I did not mean to imply that Hillary would challenge Sen. Obama’s claim that he was born in Hawaii. I assume that he indeed was born there. But might there might be some challenge, if young Barack had been adopted by his Indonesian father (which would require Muslim status in Indonesia) and subsequently resided in Indonesia for four years, regarding whether Barack met the criterion re. a ‘natural born’ citizen.

Sen. Obama’s web site leaves out any mention of marriage to an Indonesian: “Barack’s father eventually returned to Kenya, and Barack grew up with his mother in Hawaii, and for a few years in Indonesia.” How that for elipsis? Is it possible the Senator holds dual citizenship? I don’t know, but I suspect both the Clinton and McCain camps have inquiring minds that want to know.

I copied the cases below from Wikipedia to indicate some of the complexities surrounding the definition of “natural born:–

Montana v. Kennedy, 366 U.S. 308 (1961): A person born in 1906, whose mother was a native-born citizen of the United States and whose father was a foreign citizen, who was born overseas and then moved to the United States, was not a citizen of the United States by birth. (Note that the relevant laws have changed considerably since 1906, so this decision does not necessarily apply to later cases.)

Schneider v. Rusk, 377 U.S. 163 (1964): The Court voided a statute that provided that a naturalized citizen should lose his United States citizenship if, following naturalization, he resided continuously for three years in his former homeland. “We start from the premise that the rights of citizenship of the native-born and of the naturalized person are of the same dignity and are coextensive. The only difference drawn by the Constitution is that only the ‘natural born’ citizen is eligible to be President.”