Posted on 07/30/2009 8:35:25 PM PDT by Edward Watson
The entire birther argument, that Obama was actually born in Kenya instead of the US, making him ineligible for holding the office of the President of the US, is a spurious argument. It plays into Obama and the liberals hands - they want this to continue since it makes regular conservatives and opponents into fringe wackos.
Not one of us would've looked harder at his legitimacy than Hilary Clinton and the entire Clinton smear machine during the Democratic primaries. That magic bullet would've given Hilary the presidency - and yet nada, bupkis.
There are many valid reasons to oppose Obama and the liberals, but his birthplace isn't one of them.
Not just citizens, they are, in the eyes of the vast majority (you included, I believe), "natural born citizens."
-- That's not what those who wrote these provisions could have envisioned. --
Now you're starting to sound like me, LOL. But, it (the 14th) says what it says, and what it says has been applied by SCOTUS in Wong Kim Ark. And IIRC, you conclude that what Wong Kim Ark stands for is that every person born on US soil (save diplomats' kids and some native Indians' kids) is a natural born citizen, by operation of the 14th amendment.
“Clearly, the framers did not want divided loyalties otherwise there was no need to exempt themselves.”
What do you mean, exempt themselves from the natural born clause? But there was a very good practical reason for doing so: if they had not, there would have been no president for the first 35 years of U.S. history.
Won't happen, period. The US is on the cusp of a demographics problem, ala Japan. The Congress feels an urgent need to radically relax immigration. Either that, or the social programs will collapse for want of young producers.
But they can come and go from the country. IOW, if the goalpost is "citizen," amenable to entry to his country, then naturalized citizens are every much a citizen as a natural born citizen. Immigration makes no distinction between them. For purposes of the case in hand, all who bear the title "citizen" are equal; regardless of how they came to that title.
“all who bear the title ‘citizen’ are equal; regardless of how they came to that title.”
Yes, they are, in every respect, except presidential eligibility. That is what makes for two classes of citizenship. Only the odds that any individual could ever become president is so miniscule that it hardly even matters.
I am glad you have seen the long form BC. Pray tell us what it said.
If the clause is so clearly meaningless as you demonstrate, (fence jumper children qualify) why bother exempting themselves.
“If the clause is so clearly meaningless as you demonstrate, (fence jumper children qualify) why bother exempting themselves.”
I seriously cannot understand why people persist in bringing up the grandfather clause as some sort of indication that one must be born of two citizen parents to be president. Their reasons for exempting themselves has nothing to do with how one is born a citizen, nor with split loyalties, nor with anything else of continued relevance today.
They grandfathered themselves in because no one, not a soul, had been born an American citizen. Not because no one had had an two American parents. No one had had any American parents. Nor had anyone been born on American soi. Because there was no America before there was.
We already know, everyone knows, that the Founders wanted presidents to have been born U.S. citizens. All the grandfather clause tells us is that an exception was made because no one had been born a citizen. That’s it.
Let me try that again: “Not because no one had had two American parents. No one had had any American parents. Nor had anyone been born on American soil.”
For clarification’s sake, I’ve maintained that it’s perfectly possible the Framers intended only the children of two citizens to serve as president. I’ve gone on to argue that they did so by saying only born citizens could serve, and that the 14th amendment defined born citizen status in such a way that could not have been anticipated.
But none of this has anything to do with the relevance of the grandfather clause. That clause in itself does not tell us whether natural born citizens were the children of two citizen parents or children born on U.S. soil. Because neither citizen parents nor American soil were extant at the time of the Founders’ births.
The entire election process made me glad (yet again) that I don’t have TV. My memory is such that it can be very hard to scrub sights and sounds out of it.
“If the clause is so clearly meaningless as you demonstrate, (fence jumper children qualify)”
Fence jumpers qualifying would not make the clause meaningless. It’s effect would no longer be what you and perhaps the framers would like it to be, but it would still have a meaning. And that meaning is “born citizen”.
They both believe the same and they work for the same people. Most of Obama’s administration are the Clinton people.
The founders,IMHO,wanted a potential potus to at least be born here with parents who were borne here as well to prevent exactly what is happening now.
We have a potus with "Other" allegiances. Zero is so vain and obviously so conflicted that he goes around the world apologizing for what is really his adoptive country and makes us look weak and him look foreign as well as ashamed of America.
This is only one of the many reasons the founders wanted only true American born citizens to be able to run so there would never be an allegiance question.
It is clear that the founders did not want divided loyalties and to me that is the bottom line.
The dissent in US v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898), has a slighty different take on that.
Some of the founders had been born on what was and became American soil. The "grandfather" clause was literally to admit foreign-born people to obtain the presidency.
In the convention it was, says Mr. Bancroft, 'objected that no number of years could properly prepare a foreigner for that place; but as men of other lands had spilled their blood in the cause of the United States, and had assisted at every stage of the formation of their institutions, on the 7th of September it was unanimously settled that foreign-born residents of fourteen years who should be citizens at the time of the formation of the constitution are eligible to the office of president.' 2 Bancroft, Hist. U. S. Const. 192.
I think they wanted the president to be born of citizens, even if those citizens were naturalized. That way, there would be no divided allegiance within the family. In other words, I don't think they intended to be as restrictive as to parentage, as you posit.
Before the Wong Kin Ark case, that's exactly the way birth citizenship operated. Those born in the US, but of parents who weren't, for example, amenable to be drafted, did not become citizens themselves. While their parents had to follow US law while here, they had to answer to a call from their mother country, and as such were "under the jurisdiction" of the mother country, but in a different way.
The Obama/Chicago mob or Chicago Crime syndicate has stolen everything they possibly could from Hillary, donors, lists,strategies,her people, like I love to say everything but her orange pantsuit.
Hillary just didn't hand all that stuff over to Zero since she is in love with the thought of Socialism! Sorry, I ain't buyin' that one! It was bought and the price was high. I am guessing probably tens of millions plus Sec. of State.
Meanwhile, Hillary has positioned herself as Sec. of State(only by holding copies of his real BC ,IMHO) so that when the BC debacle does blow up and it probably will, she is poised to take over. After of course Joltin' Joe gets a year of two at the helm.
I have never forgotten what a brutal crime family the Clintonistas were and always will be.
If Obama is proven ineligible, his entire administration is ineligible. POTUS goes to McCain.
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