Mr. Rogers must be getting lonely. His very lengthy response, #28, to my earlier note was an impressive example of misdirection. It was reminiscent of a technique used by one of our great mathematicians, R.L. Moore, ot U.T. Austin, at least three of whose students were awarded Fields Medals, the highest award in mathematics (reputedly because Nobel's wife had an illicit affair with a mathematicion, and there is no Nobel prize for mathematics). Moore created his own notation, and his courses were about problem solving. At least half of the problems he assigned, theorems to be proved, were wrong.
Mr. Rogers does an excellent job of leading potential readers away from the question to be answered. Following Mr. Rogers’ little essays, usually assuming that his objective is to mislead, leads to a more firm understanding of the meaning of our greatest minds. Perhaps he is not an Obot but is trying to help us all understand the machinations of the statists?
An example from his long essay is his citation of a decision by a Connecticut jurist, but which doesn't contradict the Vattel, Marshall, Jay, Kent, Story, or Waite definitions, which are identical; it refers to the rights of citizens. Citizens have all the rights of natural born citizens, but cannot be president unless the are born on the soil of citizen parents.
Mr. Rogers then leads to James Kent, who is a wonderful resource for the meaning of citizenship. Again, there are not inconsistencies, but if one has the time to read Kent's writing, the intentions of our framers are reinforced. The editor of the Kent Commentaries, perhaps noting that Kent simply repeated the Vattel definition in his commentary on Article II Section I, referred to Joseph Story's longer exposition of the rationale behind natural born citizenship. Mr. Rogers is leading us to a better understanding. For those who don't have time, here is the Joseph Story explanation of why we require that a president be a natural born citizen:
It is indispensable, too, that the president should be a natural born citizen of the United States; or a citizen at the adoption of the constitution, and for fourteen years before his election. This permission of a naturalized citizen to become president is an exception from the great fundamental policy of all governments, to exclude foreign influence from their executive councils and duties. It was doubtless introduced (for it has now become by lapse of time merely nominal, and will soon become wholly extinct) out of respect to those distinguished revolutionary patriots, who were born in a foreign land, and yet had entitled themselves to high honours in their adopted country. A positive exclusion of them from the office would have been unjust to their merits, and painful to their sensibilities. But the general propriety of the exclusion of foreigners, in common cases, will scarcely be doubted by any sound statesman. It cuts off all chances for ambitious foreigners, who might otherwise be intriguing for the office; and interposes a barrier against those corrupt interferences of foreign governments in executive elections, which have inflicted the most serious evils upon the elective monarchies of Europe. Germany, Poland, and even the pontificate of Rome, are sad, but instructive examples of the enduring mischiefs arising from this source. A residence of fourteen years in the United States is also made an indispensable requisite for every candidate; so, that the people may have a full opportunity to know his character and merits, and that he may have mingled in the duties, and felt the interests, and understood the principles, and nourished the attachments, belonging to every citizen in a republican government. By “residence,” in the constitution, is to be understood, not an absolute inhabitancy within the United States during the whole period; but such an inhabitancy, as includes a permanent domicil in the United States. No one has supposed, that a temporary absence abroad on public business, and especially on an embassy to a foreign nation, would interrupt the residence of a citizen, so as to disqualify him for office. If the word were to be construed with such strictness, then a mere journey through any foreign adjacent territory for health, or for pleasure, or a commorancy there for a single day, would amount to a disqualification. Under such a construction a military or civil officer, who should have been in Canada during the late war on public business, would have lost his eligibility. The true sense of residence in the constitution is fixed domicil, or being out of the United States, and settled abroad for the purpose of general inhabitancy, animo manendi, and not for a mere temporary and fugitive purpose, in transitu.
Thanks Mr. Rogers. Justice Joseph Story, the scholar of the Marshall court, was perhaps where you were leading us.
In reference to my comment earlier about Harvard investment by Alwaleed bin Talal, here is a new course for Harvard Students, which is consistent with the announcemt yesterday that Harvard is dis-investing all of is funds in Israeli corporations. http://www.islamicstudies.harvard.edu/
Harvard, home of Obama, Kagan, Holdren, and Alwaleed bin Talal (who actually graduated from Menlo College and U. of New Hampshire, but ‘bought Harvard’ along with Obama’s law school credentials (according to Malcolm X's attorney, Percy Sutton) and his editor's title at the Law Review.
Thanks again Mr. Rogers, for helping us understand the truth.
You blow a lot of smoke, but fail to address the issue, Spaulding. In WKA, the Supreme Court discussed at length their belief that natural born citizen is the republican form of natural born subject, and use NBS to show that since WKA qualified as a NBS, he would also be a NBC and thus a citizen.
You seem to think they wrote at length...why? For fun? Because they were bored? Because they couldn’t find the source of all truth, AKA Vattel?
They used the common law meaning of NBS to determine the original intent of the Framers in the use of NBC - and it was accepted law hundreds of years before the Constitution that alien parents, if in amity with the government, gave birth to a NBS while within the realm.
Thus logically the Framers intended that a NBC could have alien parents, if they resided in amity with the US government and gave birth in the USA.
The Supreme Court provided many lower court cases to back their opinion and show it was standard legal thought. And for the last 110 years, WKA has been followed to conclude that, as the Indiana courts found, “Based upon the language of Article II, Section 1, Clause 4 and the guidance provided by Wong Kim Ark, we conclude that persons born within the borders of the United States are “natural born Citizens” for Article II, Section 1 purposes, regardless of the citizenship of their parents.”
You can blow smoke on the Internet, but when you set foot in court, you need to cite the law. And it has been established law for many years that someone born in the USA of alien parents is a natural born citizen.
So bluff away and scream and holler - but no military court will ever find Obama ineligible due to his father being a UK citizen. Nor will any civilian court. Neither will Congress. Nor did McCain, or even Hillary. Nor any state, and even now, no state DA has concluded that.
You can cite a poor translation of Vattel from years after the Constitution, but the Supreme Court has already said Vattel isn’t the source of NBC - common law is.
You can deal with that fact, or you can continue to lose again and again and again. And no, the military is NOT going to overthrow Congress and the Supreme Court and march on DC and replace Obama, and that refusal does NOT constitute treason.