Posted on 04/28/2017 7:49:45 AM PDT by ml/nj
Still posting your false mantra. Natural born citizen means having citizenship at birth. That’s all. There is no alternative definition provided by the Founders and making stuff up like a liberal won’t change that. Had the Founders deemed an even more stringent requirement was in order, they would have included it in the Constitution. Considering that they only required a candidate to have even resided in the United States for 40% of his life at the minimum qualifying age, they obviously considered that such a person might spend considerable time abroad, perhaps as a dependent, and it would have occurred to them that said person might not have two citizen parents or have even been born in the United States, yet they made no special mention of it whatsoever.
Get over it. You are doing all of us a disservice by posting this nonsense over and over.
While the Office of the Presidency should be respected, the only respect that arrogant pos deserved was disrespect.
What you believe really isn't relevant, though, is it? Vattel's The Law of Nations, which you have previously mis-cited as well, is not a founding document. Nor does it contain the definition you ascribe to it. You just use it with the expectation that nobody else has bothered to research what you claim. While the Founders may (some were, some not) have individually been familiar with it, they certainly didn't include any footnotes, so the Constitution has to stand on its own. Why is it you insist on a bogus definition attributed to a foreigner but reject the singular dictionary definition of a term in use centuries prior to the writing of the Constitution itself? Isn't that inherently foreign influence?
It’s true and accurate, you poltroon, because the Great Bill O’Reilly says it is. /s
“In short, all the money in the world will not bring peace.”
No, just his net worth of $85 million USD (2017), plus $25 million in severance, equivalent to his one year’s salary at FOX news.
Really? Was in French or in English?
And maybe he did. I didn't say that none of the Framers knew who Vattel was or what he wrote.
But Vattel's name is nowhere in the Federalist Papers or Madison's Notes on the Debates.
Notwithstanding your claim, the common American usage at the time of the drafting of the Constitution is the most likely meaning. Were a court ever to delve into the meaning of NBC, it is much more likely that they would lean on the Oxford English Dictionary than on Vattel's Le Droit des gens.
ML/NJ
So, what? Jefferson owned a Koran. Does that mean the Constitution is an Islam-inspired document and we are all Muslims? That's how absurd your argument that Washington had a copy of The Law of Nations is.
Blackstone uses natural-born and native-born interchangeably. That’s quite likely why the naturals-vs.-natives argument has fallen apart and why the radical Birthers don’t cite Blackstone any more.
There are only two types of citizens: natural-born and naturalized.
Lurkin thinks children of people serving their country overseas aren’t eligible to be President.
He’s not going to be a happy person. Mark my words.
The Oxford English Dictionary make clear that there were (at least) three types of citizens (or subjects) at the time of the Founding. (See my link at #15 on this thread.) I'm not sure what your basis is for the assertion that there were only two types.
ML/NJ
Cute, but Mr. Jefferson was in France when the Constitution was being drafted. And I don't believe he acquired his Koran until the dust-up with the Barbary Pirates.
ML/NJ
Vattel was cited AT LENGTH in the Venus Merchantman case of 1814, an entire paragraph from the Law of Nations cited in toto for a definition of NBC:
The Venus, 12 U.S. 8 Cranch 253 253 (1814)
The first was decided in A.D. 1814, at the beginning of the republic, by men who were intimately associated with the American Revolution. In that year the following men sat on the Supreme Court:
Bushrod Washington, (b. June 5, 1762 — d. Nov. 26, 1829), served Feb. 4, 1799 til Nov. 26, 1829.
John Marshall (b. Sept. 24, 1755 — d. July 6, 1835), served Feb. 4, 1891 til July 6, 1835.
William Johnson (b. Dec. 27, 1771 — d. Aug. 4, 1834), served May 7, 1804, til Aug. 4, 1834.
Henry Brockholst Livingston (b. Nov. 25, 1757 — d. Mar. 18, 1823), served Jan. 20, 1807 til March 18, 1823
Thomas Todd (b. Jan. 23, 1765 — d. Feb. 7, 1826), served May 4, 1807 til Feb. 7, 1826.
Gabriel Duvall (b. Dec. 6, 1752 — d. Mar. 6, 1844), served Nov. 23, 1811 til Jany 14, 1835.
Joseph Story (b. Sept. 18, 1779 — d. Sept. 10, 1845), served Feb. 3, 1812 til Sept. 10, 1845
Nearly all these men either participated in the American Revolution, or their fathers did. Joseph Story’s father took part in the original Boston Tea Party. Thomas Todd served 6 months in the army against the British; and participated in 5 Constitutional Conventions from 1784-1792. During the Revolutionary War, Henry Brockholst Livingston was a Lieutenant Colonel in the New York Line and an aide-de-camp to General Benedict Arnold, before the latter’s defection to the British. William Johnson’s father, mother, and elder brother were revolutionaries, who served as statesman, rebel, or nurse/assistant to the line troops, respectively. John Marshall was First Lieutenant of the Culpeper Minutement of Virginia, and then Lieutenant in the Eleventh Virginian Continental Regiment, and a personal friend of General George Washington; and debated for ratification of the U.S. Constitution by the Virginian General Assembly. Bushrod Washington was George Washington’s nephew and heir.
Being witnesses and heirs of the Revolution, they understood what the Framers of the Constitution had intended.
The Venus case regarded the question whether the cargo of a merchantman, named the Venus, belonging to an American citizen, and being shipped from British territory to America during the War of 1812, could be seized and taken as a prize by an American privateer. But what the case said about citizenship, is what matters here.
WHAT THE VENUS CASE SAYS ON CITIZENSHIP
In the Venus Case, Justice Livingston, who wrote the unanimous decision, quoted the entire §212nd paragraph from the French edition, using his own English, on p. 12 of the ruling:
Vattel, who, though not very full to this point, is more explicit and more satisfactory on it than any other whose work has fallen into my hands, says:
“The citizens are the members of the civil society; bound to this society by certain duties, and subject to its authority, they equally participate in its advantages. The natives or indigenes are those born in the country of parents who are citizens. Society not being able to subsist and to perpetuate itself but by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights.
“The inhabitants, as distinguished from citizens, are strangers who are permitted to settle and stay in the country. Bound by their residence to the society, they are subject to the laws of the state while they reside there, and they are obliged to defend it…
bookmark
I believe that globalist interests and their useful idiots actually installed a probable enemy alien has president of the US for two terms. The protections of Article II, Sec. 1, clause 5 of the US Constitution have been essentially negated without the use of the Article V amendment process.
They have established eligibility for non natural born citizens to assume the presidency, undoubtedly by design.
The next denizen they install will be far worse than Obama. We already have enough natural born traitors (like the Clintons) to worry about without importing a whole world full of them.
Thanks for this reference. I am ashamed to admit that I was completely unaware of this case where Vattel was cited. It will take me a while to make my own judgement about its application to the NBC question, but on the surface it does seem as if it might be very relevant.
ML/NJ
Glad to be of service. We need to have this issue exposed, and adjudicated by a competent court of law, especially since there has never been a direct ruling on the matter in the nation’s history.
Would you care to clarify what bearing that has on the point at hand? Nobody is disputing that a child of two citizen parents born on American soil is a NBC. Your (I presume, your, since you are defending it) argument is like claiming sound does not move because it is not as fast as light, in that because it is true that two citizen parents and domestic birth clearly makes one NBC, so anything short of that does not. It is a simple, common logical fallacy.
And, as stated, the Founders did not include footnotes or alternate definitions in the Constitution. The dictionary definition is by default the legal definition.
What some SCOTUS judges did years after the fact simply has no bearing on whether Vattel is a founding document. It isn’t.
Neither was Vattel. You make my point for me.
The Oxford English Dictionary make clear that there were (at least) three types of citizens (or subjects) at the time of the Founding. (See my link at #15 on this thread.) I'm not sure what your basis is for the assertion that there were only two types.
But only one definition for natural-born since 1583. Why, pray tell, did the founders not clarify on that point? Wasn't one of the issues at the time the arbitrary redefinition of citizenship by various authorities as an abuse of power? For example, the impressment of American sailors by the British navy (one of the things that led to the War of 1812) based on the argument that they were British subjects?
We have to take the Constitution as written, without making up new conditions or restrictions, or redefining words to suit our political agendas. You want to change it? Get an amendment, just like anybody else.
Your argument seems to overlook the justifications for the NBC requirement has regards the POTUS. Since the NBC requirement, in the constitutional sense, applies to only ONE constitutional office, that of the presidency, then a reasonable inference is that there is something singularly unique about the application of natural born citizenry to the office of POTUS. I would submit that answer is revealed by the definition cited in the Venus case. The Court, by citing Vatel agrees that “The natives or indigenes are those born in the country of PARENTS (note plural usage) who are citizens. Society not being able to subsist and to perpetuate itself but by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights.”
Like it or not, the founders were patriarchs, not post-modern feminists. They believed that the political influences of the father would weigh most heavily upon the political beliefs of the children. It is my profound belief, and that of some of the finest scholars on the matter that I have read, that the NBC requirement was intended to minimize the likelihood of undue foreign influence on the POTUS, PARTICULARLY from a father owing allegiance to a foreign sovereignty.
Obama, according to his own campaign, was born a citizen of THREE, count them THREE countries from his birth, owing to the British Immigration and Nationality Act of 1948 thru his father. Therefore, he was a citizen of Great Britain, Kenya, and if you accept his dubious birth narrative, a citizen of the US.
The founding fathers of the US, who were born British subjects and NONE of whom were natural born citizens, required a grandfather clause in Article II to allow them to be eligible to assume the office of POTUS. It is utterly inconceivable to me that they would allow someone born in the 20th century has a British citizen to be POTUS, absent a constitutional amendment allowing them consideration to that job. The 14th amendment, according to it’s selfsame authors, explicitly said that it did NOT do so.
The constitution is not a dictionary. We do not have a definition for high crimes and misdemeanors either, but that has not stopped us from impeachments and Senate trials.
No SCOTUS decision, whether it be Minor vs Happersett, Perkins vs Elg, Wong Kim Ark vs US, or the Venus case has defined an NBC other than having TWO citizen parents and born on the soil of the US. I am not going to define NBC by the ABSENCE of a case saying that another definition also applies.
I fail to understand why so many seem to fear having this Article II NBC issue adjudicated by SCOTUS for a definitive ruling. I and many of us are more than ready for that fight. No matter the outcome, at least the matter will have been dealt with, instead of this obsfucatory ridicule and scorn. I think that in and of itself, is quite revealing.
Soros is drooling over a(nother) Muslim president... this time he/she will be out and proud about it.
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