You gotta be crazy to think the founders intended this.

The Supreme Court ruled that simply being in the United States as an alien when one’s child is born is good enough to confer allegiance for the purposes of US citizenship at birth as long as the alien is under the jurisdiction of the US at the time of the child’s birth.

U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark ruled that that specific requirement is met when the child's parents are permanently domiciled in the U.S. at the time of the child's birth.

Obama's father wasn't permanently domiciled in the U.S. in 1961, or ever.

Obama isn't even a legal U.S. citizen unless he naturalized as one at some point. He certainly wasn't born a U.S. citizen. The circumstances of his birth don't meet the 14th Amendment's requirements for birthright citizenship.

By the way, Wilson continues, by making the following quote. His point is that all black people born on American soil were first subjects of England, then citizens of the United States.

By the way - the black people born here were natural born subjects without any regard whatsoever as to whether their parents were considered English subjects or not.

The term 'citizen,' as understood in our law, is purely [sic] analogous to the term 'subject' in the common law, and the change of phrase has entirely resulted from the change of government. The sovereignty has been transferred from the man to the collective body of the people; and he who before was a 'subject of the king' is now 'a citizen of the state.

This position is maintained by Rawle on the Constitution, page 80; Kent's Commentaries, volume two, lecture twenty-five; Lawrence's Appendix to Wheaton on International Law. I might multiply authorities, but I have referred to enough for my purpose.

Shortly after, Representative Burton Cook of Illinois states his understanding of the bill:

This bill provides that all persons born within the United States, excepting those who do not owe allegiance to the United States Government, as children of ambassadors of foreign Powers, and such as are not subject to our laws, and Indians not taxed who owe a tribal allegiance, shall be citizens of the United States. I think this is the law now.

Once again, a Representative stands up and states who is intended to be excluded from the operation of the bill - children of ambassadors and Indians born into tribes - and neither Bingham nor any other Representative makes a move to attempt to correct him.

Why not? Obviously, because the understanding of Representatives Wilson and Cook of what the law was, was the general understanding.

And while a few people tried to make racist arguments that black people were not citizens, it doesn't appear that a single person in the debates, in either house of Congress, ever claimed that children born on US soil of WHITE non-citizen parents were anything but natural born citizens.

So you can sit there and call me a "liar" like a little 5 year old all you want, because it's about all you have left. I can't think of a single one of your dozens of BS arguments that hasn't been exposed as being falser than George Washington's teeth.

By the way, Wilson and Cook weren't the only Representatives who contradicted your BS.

After the President's veto of the Civil Right Act (which would shortly be overridden), Representative William Lawrence, Republican from Ohio, stood up on the House floor, confirmed Wilson's take on what the rule of citizenship was, and added:

In the great case of Lynch v Clarke, it was conclusively shown that in the absence of all constitutional provision or congressional law "declaring citizenship by birth, it must be regulated by some rule of national law" "coeval [of the same age, date, or duration; equally old] with the existence of the Union," which was and is that all "children born here are citizens without any regard to the political condition or allegiance of their parents." (1 Sandford's Ch. R., 583).

In other words, he once again affirmed that children born on US soil were born citizens, whether their parents were citizens or not.

So not even the Congressmen of the post-civil-war debates support you. In fact, they contradict you multiple times.

There's virtually nothing historically or legally in support of your bogus claim, and tons of evidence and authority against it.

By the way, we can go on playing this stupid birther game for the next 5 or 10 years, if you like. I and others here can debunk every single piece of BS you've spewed. And every time you make another one of your moronic birther posts or arguments, readers who look at both sides of the issue get to see once again what a Constitution-twister and fraud you are.

He was born to a US citizen mother, in the United States. Therefore, he is a natural born citizen.

Based on what? The circumstances of his birth fail to meet the requirements of the 14th Amendment for birthright citizenship. He was subject to a foreign power at birth. U.S. Secretaries of State have confirmed that such a circumstance of birth precludes birthright U.S. citizenship.

Furthermore, he fails to meet the named conditions for birthright citizenship in U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark. His father wasn't permanently domiciled in the U.S. in 1961, or ever.

And whether you or I like it or not, there’s not the slightest doubt about his status.

For at least the reasons I've stated, there is SIGNIFICANT doubt about his eligibility status. Obama is NOT eligible, plain and simple. Legally, he isn't even a U.S. citizen unless he naturalized at some point.

Congressman Bingham is stating his opinion that parents must not owe allegiance to a foreign government in order for their offspring to be considered natural born citizens.

So you are giving me Bingham. Very good.

It would have strengthened his argument if that position was codified in statute at some point in time.

I am going to hold you to that statement. As a matter of fact, it WAS codified in statute. Quite an important one in fact. This was the immediate predecessor of the 14th amendment.

Civil Rights Act of 1866
14 Stat. 27 (1866).

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That all persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States; and such citizens, of every race and color, without regard to any previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall have the same right, in every State and Territory in the United States, to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, and give evidence, to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property, and to full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property, as is enjoyed by white citizens, and shall be subject to like punishment, pains, and penalties, and to none other, any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, to the contrary notwithstanding.

So it was codified into law. I regard this as having met the condition you specified.

I would further say that Congressman Bingham and six justices of the Supreme Court were in disagreement on that point, along with the vast majority of judges, be they local, state or federal who have ruled on the issue since 1898.

Well, if you are going to be fair about it, you have to admit that all those "local, state, or federal" judges "who have ruled on the issue since 1898" were following the 1898 guidance of the Gray court. It's hardly reasonable to suggest their opinions were derived independently of those six judges you mentioned. In effect, THEIR opinions are simply a parroting of the Gray court's opinion.

In terms of intellectual honesty, the dispute is really between those six judges of the Gray court and John Bingham. (The Author of the Amendment.) Additionally, the dispute is between those six judges of the Gray court, and several other lawmakers who have explicitly stated their opinions on the issue. It's not just Bingham.

Now I have a silly question for you. Who knows more about the meaning of a law? A court which sits 30 years later, or the men who wrote the law?

Yes they did. The question here is, was their ruling correct? I would suggest that when a court is ruling counter to the authors of a piece of legislation's stated intent, it is the court which is deviating from applying the law correctly. As I mentioned before, it's not just Rep John Bingham who opined on his understanding of the legislation. Sen. Lyman Trumbull, Sen. W. Williams, Rep. James Wilson, and Sen. Jacob Howard also clarified what was their intentions regarding this legislation. So now we have Five Congressmen v Six Judges.

The difference here is that the Congressmen know what they intended when they created the law.

Finally, the lie that Arthur is famous for is about his age. He took off a year for some bizarre reason. William Arthur did become a naturalized citizen when Chester was 14 years old,

It is believed by some that he took off a year to obfuscate attempts to look into his provenience. I have read several good articles on the subject. Arthur's actions make sense if looked at in light of better information. I'm not going to get into that topic here, we have quite enough threads to pull as it is.

I simply regard Chester Arthur as someone who got away with it prior to Barack Obama.

While that is true, they fail to mention the fact that Gray himself limited the effect of the ruling:

"The evident intention, and the necessary effect, of the submission of this case to the decision of the court upon the facts agreed by the parties were to present for determination the single question stated at the beginning of this opinion, namely, whether a child born in the United States, of parent of Chinese descent, who, at the time of his birth, are subjects of the Emperor of China, but have a permanent domicil and residence in the United States, and are there carrying on business, and are not employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under the Emperor of China, becomes at the time of his birth a citizen of the United States. For the reasons above stated, this court is of opinion that the question must be answered in the affirmative"

In that ruling, Gray had the perfect opportunity to redefine US born citizen and even 'natural born citizen' as native-born without regard to parents' status. But after all the examination, citations, and quotes, he did not do so. Gray ruled Wong Kim Ark a U.S. citizen based upon the condition of his permanently domiciled parents, among other specifically named facts.

YES, you're twisting his words, because you strip them of the CONTEXT in which he spoke those words.

The question is: What did they mean by those words, "not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty," and did those words include people simply because they were non-US-citizens of Norway, or France, or China.

No, you lying F**k! Here you go with your attempts to LIE again. Here are his EXACT words. I'm not going to let YOU get away with twisting them.

John Bingham, 1866:

I find no fault with the introductory clause, which is simply declaratory of what is written in the Constitution, [nc - prior to the 14th Amendment] that 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; but, sir, I may be allowed to say further, that I deny that the Congress of the United States ever had the power or color of power to say that any man born within the jurisdiction of the United States, not owing a foreign allegiance, is not and shall not be a citizen of the United States. Citizenship is his birthright, and neither the Congress nor the States can justly or lawfully take it from him.

And lest you think this was a loosely held belief on the part of John Bingham, here is his words from 1862 to disabuse you of that notion.

John Bingham, 1862:

“All from other lands, who by the terms of [congressional] laws and a compliance with their provisions become naturalized, are adopted citizens of the United States; all other persons born within the Republic, of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty, are natural born citizens."

Notice that John Bingham twice said "PARENTS"? That it is the PARENTS who cannot have allegiance to a foreign Sovereign?

There is NO AMBIGUITY as to what John Bingham means and intends, (Even your semi-ally Nero Germanicus admits this.) and YOUR efforts to introduce ambiguity into his statements are just further attempts at LYING! It's not that you don't understand this, it's that you understand it perfectly AND CHOSE TO LIE ABOUT IT!

I am not going to address the rest of your message. I don't have to. Once you've been demonstrated to be intentionally lying, it serves no purpose to legitimize your further prevarication with a detailed response.

If you don't mind being misled by someone who lies.

Don't you love it how these idiot birthers have been reduced to impotent name-calling against the mountain of evidence that conclusively disproves their Constitution-twisting BS?

They can't show a single occasion on which I, or you, or any other honest observer has ever said anything that's actually untrue. But we are "liars."

And every time they try to pull this BS, they show everybody what thoroughly dishonest people they are.

As far as i'm concerned, your material is not worth looking at.

Oh, I'm sure YOU don't want to read it.

Anyone ELSE who wants to confirm everything I've said above, and see what a load of BS you're peddling can start reading in the Congressional debates here.

They can read Wilson's words for themselves. They can confirm what he said. They can confirm that John Bingham had comments to make just before Wilson started speaking.

Another day, another fallacious, BS argument from the Constitution-twisters shot down.

Once again, the question is: What did John Bingham and the other Representatives and Senators MEAN by the words "of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty?"

Who was included in that? Who wasn't?

It is quite clear from the words of THREE DIFFERENT REPRESENTATIVES, all of them allied with Bingham, and from the fact that he made no objection whatsoever to their speeches, that, whatever the words on their surface might imply, Bingham and his fellow Representatives did NOT mean to exclude children born to non-citizens who were living here from natural born citizenship. Nor did they believe such people were anything other than natural born citizens.

They even quoted Rawle, who said EXPLICITLY that the children born here of alien parents were natural born citizens in the sense of the Constitution:

Therefore every person born within the United States, its territories or districts, whether the parents are citizens or aliens, is a natural born citizen in the sense of the Constitution, and entitled to all the rights and privileges appertaining to that capacity.

So the very people you are quoting to try and make your bogus case say, in absolute terms, that you and your ilk are FULL OF BS.

Tell it to the judges.
There have now been 206 original jurisdiction Obama eligibility lawsuits heard in courts in nearly every state of the union. Additionally there have been 90 state or federal appellate or state Supreme Court rulings and 25 applications for stays/injunctions/extraordinary writs or cert petitions heard in conference at the US Supreme Court. There has not been one ruling for any plaintiff. There are still a few actions pending. I say let them play out and then enough is enough. 321 losses in a row is pretty telling.
Judges who have cited Wong since 1898 have the benefit of history. They know that Wong Kim Ark’s parents returned to China and lived out the rest of their lives there.
Since Stanley Ann Dunham and her parents were “permanently domiciled” in the United States and “subject to the jurisdiction,” that appears to be good enough for contemporary judges and justices.
Congress could hold hearings on all these issues but they don’t appear to be interested or sufficiently motivated by constituents.
Justice Gray also wrote that: [An alien parent’s] allegiance to the United States is direct and immediate, and, although but local and temporary, continuing only so long as he remains within our territory, is yet, in the words of Lord Coke in Calvin’s Case, 7 Coke, 6a, ’strong enough to make a natural subject, for, if he hath issue here, that issue is a natural-born subject’
“Subject’ and ‘citizen’ are, in a degree, convertible terms as applied to natives; and though the term ‘citizen’ seems to be appropriate to republican freemen, yet we are, equally with the inhabitants of all other countries, ’subjects,’ for we are equally bound by allegiance and subjection to the government and law of the land.’

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