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The Hobby of Energy Secretary Steven Chu
quanminoan writes "Nobel Laureate and US Secretary of Energy Steven Chu has continued to publish even while in federal office. While previous research topics include gravitational redshift, Chu has coauthored a paper entitled 'Subnanometre single-molecule localization registration and distance measurements' which discusses a way to optically image objects as small as 0.5 nm — a major step down from the previous limit of 10 nm. Chu does this in his free time, claiming 'I just consider it my equivalent of ... vegging out in front of the TV.'"
Every year you age, it will get worse.
Having to be born within some geographic boundaries as a serious consideration on whether or not I want you as my President? Ridiculous.... It is not much different than having to establish nobility on both sides for 5 generations. Way too much like a birthright to me. Why not call it something like Rule by Divine GPS Coordinates?
You're right, that would be silly.
But the Constitution doesn't say anything of the kind. It says, "a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution."
You do know that children born to Americans outside the US are still citizens, right? That pregnant American women overseas are not rushed home in a terrified panic lest their children be foreigners with no right of residence? There's this whole nifty procedure we've got for these scenarios. There's this form you fill out with the local US Embassy to register the birth so that there won't be any problems later on when your child needs to prove their citizenship and their birth certificate is in Farsi or Basque.
It might seem like Rule by Map, but that's really only true when dealing with, say, a non-citizen immigrant family who had one child before immigrating and another after. In that circumstance, yes, the location of the birth made all the difference, and the map won. I think edge cases like that are an acceptable sacrifice to make in the name of preserving our jus soli rather than jus sanguinis system of citizenship.
I think the natural-born thing was a pretty reasonable defense mechanism for a tiny, fledgling group of republics who had just fought off the suzerainty of a king who had never set foot there. A king, indeed, who ruled over a great many lands he'd never set foot in; one amongst many such. Seems like a pretty fool-proof way to ensure that your leader has a vested interest in your nation's welfare, and isn't simply a silver-tongued French provocateur, no?
If you don't like it, lobby to have the Constitution amended. It's a legacy of a bygone era, certainly, but it's not as capricious or asinine as you suggest.