Tublecane, I was trying to responded to your question, while responding to calenel's question: " ... definition of ‘natural born’ from that found in the dictionary: ‘having an attribute or quality from birth’. Do you have one?
"When I say, that an alien is one who is born out of the king’s dominions, or allegiance, this also must be understood with some restrictions. The common law indeed stood absolutely so; with only a very few exceptions: so that a particular act of parliament became necessary after the restoration, for the naturalization of children of his majesty’s English subjects, born in foreign countries during the late troubles. And this maxim of the law proceeded upon a general principle, that every man owes natural allegiance where he is born, and cannot owe two such allegiances, or serve two masters, at once.
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The trend I see in MY analysis of these influential works is that loyalty, dominion, being under the "King's protection," and being a citizen/subject are connected, passed on by heirship, nearly always paternally, and AT BIRTH.
That's why the DUAL CITIZENSHIP issue is a critical component of the Obama case. You either have "Natural Born Citizenship" at birth, OR YOU DO NOT. If you DON'T, you're a CITIZEN. There's some more research I need to do looking at the Hague Convention, British and later the Kenyan Constitution, and parse some of the lesser known U.S. Naturalization cases.
And can you point out where the difference between natural born citizen and citizen at birth is to be found? What part of the Constitution or what federal law defines that?
There's some more research I need to do looking at the Hague Convention, British and later the Kenyan Constitution, and parse some of the lesser known U.S. Naturalization cases.
Yes, let's look at U.S. law and U.S. court decisions for a change. Eighteenth century Dutch authors are not going to make your case.
Excellent reply.
Thanks for the ping.
Well, this thread has certainly been super-sized, dunno if I can eat all those fries though... :P
Since you keep summoning me I figure I might as well make an appearance. Can’t say I care much for the snarky tone regarding ‘facts’ or ‘trolls’...as for newbies, well I remember Connie and Navagator, Sneaky-Pete, the blow-up over Deep-In-Hurtgen-Forest, Freeping the Mall and the forum-molester named ‘EVAYYY’ or somesuch who struck that historic day. For entertainment we had Michael Rivero smoking the local maui-wowie and giving us all sorts of offbeat stuff. I came over on the original Drudge link well before anyone had ever heard of Monica Lewinski.
Dun post much now though, not since I spent weeks struggling to convince a few Bush-Backers Ted Sampley’s ‘theories’ were lunacy and John McCain wasn’t a ‘Manchurian Candidate’ posed to deliver us all to Hanoi’s rule or whatever it was if he won the nomination in ‘2000. I’d call it a draw, I convinced a few but others wore me out and I wasn’t gonna type myself to death. I moved on. By the way, where’s Sampley on this one? I can guess..after all I recognize the logic and methods employed... ;)
As to the subject at hand, I did a lot of reading the past few days, here’s some things I discovered:
The ‘fact’ that Barak’s mother ever went to Kenya before her son was born is nothing but the speculation of one Phillip Berg, a Clintonista prominent in 911 ‘truth’ movement. His ‘evidence’ amounts to a translation tape where Barack’s sperm-doner’s step-mother *might* have claimed she was there at Obama II’s birth. Or she might have meant his father, or been mis-translated, or even have been an old woman bragging to her friends. Apparently no one has gotten ahold of her since in order to clarify. Some ‘evidence.’ Of course that flies in the face of peripheral statements like Barack II’s step-mother having to be informed of the birth, (as noted in Maraniss’ book) which would be kinda odd if it happened in Kenya, now wouldn’t it?
That quite literally is practically the sum of ‘facts’ that would require anyone to be interested in his birth certificate in the first place. Let me state it baldly: we have to believe that for some reason Barrack’s mother, a destitute student teen-aged mother-to-be whilst late in pregnancy traveled halfway around the world to some third-world toilet in order to...what? Be introduced to her faithless husband’s first and still current wife? I’m sure everyone involved was looking forward to *that* encounter. In 1961 no less, when the 747 was still on a drafting board somewhere? I wonder what was serving Kenya at that time, maybe Gooney Birds? What if she traveled to Antarctica on the way back and had her child there, we have about as much positive evidence for that scenario, would that make BO a penguin? Is that why he has such funny ears? :)
As for the ‘fake’ Certification of Life Birth that’s been posted, I can’t help but note in askance that again Clintonista 911 kook Berg is the progenitor of the ‘proof’ that it is fake, what with his three ‘experts’ and all, thankfully for him one of which was not Tech Dude who turned out to be an embarrassment to the cause. On that note, I viewed a YouTube with some guy with his face blacked out and voice disguised and...c’mon people, that’s gotta be the point where the bizarre becomes the absurd!
If you don’t see the absolute silliness in that, put down the hash pipe and step away from the computer. :)
As for the other main argument, again we must believe something almost surrealistically absurd. We must accept an argument that John McCain, due to his father being stationed overseas, is not eligible for the Presidency because he would then not qualify as a natural born citizen. If I didn’t have such a great sense of humor and gentle tolerance for fools this veteran and descendant of a distinguished military family (going back to King William’s War in the New World) might suggest precisely where you can stick that puck too.
Step back a moment and ask yourself if you honestly believe the Founders ever intended or believed that anyone could be disqualified for the presidency solely on the basis of their family being stationed overseas defending our country and interests when they were born? Even if that were the case, which it certainly is not as anyone with a passing familiarity with basically *anything* they wrote could tell you, wouldn’t it be the sort of thing that *should* be changed? Can anyone actually claim to be a conservative of any stripe and make that case?
His case is not kookery like Berg’s but pedantry. His position on McCain ought to be a big flashing neon warning of doom to true believers. Nor for that matter does he have a case, though it is theoretically possible that unlike Berg’s it won’t be thrown out of court amidst gales of laughter if only to make it perfectly clear for the short-bus pendants of the future what being ‘natural born’ entails.
In a historical aside I found the mention of Vattel’s patron, King Augustus, rather ironic and relevant—at least relative to Barrack Sr. If that’s the same Elector of Saxony I’m thinking of, the one who became the King of Poland, he sure had something in common with the satyr of this story. Off the top of my head King Augustus of Poland had something like 345 children (one with his own granddaughter!) in his womanizing career. Considering how he spread his seed at anything that didn’t move out of the way at breakneck speed, it’s not entirely impossible they were related! :P
BP2 you’ve actually got the right idea posting Vattel and Blackstone, but I think perhaps you’ve missed the actual application in this matter. Our law and that of the founders was quite obviously originally based on the English Common Law being as they were English subjects and all. However you need to turn that around and look at what it means from the other side: namely that the law of their time would naturally assume the same of an *American* parent—that the child of one would inherently be a natural born American.
Thus while it’s true that at birth Obama was eligible for British citizenship due to being born to one holding British citizenship, the converse is also true that he is a natural born American for exactly the same reason! In our way of thinking, the British eligibility doesn’t matter a whit; as that status has no justification to deny an innocent child the freedom that is his American birthright simply because some moldy old queen might want to claim him as a subject. We fought them once when they tried to claim our own, we sure wouldn’t allow it again!
Since in reality all Barack Senior amounted to in Barack Jr’s life is a sperm-donating deadbeat dad on a serial spree, how could that theoretical status amount to any conflict of interest or nationality? He didn’t live in Kenya or the United Kingdom, he never knew his dad so he couldn’t have been conditioned with any parliamentary monarchist beliefs in that fashion, as I noted his father was little more than a sperm-doner.
What if in fact he had been artificially inseminated? Would he lose his natural birthright of freedom because his ‘father’ was a baster that might have been made in Taiwan? Or, more germane to his time, what if Barrack’s mother had been raped? Would her child and all those children throughout American history be ineligible for natural citizenship simply because they were born in such unhappy circumstances as their father’s citizenship could not be proven?
I’m not telling you the law, after all the Supreme Court will do that, either positively in the unlikely event they hear the case, or by default in refusing it, merely providing the basis for rejecting the semantic sophistry employed here and elsewhere.
I strongly suspect that my reasons are not unlike those of others who reject this ‘controversy’ out of hand and even ridicule adherents. It surprises me not at all that stalwarts like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Medved, and Michelle Malkin are either suspiciously silent or outright abusive on this issue. The most notable absence is a lady who happens to know a lot about this subject what with being a constitutional scholar and all and she won’t even acknowledge it.
If Ann Coulter thinks the recount in Minnesota is more worthy of an article the day this was available to be picked up by the Supreme Court, you ought to ponder the reason why...
“If you start looking at these influences, and others, like as the Federalist Papers, and other supporting documents such as the John Jay letter, you begin to notice a trend.”
That’s just the thing. I couldn’t see that particular trend in the Jay letter, which made me question why you posted it. What is it that Jay says to make you think he used the “by right of the father” interpretation of citizenship?
“That’s why I wanted to show Vattel as an influential legal expert whose theories laid the foundation of modern international law. Vattel’s concepts would have been part of the ‘collective influence’ the Framer’s would have had, including the influence on ‘natural born citizen.’ Just like today, if you study Psychology, your going to be influenced by Jung.”
You see, when you get into “influences,” in this case a book from 40 years before the Constitution, you get into a pretty gray area. Who was it that cited Scottish common law for his judicial interpretation? Arlen Specter?
Anyway, most people will demand that you point to actual U.S. law to substantiate the “right of the father” interpretation. No such principle is articulated in the Constitution (not in regards to citizenship nor anywhere else, to my knowledge). I haven’t read much federal law before of previous centuries, so I can’t speak to their definition of citizenship. I do know that case law since the 14th amendment has favored the “right of soil” interpretation of citizenship.
First off, do we have proof of "wedded"? We never had proof of divorce or annulment, did we? (Annulment since Obama Sr. was concurrently married to a couple of other ladies) Though I don't know if Obama's parents' marital status is even meaningful to the discussion.
Next, we need some formal definition of natural born that would truly let us know whether being a citizen of any other country would make one ineligible. We need to remember that the United States cannot control what other governments do. They can confer citizenships upon anyone they wish.
A far-fetched but entirely possible scenario is that another country, say Iran, could confer citizenship on one of our candidates before an election, thus making him ineligible to become President.
Our definition of natural born may well have to exclude foreign citizenships that are conferred without request.
Actually, you didn't show a difference. You only illustrated a [deprecated - this is a fun word] definition of patriarchal hereditary citizenship. Which wasn't my question. Because to have that form of 'natural born' citizenship, you would still have to 'have it from birth'.