Posted on 07/30/2009 12:56:51 AM PDT by MissTickly
Let us assume that Barry Soetoro is not qualified to be President. In other words, let us assume, for the purposes of argument, that it can be proven that Barry was born outside of the United States or its outlying territories.
What are you going to do about it? You will file a suit saying that he was not constitutionally qualified to be the President. There are three criteria that must be satisfied for him to be constitutionally qualified:
The term "years of age" is not, to my knowledge, defined in either Constitutional or Statutory Law. (It might be, but I'm not aware of it). So a common-law definition would be applied (as in the anniversary of a person's birth).
The term "residence" is not defined in the Constitution, but it IS defined in law. 8 U.S.C. §1101:
(33) The term "residence" means the place of general abode; the place of general abode of a person means his principal, actual dwelling place in fact, without regard to intent.
So any common-law definitions of the term really don't matter. This statutory definition takes precedence.
Likewise, the terms "natural born citizen" and "citizen by birth" have been Statutorily defined...they have been so defined since the first Naturalization Act of 1790. I've repeated those definitions multiple times in the past few days, so I won't bother you with repeating them again. But, as with the term "residence", the statute takes precedence over any common-law references. The only question comes into play if the statute is offensive to the constitution. As shown in Marbury, the courts have invested themselves with the right to determine if a statute is unconstitutional (you may or may not agree with that principle, but just try to change it).
Getting back to this court case that you're going to file, you're going to have to assert that he was not a citizen of the US by birth. Showing the Kenyan Birth Certificate is only the first step. You're also going to have to demonstrate that he does not meet any of the other criteria in the statutory definition of a "citizen by birth." Again, I have quoted that entire section before, so I won't burden you with that. You can read it for yourself here if you're interested in reviewing it.
The alternative to working within the statute is to assert that this entire section of the INA is unconstitutional and should be disregarded in determining whether Ø is a citizen by birth (or, for that matter, a citizen in any regard whatsoever). If you wanted to make this a case of constitutional law, you could cite Vattel, but the way you'd do it is to use Vattel as substantiation of "original intent" and to show that this section of the INA comes nowhere near meeting the intent of the framers when they discussed "natural born citizen" status, and, thus, is unconstitutional. I think you could potentially have a really good shot at that, considering the verbiage within Article 2 and the verbiage in the 14th Amendment.
If section 1301 of the INA is thrown out as being unconstitutional, the only alternative is then to use Vattel's definition of "natural born." But until that time, you've got to use applicable statutory law in defining your terms. Title 8 of the US Code (i.e., the immigration and nationality act) is applicable, as it deals with immigration, naturalization, AND nationality.
Or you could do it the simple way: you, as the plaintiff produce Ø's Kenyan Birth Certificate, you, as the plaintiff, show that his father was an alien and his mother didn't meet the residency requirements to pass on citizenship at the time of his birth, and *boom* -- he's not only not a "natural born citizen", he's not a citizen in any fashion (unless he produces a naturalization certificate...which he doesn't have). In theory, such a case wouldn't even have to go to the SCOTUS to be resolved; it could be resolved at the district court level.
That's why I prattle on about statutes...because they ARE pertinent when implementing Article II Section 1.
Barry is prima facie unqualified because he claims a foreign father and foreign citizenship at birth. Your scenario is based on a faulty premise that encompasses statist, unConstitutional and therefore anti-American assumptions.
Statutory law does not take precedent over the Constitution.
And no statutory law defines “natural born citizen” anyway. (The section of the 1790 law you cite was repealed; presumably because someone (John Jay) pointed out they could not redefine terms in the Constitution.) The INA statutes have no bearing on the issue at hand.
Your attempt to elevate statutes to something that can redefine language and vitiate the Constitution is of a piece with your conflation earlier of “law of nations” and “international law”... the former being of a piece with and an outgrowth of natural rights, the concept on which this country was founded... the latter being a “League of Nations”-type concept where our rights can be redefined and and eliminated by by politicians or foreign judges.
You are prattling on about whether or not Obama was naturalized at birth... but that isn’t the issue. The issue is whether he is indigenous to America, a natural-born citizen.
Natural-born citizenship is part of our natural rights and doesn’t have anything to do with naturalization statutes. You are either intentionally obfuscating, or you are just so predisposed to loathe the natural rights of human beings that you have rendered yourself incoherent and irrelevant.
I have not received a response to my revised, simplified request yet, and this in turn makes me concerned that were I to make my request more detailed and specific that they would treat it any better than what they are doing now.
I therefore made some (expensive) telephone calls for the purpose of trying to find out the answer to the revised simple natural born citizen criteria question, without mentioning any person (specifically without mentioning Obama or Fukino).
One one call I spent about 25 minutes with a woman. It turned out that her first answer seemed, at least to me, somewhat off the cuff and someone’s own opinion. First, I stated the question very carefully. Upon hearing the question she needed more clarification on the question which I gave. Then she intermittently put me on hold and finally gave me what sounded like an informal personal opinion which was that Barack Obama was a natural born citizen because he was born in Hawaii. Obviously this was not responsive to my question which did not mention Obama at all, and told her so. This got the conversation off on a tangent about how good Barack Obama was, and that his mother was definitely an American citizen and that he was definitely born in Hawaii.
I restated the original question and was asked what was so important about it. This got the discussion off on the tangent of what the Constitution means by “natural born citizen.” The woman stated — I paraphrase — that her commonsense definition of the term natural born citizen was that the person must be born in the United States. I mentioned the importance of the original interpretation of the Constitution and the significance of Vattel’s contemporary definition (including that both parents must be citizens) given that the Constitution did not define the term natural born citizen. The woman insisted that that wording was not in the Constitution and therefore not valid. She went on to say that Obama was an American citizen and good president doing good work for the country and trying his best, and that misguided and vicious people that did not like his politics were trying to say he was unfit to be president.
I told her that I was not calling for a discussion of anyone’s personal politics— hers, mine, Dr. Fukino’s, or Obama’s. I was merely trying to get a factual answer to the original factual and impersonal question.
Eventually she told me that she would investigate the matter further and get a response to me later.
The woman then told me that their government office has been receiving many calls from impolite and rude people who were frequently demanding copies of Obama’s birth certificate. She said that it was very trying to deal with those people and that it was difficult to deal civilly with such callers. I told her I understood and did not approve of those callers either.
I think the bottom line is that most of the government workers are not really legally tuned in to the intricacies of the Obama natural born citizen controversy. Their reaction to any question surrounding the controversy tends to be personal and emotional. Perhaps many of them regard any skepticism concerning Obama as a personal attack on their own personal and deeply held political beliefs. This in turn prevents those of us who have dispassionate factual questions concerning Obama with legitimate concerns from being paid attention to given all the noise on both sides of the issues. It may be beneficial to keep these considerations in mind when trying to get information from such government officials and employees...
In handling mules sticks and carrots are both needed. When bureaucrats start acting like fellow rational, compassionate humans rather than mules, surely then the Messiah will have arrived at the hotel just down the street.
While I agree with that, convincing a court is a different issue altogether.
(The section of the 1790 law you cite was repealed; presumably because someone (John Jay) pointed out they could not redefine terms in the Constitution.)
The 1790 law was replaced with a 1795 law which was replaced with a 1798 law which was replaced with an 1802 law. Sorry.
You are prattling on about whether or not Obama was naturalized at birth...
No, I have never stated that. I was prattling on regarding whether Obama qualified as a citizen at birth. One can be either a citizen at birth or one becomes a naturalized citizen. There are no other options for citizenship. If you were to actually manage to read Vattel, you would find that he is in complete concurrence with this.
I don't mind you disagreeing with my statements, but it sure would be nice if you could disagree with something that I actually wrote vice something that you imagine that I wrote.
Don't know if it's utter disrespect or lack of reading comprehension that causes you to do so, thus I won't draw any conclusions.
This is such an incredible tale. Wow.
We are on to something. Monday’s release gives us something to work with. Now they HAVE to define natural born citizen. Because he’s been declared one.
If you need two parents, we know his LEGAL FATHER is not who we thought. If a father was even listed on the certificate.
If they say you need only one parent, well then we need the SCOTUS to step in and declare that is a correct interpretation.
And that’s another thought, without a father listed/declared. Can one parent transfer NBC?
Make sure you get answer to your question. And calling them was smart, it’s more difficult to parse words. But have a tape recorder ready when you do. If you can’t arrange for recording the call, have them put it in writing for the whole world to view.
Keep me posted FOR SURE.
ON the UIPA i posted for people to send today, I had added a question about who declared him a Natural Born Citizen. If it was no one that works in the department, it won’t be their policy to disclose. But we might find out another government official (even Obama, himself) declared it.
And then we can send an FOIA to that department asking for their criteria. Even if we end up sending one to the white house.=)
Maybe you could ask the same question when they get back to you?
If you actually manage to read Vattel, you would know that he discusses naturalization at birth. He cited the example of Britain, which had jus soli citizens — those were not “naturels ou indignes” aka “natural-born citizens.” As Vattel pointed out those citizens are considered naturalized at birth. See Book I, Chapter XIX, paragraph 214, last sentence.
Don’t know if it’s utter hatred of America or just rank ignorance and illiteracy fueling your remarks... but now that I’ve cured you of the latter, that leaves only the former as an option if you continue.
Hope this helps.
I should have added that the person I talked with ended up stating to me— once I told her that we just can’t plug in contemporary definitions into a two hundred year old document and get the original intent— that the Constitution should be regarded as “flexible” and that we should give Obama some “leeway” in regarding his citizenship, because “he’s lived in the United States for his whole life, and he is as American as you or I.”
Because it was off point to my goal I did not bother taking issue with this line of thought with her.
However I do sense that if her initial conjecture was correct (that the determination used to decide if Obama was a natural born citizen was that his original BC shows that he was born in Hawaii of at least one US citizen parent) that the ultimate decision would then logically hinge on the interpretation of the Constitutional term natural born citizen in court for a serious matter such as the validity of an order in the armed forces (or quo warranto, but not sure what the current status of that legal effort is). If a court got so far as to grant a subpoena for Obama’s BC to determine if both parents were US citizens, it would be a legal and finance world meltdown for the military and/or government as well as the stock markets, and that in turn is the serious reason why Obama is hanging tough on the BC release— to give as little legal leverage as possible to any legal challenge to his day-to-day authority. (One wonders if the succession Amendment would be invoked at the very instant any such subpoena were granted by any judge). Speculatively, this may be behind Obama’s first EO to seal his records... invoking national security being one more hoop that a lower court would have to jump through before release of the BC. The legal arguments then would become real chicken-and-egg, since how much national security does an EO protect if the chief executive is compromised by lack of elegibility? We would be seeing at a minimum Watergate redux once it were to get that far...
It is difficult to me to envision that Dr. Fukino (with her exclusive medical education and background) had much competent legal help in writing her July 27th statement, since the statement can be interpreted so ambiguously with regards to the natural born American citizen determination. Therefore it is somewhat difficult for me (though of course not by any means out of the question) to envision that Dr. Fukino had Vattel’s definition (two citizen parents) in mind when she made her statement in contrast to some more colloquial and more lenient understanding of the term, since most lay people (without legal background) don’t know Vattel and therefore are not attuned to the legal intricacies of who may or may not be a natural born citizen. I guess that leaves one with the conjecture that Dr. Fukino was just giving a somewhat knee-jerk reaction to all the callers that crashed her office’s telephones when the heat rose with the Obama BC issue around the time of the Cook v. Obama hearing before the July 16th dismissal.
This seems the simplest explanation to me. None of this precludes, of course, other and possibly more involved explanations. I also agree with MissTickly that the use of the term “vital records” in Dr. Fukino’s July 27th statement seems to indicate an amended BC. However, we still would not be able to get the details of any amendments given Hawaii privacy laws and Obama’s refusal to divulge his history, so that knowledge is not of itself very useful IMHO without further assistance from other avenues.
All this is somewhat speculative unless and until more information becomes available.
Speculation, however, does not prevent the public at large, led by Obama-friendly media, to presume Dr. Fukino is both a Constitutional Law expert and trier of fact on the matter of whether Obama is a natural born citizen and thus the issue is settled once and for all— a more responsible statement would have at least reduced legal ambiguity to a bare minimum or better yet avoided the question entirely since Dr. Fukino is IMHO not qualified or authorized to decide who is and who is not a natural born citizen for purposes of interpreting the Constitution. IMHO her statement gave a careful reader the impression that she is heavily politically biased in favor of Obama and used her government position to issue a statement that she felt would help Obama politically. Unfortunately the statement does not settle the issue and the her statement by contributing to the confusion rather than dispelling confusion ultimately serves to interfere with a proper authoritative and legally binding determination of the issue. We have enough unqualified people giving their opinions and views on whether Obama is a natural born citizen. It is an international disgrace that Americans and especially Americans in positions of public trust cannot collectively agree that openness and honesty is the best policy and continue to resort to diversionary tricks such as Dr. Fukino’s July 27th statement.
Fiat Lux!
Ah, I don’t think FUKINO did verify that he is a natural born citizen, I think someone else did. She doesn’t say SHE did in the press release. That’s why this is plan to follow:
First, through UIPA, we request this info:
“WHO has the authority to verify that a vital record maintained on file by the Hawai‘i State Department of Health satisfies the criteria that indicates that the owner of the record is a natural-born American citizen?”
Based on this answer, we file an Information request to the appropriate person (X) to get this info:
“Please send me an electronic copy of the written criteria that is used by (X) to declare an individual, based on their vital records, a natural-born American citizen.”
It could be that Obama declared HIMSELF natural born. We may have to file a FOIA request with to with the White House for the latter request.
What do you think?
RegulatorCountry was correct, I still have a job and have just returned to FR, but had decided that MarkoMalley’s intention is to confuse the issue with irrelevant quotations, and wasn't going to respond. My experience is that once someone uses inappropriate citations, they ignore objections to those and produce more, wasting time and creating confusion among readers.
'The Venus', 12 U.S. 253 (1814) is clearly one of the few circumstances in which a Justice defines the source of common law, and the Justice was John Marshall. That, as you pointed out, is the significance. To learn original intent, when a case specifically addressing natural born citizenship has never been heard, I'm guessing that The Venus will be cited. Besides, John Marshall such an elegant writer that I think anyone reading it will better understand why he chooses to educate us for posterity. He clearly realizes that the decisions of the young court were important.
Markomally quoted exactly one of the changed phrases in a Naturalization act, when it is entirely irrelevant, and implies as well something not true, that Congress had not changed the implication involving natural born citizens which was the reason the act was modified in 1795. Markomally sounds knowledgeable in his attempts at obfuscation, which suggests that he is other than confused.
I think for those of us who are not lawyers, the beautifully expressed reasoning in The Law of Nations will make sense to most. The issue is allegiance. Writing requirements for someone whose most important job is protecting the liberties our nation was created to grant, requirements which may survive forever, how would one try to insure the inner motivations of a candidate? Looking at his or her parents may seem too obvious, but I can think of no stronger guarantee that one could impose over centuries.
That parents be citizens seems so obvious that many can't grasp it's importance.
Curiously, that is just the clause used by the gaggle of Senators and academics rested on to argue that John McCain should be considered a natural born citizen. Of course, the congress cannot amend the constitution, so I suppose bills submitted, but not passed, were more to quiet representatives who might have actually read the constitution, and read the definition of natural born “about which there has never been doubt” in the hearings over the 14th Amendment.
Obama’s allegiance is the exactly the problem. His intention, stated, since Obama’s writings, whatever there is,have all been concealed, through the writings of some of his Czars, is to replace capitalism with whatever you want to call it - socialism, Marxism, statism. Little blood has been shed, but it seems likely to be shed, perhaps first in Honduras, as he has clearly indicated his preference for Chavez - yes Chavez because that is the strongman who will control Honduras. Israel is under siege from the most extreme of our pro-palistinian Arabists, and will be attacked as promised by Iran if they don't fight their former ally, the US.
These are the issues which concern me, not debating the typographical implications of a lower case “law of nations.”
We need to keep the objectives clear. Our constitution seems sound, if only we could impose its restrictions, created to protect us from government.
"The child of an alien, if born in the country, is as much a citizen as the natural born child of a citizen, and by operation of the same principle. "
The phrase, "as much a citizen" means that the person in question is "as much" a natural born citizen as a person who had two U.S. citizen parents.
"As much as" means "Equal To" and equal to means the very same.
Moreover, the Justices did not say "if born in the country, is as much a citizen as the natural born child of two citizens....."
Instead, they said "if born in the country, is as much a citizen as the natural born child of a citizen..."
Obama has one parent who was a citizen.
In fact, Vattel, as cited in the Venus case, made three classifications:
It's a real pity that Vattel didn't deal with the situation of children born to citizens born in a foreign country in this work, isn't it? Then we wouldn't have an argument, would we?
Don’t know if it’s utter hatred of America or just rank ignorance and illiteracy fueling your remarks... but now that I’ve cured you of the latter, that leaves only the former as an option if you continue.
Couldn't be illiteracy, so it must be a deep "über hatred" of America. Perhaps you could get some of your fellow militia patriots together to convene a common law grand jury and take action against me...that is if chem-trail spewing black helicopters with the chip-inserted MK-ULTRA conditioned pilots don't come and get you first.
need I say "/sarc"?
I disagree. I don’t think your reading of the phrase to is correct and there is no evidence that the Supreme Court has ever adopted such a position or for that matter any other court. If the Supreme Court had wanted to say that such a person is a “natural born citizen” it would have said so; instead it said that such a person is as much a “citizen” as a natural born person is. It thus deliberately contrasted the two different phrases. Your interpretation is strained.
Keep on hatin’...
& reread Book I, Chapter XIX, paragraph 214, last sentence to contemplate you complementary ignorance...
Since you just returned to FR, perhaps you forgot that it is considered proper etiquette around these parts to ping a person you mention in your post.
You accuse me of citing irrelevancies, presumably including the statutes I've quoted, as well as actually reading the SCOTUS cases you've cited. (if they were irrelevant then why in the world did you cite them to begin with?)
You seem to elevate Vattel as superior to statutory law, which is a bizarre concept that I can't picture any attorney even comprehending, much less wasting his time arguing about. But since you apparently like Vattel, you might consider this quote from Book 1 (§215):
It is asked whether the children born of citizens in a foreign country are citizens? The laws have decided this question in several countries, and their regulations must be followed…
Now I realize that you will disregard the above. And, in fact, I would imagine that you will not only disregard it, you will accuse me of obfuscating (doubtless behind my back -- as you have developed the habit of doing).
Global warming advocates don't let the facts get in the way of their arguments, so why should you?
You need to get your money back for the horrible job done by your ESL teacher. He or she obviously was not competent to teach basic grammar.
And I thought that my hatred was "über" hatred -- how in the world is that the complement of ignorance?
By the way, on the subject of discussion, you might want to keep reading...onto the first sentence of the next paragraph in the tome you constantly cite. 'Course that might be a little "inconvenient" for you.
Did you learn your rhetorical skills from Al Gore and the global warming crowd directly (or is it just a uncanny, coincidental similarity in style)?
utter
uber
Can you tell the difference?
There are different letters involved.
The subject was your false claim that Vattel does not discuss naturalization at birth, which he does in Book I, Chapter XIX, paragraph 214, last sentence.
But if you’re still working on the alphabet... take your time to catch up and admit your error/lie later.
It is asked whether the children born of citizens in a foreign country are citizens? The laws have decided this question in several countries, and their regulations must be followed…The British Nationality Act of 1948 says children born of their subjects in foreign countries are subjects. We must respect that by acknowledging Usurper Barry cannot be an indigenous American, ie a natural-born citizen.
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