Replies

Yes Mr. Lobster, it is encouraging to see such ardent Obot activity, the usual name calling and obfuscation, when the issue of eligibility arises. That means they are worried! While tenure on the FR University discussion groups isn't conclusive, when you see a flock of relative newcomers arguing over whether a poll of supreme court justices’ opinions has concluded that eligibility is a non issue, or deciding issues based upon what this or that pundit wouldn't address is designed to dilute any valid argument, bore some, confuse others, and perpetuate the clever nostrum that because the term natural born citizen was not defined in the Constitution, the definition is indeterminate. We see the droppings of Obama supporters, many of who are paid by our tax dollars.

As Mark Levin noted in Liberty and Tyranny, p37, citing and quoting James Madison, and Chief Justice Waite noted clearly in his precedential decision confirming the common-law sited by Chief Justice John Marshall, “At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted ...” you would have to look very carefully to find a single definition in The Constitution. The Constitution doesn't contain definitions - by design. The meanings of words are are always changing. The mechanism to try to insure that the ideas upon which our republic would be based remained invariant was, as Justice Waite explained, to assume the natural language and common-law familiar to the framers as the language of The Constitution. As Justice Marshall made perfectly clear, his preferred source, as a founder, framer, and perhaps our greatest Chief Justice, was Vattel. Minor didn't mention Vattel when specifying the same definition, because he was turning common law into positive law, since without the definition of our most common form of citizenship in Article II Section 1, there was, before 1868, no constitutional definition of who were citizens. Vattel was by no means the only source for the meaning of natural born citizen, or "natives". Elizabeth Minor was born on our soil of citizen parents, and thus was defined as a member of the class of natural born citizens.

Many cases, including Wong Kim Ark, assert the fact that there are just two classes of citizen, natural, and naturalized. Until Wong Kim Ark, in which the very first citation, depending upon whether the reader got an abridged version of WKA from one of the Soros sponsored censors of our historical Supreme Court Cases, such as those at the top of the queue provided by Google at Justia.com, which had Minor v. Happersett citations expurgated in 2008, the very first citation By Justice Gray is to Minor v. Happersett. Wong Kim was described by Justice Gray, with unanimous agreement by his court, as “a native-born citizen of the US,” and never a “natural born citizen of the US” because the child of an alien cannot be naturally born a citizen. Justice Marshall gave us the common-law and Justice Waite the positive law.

Barack Obama told us, on his web site fightthesmears.com, that he was born a subject of the British Commonwealth, and was a “Native-born citizen of the US.” Obama is of the same class of citizen as Wong Kim Ark, and all anchor babies. But with trillions of dollars at stake, with the full support of the media, with millions of government bureaucrats whose families depend upon the largess of an ever more powerful central government, and with a Republican party which didn't resist the trap of running John McCain, whom many competent Democrat attorneys had shown to be ineligible, albeit due to an unfortunate legal oversight (no sovereignty law signed until 1938 over the Canal Zone, if McCain was even born in The Zone), no one whose job is at stake will talk truth.

To presume that an Supreme Court Justice would discuss eligibility when he/she might have to hear the case is the usual sophistry, rather like “because it was not defined in the Constitution.”

What we have all come to see is the extent to which so many are willing to let the media and politicians interpret The Constitution. Levin doesn't dare talk directly, and this writer has never heard a cogent explanation from him. However one must assume he has read his book, Liberty and Tyranny, though he wouldn't be the first not to have done so. He went through a bankruptcy not long ago. He has two children in college. Look what a crooked justice department, a justice department under GW Bush, was allowed to do to Scooter Libby. Again, trillions of dollars are at stake. The power players will not tread lightly on anyone they perceive as a real threat.

Read Minor v. Happersett yourself. While you can still read the important case, Ex Parte Lockwood with a whole paragraph excised by Soros’ CIO Carl Malamud (Chief Information Officer at Center for American Progress) at the Cornell Law Center web site, his partner, and founder of both Findlaw and Justia.com, Tim Stanley, has now returned the twenty six or so cases in which citations to Minor v. Happersett were removed, to presumed conformance with the archived text. Progressives, or Marxists, or political opportunists, hid from the common people the legal trail to constitutional interpretation. We are not a republic of laws; as in English jurisprudence, we have a caste of legal mandarins whose first allegiance is to protect their king. Key cases from our Supreme Court Archives are being abridged, with the knowledge of our legal institutions, to protect political interests.

Read the three Congressional Research Service papers the first two originally kept from the public, written to provide talking points for legislators. For sport, see how much self contradiction those papers contain. Leo Donofrio has written about it, but anyone interested in the truth can see, without much difficulty, the lies and suggestions to legislators of how to dismiss eligibility questions. You will note that nowhere in the CRS reports will you find mention of our greatest Chief Justice, John Marshall, or of Chief Justice Waite, who wrote Minor v. Happersett. We have a propaganda ministry in Congress whose purpose is to prepare legislators to evade tough questions - the truth.

Here are just a few of the tactics, since the shibboleth that “because it was never defined in the Constitution” means natural born citizenship was not perfectly understood. Only one term was revised in the Constitution. Other than that, every term used in the Constitution came from our common-law, and in the instance of natural born citizens, Vattel, our nations first law book, specified such at our first law school, William and Mary in 1779 by Thomas Jefferson, who designed the course, among whose students were John Marshall. Vattel was used extensively as Washington's and Hamilton's most trusted source for laws of use to nations - Law of Nations. Many who prefer monarchy or oligarchy would prefer that we forget our history. But Vattel was always a key part of our history, with Ben Franklin distributing copies, and the Adams cousins, Samuel and John, quoting from Law of Nations again and again.

Don't be confused by the claim that because Minor v. Happersett was not about presidential eligibility, that the definition is “dictum.” The reason for Article II Section 1 was to define for the new nation the one citizen too important to leave to the states, the most common class of citizen, the natural born citizen. Washington had faced the issue during the war when he ordered his staff to make only citizens of the former colonies field grade officers. There were opportunists - soldiers of fortune - whose allegiances were back in their home countries, though many were enormously important to the war effort. As the author of the 14th Amendment John Bingham reiterated when he explained to the house that “...simply declaratory of what is written in the Constitution, that every human being born within the jurisdiction of the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty is, in the language of your Constitution itself, a natural born citizen…,” it is about allegiance. Elizabeth Minor was one of that class of citizen, the majority, and without Article II Section 1, the Supreme Court had no jurisdiction to decide a case about a citizen. Justice Waite constructed his case upon the truth that because Elizabeth Minor was a natural born citizen, she was a citizen. It seems a long way around, but necessary to logical coherence. Justice Waite's decision depended upon Mrs. Minor's privileges before the passage of the 14th Amendment. Obots attempt to confuse the issue. Just read Minor v. Happersett.

So it isn't so hard to see why Newt, or anyone else avoids the eligibility issue. Until the court grants standing, and that may never happen with Sotomayor and Kagan protecting Obama, the media will do what they have always done, use Rules for Radical’s 5th law, about the power of ridicule, for political advantage. Eventually, if there are enough who believe the Constitution should be treated as our framers intended, judges can and should be impeached. There is an old notion called “misprision of felony” wherein an officer of the court has an obligation to report violations to someone with jurisdiction. The concensus is that not reporting a crime is no longer applied to citizens. Whether or not it applies to officers of the court, it should. And Congress has the authority to impeach judges - and judges (one of Rick Perry's better points, along with limiting congressional sessions).

All the discussions about birth certificates are certainly interesting, but the citizenry was “played.” It was clear from the remarkable thoroughness of the concealment, including the murder of the employee of Obama’s quiet former CIA Deputy Director, John Brennan, who “cauterized” Obama’s State Department files in the Spring of 2008, and the prosecution of Testing Service Employees who might have something to reveal about Obama’s school status and records, that we will probably never know Obama’s past.

The latest conjecture about having been raised by Sukarno as Malcolm X's illegitimate son are titillating, but irrelevant. Our law makes the son of an alien ineligible to the presidency. It is that simple. The cases are there, and there can only be one definition; it is found in Minor v. Happersett. As Bill Clinton told us, “it depends upon what is is.” Chief Justice Waite told us what a natural born citizen is, whether or not he or she runs for president. Only a reinterpretation can change that definition, and twenty five attempt have been made, nine in the years between 2000 and 2007. Three of those who filed amendments now can't recall the definition, and one those was Republican Orrin Hatch, who wanted to make Schwarzenegger eligible. John Conyers was probably filing in anticipation of Obama’s candidacy. When amendments failed two Senate actions, both by Obama election committee members, were attempted, SB2678 in Feb 2008 and SR511 in April 2008. The bill filed by Obama and McCaslill to make McCain eligible failed and the Resolution, by McCaskill and Leahy passed, but is not actionable, a resolution - we think it's a good idea! We must not forget what happens when the Constitution is usurped. It is still unclear whether we can return it to primacy as the foundation for our legal system.