Obama's McCain resolution demands 'American' parents

Perhaps it's a good thing that the U.S. Senate didn't take up a resolution on Barack Obama's status as a "natural born Citizen" in 2008 – as members did for GOP candidate Sen. John McCain while both were seeking the U.S. presidency.

The Democrat might not have qualified under the requirements the Senate, including Obama, a co-sponsor and then-senator, put in the resolution, including the demand that the candidate have "American citizen" parents.

The candidates' circumstances were not the same: Questions were raised over McCain's eligibility under the Constitution's demand that a president be a "natural born Citizen," because he was born to American citizen military parents while they are on assignment overseas.

Be the first to get the new eligibility book signed by Jerome Corsi and help get TV commercials on the air to bust this issue wide open!

The specific allegations have been placed online by YouTube participate PPSimmons, who previously has analyzed and provided commentary on the issues of eligibility to the presidency:

Questions over Obama's have arisen because of his almost total concealment of documentation from his life – including his passport records, kindergarten records, Punahou school records, Occidental College records, Columbia University records, Columbia thesis, Harvard Law School records, Harvard Law Review articles, University of Chicago articles, Illinois State Bar Association records, Illinois State Senate records and schedules, medical records, Obama/Dunham marriage license, Obama/Dunham divorce documents, Soetoro/Dunham marriage license and adoption records.

Well, first, I appreciate that you took the time to post some sources. However, I looked at your first link and I was unable to find out whose opinion that was which made the two statements you posted. Were they judges? Politicians? Lawyers?

Second, I'm not a lawyer, but I found other sources which seem more official and say something different.

Plus there are things like this from the Minor vs. Happersett case:

The Chief Justice’s opinion entertained the following on the issue of natural born citizens in the Minor case:

The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parentS who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners. Some authorities go further and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their [88 U.S. 162, 168] parents. As to this class there have been doubts, but never as to the first. For the purposes of this case it is not necessary to solve these doubts. It is sufficient for everything we have now to consider that all children born of citizen parents within the jurisdiction are themselves citizens. The words ‘all children’ are certainly as comprehensive, when used in this connection, as ‘all persons,’ and if females are included in the last they must be in the first. That they are included in the last is not denied. In fact the whole argument of the plaintiffs proceeds upon that idea.[iv] (Emphasis added)

It is a seminal point in this opinion when the Justice states:

“Some authorities go further and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their [88 U.S. 162, 168] parents. As to this class there have been doubts, but never as to the first.” [v]
Since this case references the 14th Amendment and therefore obviously follows the 14th Amendment, the precedent set here seems to indicate three crucial facts:

1)Affirmation that the Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that, and
2)That there is no dispute that children born in the United States to parents that are U.S. citizens are natural born citizens, and
3)Children that are born in the United States without reference to the citizenship of their parents are not without doubt natural born citizens.

My belief and teaching was always along the lines of...if something in the Constitution needs to be changed, then an amendment needs to be made to address that change. I don't see any amendment addressing the "natural born citizen" issue. Therefore, while it may seem petty to some, I think it is wrong to 1) ignore what the Constitution says and 2) allow politicians to ignore the Constitution for political expediency.

I suspect if Obama had made a case for changing the "natural born citizen" clause, he may have won, because most people don't really seem to care if his Dad was a Kenyan or not. However, allowing one plain evasion of the law by the political class, not only violates the oath I took as a service member of the armed forces, but it sets a precedent which says that the Constitution doesn't really need to be followed by politicians if it gets too messy.

Don't believe it when you're told that the Founders could not have used Vattel's Law of Nations because it was a 1797 Edition. They had an edition from 1758. Here are translations from editions 1778, 1758 and 1883.

Emmerich de Vattel - 1778 Edition
BOOK 1, CHAPTER 19
Of Our Native Country, and Several Things That Relate to It
§ 212. Citizens and natives.
The citizens are the members of the civil society; bound to this society by certain duties, and subject to its authority, they equally participate in its advantages. The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens. As the society cannot exist and perpetuate itself otherwise than by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights. The society is supposed to desire this, in consequence of what it owes to its own preservation; and it is presumed, as matter of course, that each citizen, on entering into society, reserves to his children the right of becoming members of it. The country of the fathers is therefore that of the children; and these become true citizens merely by their tacit consent. We shall soon see whether, on their coming to the years of discretion, they may renounce their right, and what they owe to the society in which they were born. I say, that, in order to be of the country, it is necessary that a person be born of a father who is a citizen; for, if he is born there of a foreigner, it will be only the place of his birth, and not his country.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Volume I A Photographic Reproduction of Books I and II of the First Edition 1758 with an Introduction by Albert de Lapradelle
TRANSLATION OF THE EDITION OF 1758 By Charles G Fenwick WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ALBERT DE LAPRADELLE
CHAPTER XIX One's Country and Various Matters Relating to It
The members of a civil society are its citizens. Bound to that society by certain duties and subject to its authority, they share equally in the advantages it offers. Its natives are those who are born in the country of parents who are citizens. As the society can not maintain and perpetuate itself except by the children of its citizens, these children naturally take on the status of their fathers and enter upon all the latter's rights. The society is presumed to desire this as the necessary means of its self preservation, and it is justly to be inferred that each citizen, upon entering into the society, reserves to his children the right to be members of it. The country of a father is therefore that of his children, and they become true citizens by their mere tacit consent. We shall see presently whether, when arrived at the age of reason, they may renounce their right and the duty they owe to the society in which they are born. I repeat that in order to belong to a country one must be born there of a father who is a citizen; for if one is born of foreign parents, that land will only be the place of one's birth, and not one's country.

------------------------------------------------------

THE LAW OF NATIONS
FROM THE NEW EDITION, BY
JOSEPH CHITTY, Esq. Barrister At Law
WITH ADDITIONAL NOTES AND REFERENCES,
By EDWARD D. INGRAHAM, Esq.
PHILADELPHIA:
T. & J.W. JOHNSON & CO., LAW BOOKSELLERS,
No. 535 CHESTNUT STREET.
1883.
§ 212. Citizens and natives.
The citizens are the members of the civil society; bound to this society by certain duties, and subject to its authority, they equally participate in its advantages. The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens. As the society cannot exist and perpetuate itself otherwise than by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights. The society is supposed to desire this, in consequence of what it owes to its own preservation; and it is presumed, as matter of course, that each citizen, on entering into society, reserves to his children the right of becoming members of it. The country of the fathers is therefore that of the children; and these become true citizens merely by their tacit consent. We shall soon see whether, on their coming to the years of discretion, they may renounce their right, and what they owe to the society in which they were born. I say, that, in order to be of the country, it is necessary that a person be born of a father who is a citizen; for, if he is born there of a foreigner, it will be only the place of his birth, and not his country.

HA-HA, you are posting all these threads that pitch to sell that Birther-book, which probably says Obama wasnt born in the USA. But now the argument has changed to his father.

It’s OK with me, good luck.

No, sickoflibs, the author is finally focusing upon the real issue. While it has been frustrating to us who value the Constitution, we are bit closer to the real, which is certainly complex, we have a solvable problem. If, as our ruling class pundits, sadly including many who call themselves conservatives, suggest, we ignore the Constitution, just one more time, every illegal contract aimed at crippling our republic will remain in effect. Like Nancy Pelosi’s never to be forgotten, “Sign it so you can find out what's in it,” we have signed documents which betray a pattern of deception, and betray the real reason Barack was buying time with the birth certificate misdirection, a birth certificate which not only showed nothing embarrassing, certainly nothing warranting six months in Leavenworth for a decorated Army Surgeon who asked for confirmation, but embarrassing whatsoever.

Senator Barack Obama signed his agreement to the following statements. There are some weasel words, but lets take a look at what he signed in Senate Resolution 511:

‘Because he was born to American citizens, there is no doubt in my mind that Senator MCCAIN is a ‘‘natural born Citizen’’.’ Patrick Leahy.

‘We conclude that Senator McCain is a ‘‘natural born Citizen’’ by virtue of his birth in 1936 to U.S. citizen parents who were serving their country on a U.S. military base in the Panama Canal Zone.’ Barack’s Harvard adviser and consittuional law professor Larry Tribe, with Ted Olson.’

The core principle in both statements was "citizen parents." While the purpose of SR 511 is clearly to silence the Republicans, it is full of sneaky half truths, and indeed, false implications, the authors, from Obama’s campaign committee, McCaskill and Larry Tribe, showed their true intent with the comment:

“And Senator Barack Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961—not long after its admission to the Union on August 21, 1959. We find it inconceivable that Senator Obama would have been ineligible for the Presidency had he been born two years earlier.” Larry Tribe and Ted Olson.

Their point and the point of supposed Resolution that McCain was Eligible as far as the senate was concerned (it had no force of law) is to pretend that Obama was/is eligible. They guessed that no one important would dare notice that while McCain had citizen parents, Obama didn't!z,

They all knew of Obama’s problem and conspired, with the assistance of the media, to distract the public.

What was so misleading about the Tribe-Olson letter? Here is one sneaky example which could serve as a “what's wrong with this reasoning” exercise in law school or a rhetoric class.

Congress has recognized in successive federal statutes since the Nation's Founding that children born abroad to U.S. citizens are themselves U.S. citizens. 8 U.S.C. §1401 (c); see also Act of May 24, 1934, Pub. L. No. 73-250, §1, 48 Stat. 797, 797. Indeed, the statute that the First Congress enacted on this subject not only established that such children are U.S. citizens, but also expressly referred to them as ``natural born citizens.’’ Act of Mar. 26, 1790, ch. 3, §1, 1 Stat. 103, 104.

The above might be called hand waving, or crass deception, but it is dishonest law by men who besmirch their vaunted positions.

Tribe begins by citing “federal statutes,” laws, and is properly referring to ‘citizens.’ So? Citizens by statute are, by definition, by Article 1 Section 8, naturalized. Title 8 Section 1401 is naturalization law. The president and vice president must be ‘natural’ citizens. To mislead, Tribe references ‘the First Congress’ and its extension of the natural born Citizen definition to children of citizen born abroad. That reference to natural born Citizens in US Code. the only one ever written, was repealed in 1795, probably because it was unconstitutional. Tribe constructed an argument which shifted subjects, citizens to natural born Citizens, and used a patently untrue clause, one repealed five years after it was proposed.

Tribe and Olson throughout referred to the equivalence of English Common law, of a subject to a citizen. Here is just a bit of a wonderful Treatise on Citizenship from one President who actually could write, President before the ratification, in 1785, the Congressional Historian, Dr. David Ramsay (find the whole ‘Dissertation’ on scribd.com)

A citizen of the United States, means a member of this new nation. The principle of government being radically changed by revolution, the political character of the people also changed from subjects to citizens.

The difference is immense. Subject is derived from the latin words, sub and jacio, and means one who is under the power of another; but a citizen is an unit of a mass of free people, who collectively, possesses sovereignty.

Subjects look up to a master, but citizens are so far equal, that none have hereditary rights superior to others. Each citizen of a free state contains, within himself, by nature and the constitution, as much of the common sovereignty as another. In the eye of reason and philosophy, the political condition of citizens is more exalted than that of noblemen. Dukes and earls are the creatures of kings, and may be made by them at pleasure: but citizens possess in their own right original sovereignty.

Our founders and framers did NOT base our Constitution on English common law. We have political opportunists who are taking us for fools. Not many understood our citizenship laws and Constitution before Obama, but we are learning quickly. Here is Prentice Webster in an 1891 Treatise on Citzenship:

“to repeate what has already been set forth as the rule prior to 1836, it must be affirmed that neither jus soli nor allegiance in the English sense an dmeaning had any thing whatever to do with the acquisition of citizenship in the United States.”

It is important to note that our Uniform Code of Naturalization, the code which applies, by his own admission, to Barack Obama, permits naturalized citizens to hold every office but the presidency and vice presidency. English common law does not admit naturalized citizens to membership in Parliament. No English law or constitution makes commoners eligible to be monarch.

The collusion of all senators in 2008, and the blatant disregard for our Constitution shown by Barack Obama, all of whom signed a Senate Resolution in which Obama’s eligibility was pointedly but dishonestly discussed, claiming John McCain was a natural born Citizen because both of his parents WERE US Citizens when he was born, but Barack too was eligible, both of whose parents were NOT citizens, was a smokescreen, and an enormous crime. The issue was never about a birth certificate. It was to distract the public from the obscure laws governing natural born citizens so that those in the ruling class might survive our transformation from a republic into a Dictatorship of the Proletariat, with most of their privileges intact.

These laws were clearly not obscure to Barack Obama, or to Pat Leahy, or Clare McCaskill, or to Jim Webb, or to Orrin Hatch, who actually attempted himself to amend Article II Section 1 in 2003, to make Schwarzenegger eligible. The Democrats didn't bother to try because our history is too clear on the point. Twenty five amendment attempts of Article II Section 1 have failed. It was easier, as with the health-care bill, to tell you what to believe, insult you if you ask questions, and to act like the dictators they intend to be. It is easier, now that we have a legal document confirming that Obama’s father, the British subject, was indeed his father, to say that there is no legal doubt about Barack Jr.s ineligibility. The courts have said that because we are all being injured, we have no standing use the courts. It is approaching time for a government of and by the people to replace the courts, and the legislature which failed to vet an ineligible presidential nominee.

Some of our ruling class pundits are saying “There are more important things, like the economy and our foreign policy, to attend to.” “It is foolish to address silly issues like constitutional interpretation.” Without a president, judiciary and legislative branches, who obey the Constitution no effort to right an economy has a chance of succeeding. Obama’s cadre intends a wholesale replacement of our Constitutional republic with a Marxist bureaucracy. Our framers required a natural born Citizen because it could help to insure a leader with the allegiance of his or her parents. We got what they anticipated, but ignored that the parents had to have sole allegiance to our sovereign republic. The author of the 14th Amendment used that term, allegiance, in place of citizenship, when addressing the House of Representatives to explain the basis for our naturalization laws. Congressman John Bingham to the House of Representatives, 1866:

I find no fault with the introductory clause [S 61 Bill], which is simply declaratory of what is written in the Constitution, that 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….

I wrote a more detailed scenario many mos ago. Only one person who’s read it disputed it, and he’s a guy who says the 14th Amendment set aside the Framer’s intentions re: NBC. A strange interpretation At Best.

Hypothetical:

Let’s say you are a Founder, and your desire is to protect this country which you love, and which you know will be threatened by subversive forces. You write in the NBC requirement, and in your mind this is to rule out certain non-American, un-American or even anti-American (Manchurian) candidates from winning an election and fundamentally threatening the Republic from within.

Fast forward. Theoretically speaking, posit this scenario. Karl Marx, although already married, makes a legal visit to the US and ‘marries’ a 17 yo black girl. While the child is young, the mother divorces this man, moves to a foreign country and has her son adopted by a foreign national. The parents hate free market capitalism, and indoctrinate their son in the superiority of foreign cultures.

When eventually the son returns, he’s turned over to communists. They rear him with a virulent hatred for whites and traditional American values. When he gets to college he makes no secret of his affiliations: he selects radical Marxists and the most radical of all brands of feminists as friends, since these are the only people he feels comfortable with. Later he writes a book and dedicates it to the dreams he received from his father, Marx. This father supported the taking of 100 % of the citizens’ money by the state, and doling it out as the State sees fit. The son knows this, and writes a paean to his father’s ‘dreams’ because he shares them, and wants the world to know he shares them. He writes a second book in which he unabashedly offers his view of whites: “White men’s greed runs a world in need”.

Now he runs for POTUS. We have come to a time in our nation’s history when asking any kind of question whatsoever of a biracial man is considered racist, so he gets a complete pass during the election. When asked to show his original long form BC, he spits in our faces. (The evil whites have no right to question their biracial Marxist Messiah!) He rules in the kind of luxury and opulence enjoyed by tinpot dictators, and his executive orders further the impression that he’s not a president but a king. He runs the US down all over the world, apologizing for us in humiliating and demeaning ways while praising countries with wretched human rights records. He nationalizes banks, car companies, healthcare, etc. He subverts our interests to those of the UN. He pushes for, and gets, a treaty favorable to Russia and unfavorable to us. He seeks to destroy out military by homosexualizing/sodomizing it. There’s much more, but you get the picture.

Now as a Founder, can you honestly say that this isn’t precisely what you were trying to protect us from, with the NBC requirement? You wanted to assure that a US born and bred person, who knew and respected our culture and traditions, held the highest office in the land. Is not Obama EXACTLY the person the Founders feared, and tried to exclude? He is fast destroying the country they loved and sacrificed for. And it’s not a coincidence. He is not a NBC; he doesn’t understand us yet he hates us rabidly. And if the Constitution had been respected and honored, he would never have attained the sinecure from which to do his filthy work.

The alternative is that as a Founder, you wrote the NBC requirement precisely SO that a man like Marx, Mao, Hitler, Stalin—or worse—could sire a future POTUS, so long as he ‘married’ an underage American girl in order to do so. If you can’t see the idiocy in that, then you are a Leftist Loon no matter what you say.

Yes, notice the sentence I supposedly left out...which was followed one sentence later, as TigersEye knows, with “ This circumstance itself, in regard to a point which must have occurred so often in the administration of justice, furnishes a strong inference that there has never been any doubt but that the common law rule was the law of the land.”

The judge clearly said that in 1844, when he wrote the decision, no judicial decision had been written on it during the preceding 57 years. The decisions involving property and inheritance had not discussed the meaning of natural born citizen - because it was so well known that no one had used it (or Vattel’s 1797 mistranslation) to challenge anyone.

The judge, writing in 1844, was clearly NOT saying that in 2011 no decision had ever been written on the subject! I didn’t leave it out to deceive. I left it out because it changes nothing, and the entire decision runs close to 30 pages - too long to post in a reply on FR.

And John Valentine, the 1844 decision was not anonymous. If you would read, the author is clearly identified. The WKA decision, which is also pretty clear and which you dislike and therefor wish to ignore, wrote:

“That all children born within the dominion of the United States of foreign parents holding no diplomatic office became citizens at the time of their birth does not appear to have been contested or doubted until more than fifty years after the adoption of the Constitution, when the matter was elaborately argued in the Court of Chancery of New York and decided upon full consideration by Vice Chancellor Sandford in favor of their citizenship. Lynch v. Clark, (1844) 1 Sandf.Ch. 583.”

They, at least, knew who wrote it.

JV prefers “The natives or indigenes are those born in the country of parents who are citizens.” While that might be his personal preference, it has no bearing on US law - in spite of JV’s misuse of the Venus case.

Why did Justice John Marshall use Vattel in discussing the Venus case? Because the Venus case was about this:

“This is the case of a vessel which sailed from Great Britain with a cargo belonging to the respective claimants, as was contended, before the declaration of war by the United States against Great Britain was or could have been known by the shippers. She sailed from Liverpool on 4 July, 1812, under a British license, for the port of New York and was captured on 6 August, 1812, by the American privateer Dolphin and sent into the District of Massachusetts, where the vessel and cargo were libeled in the district court...

...The great question involved in this and many other of the prize cases which have been argued is whether the property of these claimants who were settled in Great Britain and engaged in the commerce of that country, shipped before they had a knowledge of the war but which was captured after the declaration of war by an American cruiser ought to be condemned as lawful prize. It is contended by the captors that as these claimants had gained a domicile in Great Britain, and continued to enjoy it up to the time when war was declared, and when these captures were made, they must be considered as British subjects, in reference to this property, and consequently that it may legally be seized as prize of war in like manner as if it had belonged to real British subjects.”

The Venus case was not about something that happened in the USA, where US law applies. It was a matter of INTERNATIONAL LAW - a matter of the “Law of Nations”. When discussing what is legal on the high seas, international law applies - not the US Constitution. The US Constitution recognizes that
by giving Congress the power to “To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations” - because the Law of Nations - INTERNATIONAL LAW - applies on the high seas.

The dicta of Vice Chancellor Sandford has held up for over 160 years. As Sanford noted, no one in any state ever asked a would-be voter if his father was a citizen. No one applying for a passport was asked about his father’s citizenship. If he was born in the US, that was all that mattered under US law.

I’ll repeat: in the USA, there was no legal basis for saying citizenship by parentage was primary over citizenship by birth! No state government and no federal law ever suggested someone born in the US was only a citizen if their father was a citizen.

Vice Chancellor Sandford points out that the states, prior to the Constitution, had already started revising their laws to replace “natural born subject” with “natural born citizen”. The WKA decision discusses a number of state decisions recognizing that NBC = NBS. At the time of Independence, every NB subject became, in the law, a NB citizen. 100%.

Birthers and WorldNutDaily like to pretend that the phrase NBC sprang out of nowhere, or that it came from a bad translation made 10 years after the Constitution. It didn’t. Many of the writers of the Constitution and many of the states ratifying the Constitution had already started switching the wording in their laws, but none of them had changed the meaning. Everyone who had been a NBS automatically was a NBC.

That was US law, and no one tried to claim it wasn’t until the Lynch case in 1844. And they lost the case.

READ Lynch. Read WKA. You are not required to like them, but the courts have not followed Vattel on citizenship. Some people thought they should, but the courts have consistently followed the Lynch decision, not Vattel. Vattel wrote on international law, not the law of the USA.

That is why the Indiana court wrote:

“The Plaintiffs do not mention the above United States Supreme Court authority in their complaint or brief; they primarily rely instead on an eighteenth century treatise and quotations of Members of Congress made during the nineteenth century. To the extent that these authorities conflict with the United States Supreme Court’s interpretation of what it means to be a natural born citizen, we believe that the Plaintiffs arguments fall under the category of “conclusory, non-factual assertions or legal conclusions” that we need not accept as true when reviewing the grant of a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim.”

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.