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Well done!
Article II eligibility.
Nicely laid out in this piece.
Kamela Harris?
Since everyone who was a citizen at the time of adoption is dead we can remove the grandfather clause wording. We are left with “No Person except a natural born Citizen [...] shall be eligible to the Office of President;”
Why does the Constitution speak of “citizens” and separately of “natural born citizens”? Why is the word “natural” inserted? It is a matter of allegiance.
A person can be a “citizen” if they were citizens or subjects in some other country first but have come here and met the naturalization requirements. Also, if one is the offspring of a citizen and a non-citizen, then one is a US citizen. However, in both these cases it can be argued that the person might choose allegiance to their former country or to the country of the foreign-born parent or at least the allegiance might be considered divided. That is, there is no natural allegiance of the offspring to one or the other parent’s country. It is this divided or alienated allegiance that the Constitutional provision is designed to prohibit.
If, however, both of one’s parents are themselves US citizens at the time of one's birth, then one is a “citizen” as well as a “natural born citizen”. The “natural born citizen” is one who at birth has no natural allegiance to any other country and the Framers felt could be trusted to be loyal to the US and not act as a foreign agent. In short, a natural born citizen is one who cannot be argued to be anything but; there is no possible argument that he might be a citizen elsewhere. [footnote: Also, in their time, the rules of royal succession held sway throught much of the world and the Founders wished to forstall any potential claims by the crowned heads of Europe or their scions to sovereignty in the US.]
Note that native born is not the same as natural born. Native born simply refers to the place of one’s birth, i.e., one’s nativity. The term does not speak to the legal circumstances of a birth, merely to its location.
SR 511 addressed this and agreed NBC meant born in the USA to two US citizen parents. Hellary and Soetoro were both in the committee and signed off on THE DEFINITION. Funny, SR 511 was to vet McIdiot and there was never a vetting of Soetoro’s eligibility.
BUMP for later.
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And you’re dredging this up again because...?
NBC in the Constitutional drafts:
June 18, 1787 - Alexander Hamilton suggests that the requirement be added, as: "No person shall be eligible to the office of President of the United States unless he be now a Citizen of one of the States, or hereafter be born a Citizen of the United States." Works of Alexander Hamilton (page 407).
June 27 1787. IN CONVENTION (Vattel's legal work is read aloud during the Federal Convention) "...that an equal vote in each State was essential to the federal idea, and was founded in justice & freedom, not merely in policy: that tho' the States may give up this right of sovereignty, yet they had not, and ought not:In order to prove that individuals in a State of nature are equally free & independent he [Luther Martin] read passages from Locke, Vattel, Lord Summers -- Priestly. To prove that the case is the same with States till they surrender their equal sovereignty, he [L.M.] read other passages in Locke & Vattel, and also Rutherford:" From Madison's Notes on the Convention.
Similar notes on Vattel being read during the convention can be found in the notes of Rufus King and Robert Yates as well.
July 25, 1787 (~5 weeks later) - John Jay writes a letter to General Washington (president of the Constitutional Convention): "Permit me to hint, whether it would be wise and seasonable to provide a strong check to the admission of Foreigners into the administration of our national Government; and to declare expressly that the Commander in Chief of the American army shall not be given to nor devolve on, any but a natural born Citizen." [the word born is underlined in Jay's letter which signifies the importance of allegiance from birth.]
http://rs6.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/hlaw:@field%28DOCID+@lit%28fr00379%29%29:
September 2nd, 1787 George Washington pens a letter to John Jay. The last line reads: "I thank you for the hints contained in your letter"
https://books.google.com/books?id=vTBIAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA269&lpg=PA269#v=onepage&q&f=false
September 4th, 1787 (~6 weeks after Jay's letter and just 2 days after Washington wrote back to Jay) - The "natural born Citizen" requirement is now found in their drafts. Madison's notes of the Convention
The proposal passed unanimously without debate.