[In response to Brandon Blue’s] article dated March 21, 2011, that makes the following assertion:

“Theodore Olson, former solicitor general, points out that a natural-born citizen is born to two American parents on American soil.”

You are demonstrably wrong.

Let’s start with what Olson was quoted as saying in the article to which you linked:

“The plain meaning of ‘natural born citizen’ includes persons who become citizens of this nation ‘naturally,’ that is, by virtue of their birth to parents who are citizens, particularly when the birth takes place on territory occupied and controlled by the United States, in Senator McCain’s case, a U.S. military base in the Panama Canal Zone.”

Olson was speaking in the context of persons born out of the United States such as John McCain. In fact, Olsen’s definition of “natural born citizen” is quite expansive in that it includes children born overseas to U.S. citizen parents — which goes beyond even the scope of U.S. naturalization law in granting citizenship. When McCain was born in 1936, no U.S. law conferred citizenship on him. He only became a U.S. citizen under a law passed in 1937 which arguably applied retroactively.

We know Olson was speaking about foreign births because he is on the record as contrasting “natural born” foreign births versus “natural born” domestic births:

“‘[N]atural born includes both birth abroad to parents who were citizens, and birth within a nation’s territory and allegiance.”

Nowhere does he add the additional condition that the child born in the nation’s territory must have two citizen parents to be “natural born.”

If you’re going to make birther arguments, please don’t twist the words of a respected legal practitioner like Ted Olson. Your readers are owed a correction.