Surely, they have be aware of it. Leahy had it on his .gov Senate website for over two years and it was referenced on FR and other places many times. IIRC, Leahy took it off his site this last spring (?). A shorter version showed up on... blah, www.scrib something or other, can’t remember. But it seemed to have less of the Chertoff and Leahy conversation along the lines of the TWO US CITIZEN PARTENTS “yes, that’s my understanding of it, too.” They had called in then Head of Homeland Security Chertoff to advise them. The six Senators agreed on the definition and then presented it to the Senate who also agreed to the definition with the plural parentS. Many now, who haven’t seen the discussion only want to say it only had to do with McCain and that it’s only a resolution rather than law. Well, excuse me, but Congress agreed to the definition and now they are ignoring their own definition and resolution. Interestingly, Congress only debated the definition for McCain (his being born in Colon and not on the US military base is another subject) but they didn’t hold Obama to the same or any vetting. That’s two branches of our government, the Legislative and the current Executive, who agreed to the definition. Throw in that Judge Thomas said that the SCOTUS was “evading” (meaning sneakily bypassing it rather than just merely haven’t looked into it) Obama’s NBC problems after Obama went to them for his little talk. Well, it might just be me but my tin foil hat is getting itchy.
Ok, found this although I don’t remember the “assumption” in Chertoff’s statement but whatever, Obama’s name is on it so he has some major explaining to do. Also, since this was BEFORE the election then so does Pelosi, Hillary (who was at the six member committee table) and the rest of Congress:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/31679913/25337874-Sr511-Technically-a-Dfinition-of-Natural-Born-Citizen
Your memory is fine bgill. You can always find the two- parent - jus sanguinis - argument in the record of the Senate hearings, which were in April 2008. They also include the full Larry Tribe (Harvard Con. Law professor and Obama Adviser, both at Harvard and on his election committee) letter, with Ted Olsen, playing games with the 1790 Naturalization Act, never mentioning that it was retroactive and repealed in 1795.
You can also find the two parent argument in Senate Bill 2678, Obama-McCaskill (pretty audacious huh?), where the Obama election cadre were trying to clear the path to insure that their opponent would be the bought and paid for, not to mention ineligible John McCain. SB2678 was referred to as “A Bill to Insure That Foreign-born Children of Military Citizens are Eligible to the Presidency.” You can also probably still find the YouTube recording of the National Press Club interviews of Obama operative Berg, who spreads tantalizing rumors and Orly Taitz, clearly stating the legal definition of natural born citizen as the reason that birth certificates and Kenyan birth are irrelevant. That was December of 2008.
This is a subtle legal issue which the two Italian lawyers, Leo Donofrio and Mario Apuzzo have done a remarkable job of explaining. In the process, Donofrio has discovered the illegitimacy of Chester Arthur, and the perhaps intentional key error in the Wong Kim Ark decision, in which Justice Gray ignored an earlier court acknowledgement of a misquote by Justice Story in a cited case. The ramifications of Justice Gray's error, could require re-interpretation of the anchor babies. These are remarkable legal times. Read Leo Donofrio’s blog for the latest on the errors in Wong Kim Ark, and for a mor accessible explanation of why Minor v. Happersett was considered positive law by at least twenty six other courts.
Mario Apuzzo's analysis are careful and thorough about both the meaning of the Minor precedent, and especially about the meaning of American common-law. Apuzzo patiently takes on the subtle lies being propagated by Obama lawyers. The opponents of representative government, where the ends justify the means, but certainly not dumb. (For those in the computer business, Apuzzo and Donofrio are employing a tactic used by good developers - putting their intellectual product into the hands of a group committed to finding faults.)
To add to the clarification, whenever anyone tell you “Because it wasn't defined in the Constitution”, note that essentially nothing is defined in the Constitution. The framers included their definition of “Treason”, probably thinking that it might be used frequently. But terms in the Constitution were intentionally deemed defined in our common-law, and the common language familiar to its framers. Madison explained this in a number of places, one of which you'll find in a letter reproduced Mark Levin's Liberty and Tyranny, p37. Languages change. Ideas can only be preserved by assuming the language used to write them.