Apparently Obama and his campaign co-chair Clair McCaskill and Senator Barack knew that Foreign Born Children of military citizens were not natural born when they sponsored Senate Bill 2678 in February of 2008, clearly attempting to legitimize the tool McCain. The Bill did not get out of the Senate - didn’t pass. McCain was born in 1936, a year before Congress passed the necessary act to render the Canal Zone U.S. Sovereignty. “To clarify the law and ensure that children born to United States citizens while serving overseas in the military are eligible to become President.”, Senate Bill 2678, February 17, 2008, which failed to pass, but would not have been submitted if it was redundant.
Professor Larry Tribe, Harvard, whom Elena Kagan saved from expulsion for plagiarization of a book he “authored”, made the definition clear in his latter to the Senate Judiciary Committee supporting Obama and McCaskill’s second attempt to make McCain seem eligible - Senate resolutions don’t make law and laws can’t interpret the Constitution. Larry repeated his understanding of the original interpretation in his op-ed in the Boston Globe explaining why Ted Cruz was a hypocrite for insisting that he was eligible - a natural born citizen - though born in Canada to an alien father. “Senator John McCain Natural Born Citizen Resolution”, April 30, 2008, Clair McCaskill sponsor with Obama as a co-sponsor
Tribe still values his reputation, having taught constitutional law to both Obama and Cruz. Larry is honest about believing in a living constitution. He and other “living Constitution” supporter believe that interpreting the dusty old Constitution is their prerogative. Both Tribe and Obama, are honest about regarding the Constitution as having mostly historical relevance. That, of course, means Obama lied when he took the oath administered by John Roberts. But Obama never called himself a natural born citizen. In fact his web site was clear “I am a native-born citizen of the U.S....”. Obama told us all he was born a “Subject of the British Commonwealth. A native-born citizen is not natural born citizen is not natural born, as clearly implied in the 14th Amendment, as tribal American Indians, “not taxed”, were not even made citizens.
If Minor v Happersett had not been treated as precedent, Perkins v. Elg, 1939, would have, since neither was dictum. In both cases the definition was essential to the decision. common-law interpretation, which was stated by 14th Amendment. John Bingham, Congressman and Jusdge, author of the citizenship paragraphs of the 14th Amendment, explained three times to Congress that being born to citizen parents on our soil was the never doubted definition of natural born citizen, and wasn’t addressed at all in the 14th Amendment.. Fortunately, unlike votes or digital copies of Supreme Court decisions offered as legitimate by Google partner Justia.com, the largest free web-based source of Supreme Court cases, which Justia.com edited during the Summer of 2008, and later corrected, the Congressional Record/Congressional Globe, is still available on paper and Justia’s Tim Stanley and his Soros-funded partner, Karl Malamud, who was CIO for Podesta’s Center for American Progress, couldn’t edit the 1866 Congressional Globe.
That is incorrect. Redundant and feel-good bills are submitted - and passed - all the time. I recall this as being a side effect of the whole birther circus around Obama.
If the Founders had wanted or deemed necessary a requirement for birth to two American parents on US soil they would have said so. They didn't. Therefore the existing definition of natural born - having a quality or attribute from birth - is the legal definition. That is SOP in the judicial world.
McCain, Cruz - and, if actually born in Hawaii, Obama - are all NBC by the legal definition. They may not be ideal in the sense that a birther wants them to be born in Washington DC, have 10 generations of NBC ancestors and have never set foot outside the original 13 colonies, but, hey, that's their problem.
If you want the definition of NBC - the same since 1585 or so - to be something other than the one I stated above, the dictionary definition, get a Constitutional Amendment passed. Good luck.
As I recall, also, Bingham contradicted himself later on, and his arguments were certainly not incorporated into the 14th Amendment, so...
Conspiracy theories about the contents of the Congressional Record don't seem to have much traction, either. you'd think that somebody would make a big deal about it.
Both Minor v Happersett and Perkins v. Elg are cherry-picked by the birther cohort to support their arguments, but in neither case do they say what the birthers claim. Something more substantial than conspiracy theories and confirmation bias needs to be presented, and then I'll be right there with you. But in nearly 10 years nothing has been produced but misrepresentation of SCOTUS cases, confused interpretations of Blackstone and Vattel (neither of which are founding documents or based on founding documents) and bizarre excuses for why the Founders didn't say plainly the redefinition of 'natural-born' that the birther movement ascribes to them. They were very clear and very particular about the qualifications to be President. They could have easily added more conditions if they needed or wanted to.
You could just as easily (and just as ridiculously) argue that Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Munroe and Van Buren were not qualified to be President because they were not citizens of the United States when the Constitution was adopted as both Virginia and New York had not ratified it at that time. It's a silly argument with nothing but contrived "intent" that never, somehow, made it into the actual document in question.