Ah yes MindBender26. We are back to "It depends up what is is." Justice Waite did not say that Mrs. Minor is included in the class of natural born citizens. He used the verb to be: is, were. Supreme Court justices were careful with their use of language. "Words must be presumed to have meaning." In mathematics "is" implies a definition. A definition means "the same as." Spoken and written language is not so concise as mathematics, and great jurists seem to take special care to insure that logical constructions are well-formed.
No amendments passed (many amendments were attempted, nine between 2000 and 2007 attempted, and twenty six attempts since 1789) have addressed natural born citizenship, and while no federal laws have been passed either, separation of powers prevents a law from reinterpreting the Constitution, as Clare McCaskill and Barack undoubtedly knew when they submitted the "Bill to Insure That Foreign Born Children of Citizens in the Military have Presidential Eligibility", SB2678, in February of 2008. They wanted to establish talking points for the Obama Media, and to discourage any Republican from raising the ineligibility flag. Citizenship laws - article 1 section 8, "To establish an Uniform Rule of Naturalization," make naturalized citizens. The president must be a Natural born citizen, the only class defined by the Constitution, all of which definitions come from, as Justice Waite so clearly explained in Minor v. Happerwsett: "At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar..." There is but one redefinition, the clarification of "Treason against the U.S." in the Constitution, and no other definitions - by design. The intention was to explicitly use the common-language and common-law at the time of the framers so that citizens would understand our foundations. Our framers did not want law dispensed by legal Mandarins from private libraries filled with thousands of dusty leather-bound volumes of often contradictory decisions designed to protect the prerogatives of the monarchy (Justice James Wilson wrote scathing chapters about the lunacy of building US Law upon Blackstone - British Common Law.)
"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."
Language and prepositional logic make any definition other than "children born in a country of parents who were its citizens" a definition of a class other than that of natural born citizens. "Citizens are either natural born or naturalized." If there are two classes, and every element of the first is also in the second, and every element of the second is also in the first, the classes are equal. That is the nature of a definition. Any citizen other than one born to citizen parents on our soil is a naturalized citizen, which, by-the-way, is exactly the legal definition Obama applied to his own status on his web site, fightthesmears-dot-com. He defined himself using the 14th Amendment terminology used to define naturalized citizens, as a "native-born citizen of the U.S.", the same status given by Justice Gray to Wong Kim Ark, born to Chinese Nationals, but on our soil. There is no mention of natural born citizenship in the 14th Amendment, and its author, John Bingham, confirmed the Vattel definition made "stare decisis" - decided law - by Minor. Wong Kim would not have been eligible to be president (though no law would prevent him from running, just as Calero, McCain and Obama ran, leaving open whether accepting presidential campaign contributions constituted fraud).
It is good to raise the issues so that more will understand. Just as there is no question that Rubio understand, and Jindal understands, that neither is currently eligible. Each of them can try to get someone, as Senator John Conyers tried for Obama and Hatch tried for Schwarzenegger, to initiate an amendment to Article II Section 1. The British still don't even allow naturalized citizens to be MPs whereas our naturalized citizens can hold any office but the presidency.
We now have an example of what can happen when we allow the power of the presidency, eligible or not, to be wielded by someone whose dreams were influenced by a father who hated capitalism. Do our soldiers believe their commander in chief is committing them to risks in the interests of the nation they volunteered to fight for, where their wives and children live, and which government was created to protect them? Or can they see, as in "Fast and Furious", that their commander believes that sacrificing a few soldiers might help with his stated political ambition for a global defense force controlled by the UN or some new consortium perhaps alled with those behind the "Arab Spring."
If we don't insist that the doctrines in our republic's foundation be adhered to, even if an exception seems worthy, such as McCain's service and his sacrifice as a war prisoner exemplify, respect for our laws becomes a political expedient. If we want to change the precedent in Minor to allow someone born to one dual citizen (Stanley Ann became a British subject by marrying Obama Sr.) and an alien, born on our soil, to be a reputed natural born citizen, or to two aliens if they never belonged to a community that threatened to blow up Israel or the US, or their parents subsequently became naturalized citizens like Chester Arthur, or to two illegal aliens if they got a college degree paid for by our tax money... we have a constitutional mechanism, Article V, for changing the Constitution. Assuming legislators can be bought after having spent a year or two in Congress, would three fourths of the states accept the risks associated with mucking with "born on the soil of citizen parents?"
So?....What are the very highest military silent? Where are the requests to congress and the courts for certifiable documentation that Obama is a natural born citizen and is who he says he is. Where were the press conferences and highly public resignations? Is **this** how our highest military defend the Constitution and watches to the backs of our honorable, brave, and highly trained troops? Is fraud, identity theft, forgeries, usurpation of the position of Commander in Chief, multiple social security numbers, and failure to e-verify not part of the military code of honor? I this how they defend the Constitution.?
How many soldiers have died or been grossly wounded because Obama uses the military to promote his election chances? Personally, I think the very highest military treats the Constitution like a snotty piece of Kleenex. I don't know why lightning doesn't strike when our brave troops salute them. Why don't they wither into a little pile of dust when they look into the faces of the love ones of our dead and wounded soldiers?