Posted on 01/20/2009 9:42:15 AM PST by Kevmo
I look at it this way. The Constitution and our way of government was our social contract. It has been broken. When will the people put it back? Only when they feel the pain of doing without it.
For this term, absolutely.
But you can't deny that this exposed a weakness in the enforcement of clauses in the Constitution. What would you change for the next time?
Would you not support taking active measures to ensure that future presidents clearly present their credentials to the American people prior to running for office?
When a potential candidate announces that they are forming an "exploratory committee," why shouldn't the appropriate governement entities also "explore" the qualifications of the person during this exploratory phase?
-PJ
We’re done.
***Now there’s finally something to be happy about.
That would only apply to Obama not having to comply during his current term. It would not absolve him from complying in 2012 should he choose to run again.
-PJ
One can hope. Best of luck with that effort.
For now.
Interesting... I hadn't heard that. I though InTrade and TradeSports were the same entity, run out of Ireland.
They don't make it clear, but last year when I traced their "Contact Us" information, both sites went back to the same FAX telephone number.
-PJ
I haven’t seen anything to suggest the new President isn’t a citizen of the United States of America.
What I have seen is some on the Right of the political spectrum beginning to behave EXACTLY like the 9/11 kooks...or those afflicted by Bush Derangement Syndrome.
I think its counter productive to Conservative issues in general, and websites that end up having it up in their respective forums specifically.
JMHO here.
First, even after the election people were still trying to define what a "Natural Born Citizen" is, and whether there is a third class of citizenship between Natural Born and naturalized for people who are born citizens but aren't "Natural Born Citizens". Now maybe it isn't defined in US law because the only two jobs it matters for are president and vice president and Congress never considered that someone might toe that line. Does a Natural Born citizen have to be born inside United States territory to two citizen parents (the most restrictive definition I saw which would have even eliminated McCain)? Is anyone born in the United States to anyone Natural Born based on the fact that they were born a citizen according to the current interpretation of the 14th amendment (least restrictive definition I saw)? Can a Natural Born citizen have a dual citizenship at birth, or does that eliminate him from the Natural Born category?
Second, the method of getting a Hawaii Certification of Live Birth remained fuzzy (although I might have missed the definitive answer). How long after the birth could you apply for one? What documentary evidence did it take to get one? Is a mother's claim sufficient?
Next, the aim of the investigation seemed scatter-shot. Was the attempt to prove that Barack Obama was born outside of the country? Was it to prove that he gave up his citizenship when his stepfather brought him to Indonesia?(with a followup question of whether a parent can give up a child's US citizenship, or if it can't be given up until he's 18 years old?) Was it to prove that he was born with a dual citizenship and therefore might be unable to be President? We never hit one solid reason why he wasn't eligible, instead we threw up a lot of "well, it could be this" choices.
Also there seemed to be a tenacity on holding onto evidence which didn't matter anymore. My primary point on that were the people who tried to prove that the originally published COLB was a forgery (as opposed to an official document produced by the State of Hawaii). A lot of Freepers made a big deal about white borders around the text on the first COLB posted. However it was pretty clear to me those were artifacts from having a JPEG image that was compressed way too much and trying to compare it to a less compressed "official" version. When I said so some were questioning whether I was a troll.
We should have understood the legalese of each secretary of state of each state to certify his eligibility, and swamped them before he got the nomination.
And we were working on this in March.
I asked if the situation exposed weaknesses in determining the Constitutional qualification of a candidate, and you said you "haven’t seen anything to suggest the new President isn’t a citizen of the United States of America."
Of course, the Constitution doesn't stop at "citizen," it asks for "natural-born citizen." How do we ensure that future candidates present to proper authorities proof of compliance with this qualification? We can't let the most powerful position in the world go to someone who is only willing to show a scan of one side of a document to a left-leaning website, and call that certified proof, can we?
You say "What I have seen is some on the Right of the political spectrum beginning to behave EXACTLY like the 9/11 kooks..." but 9/11 happened, and the government actively responded by creating a new government Cabinet-level department, forming a Congressional commission to review past practices, and enacting new laws to ensure the flow of information to all affected agencies.
If we use your analogy to 9/11 as a guide, then we should also change government practices around verifying qualifications for future presidents, to close an enforcement gap in the Constituion, whether Obama was qualified or not.
In today's information age, it's clear that we need additional future steps to ensure that future candidates positively demonstrate their qualifications. Wouldn't you agree?
-PJ
What I posted tells you clearly I don’t see any indication to support this kook theory Obama is not an American citizen.
Given that, why would I bother with the rest of what you posted BASED upon that theory?
Anyway...we don’t agree on this. Have at it if thats what you feel you need to do. Good luck, you’ll need it in my view.
For years, the NFL resisted it, as MLB still does. I can see how if a bad call hurts your team, you're all for instant replay, and if a bad call helped your team, you'd be against it.
For the guardians of the sancticty of the game, a bad call here or there isn't enough to warrant wholesale change, especially if the alleged bad calls didn't affect any of their own favored teams.
However, what happens when the bad call happens in the Super Bowl, and the whole world is watching, and it puts the credibility of the sport at risk?
And what does one say to the argument that, whether past bad calls affected me or not, I was aware of a brewing problem and could have put instant replay in place before a bad call tainted the Super Bowl?
I sense that you are willing to risk the possibility of a future candidate not being eligible, because you think Obama was eligible, and so the system worked this time. I think there were judgement calls made with no instant replay, and that with open borders, free-for-all immigration, and uncontrolled voting, we will have a problem in future elections if we don't close some gaps now.
-PJ
I’m not worried, I have you and Kevmo watching for me....(chuckle)
A lot of Freepers made a big deal about white borders around the text on the first COLB posted. However it was pretty clear to me those were artifacts from having a JPEG image that was compressed way too much and trying to compare it to a less compressed “official” version.
***Is it possible it was clear to you but not to others? How can we avoid such discordance in the future? There was a lot of other evidence besides white borders that suggested the CoLBs offered were forgeries. Did you overlook that other evidence? Did you debunk Polarik’s 160 page report on Factcheck’s CoLB? If so, I missed that. Where is it?
When I said so some were questioning whether I was a troll.
***There was troll activity even back then. Let’s assume, for a moment, that there really were trolls operating on CoLB threads. How can you differentiate yourself from them? Can you see that this is in the best interest of both sides — guys like you whom I presume would want to differentiate, and guys like me who would want to identify & isolate trolls? We needed a definition of troll, and we needed to be able to match up what freepers were doing with respect to the definition. Today there’s still no definition for ordinary freepers, and the mods seem to operate with an extracurricular definition.
-PJ
A little attempt at humor seemed required here.
Have a good day.
I believe it recently happened that Intrade closed all ties to TradeSports {not Sportsbook, sorry about the typo}.
Tradesports is shutting down
https://bb.intrade.com/intradeForum/posts/list/3201.page
with open borders, free-for-all immigration, and uncontrolled voting, we will have a problem in future elections if we don’t close some gaps now.
***Those are the problems that South Africa faced, and did not deal with adequately, thus they lost their own sovereignty.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2072642/posts?page=13#13
That is what I really meant in my post. The battle begins now to get solid conservaties on ballots to support them in primaries for the House and Senate races and do a lot of grunt work to get it done.
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