Posted on 05/08/2011 8:40:39 AM PDT by rhubarbb
Sorry if this is in the wrong area, this is my first time posting. I'm a long-time lurker who loves FR and I use what I learn all the time against my friends, some of whom (Unfortunately) are liberal. It's the price of going to a big college. I'm really good about speaking the truth to them and showing how they're wrong, and most of my best arguments come from FR. But there's been one question that one of my friends keeps repeating and while I know he's wrong I can't prove it and it's bugging me.
I know the best researchers are here and I figured someone here has figured out how to set the Obama-bots straight on the issue. I've searched through all the other threads on eligibility and didn't find anything.
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My friend says that Spio Agnew (Nixon's VP) proves that you don't need two citizen parents to be a Natural Born Citizen.
Now, I know that the Vice President must meet the same elgibility requirements as the President, and therefore must also be a Natural Born Citizen (12th Amendment). My friend claims that Spiro Agnew's father was a Greek Citizen when he was born. I've tried to find any information to confirm and deny this, but can't find anything. I know he's wrong (he's a Dem... haha) but need help with the proof.
I can't see Nixon choosing someone, and the Republicans electing, a vice president that was obviously unqualified for office.
So my question:
Is this true? Have one of the researcher's looked into Agnew's citizenship? Did Nixon choose a VP that was not a Natural Born Citizen? And if so, did he hide it like Chester A. Arthur did? I figure that one of the reasons I can't find any information on it might be because he did the "hide your past" thing like Arthur.
Any help would be great and help to take a liberal down!!
Whose current legal thought?
Any time this has been brought into an appropriate legal forum, the plaintiffs have been told they have no legal standing. No serious judicial examination of this issue has taken place to date. This is an issue that has to be addressed by the SCOTUS.
Last week, as I watched the arguments before the 9th Circuit, one of the Federal Appellate justices asked Gary Kreep how his client has been hurt by Obama occupying the Oval office. To my eye, the Justice was attempting to limit the scope of the damage that Obama has perpetrated on this country to one man. Thus no damage, therefore no standing before the court. Next!
Look at the amount of damage this man has done to this country over the past two years and what is to come? Two more years of damage? This has to be addressed for that reason alone.
Thanks for the graphic.
Another visual illustration I can think of (vastly oversimplified) is that of the double gate: e.g. a double barrier at a grade-level railroad crossing, a double watertight door on a submarine for underwater entry and exit, a double gate at a dog park. All of the above show how a double gate keeps the right things in and the right things out. “Natural born citizen” is how our Constitution keeps foreigners and those with foreign loyalties out of the Presidency (and Vice Presidency) and allows only loyal natural-born Americans inside.
The Constitution nowhere defines the meaning of these words, either by way of inclusion or of exclusion, except insofar as this is done by the affirmative declaration that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” In this as in other respects, it must be interpreted in the light of the common law, the principles and history of which were familiarly known to the framers of the Constitution. Minor v. Happersett, 21 Wall. 162; Ex parte Wilson, 114 U.S. 417, 422; Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616, 624, 625; Smith v. Alabama, 124 U.S. 465. The language of the Constitution, as has been well said, could not be understood without reference to the common law. Kent Com. 336; Bradley, J., in Moore v. United States, 91 U.S. 270, 274. [p655]
In Minor v. Happersett, Chief Justice Waite, when construing, in behalf of the court, the very provision of the Fourteenth Amendment now in question, said: “The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that.” And he proceeded to resort to the common law as an aid in the construction of this provision. 21 Wall. 167.
In Smith v. Alabama, Mr. Justice Matthews, delivering the judgment of the court, said:
There is no common law of the United States, in the sense of a national customary law, distinct from the common law of England as adopted by the several States each for itself, applied as its local law, and subject to such alteration as may be provided by its own statutes. . . . There is, however, one clear exception to the statement that there is no national common law. The interpretation of the Constitution of the United States is necessarily influenced by the fact that its provisions are framed in the language of the English common law, and are to be read in the light of its history.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0169_0649_ZO.html
“Allegiance is nothing more than the tie or duty of obedience of a subject to the sovereign under whose protection he is, and allegiance by birth is that which arises from being born within the dominions and under the protection of a particular sovereign. Two things usually concur to create citizenship: first, birth locally within the dominions of the sovereign, and secondly, birth within the protection and obedience, or, in other words, within the allegiance of the sovereign….That the father and mother of the demandant were British born subjects is admitted. If he was born before 4 July, 1776, it is as clear that he was born a British subject. If he was born after 4 July, 1776, and before 15 September, 1776 [the date the British occupied New York], he was born an American citizen, whether his parents were at the time of his birth British subjects or American citizens. Nothing is better settled at the common law than the doctrine that the children even of aliens born in a country while the parents are resident there under the protection of the government and owing a temporary allegiance thereto are subjects by birth.”
Justice Story, concurring opinion,Inglis v. Sailors’ Snug Harbor, 3 Pet. 99, 155,164. (1830)
“It is an established maxim, received by all political writers, that every person owes a natural allegiance to the government of that country in which he is born. Allegiance is defined to be a tie, that binds the subject to the state, and in consequence of his obedience, he is entitled to protection… The children of aliens, born in this state, are considered as natural born subjects, and have the same rights with the rest of the citizens.”
Zephaniah Swift, A system of the laws of the state of Connecticut (1795)
“that a man born within the jurisdiction of the common law is a citizen of the country wherein he is born. By this circumstance of his birth, he is subjected to the duty of allegiance which is claimed and enforced by the sovereign of his native land, and becomes reciprocally entitled to the protection of that sovereign, and to the other rights and advantages which are included in the term “citizenship.”
Garder v. Ward, 2 Mass. 244 (1805)
“The doctrine of the common law is that every man born within its jurisdiction is a subject of the sovereign of the country where he is born, and allegiance is not personal to the sovereign in the extent that has been contended for; it is due to him in his political capacity of sovereign of the territory where the person owing the allegiance as born.”
Kilham v. Ward 2 Mass. 236, 26 (1806)
“And if, at common law, all human beings born within the ligeance of the King, and under the King’s obedience, were natural-born subjects, and not aliens, I do not perceive why this doctrine does not apply to these United States, in all cases in which there is no express constitutional or statute declaration to the contrary. . . . Subject and citizen are, in a degree, convertible terms as applied to natives, and though the term citizen seems to be appropriate to republican freemen, yet we are, equally with the inhabitants of all other countries, subjects, for we are equally bound by allegiance and subjection to the government and law of the land.”
James Kent, COMMENTARIES ON AMERICAN LAW, pg. 258 (1826)
“As the President is required to be a native citizen of the United States…. Natives are all persons born within the jurisdiction and allegiance of the United States.”
James Kent, COMMENTARIES ON AMERICAN LAW (1826)
“That provision in the constitution which requires that the president shall be a native-born citizen (unless he were a citizen of the United States when the constitution was adopted) is a happy means of security against foreign influence,…A very respectable political writer makes the following pertinent remarks upon this subject. “Prior to the adoption of the constitution, the people inhabiting the different states might be divided into two classes: natural born citizens, or those born within the state, and aliens, or such as were born out of it.”
St. George Tucker, BLACKSTONE’S COMMENTARIES (1803)
It has not been a waste of energy for the Left. It has successfully taken focus off their initiatives. It has allowed them to promote a false caricature of conservatives as nutcases. It makes independents see conservatives as those who don't care about the will of the electorate.
As a colleague put it: "Birthers are people who think every American can be trusted with a gun but not with a ballot."
James Buchanan's father was not a US citizen. He immigrated from County Donegal but never became a citizen.
Chester A. Arthur's father was Irish (immigrated from County Antrim) and was not a US citizen when his son was born.
Were did you get that?
Which name?
To further block Alexander Hamilton?
I was planning to reply with a quote from James Madison, but I see that it has already been cited, at #60.
Perhaps you prefer French law, but I support the Father of the American Constitution in this case.
“Middle East Muslim Radicalization
Birth Certificate
Illegal Immigration
Soaring Debt/Deficit - Economy”
Theodore S. Agnew
Listed as “Alien” on the 1920 federal census.
This is a distinction without a difference. If the Supreme Court agreed, they wouldn't have sworn him in. If any lawyer, judge or legislator agreed, they'd be pushing this through the courts. The GOP, Hillary Clinton, anyone had means and motive to disqualify Obama, were your interpretation correct.
I get that you have a dissenting opinion. What I don't get is that you think it's legally binding.
If you’re willing to concede your conservative principles, and ignore the fact that Obama and the left are trampling on something as basic as the constitutional requirements for presidential eligibility, then you’ve already surrendered to the pressure of their political correctness.
It's not conceding any principles to acknowledge reality. I don't believe most California gun laws are Constitutional, but the state of California does. It's one thing to push to get those laws more in alignment with the views of the Founders. It's another to imagine they don't exist.
Whether or not you like it, the Supreme Court and Congress decided that Obama is qualified to hold office, based off of current understanding of the law. No political opponents of Obama have chosen to contest this, based off of current understanding of the law.
Birthers need to come to grips with this reality if you have any desire to defeat Obama. Otherwise, you're just wasting resources in fighting a battle he won years ago.
Obama did not release his Long Form Birth Certificate.
It a document with data points on it.
We want to see a birth certificate that he found among his mother’s belongings, when she died in 1995.
The one he used to obtain his first passport.
The one that is in the folder of his entrance into the school system that is now under seal.
There is no reason for him to have put up the first document.
Additionaly, everyone has been telling us there is no other document that Hawaii produces. That’s the only one.
Then lo and behold there is another document.
Which of course is one of three documents you can request under Hawaii statute 318.
You can absolutely get a copy of your actual birth certificate.
In fact, if you are a native Hawaiian and want to participate in the Hawaiian Homelands project you are required to produce a copy of your birth certificate.
They state so, specifically, and warn you will not be accepted into the Hawaiian Homelands project without.
Further, Hawaii statute 318 says one may request a copy of their birth certificate for genealogical or genetic reasons. You will wait 6-8 weeks for it to be delivered.
So a copy is available and the ones Barak has produced are documents you order at the counter and walk away with the same day.
Well, I should say the second one you normally have to wait 10 days to receive.
We know he can produce one even if he sup
He was married to An American citizen, although he still had to complete the process he was well on the way to citizenship. Unlike Zero’s claimed Daddy, he never had any intention of becoming a citizen.
And all census data is only as good as the combined effort of all the census enumerators. I think the census taker in 1920 just made a few mistakes in recording the Agnew family information.
And, yes, the census is definitely not the source document for establishing any sort of citizenship.
See the up-thread "greater good" comments. I believe it's for this pragmatic reason no one wants to touch it. Not to mention probable GOP marching orders.
I get your point. It certainly raises an eyebrow. Soccer moms hear their kids talking about all the proof on youtube of his COLB being fake. This stuff does seep in and do damage. It contributes to his Obamacare back-room bunco persona.
Ping. The BS that Spiro Angew is not a natural born citizen again.
As a colleague put it: “Birthers are people who think every American can be trusted with a gun but not with a ballot.”
Your colleague must be a bedwetting lib. Exactly what the framers thought when they drafted the Constitution. The Constitution enmerates our God given rights to bear arms. There is no Universal right to vote. The Framers left that up to the States. The states could set restrictions based on passing a basic test on civics. That would take care of 90 percent of the DEMONCRAT voting block.
On James Buchanan:
“His mother Elizabeth Speer was born in Pennsylvania. His father James Buchanan emigrated to the United States from Ireland in 1783. It was an interesting year for the United States as the Treaty of 1783 was signed between the US and Great Britain. Colonists chose to be United States citizens and by virtue of the Treaty, Great Britain recognized those former subjects as United States citizens.
Before the Constitution, United States citizenship was conferred on citizens by the States. When the Constitution was ratified, each citizen of a state became a citizen of the United States. No formal naturalization was needed.
On June 21, 1788 the Constitution was ratified. The Buchanans were citizens of Pennsylvania and therefore James Sr. was a citizen of the United States. When James Jr. was born in Pennsylvania he was therefore a natural born citizen, born on United States soil to two US citizen parents.”
Yeah, it certianly looks like a set-up thread for the goofy after-Birther.
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