Posted on 12/03/2008 11:43:31 PM PST by BP2
I traced my generations back to 7 German from my mothers side 5 from my dad's French side. Both trees flourished in South Louisiana eventually I was born. In tracing those I found a love for History. What Mother England did to Canadian family's when she took Canada was absolutely brutal, whole family's refused allegiance to Her were forced from their homes, farms, businesses many died and were expelled across the pond to the wilderness of America.
I know about Mother England taxing the air in Ireland. People had little or no windows in their houses to cut down on taxes due MOMMA. Inside Crown England reside ancient devils who have no limits. Looks like our leaders have open our doors to the Crown and in gratitude Mother England suggests a flatulence tax on cows. There will be no end to taxes, inspections of our garbage cans the same thing that is happening in England right now. I can just see the rationing of food and God knows what else.
I pray this stops. I pray that God give SCOTUS justices His Devine strength to resist and fight for our freedom.
AMEN?
But in those days things were indeed more patrilineal. They would not have considered the child of an unwed mother fit to be President, while we do not feel so harsh today to an innocent baby. We also have given women full rights of citizenship that they did not enjoy in the Founders' days.
For there to be a new definition to fit today's world, we could never apply only patrilineage to natural born status. We could decide that natural born equals born to TWO American citizens. But we could never decide today that only the FATHER need be an American citizen.
Because these days, you can't be a natural born bastard any more. These days, you have to EARN that status with your behavior.
First off, do we have proof of "wedded"? We never had proof of divorce or annulment, did we? (Annulment since Obama Sr. was concurrently married to a couple of other ladies) Though I don't know if Obama's parents' marital status is even meaningful to the discussion.
Next, we need some formal definition of natural born that would truly let us know whether being a citizen of any other country would make one ineligible. We need to remember that the United States cannot control what other governments do. They can confer citizenships upon anyone they wish.
A far-fetched but entirely possible scenario is that another country, say Iran, could confer citizenship on one of our candidates before an election, thus making him ineligible to become President.
Our definition of natural born may well have to exclude foreign citizenships that are conferred without request.
That would be essential. I don't mind a tourist's or student's child becoming American, but if you are not legally in this country, your children should NOT become citizens. I believe that you should not even get social services, free schooling, or welfare. It's killing us.
Is this the key, if Obama were born outside the USA? And what constitutes residency? Couldn't his father's student visa be considered legal residency?
Whereas the well-being of all citizens of the United States is preserved and enhanced by the men and women who are assigned to serve our country outside of our national borders;
Whereas previous presidential candidates were born outside of the United States of America and were understood to be eligible to be President; and
This resolution doesn't seem to apply to nonmilitary parents.
Also, which other presidential candidates were born outside the country, and why were they "understood" to be eligible? Isn't Barack Obama "understood" to be eligible? Does "understood" mean no mainstream media dared to question someone's eligibility? (How right was Marshall McLuhan??)
Americans of the founding generation were extremely distrustful of executive authority. By the time of the Constitutional Convention, however, difficulties undergone during and after the War for Independence had convinced public-spirited men that a national executive was necessary, but they approached the problem cautiously.
At least one-third of the delegates favored a plural executive in the interests of safety. The others endorsed a single executive, but only because George Washington would obviously be the first President. But Washington could not serve forever, and the delegates groped almost desperately to devise a means of choosing his successors. The search took up more time, more of the debates, than any other subject.
The greatest fear was of corrupt influences upon the election, particularly from abroad. Since the time of Louis XIV, every major European power had developed a secret service. The damage that such agencies could do was vivid in the American imagination, and it was not imaginary.
The horrible example of Poland was commonly cited. Poland had an elected monarch, and only 15 years earlier, in 1772, the secret services of Austria, Prussia and Russia had rigged the election of their own candidate, whereupon Poland was partitioned and divided among those three powers.
As Charles Pinckney, a delegate from South Carolina, put it, the danger was that ''we shall soon have the scenes of Polish Diets and elections re-acted here, and in not many years, the fate of Poland may be that of United America.''
Fear of foreign influence was pandemic. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts even wanted to prevent foreigners from becoming citizens, taking the position that naturalized citizens would always have divided loyalties.
On much the same ground, John Jay, then Superintendent of Foreign Affairs, wrote to Washington, as Mr. Canady said, as president of the Convention, urging that the Constitution ''declare expressly that the command in chief of the American Army shall not be given to nor devolved on any but a natural-born citizen.''
Meanwhile, as Mr. Canady also pointed out, a rumor was circulating that the Convention intended to invite a distant relative of George III to assume the American crown, a rumor that delegates publicly denied, despite the mantle of secrecy cloaking all those deliberations. Such nervous talk emphasized that the Convention must come up with something that in no way resembled or could be converted into a monarchy.
Debates about electing the President raged until early September, less than 2 weeks before the Convention adjourned. Then Pierce Butler, an Irish-born delegate, came up with a cumbersome plan that overcame the objections to all earlier proposals. This was the electoral college system. The system was so diffuse that it would be virtually impossible, given the primitive communications then available, for foreign agents to corrupt it. But for good measure Butler's proposal included the restrictive language, ''no person except a natural-born citizen.''
That language was adopted without a single dissenting voice, nor did anyone speak in its support. Its meaning and rationale went without saying. As Joseph Storey later explained in his famous commentaries, the phraseology ''cuts off all chances for ambitious foreigners who might otherwise be intriguing for the office and interposes a barrier against . . . corrupt interferences of foreign governments.''
Now, the question before the subcommittee is not the original purpose of the clause, but whether it has outlived its usefulness. The circumstances that prevailed at the time of the founding have changed. Yet it seems to me on balance that conditions in the foreseeable future warrant a continuation of the caution shown by the framers.
Take the matter of the possible corruption in the electoral process. The system is still structurally diffuse, but in practice it might as well be centralized, given modern techniques of communication and the instant portability of money, the most potent corrupting influence. Presidential candidates spend scores of millions of dollars. Just consider the prospective influence of a few billion dollars, a sum well within the means of a number of countries, any one of which, while unwilling to risk such a sum on a natural-born American, might be eager to support a candidate who had been born and raised in their country.
The original Constitution contemplated a relatively weak Presidency, but the office has become the most powerful in the world, and safeguards surrounding it are therefore more indispensable than ever. The one area of Presidential authority that is virtually unchecked and uncheckable is the President's power as Commander in Chief. Can that power be safely entrusted to a foreign-born citizen?
A distinction without a difference.
yep Obama pay back is a bitch
So it IS subject to interpretation.
What docomentation are you talking about? The forged COLB, by any chance?
LAUNCHING NEW POST IN A FEW MINUTES:
Full Symposium documented in Sept 08 Mich Law Review on McCain Natural Born / Eligibility!!
http://www.michiganlawreview.org/firstimpressions/vol107/mccain.htm
What goes on here? Why havent I heard this mentioned on the Plainsradio shows, of which Ive heard at least 75% of? Why hasnt Donofrio or anyone mentioned this organ? Im sure he hadnt as it would have been most memorable. You can see readily the first (and longest-some 27 pages pasted into MS Word- the others are less than ten- and these are REAL academic pieces with full footnoting) has it McCain ineligible, the final two that he is. Ive only browsed them as I pasted into MS Word. I see many references to things being discussed here on FR and I believe some I have not seen (other cases). Perhaps the large, late Benjamin piece on TD blog has more refs to those here (in comments JB gives a list of about 5 cases to a detractor). I havent sussed two articles set between.
Just looking here its a wonder the 9 in SCOTUS wouldnt be taking on the Donofrio case. One would have to think they have disgorged these five articles. One would have to think the four conservatives and at least one other would issue or want to issue decision.
In haste I post. Itd take me a lot of time to study as I should. Just passing it on without comment, except my real PC has just had its famous pre-repair crash now back from the shop a week. Ive also lost my long ping list so do as you would, please. Someone should get this to Donofrio, really. I just dont, in what Ive scrolled through here, think hes onto some of this anyways. My files are trapped in a CPU that wont turn on as of less than an hour ago. Of course there are many references to his cited materials but there are things well, maybe Im dreaming.
Here is the one FR post from this I found in quick search of Natural Born Citizen.
Originalism and the Natural Born Citizen Clause
10/22/2008 6:31:48 PM PDT by Dajjal 7 replies 707+ views
There are four more entries that go back to Sept 13 didnt FR lose files with a server change back around here? I believe I caught it on Atlas Shruggs, where I was lurking / mining back then, along with Godlikeproductions (yes, of all places) and TexasDarlin. I didnt join FR until later.
Here goes:
Volume 107, No. 1 (September 2008)
An Online Symposium on
Senator John McCain and Natural Born Citizenship
Senator John McCain, the current Republican Party nominee for President, was born in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936. The circumstances of his birth raise the question of whether he is a “natural born citizen” as required by Article II, section 1 of the Constitution. The symposium contributors explore both the substance of this issue and the methods used to resolve it.
Why Senator John McCain Cannot be President: Eleven Months and a Hundred Yards Short of Citizenship [HTML] [PDF]
Gabriel J. Chin, University of Arizona Law School
Article II, section 1 of the Constitution provides that No Person except a natural born Citizen . . . shall be eligible to the Office of President . . . . A person must be a citizen at birth to be a natural born citizen. Senator McCain was born in the Canal Zone in 1936. Although he is now a U.S. citizen, the law in effect in 1936 did not grant him citizenship at birth. Because he was not born a citizen, he is not eligible to the office of president.
Originalism and the Natural Born Citizen Clause [HTML] [PDF]
Lawrence B. Solum, University of Illinois Law School
The enigmatic phrase natural born citizen poses a series of problems for contemporary originalism. New Originalists, like Justice Scalia, focus on the original public meaning of the constitutional text. The notion of a natural born citizen was likely a term of art derived from the idea of a natural born subject in English lawa category that most likely did not extend to persons, like Senator McCain, who were born outside sovereign territory. But the Constitution speaks of citizens and not subjects, introducing uncertainties and ambiguities that might (or might not) make McCain eligible for the presidency.
The Justiciability of Eligibility: May Courts Decide Who Can Be President? [HTML] [PDF]
Daniel P. Tokaji, The Ohio State University, Moritz College of Law
The 2008 election cycle has been a busy one for legal disputes over the qualifications of presidential candidates, with federal cases having been filed to challenge both major candidates eligibility under the natural born Citizen clause. These cases unquestionably present vital questions of constitutional law, touching on matters of self-evident national importance. It is doubtful, however, that they are justiciable in lower federal courts. Standing requirements and the political question doctrine make it unlikely that a federal court will reach the merits in cases of the type filed to date.
McCains Citizenship and Constitutional Method [HTML] [PDF]
Peter J. Spiro, Temple University Beasley School of Law
Many things may obstruct John McCains path to the White House, but his citizenship status is not among them. The question of his eligibility, given the circumstances of his birth, has already been resolved. That outcome has been produced by actors outside the courts. . . . If non-judicial actorsincluding Congress, editorialists, leading members of the bar, and the People themselvesmanage to generate a constitutional consensus, there isnt much that the courts can do about it. In cases such as this one, at least, that seems to be an acceptable method of constitutional determination.
Why John McCain Was a Citizen at Birth [HTML] [PDF]
Stephen E. Sachs
Senator John McCain was born a citizen in 1936. Professor Gabriel J. Chin challenges this view in this Symposium, arguing that McCains birth in the Panama Canal Zone (while his father was stationed there by the Navy) fell into a loophole in the governing statute. The best historical evidence, however, suggests that this loophole is an illusion and that McCain is a natural born Citizen eligible to be president.
Ping anyway.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2142619/posts?page=794#794
Here, again, we see the terms are interchangeable.
"parents"
if we take the plural here to mean exclusively both parents then you might have a point, but we also express 'the male parent of this child and the female parent of that child and the male parent of the female parent of that other child' as 'parents' - the plural of parent when they do not share offspring. I wish I could have avoided the very awkward constructs above, as did Vattel.
Citizen at birth by ancestry is not in dispute. Citizen at birth by location of birth is another facet of English common law. The 14th Amendment does use 'OR'. US Law and the COTUS are more relevant than either Natural Law or English Common Law - George Mason, [a] father of the Bill of Rights, said: "English Law is not our Law". All these 'Natural Law' and 'English Common Law' arguments are tenuous at best. I have yet to see the expression 'father and mother are citizens' or the like in any of these supposed proofs of the 'two citizen parents' argument. Furthermore, how does any of this supersede the COTUS, including the 14th Amendment? On top of all that, as I mentioned earlier, women acquired the citizenship of their husband at marriage, if different from his prior (all you English Common Lawyers go look that one up). Citizenship of the mother simply was not a factor. And, further, the John Jay letter has no bearing. We already know that 'natural born' means 'having that attribute from birth' and that was important. I do not accept your 'proof' to, well, prove anything.
P.S. Don't use yellow, at least not this shade, it is difficult to read. Not enough contrast.
Bump Dat X2...(tic)...;0)
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