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To: Verginius Rufus
The problem with insisting now on the original rule that both parents must be citizens at the person's birth is that there have been exceptions which passed unchallenged at the time (Chester Arthur for VP and for President, Agnew for VP). The public seems to think that anyone born in the US is a "natural born citizen" so it's going to be hard for a few constitutional experts to set them straight.

Nice try, but apparently Agnew was NBC and the 1920 Census data was in error. While Arthur's status was not generally known. It was known or at least thought (correctly) that the was born in Vermont, It was also known that his mother was born in the US, and that his father had been here, or in Canada, for a good long time before his birht, and was a citizen at the time of his selection to VP. What was not known was that his father was not naturalized until well after Chester's birth(about 14 years afterwards) The latter fact was only recently unearthed.

Since "the public" did not know his status, how can you say they approved?

177 posted on 04/05/2010 3:09:28 PM PDT by El Gato ("The second amendment is the reset button of the US constitution"-Doug McKay)
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To: El Gato
Probably most people in the US in 1880 were oblivious to any legal issues about Chester Arthur's eligibility, and I don't recall anyone in 1968 saying Agnew wasn't eligible. That it wasn't an issue doesn't mean the public approved--they didn't weigh in.

I wish Obama wasn't President and I'm ready to rank him as the worst President in history, but the idea that he could be removed from office because some legal experts show that he doesn't meet the 1787 meaning of "natural born citizen" is beyond the realm of possibility. The public thinks he's a natural born citizen by virtue of being born in Hawaii (whether or not that's really where he was born), and he definitely got a majority of the electoral votes in 2008. He'd have to do something much worse than the Watergate coverup to be impeached and removed. Michael Steele is bent on ensuring the Democrats keep control of Congress so he won't have to worry about a Republican majority next year. We are stuck with him.

181 posted on 04/05/2010 4:06:31 PM PDT by Verginius Rufus
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