Is climate change making tornadoes more frequent?

The recent horrific deaths due to an F5 tornado was followed by the usual comments by commentators linking the tornado to climate change.  The assumption is that climate change will make tornadoes more common and this one was viewed as evidence.

In this case, however, the climate change believers have it wrong.  The data below shows the data for tornadoes according to the National Weather Service.  There does not appear to have been any significant uptick.


The data for F3+ storms is even less corroborative.


There is a lot of evidence that the world is heating up.  You can go to the interactive map feature at climate.gov here and see the details.  It'll show that the earth has been heating up; that carbon dioxide levels have been rising; that sea levels have been rising; that glaciers are shrinking and ocean heat has been going up.  Really, the evidence is pretty overwhelming.  So, we really don't have to make up stuff.  The fact is that there is no evidence that tornadoes are getting any more frequent in the US or any stronger.

Profiling and the tragedy of the media's innumeracy!

A federal judge recently ruled that Sheriff Joe Arpaio was indulging in illegal racial profile.  The blogs have been ablaze and a surprising number of people have been suggesting that the debate is between "political correctness" (a reference perhaps to the moral imperative and the constitutional requirement to be racially unbiased) and a very effective strategy.  I have to admit that this isn't the first time I have heard this.  People as diverse as Bill Maher, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter have all advocated racial profiling - for illegal immigrants and terrorists.  What is fascinating is how these people and the people on the blogs have been arguing for profiling.  Their argument can basically be summarized as follows:

Most terrorists are Muslim so you should single out Muslims for extra scrutiny OR most illegal immigrants are Hispanic, so you should single out Hispanics for extra scrutiny. 

When I first encountered these arguments, I was amused but dismissed it, but having seen the frequency with which these arguments seem to arise, I decided to write about the framing of the argument.

At issue are the underlying conditional probabilities.

To explain, let's do a thought experiment.

In 2011, according to the FBI, there were 4.7 murders per 100,000 people.  Imagine for our experiment that all these murders are committed by African Americans.  They are not.  But, this extreme example will illustrate the point.  If you follow the logic that Maher, Coulter and others employ, shouldn't you profile African Americans?  After all, if you have a murder, by these statistics, the probability that the perpetrator is an African American is 100% - i.e. certain.  Seems logical, right?

On the other hand, consider this.  About 12.4% of US citizens are African American.  That means in those 100,000 people, 12,400 are African American.  So, in these statistics of every 12,400 people, <5 would be murderers and the remaining 12,395+ would not.

This is conditional probabilities in action.  Even with a conditional probability of 100% for being African American given that we have a murder, the probability that you have a murderer given the person is African American is 0.038%, i.e. basically insignificant.  99.62% of African Americans in our extreme thought experiment would be innocent.

Since the percentage of African American perpetrators of murders is much smaller, the actual probability that an African American is innocent is much higher.

Let's consider another case. It turns out that if you have a mass shooting in the US, the perpetrator is more likely than not to be a white male.  In fact, of the 14 mass shootings in 2012, 12 of them had a white male involved.  Yet, the fact remains that no one is likely to want to round up all white men.  For that matter, it is actually true that Asians are over represented in the list of mass shooters.  Yet, of the millions of Asians in the US, as far as I can tell, the number of mass shooters is just a handful.  That means that the probability that a randomly selected Asian is a mass shooter is probably less than 0.01%.

Or take another one.  Let's say every terrorist attack all over the world was perpetrated by a Muslim (they aren't ... but again, this extreme version will help illustrate the point), i.e. we assume that the probability that the perpetrator is Muslim given that there has been a terrorist attack is 100%.  There are over 1.6 billion Muslims in the world.  There are likely not more than a few thousand terrorist attacks around the world a year.  Assume there are 10,000 terrorist attacks a year (this is much much higher than the actual number which is rarely more than 1-2 per day).  Over the last decade, there would have been about 100,000 attacks.  Even then, the probability that a randomly selected Muslim would be a terrorist would be 0.006%, i.e. out of every 100,000 Muslims you screen, 99,994 would be innocent.  Again, remember, I grossly overstated the number of terrorist attacks.

What does this mean?

This does not automatically mean that profiling can never work.  It might.  While most forms of profiling are likely to have minuscule predictive ability as standalone metrics for guilt, combined with other factors, it might have more of an implication.  However, the question we should ask ourselves is whether the criteria we are using to identify likely criminals has sufficient nexus with the crime to be a strong indicator.  If not, profiling is likely to be very inefficient, create obvious gaps in our security apparatus and due to a high false positive rate, will likely abrogate the Constitutional rights of the majority of those targeted.  The mistake these commentators make is that they use the wrong conditional probability and therefore potentially draw the wrong conclusion about how to tackle the situation.

The sad history of immigration in the US

Currently, the US Senate is debating an immigration bill.  The bill, negotiated by a bipartisan Gang of Eight - four Democrats and four Republicans, attempts to expand legal employment based immigration, expand immigration in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math fields, give a path to legalization to 11M illegal immigrants already here, while increasing investment in border security, reducing family based immigration and making the laws against employers hiring illegal immigrants a lot stricter.  It also inroduces a bunch of guest worker programs.  Here are two summaries of the bill, one in the Wonkblog and the other in the Wall Street Journal.  The bill just passed the Senate Judiciary Committee.

This article, however, is not an examination of the merits of the proposal.  It seems a bit of a waste of time to examine the merits as it seems highly unlikely that this bill will go anywhere.  John Boehner has flatly ruled out allowing a vote on the Senate bill in the House.  That means that even if the bill passes the Senate, it really has  no where to go.  Of course, that assumes the bill passes the Senate.  According to CNN, it does not seem likely that there are 60 votes in the Senate to pass the bill.  This is especially true because Senators Jeff Flake and Ted Cruz among others are taking a very hard line (the links take you to their record on immigration) and they are almost certainly going to filibuster.  In case you think this is all about illegal immigration, Ann Coulter clarifies that its really not.

What the bill, however, drew my attention to was a slightly different question.  The story we tell about the US is that its a haven for immigrants.  In fact, many of the bill's supporters almost seem to be arguing that immigration reform is sort of manifest destiny for the US.  They point out, as evidence, that almost everyone in the US is an immigrant and that for most families there is likely a first generation immigrant among their parents or grandparents or great grandparents.

What caught me by surprise is the vituperative, irrational and xenophobic rage that the topic appears to inspire among people as diverse as bloggers, commentators and various Senators and Congressmen.  Why in the world in a country built by immigrants is immigration of all ilk - legal and illegal, being viewed so negatively by so many?  Some have argued that while vociferous, this opposition is a minority racist view, the last hold over of a racist past.  Possibly.   However, the question of what is going on so intrigued me that I decided to investigate.

One of the first interesting charts I came across was this one which shows the immigrants in the US as a percentage of the total US population:


There are two fascinating aspects of this chart.

• The first is that immigrants, as a percentage of the US population, are nearing a historic high.  In fact, it is likely that if the new immigration bill passes, it will be at a historic high.
• The second is the spectacular drop in immigrants since the 1920s.  I found this latter fact to be counter-intuitive as this is supposedly the high point for Italian, Polish and other immigration.

Here's a summary of the story.

As this Wikipedia article shows, every generation of new immigrants in the country has been met with opposition.

Racism in the US immigration policy actually started soon after independence.  The Naturalization Act of 1790 restricted naturalization to immigrants who were "free white persons" of "good moral character".  It thus left out any colored people.  The US, the founding fathers seemed to be implying, was a country for white people.  This situation continued till after the Civil War.

It wasn't only "non white" people who faced opposition though.  Virtually every new wave of immigrants faced with opposition.  The waves of Irish and German immigrants in the 1840s, for instance, were opposed purportedly due to fears that because of their Catholic heritage they'd take orders from the Pope.

After the Civil War, with the enactment of the 14th Amendment, it became clear that the discrimination against non white's could not continue.  In 1870, Congress passed the Naturalization Act of 1870 which for the first time extended the naturalization process to "aliens of African nativity and to persons of African descent".  It however left intact the proscription against other races.

Over the next few years, many states started to pass their own immigration laws.  In 1875, the Supreme Court ruled that immigration was the sole province of the Federal Government.  In the same year, Congress passed its first immigration act - the Page Act of 1875.  The Act sought to outlaw the importation of Asian contract laborers, any Asian woman who would engage in prostitution, and all people considered to be convicts in their own countries.  This was followed in 1882 by the Chinese Exclusion Act which effectively limited and nearly proscribed immigration by Chinese.  This enshrined discrimination on the basis of race in US immigration policy.

It seems fascinating that so much of the effort in the first few immigration bills seemed to be targeting Asians. The trend did not stop there.  Rules continued to be strengthened.  Amendments made in 1884 tightened the provisions that allowed previous Chinese immigrants to leave and return, and clarified that the law applied to ethnic Chinese regardless of their country of origin.  The Scott Act (1888) expanded upon the Chinese Exclusion Act, prohibiting reentry after leaving the U.S. The Act was renewed for ten years by the 1892 Geary Act, and again with no terminal date in 1902. When the act was extended in 1902, it required "each Chinese resident to register and obtain a certificate of residence. Without a certificate, he or she faced deportation."

Meanwhile, immigration from other parts of the world continued undeterred.  Italian immigration reached a peak in 1910.  Eastern European immigration skyrocketed.  And, curiously, Japanese immigrants were allowed.  The prohibitions on Chinese immigration stemmed from fears that the Chinese would lower wages and displace white workers.  The immigrants from Eastern and central Europe and from Japan actually offset any benefits that might have accrued from the anti Chinese policies.

The discrimination against the Chinese resulted in a bizarre situation where even people of Chinese origin born in the US who went out of the US and sought reentry were often denied reentry.  Things came to a head in 1897 in Wong Kim Ark v United States in the Supreme Court.  Here's a summary of the circumstances from the final opinion:

Wong Kim Ark was born in 1873 in the city of San Francisco, in the State of California and United States of America, and was and is a laborer. His father and mother were persons of Chinese descent, and subjects of the Emperor of China; they were at the time of his birth domiciled residents of the United States, having previously established and still enjoying a permanent domicil and residence therein at San Francisco; they continued to reside and remain in the United States until 1890, when they departed for China, and during all the time of their residence in the United States, they were engaged in business, and were never employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under the Emperor of China. Wong Kim Ark, ever since his birth, has had but one residence, to-wit, in California, within the United States, and has there resided, claiming to be a citizen of the United States, and has never lost or changed that residence, or gained or acquired another residence, and neither he nor his parents acting for him ever renounced his allegiance to the United States, or did or committed any act or thing to exclude him therefrom. In 1890 (when he must have been about seventeen years of age), he departed for China on a temporary visit and with the intention of returning to the United States, and did return thereto by sea in the same year, and was permitted by the collector of customs to enter the United States upon the sole ground that he was a native-born citizen of the United States. After such return, he remained in the United States, claiming to be a citizen thereof, until 1894, when he (being about twenty-one years of age, but whether a little above or a little under that age does not appear) again departed for China on a temporary visit and with the intention of returning to the United States, and he did return thereto by sea in August, 1895, and applied to the collector of customs for permission to land, and was denied such permission upon the sole ground that he was not a citizen of the United States.

The court ruled 6-2 in favor of the modern interpretation of citizenship - that anyone born in the US is a US Citizen irrespective of their parents' country of origin.  The dissent penned by Chief justice Fuller basically argued that there were two criteria for being a citizen - one that you were born here and the second that you were not the subject of a foreign power.  Their argument was that unless China renounced their claim, you could not become a US citizen merely by birth.  The majority opinion basically argued that you were presumed to be a US subject by birth until you opted out.

While this protected natural born citizens challenges to immigration laws all failed and naturalized citizens enjoyed no such protections.

In 1917 Congress passed an even more draconian rule, where they barred immigration by illiterate people over 16 and created an Asiatic barred zone:

The provision against illiterate people was intended to stem the flow of Eastern and Central Europeans who, while white, were considered undesirable.

In 1921, the US introduced the National Origins formula restricting immigration to 3% of foreign-born persons of each nationality that resident in the United States in 1910 and the Immigration Act of 1924  provided that for three years the formula would change from 3% to 2% and the basis for the calculation would be the census of 1890 instead of that of 1910. After June 30, 1927, total immigration from all countries will be limited to 150,000, with allocations by country based upon national origins of inhabitants according to the census of 1920. The quota system applied only to white immigrants. It aimed to reduce the overall number of unskilled immigrants, to allow families to re-unite, and to prevent immigration from changing the ethnic distribution of the population.

In 1923, Supreme Court in United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind created the official stance to classify Indians as non-white, which at the time retroactively stripped Indians of citizenship, since prosecutors argued Indian Americans had gained citizenship illegally. The California Alien Land Law of 1913 (invalidated in 1952) and others similar racist laws prohibited these aliens from owning land property, thus effectively stripping Indian Americans from land rights. The decision was placating racist Asiatic Exclusion League (AEL) demands, spurned by growing outrage at the Turban Tide/Hindu Invasion [sic] alongside the preexisting outrage at the "Yellow Peril".

So, let's recap.  When the US was founded, the framers of the constitution introduced an Act to ensure that the US was a white nation.  This policy only receded slightly after the Civil war, but the US passed waves of increasingly draconian measures to bar Asian immigration, ultimately completely banning it in 1917.  By 1921, the US tried to freeze its racial composition to the 1910 composition, and three years later tries to freeze it to the 1890 composition.  Meanwhile, in 1923, the US Supreme Court stripped Naturalized Indians of their citizenship and various states passed laws banning them from owning property and land.

This had a dramatic affect on immigration to the US as seen from this chart of European immigration to the US from 1881 to 1940:


So, now we have an explanation for the massive drop off in immigration in the 1920s.  The US tried to maintain its racial composition and effectively throttled Asian immigration and massively curtailed Eastern European immigration.

These laws have been subsequently repealed beginning with a repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943 and then in waves until a complete elimination of the racial quota system in 1965.  It should be noted though that the last vestiges of the system remains enshrined in law with a limit on the percentage of total immigrants from any one country, purportedly to ensure racial diversity, which continues to discriminate against Indians, Chinese and Mexicans.

Why is all this relevant?

Well, firstly when we hear someone like Ann Coulter argue for more British immigrants rather than more Latin Americans, many of us are quick to dismiss her as a fringe element.  Except that historically speaking, Ann Coulter's view is the norm and the modern racially unbiased view is actually very much the aberration in the historical sense.

Secondly, when you hear people justify immigration because the US has been a nation of immigrants, remember that for the majority of the 20th century, immigration to the US was a fraction of current levels and  the official immigration policy of the US was designed to retain the racial mix of the US.  Moreover, what is being proposed in the immigration bill would actually push immigration to levels not seen in the last 150 years.

So, while there are a lot of good reasons for a liberal immigration policy, the proposed policy does in fact move the US further away from the historical racial mix and the policies that prevailed in the US for the first 150 years of its existence.  This is does not argue against the immigration bill.  It does, however, suggest that the opposition to the bill may not be as "fringe" as the mainstream narrative would suggest it is.

Do campaign ads have any effect on elections?

The Freakonomics blog had an article some time ago that argued that there is little evidence that money buys elections.  Here is the conclusion of the article:

I have examined several other natural experiments and found similar results. For example, large shocks to campaign spending from changes in campaign finance regulations do not produce concomitant impacts on electoral success, nor do candidates with vast personal wealth to spend on their campaigns fare better than other candidates.  

These findings may be surprising at first blush, but the intuition isn’t that hard to grasp.  After all, how many people do you know who ever change their minds on something important like their political beliefs (well, other than liberal Republicans who find themselves running for national office)?  People just aren’t that malleable; and for that reason, campaign spending is far less important in determining election outcomes than many people believe (or fear).

There is an article today by John Sides that argues, yet again, that campaign ads have little to do with whether candidates win elections.  John Sides however explains his rationale by citing four common reasons for this effect:

1. Campaign activity can be overwhelmed by other events in the campaign.
2. It can be hard to win the messaging war (essentially your counterparties are saying much the same things)
3. The effects of campaign activity are short-lived.
4. In most presidential elections it is hard to get a big advantage in campaign activity.

Note, the two conclusions while superficially similar, may not in fact be similar at all.  

Freakonomics argues that once opinions are set in, ads have little effect.  Here's Steven Levitt's paper on the subject.  Steven Levitt concludes that campaign spending had negligible impact on elections and spending by your opponent often had more of an impact.  In Freakonomics' view a vast spending difference between the two candidates would not necessarily handicap one or the other.  In John Sides' view, it may.  John Sides' explanation is that the campaigns were fighting themselves to a draw.

Here's my issue with John Sides' argument that seems illogical.  If as they say "effects of campaign activity are short-lived" why even aim for a draw? They cite their and others’ analyses of 2012 advertising effects as well as previous research to demonstrate their point.  

What caught my attention were two charts they reproduced in their article:

Here's what they say about the charts:

This graph shows that Romney’s time at Bain Capital was a major part of advertising and news coverage only in July  In part, this was because the Obama campaign emphasized Bain less as the general election campaign heated up. In part, this was because the news coverage of Bain Capital — stimulated in July largely by a Boston Globe story – waned as the media moved on to other topics.

However, I don't buy their conclusion.  Firstly, the articles they cite in support actually studied the relationship between vote shares and advertising intensity.  Their conclusion that long term advertising intensity did not have an effect appears to be drawn for lower correlation for advertising intensity over longer terms.  Hmmm ... but since this isn't a controlled experiment, wouldn't it be more logical to assume that the ad teams reallocated media dollars to regions where the ads appeared to be working.  So, I am not sure how they draw that conclusion.  This does not exactly undermine their conclusion, but it does raise some eyebrows.

Next let's take those charts.  Actually, that's what got me thinking.  My recollection was that what Obama was trying to do was to define Romney before Romney could define himself.  So, what I thought might be interesting to look at would be Google Search trends for "Romney Bain".  Here is the chart:

What I noticed almost immediately was that post Obama's massive ad campaign, he was able to raise the level of interest in "Romney Bain" so that it settled at a new level.  This isn't a "short term effect".  Is it possible that how short term the effect is depends on how well formed your opinions are.

I have two takeaways.  In essence, I actually agree with both Freakonomics and John Sides.  I also generally agree with John Sides' reasons.  However, my other takeaway is that the problem with these intensity and spend studies is that they ignore message and "earned" media - i.e. what people are talking about.  As the Google charts show, done right, paid media may move the conversation.  It is likely though that spending cannot really compensate for the lack of appeal of the underlying product (candidate) or message.

The Miraculous Presidency

Jim Porter was elected as the new President of the National Rifles Association (NRA). This is a man who is on record saying: 

"NRA was started 1871 right here in New York state. It was started by some Yankee generals who didn’t like the way my Southern boys had the ability to shoot in what we call the 'War of Northern Aggression.' Now y’all might call it the Civil War, but we call it the 'War of Northern Aggression' down south.

...
That was the very reason that they started the National Rifle Association, was to teach and train the civilian in the use of the standard military firearm and I am one who still feels very strongly that that is one of our greatest charges that we can have today, is to train the civilian in the use of the standard military firearm so when they have to fight for their country, they’re ready to do it. Also, when they’re ready to fight tyranny, they’re ready to do it. Also, when they’re ready to fight tyranny, they have the wherewithal and the weapons to do it."

You can watch his full speech here.  I don't think its a stretch to suggest that Jim Porter is suggesting that the types of government tyranny they are working to protect US citizens from is the type of tyranny observed in the Civil War, i.e. the aggression by the North/Union in trying to maintain the Union and in trying to ban slavery.

It made me think about the miracle that is the Obama Presidency.

We now have President in the US who is African American and an offspring of an interracial marriage.  He has won twice, each time with more than 50% of the votes, a feat last achieved by Reagan.  This has perhaps made us forget just how astonishing it is that a child from an interracial marriage is President of the US.

When Obama was born, in 1961, his parents' interracial marriage was illegal in 13 states.  Those states included Virginia, which had one of the strongest proscriptions.  It would take another five years before the decision in Loving v Virginia by the Supreme Court ruling antimiscegenation statutes unconstitutional.  

In 1966, when the Loving case was being argued at the Supreme Court, the counsel for Virginia argued that antimiscegenation statutes were Constitutional.  I was curious to know what they argued.  It just so happens that there is now a wonderful site called www.oyez.org where they have posted not only the transcripts of a number of historical cases argued before the Supreme Court but also provided the audio recording of those arguments.  As it happens, the site has the Loving case.  I spend a very interesting couple of hours listening to the case.  

Here are some of the more interesting quotes from the defense of the laws by Mr. Mcllwaine.

"We have the question of whether or not that marriage would be recognized as valid in Virginia even though it was contracted by parties who are not residents of the State of Virginia under the conflict of laws principle that a marriage valid were celebrated is valid everywhere. 

This would be a serious question and under Virginia law, it is highly questionable that such a marriage would be recognized in Virginia, especially since Virginia has a very strong policy against interracial marriage and the implementing statutes declare that marriages between white and colored people shall be absolutely void without decree of divorce or other legal process, the implementing statute which forbids Virginia citizens to leave the State for the purpose of evading the law and returning, the exception to the conflict of laws principally I've stated that a marriage valid was celebrated would be valid everywhere except where contrary to the long -- to the strong local public policy

... 

It is clear from the most recent available evidence on the psycho-sociological aspect of this question that intermarried families are subjected to much greater pressures and problems then those of the intramarried and that the state's prohibition of interracial marriage for this reason stands on the same footing as the prohibition of polygamous marriage, or incestuous marriage or the prescription of minimum ages at which people may marry and the prevention of the marriage of people who are mentally incompetent.

... 

And that the interracial marriages bequeath to the progeny of those marriages, more psychological problems than parents have a right to bequeath to them....As I say, it was published in 1964 and some of the statements which made in it based upon the demonstrably -- statistically demonstrably greater ratio of a marry -- of divorce, annulment in intermarried couples than intramarried couples. 

Dr. Gordon has stated it as his opinion that it is my conviction that intermarriage is definitely inadvisible, that they are wrong because they are most frequently if not solely entered into under the present day circumstances by people who have a rebellious attitude towards -- towards society, self-hatred, neurotic tendencies, immaturity and other detrimental psychological factors.
... 

It is the attitude which society has taught interracial marriages, which in detailing his opposition says, "Causes a child to have almost insuperable difficulties in identification and that the problems which a child of an interracial marriage faces are those which no child can come through without damage to himself."...It is not infrequent that the children of intermarried parents are referred to not merely as the children of intermarried parents but as the victims of intermarried parents and as the martyrs of intermarried parents.
...
But in that case, you do not come to the proposition of the power of the State to forbid interracial marriages and the interest of the state in doing so on the basis of the valid scientific evidence that exists on the detrimental effects of interracial marriage. 

I don't see how you can start with the right and come to the proposition that the state statute infringes the right unless you exclude the evidence which tends to show that the statute in question is rational because even rights, a right to marry is subjective to reasonable limitations by the State as always been. 

Polygamy statutes have never been questioned. 

Incest statutes have never been questioned. 

They have in fact been specifically upheld and upheld against the charge in Reynolds against the United States that the person convicted there had religious duty to marry, not to the other right to marry, his religious tenet as a Mormon required him to marry.

And this Court held that the fact that its religious tenet required him to do so, did not prevent him from being convicted criminally about engaging in a polygamous marriage. 

So you can't reach the conclusion that this statute infringes, a right under the Fourteenth Amendment without examining evidence on behalf of the State to show that the infringement is a reasonable one, just as reasonable as far as we can determine, as far more evidence of the reasonableness of a ban against interracial marriage than there is against polygamous or incest marriages so far as the scientific proposition is concern. 

But I cannot conceive to this Court striking down the polygamy or incest statute on the basis of scientific evidence, and I submit that it would be no more appropriate for this Court to invalidate the miscegenetic statute on that basis."

I recommend you listen to the entire arguments.  Here is the link to the Loving v Virginia case.  

Let me highlight a few points.  In 1966, the lawyer for Virginia was arguing that there is "far more evidence of the reasonableness of a ban against interracial marriage than there is against polygamous or incest marriages so far as the scientific proposition is concern."  Moreover, if you follow the logic, Obama is psychologically "damaged".  What he also explains in an exchange I have not quoted is that Virginia did not recognize interracial marriages from other states and there were proscriptions on interracial cohabitation in Virginia, which was a misdemeanor and not a felony.  The implication would be that Obama's parents could have been prosecuted in Virginia as late as 1966. 

While the Supreme Court struck these laws down, some of the now unconstitutional statutes still remained on the books for a while. In 2000, the last of these statutes was finally struck from the books in 2000 in Alabama through a ballot initiative, BUT 40% of the state voted against the removal of the unconstitutional statute.

It's incredible, nearly miraculous, that a man whose parents' interracial marriage would have been considered illegal when he was born, should have grown up to become the President of the US just about four decades later.  It puts the debate about Obama and his legitimacy into perspective.