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To: Yossarian; El Gato; trumandogz; John Valentine

The link that Yossarian posts refers to ‘citizen’ and not ‘natural born citizen’.

From Larry Walker’s blog:

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Article 2, section 1 of the Constitution states, “No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of president; neither shall any person be eligible who shall not attained to the age of thirty-five years, and been fourteen years a resident within the United Satates.”
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The addition of a grandfather clause in this paragraph says a lot as to the meaning of natural born. The first thing it says is that being born in the US is not enough to be natural born, otherwise the grandfather clause would not be necessary. The writers and delegates, having been born in the US, wanted to be eligible for the presidency, but most were the children of British subjects. Knowing that that eliminated them from being natural born and, thus, from eligibility, they included the grandfather clause which expired when the last person alive at the time of the ratification of the Constitution died. So, being a native born citizen is not the same as being natural born. If it were the framers would not have included the clause.

When asked to define natural born citizen, John Bingham, the author of the 14th ammendment which extended the bill of rights to former slaves, stated, “Any human born to parents who are US citizens and are under no other jurisdiction or authority.” The Naturalization Act of 1790, also passed by this congress, declared “And the children of citizens of the US shall be considered as natural born, provided that the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been a resident of the US.” Neither of these definitions, one from US law, mentions birthplace, only the parents’ citizenship.


50 posted on 10/15/2009 5:00:35 AM PDT by Hostage
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To: Hostage

Did John Bingham run out of ink when penning the 14th and if not, why did he ‘fail’ to include that explanation in the text of the amendment?


69 posted on 10/15/2009 11:49:20 AM PDT by trumandogz (The Democrats are driving us to Socialism at 100 MPH -The GOP is driving us to Socialism at 97.5 MPH)
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