On "Birthers," Heed "Radio Patriot," Not Glenn Beck

The logical conclusion is that there is SOMETHING on the document that Obama does not want to share with the American people. Even the Beckster should realize that!

Glenn Beck is an Obama critic, but he's not a "birther" and ridicules "birthers" as the dumbest of the dumb and even helpful to Obama. "Radio Patriot" Andrea Shea King, a "birther," knows better.

World Net Daily's Drew Zahn, "Glenn Beck on birther issue: 'Dumbest thing I've ever heard'" (January 4, 2009) (http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=120992):

"On the air today, popular radio host Glenn Beck mocked 'birthers' and claimed there is a concerted campaign to get those questioning Barack Obama's constitutional eligibility onto the airwaves – a strategy Beck said would actually benefit Obama.

"'There's always games being played behind the scenes at a talk radio show,' Beck said. 'Rush has always called them seminar callers. But instead of being coy with the seminar callers or with you, I'm just going to expose the game that is going on. Today there is a concerted effort on all radio stations to get birthers on the air.'

"'I have to tell you, are you working for the Barack Obama administration?' Beck scoffed. 'I mean, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.'"

This morning on "Fox & Friends" there was a report that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt really died of a brain tumor, not a stroke, and his brain tumor was concealed for political purposes.

Beck calls radical Obamaton and ACORN 8 leader his "Rosa Parks," so his own capacity for "dumbness" is not in doubt.

Beck just proved that again this year by joining the big dog at Fox News, Bill O'Reilly, in mocking the "birthers."

I don't know where Obama was born, but I believe that "birthers" are right to respect the United States Constitution and demand proof that Obama is eligible to be President and the burden of proof on that issue belongs on Obama.

In 2008 John McCain quickly produced his birth certificate, but Obama still has not done so.

Obama's refusal to produce his birth certificate is NOT proof that he was born in Kenya, but it IS a strong sign that he's hiding SOMETHING.

"The ongoing dialogue then spun off into ridicule as Beck caricatured those who question the sitting president's eligibility with straw-man arguments reminiscent of jibes made by Obama's apologists in other news outlets.

"Beck defined birthers as people who believe Obama was born in Kenya or other foreign country, was raised as a Manchurian candidate and somehow brainwashed Hillary Clinton into not exposing his fraud. According to Beck's running joke, birthers believe someone – maybe Obama's KGB 'control' – preemptively placed Obama's birth announcement in 1961 Hawaiian newspapers with a 'roadmap' of getting an African man into office.

"As for Obama producing a long-form birth certificate to actually prove his place of birth, Beck questioned, 'Why do that when these people ["birthers"] are so discrediting themselves?'"

But, as Zahn put it: "The 'certification of live birth' posted online and widely touted as 'Obama's birth certificate' does not in any way prove he was born in Hawaii, since the same 'short-form' document is easily obtainable for children not born in Hawaii. The true 'long-form" birth certificate – which includes information such as the name of the birth hospital and attending physician – is the only document that can prove Obama was born in Hawaii, but to date he has not permitted its release for public or press scrutiny."

Scrutiny of Obama (in sharp contrast to Sarah Palin) is something that the liberal media establishment avoided and Fox News did not do nearly well enough.

Perhaps Beck and O'Reilly mock the "birthers" because they too would be embarrassed if the true "long form" birth certificate were made public and contained any significant information that would bear on either Obama's eligibility or suitability to be President of the United States. (It was not until long after Obama was inaugurated that those two Fox News hosts focused on The New York Times killing an Obama/ACORN expose on October 21, 2008, even though I reported it on the Internet the next day.)

"The radio host further argued that by distracting the public from actionable issues, 'birthers' have become 'a dream come true' for Obama, an ideal situation akin to the fantasies of adolescent boys after Hollywood bombshells.

"'Barack Obama looks at the birthers as Megan Fox,' Beck said, referring to the star and sex symbol of the popular 'Transformers' films."

Message to Beck: As a faithful student of community organizer Saul Alinsky, Obama has followed his rules for radicals. Like a faithful Alinskyite, you too ridicule the "birthers." But ridicule is not a substitute for Obama's original birth certificate.

"'Birthers'...reflect a far greater diversity of opinion than is assumed by Beck's characterization. For example, while the term has been applied to anyone questioning Obama's eligibility to serve as president under the Constitution's 'natural born citizen' clause, many 'birthers' don't doubt Obama's Hawaiian birth, but instead take issue with his father's foreign citizenship.

"While other top radio hosts, including Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Mark Levin and Lou Dobbs, have all said unequivocally and publicly that the Obama eligibility issue is legitimate and worthy, a few – including Beck and fellow Fox TV host Bill O'Reilly – have taken the position that the issue is, in O'Reilly's words, 'bogus.' Both Beck and O'Reilly cite the contemporaneous appearance of birth announcements in two Honolulu newspapers as prima facie evidence Obama was born in Hawaii and 'birthers' are conspiracy nuts.

"However, what neither talk host realizes is that newspaper birth announcements are not placed by parents phoning their local paper with the good news that they had a child. Rather, as WND has reported based on interviews with the two Hawaii papers involved, the Obama newspaper birth announcements stemmed from information automatically sent to the papers by Hawaii's Department of Health upon the state's issuance of a 'Certification of Live Birth,' which, as WND has also reported, is considered insufficient on its own to positively document the president's birthplace.

"Many people remain unaware that a child does not even have to be born in Hawaii to receive a 'Certification of Live Birth – that's the 'short form' that provides no hospital name, delivering physician or any of the other information that traditionally appears on a legitimate birth certificate. And yet the 'short form' COLB is the one and only piece of evidence the White House has cited in defending its assertion Obama was born in Hawaii.

"Hawaiian law specifically allows 'an adult or the legal parents of a minor child' to apply to the health department and, upon unspecified proof, be given the birth document.

"The only requirement for proof cited in the law doesn't address the birth of the child either, just 'that the legal parents of such individual while living without Territory or State of Hawaii had declared the Territory or State of Hawaii as their legal residence for at least one year immediately preceding the birth or adoption of such child.'

"Demand the truth by joining the petition campaign to make President Obama reveal his long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate!

"And since Obama's long-form birth certificate remains locked away from public view and sealed by privacy laws, no brainwashing device – such as Beck alluded to in his program – would be necessary to keep Hillary Clinton from discovering the contents of Obama's original birth certificate."

The logical conclusion is that there is SOMETHING in the document that Obama does not want to share with the American people.

"Obama's birth papers...aren't the only piece of the sitting president's past that Obama has refused to reveal.

"As WND has reported, other documentation not yet available includes Obama's kindergarten records, Punahou school records, Occidental College records, Columbia University records, Columbia thesis, Harvard Law School records, Harvard Law Review articles, scholarly articles from the University of Chicago, passport, medical records, files from his years as an Illinois state senator, his Illinois State Bar Association records, any baptism records and his adoption records."

Who really thinks there's nothing there that might reasonably influence voters if known?

Beck, who last year publicly stated that Obama is racist, now wants to challenge Obama only on his policies and actions.

Beck: "Why don't we go after the things that are provable, after the things that actually you need to stop right now? And if you want to argue, then let's argue based in fact, based on things that are provable and true. And what do you say? Do you want to argue the Constitution? Good. Let's show the number of people in Congress and in the Senate that don't even read the Constitution – can't tell you right now if healthcare is even in the Constitution. Let's talk to the scholars. Let's talk to the average Joe that understands this isn't in the Constitution. Let's argue the Constitution on the laws and the systems that they are building today. Instead of arguing the Constitution and whether or not he was born in America, why don't we argue the constitutionality of a little known thing called czars and the power that these people have?"

Second, we need to expose the truth about the Obama/ACORN relationship that helps explain why Obama appointed all those "czars."

Third, Marcel Reid is an ardent Obama supporter with personal and radical political agendas and not a "Rosa Parks.

"Radio Patriot" Andrea Shea King surely is disappointed with the Beckster ridiculing "birthers."

"Radio Patriot," in "The Lamestream Media Is Chewing Towels" (December 4, 2009) (http://radiopatriot.wordpress.com/2009/12/04/the-lamestream-media-is-chewing-towels/):

"What toute la monde is chewing dishtowels about this morning ranges from 'Sarah’s a birther!' to 'It’s a reasonable question'. But it’s one that the mainstream media won’t — can’t — touch with a ten foot pole.

"As my show producer Dave said, they’re in quandary — “They can’t take this opportunity to smash Palin once again for fear of reporting on the birth certificate story. They’ve got the club in their hand but they can’t use it.”

"Pinch is half insane this morning. If Palin had come out and said ‘I believe in flying saucers’, they’d report that in a hot second, but they can’t touch this — you know they’re banging their heads on the edge of their desks. They can’t write this story — cannot take this opportunity to smash Palin. This birth certificate/eligibility issue is a no-fly zone.

"And they like to paint her as stupid? I’m laughing out loud. Dumb like a fox. She’s placed this issue squarely on the front page of controversy. Where it needs to be."

"Anyone who has read my blogs or tuned in to my radio program knows I’ve been asking ‘who the heck is Barack Hussein Obama‘ ever since he first appeared on the national radar screen. And here’s why:

His childhood mentor was Frank Davis Marshall, who spied on U.S. military installations in Hawaii for the Soviet Union; edited a communist newspaper; authored pronographic novels; and wrote poetry in praise of Joseph Stalin.

BHO promised t[r]ansparency in government, but has spent over a million dollars in legal fees hiding information that would determine his Constitutional eligibility to be President.

He has produced no legitimate birth certificate which would indicate his place of birth, the attending physician, and any other pertinent information found on your or my birth certificate.

He is a president who refused to intercept or inspect a North Korean ship virtually certain to be carrying weapons of mass destruction to Burma.

A president who wants to cancel all missile defense while rogue nations are developing long-range ballistic missiles. An American president who blames the violence in Mexico on America.

A Commander in Chief who claims to have been unaware that Air Force One was taken on a terrifying, low-level 'photo-op' over Manhattan. And do we really know who was on-board that aircraft during the flyover joyride?

A president who berates American CEOs for flying in private planes at private expense on company business, but whose wife spends hundreds of thousands of tax payer dollars flying to Paris for a shopping spree.

A president who promised a transparent administration but requires all questions be screened before impromptu appearances.

A man who freely admits his energy policies are designed to bankrupt the American coal industry.

A president who has presided over the loss of 14.7 + million jobs and whose energy policy will cause the loss of another million jobs.

A president whose energy policy will increase the average American utility bills by over $2,000 a year, in the middle of the Great Recession.

A man about whom liberal journalist Tom Brokaw said, 'There’s a lot about him we don’t know'… just one week before the election. "But someone knows who he is.

Someone engineered legal challenges to all of his election opponents for the State Senate and had them disqualified.

Someone straightened and leveled his path to the U.S. Senate when a Democrat Judge made public the child custody records of his Republican opponent.

When he was a candidate for the U.S. Senate, someone arranged for him to speak at the 2004 Democratic National Convention

Someone saw to it that all of his records were sealed, at home and abroad Someone assembled the massive organization for his run for Presidency

"Someone knows all about him. And it for sure isn’t us. "But we’re disparaged as 'Birthers' by hypocrites who 'won’t go there', yet still ask why it is we know so little about Obama; Conspiracy Freaks by those who are simply ignorant of the facts; and 'Trolls”' by self-appointed 'betters' simply for asking."

What might the phrase “natural-born citizen” of the United States imply under the U.S. Constitution? The phrase has always been obscure due to the lack of any single authoritative source to confer in order to understand the condition of citizenship the phrase recognizes. Learning what the phrase might have meant following the Declaration of Independence, and the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, requires detective work. As with all detective work, eliminating the usual suspects from the beginning goes a long way in quickly solving a case.

What Natural-Born Citizen Could Not Mean

Could a natural-born citizen simply mean citizenship due to place of birth?

Unlikely in the strict sense because we know one can be native born and yet not a native born citizen of this country. There were even disputes whether anyone born within the District of Columbia or in the territories were born citizens of the United States (they were generally referred to as “inhabitants” instead.) National Government could make no “territorial allegiance” demands within the several States because as Madison explained it, the “powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.”

Jurisdiction over citizenship via birth within the several States was part of the “ordinary course of affairs” of the States that only local laws could affect. Early acts of Naturalization recognized the individual State Legislatures as the only authority who could make anyone a citizen of a State. Framer James Wilson said, “a citizen of the United States is he, who is a citizen of at least some one state in the Union.” These citizens of each State were united together through Article IV, Sec. II of the U.S. Constitution, and thus, no act of Congress was required to make citizens of the individual States citizens of the United States.

Prior to the Revolutionary War place of birth within the dominions of the crown was the principle criterion for establishing perpetual allegiance and citizenship. After independence each State was free to establish their own maxims on the subject. James Madison’s own State of Virginia adopted a birthright law authored by Thomas Jefferson in 1779 that recognized parentage (citizenship of father) in determining citizenship of the child:

[A]ll infants, wheresoever born, whose father, if living, or otherwise, whose mother was a citizen at the time of their birth, or who migrate hither, their father, if living, or otherwise, their mother becoming a citizen, or who migrate hither without father or mother, shall be deemed citizens of this Commonwealth until they relinquish that character, in manner as hereinafter expressed; and all others not being citizens of any, of the United States of America, shall be deemed aliens.
Some States made citizenship conditional on either parent in terms of their citizenship, such as Kentucky: “[E]very child, wherever born, whose father or mother was or shall be a citizen of Kentucky at the birth of such child, shall be deemed citizens of that State.” One common law found in a number of States that defined those born as citizens read, “All persons born in this state, and resident within it, except the children of transient aliens, and of alien public ministers and consuls, etc.”

The State of Connecticut adopted a law that read, “All persons born in this State … except aliens, paupers, and fugitives from justice or service, are and shall be deemed to be citizens of this State, owing it allegiance and entitled to receive its protection, until they shall have voluntarily withdrawn from its limits and become incorporated into some other State or sovereignty as members thereof.” States that were slow in enacting laws over acquiring citizenship through birth forced courts to adjudicate citizenship disputes under common law rules.

Could a natural-born citizen perhaps be synonymous with the British term “natural-born subject”?

It is very doubtful the framers adopted the doctrine found under the old English doctrine of “natural-born subject.” The British doctrine allowed for double allegiances, something the founders considered improper and dangerous. The American naturalization process required all males to twice renounce all allegiances with other governments and pledge their allegiance to this one before finally becoming a citizen.

Framer Rufus King said allegiance to the United States depended on whether a person is a “member of the body politic.” King says no nation should adopt or naturalize a person of another society without the consent of that person. The reason? Because “he ought not silently to be embarrassed with a double allegiance.” House Report No. 784, dated June 22, 1874, stated, “The United States have not recognized a ‘double allegiance.’ By our law a citizen is bound to be ‘true and faithful’ alone to our government.”

Under the old English common law doctrine of natural-born subject, birth itself was an act of naturalization that required no prior consent or demanded allegiance to the nation in advance. Furthermore, birth was viewed as enjoining a “perpetual allegiance” upon all that could never be severed or altered by any change of time or act of anyone. England’s “perpetual allegiance” due from birth was extremely unpopular in this country; often referred to as absurd barbarism, or simply perpetual nonsense. America went to war with England over the doctrine behind “natural-born subject” in June of 1812.

Because Britain considered all who were born within the dominions of the crown to be its natural-born subjects even after becoming naturalized citizens of the United States, led to British vessels blockading American ports. Under the British blockade, every American ship entering or leaving was boarded by soldiers in search of British born subjects. At least 6,000 American citizens who were found to be British natural-born subjects were pressed into military service on behalf of the British Empire, and thus, the reason we went to war.

Fourteenth Amendment

Whatever might had been the correct understanding of “natural-born citizen” prior to 1866, the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment certainly changes the view because for the first time we have a written national rule declaring who are citizens through birth or naturalization. Who may be born citizens is conditional upon being born “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States - a condition not required under the common law. The legislative definition of “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” was defined as “Not owing allegiance to anybody else.”

This national rule prevents us from interpreting natural-born citizen under common law rules because it eliminates the possibility of a child being born with more than one allegiance.

The primary author of the citizenship clause, Sen. Jacob M. Howard, said the “word jurisdiction, as here employed, ought to be construed so as to imply a full and complete jurisdiction on the part of the United States, coextensive in all respects with the constitutional power of the United States, whether exercised by Congress, by the executive, or by the judicial department; that is to say, the same jurisdiction in extent and quality as applies to every citizen of the United States now.”

United States Attorney General, George Williams, whom was a U.S. Senator aligned with Radical Republicans during the drafting of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1866, ruled in 1873 the word “jurisdiction” under the Fourteenth Amendment “must be understood to mean absolute and complete jurisdiction, such as the United States had over its citizens before the adoption of this amendment.” He added, “Political and military rights and duties do not pertain to anyone else.”

Essentially then, “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” means the same jurisdiction the United States exercises over its own citizens, i.e., only citizens of the United States come within its operation since citizens of the United States do not owe allegiance to some other nation at the same time they do the United States. This makes a great deal of sense for the time because there was a great deal of controversy over conflicts arising from double allegiances.

Just as a person cannot be naturalized and subject to the jurisdiction of the United States while owing allegiance to another nation - neither can anyone born. Why would “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” be any different with persons born since this jurisdiction equally applies to persons born or naturalized? If allegiance simply meant location on American soil, then what was the purpose of having aliens renounce their allegiance to other countries and pledge their allegiance to this one for purposes of becoming naturalized? Perhaps because locality itself was never enough to confer allegiance and citizenship?

It is worth noting that wives and children were never naturalized separately but became naturalized through the father/husband. Because “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” requires not owing allegiance to any other nation, and because the nation does not recognize double allegiances that can be created at common law, narrows the possibilities to what “natural-born citizen” can mean.

Natural-Born Citizen Defined

One universal point most all early publicists agreed on was natural-born citizen must mean one who is a citizen by no act of law. If a person owes their citizenship to some act of law (naturalization for example), they cannot be considered a natural-born citizen. This leads us to defining natural-born citizen under the laws of nature - laws the founders recognized and embraced.

Under the laws of nature, every child born requires no act of law to establish the fact the child inherits through nature his/her father’s citizenship as well as his name (or even his property) through birth. This law of nature is also recognized by law of nations. Sen. Howard said the citizenship clause under the Fourteenth Amendment was by virtue of “natural law and national law.”

The advantages of Natural Law is competing allegiances between nations are avoided, or at least with those nations whose custom is to not make citizens of other countries citizens without their consent. Any alternations or conflicts due to a child’s natural citizenship are strictly a creature of local municipal law. In the year 1866, the United States for the first time adopted a local municipal law under Sec. 1992 of U.S. Revised Statutes that read: “All persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are declared to be citizens of the United States.”

Rep. John A. Bingham commenting on Section 1992 said it means “every human being born within the jurisdiction of the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty is, in the language of your Constitution itself, a natural born citizen.” (Cong. Globe, 39th, 1st Sess., 1291 (1866))

Bingham subscribed to the same view as most everyone in Congress at the time that in order to be born a citizen of the United States one must be born within the allegiance of the Nation. Bingham had explained years earlier that to be born within the allegiance of the United States the parents, or more precisely, the father, must not owe allegiance to some other foreign sovereignty (remember the U.S. abandoned England’s “natural allegiance” doctrine). This of course, explains why emphasis of not owing allegiance to anyone else was the affect of being subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.

It should be noted this allegiance due under England’s common law and American law are of two different species. Under the common law one owed a personal allegiance to the King as an individual upon birth. Under the American system there was no individual ruler to owe a personal allegiance to.

The constitutional requirement for the President of the United States to be a natural-born citizen had one purpose according to St. George Tucker:

That provision in the constitution which requires that the president shall be a native-born citizen (unless he were a citizen of the United States when the constitution was adopted,) is a happy means of security against foreign influence, which, wherever it is capable of being exerted, is to he dreaded more than the plague. The admission of foreigners into our councils, consequently, cannot be too much guarded against; their total exclusion from a station to which foreign nations have been accustomed to, attach ideas of sovereign power, sacredness of character, and hereditary right, is a measure of the most consummate policy and wisdom. …The title of king, prince, emperor, or czar, without the smallest addition to his powers, would have rendered him a member of the fraternity of crowned heads: their common cause has more than once threatened the desolation of Europe. To have added a member to this sacred family in America, would have invited and perpetuated among us all the evils of Pandora’s Box. Charles Pinckney in 1800 said the presidential eligibility clause was designed “to insure … attachment to the country.” President Washington warned a “passionate attachment of one nation for another, produces a variety of evils,” and goes on to say:

Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest, in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter, without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation, of privileges denied to others, which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained; and by exciting jealousy, ill- will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld.

And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens, (who devote themselves to the favorite nation,) facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearance of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.
What better way to insure attachment to the country then to require the President to have inherited his American citizenship through his American father and not through a foreign father. Any child can be born anywhere in the country and removed by their father to be raised in his native country. The risks would be for the child to return in later life to reside in this country bringing with him foreign influences and intrigues, and thus, making such a citizen indistinguishable from a naturalized citizen.

Therefore, we can say with confidence that a natural-born citizen of the United States means those persons born whose father the United States already has an established jurisdiction over, i.e., born to father’s who are themselves citizens of the United States. A person who had been born under a double allegiance cannot be said to be a natural-born citizen of the United States because such status is not recognized (only in fiction of law). A child born to an American mother and alien father might be said to be a citizen of the United States by some affirmative act of law (if there was one) but never entitled to be a natural-born citizen because through laws of nature the child inherits the condition of their father~~~~~~~~~

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