Mark has his own reasons for avoiding issues. His daily infomercials, which I often find informative, are an enormously valuable marketing tool for which he is paid! Who else gets paid to sell his own products three hours each day? I'm a capitalist. No one needs to listen to his harangues. Levin's ideology may be more tactical than strategic.
I suspected, and had confirmed in Mark's Liberty and Tyranny, p37, that our framers intentionally omitted term definitions from our Constitution. Try to find one! There is but one narrowing of one word overused by the British, which I'll leave for the reader to find. The one exception proves the rule. Mark quoted a Madison letter to a friend and colleague, in which Madison explains this. It reminds of a principle assumed by astrophysicist called 'time invariance of physical law'. If one looks at light from stars and galaxies transmitted ten billion years ago, the only way to analyze the meaning of what that light reveals is to assume physical laws haven't changed. Madison explained that the only way to understand our Constitution, which was written presuming the eternal truth of ‘Natural Law’, which was the foundation of our Declaration and Constitution, is to use the language and law common to our founders and framers when they wrote the document.
Mark, unfortunately, repeated the misdirection, one about which he is certainly familiar, since he wrote about it, that “Our Constitution doesn't define who are natural born citizens because they didn't define the term.” Mark also, just recently, in an interview with Hannity after an embarrassing exchange with someone at a book signing, stipulated, talking about Ted Cruz, but the stipulation would apply to McCain if it were true, that “The 1790 Naturalization Act makes Cruz (and McCain), eligible without any doubt.” His statement is not true, and I find it hard to believe he, more a Constitutional Scholar than Obama, who never claimed natural born citizenship, that Mark doesn't know the truth. He is also well aware of separation of powers, and that Congress has no authority to re-interpret the Constitution.
The 1790 Naturalization Act was entirely repealed in 1795, signed by the same President Washington, with the new act containing the same legal context, Article 1 Section 8 uniform naturalization rules, but the stipulation that children born to citizen parents “across the seas” (out of U.S. sovereign jurisdiction), were made ‘citizens. No mention of natural born citizens appears in U.S. Code since the mistake in the 1790 Act was corrected. One can surmise that Congress realized that using Article I Section 8, a 'naturalization' provision, to affect Article II Section I, 'natural born citizen' and its presidential eligibility stipulation, was seen to be the conflict that it is. Were the 1790 Act not repealed, Congress could redefine who was eligible to be president.
The same trick, citing the 1790 Act, was deployed by Obama’s Constitutional Law professor, Supreme Court wannabe, Larry Tribe, and by the sad product of the Congressional Research Service's Jack Maskill in three remarkably error-filled efforts to cloud the issue of Obama’s ineligibility.
Why would I listen to Levin? Mark's Landmark Legal Foundation gets most of its business from conservative clients. Karl Rove and Jihadi Grover Norquist could probably shut down Landmark Legal. They certainly know Obama is illegitimate, but watched McCain fight law suits and Congressional hearings from 2001 on. McCain's questionable legitimacy was well published in the WaPo, NYT, LA Times, Chicago Trib... It is a tangled web which may never be untangled, but if Levin were to weigh in, with his following, many Republicans would be removed from the dole, and probably Levin as well. It cannot be a coincidence that the media and Republican movers float one naturalized citizen after another, Jindal, Haley, Rubio, Cruz, for 2016 when we have so many who are natural born.
Why didn't Republicans promote the justifiable constitutional amendment to make McCain eligible? Democrats did! Clair McCaskill, Obama’s 2008 campaign co-chair, and Obama sponsored Senate Bill 2678, the ‘‘Children of Military Families Natural Born Citizen Act’’ Democrats also sponsored four amendment bills , two by John Conyers and one each by Menendez and Frank, which would have made Obama eligible. Democrats wanted McCain to be their opponent, and Levin, who is unequivocally hostile to McCain, is implicated in the cover-up, much as I suspect he would rather not be.
I will buy Levin's new book, but believe the words of Levin's former boss apply: “Trust but Verify”. My take is that he doesn't feel he could defend the economics of the proposal eliminating the graduated income tax, and trying to defend that particular thesis would cost him more influence. Clearly, he doesn't understand, or won't address eligibility. But many of his suggestions seem very worthy of careful examination. Not having read the book, but having listened to his daily recitations about it, his exposure of the Constitutional mechanism may be end up at the most valuable contribution, and one he attributes to a retired judge and professor from Montana (I don't recall the name, but he was the source for Levin of the clarification). If his infomercials make him rich, and he keeps his audience, more power to him.
Just as I suspected. You haven’t read the book. I suggest you read all of his books before you pass judgement on one part of his proposal. You know nothing of what you suppose to speak of. You aren’t fit to wipe his boots.
You can "surmise" all you want, but you offer no evidence about what Congress was thinking in 1790 and 1795. There are other logical possible explanations.
Were the 1790 Act not repealed, Congress could redefine who was eligible to be president.
No not at all.
“It cannot be a coincidence that the media and Republican movers float one naturalized citizen after another, Jindal, Haley, Rubio, Cruz, for 2016 when we have so many who are natural born.”
You rant in favor of precision, and then you write this nonsense. Neither Cruz, nor Haley, nor Rubio, nor Jindal is a naturalized citizen. Each and every one of them was a citizen at birth.