“Didn’t the US Senate once pass a resolution declaring Juan McLame to be “natural born”? “
Yes because Juan was likely also ineligible. To attempt to put it to rest the Senate passed a resolution declaring him an NBC although the resolution as no authority of law whatsoever.
I understood the McClame issue to be that he was born of two American parents, but on a US military base in Panama, and the Congress was declaring that being born on the base was like being born in the US. Am I wrong on this?
I don’t think the issues were at all the same with that Bat, Juano.
Absolutely Georgia Girl 2. The “resolution”, Senate Res. 511, April 2008 was hurriedly entered by Obama’s campaign co-chair Clare McCaskill after Obama and McCaskill’s “actionable” bill, a law, Senate Bill 2678, February 2008, the ‘‘Children of Military Families Natural Born Citizen Act’’, failed to pass.
Congress, Senator Orin Hatch, did the right thing to try to make Schwarzenegger eligible. He sponsored an amendment in 2002. But it failed. Conyers tried twice in that period, 2003, 2004, Menendez once, probably to make Obama eligible. Nickles, Rohrabacher, Frank, all of whom know the Constitutional requirement, probably had other candidates in mind, but tried to amend Article II Section 1. All failed, so McCain and Obama covered for each other, whether intentionally or not. Only one Congressman dared raise the issue, Nathan Deal, and he was silenced using the IRS to dig out of Deal's tax returns some justification for congressional ethics charges, which were dropped when he resigned from Congress (and become governor of Georgia).
It is nonsense to claim that the term natural born citizen is vague or undefined. No terms are defined in the Constitution. That claim is a red herring, often used by both parties. There is clear precedence, and dozens of clear enunciations of the common-law, which was, according to Chief Justice Morrison Waite, and 14th Amendment author, Judge and Congressman John Bingham, "never doubted."
Cruz, Obama, Chester Arthur, Marco Rubio, Jindal, Haley, all fail the requirement that a president be born to parents who were citizens when they were born. McCain was ineligible for a legal technicality, The Canal Zone was only made “sovereign U.S. Territory by Congress in 1937, the year after he was born.
Original sources are being remarkably dismissed in the face of Obama’s clear and unequivocal statement that “I am a native-born citizen of the U.S.” Those words, as the Constitutional Law Lecturer at Univ. of Chicago knows very well, define a “naturalized” citizen, using the language of the 14th Amendment. Obama told us he is naturalized and pundits on both sides insist that Article II Section 1 no longer means what it says. What does it say. Only the president must be a natural born citizen, but most U.S. citizens born a decade after the Constitution was ratified were natural born citizens. We didn't ratify the naturalization amendment, the 14th, until 1867, mostly due to the objections of states in which slaves were denied the rights of citizens. That is why our framers punted and required, in Article 1 Section 8, that Congress create "An Uniform Rule for Naturalization." Remember, no one so naturalized is eligible to the presidency, and Obama old us all he was "Born a subject of the British Commonwealth", "By the British Nationality Law of 1948." Obama is a natural born subject of Britain, and eligible to run for British Parliament, but not our presidency.
Chief Justice Morrison Waite in Minor v. Happersett, 1875:
The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners.
Chief Justice John Marshall in The Venus, 1814:
The citizens are the members of the civil society; bound to this society by certain duties, and subject to its authority, they equally participate in its advantages. The natives or indigenes are those born in the country of parents who are citizens. Society not being able to subsist and to perpetuate itself but by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights.
14th Amendment author, Congressman John Bingham in 1866, explaining citizenship to the House. His amendment says nothing about natural born citizenship, and modifies it in no way, nor does any law current in U.S. Code. The term was used in one law, a Nationality Act in the First Congress which was rescinded entirely in 1795, and never appeared again. Congress cannot interpret the Constitution. Only the media and other self-appointed supporters of Obama’s policies, with the help of Soros’ Center for American Progress, which edited Supreme Court Cases to hide the significance of Minor v. Happersett take that privilege.
I find no fault with the introductory clause [S 61 Bill], which is 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….
Michael Chertoff’s quotation is in the Senate Judiciary record of Senate Resolution 511, called “...recognizing that John Sidney McCain, III, is a natural born citizen.” SR 511 is a personal statement of opinion, full of nonsensical historical allegations that were clearly intended as talking points for politicians and the media.
“My assumption and my understanding is that if you are born of American parents, you are naturally a natural-born American citizen,” Chertoff replied. “That is mine, too,” said Leahy.”
Both McCain's parents were citizens, his dad from Iowa and his mom from Oklahoma. They were living in Panama on assignment from the US military. To declare the children of career military ineligible for US citizenship is madness.
INA: ACT 320 - Children born outside the United States and residing permanently in the United States; conditions under which citizenship automatically acquired 1/
Sec. 320. [8 U.S.C. 1431] (a) A child born outside of the United States automatically becomes a citizen of the United States when all of the following conditions have been fulfilled:
(1) At least one parent of the child is a citizen of the United States, whether by birth or naturalization.
(2) The child is under the age of eighteen years.
(3) The child is residing in the United States in the legal and physical custody of the citizen parent pursuant to a lawful admission for permanent residence.
(b) Subsection (a) shall apply to a child adopted by a United States citizen parent if the child satisfies the requirements applicable to adopted children under section 101(b)(1) .