Posted on 12/29/2011 4:22:24 PM PST by Smokeyblue
Newt Gingrich routinely fields questions during his campaign stops and during the event showcasing Art Laffer's endorsement, a woman who had been sititing on stage behind him asked Gingrich for clarification about President Obama's country of birth.
SNIP
"All I can report is the state of Hawaii has certified that he was born there," Gingrich continued.
Gesturing to his wife beside him, he said, "We both were with a taxi driver one day who showed us the hospital. There is every reason to believe he is a citizen of the United States. The fact that he's already a terrible president, we don't have to go beyond that and try to find something beyond that."
(Excerpt) Read more at politics.blogs.foxnews.com ...
Fair point. And like you, I am learning bits and pieces too.
True enough, but I've only been here since about 2009. The election got me hunting for like-minded conservatives. Before then, I was not even aware FR existed. So in relative terms, he's been here long enough for me to get a sense of who he is. Hence the comment...
Then let's see where it was used before and see if it was treated the same way.
Sorry, but spicing things up with strong adjectives doesn't really alter the marginal substance of the question. Let me try to give you where I'm coming from on this, because this is important to me, and I really wouldn't have picked a fight with you unless it was important.
I am a graduate of Liberty University School of Law, one of only a handful of programs that actually tries to address at a root level the systemic problems of modern legal culture. One of these problems actually does stem from what we believe is a real connection between a fixation on modern authority and the selection of a fluid model for constitutional interpretation.
Before we get to that, one of the intrinsic problems in finding modern authorities for the NBC question is the whole nature of precedent law. Where there is a lack of directly applicable precedents, combined with a collective disinterest in the subject matter, there is no motive to become an expert on the subject. In terms of post-revolutionary precedents, Chester Arthur comes closest to being directly on point, but his case was never adjudicated. Modern, “living,” Constitutional scholars of merit are simply not inclined to spend their credibility on analyses that have no prospect of enhancing their careers, and even more so when the whole exercise would be so speculative in nature. You see this mentality at work right away in Law Review. The more successful students tend to stay with safe, mainstream topics that will help them get jobs after graduation.
Which gets us to the other, deeper problem, which is modern legal culture. If you’ve been through the law school wringer with your eyes open, you know that Nietzsche’s will to power dominates the mental landscape of the modern legal academy. Not openly, of course, disguised as it is in various “critical studies” curriculums, and woven into the social fabric of even the most basic classes. Nevertheless, students are systematically guided via authority and peer pressure to be dismissive of ancient authority, particularly when it conflicts with modern cultural values. To those so conditioned, the law becomes a mere artificial construct, a tool to give or take away power, to do good or make money or whatever, but certainly not a binding guide. Dead people, and dead white males in particular, should not have tyrannical control over the present. The present belongs to us, and we can make of it whatever we can get away with.
Hence the notion of a living Constitution. And that it should be associated with a preference for modern authority is no surprise. Modern legal authority is near-monolithically tainted with the same set of liberal premises, so naturally it will be a self-reinforcing system. Modern legal “authorities” tend to be career-oriented liberal conformists. Many of them, that I have personally read, seem to lack even the capacity to reflect on their own set of unquestioned liberal premises. It is simply the air they breathe, the air they were trained to breathe in law school.
Nevertheless, if you are willing to look outside the self-contained liberal universe of the legal academy, you will find people of skill and merit who take the NBC question and its corollaries very seriously and who engage the relevant arguments very effectively. Unfortunately, these people are not in power, and have been marginalized by those who are.
For example, no doubt you have heard of Leo Donofrio and dismissed him as not an answer to your “valid” question. Am I right? Then you draw specious and unsupportable inferences about Roberts et al supporting the mainstream view because they chose not to throw their careers away on a highly speculative and controversial area of law. Yet you really don’t know their actual, stated position, do you.
So my question to you would be this: Can you identify any legal authority of merit whose willingness to opine on the subject would not be affected either by their career or by the dominant liberal legal culture, who has stated the mainstream view, which I take to be that the NBC clause does not disqualify Obama from being president? And your proposed authorities cannot be classified as anti-NBCers by double-dark guessing games and questionable inferences, but only by explicitly taking a position, preferably published.
And if, after all this demonstration of good will, you still wish to paint me and “All” NBCers with your overbroad brush, I will wear the designation of “ass” with pride, as it will cement my association with some of the finest people I have ever known during this last half century of my life, including both the stalwarts of constitutional integrity I knew back in the day, as well as my many like-minded brother and sister FReepers. No one is perfect, but these are good people, with some exceptions. Not the other way around.
Peace,
SR
This is a point I am constantly reiterating. It is such a well known fallacy that it has a Latin name. "Argumentum Ad Verecundiam."
The Supreme court does not determine what is the truth. They only determine what doctrine will be enforced. In a functional system, that doctrine corresponds with what *IS* the law of the land. The road to the truth does not begin at the Supreme Court, it begins at primary sources. i.e. Those who CREATED the law.
Very insightful and very well stated.
FINANCIAL SERVICES AND GENERAL GOVERNMENT APPROPRIATIONS FOR 2009
March 12, 2008
Chairman Serrano's Opening Statement
. ..Also, I would like to tell you that as of this morning, President McCain has been challenged--I mean Senator McCain, has been challenged out West as to whether he is eligible to be President. I keep asking every lawyer, every judge that comes before me, please clarify whether I can be President, because he was born in the Panama Canal Zone and I was born in Puerto Rico. So I hope if he gets a favorable ruling, which he should, it includes me too. There is more than one way to make me happy.
Thursday, March 13, 2008.
Chairman Serrano's Opening Statement
...And for those of you who were trying to figure out what we were discussing for a few minutes, we did not make any major decisions on anything. Although I must say, on a personal level, that for about 10 years, I have been trying to get out of you an unofficial comment on whether or not someone born in Puerto Rico can serve as President. And from what I understand from a California case, you may have to decide on Senator McCain. So if you do, I will try to get myself included in the same thing.
Justice Kennedy's Testimony
...Mr. Chairman, oh, incidentally, I can give you a ruling right now. You are eligible to come to the Supreme Court.
Mr. Serrano. I am eligible to serve on the Supreme Court? Is that what you just said?
Justice Kennedy. No problem with that. So if your Presidential ambitions subside, you can always come----
Mr. Serrano. But President is kind of cool.
C-Span video - About 1:15 into it...
April 23, 2009 - Supreme Court Budget 2010
Justice Thomas "evading" the question of Obama's eligibility is, and has always been, a complete WND fabrication.
I thought you said this was a running gag for 10 years??? This only goes back a few years and is within the same time frame that McCain and Obama have been running for president (we know it has been an issue for both of them and Serrano even acknowledges as much for McCain in your example). This doesn’t explain Clarence Thomas’ comment. If he had said he was avoiding the question, that might make sense, but Thomas said the court was “evading the issue.” Do you understand the difference?? Serrano has a question, but Obama’s eligiblity was and is an issue because it’s actually been challenged in court.
This is an example of why I seldom try to reason with birthers anymore. They refuse to acknowledge reality.
I just don't get it. Why would he do this? Has any other president ever met with the Supreme Court justices in this manner so soon after an election?"Perhaps the invitation would clear that up:
Dear Mr. President-elect:The birthers' various smears are just crank nonsense, the tantrums of sore losers.Through the years, our respective predecessors have occasionally arranged a pre-inaugural meeting between the President-elect and Members of the Supreme Court, so that colleagues in public service might become better acquainted.
The Associate Justices and I would be pleased to see that sporadic practice becomes a congenial tradition. [...]
The only time you need to "interpret" something that's written in black and white, plain English is for someone who speaks another language. (like communism)
Or to promote a big friggin 180 degree anti-common sense whopper as most leftist Harvard Liars are likely to do.
Yabut, what's the difference between that and a..."reporter"?
"Political Planet Reality" is a place where the public schools, the universities, the "news media" and the entertainment industry are all crawling with lying leftwing propagandists distorting and destroying the American way of life.
The American people are no longer so enamored with the golden boy that they will fall for his use of the race card or attacks. I believe a large percentage of them are already of the belief that he is either foreign born or otherwise ineligible...certainly another reason for that those who dislike him to justify their position.
There is no such thing as political reality, for the truth is; perception is reality.
If some people believe he is ineligible, they won't vote for him. The RATs, playing by the Rules for Radicals, will use derogatory smears to destroy their opponents even if there is no semblance of truth to them.
I doubt that the activities of those who question Obama's bona fides will cost any Obama opponent any votes.
I also doubt the sincerity of your concern...troll.
Yet you didn't actually present anything older than a few years ago. There's no way to know if it was a literal comment or an exaggeration, although it doesn't matter.
Kinda predates Obama doncha think?
It doesn't matter. Serrano wasn't the one who said it was being evaded. That's why I asked for comments to see how it was being responded to. Remember?? I said, "let's see where it was used before and see if it was treated the same way."
You've made an assumption about Clarence Thomas's comment that doesn't make sense outside of the context of Obama's eligibility being challenged (along with McCain's ... which Serrano specifically referenced). At best you've shown Justice Kennedy saying something about Serrano's presidential ambitions subsiding, but this doesn't negate Clarence Thomas comments from being influenced by the eligibility lawsuits.
This is an example of why I seldom try to reason with birthers anymore. They refuse to acknowledge reality.
Labeling people as "birthers" is not how one acknowledges reality. You would save yourself a lot of embarrassment by simply not posing on this issue, since you can't back up your claims. t negate Clarence Thomas comments from being influenced by the eligibility lawsuits.
In general, a degree in journalism instead of philosophy or a master of arts in English.
I've said this in at least one past post, but butter is almost singlehandedly responsible for my having come to the conclusion that there is a "there, there" with regard to the validity of unanswered questions related to 0bama's birth/life narrative and hence eligibility to hold office. I had never paid this issue any mind at all until Trump started going on about it last spring. I thought it was interesting that there was so much vitriol coming at him from the press over the supposedly non-issue, so I decided to start looking into the matter online, just by searching for articles and blogs on the subject and then reading material from the associated links, and butter's cogent, thorough blog was one of the first that I encountered, luckily.
Asking questions about 0bama's past has truly become the "new third rail of American politics" as a commenter put it at another site earlier today.
“There are a whole lot more than 8 of us.
Considering that you are the third newest Freeper on this thread you don’t have a clue how many of us there are.
161 posted on December 30, 2011 4:34:06 PM GMT+09:00 by Smokeyblue”
Yep. There was a quite lively discussion at another well-known blog today on the subject, vis a vis the supposed gaffe/quip by Matt Romney, Mitt Romney’s son relating to birth certificate and transcript transparency. The White House response feigned righteous indignation at the birth certificate dig, but was curiously silent on the scholarly records thing, and Matt twittered an “apology” and such was the basis for the article posting. When you have that much discussion on the subject going on in such a well-known forum, you know the conversation is quite widespread. And that’s as it should be. The rule of law matters.
butterdezillion wrote: “So though the SCOTUS justices haven’t said whether they agree with the de Vattel definition of NBC, they have given clues that something stinks on the whole Obama eligibility issue. And Sotomayor and Kagan’s refusal to recuse themselves from the decision on whether to hear the Hollister case strongly suggests that there are enough justices who would like to take the case that Sotomayor and Kagan would be needed to keep this issue under the rug. Apparently one of the conservative justices is the one wavering on this issue. I would really, really like to know why.”
That’s fantasy. Birther petitions and applications got the same result at SCOTUS before Sotomayor and Kagan joined, namely, dismissal and denial without comment. (Except on Schneller v. Cortes where the Court also found that Schneller’s repeated un-paid filings abused the Court’s process.)
The U.S. Supreme Court’s conferences are private, but there’s pretty good evidence that no justice has shown any interest in birther appeals. The respondents to birther petitions for certiorari waived right of response. In no case did the Court then call for a response. The Court invariably obtains briefs from the respondents before granting certiorari. The Court will deny petitions without hearing from the other side, but will not grant them without hearing from the other side. A single justice can call for a response.
Denials of cert are not precedents, and the Court’s conferences are undisclosed. Nevertheless, we have reasonable external evidence that not a single justice ever thought any birther petition even required a response from the other side.
The story in the lower courts is similar, but more definite. Birthers lost every case, every appeal. In some instances multiple judges made the decision and we know the vote; it’s been unanimous against the birthers every time. There has never been a dissent.
In the Vattel-birthers least-favorite ruling so far, on Ankeny v. Daniels, a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals of Indiana unanimously opined:
“Based on the language of Article II, Section 1, Clause 4 and the guidance provided by Wong Kim Ark, we conclude that persons born within the borders of the United States are ‘natural born Citizens’ for Article II, Section 1 purposes, regardless of the citizenship of their parents.”
The plaintiffs petitioned for transfer to the Indiana Supreme Court. Here’s that result (capitalization in original):
“4/01/10 ——THIS MATTER HAS COME BEFORE THE INDIANA SUPREME COURT ON A PETITION TO TRANSFER JURISDICTION FOLLOWING THE ISSUANCE OF A DECISION BY THE COURT OF APPEALS. THE PETITION WAS FILED PURSUANT TO APPELLATE RULE 57. THE COURT HAS REVIEWED THE DECISION OF THE COURT OF APPEALS. ANY RECORD ON APPEAL THAT WAS SUBMITTED HAS BEEN MADE AVAILABLE TO THE COURT FOR REVIEW, ALONG WITH ANY AND ALL BRIEFS THAT MAY HAVE BEEN FILED IN THE COURT OF APPEALS AND ALL THE MATERIALS FILED IN CONNECTION WITH THE REQUEST TO TRANSFER JURISDICTION. EACH PARTICIPATING MEMBER OF THE COURT HAS VOTED ON THE PETITION. EACH PARTICIPATING MEMBER HAS HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO VOICE THAT JUSTICE’S VIEWS ON THE CASE IN CONFERENCE WITH THE OTHER JUSTICES. BEING DULY ADVISED, THE COURT NOW DENIES THE APPELLANT’S PETITION TO TRANSFER OF JURISDICTION. RANDALL T. SHEPARD, CHIEF JUSTICE ALL JUSTICES CONCUR.”
Note the closing: All justices concur. In a some other instances we don’t that level of detail. In every case where we know the judgement of each member of the judiciary, the outcome is 100% unanimous against the birthers 100% of the time.
The issue here is not conservative judges or legal scholars versus liberal. Nor is it Republican versus Democrat, nor state versus federal. The results are 100% consistent across all those distinctions. The issue is fantasy versus reality.
The forums in which birthers can claim wins are the ones where they imagine themselves — pardon the cliche — judge, jury, and executioner. Actually that’s an understatement. They are are also prosecutor, expert witness (usually expert on their first try) and controller/propagandist/censor of the media, in the world in their heads. Newt Gingrich was talking about reality.
Oh, so you're saying they haven't yet paid hundreds of thousands of dollars, in order to endure years of total immersion in Alinsky-style Marxism and self-important atheism, by a bunch of greedy, lying, wild-eyed, incontinent, unemployable, tenured old-hippy, pervert "professors" who actually know nothing about America? (See: Ward Churchill)
Wow, what a lofty goal to have achieved.
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