"Citizens born in Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands are legally defined as “natural born” citizens, and are, therefore, also eligible to be elected President,...."
You can find this dubious statement in the [PDF] CRS Report for Congress ; Presidential Elections in the United States: A Primer published in April 17, 2000.
This 2000 report cites another report about the "legal NBC definition" that comes from this 1996 report:
"Congressional Research Service, U.S. Insular Areas and Their Political Development, by Andorra Bruno and Garrine P. Laney, CRS Report 96-578GOV (Washington: Jun. 17, 1996), pp. 9, 21, 33]."
There are no laws that legally defines citizens from Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands are natural born citizens, but are opinions from a few lib lawyers that was likely written at the request of liberal Dem Congress critters so they can cite it. These guys appear to be yes men; they tell the Cong members what they like to hear. This is the same Gooberment organ that wrote:
"Qualifications for the Office of President of the United States and Legal Challenges to the Eligibility of a Candidate"
That was written in 2009 by Jack Maskell of the CRS to covered Obama's backside, and the document was for Cong Critters to have handy to tell irate citizens who complain that Obama is not NBC.
And thanks to Mr. BarackPhilly's
(starting at 2:24 min) CSPAN video link to a March 3, 2007 Cong Serrano's House Committee Appropriations hearing. To quote Jose Serrano:
Serrano - "Off the record you've told me, I'm probably not eligible to run for president. It's an on going thing with me...someday I may bring it before you...of someone born in Puerto Rico...."
There is some good natured banter between (Serrano, Thomas and Kennedy) them, but there is an underlying seriousness of the question. He really wants to know, especially when he see that an Usurper has taken the presidential office and when he saw past CRS reports that say he is eligible for president.
Funny that the video picture cuts in and out but the audio is good though.
I just got this in an e-mail and it was discussed last night on Hanity’s Faux TV!
Gives some food for thoughts!!
Wonder IF the Tuesday’s “Winners” have the cojones to follow up on this!!!
SMASH THE UNION THUG-OCRACY
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
Published on DickMorris.com on November 8, 2010
One of the first orders of business to come up in the new Republican-controlled House of Representatives will be the demand for bailouts of states where expenditures have been especially profligate - California, New York, Michigan, Illinois, and Connecticut. Throughout 2009 and 2010, these states governments have stayed above water by repeated infusions of federal cash. These one-shot stimulus payments must be repeated each year. They are all non-recurring expenditures requiring separate annual appropriations.
The Republican House must say no and hold the line, stopping this raid on the federal Treasury. The cry in the caucus must ring loud: “No More Bailouts!”
But, as the Republicans demand fiscal discipline and refuse to make the citizens of the other, more responsible states subsidize the wayward finances of California and New York, we need to focus on the union power that has forced states, localities, and school boards to raise taxes, borrow money, and - ultimately - to depend on federal bailouts.
These unions have forced contracts on their states, localities, and school boards which provide for ever higher wages, benefits, and pensions. Even now, teachers are on strike in a suburb of Pittsburgh because they feel a 4.5% annual wage increase is inadequate!
The House must create a federal bankruptcy procedure for states that cannot make ends meet requiring, as happens in corporate bankruptcies, that the state governments abrogate all their union contracts. The new state bankruptcy procedure should offer all states - and through them, their localities, counties, and school boards — the ability to reorganize their finances free of the demands and constraints of their union agreements.
This measure will return our state and local governments to the sovereignty of the people and take them away from the thug-ocracy of public employee unions.
When states like California and New York come to Washington begging for relief, they will threaten us with the closure of their schools and the release of their prison inmates if we deny them subsidy. Liberals and President Obama will try to portray the battle as school children vs. niggardly Republican legislators.
But the real fight will be between school children and citizens on the one hand and unions on the other. The House must shape the issue so that it exposes the real cause of the state shortfalls: The excessive agreements public employee unions have won over the years.
The unions are about to fall prey to what Margaret Thatcher identified as the terminal drawback of socialism - that eventually one runs out of other people’s money!
Such an approach will also have a larger political impact.
Election Day 2010 demonstrated the enormous power of public employee unions and their integral relevance to the Democratic Party. In state after state, the vote totals of Democratic candidates, particularly those running for Senate, exceeded the predictions of all pollsters. This gap between pre-election anticipation and Election Day results had one main cause: the militancy, money, and manpower of public employee unions. It was the combined efforts of the SEIU (Service Employees International Union), the NEA (National Education Association), the AFT (American Federation of Teachers), and AFSME (American Federation of State and Municipal Employees) that preserved the Democratic control of the U.S. Senate.
Nate Silver, writing in The New York Times, compared the results of the major public opinion polls for the twenty-one days before the election with the actual results. He found that seven of the eight major polling firms all overestimated the Republican vote, some by as much as an average of four points. Silver’s point was to criticize the accuracy of the surveys and, perhaps, to impute a partisan bias to their findings. But it is far more likely that the polls were right and that the election day performance of the Democratic Party’s ground game overcame even substantial Republican leads in states like Nevada.
Here are Silver’s findings:
Firm Polls Average Error Bias
Rasmussen 105 5.8 R+3.9
CNN/Opinioin Res 17 4.9 R+2.1
Marist 14 4.9 R+4.0
Mason Dixon 20 4.6 D+0.4
Public Policy Polling 45 3.8 R+0.3
You Gov 35 3.5 R+1.1
Survey USA 30 3.5 R+0.8
Quinnipiac 21 3.3 R+0.7
Were all these polls wrong? No way. They were right. But they did not take account of the potency of Democratic unions.
Almost every poll, for example, had Sharron Angle defeating Harry Reid, usually by three or four points. Her six point defeat on Election Day can only be attributed to the union-based Democratic effort.
The fiscal crises facing state and local governments and school boards makes these unions and their political clout vulnerable, potentially at the mercy of a Republican controlled House of Representatives. We may, at long last, have a way to liberate our nation from the domination of those who should be our public servants but instead are frequently our union masters.
I wish I was on the computer that allows me to see video. Dang.
The combination of things posted leads me to believe that Thomas knows a person has to be born in the US to be eligible to be POTUS. They’ve never yet received a case that they could decide regarding a Puerto Rican.
When Thomas says they’re “evading” the issue he isn’t talking about evading giving Serrano a private, off-the-record assessment about the Puerto Rico issue, because from Serrano said in 2007, Thomas has already done that.
He can’t be talking about evading the Puerto Rico issue specifically because it’s never been part of a case. The only way they could legally “evade” the issue is if there was a case that had arisen and they were carefully side-stepping it.
In 2008 Serrano joked that SCOTUS had fewer cases because they wouldn’t take up his presidential question, but said that if they had to decide McCain’s case they could throw his situation in with it. He’s very aware that they could evade McCain’s case - which they ended up doing.
I think you’re right, that it does bug Serrano that Thomas has said he (Serrano) is probably ineligible but when the need for the definition of NBC to be clarified came up - both with McCain and with Obama - SCOTUS refused to hear the case, even though they would have had the time to do so. They didn’t reject hearing the cases because they had too many other serious issues to decide, nor did they reject them because they were not technically “cases” (e.g. didn’t meet the standing requirement). They were - as Thomas openly admitted - simply “evading” the issue of presidential eligibility.
It was not a joking mood when Serrano and Thomas had this exchange. The awkwardness seemed palpable to me when I watched it. The issues of race and experience had been central to the discussion up to that point, and then Thomas awkwardly brought up, of his own volition, the issue of birth place.
I’m glad to have a better grasp of the background so I can know the currents going on underneath, but the awkwardness of that exchange still sticks out in my mind - especially in contrast with the times when the issue really WAS a subject of good-natured banter.
Serrano seems like an interesting character. That 2010 hearing just seems so different than the other ones. The Obama presidency has really taken a toll on a lot of things, I think.