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To: EnderWiggins; Red Steel; Velveeta; little jeremiah; butterdezillion
“Thank you, Dave, for helping prove my point that John Bingham did not write the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment.”

I take it you have a vision problem?

Jacob M. Howard merely changed the first sentence.

During Reconstruction Howard participated in debate over the first clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, arguing for including the phrase and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.

OK, pay attention:
This is section 1:
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The bold part is the part Mr. Howard added.
The rest is what John Bingham wrote.
You catching up with me?
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llcg&fileName=073/llcg073.db&recNum=11

A grammar one as well?

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 person.

The comma is used in many contexts and languages, principally for separating things. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word comma comes directly from the Greek êüììá which means something cut off or short

Take for example,
Those who have $5 dollars, $10 dollars, $15 dollars or $20 dollars, but will include every other bill or coin.

So to you the above is not 4 distinct people but someone with $50 dollars?

http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/commas.asp

Not to worry, we made a wager that you were going to say exactly
what you did.
At least your predictable.

578 posted on 02/10/2010 2:06:37 PM PST by DaveTesla (You can fool some of the people some of the time......)
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To: DaveTesla
"Jacob M. Howard merely changed the first sentence."

Better a vision problem than a comprehension problem. The first sentence is the Citizenship Clause. It did not exist prior to his addition of it.

Read your own reference, Dave. It is the play-by-play description of the moment that Senator Howard inserted that clause into the Amendment. It is the absolutely official and incontrovertible proof that Bingham did not write it.

"During Reconstruction Howard participated in debate over the first clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, arguing for including the phrase and subject to the jurisdiction thereof."

Oooohhh, yes, you have a serious comprehension problem. Go back and read your own reference. Read it carefully. Pay attention to specifically what the words are that Senator Howard asked to be inserted, and where he asked for them to be inserted.

Q: What was inserted?

A: The entire sentence, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."

Q: Where was it inserted?

A: After the words, "Section One."

Squirm as you might, Dave, the record there is clear. Senator Howard wrote and inserted the entire Citizenship Clause, not just the little part you think he did. Your own reference, which is the official record of the proceedings, proves it. It's right there in black an white.

Now... to your bastardization of English grammar:

Think for a second about the whole comment by Senator Howard. All "four distinct people" you assert he is talking about are being discussed at the moment of birth. It was this:

"The 14th amendment 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 person."

If (as you contend) he is talking about "four distinct people," then you must be also be saying that:

1. You must be claiming that "foreigners" and "aliens" are two different things. But they're not. They are perfect synonyms as any thesaurus will show you. So we already know that he using at least that one comma to separate two synonyms for the same kind of person, not two different kinds of people.

2. You must be claiming that "foreign ministers" can be born already being foreign ministers. Because the fourth "distinct person" found here is "foreign ministers," not "the families of foreign ministers."

Now as amusing as the image of a three day old foreign minister might be, I'm pretty sure that's not what the Senator had in mind.

So, we know here that the "or" is not separating two different kinds of people, it is operating two different kinds of families; i.e. those of ambassadors and those of foreign ministers including them together with the conjunction "or." There are not four anything here. There are three: aliens, foreigners and families of foreign diplomats.

So, knowing that foreigners and aliens (separated by a comma) mean the same thing, and knowing that the third thing (families of foreign diplomats) is also only seperated by a comma and not a conjunction there is only one grammatically correct way to understand his statement.

Foreigners=aliens=families of foreign diplomats.

And this is (by the way) exactly how every court since has explicitly understood "under the jurisdiction" to mean.

So, to be correct your example should be:

Those who have 1 dollar, 4 quarters, 100 cents or pennies, but will include every other number of cents.
580 posted on 02/10/2010 2:49:20 PM PST by EnderWiggins
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To: DaveTesla; EnderWiggins
From post # 526,

an excerpt from the The American Law Review article dated Sept/Oct 1884 make a salient point:

"The phrase in the above section "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" does not mean territorial jurisdiction ; that is the jurisdiction which a nation possesses over those who are its citizens or subjects as such. The phrase used in the constitution was intended to have a negative operation; that this is true, and that territorial jurisdiction was not meant, is evident from section 1992, which is a part of section 1, of what is known as the "Civil Rights Bill," and which was enacted by the same Congress which framed and proposed the Fourteenth Amendment to the constitution; that section is as follows: "All persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are declared to be citizens of the United States." "

So are we to conclude Wig that in the 14th Amendment has a different meaning where it states "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" when this same 39th Congress passed the "Civil Rights Bill" that states what is underlined above?

603 posted on 02/10/2010 7:57:38 PM PST by Red Steel
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