Cuccinelli Explains Obama Birthplace Remarks
Monday, Mar 15, 2010 | Updated 9:15 PM EDT
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Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli said his remarks about President Barack Obama's country of birth were taken out of context by Democratic blog Not Larry Sabato, POLITICO.com reported.
The blog posted audio of a conversation in which Cuccinelli said the issue of Obama's birthplace could come up if someone convicted of a law signed by Obama challenges it.
"It will get tested in my view when someone… when he signs a law, and someone is convicted of violating it and one of their defenses will be it is not a law because someone qualified to be President didn’t sign it," Cuccinelli says on the recording, suggesting its "possible" that he would challenge it.
"Someone is going to have to come forward with nailed down testimony that he was born in place B, wherever that is. You know, the speculation is Kenya. And that doesn’t seem beyond the realm of possibility," he says.
Cuccinelli said, "I was asked a hypothetical legal question, and I gave a hypothetical legal answer in response."
He denied believing those who say Obama wasn't born in the U.S.
Nevertheless, the issue isn't making it any easier for Gov. Bob McDonnell to stay close to his 2009 partner on the Republican campaign trail and still seem to be a moderate leader.
Last week, the controversy surrounded a letter Cuccinelli wrote warning Virginia’s public universities that they could not adopt policies that prohibit discrimination on sexual orientation because the General Assembly has not approved such a ban. While McDonnell supported Cuccinelli's legal reasoning, he said he would not tolerate any such discrimination on campuses or in other state agencies.
“There’s a long list of opinions. It’s all separation of power issues,” McDonnell told the Post. “But that doesn’t mean that a governor can’t say to his managers, ‘I will not tolerate discrimination in this administration.'”
