posted by Anonymous. on Nov.15.2008 @ 12:33 pm Edit | Delete
I am a student of history, and I have researched this pretty well. The terms "natural born" appear only 1 time in the constitution. No where else does the requirement of a "grade" of citizenship come into play. All other consitutional requirements, outside of President, and Vice President, are available to Naturalized citizens. In order to understand the mindset of the Framers of the Constitution, you have to look at their other writings to develope an" opinion" of what they were thinking when they wrote the requirements.
I have only found 1 reference to the "Natural born" sentiment in a letter from John Jay to George Washington, insisting that the Commander in Chief of the military ( the President) had "singular loyalty" to the United States, and therefore must be Natural born.
Although none of the other Framers, or influential minds of the age wrote anything specific on the subject, their belief in the " singular loyalty theory" is evident throughout their writings, both published articles and archived letters.
They had just commited the largest usurpation of Governement in the history of the world , and it could not have been accomplished without educated, pensive, and ferocious patriotism. This would lead anyone who reads any of their writings to understand that not a SINGLE word was taken lightly, nor was their any duality in their meaning.
It is my understanding that the Supreme Court Justices are bound to interpret the Founding Fathers intent when they adjudicate a case that has no precedent. If that is the case, then there is no way anyone could come up with anything other than a firm belief in the "Singular Loyalty" opinion.
Jefferson,Hamilton, Frankilin, John Admas, Samual Adams, John Jay, George Washington, and a whole host of others are implicit in their beleifs.....One Nation......One Loyalty......... no Questions or "Ifs"
posted by Anonymous. on Nov.15.2008 @ 1:45 pm Edit | Delete
Let go out of the legal woods. Let think plain and simple.You do not have to be very smart or legally educated to understand this situation.
Let assume for a moment that Obama senior came to the University of Hawaii not from Kenya but from Iran. Then if we svae all other facts of Obama's story the same we would have a village in the middle of Iran populated by our Commander in Chief's grandmother, a few half brothers and countless uncles,aunts,cousins,nepews and other relatives. Moreover if we take off a road accident where his father died then a 70 something Obama senior himself could have a happy retirement in suburbs of Tehran.
It takes even less imagination to picture that in 2-3 years our President will face a tough choice of using military force aginst Iran, because those fanatics will not yield to nobody dveloping nuclear arms.
Questions:
1. Will an option to kill his dear father, his lovely mother and the rest of Obama gang make our President's decisionmaking process more complicated?
2. Will the United States be more vunerable if our Commander in Chief's close relatives will be living as hostages behind enemiy lines?
If you answer "No" on both questions then you are Osama bun Laden or Ahmadinejad.
To avoid such terrible situation, such obvious conflict of interests and such unhuman choices for our President the beloved Framers wisely included "natural born citizen" clause in our Constitution.
It is very simple: in order to not be in this so close to reality situation only a person born in the United States and having both parents who are naturally born citizens of our country themselves could be our President and Commanderr in Chief.
I agree that the POTUS should have that “singular loyalty.” But nothing, NOTHING, can stop another country from conferring citizenship on any of us. An enemy could confer citizenship on YOU right now and you could not stop it.
In citizenship law (I’ve read it but don’t know where to link to it right now), they make a HUGE distinction between citizenship being conferred on an American without his having to petition for it, and an American APPLYING of his own volition for citizenship of another country. The latter MAY be subject to losing his citizenship, but I believe it’s a case-by-case thing. In the early decades of the state of Israel, many American Jews jumped to join and become Israeli citizens, for two reasons: fear of another Holocaust one day, and also, believe it or not, to pay taxes to Israel to help out the fledgling state (a man told me he did it for that reason). None of those people lost their USA citizenship that I know of.
How soon we forget, foreign precedent has crept into, many decisions lately.