Why the birthers lose

Slate finally asks the question that we should have been posing to the birthers all along: suppose Barack Obama was really born outside the U.S....legally, would it really matter? Among the not very complicated legal reasons why there would be virtually no way the birthers would prevail in a challenge to the legitimacy of Obama's presidency even if they finally found the smoking gun of Kenya birth:

1. No citizen in the U.S. would have standing to sue to challenge his presidency, because every citizen would be impacted equivalently and courts routinely interpret such situations as not conferring standing.

2. The people who ran against Obama in 2008 also wouldn't have standing because there is no legal relief available that would address their injury. Basically, if Hillary Clinton sued and won, it still wouldn't make her the winner of the Democratic primary or President. Instead it would just make Joe Biden President.

3. Even if someone established standing, courts would probably decide it was a political question not appropriate for adjudication. Courts would be very wary of forcing a Constitutional crisis that would oust a sitting President, particularly when there is a procedure specifically spelled out in the Constitution for that. Which brings us to...

4. Congress could impeach him, but it would be difficult to prove he committed a high crime or misdemeanor unless he actually knew he had been born in Kenya and conspired to hide it, thereby committing a fraud. If he didn't know, he wouldn't have done anything criminal that would qualify. Also, there's no way in hell this Congress votes to impeach him.

Of course this article doesn't go into the other big reason why it might not even matter: Obama was born to an American citizen, Stanley Ann Dunham, so much like John McCain he would have been a natural born citizen of the U.S. even though not born on American soil. (There is some question of whether she had been a citizen for 5 years beyond her 14th birthday, a requirement under some statutes to be considered a full citizen, but it's not even clear that applies.) Being a natural born citizen is all the constitution requires, and does not necessarily require birth on U.S. soil despite the ravings of people who have obviously never read said Constitution. Being born on U.S. soil is the easiest, but not the ONLY, way to be a legally natural born citizen.

(The Constitution also does not require that both biological or legal parents be American citizens, but that won't stop some of the whackjobbier birthers from claiming it anyway.)

So there you have it, even if you assume the crazy things they would have you assume, it still won't change anything. Can we move on to more important matters now?