Posted on 08/14/2013 5:45:12 AM PDT by Perdogg
You cite: "Every Person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States. This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons." as if it supports your birther views but it DOES NOT; it totally disproves your position. HINT: Replace "or" or a slash for the "," between foreigners and aliens and the sentence will make sense.
You're pushing it.
-----
HINT: Replace "or" or a slash for the "," between foreigners and aliens and the sentence will make sense.
HINT: Use the rules common English grammar that are still in use, you would realize it's a series comma, and read it as it was intended with the three separate categories shown
1) foreigners - [foreign visitors]
2)Aliens -[resident aliens]
3) who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States - [self explanatory]
Conjunction BUT
will include every other class of persons
The only classes left are freed slaves and persons who were already citizens
-------
I'd also like to note you skimmed totally past the of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty quote.
That's quite telling.
I think that reading is mistaken, because the structure of the three categories is not parallel. "Foreigners" and "aliens" are nouns, but the "who" part is a relative clause. For it to work as a series, it would have to say "persons who" or something like that.
Also, the part after the "but" is structurally parallel with the preceding "will not, of course, include." The sentence has "this" as the subject with a compound verb, "will not include" and "will include." So the "but" cannot be part of the series, leaving your claimed series without a conjunction.
That's two reasons the sentence cannot be read as series of three separate categories.
I'd also like to note you skimmed totally past the of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty quote.
The WKA decision addressed that:
very citizen or subject of another country, while domiciled here, is within the allegiance and the protection, and consequently subject to the jurisdiction, of the United States. His allegiance to the United States is direct and immediate, and, although but local and temporary, continuing only so long as he remains within our territory, is yet, in the words of Lord Coke in Calvin's Case, 7 Rep. 6a, "strong enough to make a natural subject, for if he hath issue here, that issue is a natural-born subject;" and his child, as said by Mr. Binney in his essay before quoted, "if born in the country, is as much a citizen as the natural-born child of a citizen, and by operation of the same principle."Did the WKA court also misconstrue Lord Coke?
Forgot to ping you to my preceding post.
I had a teacher who explained that natural born is a child born of citizens. Fifth grade, in New Jersey, 1970.
This was after Romney Sr. Caused the same debate about NBC.
I remember it like it was yesterday. She was a great teacher.
I've provided a source that says otherwise.
-----
Did the WKA court also misconstrue Lord Coke?
The WKA court misconstrued the 14th Amendment, which is applicable to American law. Lord Coke was based in English law and served in the House of Commons. The court rambled from one place to another repeating the phrase 'natural born' quoting it from various works, but when it came down to the determination, they did not say Wong Kim Ark was natural born
The evident intention, and the necessary effect, of the submission of this case to the decision of the court upon the facts agreed by the parties, were to present for determination the single question, stated at the beginning of this opinion, namely, whether a child born in the United States, of parents of Chinese descent, who, at the time of his birth, are subjects of the emperor of China, but have a permanent domicile and residence in the United States, and are there carrying on business, and are not employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under the emperor of China, becomes at the time of his birth a citizen of the United States. For the reasons above stated, this court is of opinion that the question must be answered in the affirmative.
The DETERMINATION was that he was a 'citizen of the United States'.
Now, a natural born Citizen IS, necessarily a citizen of the United States, but a citizen of the United States is NOT necessarily a natural born Citizen
-----
WKA was legislation from the bench. There was no jus soli citizenship in America prior TO it.
The Congress ran with it and gave ITSELF the ability to create citizens AT WILL. With one parent, two parents, Hell, NO parents, for that matter....no matter if they reside or are born in the country or not.
And people, in their ignorance, run around thinking the Founders intended it this way
Mr. Madison.--When we are considering the advantages that may result from an easy mode of naturalization, we ought also to consider the cautions necessary to guard against abuses. It is no doubt very desirable that we should hold out as many inducements as possible for the worthy part of mankind to come and settle amongst us, and throw their fortunes into a common lot with ours. But why is this desirable? Not merely to swell the catalogue of people. No, sir, it is to increase the wealth and strength of the community; and those who acquire the rights of citizenship, without adding to the strength or wealth of the community are not the people we are in want of. And what is proposed by the amendment is, that they shall take nothing more than an oath of fidelity, and declare their intention to reside in the United States.
Thank you.
I forgot the link
½ way down the page
Madison
House of Representatives, Rule of Naturalization
3--4 Feb. 1790 Annals 1:1109--25
You mean that link to the definition of a series comma? That doesn't demonstrate that this is a series, and it's not a series comma if it's not a series. It can't be a series (assuming we're following the rules of English grammar that are still in use, as you stipulate) if the things between the commas are of different grammatical types.
but when it came down to the determination, they did not say Wong Kim Ark was natural born
We've been through this before. They did not say it because that was not the question they were asked to decide. They were only asked to decide if he was a citizen. But their reasoning was clearly that he fit the criteria for natural born citizen, therefore he's a citizen. The fact that they didn't say "he's a natural born citizen" can't be taken to mean he isn't one.
I'll repeat the analogy I used before: it's as though I were asked if someone were a resident of Texas. And I went through all this evidence showing that they lived in Houston, and so concluded "they're a resident of Texas." It wouldn't make sense for you to make an issue of the fact that I didn't pronounce him a resident of Houston.
I understand that you think the WKA court was mistaken. But let's not extend that to mischaracterizing what they actually said.
It fits every rule of the definition.
Three items followed by a conjunction. The last comma is the series comma.
Surely I can't be the only one in Freeperdom that knows this.
Writing endless example sentences in school like: I went to the store for apples, bananas, bread, and eggs.
***
Reminiscences aside, you've provided no evidence to the contrary, so the assertion stands.
-----
They did not say it because that was not the question they were asked to decide. They were only asked to decide if he was a citizen.
That's right. He petitioned the court as a native born citizen. HAD he been native born, it would have been up to the STATE OF HIS BIRTH to claim him as such, but they did not.
But their reasoning was clearly that he fit the criteria for natural born citizen, therefore he's a citizen.
Just not a natural born one.
Do you seriously think they went through all that verbiage and then forgot to say his was natural born? Not hardly. They had no jurisdiction to hear the case in the first place and they KNEW it.
From the man who would later be the First Chief Justice of the Supreme Court:
I could not represent him as such—nor could I comply with his Request as to administring the Oath, haveg no power for that purpose[snip] He told me you had advised him to take such an Oath at Bordeaux and had appointed a person there to administer it, but that prudential Considerations had induced him to postpone it till his arrival here[snip] till I shd. recieve your Answer to a Letter I promised to write to you on the Subject of administring the Oath. He accordingly went to Toledo, but not having a Pasport the govr wd not permit his re-maing there[snip] I believe it to be the Inclination as well as the Interest of America to augment her Number of Citizens but still her Consent to admit a Foreigner must be as necessary as his consent to be admitted besides, it appears to me that an oath of Allegeance to the united States can with propriety be only administred to Servants of Congress— for tho a person may by Birth or admission become a Citizen of one of the States I cannot conceive how one can either be born or be made a Citizen of them all
John Jay To Dr Franklin, 31 May 1781
There was no 'collective' us citizenship, you were a citizen of one of the States and thus a citizen of the United States.
-----
I'll repeat the analogy I used before: it's as though I were asked if someone were a resident of Texas. And I went through all this evidence showing that they lived in Houston, and so concluded "they're a resident of Texas." It wouldn't make sense for you to make an issue of the fact that I didn't pronounce him a resident of Houston.
LOL! Nice gambit with the difference without distinction ploy. Too bad Courts deal in distinctions.
It might have worked if you hadn't so obviously stopped at the point that the difference would have been made.
To add to it...what if the law said Texans could run for governor, but Houstonians could not?
After all, they are Texans, too.
-----
But let's not extend that to mischaracterizing what they actually said.
I fully agree - lets not.
So stop saying THEY said he was a natural born citizen when the only thing a citizen of the United States in this context could mean is that he was naturalized at birth.
IOW, Barnett, Keyes, et al asked the court to do something which the court lacks any power to do. No one therefore, is asking the SCOTUS to, "remove a sitting President." What is being asked is, "was he eligible to run?"
In a way, this has nothing to do with Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. That's because even if the SCOTUS were to find that he was indeed ineligible to seek the office, Congress could logically find that there was no reason to remove him, because at the time he ran, no ruling on "natural born Citizen" as applied to Presidential candidates was in place.
Constitutional Eligibility is valid issue.
Therefore, I maintain the SCOTUS must hear the issue on its merits and opine.
It doesn't fit every rule. There is also the rule that the items have to be of the same grammatical type, known as parallelism. From the second link:
By convention, items in a series appear in parallel grammatical form: a noun is listed with other nouns, an -ing form with other -ing forms, and so on. Failure to express such items in similar grammatical form is called faulty parallelism.Your example above has parallel structure--apples, bananas, bread, and eggs are all nouns--and so is grammatically correct.
Bingham's quote does not have parallel structure. It goes noun, noun, relative clause, and second half of a compound verb. So either Bingham said a horribly ungrammatical sentence, or it's not really a series. A slight change in punctuation makes the actual structure clear and saves Bingham's rhetorical reputation:
This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners--aliens--who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons.Do you seriously think they went through all that verbiage and then forgot to say his was natural born? Not hardly. They had no jurisdiction to hear the case in the first place and they KNEW it.
I think they went through all that verbiage and then said only that he was a citizen because that was the question before them. That's what courts do--they answer the narrow question before them, even if their reasoning might support other answers to other questions. You seriously think they stopped short of calling him natural born because...what? To avoid the judgment of history? If they were operating as far outside the bounds as you claim, why stop there?
It might have worked if you hadn't so obviously stopped at the point that the difference would have been made.
To add to it...what if the law said Texans could run for governor, but Houstonians could not?
After all, they are Texans, too.
You have the analogy backwards. More apt would be if the law said only Houstonians (the more restrictive class, like "natural born citizen") could run for governor, not all Texans (the larger class, like "citizens"). So once again I'm asked to decide whether someone's a Texan (not whether they can run for governor, just whether they're a Texan); and I find their energy bill and satellite TV subscription and driver's license, and they all have a Houston address; and I say, "based on this evidence, I find this person is a Texan"; wouldn't it be silly for someone to then claim I had intentionally ruled them ineligible to run for governor? But that's what you want to do with the WKA decision.
Besides, remember, the WKA dissenter complained that the decision meant someone in Ark's position could be president. He thought that's what they'd decided, even if you don't.
The Supreme Court does not conduct “trials on the merits.” That’s the job of original jurisdiction courts.
At SCOTUS, the written brief submitted to the Justices is all-important. Each side only gets half an hour in oral argument before the Justices. In some major, controversial appeals, oral argument time is extended by the Court. There is no evidence presented and no witnesses are allowed. Oral argument is primarily responding to Justices’ questions about your brief. Justice Scalia always asks the most questions and Justice Thomas rarely asks any.
There have been eighteen appeals on Article II, Section 1 eligibility submitted to SCOTUS since 2008. None have made it to oral argument.
Oh, there are all kinds of rules, but all are decriptives concerning classes of persons, so there is no imbalance there.
I copy & pasted this:
will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons.
and there was 1 critical writing issue in the text.
Plagiarism.
I think I trust dictionaries and bona fide grammer checkers before About.com.
-----
You seriously think they stopped short of calling him natural born because...what? To avoid the judgment of history?
No, because the only authority any branch of the federal government has concerning such matters IS Naturalization...as per the Constitution.
If you believe there is any authority on deciding who is or is not natural-born, please show it to me.
-----
So once again I'm asked to decide whether someone's a Texan (not whether they can run for governor, just whether they're a Texan); and I find their energy bill and satellite TV subscription and driver's license, and they all have a Houston address; and I say, "based on this evidence, I find this person is a Texan"; wouldn't it be silly for someone to then claim I had intentionally ruled them ineligible to run for governor? But that's what you want to do with the WKA decision.
Blah, blah, blah.
Conjecture is fun, but lets at least try to keep it down to a minimum, okay?
-----
Besides, remember, the WKA dissenter complained that the decision meant someone in Ark's position could be president. He thought that's what they'd decided, even if you don't.
Why do you think he dissented?
So you're okay with someone running for the border, squirting out a child, leaving with that child, and the that child returning to be President?
That is, after all, what you're essentially saying since Wong Kim Ark was the country's first anchor baby.
I'm afraid that all you've done is demonstrate that you don't really understand the issue here. The sentence is not inherently ungrammatical, so I'm not surprised it passed that test. But it's not grammatical in the way you want it to be. It's as though I wrote, "I went into the store, bought apples, Red Delicious, which came from Washington, and left." That's a grammatical sentence (it passes Word's grammar checker), and it has a bunch of things separated by commas with a conjunction, but it's not a list of four things. If you can't see that, I don't know what to say.
Really, it's like you wrote "John and Sue like there new house," and when I pointed out that "there" was the wrong word, you ran it through a spell checker and said you were satisfied. A computer doesn't understand meaning.
Blah, blah, blah.
I've noticed that's a common response when people have run out of arguments, so it doesn't surprise me to encounter it here.
So you're okay with someone running for the border, squirting out a child, leaving with that child, and the that child returning to be President?
Whether I'm okay with it or not, that's what the law allows. That's what I'm arguing. There are lots of laws I'm not okay with, but I'm not foolish enough to claim that that means they can't really be the law.
Yes, and several appeals should have. That is what I meant when I said "heard on the merits." I repeat: The SCOTUS has used up a good many excuses in avoiding the issue; a great disservice to the republic..
And you act as if the co author of the 14th Amendment was an idiot by putting 2 words where one would do. If they had MEANT foreigners and aliens to be the same, they would have used one OR the other...not both.
-----
I've noticed that's a common response when people have run out of arguments, so it doesn't surprise me to encounter it here.
Since we've conversed before, it really shouldn't. You know I do my best to deal in facts. Something your posts have been woefully short on.
------
Whether I'm okay with it or not, that's what the law allows.
No, that's what the legal system allows.
-----
There are lots of laws I'm not okay with, but I'm not foolish enough to claim that that means they can't really be the law.
Marginalizing what I've said as 'foolish statements' is rather foolish in and of itself. I've shown 2 statements from the Library of Congress contemporary to the time-frame of the 14th Amendment to show where the Wong court deliberately ignored the plain wording of the entries..... They both say foreigners and aliens are NOT natural born citizens. You harp on one, yet ignore the other.
I've shown where the man who became the first US Supreme Court Justice stated there were no other type of US citizens EXCEPT citizens of the States.
So the question becomes "If you know the *law* is a lie, why keep protecting it"?
I've noticed that's a common response when people have run out of arguments, so it doesn't surprise me to encounter it here.
No, that the response for someone who pulls wild scenarios out of their backside in attempt to make the facts fit where they want.
Which, > Since we've conversed before, it really shouldn't surprise you. You know I do my best to deal in facts. Something your posts have been woefully short on.
Well, first of all, I have little patience for "if they'd meant THIS, they would have said THIS" arguments. We only know what they did say--it's mindreading to get into what they would have said if if if. Second, using two words where one would do is not uncommon in legal speak or in rhetoric--see "faith and credit," "custom or habit," "wear and tear." Third, if you read the repunctuated version I posted before, it's clear that there's nothing weird about using the two words. Remember, this was a transcribed speech, not a written article.
You know I do my best to deal in facts. Something your posts have been woefully short on.
My original point was that the sentence did not work grammatically if read as a series, as you wish to. In support of that I've linked to a site that explains that series need parallel structure, and another site that explains what parallel structure is. In reply, you've claimed that they are parallel because they're about the same thing, which demonstrates that you don't understand what parallel structure means, and that the sentence passed a grammar checker, which I never said it wouldn't. Presenting facts to someone who doesn't grasp their significance doesn't really do a lot of good.
Law is a precise language it means what it says and says what it means. I'd also like to point out that your claim has been they said he was a natural born citizen, but the Determination of Record is that he was a citizen of the United States.
If they truly believed he WERE one, they wouldn't have hedged.
-----
Remember, this was a transcribed speech, not a written article.
It the official Congressional Record in the Library of Congress. They BOTH are.
If they were synonyms, it would have been written like they wrote all the rest - subject OR Citizen, native OR natural born, foreigner OR alien.
----
In reply, you've claimed that they are parallel because they're about the same thing, which demonstrates that you don't understand what parallel structure means
No, I said they are the same thing...classes of persons.
Now, would you care to present any facts like historical records, Founders letters or such to support your position?
Or are you just going to keep telling me how wrong I am and slyly insulting my intelligence?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.