McCain

[Soldier4Christ]

John McCain funded
by Soros since 2001
Candidate's Reform Institute also
accepted funds from Teresa Kerry

As Sen. John McCain assumes the GOP front-runner mantle, his long-standing, but little-noticed association with left-wing donors such as George Soros and Teresa Heinz Kerry is receiving new attention among his Republican critics.

In 2001, McCain founded the Alexandria, Va.-based Reform Institute as a vehicle to receive funding from George Soros' Open Society Institute and Teresa Heinz Kerry's Tides Foundation and several other prominent non-profit organizations.

McCain used the institute to promote his political agenda and provide compensation to key campaign operatives between elections.

In 2006, the Arizona senator was forced to sever his formal ties with the Reform Institute after a controversial $200,000 contribution from Cablevision came to light. McCain solicited the donation for the Reform Institute using his membership on the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. In a letter to the Federal Communications Commission, he supported Cablevision's push to introduce the more profitable al la carte pricing, rather than packages of TV programming.

Yet, the Reform Institute still employs the McCain campaign's Hispanic outreach director, Juan Hernandez, as a senior fellow of its Comprehensive Immigration Reform Initiative.

As WND reported, Hernandez serves as a non-paid volunteer for the McCain campaign. A dual Mexican-U.S. citizen, he was a member of former President Vicente Fox's cabinet, representing an estimate 24 million Mexicans living abroad. Hernandez, with a "Mexico first" message, has argued aggressively against building a fence on the Mexican border, insisting the frontier needed to remain wide open so illegal immigrants could easily enter the U.S.

The July 6, 2001, homepage of the Reform Institute archived on the Internet lists founder McCain as chairman of the group's advisory committee.

Prominent senior officials on the McCain 2008 presidential campaign staff found generously paid positions at the Reform Institute following the senator's unsuccessful run for the White House in 2000.

Rick Davis, McCain's current campaign manager, was paid $110,000 a year by the Reform Institute for a consulting position, according to the group's 2003 Form 990 filing with the IRS.

In 2004, Davis advanced to the position of Reform Institute president, with an annual salary of $120,000, according to the group's 2004 Form 990.

In 2005, Davis remained president, but his salary dropped back to $45,000 a year, with a time commitment of five hours per week, according the 2005 Form 990.

Carla Eudy, a senior advisor on McCain's 2008 presidential campaign who until recently headed fundraising, was paid $177,885 in 2005 to serve as the Reform Institute's secretary-treasurer.

Other McCain presidential campaign staffers who have found employment at the Reform Institute include Trevor Potter, McCain's 2000 legal counsel, and Crystal Benton, the senator's former press secretary, who served as institute's communications director in 2005 for an annual salary of $52,083.

The Reform Institute regularly has supported McCain in various legislative efforts, including on campaign finance reform, global warming and "comprehensive immigration reform," all efforts widely opposed by many in the party's conservative base.

Arianna Huffington, syndicated columnist and creator of the HuffingtonPost.com, has served on the Reform Institute's advisory committee since the group's inception.

According to FrontPage Magazine, Teresa Heinz Kerry has provided more than $4 million to the Tides Foundation, a non-profit organization founded by anti-war activist Drummond Pike in 1976 with a history of funding causes such as abortion, homosexual-rights activism and open borders.

Financial contributors while McCain was chairman of the Reform Institute also have included the Educational Foundation of America, a group that supports abortion and opposes drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve.

The Soros-Kerry funding connection with McCain was first exposed by Ed Morrissey at the Captains Quarters blog in 2005.

Subsequently, David Horowitz's DiscoverTheNetworks.org website and Michelle Malkin's blog gave renewed attention to the Reform Institute's funding ties.

[nChrist]

WOW!

This is pathetic, and it stinks! This explains the McCain - Kennedy connection and other things. In my opinion, George Soros works for the devil, the destruction of morals, and the destruction of what's left of our country. Further, I think this description is overly kind. Do a Google search for George Soros - look at the quotes - ponder the material, and make your own opinion. PLEASE, don't pay any attention at all to my opinion on this matter. ALL of us need to be informed individually on things like this.

[Soldier4Christ]

Soros is indeed evil and working for the devil. With his support of Obama, Clinton and McCain he is insuring that he has all his bases covered. He is going to get what he wants one way or another.

[nChrist]

Only one question remains:  does George Soros have Huckabee also? Maybe NOT!

[Soldier4Christ]

Only one question remains:  does George Soros have Huckabee also? Maybe NOT!

That question crossed my mind also.

[Brother Jerry]

Could be some light in a dark corner of politics that will help ensure that God's chosen leader will be in place to assume the mantle of President of the United States.

[Soldier4Christ]

I can't disagree with that at all.


To all appearances, Huckabee has nothing to do with George Soros. In fact he has publicly chastised those that do and has put Soros down for his stance on things. One of things he has made a comment about on Hillary Clinton was how she refused to open up her mouth in suuport for General Petraeus because she was to busy with her lips on Soros' back side.

[nChrist]

Brothers and Sisters,

I think that most of us have had considerable thought and prayer about this issue.

I realize that there are no perfect candidates, but Huckabee is the only one right now who I can vote for in good conscience. This has been a wild and insane time in terms of what MONEY has obviously BOUGHT and where BIG MONEY wants this country to go. At this point, I feel led to continue supporting Huckabee.

Two other thoughts have crossed my mind that won't have any influence on how I vote at all. 1) Our country might not deserve a Godly leader. Overall, as a nation, it would be a sad thing if we got what we deserved. 2) GOD'S Chosen Leader for this specific time might be one who helps to user in the Tribulation Period. I know that GOD'S Will be done!, and it Will Be! As for my part, I plan to pray, pray some more, and yield to GOD'S Will.

[Brother Jerry]

AMEN!!

[Shammu]

The only way though for Mike Huckabee win at this point, is to get 89.8% of the delegates left. I was listening on the radio on the way home when the broadcaster figured out what percent would be needed for Huckabee to win.

[Soldier4Christ]

George Soros brains behind McCain-Feingold
'Activist wanted limits on advertising after Hillarycare defeat'

An investigative author says George Soros used Sen. John McCain to push for limits on issue advertising by grassroots groups because he was upset over the cataclysmic failure of Hillarycare, the all-encompassing government health care program proposed during Bill Clinton's first term as president.

The author, Richard Poe, whose earlier publications include Hillary's Secret War: The Clinton Conspiracy to Muzzle Internet Journalists, told WND that Soros later funded the senator's Reform Institute because of their work together on the McCain-Feingold Act.

"Money paid to the Reform Institute rewarded McCain for pushing the McCain-Feingold Act, a law which restricts the ability of grassroots groups to advertise on television, while allowing major media free rein to promote their favorite Democrat candidates," Poe told WND.

According to the author, Soros devised McCain-Feingold in 1994 in response to the failure of Hillarycare, the universal health care program Hillary Clinton championed.

Hillary, Soros and other Democrats blamed the defeat of Hillarycare on television advertising and, as a result, Soros resolved to choke off access to the TV airwaves to those opponents, Poe told WND.

A comment could not be obtained from the McCain campaign because of the holiday yesterday. But in their book, "The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party," co-authors David Horowitz and Poe trace Soros' determination to push for campaign finance reform back to a speech Soros gave at Columbia University's school of medicine on Nov. 30, 1994.

In that address, Soros spoke mainly about a new initiative he was launching called the Project on Death in America.

With his Project on Death in America, Soros sought to promote "palliative care," which means keeping patients comfortable while they are dying, but making no effort to save or extend their lives.

In their book, Horowitz and Poe argued that Soros had a "covert purpose," both in supporting Hillarycare and in funding the Project on Death in America, namely, "to save money by rationing healthcare."

Healthcare rationing was the essence of Hillary’s health plan in 1994, just as it is today, Poe said, when Hillary now promises to slash medical spending in America by $120 billion per year.

Horowitz and Poe saw Soros' Project on Death in America as a back-door effort to salvage a key feature of Hillarycare, seeking to implement Hillarycare through the private sector, after failing to pass the agenda politically.

Soros ended his Columbia University speech by promising to "do something" about "the distortion of our electoral process by the excessive use of TV advertising."

Horowitz and Poe argue that the "something" turned out to be the McCain-Feingold Act of March 27, 2002.

Still, Horowitz and Poe insisted that the McCain-Feingold Act was a "Trojan Horse."

"Its stated purpose was to clean up politics by tightly regulating the amount of money political parties and candidates could accept from donors," Horowitz and Poe wrote. "Its actual purpose, to use Soros' words, was to curb the 'use of TV advertising' in American politics."

Poe told WND that Soros' plan came to fruition with his funding of Arianna Huffington's "Shadow Conventions," which were designed to be held at the same time and in the same cities as the Republican and Democratic national nominating conventions in Philadelphia and Los Angeles in 2000.

Sen. Russ Feingold was the keynote speaker at the Los Angeles Shadow Convention during the Democratic Party's national nominating convention, while John McCain gave the keynote speech in Philadelphia during the Republican Party's national nominating convention.

An archived transcript from CNN shows McCain delivered the keynote address for Huffington's Shadow Convention on July 30, 2000, two days before he addressed the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia.

In their book "The Shadow Party," Horowitz and Poe document what they call "Pewgate," a successful effort by Soros' Open Society Institute to get Pew Charitable Trusts to lead a group of foundations to contribute $140 million to promote campaign finance reform from 1994 to 2004.

"Without funding from George Soros' Open Society Institute and other Pewgate foundations, the Shadow Conventions could not and would not have occurred, any more than McCain-Feingold could eventually have passed into law," wrote Horowitz and Poe.

The Reform Institute opened its doors in July 2001, with John McCain listed as chairman on the organization's homepage and Arianna Huffington listed as a member of the Advisory Committee.

"McCain's Reform Institute for Campaign and Election Issues received generous funding from several Pewgate foundations, including the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Jerome Kohlberg, Jr. Revocable Trust, and George Soros' Open Society Institute," wrote Horowitz and Poe in "The Shadow Party."

After studying the Reform Institute's website, Horowitz and Poe concluded that "almost all of McCain's funders who have contributed more than $50,000 are left-wing foundations."

WND previously has reported McCain used the Reform Institute to provide salaries for his 2000 presidential campaign staff, including Rich Davis, McCain's campaign manager, who received six figure compensation from the Reform Institute in 2003 and 2004, first as a consultant, then as the Reform Institute's president.

WND has also reported the Center for Public Integrity in 2002 charged McCain with what amounts to influence peddling, based on evidence McCain and Davis used McCain's position as chairman of the influential Senate Commerce Committee to further the business interests of telecommunications clients of Davis's lobbying firm or to solicit contributions to the Reform Institute from telecommunications companies seeking favorable FCC rulings.

"It's the old game," Poe said. "These foundations are supposed to be non-partisan institutes formed to advance some public policy agenda, in keeping with their 501(c)(3) tax-exempt guidelines, but many engage in outright politicking."

"The Reform Institute became a virtual 'McCain for President' campaign headquarters, preparing for 2008," he continued. "The place was staffed up with McCain campaign personnel and the goal was to promote McCain as a 'reformer.'"

Despite the charges raised against McCain in "The Shadow Party," Horowitz has defended publicly the Republican frontrunner against conservative critics.

Poe supports McCain too, but reluctantly.

"McCain is all we've got," Poe told WND. "Republicans need to unite behind him, but we also need to hold his feet to the fire. McCain must break his ties with the Hillary-Soros machine."

[Soldier4Christ]

McCain aide linked to Russian billionaire
Connection raises questions about candidate's opposition to Putin

Sen. John McCain has asserted his opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin a number of times, going so far as joining with Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., in 2005 to introduce legislation calling on President Bush to suspend Russia's membership in the Group of Eight.

That opposition, however, is being called into question by links that have been established in various reports between McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, and Ukrainian billionaire Oleg Deripaska, who is suspected of having ties to organized Russian crime.

Davis even arranged for McCain to meet Deripaska at a time when Davis' lobbying firm was working under contract with Ukrainian political leaders supported by Putin's regime in Moscow.

Moreover, Davis' decision to retain his position in his lobbying firm while serving as McCain's 2008 presidential campaign manager raises questions about McCain's sincerity in his self-avowed campaign to eliminate influence peddling from U.S. politics.

It was in 2006 when Davis arranged an introduction between McCain and Deripaska, a billionaire Russian aluminum magnate, during an international economic conference in Davos, Switzerland, according to a report by the Washington Post in January.

Davis, at the time of the meeting, was president of the George Soros-funded Reform Institute and managing partner in his Washington, D.C., lobbying firm, Davis, Manafort & Freeman.

Deripaska, whose net worth is estimated to exceed $13 billion, is widely reported to be a close ally of Putin.

At the time of the meeting, Paul Manafort, Davis' partner in the lobbying firm bearing their names, had a contract to advise Ukrainian politician and former prime minister Victor Yanukovych, the Putin-supported leader of the Party of Regions who in 2006 was then vying with Victor Yushchenko in the parliamentary elections in a bid to form a pro-Moscow government.

In 2006, McCain as chairman of the International Republican Institute, or IRI,openly supported Yushchenko, arguing Yanukovych's alleged ties to the Russian mafia and the KGB disqualified him from being the type of democratic leaders needed to advance the Ukraine's "Orange Revolution."

In the 2006 effort, McCain again was joined by Soros who was openly funding Yushchenko in the contest against Yanukovych.

The Washington Post reported Deripaska was sufficiently grateful for the introduction to write a thank you note, obtained by the Washington Post, to Davis and Manafort and offering to assist them in a subsequent business deal.

A WND phone call to McCain’s presidential campaign seeking an explanation of McCain's meeting with Deripaska went unanswered.

But McCain has frequently been a vocal opponent of Putin.

According to a CNN report at the time of his 2005 work with Lieberman, McCain urged Bush to rebuke Putin for turning away from democracy in Russia, accepting Yanukovych as Ukrainian prime minister in a heavily disputed election, and for encouraging Iran in the development of a covert nuclear weapons program under the guise of a nuclear energy program.

Deripaska already had a history of paying U.S. politicians for political favors.

In 2003, former Sen. Bob Dole, the Republican Party presidential candidate in 1996, was paid $300,000 to assist Deripaska obtain a visa to visit the United States, according to an April 2007 report that was published in the Wall Street Journal.

In 2005, when the State Department reversed its conclusion that Deripaska was a criminal who had used bribery, intimidation and violence to amass his aluminum-based fortune in Russia, Dole was paid another $260,000 to reward him for getting Deripaska a multi-visit visa to the U.S.

The same Wall Street Journal article reported Manafort had received fees and donations from Ukrainian billionaire Rinat Akhmetov, reputedly Yanukovich's political patron.

Manafort served as a media consultant to Dole’s 1996 presidential campaign.

In July 2007, the State Department again reversed its decision, cancelling Deripaska's visa over continuing concerns he remained connected with the Russian mafia.

At the time, Deripaska was rumored to be at the center of a possible bid to buy ailing DaimlerChrysler.

[Soldier4Christ]

McCain fortune traced to organized crime
Mob figures later implicated in Arizona savings and loan scandal

John McCain's personal fortune traces back to organized crime in Arizona, through his father-in-law, according to a report published by a multi-news agency team called Investigative Reporters and Editors Inc.

IRE reporters Amy Silverman and John Doherty, writing in the Phoenix New Times, note that the father of McCain's wife, James Hensley, was convicted by a federal jury in U.S. District Court of Arizona in March 1948 on seven counts of filing false liquor records. Hensley also was charged with conspiracy to hide from federal authorities the names of persons involved in a liquor industry racket with two companies he managed, United Sales Company in Phoenix and United Distributors in Tucson.

The umbrella company, United Liquor, at that time held a  monopoly in Arizona, organized and managed by Kemper Marley, who was accused of mob ties by a reporter who was murdered in 1977.

Silverman and Doherty report that by 1955, Hensley had launched a Budweiser distributorship in Phoenix, "a franchise reportedly bestowed upon him by Marley, who was never indicted in the 1948 liquor-law-violation case – or a subsequent one – despite his controlling role in the liquor distribution businesses."

According to Marley's longtime public relations man, Al Lizanetz, the Marley liquor empire was founded by the Bronfman family dynasty of Canada which operated Allied Finance Company, Northern Export Company and Distillers Corporation – the Seagrams, Ltd. empire.

As chronicled by the "Rumrunners and Prohibition" video shown popularly on the History Channel, during the 1920s, the Bronfman family made millions in bootlegging, accounting for half the illegal liquor crossing the border, working in a profitable distribution deal with the infamous mobster Meyer Lansky, who later moved on to establish the crime syndicates in the casinos of Havana, Cuba, in the 1940s and 50s.

Arizona in the 1970s drew a "who's who" of organized crime figures seeking to retire in the sun, including Rochester, N.Y., mob boss Joe Bonanno, who spent his last days along the Lake Havasu shores and in a quiet home in Tucson.

In 1977, after Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles was killed when his car was blown up by the mob in a parking lot, a team of 36 journalists from 27 news organizations, known as IRE, published an 80,000 word 23-part series on organized crime in Arizona.

Dan Nowicki and Bill Muller, reporting in the Arizona Republic March 1, 2007, documented that in 1953, Hensley was again charged with falsifying records at Marley's liquor firms.

Hensley was found not guilty after being defended by William Rehnquist, the future chief justice of the Supreme Court, Nowicki and Muller wrote.

In 2000, Hensley, then 80 years old, still controlled the Budweiser distributorship valued as a $200 million-a-year business, with annual sales of more than 20 million cases of beer.

On Feb. 17, 2000, Pat Flannery reported in the Arizona Republic that Hensley's beer-distribution empire was the fifth largest in the nation, "a Budweiser franchise whose bigwigs hold the No. 2 spot on Sen. John McCain's all-time career list of corporate donors."

Since 1982, according to the Center for Public Integrity, Hensley & Co. officials have pumped $80,000 into the campaigns of McCain, Flannery wrote. More than a quarter of that has been donated since 1997.

Flannery further reported that in 2000, Cindy Hensley McCain, the senator's wife, held a 37.18 percent financial interest in her father's Budweiser distributorship, although she was not involved in day-to-day operations.

The McCain's four children held a combined 23.55 percent interest, though their interests were at that time held in trust.

Arizona crime connections again surfaced in the 1980s when McCain was implicated as one of the five U.S. senators named in the "Keating Five" scandal.

Charles Keating Jr. and his associates paid McCain some $112,000 in political campaign contributions between 1982 and 1987, while Keating was organizing a massive real estate fraud in the then FDIC federally insured Lincoln Savings and Loan Association.

In April 1986, McCain's wife and father-in-law also invested $359,000 in a Keating shopping center, before the savings and loan scandal broke.

Keating was sent to prison under civil racketeering and fraud charges for the $1.1 billion loss the investment scheme cost the public, although McCain and the other U.S. senators involved managed to avoid charges in the Senate, with McCain receiving only an Ethics Committee rebuke for exercising "poor judgment."

Even today, McCain's 2008 presidential campaign staff includes several prominent lobbyists, despite the senator's claim to be a campaign reform crusader whose goal is to take money out of politics.

WND previously reported McCain's 2000 and 2008 campaign manager Rick Davis took a six-figure salary as president of the Soros-funded Reform Institute in the intervening years and managed his own lobby firm of Davis, Manafort & Freeman in Alexandria, Va., operating at the same building in a suite down the hall from the Reform Institute.

In 2003 and 2004, Davis apparently solicited CSC Holdings, a subsidiary of the Cablevision Systems Corporation, headed by Charles F. Dolan, to make two separate $100,000 contributions to the Reform Institute.

In between the two separate $100,000 contributions Cablevision made to the Reform Institute, McCain, then chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, wrote a letter to the Federal Communications Commission supporting Cablevision's desire to continue packaging customer TV programming in a manner more profitable to Cablevision.

In this period of time, McCain worked with Vicki Iseman, a lobbyist representing telecommunications companies, including Cablevision.

WND also reported Davis arranged a 2006 meeting with Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska in Davos, Switzerland, a close supporter of Russian president Vladimir Putin.

McCain repeatedly has voiced opposition to Putin, even calling on President Bush to suspend Russia's membership in the Group of Eight.

In 2007, the U.S. State Department cancelled Deripaska's visa over continuing concerns he remained connected with the Russian mafia.

[Brother Jerry]

Wanted to put in a note as well on the Mike Hucakbee page is a call to challenge McCain to a Lincoln-Douglass debate in Texas.  They are calling for folks to add comments to the blog in support of it...reportedly the blog is being sent or will be sent to McCain HQ.

I think it would be interesting to see the two match up and discuss what their vision for the country is.

[Soldier4Christ]

McCain’s Canal Zone Birth Prompts Queries About Whether That Rules Him Out

WASHINGTON — The question has nagged at the parents of Americans born outside the continental United States for generations: Dare their children aspire to grow up and become president? In the case of Senator John McCain of Arizona, the issue is becoming more than a matter of parental daydreaming.

Mr. McCain’s likely nomination as the Republican candidate for president and the happenstance of his birth in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936 are reviving a musty debate that has surfaced periodically since the founders first set quill to parchment and declared that only a “natural-born citizen” can hold the nation’s highest office.

Almost since those words were written in 1787 with scant explanation, their precise meaning has been the stuff of confusion, law school review articles, whisper campaigns and civics class debates over whether only those delivered on American soil can be truly natural born. To date, no American to take the presidential oath has had an official birthplace outside the 50 states.

“There are powerful arguments that Senator McCain or anyone else in this position is constitutionally qualified, but there is certainly no precedent,” said Sarah H. Duggin, an associate professor of law at Catholic University who has studied the issue extensively. “It is not a slam-dunk situation.”

Mr. McCain was born on a military installation in the Canal Zone, where his mother and father, a Navy officer, were stationed. His campaign advisers say they are comfortable that Mr. McCain meets the requirement and note that the question was researched for his first presidential bid in 1999 and reviewed again this time around.

But given mounting interest, the campaign recently asked Theodore B. Olson, a former solicitor general now advising Mr. McCain, to prepare a detailed legal analysis. “I don’t have much doubt about it,” said Mr. Olson, who added, though, that he still needed to finish his research.

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and one of Mr. McCain’s closest allies, said it would be incomprehensible to him if the son of a military member born in a military station could not run for president.

“He was posted there on orders from the United States government,” Mr. Graham said of Mr. McCain’s father. “If that becomes a problem, we need to tell every military family that your kid can’t be president if they take an overseas assignment.”

The phrase “natural born” was in early drafts of the Constitution. Scholars say notes of the Constitutional Convention give away little of the intent of the framers. Its origin may be traced to a letter from John Jay to George Washington, with Jay suggesting that to prevent foreigners from becoming commander in chief, the Constitution needed to “declare expressly” that only a natural-born citizen could be president.

Ms. Duggin and others who have explored the arcane subject in depth say legal argument and basic fairness may indeed be on the side of Mr. McCain, a longtime member of Congress from Arizona. But multiple experts and scholarly reviews say the issue has never been definitively resolved by either Congress or the Supreme Court.

Ms. Duggin favors a constitutional amendment to settle the matter. Others have called on Congress to guarantee that Americans born outside the national boundaries can legitimately see themselves as potential contenders for the Oval Office.

“They ought to have the same rights,” said Don Nickles, a former Republican senator from Oklahoma who in 2004 introduced legislation that would have established that children born abroad to American citizens could harbor presidential ambitions without a legal cloud over their hopes. “There is some ambiguity because there has never been a court case on what ‘natural-born citizen’ means.”

Mr. McCain’s situation is different from those of the current governors of California and Michigan, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jennifer M. Granholm, who were born in other countries and were first citizens of those nations, rendering them naturalized Americans ineligible under current interpretations. The conflict that could conceivably ensnare Mr. McCain goes more to the interpretation of “natural born” when weighed against intent and decades of immigration law.

Mr. McCain is not the first person to find himself in these circumstances. The last Arizona Republican to be a presidential nominee, Barry Goldwater, faced the issue. He was born in the Arizona territory in 1909, three years before it became a state. But Goldwater did not win, and the view at the time was that since he was born in a continental territory that later became a state, he probably met the standard.

It also surfaced in the 1968 candidacy of George Romney, who was born in Mexico, but again was not tested. The former Connecticut politician Lowell P. Weicker Jr., born in Paris, sought a legal analysis when considering the presidency, an aide said, and was assured he was eligible. Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. was once viewed as a potential successor to his father, but was seen by some as ineligible since he had been born on Campobello Island in Canada. The 21st president, Chester A. Arthur, whose birthplace is Vermont, was rumored to have actually been born in Canada, prompting some to question his eligibility.

Quickly recognizing confusion over the evolving nature of citizenship, the First Congress in 1790 passed a measure that did define children of citizens “born beyond the sea, or out of the limits of the United States to be natural born.” But that law is still seen as potentially unconstitutional and was overtaken by subsequent legislation that omitted the “natural-born” phrase.

Mr. McCain’s citizenship was established by statutes covering the offspring of Americans abroad and laws specific to the Canal Zone as Congress realized that Americans would be living and working in the area for extended periods. But whether he qualifies as natural-born has been a topic of Internet buzz for months, with some declaring him ineligible while others assert that he meets all the basic constitutional qualifications — a natural-born citizen at least 35 years of age with 14 years of residence.

“I don’t think he has any problem whatsoever,” said Mr. Nickles, a McCain supporter. “But I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if somebody is going to try to make an issue out of it. If it goes to court, I think he will win.”

Lawyers who have examined the topic say there is not just confusion about the provision itself, but uncertainty about who would have the legal standing to challenge a candidate on such grounds, what form a challenge could take and whether it would have to wait until after the election or could be made at any time.

In a paper written 20 years ago for the Yale Law Journal on the natural-born enigma, Jill Pryor, now a lawyer in Atlanta, said that any legal challenge to a presidential candidate born outside national boundaries would be “unpredictable and unsatisfactory.”

“If I were on the Supreme Court, I would decide for John McCain,” Ms. Pryor said in a recent interview. “But it is certainly not a frivolous issue.”