Liberals claim Obama is a native-born U.S. citizen. So why would he have created a fake birth certificate using Adobe software, unless he was actually a foreign national?

you are wrong, and i'm not wasting any more time on trying to disabuse you of your error.

OK ... i'll waste a bit more time ...

http://urbanlegends.about.com...

Article II of the U.S. Constitution indeed specifies that only natural-born citizens are eligible for the office of the presidency:

No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.
Though the term "natural-born citizen" was left undefined by the Framers of the Constitution, it was broadly understood in English common law at the time as referring to one who possesses citizenship by virtue of the circumstances of their birth, which is still the general meaning of the phrase as it's used today.

In the United States there are two established legal principles upon which individuals are said to acquire citizenship at birth: jus sanguinus ("right of blood"), meaning citizenship conferred by being born to parents who are U.S. citizens, and jus soli ("right of soil"), meaning citizenship conferred by being born on U.S. soil. Per the Fourteenth Amendment, which states that "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside," all individuals born on U.S. soil are considered "birthright citizens" under the law regardless of the citizenship status of their parents.

Citizenship status of Barack Obama's parents

The forwarded email asserts that because Obama's Kenyan father wasn't a U.S. citizen, and because his mother, who was a citizen, didn't fulfill the supposed legal requirement of "resid[ing] in the United States for at least ten years, at least five of which had to be after the age of 16," Obama himself was therefore not a citizen at birth.

That is false on two counts:

Obama was born on U.S. soil — in Honolulu, Hawaii — and was therefore a citizen at birth by virtue of the Fourteenth Amendment (and the principle of jus soli).
The stated residency requirement, in effect between 1952 and 1986, applied only to parents of individuals born outside the United States.
Therefore Barack Obama is, in fact, a U.S. citizen. However, some still argue that he is not a natural-born citizen. The reasons have to do with the disputed meaning of the term "natural born."

'Natural born' vs. 'native born'

In lawsuits challenging Obama's Constitutional eligibility it has been argued that while birth on U.S. soil confers "birthright" or "native-born" citizenship, it does not confer natural-born citizenship unless both parents are also U.S. citizens. Citing precedents they claim establish the Framers' intent to disqualify individuals who could possess dual nationality or dual allegiance by virtue of having a foreign national for a parent, these litigants assert that such an individual ought not to be regarded as a natural-born citizen eligible to hold the office of the presidency (for example, see Leo D'Onofrio, "Why Obama Is Ineligible - Regardless of His Birthplace").

But among Constitutional scholars the distinction between "natural born" and "native born" is not universally accepted as a crucial one. Short of a Supreme Court decision or legislative statute settling the matter, it remains but one way of interpreting a longstanding legal ambiguity concerning the eligibility clause. There are other interpretations, most notably that found in an analysis of Republican presidential candidate John McCain's standing as a natural-born citizen conducted in 2008 by former U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson and Constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe. In their view — "based," Tribe and Olson wrote, "on the original meaning of the Constitution, the Framers' intentions, and subsequent legal precedent" — either the fact of birth on U.S. soil or the fact of birth to parents who are U.S. citizens is independently sufficient to confer natural born status.

http://www.federalistblog.us/...

Natural-Born Citizen Defined

One universal point most all early publicists agreed on was natural-born citizen must mean one who is a citizen by no act of law. If a person owes their citizenship to some act of law (naturalization for example), they cannot be considered a natural-born citizen. This leads us to defining natural-born citizen under the laws of nature – laws the founders recognized and embraced.

Under the laws of nature, every child born requires no act of law to establish the fact the child inherits through nature his/her father’s citizenship as well as his name (or even his property) through birth. This law of nature is also recognized by law of nations. Sen. Howard said the citizenship clause under the Fourteenth Amendment was by virtue of “natural law and national law.”

The advantages of Natural Law is competing allegiances between nations are not claimed, or at least with those nations whose custom is to not make citizens of other countries citizens without their consent. Under Sec. 1992 of U.S. Revised Statutes (1866) made clear other nation’s citizens would not be claimed: “All persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are declared to be citizens of the United States.”

Rep. John A. Bingham commenting on Section 1992 said it means “every human being born within the jurisdiction of the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty is, in the language of your Constitution itself, a natural born citizen.” (Cong. Globe, 39th, 1st Sess., 1291 (1866))