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To: editor-surveyor; little jeremiah

The basis of the birther argument is a court case, dealing with women’s inability to vote. Congratulations on refuting your own argument.

I’m on this thread because you are attacking Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio in your lame attempt to invalidate Obama.

Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are currently leading the charge in the Senate to defund Obamacare.

Meanwhile, you dopes are still citing the same old cases and theories that have been refuted by ACTUAL courts in this country.

Legal beagles who get all their information from the same birther blogs, then troll this board, and call everyone a GOP elite or an Obama plant.

I already detailed how I arrived at this board. I googled the story about “Campaign Sex Scandal” when Drudge was running the headline. Free Republic had a thread speculating on what the drudge headline meant.

I joined shortly afterwards.


1,146 posted on 03/11/2013 3:49:54 PM PDT by HawkHogan
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To: HawkHogan
I’m on this thread because you are attacking Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio in your lame attempt to invalidate Obama.

No one is attacking either man. We all here are attacking stupidity and ignorance as we each see them...and we are calling you specifically on your ad hominem.

Everyone appears to be very happy with what the Senators are doing as Senators. I know I am.

I personally do NOT want them to stop doing the jobs their voters elected them to do. They are fulfilling their promises to voters. What's not to love about that??

We do not believe that either man is a NBC as we understand it. How is that an attack?

Moreover, why would you take such effective people out of the jobs they are doing so well and are so loved for it and put them into positions that will remove that support, create division among their supporters and cause voters to stay home again unless you didn't like the job they are doing and wanted them and their party to fail?

Don't believe it? Just count the posts so far...

1,148 posted on 03/11/2013 4:02:26 PM PDT by GBA (Here in the Matrix, life is but a dream.)
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To: HawkHogan; editor-surveyor

You can make whatever claim you want.

You say that 0’s non-elgilibity is junk topic, and yet - here you are! Ignoring your own advice to attack him on the issues.

And one of the issues is his illegal usurpation of the presidency. Which, of course, you cheer.


1,152 posted on 03/11/2013 4:15:36 PM PDT by little jeremiah (Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point. CSLewis)
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To: HawkHogan
Contrary to what some seem to see or would “like” to see in Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162 (1874), the SCOTUS did not make a ruling or confer a binding precedent as to who was a Natural Born Citizen under the Constitution nor on the eligibility for POTUS as this was not the question before the Court in this case.

Rather they were ruling on the claim made by Virginia Minor, a woman who claimed that as a U.S. citizen, she was denied her Constitutional right to vote by the State of Missouri as they had prevented her from exercising what she believed to be her Constitutional Right of citizenship by denying her to register to vote and the question before the Court was whether the Court would uphold as Constitutional, the constitution of the State of Missouri that ordained: “Every male citizen of the United States shall be entitled to vote.”

So the very first thing the court did was look at the question of whether or not Virginia Minor was a U.S. citizen as defined by the Constitution and then secondly and most importantly whether, if she was, if this citizenship conferred “Suffrage” in the State of Missouri, the second point being the most important and what constituted the binding part of the ruling – the binding part being the Holdings, or ratio decidendi (Latin for “the rationale for the decision), are those parts of a court’s opinion that are binding on lower courts and later courts. This binding is referred to as the doctrine of stare decisis which provides hierarchical (vertical) and temporal (horizontal) continuity throughout the judicial system.

In considering that question the SCOTUS had to look at the facts at hand and whether Virginia Minor was a citizen and the SCOTUS found that Virginia Minor was indeed a U.S. citizen. The SCOTUS found that this fact was beyond question as she was as not only was she born in the U.S., she was also born of two U.S. citizen parents so her citizenship was beyond question. Whether or not she was a “Natural Born Citizen” or not was beyond the scope of the question at hand although the Court discussed it as a matter of background and as such it was an obiter dictum – “Obiter dictum (plural obiter dicta, often referred to simply as dicta or obiter) is Latin for a statement "said in passing". An obiter dictum is a remark or observation made by a judge that, although included in the body of the court's opinion, does not form a necessary part of the court's decision. In a court opinion, obiter dicta include, but are not limited to, words "introduced by way of illustration, or analogy or argument".

It was an “obiter dictum” as the question as to whether she was a “Natural Born Citizen”, a citizen by statute or a naturalized citizen made no difference one way or another in the ruling as it was really not a question of whether or not she was a citizen as that was established, but whether only male citizens ( and there was no question before the Court that Virginia Minor was a woman) could vote under the constitution of Missouri. It was also not a question before the Court as to whether males in the State of Missouri were limited as to their right to vote based on whether they were born here of U.S. citizen parents, or here of non-citizens parents or naturalized or made citizens by statute as all citizen males could vote in the State of Missouri.

What the SCOTUS said:

“Additions might always be made to the citizenship of the United States in two ways: first, by birth, and second, by naturalization. This is apparent from the Constitution itself, for it provides that “no person except a natural-born citizen, or a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President,” and that Congress shall have power “to establish a uniform rule of naturalization.” Thus new citizens may be born or they may be created by naturalization.

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. Some authorities go further and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their parents. As to this class there have been doubts, but never as to the first. For the purposes of this case it is not necessary to solve these doubts. It is sufficient for everything we have now to consider that all children born of citizen parents within the jurisdiction are themselves citizens. The words “all children” are certainly as comprehensive, when used in this connection, as “all persons,” and if females are included in the last they must be in the first. That they are included in the last is not denied. In fact the whole argument of the plaintiffs proceeds upon that idea.”

So the SCOTUS in Minor v. Happersett admitted there were doubts about whether “children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their parents” were natural-born citizens but went on to say that there were never any doubts as to the children born here of citizen parents such as was the case with Virginia Minor. The SCOTUS was merely reaffirming that Virginia Minor’s citizenship, even that as a female, was beyond doubt.

The rest and the pertinent part of the ruling addressed whether individual states could limit who among citizens could vote.

In fact the SCOTUS even went on to say:

“Besides this, citizenship has not in all cases been made a condition precedent to the enjoyment of the right of suffrage. Thus, in Missouri, persons of foreign birth, who have declared their intention to become citizens of the United States, may under certain circumstances vote. The same provision is to be found in the constitutions of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, and Texas.

In other words the Court said that some states allow even non-citizens (presumably male and in some states, with other restrictions that effectively prevented male black citizens from voting) to vote under some circumstances while not allowing U.S. born female citizens to vote and the Court found no fault in this. So at the end of the day, even Virginia Minor’s citizenship was not really the question at hand, but rather, could individual states determine who was eligible to vote or not. Again the court was not addressing who was eligible to be elected POTUS based on their citizenship or of their parent’s citizenship, whether they were born on U.S. soil or on foreign soil but U.S. citizen parents nor did it make a binding ruling on who was a “natural born citizen”. Quite ironically one could take away from Minor v. Happersett by inference, that while she was ultimately ruled not eligible to vote, she was eligible for the office of POTUS.

“Certainly, if the courts can consider any question settled, this is one. For nearly ninety years the people have acted upon the idea that the Constitution, when it conferred citizenship, did not necessarily confer the right of suffrage. If [88 U.S. 162, 178] uniform practice long continued can settle the construction of so important an instrument as the Constitution of the United States confessedly is, most certainly it has been done here. Our province is to decide what the law is, not to declare what it should be.”

Finally the SCOTUS said:

“Being unanimously of the opinion that the Constitution of the United States does not confer the right of suffrage upon any one, and that the constitutions and laws of the several States which commit that important trust to men alone are not necessarily void, we

AFFIRM THE JUDGMENT.”

Of course the SCOTUS ruling in Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162 (1874) was made completely moot by the 19th Amendment that granted women suffrage in all U.S. States. So while perhaps technically true that no future court ruling never overturned Minor v. Happersett, no future court ruling had to as it was completely vacated by the 19th Amendment.

1,202 posted on 03/11/2013 6:30:33 PM PDT by MD Expat in PA
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