[cynwoody]

Congress's use of the NBC term in 1790 gives us a good read as to how it was understood when the Constitution was drafted and passed. As a certain Texas lawyer pointed out the other day.

Their failure to use NBC in 1795 is indicative of nothing, except perhaps that they just didn't think it was all that important. After all, it was already safely in the Constitution, and if that Austrian prince Ferdinand Maximilian had tried to run for President (instead of Emperor of Mexico), well, it just wouldn't have been legal!

Even if Congress had meant to redefine the meaning of NBC in 1795, they lacked the power. They would have needed two thirds of their members and three quarters of the states.

[Uncle Sham]

You are claiming that they gave us a good read as to how they understood the term natural born citizen in the Act of 1790. You then state that they needed to pass an amendment to change the meaning that had been safely placed into the Constitution. The Act of 1790 was not an amendment, so the description they gave has no effect on what the original interpretation might have been. That they eliminated their 1790 description with the 1795 one indicates that perhaps the 1790 version did not reflect their original meaning of the term.

Congress certainly has the power to change Acts of Congress. It could very well have been that they revised the Act of 1790 because the description they had placed in it did not match what their original intent was and wanted to remove/correct their mistake. They may have come to the conclusion that Congress did not have the authority to re-define the term natural born citizen without an amendment process and thus removed it from the Act.

My point is that you cannot look at just the 1790 Act for guidance on this issue. Both Acts and the change made in reference to the term natural born citizen to just citizen together tell us something very important.