Obama, the Constitution and a Permanent State of Emergency

Obama's EXECUTIVE ORDERS against guns are coming our way. The Obama régime is declaring a war on The Gun, and they want this war to be PERMANENT. They want the exception to become the norm. Forever. That’s why a hot war is inevitable.

When lefties will say, “yes, but Lincoln did also deactivate the Constitution,” — we shoud say: “yes, but Lincoln did not try to make an exception PERMANENT.”

Here, I will provide are a few instances of past presidents using EO in the name of public safety; I’m providing them here so as to understand the role of Executive Orders in past situations of emergency.

What differentiates Obama from Lincoln, Wilson and even FDR, is that Obama’s executive order will be PERMANENT, FOREVER, without any grandfather clause.

Lincoln did not want to become a total dictator forever. The generalized the state of emergency he declared by Executive Order throughout the entire territory of the United States for the emancipation of the slaves had a clear expiration date: once the war is over, the exception is no more.

FDR differs from Wilson and Lincoln however. He could not have enacted the New Deal without dictatorial powers. And both Social Security and the National Rifle Act are still here to haunt us. Obama wants to radicalize the gun control measures enacted by FDR in 1934 and LBJ in 1968.

During the Civil War (1861–1865), Lincoln acted counter to the text of Article 1 (on April 15, 1861) by proclaiming that an army of seventy-five thousand men was to be raised and convened a special session of Congress for July 4. In the ten weeks that passed between April 15 and July 4, Lincoln acted de facto as a total dictator. On April 27, Lincoln authorized the General in Chief of the Army to suspend the writ of Habeas Corpus whenever he deemed it necessary along the military line between Washington and Philadelphia. Furthermore, on February 1862, Lincoln imposed censorship of the mail and authorized the arrest and detention in military prisons of persons suspected of "disloyal and treasonable practices".

"Whether strictly legal or not, [the measures he had adopted had been taken] under what appeared to be a popular demand and a public necessity" in the certainty that Congress would ratify them. Those exceptional measures were based on the conviction that even fundamental, natural law could be violated IF the very existence of the union and the juridical order were at stake:

During World War One President Wilson assumed broader powers than those Lincoln had claimed. However, instead of ignoring Congress, as Lincoln had done, Wilson had those extraordinary powers delegated to him by Congress. Instead of declaring a state of emergency, he had exceptional laws issued. From 1917 to 1918, Congress approved a series of acts (from the Espionage Act of 1917 to the Departmental Reorganization Act of 1918) that granted the President COMPLETE CONTROL over the administration of the United States and not only prohibited disloyal activities (such as collaboration with the enemy and the diffusion of false reports), but even made it a crime to "willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States" (from the Sedition Act of 1918).

Since the power of the President is grounded in the emergency linked to a state of war, the metaphor of war became a part of the presidential vocabulary whenever decisions considered to be of vital importance are being imposed.

In 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt was able to assume extraordinary powers by presenting his actions as those of a Commander in Chief during a military campaign:

The outbreak of World War Two extended these powers with the creation of a "Office of Emergency Management" [the ancestor of today's FEMA]. On September 7, 1942, FDR renewed his claim to TOTAL CONTROL during the emergency:

On February 19, 1942, the FDR administration proceeded with the internment of seventy thousand American citizens of Japanese descent who resided on the West Coast (along with forty thousand Japanese citizens who lived and worked there).

Supreme Court cases that cite “natural born Citizen” as one born on U.S. soil to citizen parents:

The Venus, 12 U.S. 8 Cranch 253 253 (1814)

Vattel, who, though not very full to this point, is more explicit and more satisfactory on it than any other whose work has fallen into my hands, says: “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 indigenes are those born in the country of parents who are citizens. Society not being able to subsist and to perpetuate itself but by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights.

Shanks v. Dupont, 28 U.S. 3 Pet. 242 242 (1830)

Ann Scott was born in South Carolina before the American revolution, and her father adhered to the American cause and remained and was at his death a citizen of South Carolina. There is no dispute that his daughter Ann, at the time of the Revolution and afterwards, remained in South Carolina until December, 1782. Whether she was of age during this time does not appear. If she was, then her birth and residence might be deemed to constitute her by election a citizen of South Carolina. If she was not of age, then she might well be deemed under the circumstances of this case to hold the citizenship of her father, for children born in a country, continuing while under age in the family of the father, partake of his national character as a citizen of that country. Her citizenship, then, being prima facie established, and indeed this is admitted in the pleadings, has it ever been lost, or was it lost before the death of her father, so that the estate in question was, upon the descent cast, incapable of vesting in her? Upon the facts stated, it appears to us that it was not lost and that she was capable of taking it at the time of the descent cast.

Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857)

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 society cannot perpetuate itself otherwise than by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their parents, and succeed to all their rights.' Again: 'I say, to be of the country, it is necessary to be born of a person who is a citizen; for if he be born there of a foreigner, it will be only the place of his birth, and not his country. . . .

Minor v. Happersett , 88 U.S. 162 (1875)

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 parents. As to this class there have been doubts, but never as to the first.

United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898)

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.

Perkins v. Elg, 307 U.S. 325 (1939),

Was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that a child born in the United States to naturalized parents on U.S. soil is a natural born citizen and that the child's natural born citizenship is not lost if the child is taken to and raised in the country of the parents' origin, provided that upon attaining the age of majority, the child elects to retain U.S. citizenship "and to return to the United States to assume its duties." Not only did the court rule that she did not lose her native born Citizenship but it upheld the lower courts decision that she is a "natural born Citizen of the United States" because she was born in the USA to two naturalized U.S. Citizens.

But the Secretary of State, according to the allegation of the bill of complaint, had refused to issue a passport to Miss Elg 'solely on the ground that she had lost her native born American citizenship.' The court below, properly recognizing the existence of an actual controversy with the defendants [307 U.S. 325, 350] (Aetna Life Ins. Co. v. Haworth, 300 U.S. 227 , 57 S.Ct. 461, 108 A.L.R. 1000), declared Miss Elg 'to be a natural born citizen of the United States' (99 F.2d 414) and we think that the decree should include the Secretary of State as well as the other defendants. The decree in that sense would in no way interfere with the exercise of the Secretary's discretion with respect to the issue of a passport but would simply preclude the denial of a passport on the sole ground that Miss Elg had lost her American citizenship."

The Supreme Court of the United States has never applied the term “natural born citizen” to any other category than “those born in the country of parents who are citizens thereof”.

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