Just to expand upon Sudetenland's declaration, here are some “looney-tunes birther” quotations:
“My assumption and my understanding is that if you are born of American parents, you are naturally a natural-born American citizen,” Chertoff replied. “That is mine, too,” said Leahy.”
From the Senate Resolution 511 hearings in the Sen. Judiciary Committee, a resolultion signed by every US Senator in April 2008. The hearings were the Democratic effort to provide cover for McCain's candidacy, since having McCain as a candidate would necessarily silence Republicans, who would face Hillary if Republicans said a word about eligibility. That is why the sponsors of both SR 511 and the prior, Feb 2008, Senate Bill S.2678, ‘Children of Military Families Natural Born Citizen Act’ were Democrat Obama supporters, S.2678 by McCaskill and Obama, and SR511 by McCaskill, Leahy, Coburn, Obama, Clinton, and Webb (a couple of Republicans added, since they were all complicit). SB.2678 failed to pass. It would have failed judicial review, since Congress cannot interpret the Constitution.
From the WaPo ‘Fact-Checker’ column by Michael Dobbs in May 2008, Dobbs addressing the Larry Tribe (Obama’s Harvard adviser and con. law professor) and Ted Olson letter to the SR 511 McCain ‘whitewash committee’ - the Senate Judiciary committee:
"They argue that McCain is a natural born citizen because the United States exercised sovereignty over the Panama Canal at the time of his birth on August 29, 1936, he was born on a U.S. military base, and both of his parents were U.S. citizens. The Olsen-Tribe opinion is available here.
From the Author of the 14th Amendment, Congressman John Bingham, in his address to the house prior to voting on the Amendment:
I find no fault with the introductory clause [S 61 Bill], which is simply declaratory of what is written in the Constitution, 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…."
From Chief Justice Morrison Waite whose court was unanimous in establishing common-law as ‘held’ precedent in Minor v. Happersett, 88 US 162 (1875), needing the only constitution definition of any class of citizen before 1868 (14 Amendment) to prove his assertion that Mrs. Minor, born to citizen parent on our soil, did not gain voting rights from the 14th Amendment's ‘equal protections’ clause:
“The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners.”
Important, since so few, including our ‘conservative’ pundits appear to have read the Constitution, is Waite's “At common-law...” statement. The Constitution explicitly avoids definitions. While he won't openly address it. read Mark Levin's book, ‘Liberty and Tyranny’ beginning p37. Hamilton describes the propriety of, and necessity for interpreting the Constitution in the language familiar to its authors. Hamilton said “What a metamorphosis would be produced in the code of law if all its ancient phraseology were to be taken in its modern sense.” There are dozens, probably hundreds of such statements by framers and justices explaining why there are not definitions in the Constitution, and why it was written assuming that interpretation of terms would come from the common language and common-law of its framers, as Waite explained.
Finally,a citation in fact, from another ‘looney birther’, one clear not in good graces with his excellency Barack, Chief Justice John Marshall, who was also a founder, and a framer of the Constition. This statement is not repeated by ‘loony birthers’ often because Waite's restatement of the definition cited by Marshall, and from Vattel, established the common-law as positive law, and the Obots unanimously screech “Dictum,” “Dictum!” Justice Marshall's comment is certainly dictum, since in this fascinating citizenship case, the citizenship issue appearing so often in the courts during the post-Revolution division of spoils, inheritance battles, resolving differences between states still being governed by parts of English Common Law. Marshall, with whose Marbury v. Madison decision Barack appears unfamiliar also said, in his contribution to The Venus, 12 US 253, (1814):
“The citizens are the members of the civil society; bound to this society by certain duties, and subject to its authority, they equally participate in its advantages. The natives or indigenes are those born in the country of parents who are citizens. Society not being able to subsist and to perpetuate itself but by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights.”
The Obots argued endlessly about the English translations of ‘indegines’ used by Marshall, probably due to Marshall's using the origintal French version of Vattel's Law of Nations, then by far the most cited legal reference in American jurisprudence (Grotian Society Papers s, 1972, F.S. Ruddy). But Justice Waite eliminated the confusion in his Minor precedent by making the terms equivalent - “natives or natural born citizens”. This is, as Waite pointed out, the “never doubted” common law. But “looney birthers” are simply too mired in the ancient history to realize that to be a happy and prosperous nation it is time to appreciate what Barack told us before he became a candidate for the presidency, that “A doctrine of negative liberties does not allow me to do the things for society that I believe it needs.” He wanted a new bill of rights. The legitimate interpretations of the musty old Constitution would now emanate from the Center for American Progress, whose minions scrubbed twenty six Supreme Court decisions of their citations to Minor v. Happersett, and, with Googles help, pointed web queries first to their handywork at justia.com and Cornell.
Rubio has found himself in a web created by crony capitalist Republicans. They believed more in McCain's long experience covering up corruption including his Keating Five experience, covered up like Obama's ineligibility, with the able assistance of the media. Both sides were complicit so they sacrificed a a player, leaving the knight in play. For Obama they sacrificed a seldom used provision of the Constitution, and want to use Rubio to protect them lest a constitutionalist gain power in the executive and put them all in jeapordy. Susanna Martinez is, from what this writer has seen, presidential material. Hispanics are not maleable pawns, though promises to illegals might be real motive behind using Rubio, even if he were eligibile. Amending the Constitution is legitimate; ignoring it is not, and may constitute, using the only term defined in the Constitution itself, treason.
Darn the UNANIMOUS lunatics on the Minor and Ark courts.