[caption id="attachment_67301" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="Dana Rosemary Scallon."]
There was a hiccup in Dana Rosemary Scallon's presidential campaign last week when the matter of her dual Irish/U.S. citizenship was raised as an issue.
Well, the Derry Chanteuse rightly defended her right to run for the Irish presidency, stating that there no conflict between the two national ties.
According to reports, Scallon confirmed that she had pledged the oath that requires naturalized U.S. citizens to renounce their allegiance to all other states.
Before doing so, she told an official she could not give up her Irish citizenship and he had said this was not a problem because there was a "unique relationship" between the countries.
"I was absolutely assured that the oath had no effect on my allegiance to this country," she told RTÉ.
The report added that the independent candidate said she took out U.S. citizenship in 1999, "after she had stood in the 1997 presidential election and not before that election, as stated by her sister, Susan Stein, during a court case in Iowa."
Without quite getting into family feud territory here it's worth pointing out that there is no problem retaining Irish citizenship even though you adopt U.S. citizenship. Ireland is one of a group of countries with which Washington has no problem recognizing dual citizenship.
As for Dana being Irish president? Sure wasn't de Valera born in the U.S. and Chaim Herzog, who was president of Israel, was born in Belfast and raised in Dublin.
There should be no conflict or issue with regard to Dana running, or getting elected. Next business please.
WHAT ODDS?
Dana's chance of being elected president looks a bit slim according to the polls but you wouldn't want to depend entirely on the odds when making predictions in this day and age.
What were the odds of Andorra, of all places, being named twice on the front page of the Irish Echo as was the case last week? Long to say the least.
SILVER AND GOLD
Ah, the Irish are no different to all others. They are drawn to all that glitters. This from the Irish Independent: "An Irishman is leading an audacious attempt to recover 200 tonnes of silver - worth €170m - from a shipwreck lying a mile deeper than the Titanic and located 300 miles off the Irish Atlantic coast."
And this from the same paper: "Irish scientists have struck gold in a deep-sea discovery that could yield a multi-million-euro mining boost. The Irish-led team made the discovery 3km down on the Atlantic ocean floor by identifying a field of volcanic vents spewing up rare metals from the earth's core."
