Posted on 01/04/2012 1:44:50 PM PST by To-Whose-Benefit?
For the first time in dozens of court cases challenging Barack Obama’s eligibility to be president, a judge has ruled that Obama must, in order to be a candidate on the Georgia ballot for president in 2012, meet the constitutional demands for candidates for the office.
A hearing has been scheduled later this month for evidence on the issue that has plagued Obama and his presidency since long before he took office. At issue is the constitutional requirement that a president be a “natural-born citizen.” Some allege he was not born in the U.S. as he has claimed and, therefore, is not eligible.
Others, including top constitutional expert Herb Titus, contend that the term “natural-born citizen,” which is not defined in the Constitution, would have been understood when the document was written to mean the offspring of two U.S. citizens. That argument is supported by a 19th-century U.S. Supreme Court decision.
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
I agree. It really doesn't matter where he was born. His citizenship is probably Indonesian, because he was adopted by an Indonesian and had his citizenship transferred when his mother married Soetoro. There is no way to know because of the secrecy involved, but I would not be surprised to learn that he has never applied for U.S. Citizenship since his childhood in Indonesia.
(1) The case is called Minor v. Happersett.
(2) It was not a precedent on the definition of Natural Born Citizen, because the only issue in the case was whether women had the right to vote under the 14th Amendment.
(3) The dicta discussing the NBC issue didn't say that only children of citizens were NBCs, it said only that there was some doubt about whether others were.
(4) Numerous later cases have stated (also in dicta) that anyone who is a citizen by birth, not by naturalization, is a Natural Born Citizen.
(5) The only case in which the discussion of Natural Born Citizen was not dicta (i.e., in which the actual issue before the court was someone's eligibility to be President), was Arkenny v. Indiana, which held that both Obama and McCain were Natural Born Citizens.
If Obama was born in the U.S., he could not lose his citizenship by anything his parents did. Someone born in the U.S. can lose their citizenship only by a voluntary renunciation after age 18.
No. Law is based on moral right and, in this country, on the Constitution, the supreme law of the land. And in the national sense, the Congress is vested by Article One, Section 1 with sole lawmaking authority.
Court opinions are not law. They are merely court opinions, in particular cases, decided within the parameters of moral right, the Constitution and the constitutionally-valid laws passed by the representatives of the people.
I say Bring it on you kenyan SOB!
snip-”New evidence conclusively establishes that 25 U.S. Supreme Court opinions were sabotaged then republished at Justia.com during the run up to the ’08 election. My prior report documented the scrubbing of just two cases. But last week, a third sabotaged case was discovered which led to a thorough examination of all US Supreme Court cases which cite “Minor v. Happersett” as they appeared on Justia.com between 2006 and the present.
Since Justia placed affirmations on each tampered opinion which state “Full Text of Case”, personnel may also be guilty of violating 18 U.S.C. 1018 by intentionally passing off tampered versions of US Supreme Court opinions as if they were official versions published by the US Supreme Court.”
Yes I forgot about that. Its a hold over from the old days when the Jim Crow laws in the south kept the blacks from registering and voting. But as far as I know thats regarding laws about voter registration not getting on the ballot to run for office. I think the Sec of State in each state regulates that.
Not true "Libertarian." Minor established precedent because before the 14th Amendment, the only citizen defined by the Constitution, and thus providing the court with jurisdiction, was a natural born citizen. Justice Waite had not jurisdiction if Mrs. Minor was not a citizen. She was a citizen because she was a natural born citizen. Minor established that definition without doubt. The doubt expressed in the decision was doubt about who were citizens, since Congress hadn't yet got around to "Establish(ing) an uniform code for Naturalization," and citizenship rules varied widely from state-to-state. At issue was whether Elizabeth Minor was a citizen. Besides the fact the natural born citizens composed the majority of residents in the United States, the reason for the definition in Article II was clearly because of the critical role of the president to the survival of the republic. But a definition is a definition. Logically, it means "the same as." There can be no other definition, and there has never been.
The words natural born citizen appear nowhere in US Code. Separation of powers and judicial review both prevent a legislative interpretation, except through the amendmeent process. The 14th Amendment never mentions natural born citizens, but was written to make slaves citizens. Its author, John Bingham, in The Globe, the record of house hearings, in 1866, repeated the Vattel common-law definition, born on the soil of citizen parents, though Bingham phrased it to emphasize parents whose sole allegiance was to our republic - citizens.
Because Elizabeth Minor's natural born citizenship was essential to the decision, the definition is not dictum. Justice Waite stated the definition which is connected by Article II Section 1 to presidential eligibility. Had she not been eligible to the presidency, a natural born citizen, she was not a constitutionally defined citizen. It may seem a roundabout way to citizenship, but it was the only route prior to the 14th Amendment, and that was what was at issue - did the 14th Amendment address sufferage. The 14th didn't mention sufferage, so a female citizen before the 14th Amendment, who, like all women then, couldn't vote, did not gain sufferage through the 14th Amendment's "equal protections" clause. The proof was unanimously accepted by all justices.
The claim that later cases claimed that someone whose parents were not citizens was declared a natural born citizen is simply not true. The most important such case, Wong Kim Ark, born to resident but not citizen parents was deemed specifically not a natural born citizen. Read the conclusion. Wong Kim is a “Native born citizen of the U.S.,’ just like Barack Obama. Justice Gray, if you happen to read an unscrubbed version of Wong Kim Ark, cites Chief Justice Waite's Minor v. Happersett decision, in fact his first citation, and decides that Wong Kim is a citizen, not a natural born citizen. Wong Kim Ark, nor any Supreme Court case, may not alter another decision by inference. It cannot change the definition, particularly of a case cited as precedence. Wong Kim was declared "a citizen." (That case also led to what many are beginning to reexamine, the creation of "anchor babies," children born on our soil to illegal immigrants).
The Indiana decision, besides being from a state and not a federal court, let alone the US Supreme Court, is a joke. One of its claims is that because Chester Arthur, born to a British Subject father, was allowed to become president, precence was created. In fact, there is no evidence that anyone discovered the truth about Chester Arthur's father's naturalization when Chester was 14, until it was uncovered in early 2009 by Leo Donofrio and his sister, digging through what remained of Arthur's personal effects. Arthur lied, as has Obama, about his parents, and had his personal papers burned while he was on his death bed. He created false doubts about where he was born, just as Barack has created a fertile environment for doubts about his birthplace, doubts which could always have been allayed by opening his personal recoreds.
Finally. Try to find any law student who doesn't know about justia.com. Justia and Findlaw, both founded by Soros associated entrepreneur Tim Stanley, is by far the most frequently returned URL by Google from queries for Supreme Court cases. Lexis and Westlaw are fee-for-service sites, and quite expensive. Justia seemed a good idea except that its founder chose to use his influence as the largest provider of access to archives of Supreme Court cases to protect his patron. It is clear that several law schools know of Justia's corruption of documents, but, to date, they only warn their students to check presumably reliable sources (called Shepardizing their citations). The eligibility issue is too politically charged, and law schools are too beholden to federal largess to talk openly.
Stanley's partner in crime, Carl Malamud, CEO of law.gov, which clearly implies an association with the government, is working with prominent law schools, and performing a similar function. Since Malamud's association with Cornell, one of the most important early cases citing Minor v. Happersett, Ex Parte Lockwood, was edited to remove a whole paragraph because it explicitly referred to Minor as precedence for natural born citizenship. (See Leo Donofrio's site for screen captures of the corrupted documents, along with clear explanations)
Clearly your intention is to confuse readers. Since you have misstated so many issues, let's also clear up another shibboleth used by most who correctly assume few of us have actually read The Constitution. With only one exception, and that because the framers created explicit rules for treason, nothing is defined in the Constitution. Definitions were explicitly left out of the Constitution because, as Madison explained (see Mark Levin's Liberty and Tyranny p37 for a Madison letter, only one of many such explanations), the meanings of words change with time. If the Constitution is to have eternal meaning, the words must be interpreted, as Justice Waite explained in Minor v. Happersett, in the language familiar to its framers. It is not unlike assuming that physical laws as we understand them apply to objects billions of years old. Without that assumption astronmy and astrophysics could not be understood. Fixing the language to the time of the framers is to preserve the meaning intended by our framers and founders.
Any other interpretation than the one expressed in the Minor definition must come from the court, or by amendment, and there has never been another interpretation. Even Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, in Perkins v. Elg, in 1939, allowed that Marie Elg, born to naturalized Swedish Parents in New York, but moved back to Sweden by her parents and raised in Sweden, when they repudiated their US citizenship, was determined to have been eligible, after 14 years residence and attaining the age of 35 to become president, because natural born citizenship is granted by God. Any other citizen would need to naturalized.
Born to a dual citizen, since Stanley Ann became a British Subject by marrying Barack Senior, and an alien, Barach Sr., there is simply no path to natural born citizenship for Barack, nor did he ever claim to be a natural born citizen. He said “I am a native born citizen of the U.S.” You can bet he knows the difference; he simply doesn't care. He doesn't believe it matters. It certainly mattered to John McCain, who went through two law suits and six congressional hears, none of which confirmed his eligibility. It certainly mattered to John Conyers, who tried twice between 2000 and 2007 to get Article II loosened up, It mattered to Orrin Hatch who also tried, so that Schwarzenegger could run. It mattered to twenty three other legislators who also tried. Neither Conyer’s nor Hatch’s, nor five other amendment attempts during the last decade passed. Both parties found the Constitution inconvenient in 2008.
Rubio and Jindal are both ineligible, unless an amendment is passed, and there isn't time before the 2012 elections. An amendment to address the McCain ineligibility seems worth attempting. McCain was born on soil, whether in Colon or the Canal Zone, which was not under sovereign US jurisdiction in 1937, but was addressed by the State Department in 1938. It seems unfair, but is the law. But to make a child born to parents who have not declared sole allegiance to our republic a reputed natural born citizen is foolish. This writer believes most citizens would not want that requirement changed. Only our president must be a natural born citizen. Given the importance to our survival of the allegiance of our President and Commander in Chief, it is a perfectly reasonable prerequisite - and, it is our law. Even the British, whose citizenship at birth defined Barack Obama, don't allow naturalized citizens to be Members of Parliament. Barack, in fact, was born to two British Subjects, and, by the British Nationality act of 1948 (and for centuries before) is a natural born subject of the British Commonwealth. Barack, probably requiring some period of residence, could be eligible to be a Member of Pariament, but not President of the US. I keep hearing that no one cares. If that is true, the same can be said for whatever other provisions of The Constitution are also inconvenient. Then those who presume to make opinion have control over what protections and rights the Constitution guaranteed. I think we need to care about presidential eligibility.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.