Free Republic

I don't think there is any chance in hell that SCOTUS will touch this. If Obama were found to be ineligible, it would shake our country to it's core. If everything he has signed as president were suddenly invalid all the budget bills would be invalid. How would you resolve all the laws being invalid and all the money that has already been spent?

It could easily completely crash our economy, and devolve our government into utter chaos.

If several states legislate strict methods of proving eligibility to get on the ballot, then Obama would either have to prove eligibility in the next election, or come up with a reason to not run again.

However, I see absolutely no chance that if he isn't eligible that we will ever see it proved.

Requires “Both Parents” must be “Citizens of the United States” to be considered a “Natural-Born” Citizen!

Under “Vattel’s Law of Nations” ( which our Founding Fathers used in defining “Natural-Born” Citizen). The” Country of the Fathers” is therefor that of the Children; and these become true citizens by their Tacit consent.

So Vattel's book was referenced in the Constitution? Was it made clear to all the signers and those ratifying the constitution that natural born citizens (which happens to be in lower case in the Constitution) was referring to Vattel's definition rather than the more obvious definition of someone who became a citizen at the time of their birth?

I say,that, in order to “be of the country”, it is necessary that a person be born of a father who is a “Citizen”; for, if he is born there of a “foreigner”, it will only be the place of his birth and “Not” his Country!

So what would be the citizenship of someone who's father is unknown? Would the be in perpetual limbo? An illegal alien wherever they might go?

If Obama was born outside of this nation according to our laws at the time, he would not have been a citizen at birth, and therefore wouldn't be a natural born citizen. However, it does not seem clear to me that those signing or ratifying our Constitution had all read Vattel or understood that term to be as he defined it.

Doesn’t really sound like a criminal offense to me. More like a civil issue. The state should dock their pay, and discipline them. There are probably terms in the contract about how teachers can be disciplined, and those need to be followed, but they should treat them as harshly as the contract allows.

They better not have used state funds or state owned vehicles to flee the state. If they did give them 24 hours to return and reimburse the state, or prosecute them for misuse of public funds.

No particular foreign language class should be mandatory, and if taking a foreign language is required, the students should have a selection to choose from.

Our military and intelligence communities would likely be happy with a larger number of people familiar with Arabic to pull from but I don't think many people will get much use out of it.

What I believe you are both missing is that these states are not locked into these outrageous contracts forever, just until they come up for renewel. They are then free to renogiate or even to pass legislation disallowing public sector unions.

I'm not missing it. A five year contract foolishly negotiated by an administration that was pandering for votes means that even if you replace the administration, there is little they can do to address the problem.

They are the people's elected officials and the people gave them the authority to negotiate those contracts. Bankruptcy is a process through which someone can gain relief when it is no longer possible for them to fulfill their obligations.

I believe bankruptcy has a place in our society, but it must be as fair and equitable as possible. Having union contracts be the ONLY obligation that can be renegotiated doesn't seem fair.

This doesn't seem like the proper way to limit the power of unions. You shouldn't limit power by giving the government power to negotiate in bad faith and then back out.

The article doesn't actually propose letting the states out of their debts. It suggests letting them void existing labor contracts and go back to the bargaining table with the unions. Those contracts represent a different kind of debt that the state has incurred. I think state employee unions generally have far too much power, but I'm not sure there is a sound reason to let the states get out of one type of liability while not allowing any flexibility on the rest.

However, it does seem that when it goes to the courts, the union members usually make out better than nameless investors holding bonds.

Actually, the best method for Congress to restrain an overreaching executive branch is to withdraw funding from whatever they want to kill. Funding bills need to originate in the House, so this is something the House should do rather than the Senate.

Calling Voinovich is probably not worth the effort. He has been ignoring constituents opinions on such issues and relying on the fact that the Democrats have run extremist liberals against him that make him look like the safer choice for many years.

He is retiring in January. Good riddance!

No handler who ever wants a search warrant approved in the future is going to tell one of their informants to call for the death of federal judges.

This is just political theater. His constituents don't appear to care if he is corrupt. He will keep getting reelected. This costs him nothing.

He broke several laws. Prosecute him. He shouldn't be above the law just because he has been successfully scoffing at it for so long.

Unless they are going to expel him, this is nearly pointless anyway. He committed criminal acts. He should be prosecuted. A house ethics committee decision is not a replacement for upholding laws. He needs to face criminal prosecution.

There are a lot of people out there that are foolish enough to believe that our government could and should operate in complete and total transparency. However, a lot of them also tend to be pretty close to being anarchists and believe they have a right to know everything about everyone else, but no one has a right to know anything about them.

What is an international covenant?

How exactly is it binding under US law, which is the law to which our government is responsible.

However, if our nation has made such agreements binding under our law, then I think we should do the honorable thing and withdraw from the UN.

I think Clinton should resign and we should withdraw from the UN regardless of if we broke any of their covenants, but I see no reason why anyone should care what Assange says.

Only to those that have already immigrated lawfully.

http://www.usimmigrationsupport.org/military.html

I'm not really opposed to opening up military service to those who wish to become residents and eventually citizens, but I'm not sure how you set up an objective system of who you would accept and also limit the numbers so we don't get a flood of recruits with questionable allegiances.

If they meet recruiting standards,are willing to join the military, and serve honorably. It may be reasonable to set the recruiting standards a bit higher for those without legal status, but not unreasonably so.

I'm a proponent of legal, controlled immigration. If they are interested in serving our country and can make a positive contribution, I think we should give them precedence over those who would make less of a contribution to our country.

He didn't know his wife was soliciting and taking bribes when on the Detroit city council. The justice department was nice enough to accept his word that he was in no way involved which of course had nothing to do with him being chairman of the house judiciary committee. Somehow his wife was even provided with a lawyer by the taxpayers.

Now he doesn't know that his son is unlawfully using a government owned car.

The pictures of his son with alcohol in the vehicle show another instance of him inappropriately using the car. Since the bottle isn't open, and it is possible that an adult is present, I don't think they can go after him about the alcohol itself, but they can ask him some difficult questions about who was there that was over 21 and was it someone who should have known he shouldn't be using the car?

I think there has been more than enough evidence that Conyers needs to be investigated. Maybe he's only guilty of being a fool who married a crook and who is careless with not securing a government vehicle from his son. That alone should get him kicked off of the judiciary committee.

The federal government is in a state of treason to its citizens. One of the few enumerated duties that the Constitution sets forth for the federal government, is that of protecting American citizens from invasion. They have clearly failed in that primary responsibility.

We aren't facing a real invasion. We are facing piss poor border control and piss poor immigration control. Even though we can justifiably argue that our government isn't enforcing immigration laws, in reality we always face having law enforcement and prosecution being limited by resources, and allocating those resources is the responsibility of congress and using those resources within the discression allowed by congress is the role of the executive branch.

Congress has a long habit of talking tough on some topics, passing laws that should help address the issues, and then underfunding them because while they want to appear tough on the topic, the issue doesn't have enough priority with them to actually get fully funded.

It's irritating as hell that they do it, but it is completely within their constitutional authority to do it. It's not treason. It's not unconstitutional. It's not illegal. It's political. For some of them it may be an act of dishonesty. For others, it's just a matter of dealing with unlimited desires and limited resources.

The American people’s right to self-defense supersedes the Constitution and every local, state, and federal statute. I think you understand that our rights are NOT conferred by the state, but by the Creator.

Pulling these small number of troops that weren't doing a whole hardly interferes with our right to defend ourselves. It may make a relatively small number of people less safe.

I would greately prefer our government put a more sizable force along the border with rules of engagement that actually allowed them to be more effective. Even better would be to increase the size of the border patrol and borrow from other federal law enforcement agencies, since most of the problem is a law enforcement issue, not a military one, and it is better that our military not be used for law enforcement.

However, too many of our politicians either don't want to deal with the immigration issues, or don't consider it a high enough priority. They also can't really deal with the smuggling issues without addressing the immigration issues, and the smuggling issues apparently haven't raised the stakes enough to get them to do something about it. They haven't raised the political stakes enough. We can get pissed off all we want, but we must be in the minority, because the politicians who refuse to address the problem are still in office. As long as they remain there, then it obviously isn't important enough to enough of the American people.

We have to vote them out of office. Irate rants about how we must arm ourselves against the problem aren't going to solve the problem, and advocating armed insurrection against our government does start to border on treason.

We do have a right to freedom of speech, but such words can come back to haunt you, so be careful of how you say things. I don't think you stepped over that line here, but I've seen enough others that have. I'm not suggesting anyone stop opposing how the government is handling immigration, or even stop being really, really pissed off about it.

The only way we are going to cause change however is to change the politicians, or to make it obvious to them that if they don't change the laws and allocate the resources, they will be replaced with someone who will.

Comes a time when a people have to defend their land, no matter the artificial constraints and impediments forced upon them by a weak and treasonous government.

They aren't completely artificial. It is important for our own freedom that our different levels of government have limitations on their power, sepecially when it comes to ordering the military around.

It is the role of the Federal Government, and the problem is that not enough voters are taking the issue seriously enough and that they keep electing socially liberal politicians (Bush included) who won't protect our borders and enforce controlled and legal immigration.

It MUST be done at the federal level, and there hasn't been a presidential candidate from either party in the last three elections that came anywhere close to winning even their party primary that was serious about securing our border.

It's an issue that many Americans want addressed, but apparently they don't feel strongly enough to have it be one of the most important issues in how they vote.

Until that changes, we aren't going to see major policy changes.

99% of Demorats are anti-gun , so what’s the difference . SOOOO when TSHTF how the hell they gonna defend themselves ?

Actually they aren't, at least not the voters. There are a considerable number of pro-gun Democrats, and an even larger percentage for whom it isn't a high priority issue one way or the other.

Gun control laws have not been popular, and have played a significant role in Democrat politicians losing their offices. Pro gun Democrats have done well in many parts of the country. It is probably the main thing that got Strickland elected as Governor here in Ohio. If he wasn't so extremely liberal on everything else he probably would have gotten reelected.

The anti-gun lobby is small, but very powerful. It doesn't have a lot of members, just a lot of money, and a lot of followers in the press.