The Arizona Congress just passed their new so-called "birther" bill which will require all future presidential candidates to prove citizenship before appearing on the AZ ballot over to the Governor to sign or veto. If Governor Jan Brewer signs the law, it will be the first law in the nation that attempts to enforce the "natural born citizenship" provision of the Constitution. Of course, no one in the Arizona state house is suggesting this has anything to do with the so-called "birther" conspiracy theory that President Obama was not born in the United States, faked his official records in Hawai'i, had Time Travel Agents go back and plant birth announcements in the newspaper, and plant false memories of his childhood in the mind of the current governor who claims to have known Barack Obama when he was a child.
Unfortunately, there are some problems as revealed by the current secretary of state of Arizona in this
interview.
First, the bill gives any Arizonan the right to sue if he or she believes the Secretary of State has ruled in error on the fulfillment of the Arizona requirements.
Second, the bill will never withstand Supreme Court appeals at present because the Supreme Court will have a difficult time upholding the law without ruling on what constitutes a natural-born citizen of the United States. The debate will wage on and attempts to understand and get at the intentions of the authors of the Constitution who created the provision with an automatic exclusion to account for the fact that it would take a while for natural-born citizens to grow up to hold the office in the new nation. George Washington wasn't a natural born citizen, for example.
It is interesting, however, to listen to the Secretary of State rule on President Obama's document stating that more important than the document would be the accompanying documents from the issuing party certifying the authenticity of the document.
This will certainly be interesting, but it is difficult to see how this is not directed at the current President. The good thing will be, however, that passing the Arizona litmus test, which is apparently more stringent than that of the US Department of State, might finally put the birther issue to rest.