The Statement in M-H really does get clearer with every reading. I have seen that quote taken out of context dozens of times, and always assumed it left open NBC to children of foreign citizens born here. But when I read the opinion in its full context, and understood the case, it was like a light bulb turned on. No way in hell is it allowing NBC to foreign citizens.
There was a campaign of misdirection, not suprisingly similar to that surrounding Obama. Many of Arthur's statements were patently untrue, and can only be construed as a tactic to create more confusion. Arthur told the press that his mother was “...a New Englander who had never left her native country.” That was not true, and every member of the Arthur family knew it.
Someone pointed out that, unlike the statements on Wiki and in the voluminous “Gentleman Boss,” life and times of Chester Arthur, Arthur and Hinman, the journalist were old friends and associates during Arthur's tumultuous New York years. The Hinman book could well have been clever misdirection. Arthur's appointee Horace Gray certainly understood the definition of who were natural born citizens, having made Minor v. Happersett his first citation in Wong Kim Ark.
It seems very possible that Arthur's ineligibility was not at all a secret, but that both parties found it inconvenient to turn the stones which might cause many more to be implicated in the cover-up, very much like the silence of so many who know better.
While much of what “Squeeky”, our most recent Obot, is nonsense, her/his reminder that Mark Levin, in whose book Liberty and Tyranny Levin quotes Madison explaining why the framers built the Constitution upon the common-language understood at the time of its framers, resorts to name-calling when the issue arises. For those who trust reason and clear language, there appears to be more to this cover-up than what has been published to assuage the concerns of citizens. Is the presumption that we live in a representative republic, with laws subject to judicial review an elaborate myth?