Shailagh Murray,The Washington Post, February 29, 2008
FT. WORTH, Texas — Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign announced he would co-sponsor legislation introduced yesterday by his political ally Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill to ensure that John McCain can become president, even though he was born in the Panama Canal Zone.
The issue of McCain’s eligibility was raised in a New York Times article noting the constitutional requirement that a U.S. president be a “natural-born citizen” had never been fully defined.
The McCaskill bill, submitted immediately after she scrawled it onto a notepad on the Senate floor in response to the Times story, would establish the eligibility of anyone born to a U.S. citizen who is serving overseas as an active or reserve members of the U.S. Armed Forces. The Arizona senator’s father was a Navy officer serving in the Canal Zone when McCain was born there in 1936.