Question on Barack Obama...?

Question

I've read two articles today stating that it is possible that Barack Obama may run for president in 2008. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought I had heard a couple of years ago that he would not be able to run for president because he wasn't born as a US citizen (i.e. not born in the US, his parents weren't US citizens). Am I wrong about this -- is he qualified to run?

Answer 1

Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii to Barack Obama, Sr. a Harvard-educated economist of Nyangoma-Kogelo, Kenya, and Ann Dunham of Wichita, Kansas, an anthropologist. His parents met while both were attending the East-West Center of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where his father was enrolled as a foreign student. In his 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father, Obama writes that in 1960, the year his "black as pitch" African father married his "white as milk" American mother, interracial marriage was still a felony in over half the U.S..[3]

Answer 2

His mother is a U.S. citizen. Even if she wasn't, the Constitution only requires that the candidate be a "natural born citizen" - it doesn't matter whether your parents were. The relevant text (Article 2, Clause 5) is:

"No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States."

Answer 3

Barack Obama is a natural born U.S citizen, as is his mother. The only constitutional requirement to run for President is that he be a natural born U.S. citizen, so he meets the requirement. He has an African name (not a muslim name) because his father is from Kenya.