Posted on 05/08/2011 8:40:39 AM PDT by rhubarbb
Sorry if this is in the wrong area, this is my first time posting. I'm a long-time lurker who loves FR and I use what I learn all the time against my friends, some of whom (Unfortunately) are liberal. It's the price of going to a big college. I'm really good about speaking the truth to them and showing how they're wrong, and most of my best arguments come from FR. But there's been one question that one of my friends keeps repeating and while I know he's wrong I can't prove it and it's bugging me.
I know the best researchers are here and I figured someone here has figured out how to set the Obama-bots straight on the issue. I've searched through all the other threads on eligibility and didn't find anything.
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My friend says that Spio Agnew (Nixon's VP) proves that you don't need two citizen parents to be a Natural Born Citizen.
Now, I know that the Vice President must meet the same elgibility requirements as the President, and therefore must also be a Natural Born Citizen (12th Amendment). My friend claims that Spiro Agnew's father was a Greek Citizen when he was born. I've tried to find any information to confirm and deny this, but can't find anything. I know he's wrong (he's a Dem... haha) but need help with the proof.
I can't see Nixon choosing someone, and the Republicans electing, a vice president that was obviously unqualified for office.
So my question:
Is this true? Have one of the researcher's looked into Agnew's citizenship? Did Nixon choose a VP that was not a Natural Born Citizen? And if so, did he hide it like Chester A. Arthur did? I figure that one of the reasons I can't find any information on it might be because he did the "hide your past" thing like Arthur.
Any help would be great and help to take a liberal down!!
A picture? GREAT legal analysis. Do you use it in court filings?
If you disagree that natural born citizen is equivalent to the term natural born subject, then what is your evidence? Please cite the law and not your opinions or pictures.
Alexander Hamilton’s suggested presidential eligibility clause:
"No person shall be eligible to the office of President of the United States unless he be now a Citizen of one of the States, or hereafter be born a Citizen of the United States."
Many of the founders and framers had a fear of foreign influence on the person who would in the future be President of the United States since this particular office was singularly and uniquely powerful under the proposed new Constitution. The President was also to be the Commander in Chief of the military. This fear of foreign influence on a future President and Commander in Chief was particularly strongly felt by John Jay, who later became the first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. He felt so strongly about the issue of potential foreign influence that he took it upon himself to draft a letter to General George Washington, the presiding officer of the Constitutional Convention, recommending/hinting that the framers should strengthen the Citizenship requirements. John Jay was an avid reader and proponent of natural law and particularly Vattel's codification of natural law and the Law of Nations. In his letter to Washington he said that the Citizenship requirement for the office of the commander of our armies should contain a "strong check" against foreign influence and he recommended to Washington that the command of the military be open only to a "natural born Citizen". Thus Jay did not agree that simply being a "born Citizen" was sufficient enough protection from foreign influence in the singular most powerful office in the new form of government. He wanted another adjective added to the eligibility clause, i.e., 'natural'. And that word natural goes to the Citizenship status of one's parents via natural law.
The below is the relevant proposed change language from Jay's letter which he proposed to strengthen the citizenship requirements in Article II and to require more than just being a "born Citizen" of the United States to serve as a future Commander in Chief and President.
John Jay wrote in a letter to George Washington dated 25 Jul 1787:
"Permit me to hint, whether it would be wise and seasonable to provide a strong check to the admission of Foreigners into the administration of our national Government; and to declare expressly that the Commander in Chief of the American army shall not be given to nor devolve on, any but a natural born Citizen. "
See a transcription of Jay's letter to Washington at this link. This letter from Jay was written on July 25, 1787. General Washington passed on the recommendation from Jay to the convention and it was adopted in the final draft and was accepted adding the adjective "natural" making it "natural born Citizen of the United States" for future Presidents and Commanders in Chief of the military, rather than Hamilton's proposed "born a Citizen". Thus Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution, the fundamental law of our nation reads:
Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 of U.S. Constitution as adopted 17 Sep 1787:
"No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States."
There you have the crux of the issue now before the nation and the answer. --CDR Charles Kirchner, Jr., retired.
Does your definition exclude the children of military families born when the parent was stationed overseas?
If by "TJ" you mean Thomas Jefferson, I doubt it. Jefferson was only able to participate from afar via correspondence, as he was serving as US Minister to France at the time of the writing of the Constitution. I believe you're thinking of the Declaration of Independence, which Jefferson wrote.
If by "TJ" you mean Thomas Jefferson, I doubt it. Jefferson was only able to participate from afar via correspondence, as he was serving as US Minister to France at the time of the writing of the Constitution. I believe you're thinking of the Declaration of Independence, which Jefferson wrote.
>> The Framers’ drew on Emmer De Vattel’s definition of Natural Born Citizen <<
Maybe they did. But under Section One, Article Eight of the Constitution, Congress can change the requirements as to who must be “naturalized” — versus who becomes a citizen at birth. So whatever Vattel’s definition of “natural born” might have been, it was long ago made obsolete both by statutory law and by the 14th Amendment.
“Why did the Founding Fathers change the language of the presidential eligibility from born a Citizen to natural born Citizen? “
Because they knew the law, and “natural born citizen” had an established meaning, and born a citizen did not. After all, some countries at the time used born a citizen to mean born anywhere of citizen parents. Others, like England, would have used it to mean born in country. So the Founders used a legal term with a known meaning based on English common law, known to every state since the states used the term in their own laws.
“General Washington passed on the recommendation from Jay to the convention and it was adopted in the final draft and was accepted adding the adjective “natural” making it “natural born Citizen of the United States” for future Presidents and Commanders in Chief of the military, rather than Hamilton’s proposed “born a Citizen”.”
The original draft had no birth requirement at all. When they added a birth requirement, they used a legal phrase with a known meaning in the law.
English common law uses the term Citizen? You are full of it.
The 12th Amendment says that the VPOTUS has the same eligibility requirements as the POTUS
Precisely!!
This was a set-up thread, to give some credulity to barry the bastard’s illicit status. Look at what hit the thread immediately upon it being posted. An instant reference to the obamanoid, Captain Kirk, thread which floats the big lie, so the thread started with two layers already stilted to defend the bassturd’s ineligibility. As the 2012 relection cycle heats up, expect more and more of these vermin to come slithering out of the woodwork.
he’s dead....
We’ve all had the same teacher. We must be (at least) roughly the same age. Schools stopped teaching these things about 30-35 years ago.
Yes, but they didn't have a time machine to zoom forward to use the 19th Century English edition like so many here claim.
Also, your claim that a minor can have his citizenship taken away from him also has no backing. In fact, it's contraindicated by legal precedent, to my knowledge.
If this were the current occupant of the Oval Office, people would be screaming, “Look at the discrepancy in the records! In the 1920 census, it says, ‘Alien’!”
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