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Dumb enough to believe that the REAL definition of Natural Born is offspring coming from 2 CITIZEN parents? The real question is, who is dumb enough to think that's NOT what it means?
I don't think he will be around in 2012 anyway, but IMO that is a correct law and by that law Obama and several Republicans also interested in being President are indeed not eligible by the law.
It’s not that you haven’t been paying attention lately and yes, you can be excused for missing the ruling as it came down, not in the last few days but back in 1875.
So it's obviously just a "gotcha" headline to propagate the same tired old birther propaganda.
The only thing that will be "excluded" in 2012 will be your common sense, apparently.
I think both parties delight in maintaining the 'us vs. them' atmosphere that defines politics today, it keeps people from realizing how much both parties suck.
+1 rep for that one.
I'm amazed at how many reps supported Bush and now how many dems support Obama aka Bush 3.0.
Dumb enough to believe that the REAL definition of Natural Born is offspring coming from 2 CITIZEN parents? The real question is, who is dumb enough to think that's NOT what it means?
here's a link to the most recent congressional research service's report on eligibility. it specifically talks about birthers' interpretation of minor v. happersett.
Congressional Research Service – Report on Obama’s Eligibility « Native and Natural Born Citizenship Explored (http://nativeborncitizen.wordpress.com/2010/11/05/congressional-research-service-report-on-obamas-eligibility/ - broken link)
Dumb enough to believe that the REAL definition of Natural Born is offspring coming from 2 CITIZEN parents?
Yes... dumb enough to believe that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SourD
The real question is, who is dumb enough to think that's NOT what it means?
The Founders and Framers, the Congress of the United States, the Supreme Court of the United States, every living Constitutional expert or authority, and most recently, the Congressional Research Service:
Quote:
Citizenship of Parents. Concerning specifically the reading into the Constitution of a two-citizen parent requirement for “natural born” citizenship status, it should be noted that there is, significantly, no historical nor controlling legal holding in American jurisprudence to support the argument that parental citizenship governs and controls the eligibility of a native born U.S. citizen to be President. As indicated in the discussion of the history of the constitutional provision, there is also no justification for this unique theory, which would exclude an entire class of native born U.S. citizens from eligibility for the Presidency, in any of the statements or writings of the framers of the Constitution, or in the entire record of the ratification debates of the United States Constitution.
In 1825, in a significant and widely recognized work on the Constitution, William Rawle specifically noted that the term “natural born citizen” as used in the Constitution would include “every person born within the United States ... whether the parents are citizens or aliens....” Similarly, in his treatise on Citizenship of the United States, Frederick Van Dyne, Assistant Solicitor of the Department of State, explained in 1904 that the rule governing citizenship is not one derived from “international law” or the so-called “law of nations,” but is rather municipal law which “[e]very nation determines for itself’ and, in the United States, derives from the common law principle of jus soli, dependant “on the place of birth,” as modified by statute incorporating the principles of jus sanguinis to include the children of citizens “born out of the jurisdiction of the United States.” In reviewing Supreme Court decisional material, the author in this treatise noted that the Fourteenth Amendment and the 1866 civil rights act “reaffirm the fundamental principle of citizenship by birth” which “was generally held to be regulated by the common law, by which all persons born within the limits and allegiance of the United States were deemed to be natural born citizens thereof.”
Although the Supreme Court has never had to address the issue of “natural born” citizenship directly in the context of a challenge to the eligibility of one to be President, the federal courts have discussed the concept on numerous occasions for more than 200 years and have, other than in the Dred Scott decision, consistently relied upon the place of birth, without regard or reference to the status of one’s parents, as the determining factor of natural born citizenship. In a celebrated state court ruling, in 1844, providing a detailed explanation of the legal history of the citizenship laws and statutes in the United States, the following conclusion was provided with respect to natural born citizenship:
Upon principle, therefore, I can entertain no doubt, but that by the law of the United States, every person born within the dominions and allegiance of the United States, whatever were the situation of his parents, is a natural born citizen.
That the place of birth was the rule governing “natural born” citizenship under American jurisprudence, regardless of the status of one’s parents (except for children of official diplomats or hostile armies), even before the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, was explained by the Supreme Court in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, in 1898, which noted that the Fourteenth Amendment “affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory, in the allegiance and under the protection of the country, including all children born here of resident aliens, with the exceptions or qualifications (as old as the rule itself) of children of foreign sovereigns or their ministers, or born on foreign public ships, or of enemies within and during a hostile occupation of part of our territory ....” The Supreme Court in Wong Kim Ark cited with approval those previous judicial rulings which held that every child born on the soil of the United States, and subject to its jurisdiction, are “natural born” citizens of this country, without regard to the nationality or citizenship status of their parents. The Supreme Court, this time using the term “native born citizen” again explained in that case:
Passing by questions once earnestly controverted, but finally put at rest by the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, it is beyond doubt that, before the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 or the adoption of the Constitutional Amendment, all white persons, at least, born within the sovereignty of the United States, whether children of citizens or of foreigners, excepting only children of ambassadors or public ministers of a foreign government, were native-born citizens of the United States.
As discussed previously, the Supreme Court has used the term “native born” citizens (as expressly used in Wong Kim Ark to mean those born in the United States “whether children of citizens or foreigners”) as synonymous with, or at least included within the term “natural born,” in subsequent references to eligibility to the Presidency. In United States v. Schwimmer, for example, the Court stated: “Except for eligibility to the Presidency, naturalized citizens stand on the same footing as do native born citizens”216 Similarly, in Luria v. United States the Supreme Court stated: “Under our Constitution, a naturalized citizen stands on an equal footing with the native citizen in all respects, save that of eligibility to the Presidency,”217 and noted in 1931 that other than the one instance in the Constitution which provides a difference, that is, the eligibility to the Presidency, “[t]he alien, when he becomes a naturalized citizen, acquires, with one exception, every right possessed under the Constitution by those citizens who are native born.”
With regard to the citizenship of children born in the United States to recent immigrants, it is significant to note that in this country in the late 1800’s, the public’s economic fears and hostility to foreigners led Congress to—in the words of one historian—“legitimize[ ] racism as national policy” by adopting legislation to prevent immigration of Chinese laborers to the United States, and to prohibit anyone of Chinese nationality to obtain U.S. citizenship through naturalization. Despite this law and its extensions, commonly known as the Chinese Exclusion Acts, the federal courts continually and consistently held that children born “in” the United States of Chinese nationals were “natural born” citizens of the United States, even though the parents were not, and could never be, U.S. citizens themselves under the exclusion laws. In one case concerning the identity of a petitioner, the Supreme Court of the United States explained that “(i)t is not disputed that if petitioner is the son” of two Chinese national citizens who were physically in the United States when petitioner was born, then he is “a natural born American citizen ....” Similarly, in 1919, the United States Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled that the appellee, based solely on the fact that he was born in San Francisco, without any reference to the nationality of his parents, “is a natural-born citizen of the United States.”
In a case that preceded the Supreme Court’s Wong Kim Ark decision, the United States Court of Appeals agreed with the petitioner’s claim to be “a natural-born citizen of the United States” because of his place of birth, that is, within the United States, even though his parents were both “aliens” of Chinese nationality who were in the United States privately and “not here in any diplomatic or other official capacity under the emperor of China.” That federal court in 1884, relying on precedents including Assistant Vice-Chancellor Lewis Sandford’s opinion in Lynch v. Clarke, explained the concept in American jurisprudence that one is a “natural born” citizen when born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, and that such was the state of American law even before the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment (for other than those brought into the United States under slavery):
Independently of the constitutional provision, it has always been the doctrine of this country, except as applied to Africans brought here and sold as slaves, and their descendants, that birth within the dominions and jurisdiction of the United States of itself creates citizenship. This subject was elaborately considered by Assistant Vice-chancellor SANDFORD in Lynch v. Clarke, found in the first volume of his reports. [1 Sandf. 583.] In that case one Julia Lynch, born in New York in 1819, of alien parents, during their temporary sojourn in that city, returned with them the same year to their native country and always resided their afterwards. It was held that she was a citizen of the United States. After an exhaustive examination of the law the vice-chancellor said that he entertained no doubt that every person born within the dominions and allegiance of the United States, whatever the situation of his parents, was a natural-born citizen, and added that this was the general understanding of the legal profession, and the universal impression of the public mind.
More recent federal cases expressly recognize the principle explained in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century cases that one born in the United States and under its jurisdiction, even when one or both parents were “aliens,” is considered a citizen of the United States by birth, and thus a “natural born” citizen of the United States. The court in Dos Reis ex rel. Camara v. Nicolls, for example, accepted the findings of fact that “The relator was born in the City of Fall River, Massachusetts, on December 31, 1921. His father was a native and citizen of Portugal, and his mother was a native of Brazil,” and that, as found by the Commissioner of Immigration and Naturalization, affirming the decision of the Board of Special Inquiry, “that the relator was a natural-born citizen....” In Loo Goon Hop v. Dulles, the court found that a person “having been born in this country,” without any reference to, finding, or identification of the citizenship of that person’s parents, is a “natural born citizen of the United States.” In Yamauchi v. Rogers, the federal court in reciting “findings of fact and conclusions of law,” found that the plaintiff, born in California of a “Japanese national” who had married another “Japanese national,” “is a natural born citizen of the United States....” In Diaz-Salazar v. INS, the court there noted that children born in the United States, even to an “illegal” (or undocumented) alien father, “are natural-born citizens of the United States.” Similarly, in Mustata v. U.S Department of Justice, the United States Court of Appeals, in reciting the facts of the case, noted: “Petitioners Marian and Lenuta Mustata are citizens of Romania. At the time of their petition, they resided in Michigan with their two minor children, who are natural born citizens of the United States.” In 2008, a U.S. district court discussed the concept of “natural born” citizenship specifically with respect to the eligibility to be President as applying, since the founding of the Nation, to all who were born in and subject to the jurisdiction of the United States:
Those born “in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” U.S. Const., amend. XIV, have been considered American citizens under American law in effect since the time of the founding, United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649, 674-75, 18 S.Ct. 456, 42 L.Ed. 890 (1898), and thus eligible for the presidency, see, e.g., Schneider v. Rusk, 377 U.S. 163, 165, 84 S.Ct. 1187, 12 L.Ed.2d 218 (1964)(dicta).
Similarly, in dismissing an eligibility case concerning President Obama’s birth in Hawaii, a state appellate court in Indiana, after a thorough review of federal case law, concluded that anyone born in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction, regardless of the citizenship of that person’s parents, was a “natural born” citizen eligible to be President:
Based on the language of Article II, Section 1, Clause 4 and the guidance provided by Wong Kim Ark, we conclude that persons born within the borders of the United States are “natural born Citizens” for Article II, Section 1 purposes, regardless of the citizenship of their parents. Just as a person “born within the British dominions [was] a natural born-born subject” at the time of the framing of the U.S. Constitution, so too were those “born in the allegiance of the United States [ ] natural-born citizens.”
The constitutional history, the nearly unanimous consensus of legal and constitutional scholars, and the consistent, relevant case law thus indicate that every child born in and subject to the jurisdiction of the United States (that is, not children of diplomatic personnel representing a foreign nation or military troops in hostile occupation), is a native born U.S. citizen and thus a “natural born Citizen” eligible to be President under the qualifications clause of the Constitution, regardless of the nationality or citizenship of one’s parents. The legal issues regarding “natural born” citizenship and birth within the United States, without regard to lineage or ancestral bloodline, have been well settled in this country for more than a century, and such concepts date back to, and even pre-date, the founding of the nation. The weight of more recent federal cases, as well as the majority of scholarship on the subject, also indicates that the term “natural born citizen” would most likely include, as well as native born citizens, those born abroad to U.S. citizen-parents, at least one of whom had previously resided in the United States, or those born abroad to one U.S. citizen parent who, prior to the birth, had met the requirements of federal law for physical presence in the country.
here's a link to the most recent congressional research service's report on eligibility. it specifically talks about birthers' interpretation of minor v. happersett.
Congressional Research Service – Report on Obama’s Eligibility « Native and Natural Born Citizenship Explored (http://nativeborncitizen.wordpress.com/2010/11/05/congressional-research-service-report-on-obamas-eligibility/ - broken link)
What it really says is that they have no idea if Obama is really eligible or not. It specifically states that there is no "vetting" of the candidates prior to the election. So all in all, it says you can lie and nobody will ever know.
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