Diplomatic Passports are no-doc passports… you don’t have to provide any documentation to get one, you just have to win an election or be nominated to a diplomatic position.
And guess what? The only Passport that Obama has ever displayed publicly is his Diplomatic Passport:
Screen Capture from:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/video/2010/08/12/west-wing-week-mailbag-day-summer-edition
http://www.webcitation.org/5wh5QsMhb
Direct link to MP4:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/videos/2010/August/081310_www_v3_e6_mailbag_beta.mp4
Obama’s Diplomatic Passport:
http://wtpotus.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/diplomatic-passport.jpg
Screen Capture from: http://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/video/2010/08/12/west-wing-week-mailbag-day-summer-edition
http://www.webcitation.org/5wh5QsMhb
That explains why Rep. Serrano is discusing the 2012 U.S. Supreme Court budget with U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter.
If we assume that Serrano’s parents were both born in Puerto Rico, then they were U.S. citizens at the time of José’s birth, and José was born a natural born citizen of the United States. So that’s not really an issue here. What is an issue is what Justice Souter said:
Obviously, I am among those who hold to the importance of not only the word “born” but also the word “natural”, as in “Natural Law”, and hold that by the Law of Nature, Obama follows the condition of his father and was born a British subject, to which Obama admits, and that fact excludes him from being a “natural born citizen” of the United States.
But listen again to what Justice Souter said…
How exactly can “natural born citizen” have a “broader” meaning than “everyone except a naturalized citizen”? Is Justice Souter suggesting that some think that even naturalized citizens should be allowed to be President, even though the Constitution clearly specifies “natural born citizen”?!
When the White House released the video of Obama’s Diplomatic Passport, Politico was quick to put this out:
August 17, 2010
Don’t look, birthers: Obama’s passport
But they conveniently didn’t tell their readers that Diplomatic Passports are “No Doc” Passports. Obama was not required to submit any documentary proof of his birthplace or citizenship to obtain that Passport.
And why did the White House feel the need to blur out the “Date of Issue” and “Date of Expiration”? Why would those fields be sensitive information? I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that diplomatic passports may say something different in this area than regular passports do, and they wanted to obscure that.