Supreme Court rejects Obama case

http://www.supremecourtus.gov/orders/courtorders/120808zor.pdf ^

[Technical Editor]

Sorry, but the Constitution requires that he be a natural born citizen, not just “a” citizen.

That’s the fundamental law of the land, and it’s too late to pretend it’s not in the Constitution.

The question the Supreme Court should be addressing is whether the dual citizenship Obama inherited at birth precludes him from being a natural born citizen. On its face, I would think it does, but I’m hoping the Supreme Court will rule on this.

We cannot just ignore the Constitution. Those of you who think we can are just acting like children who want to pretend that they have no parents enforcing rules.

[Impy]

I’m with you I never bought this for a second.

There is some fishiness around the documents unavailability and his dad’s mother swears Obama was born in the village (senile, pride thing, or mixed up with one of her other grandchildren) but it’s so implausible. Even with some FRiends I respect and my own mother believing it I don’t.

Even it were true his mom was American so if he’d be ineligible it would be because of a technicality.

And their would be stronger evidence.

Maybe the birth certificate names Obama’s Marxist mentor and friend of his granfather, (forget his name) as his real father though! That’s a conspiracy theory I can get behind. ;)

[stevie_d_64]

I sense your frustration...I too am frustrated with this situation...But he is a human being, albiet he does not represent any real American conservative values, nor does he tout any agenda that I agree with...

He’ll go out of his way to do whatever it takes to get his idea of fairness and justice deeper into the intellectually lazy populace in this country, and he’ll do it with the blessing of his majority in congress and the senate...

I hope this becomes a recoverable lesson for conservatives to not consentrate on something that is certainly important, but it is an issue that I wish some key players in our government could have taken care of if they had the courage to do so...

[PoliticsInMotion]

The "context" of the Immigration Act of 1795 was to define citizenship in regards to civil liberties issues. It was NOT to define the difference between a "natural-born citizen" and a "naturalized citizen" in regards to the eligibility/qualifications of POTUS.

Hope this helps some?:

The difference between "natural-born citizen" and "naturalized citizen" as related to the eligibility/qualifications of POTUS was determined/discussed in the 12th Amendment - Article II - Section 1. - Clause 5.

Here's an excerpt:

12th Amendment - Article II - Section 1. - Clause 5
Clause 5. No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been Fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.
VerDate Aug<04>2004 13:21 Oct 06, 2004 Jkt 077500 PO 00000 Frm 00023 Fmt 8222 Sfmt 8222 C:\CONAN\CON011.SGM PRFM99 PsN: CON011

456 ART. II—EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT Sec. 1—The President Cl. 5—Qualifications 100 8 U.S.C. § 1401.

101 Reliance on the provision of an Amendment adopted subsequent to the constitutional provision being interpreted is not precluded by but is strongly militated against by the language in Freytag v. Commissioner, 501 U.S. 868, 886-887 (1991), in which the Court declined to be bound by the language of the 25th Amendment in determining the meaning of ‘‘Heads of Departments’’ in the appointments clause. See also id. at 917 (Justice Scalia concurring). If the Fourteenth Amendment is relevant and the language is exclusive, that is, if it describes the only means by which persons can become citizens, then, anyone born outside the United States would have to be considered naturalized in order to be a citizen, and a child born abroad of American parents is to be considered ‘‘naturalized’’ by being statutorily made a citizen at birth. Although dictum in certain cases supports this exclusive interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment, United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649, 702-703 (1898); cf. Montana v. Kennedy, 366 U.S. 308, 312 (1961), the most recent case in its holding and language rejects it. Rogers v. Bellei, 401 U.S. 815 (1971). 102 Act of March 26, 1790, 1 Stat. 103, 104 (emphasis supplied). See Weedin v. Chin Bow, 274 U.S. 657, 661-666 (1927); United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649, 672-675 (1898). With minor variations, this language remained law in subsequent reenactments until an 1802 Act, which omitted the italicized words for reasons not discernable. See Act of Feb. 10, 1855, 10 Stat. 604 (enacting same provision, for offspring of American-citizen fathers, but omitting the italicized phrase). 103 25 Edw. 3, Stat. 2 (1350); 7 Anne, ch. 5, § 3 (1709); 4 Geo. 2, ch. 21 (1731). 104 See, e.g., Gordon, Who Can Be President of the United States: The Unresolved Enigma, 28 MD. L. REV. 1 (1968).

QUALIFICATIONS

All Presidents since and including Martin Van Buren were born in the United States subsequent to the Declaration of Independence. The principal issue with regard to the qualifications set out in this clause is whether a child born abroad of American parents is ‘‘a natural born citizen’’ in the sense of the clause. Such a child is a citizen as a consequence of statute. 100 Whatever the term ‘‘natural born’’ means, it no doubt does not include a person who is ‘‘naturalized.’’ Thus, the answer to the question might be seen to turn on the interpretation of the first sentence of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment, providing that ‘‘[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States’’ are citizens. 101 Significantly, however, Congress, in which a number of Framers sat, provided in the Naturalization act of 1790 that ‘‘the children of citizens of the United States, that may be born beyond the sea, . . . shall be considered as natural born citizens . . . .’’ 102 This phrasing followed the literal terms of British statutes, beginning in 1350, under which persons born abroad, whose parents were both British subjects, would enjoy the same rights of inheritance as those born in England; beginning with laws in 1709 and 1731, these statutes expressly provided that such persons were natural-born subjects of the crown. 103 There is reason to believe, therefore, that the phrase includes persons who become citizens at birth by statute because of their status in being born abroad of American citizens...

[aruanan]

However when the St. Petersburg Times newspaper sent a copy of the Certificate that Obama posted on his web site to the Hawaii Health Department back in June, Janice Okubo, Director of Communications for the Hawaii Health Department verified that it was genuine, not fake.

She did not verify that it was Obama's genuine COLB only that it was a Hawaiian COLB. Yes, it was made using a genuine COLB and at first glance nothing appeared to Okubo to be grossly out of place. That was all revealed subsequently and is beyond dispute. She made a bad call based on a cursory, superficial examination. She was taken in as were a lot of other people, as intended by the Obama campaign. They were caught.

We e-mailed it to the Hawaii Department of Health, which maintains such records, to ask if it was real.

“It’s a valid Hawaii state birth certificate,” spokesman Janice Okubo told us.

[pa mom]

If you read my previous posts, I have never “told anyone to drop it”. I try very hard to engage on the facts. I absolutely believed that there was something here right before the election, but I started doing independent research. I simply espouse people to look into things for themselves.

Further, I enjoy reading the well thought out analysis of these issues, since a certain amount of suspicion remains in my mind.

[Grampa Dave]

“Catching up on the thread with some late evening reading. Grampa Dave - Did you stay at a Holiday Inn last night?”

No, but I was one the first to recognize the postings of this Zer0 Troll and helped to show it to the FR exit.

[pa mom]

I think we agree that there is reason for suspicion. I do wish O will be legally compelled to release the vault certificate, though voluntarily would be better.

Bringing in argument like the Sun stuff just weakens the argument and distracts from real issues. During Sun’s time, the US enforced the Chinese Exclusion Act and so his supporters in China forged birth records to get him into the US. Further, 1904 is not the 1960’s and certainly not modern times. I am not ruling out foul play, but record keeping in territorial Hawaii was not up to modern standards.

[andy58-in-nh]

Thank you - I promise to check it out.

BTW, and as a caveat: I have seen the images in question. Having had a good deal of experience with document science, photography and computer graphics, I could not say for certain that the images had been manipulated beyond the obvious redactions made for privacy reasons.

Compression algorithms common to .jpg/jpeg images can do some funky things to pixels around the perimeters of geometric shapes, especially when filters have been applied to them to enhance or diffuse sharpness, resize the original, detect or isolate edges, or even adjust properties such as gamma and contrast. I've manipulated thousands of images myself, and seen all manner of strange things happen, especially when images are resampled from one format to another.

In the digital age, the only way to absolutely prove that a document is genuine is hands-on inspection. Otherwise, one would normally accord a presumption of authenticity to a state-issued document based upon the opinion of a relevant official. That presumption can be overcome by a presentation of compelling evidence to the contrary, which, as in this case, is not always easy to come by.

I hope someone prevails on the authorities in this instance to allow for an independent expert to make such an examination. If nothing else, it would put to rest the sort of needless speculation generated by the Obama camp's unnerving tendency toward secrecy.

[wmfights]

That is the point, isn't it? Why wage an expensive battle over nothing?

That's the one point that has nagged at me from the beginning.

I had hoped the issue would be confronted, but didn't have high expectations. It is going to be a tough battle to turn back these leftists.

[pa mom]

The reason I am uncomfortable with situation is that many, many on here do not seem to have a strong, coherent argument. I have read some well done analysis of the legal cases, but beyond that, most posts degenerate into a mishmash of speculation and innuendo. Any facts which do not fit into the ineligibility scenario are dismissed or explained away as fraud or forgery.

It seems the bottom line is “why won’t he release the vault copy”. Indeed. But all that gives us is suspicion, not proof. Frustrating, yes, but not PROOF. I would just like to see a bit more intellectual rigor.

I feel confidant that O was born in Hawaii, based on the birth announcements in the papers. I am trying to explore the issues beyond that to see if there is anything else to disqualify him. Will wait with baited breath for Friday.

[TheCipher]

I totally agree. Which makes Factchecks analysis meaningless. They post photos of the document held at a distance. If they were being truly honest , they would have posted a high resolution TIFF scan. There is no reason why he shouldn’t allow the release of his COLB to the public. The whole reason for the state not releasing it is to protect the privacy of the individual. By releasing it to the public already, he has in effect waived that right. There is no need to keep it from the public. One might say he wouldn’t want people to have a certified copy of his COLB. That is fine. The registrar can release the index records of all the data on the COLB. It would verify the information on his COLB without releasing the actual copy.

[pa mom]

The Constitution does not specify that both parents need to be citizens for a child born on US soil to be natural born.

[pa mom]

The Constitution does not require that both parents be citizens in order for a person to be “natural born”.

For case law, see US vs. Wong, 1897 or so. The US confers citizenship jus soli, by virtue of place of birth, not jus sanguinis, by blood.

[mquinn]

Er, no, that’s kinda not how it works. Obama, a smuch as I loathe him being president, is a natural born citizen until proven otherwise.

As much as it may gall you, the truth of the matter is that the burden of proof is on the accuser, not the accused. That’s kinda how our legal system works, eve when it protects people that we do not like.

[dools007]

Maybe I misunderstood your original posting. I thought you said that the Constitutional requirement for president to be native born citizen was, essentially, not worth fighting for. In other words, we should just move along.

If I erred I apologize. But if my take was correct then you are obviously not willing to fight for “all” of the Constitution.

[aruanan]

For case law, see US vs. Wong, 1897 or so. The US confers citizenship jus soli, by virtue of place of birth, not jus sanguinis, by blood.

If this were true, then someone born to American citizen parents overseas would then not be American.

[pa mom]

It is true, but we have exceptions in the Constitution for the children of citizens abroad.

Jus soli gives us anchor babies.

[autumnraine]

Once again I think you are confusing Citizen with Natural Born Citizen.

The Wong VS US case was about citizenship and if he a person was born here, were they a CITIZEN. According to other SCOTUS cases, the “natural born” consists of not being being born as a subject of a foreign power, which Obama was.

I don’t doubt Obama’s citizenship, I doubt his “natural born citizenship”.