Posted on 07/22/2009 8:35:28 AM PDT by pissant
This all out attack of the ‘birthers’ is interesting. I think that the movement is getting tons of free publicity.
As Americans become less satisfied with the current economic situation, the natural rection is to find reasons to blame those in power.
I see more and more people grabbing onto this issue. It is an easy way to disengage from their original support. Obama has higher personal numbers than policy numbers. This will help that change.
Thanks, MSM for the advertising.
Compared to what is on Fox News today....Dobbs may be the closest to a conservative anywhere on cable news
Fox News wont even tough the birth certificate issue....its like watching PMSNBCLSD at times
I haven’t paid much attention to this issue but what is startling is the left/media hive’s full court press on this today.It’s a talking point- palooza.
Until proven otherwise, I am sceptical of the Birther movement. In fact, I am concerned that Team Obama is about to ambush its critics. After all, they *could* be holding the trump-card: a valid US Birth Certificate.
Releasing it at the right time would have a tremendous impact on Obama’s critics.
“You guys were wrong about his nationality, and you’re wrong about him being a muslim/socialist/Reverend Wright lover” etc.
And I hope I’m wrong.
Supreme Court Justice Waite did just that, in 1874, Minor v. Happersett:
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.
There you have a definitive clarification by the US Supreme Court, as to the meaning of the Constitutional term "natural-born citizen."
There are others, too. Rusk, for one.
You said — Releasing it at the right time would have a tremendous impact on Obama’s critics.
—
Actually this issue is more useful to the leftists in order to distract the public from bills that are being passed without being printed, and providing them with a built-in story for slow news days, and giving them a lot of fun in marginalizing a certain segment of the conservatives.
I believe they would be disappointed if the issue was solved... they would then have to write on current legislation...
when they withdrew that soldier’s orders to deploy overseas rather than go to a Court Martial, this issue became unavoidable
Natural born refers to someone being born of that nation or territory. If you were born in, say, Texas, you would be a natural born citizen of the USA
More importantly, the founding fathers put this in the constitution (natural born) to prevent foreign born persons from becoming President.
At the time of our nation’s founding....many European lands were ruled by royals who were not born in the country they were ruling in. There was also much inter-marraige of the royals (marriage into other land’s royal families.....or marrying close relatives)
Interesting is that this natural born clause would have been helpful for some other nations throughout history. Napoleon was born in Corsica....Stalin was born in Georgia...Hitler was born in Austria.....Yasser Arafat was born in Egypt....all foreign-born rulers of their lands/nations
Thanks. Now, will somebody at the Federal legislative level please come up with a procedure for certifying that candidates meet that criterion!
everyone please keep calling there reps. soon they will get sick of us and demand something to be shown. i call every week sometimes multiple times. and why your at it tell them to audit the fed too!
“Boston Phoenix”, huh?
As someone recently said, “New England is where political parties go to die.”
It really wouldn’t have to be at the federal level in order to prevent this from happening in the future, and to prevent Barry from running in 2012.
One state legislature would be all it would take - Alaska, Montana, Oklahoma, etc.
If the “candidate” refused to supply the documentation to the SoS of that state, he wouldn’t be eligible to be on the ballot or to have any electoral votes from that state.
I know what natural born is supposed to mean. However, it is also used in another context meaning that the child was delivered naturally, without anesthetic. Additionally, it is used meaning that the child was delivered vaginally — not by C-section.
I realize that those childbirth meanings sound silly regarding eligibility to be president, but don’t you remember the argument used by another President fairly recently (not 100 years ago) that “It depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is”?
I’m merely anticipating the legal hoops that will be used if this case ever comes to trial.
BTW, I always understood that the “natural born” clause was put into the Constitution to prevent Alexander Hamilton from ever becoming President. Apparently, Hamilton had detractors in addition to Aaron Burr.
Its already been defined....born in the country of TWO citizen parents. The problem is the powers that be refuse to endorse this definition and others refuse to believe that this has been defined. Read The Federalist Papers: Defining Natural Born Citizen
The definition goes all the way back to Emerich de Vattel's work The Law of Nations written in 1758, Book 1, Chapter 19, Section 212: where he defines ‘natural born’ as ‘those children born in the country, of PARENTS who are citizens.’ De Vattel was THE pre-eminent work that our Founders drew from in drafting our constitution! Justice John Marshall reinforced this definition. John Jay reinforced this definition. The following SCOTUS cases have rein-forced this definition:
Shanks v. Dupont, 28 U.S. 242, 245 in 1830 - they reinforced Vattel’s definition in this case.
Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162, 167-68 in 1875 - again the same definition as Vattel was reinforced in this case.
Ex parte Reynolds, 1879, 5 Dill., 394, 402 - In this case not only was the same definition as Vattel reinforced yet again, but the source citation for this definition was Vattel!
United States v. Ward, 42 F.320 (C.C.S.D.Cal. 1890) - Vattel was again cited as the source for the proper definiton of ‘natural born’ as understood by the framers of our constitution.
Nowhere has this traditional definition ever been overturned. Not in the 14th amendment which only defines ‘citizenship’, not ‘natural born status’ - not in any SCOTUS decisions (quite the opposite) - and not in any Acts of Congress.
The most recent congressional legistation dated April 2008 regarding John McCain's natural birth status submitted by Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Claire McCaskill (D-MO) co-sponsored by Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Obama himself while still a Senator was put to a judiciary committee meeting to resolve the issue and the conclusion was:
"My assumption and my understanding is that if you are born of American parents, [Please note the plural here - the definition TWO parents going all the way back to Vattel has not changed] you are naturally a natural-born American citizen," Chertoff said. Leahy concurred."
Reported here and again here. McCaskill later tried to pass legislation re-defining natural born to mean born to only 'one' citizen parent but it failed to pass.
What the above does is reinforce the traditional definition as defined by the Federalist Papers and the United States Supreme Court requiring TWO citizen parents. This legislation was co-sponsored by Obama himself, and has not been revoked in spite of Democrats best efforts.
What should be taking place right now is not so much a 'birth certificate' but using Obama's own words against him where he has stated he was 'born a British subject' (due to his Father being a non-us citizen from Kenya) and applying that to what has already been ruled by SCOTUS. Obama cannot possibly be a natural born citizen no matter WHERE he was born because his father was NOT a citizen!!
There is High Treason going on in the highest levels of our government.
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.
The Founding Fathers recognized the need to have no allegiance to any foreign power, nor influence, and so they put this clause into the Constitution.
Since the nation was in it's infancy, only those original U.S. citizens who were alive at the adoption of the Constitution were eligible for president (since they were actually born in England, or were subjects of England).
As children were born to two original U.S. citizens in the United States, they were natural born and thus eligible themselves when they met the other two requirements. Eventually, the original U.S. citizens died, and the natural-born requirement is the only one applicable today.
You cannot be born in another country and be natural-born, nor can you have another country confer citizenship over you and be natural-born.
By his own admission, Obama was a citizen of Kenya through his Kenyan father until 1982, when he let it lapse. That is not natural-born, and that's the real scandal. This is what the Founding Fathers intended to protect us from - someone with sympathies to countries other than this one.
I still think he needs to release the long-form birth certificate.
If he has a legit BC, fine. Let’s see it. Then he can stay in office until 2004 when he is defeated.
If he doesn’t, well drag his marxist hide out of there by his ears.
Obviously there has already been a "Birthers I" group who were "rabidly" demanding to be shown a Republican candidate's birth certificate.
Wonder why the leftist media hasn't written an equal amount of articles about that bunch of "crazy" Birthers?
They, after all, are "fair and balanced, objective journalists", right?
Of course they are, after all, they never miss a chance to tell everyone they are, right?
I buy your well crafted argument. Now, what can we do about it?
And I still want to see some kind of official "vetting" program for candidates instituted.
This just stinks.
Furthermore, I want to know more about the allegation (by Dr. Orly Taitz) that Obama has used "up to 39 different Social Security Numbers" in his lifetime. Where does that come from? Isn't that fraud? Isn't that identity theft? Why can't he be prosecuted, if true.
“will somebody please come up with a definition of a natural born citizen?”
This is a good article explaining it here:
http://federalistblog.us/2008/11/natural-born_citizen_defined.html#more
STE=Q
I believe questions were raised about Barry Goldwater (born in AZ before it became a state) and George Romney (born in Mexico to American citizen Mormon colonizers) when they were candidates for POTUS. So would we actually be Birthers IV?
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.