[BayBuck]

Bipartisan team says McCain natural born

A pair of lawyers - one Republican, one Democrat - have concluded that John McCain's 1936 birth outside the continental United States does not disqualify him to be president...
A federal judge in California has been asked to determine whether McCain meets the legal test to hold the nation's highest office. Although McCain has called questions about his eligibility nonsense, his campaign, as it did in his first White House run in 2000, sought a review from legal experts to put the issue to rest...
"Based on the original meaning of the Constitution, the Framers' intentions, and subsequent legal and historical precedent, Senator McCain's birth to parents who were U.S. citizens, serving on a U.S. military base in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936, makes him a 'natural born citizen' within the meaning of the Constitution," the review found...
The Constitution requires that only "natural born" citizens hold the presidency. But the Founding Fathers did not elaborate on the term, and the meaning of the phrase has long been debated.