Re http://groups.yahoo.com/group/whoru/message/2
Interesting.
Another critique states,
Please remember why this amendment was a necessity to the U.S. Constitution and for what reasons it needed to be clarified from the original writing just shy of 100 years earlier.
Senator Jacob Howard of Ohio was the author of the ‘Citizenship Clause’ and defended the new language against the charge that it would make Indians citizens of the United States. Senator Howard assured skeptics that “Indians born within the limits of the United States, and who maintain their tribal relations, are not, in the sense of this Amendment, born subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.” (As a sidebar: Why would people from Middle or South America be construed as any different?) http://onemorecup.wordpress.com/2011/07/06/revisit-the-fourteenth-amendment-in-content-and-context/
I am not educated enough in all the aspects this relates to and am recovering from sickness, but maybe someone else has a comment.
“Subject to the jurisdiction thereof” has a very simple and obvious meaning, that the person does not have what we now call diplomatic immunity. IOW, if you break a law of the US, are you subject to punishment?
If yes, then you are “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” If no, then you have diplomatic immunity and are not “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”
In your first link, the author apparently does not understand that the several clauses of 14A address several issues that are not necessarily related. The 4th clause, with its prohibition of a future Congress repudiating the federal debt, has nothing to do with the 1st clause establishing who is a citizen.
The purpose of the 2nd and 4th clauses was to make it impossible for Congress to do some things that to our minds look so silly that there was no need to prohibit them: Compensate slaveowners for emancipation, assume the debts of the CSA or seceded states, or repudiate the federal debt, most of which was incurred during the War.
Try reading this: The Three United States
This is the Supreme Courts interpretation
http://www.supremelaw.org/fedzone11/htm/chapter4.htm
This whole site is extremely informative:
http://www.supremelaw.org/fedzone11/index.htm