Wow. So the 14th Amendment was about erasing the distinction between "natural born citizen" and "citizen" in the Constitution, and granting citizenship to the offsping of criminal aliens? I thought it was about extending citizenship to freed negro slaves.
Now I am not a lawyer so I don't know how to read plain words and discover in them things they do not say. It does seem to me though that in every legal contest, fifty percent of the lawyers are wrong. I would submit that they are often knowingly so but argue for either financial or political reasons. They sometimes prevail too, so we end up with things like Wickard and this ridiculous assertion that anchor babies or the son a Marxist foreigner might be "natural born".
FWIW, I think old deck hand has a point regarding the NBC angle...it can be won in court by Obama if he just gets a favorable judge or puts political pressure on the Supremes. (regardless of who is actually right on the issue)
The only way to get Obama, and I believe Congress would not impeach him, is to prove this latest BC a fraud. Even then, I think they let him serve out his term and hopefully he loses in 2012. I think that’s the best we could hope for.
First, you're either intentionally or unintentionally tying this NBC debate to the debate about the citizenship status of the children born to illegal aliens. I'm not. They are two wholly separate issues, and I'm only discussing children born to parents who are in the country legally.
Having said that, tt seems that you can't quite grasp the concept of judicial review and that review's relevance on the written law.
Whatever purpose there was for initially passing the 14A is quite irrelevant to how that amendment was subsequently interpreted. For instance, Wong Kim Ark was NOT a slave, and he wasn't even black. That, however, did not keep the Court from extending the legal relevance of the 14A to his specific situation - a child born to foreign-national parents on American soil is an American citizen at birth. Since the Court is silent with respect to the parent's requisite legal immigration status, that particular issue is (for now) unsettled law.
What does this all mean in the context of "natural-born citizen"? Well, the decision(Ark) doesn't address it specifically in its central legal holding, but it is discussed in several places in obiter dicta. Most telling is a passage from Justice Fuller, when writing in dissent of the majority holding, he laments quite clearly what he believes to be a fundamental flaw and perhaps unintended consequence of that decision is and says about it...
Considering the circumstances surrounding the framing of the Constitution, I submit that it is unreasonable to conclude that "natural-born citizen" applied to everybody born within the geographical tract known as the United States, irrespective of circumstances, and that the children of foreigners, happening to be born to them while passing through the country, whether of royal parentage or not, or whether of the Mongolian, Malay or other race, were eligible to the Presidency, while children of our citizens, born abroad, were not.
He thinks that it's "unreasonable to conclude" it, but he recognizes that this is EXACTLY the conclusion that the majority opinion is reaching.
"It does seem to me though that in every legal contest, fifty percent of the lawyers are wrong"
I am unfamiliar with any polling that has been done of the legal community on this issue, but I think that the the position that Wong Kim Ark would have been constitutionally qualified to be president is BY FAR the prevailing legal opinion - something much greater than "50%".