It's a story as old as time.

An innocent, principled man stands up for truth, something bigger than his own self-interest, and he loses everything the world has to offer as a result – his approximately $2 million military pension, his family for the next several years, his certain promotion to full-bird colonel, his honorable discharge, even his freedom.

I'm talking, of course, about Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin, a man for whom I have immense respect and admiration for standing up for the integrity of the Constitution.

That is, after all, his only offense. He took an oath to uphold it and defend it. He did not take an oath to uphold and defend the president of the United States or to blindly follow the orders of one holding that office under the color of authority.

Fitting that such an abuse of justice should take place in the Christmas season when much of the world is thinking about another person who stood up for truth before a powerful man who held his life in his hands and asked "What is truth?"

Terrence Lakin was not allowed to speak up in his own defense. He was not permitted to use the power of discovery to prove his innocence. He was not granted the right to introduce evidence.

He was an innocent lamb led willingly to slaughter.

That a man like this, committed at all costs to the integrity of the Constitution and to truth, would be sentenced to prison and discharged from the military he loved while the Congress of the United States votes to allow open homosexuality in the armed forces says a great deal about the state of our nation.

I believe there will still be a happy ending to this story.

I believe there is a day of reckoning coming.

I believe justice will prevail in the matter of Barack Hussein Obama.

You will soon begin to see this light at the end of the tunnel.

Beginning in a few short weeks state legislatures will come back into session in 50 states.

In several of those states you will see bills introduced to require future presidential candidates to prove their constitutional eligibility to get on the ballot.

When you see that happening, it will spell the beginning of the end of Obama's charade.

I no longer believe it is likely that Obama can pass that test.

If he could, why wouldn't he just release it? Would he really let a man like Terrence Lakin go to jail when he could prevent it so easily? If he could, what kind of a man is Barack Obama?

If I'm right about these moves in the state legislatures, Obama will have a choice to make in 2012. If he wants to seek re-election, he will have to produce the evidence so many of us have longed to see. Or, he will have to forgo his ambition and not seek re-election. If he chooses the latter path, you and I will know why. Remember, it will not be because of any of the excuses he offers. It will not be because he wants to spend more time with Michelle and the kids. It will not be because of a mysterious health concern. It will not even be because his popularity ratings are so low – though I have no doubt they will be.

It will be because he can't or won't prove his own constitutional eligibility.

Let's hope his successor has the decency to offer a full pardon for the man who stood up and tried to get the truth out two years earlier – Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin.