Posted on 09/27/2011 5:48:51 AM PDT by tutstar
A Guyana-born naturalized American citizen fits the Federal Elections Commission's requirements to run for president, the FEC announced in a ruling.
The case involves New York lawyer Abdul Hassan, who was born in the South American country in 1974. Hassan argues it is discriminatory to not allow him to run for office.
Responding to criticism of possible dual-loyalty issues, Hassan said in a radio interview that a person's place of birth should not determine his patriotism or presidential eligibility.
"I am an attorney," he said. "When I undertake the representation of a client, I have to act in the best interests of my client," Hassan stated on "Aaron Klein Investigative Radio" on New York's WABC Radio.
Read more: Washington reinterprets constitutional eligibility http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=348933#ixzz1Z9xy0pso
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
And under the "election law" he is "eligible" to "run". He is not eligible to hold the office once elected.
BTW, I do not believe that Federal Election bureaucrats are bound by any oath to uphold the constitution. 99% of what all Federal bureaucrats do is unconstitutional. That doesn't stop them.
I objected before my State's primary to my Secretary of State. That office claimed it had no responsibility. Others also object to their State officials. Nothing was done. "Not my job" they all said.
The Electoral College didn't examine the notorious and argued issue, the US Congress did not examine or address the notorious and argued issue. Many dozens of petitions of many sorts have been brought before courts, all discharged without any hearing of facts or legal argument on the point of eligibility under the "natural born citizen" clause of the Constitution. At least one soldier -- a officer and surgeon -- has gone to jail and been rudely discharged when he refused to obey orders unlawful because the Commander-in-Chief is unlawful. His arguments against the qualification of the CiC where refused any hearing. He was pilloried by the military version of process law, a process law which is empty of the force of good ideals or good morality, it being only "process".
No hearing. The claim is notorious, the clamor against Obama's eligibility is famous and long-standing, it is essentially unabated or undiminished by facts or formal resolution before any judicial or legislative body. No hearing!
You then ask, "Do you really want a regulatory agency determining who can, run?
Yes, I want someone to decide the case of Obama, the alleged usurper and fraud. I am sick of the "not my job" attitude that once wholly permeating German office holders in the early 1930's and now is seen here.
“Yep, the FEC most likely wouldn’t say he was ineligible but they would not have given him the funds, just as happened in this case.”
What are you talking about? The FEC pretty clearly said that Mr. Hassan is ineligible:
“Clear and self-avowed constitutional ineligibility for office is one of the few instances where the Commission’s exercise of its discretion to withhold funds is appropriate. Because Mr. Hassan has clearly stated that he is a naturalized citizen of the United States, and not a natural born citizen under the constitutional requirement in Article II, Section 1, Clause 5, the Commission concludes that Mr. Hassan is not eligible to receive matching funds.”
Why wouldn’t the FEC have given him funds? They gave funds to Joe Biden, who’s never produced any documentation proving he was born in Scranton. They gave funds to Mike Gravel, whose parents were French-Canadian immigrants. What would make Obama different from them?
That ethos is clearest, distilled, in a document I recommend you go immediately a re-read: the Declaration of Independence.
In that wondrously unique document the primal basis of laws are "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God". Not legislative process, no matter how orderly.
Pay close attention to this paragraph from that marvelous work of humans:
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.Not just wholly reform, wholly abolish, wholly rebel, which is as our Founders ended up by circumstance and necessity doing. A man, men, have a duty to "alter" destructive forms of government.
And again and again in American History our greatest citizens and patriots have stood up like men to do so.
I can go on with examples for weeks, so I believe, but none will sway a bull-headed person set to deny that aspect of being an American.
By your posts you seem far from that genuine AMERICAN ethos.
I am no constitutional scholar, but shouldn’t this final decision be coming from the Supreme Court rather than the FEC, an unelected board of individuals?
Just curious.
I read WND for a long time, but I stopped about the same time I stopped watching Glenn Beck and others.
People, with God’s help, think for yourselves, PLEASE!
Other than a foreign national for a father who, through descent, made Obama a natural born subject of Great Britain, or the part about not legally being able to prove he was born in the United States???
Read the thread. The FEC did not do what WND is claiming (surprise).
So anyone will do, as long as they TAKE the powers you want to hand them. Funny, since my understanding of the Constitution says congress has to delagate them that powers.
I agree there is a problem of enforcement, and that obama is likely not elliable. But congress is who needs to assign this authority to another agency, or take it up themselves., or the courts.
But we have enough agencies taking and using powers they weren’t given by law. That isn’t a republic, that’s tyrany and a dictatorship by committee.
“Other than a foreign national for a father who, through descent, made Obama a natural born subject of Great Britain, or the part about not legally being able to prove he was born in the United States???”
To repeat myself, Mike Gravel’s parents were French-Canadian immigrants. Gravel had TWO British citizens for parents. And yet he got matching funds.
And Joe Biden has never produced a jot of evidence to prove where he was born. Yet he got matching funds too.
So why do you think the FEC would give matching funds to them, but not to Obama? What did Gravel and Biden do that Obama didn’t?
Wow, because I think that entities created by statute by Congress should follow Congress’ laws, I’m at odd with the Founders’ vision for the country? Amazing.
Allowing each and every civil servant to divine their own interpretation of the Constitution, without regard for the laws as passed by Congress and reviewed by the Supreme Court is asking for a form of anarchy, where civil servants each become a law unto themselves.
Sorry, I ain’t buying that as what the Founders intended. Get off your high horse and admit that you are only in favor of letting civil servants interpret the Constitution when their interpretation matches yours.
You can't have it both ways -- either they are allowed and competent enough to interpret the Constitution, or they're not. You can't just pick and choose on the basis of whether or not you agree with a specific interpretation.
In my jobs I have often found that “process” gets in the way of “production” and failures are rampant, when “process” is put first and foremost.
In business, production must come first, process is only a tool to get better product.
Likewise, in a well-functioning society, each person and each institution — civic groups, businesses, schools, clubs, governments, bureaucracies, courts, crews of workers, etc. — must put productive and socially harmonious habits, actions, mores and ethos first, before dry “process”.
There is always a over and under in action according to one’s duty. If one is not doing more on some occasion than strict permit may allow, then one is certainly doing less than is one’s true duty, one is a slacker. Such under-performers will — in an watchdog regulatory agency like an FEC — come to allow destructive forces and harms to occur by inaction.
THAT TYPE OF BUREAUCRATIC INACTION IS VERY EUROPEAN! IT IS PERVASIVE IN LATIN AMERICAN COUNTRIES! It results in long lines and insufferable delays to get anything done, even the most trivial. It is not American.
It enables great tyrannies to arise, and blocks many channels that otherwise would avail to stop them. Viz Germany in the 1930’s.
In AMERICA, in any nation committed to ideals, every person in a bureaucracy and agency still has a citizen’s duty to uphold the law, and in ideal, to perform those duties and needed actions that the agency or bureau just by its very existence comes by law, habit or general perception of scope of authority to preclude others from doing. That’s called picking up the load.
By doing SOMETHING, by making a decision or taking an action with actual serious consequences, the bureau or agency provides a public measure of it’s justification. We, the public, can then decide to keep it, cut it, chop it down to some size, or grow it. By making non-consequential decisions such as the FEC just did, they dilute and obfuscate accountability, for themselves and for that which they “acted”. That’s wrong. That’s immoral.
The big struggle in life and duty is to keep those excursions around the limits of one’s duty all for the good. Even in exception one strives to be moral and ethical.
His parents immigrated to the U.S. seven years before he was born. They could have naturalized. Obama's parents were not immigrants. Barak Sr. was a British-Kenyan who stayed that way. SAD married the British-Kenyan and almost immediately after divorcing him, married an Indonesian. She's not exactly a loyal American citizen. The question was about the difference, and there's still a difference. I also mentioned elsewhere Obama may not have wanted to take a chance since he lacked the legal ability to prove he was born in the U.S.
from Aaron Klein's site
http://kleinonline.wnd.com/2011/09/25/fec-south-american-born-eligible-for-u-s-president-agency-rules-there-is-no-reference-to-natural-born-or-naturalized-citizens/
In its official response earlier this month, the FEC agreed with Hassan’s logic.
The FEC’s ruling, which did not receive any news media attention, concluded that a naturalized citizen is not prohibited by the Federal Election Campaign Act from becoming a “candidate” as defined under the Act.
However, a naturalized citizen is not eligible to receive Federal matching funds under the FEC’s Presidential Primary Matching Payment Account Act.
Stated the FEC ruling: “In regard to the definition of ‘person,’ the Act defines that term as including ‘an individual, partnership, committee, association, corporation, labor organization, or any other organization or group of persons,’ excluding the Federal Government. There is no reference to natural born or naturalized citizens. As an individual, Mr. Hassan is a ‘person’ under the Act.”
While the FEC’s own rules now allow Hassan to run for high office, the attorney must still clear judicial hurdles before his eligibility could become official.
At issue is the Constitutional stipulation that only a “natural born” citizen can run for president.
Article 2, Section 1, Clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution stipulates presidential eligibility, requiring the nation’s elected chief to be a “natural born citizen.”
The clause states: “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”.
The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution specifically defines “citizen” but not “natural born citizen”.
A “citizen” is defined as: “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.”
However, no definition of “natural born citizen” – which is only used in the presidential requirement clause – was provided anywhere in the Constitution, and to this day the precise meaning of the term is still being debated.
In his legal argument, Hassan contended the Constitutional eligibility clause discriminates against naturalized citizens.
He cites Supreme Court rulings that interpret the Constitution as providing “equal protection” to naturalized citizens. Other rulings cited by Hassan guarantee against the discrimination of naturalized citizens.
“The natural born requirement, that was adapted in the 1780’s at a time when slavery was also a part of the constitution,” Hassan told Klein.
Hassan added the eligibility requirement should be reinterpreted in a way that would allow naturalized citizens to run for president.
“His parents immigrated to the U.S. seven years before he was born. They could have naturalized.”
They didn’t. According to the 1930 Census, they were both still aliens (and Mike was born in May 1930).
So yes, the FEC gave matching funds to a guy born to TWO British citizens.
However, a naturalized citizen is not eligible to receive Federal matching funds under the FEC’s Presidential Primary Matching Payment Account Act.
From post 39:
Thus, because Mr. Hassan has clearly stated that he is a naturalized citizen and not a natural born citizen under the Constitutional requirement for holding the office of President, the Commission concluded that Mr. Hassan is not eligible to receive matching funds.
So the FEC has basically made a determination that Hassan is not eligible under the Constitution within the discretion granted them to decide who gets matching funds - a detail omitted from this analysis because I guess it is inconvient to the rant.
I’ve noticed that since.
This is a lot of hoopla over do-nothing legislation.
Except for the idea of not allowing fed. funds to go to ineligible folks. That I agree with.
Imagine that - bureaucrats operating within the powers granted them by law instead of seizing powers not bestowed to them, like we see all the time with agenda-driven departments such as the EPA.
Folks should be applauding the FEC for this ruling. But instead, because the slimeballs at WND wanted to spin this for their own agenda, folks who don't research further get all hot under the collar and get the entirely wrong impression of what happened.
Watch your back -- when I said this upthread, I was essentially called a Nazi (see post #29).
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