Replies

Perhaps we are talking at cross-purposes here.

Without the grandfather clause, you are correct, none of the framers of the U.S. Constitution could have been natural born U.S. citizens.

Politically speaking,the country (the colonies) existed before the Constitution was adopted as part of the British empire. They were the framers were subjects of the crown. One could say they were all "natural born" British subjects. With 47 of the 55 framers of the Constitution were born in the colonies themselves.

For example: Augustine Washington, father of George Washington, was born in 1694 in Westmoreland, Virginia. Mary Ball Washington, mother of good, old George, was born in Lancaster County, Virginia, in 1708.

The nation's first president was, in fact, Constitutionally speaking: a "natural born" U.S. citizen.

But you may be correct in suggesting my prior post was too general when I stated: "...If both of your parents were alive and living in this country, you were a “natural born” citizen".... I may now have to change that to "If both parents were born in the colonies,"... they would have been U.S. citizens at the time of adoption of the U.S. Constitution(alive or dead), would be a more accurate statement.

ex animo

davidfarrar

This was an interesting article.... Certainly looks like he was painted as a voyeur anyway....

http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2008/September/08-crm-841.html

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, September 22, 2008
WWW.USDOJ.GOV
CRM
(202) 514-2007
TDD (202) 514-1888
Former State Department Employee Pleads Guilty to Illegally Accessing Confidential Passport Files

WASHINGTON – A former State Department employee pleaded guilty today to illegally accessing hundreds of confidential passport application files, Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Friedrich of the Criminal Division announced.

Lawrence C. Yontz, 48, of Arlington, Va., pleaded guilty before U.S. Magistrate Judge John M. Facciola in Washington, D.C., to a one-count criminal information charging him with unauthorized computer access. At sentencing, Yontz faces a maximum sentence of one year in prison, a $100,000 fine and a $25 special assessment. Sentencing has been scheduled for Dec. 19, 2008.

According to court documents, between September 1987 and April 1996, Yontz served as a foreign service officer for the State Department. He returned to the agency as a contract employee in January 2004 to work as an intelligence analyst within the Bureau of Intelligence and Research. In the regular course of his employment, Yontz admitted he had access to official State Department computer databases, including the Passport Information Electronic Records System (PIERS), which contains, among other data, all imaged passport applications dating back to 1994. According to information contained in plea documents, the imaged passport applications on PIERS contain, among other things, a photograph of the passport applicant as well as certain personal information including the applicant’s full name, date and place of birth, current address, telephone numbers, parent information, spouse’s name and emergency contact information. These confidential files are protected by the Privacy Act of 1974, and access by State Department employees is strictly limited to official government duties.

In pleading guilty, Yontz admitted that between February 2005 and March 2008, he logged onto the PIERS database and viewed the passport applications of approximately 200 celebrities, athletes, actors, politicians and their immediate families, musicians, game show contestants, members of the media corps, prominent business professionals, colleagues, associates, neighbors and individuals identified in the press. Yontz admitted that he had no official government reason to access and view these passport applications, but that his sole purpose in accessing and viewing these passport applications was idle curiosity.

The case is being prosecuted by Trial Attorney Armando O. Bonilla of the Criminal Division’s Public Integrity Section, headed by Section Chief William M. Welch II. Trial Attorney Jaikumar Ramaswamy of the Criminal Division’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section assisted in the investigation of this matter. The case is being investigated by the State Department Office of Inspector General.

###

08-841

But you may be correct in suggesting my prior post was too general when I stated: “...If both of your parents were alive and living in this country, you were a “natural born” citizen”.... I may now have to change that to “If both parents were born in the colonies,”... they would have been U.S. citizens at the time of adoption of the U.S. Constitution(alive or dead), would be a more accurate statement.
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According to SCOTUS case law, there is no doubt on that class you mention being ‘natural born citizens.’

MINOR v. HAPPERSETT, 88 U.S. 162 (1874)
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=88&invol=162

“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.”
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Clearly, it’s the ‘this class there have been doubts’ that we’re concerned about, at the least with Obama - who according to his tiny amount of disclosure, had one non-citizen father. If he were born in Kenya, then even his citizenship is in doubt, as many others have pointed out on numerous occasions.

The parents of those who were citizens at the time of adoption of the Constitution are irrelevant, DavidFarrar. That they were citizens themselves at that time, is all that is specified.

There were no natural born citizens at all, until after the time of adoption of the Constitution.

And, there were no natural born citizen Presidents, until there were natural born citizens born after the time of adoption of the Constitution, who were age 35 or older. Up to that point, all Presidents had been merely “citizens,” but were eligible via the so-called grandfather clause.