The Man John Jay warned About

As we’ve shown several times, Ankeny’s reasoning was flawed. “Just as a person “born within the British dominions [was] a natural-born British subject” at the time of the framing of the U.S. Constitution, so too were those “born in the allegiance of the United States natural-born citizens.” At the time of the framing of the Constitution, you couldn’t be both and the father’s allegiance determined that of the child. It’s a great argument Ankeny makes that Obama would be considered a natural born subject, but far from a natural born citizen. That’s what you call the Ankeny of defeat.

If the Indiana Court of Appeals reasoning is flawed, I wonder wny the Indiana Supreme Court refused to entertain the case on appeal.
Perhaps it is YOUR reasoning that is flawed. The US Supreme Court has had seven opportunities to take on the subject of Obama’s eligibility. They have rejected them all.
I supppose their reasoning is flawed as well.

Does this post of yours come from your free and unencumbered mind or is it bought and paid for with Obama stimulus money???

I’ll take “choice A”: “my free and unencumbered mind” for three hundred, Alex.

If the Indiana Court of Appeals reasoning is flawed, I wonder wny the Indiana Supreme Court refused to entertain the case on appeal. Perhaps it is YOUR reasoning that is flawed. The US Supreme Court has had seven opportunities to take on the subject of Obama’s eligibility. They have rejected them all. I supppose their reasoning is flawed as well.

Ankeny upheld a motion to dismiss because the plaintiffs failed to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. They sued the governor of Indiana and didn't sufficiently support their claim to the court(s) that the governor had a responsibility to vet the eligibility of presidential candidates. Anything beyond that is flufff. The appeal court's flawed rationale over phantom guidance from Wong Kim Ark on natural born citizenship doesn't magically affect whether the governor has a legal responsibility or not. It's an aside. The Indiana Supreme Court doesn't need to consider whether the appeals court was on drugs when it wrote about natural born citizenship, but just on whether the plaintiff sufficiently stated a justiciable claim against the defendant. This has no direct bearing on the cases presented to the U.S. Supreme Court, although they may have failed over similar procedural issues and not how they perceived Obama's eligibilty.

As has been pointed out previously... whether you want to admit it or not, courts are still political in nature. My parents were sued and their land was taken away from them by eminent domain. Because no notice was given to them prior to the decision to take their property which was a violation of our State's laws their case made it all the way to our State Supreme Court.

The State Supreme Court made a decision based on “facts” that were never introduced in trial and were actually outright lies. They decided that because Sound Transit supposedly had posted several layers down on their website that at a meeting that was not actually even open to public input that they were going to be discussing the acquisition of certain real properties between Seattle and Olympia... that sufficient notice had been given. My dad had never even touched a computer at that time. The decision was a politically influenced farce. The twisted logic that they used was based on lies and precedents that had no relationship to reality.

So jamese777 don't try to tell me that the decision of some hack court in Indiana is the last word on this. As has been pointed out courts are political bodies. Their reasoning is often influenced by politics more than sound legal reasoning. In our state the justices are elected like all other politicians.

For those who are interested. In the end my parents legal expenses were far more than what they actually received in compensation for their land. Their legal expenses were over $550,000. They still owed $500,000 on the land. They were awarded $450,000 with no compensation for their legal expenses. Inferior property across the street which was smaller and had several major problems associated with it sold for over a $1,000,000 ten years before. Sound Transit spent approximately $1,500,000 in legal expenses trying to keep from paying a fair price, not including a PR campaign designed to spread disinformation and a whole lot of political arm twisting.

THE MYTH OF A MINOR CANNOT RENOUNCE US CITIZENSHIP The issuance of a Certificate of Loss of Nationality (CLN) is at the discretion of the Secretary of State. In other words, the current SoS, Secretary Clinton, may issue a policy statement where a minor under the age of 14 will not be issued a CLN under any circumstance. A more appropriate question is: Would the SoS in 1965 to 1969 issue a CLN to minor who had moved to SE Asia with his mother and adoptive father? And further, let's add to the situation where the adoptive father is a military officer in a foreign army under centralized authoritarian rule. Would Secretary Dean Acheson, SoS 1964 - 1968, issue a CLN to a minor living in a SE Asian country ruled by a military dictator? Answer: YES!

You mean Dean Rusk, Secretary of State (1961 to 1969).

To get a CLN, a 6 to 10 year old Barack Obama would have had to go before a US consular or diplomatic official and convince the official that he wanted to renounce his citizenship and that he understood what all that meant.

Put yourself in Obama's mother's shoes. Would she really be more likely to put herself, her husband, and her son through all of that red tape and rigamarole and subject her child to the Indonesian junta's authority, or would she be more likely to just tell the school what it wanted to hear and forget about all the bureaucratic nonsense?

As has been pointed out previously... whether you want to admit it or not, courts are still political in nature. My parents were sued and their land was taken away from them by eminent domain. Because no notice was given to them prior to the decision to take their property which was a violation of our State’s laws their case made it all the way to our State Supreme Court.
The State Supreme Court made a decision based on “facts” that were never introduced in trial and were actually outright lies. They decided that because Sound Transit supposedly had posted several layers down on their website that at a meeting that was not actually even open to public input that they were going to be discussing the acquisition of certain real properties between Seattle and Olympia... that sufficient notice had been given. My dad had never even touched a computer at that time. The decision was a politically influenced farce. The twisted logic that they used was based on lies and precedents that had no relationship to reality.

So jamese777 don’t try to tell me that the decision of some hack court in Indiana is the last word on this. As has been pointed out courts are political bodies. Their reasoning is often influenced by politics more than sound legal reasoning. In our state the justices are elected like all other politicians.

For those who are interested. In the end my parents legal expenses were far more than what they actually received in compensation for their land. Their legal expenses were over $550,000. They still owed $500,000 on the land. They were awarded $450,000 with no compensation for their legal expenses. Inferior property across the street which was smaller and had several major problems associated with it sold for over a $1,000,000 ten years before. Sound Transit spent approximately $1,500,000 in legal expenses trying to keep from paying a fair price, not including a PR campaign designed to spread disinformation and a whole lot of political arm twisting.

If the courts are so “political in nature” why are birthers continuing to use those very same “political” courts to force Obama to defend his eligibility?

Thus far 69 lawsuits challenging Obama’s eligibility have been dismissed, denied a hearing or rejected on appeal at every level of the judiciary and in practically every state in the nation.

No plaintiff has yet prevailed in any of them.

Yes, you can rationalize and spin all those lawsuits until you’re blue in the face; be my guest. But the facts and the decisions handed down speak for themselves.

The US Supreme Court, with a conservative majority of Alito, Kennedy, Roberts, Scalia and Thomas has refused seven different challenges to Obama’s eligibility. You can call any court that disagrees with you “hacks” if it suits your fancy, but your perjoratives mean absolutely nothing other than the sound and fury of a fool, signifying nothing.

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” —Albert Einstein

Using civil lawsuits to force a decision from a court on Obama’s eligibility has been tried 69 times now and failed every single time.

My approach is to switch tactics and use the CRIMINAL court system not the civil lawsuit route. Find a prosecuting attorney, a US Attorney like Patrick Fitzgerald who brought down Rod Blagojevich, a state Attorney General like the Attorney General of Hawaii Mark Bennett who is a Republicans, or even a local district attorney who is a law and order conservative. Get that prosecutor to convene a Grand Jury investigation of the authenticity of Obama’s birth records. Under a Grand Jury investigation, a subpoena can be issued for Obama’s original birth documents and they can be examined by experts under oath.
That is the way I would try to resolve this issue once and for all.

Ankeny upheld a motion to dismiss because the plaintiffs failed to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. They sued the governor of Indiana and didn’t sufficiently support their claim to the court(s) that the governor had a responsibility to vet the eligibility of presidential candidates. Anything beyond that is flufff. The appeal court’s flawed rationale over phantom guidance from Wong Kim Ark on natural born citizenship doesn’t magically affect whether the governor has a legal responsibility or not. It’s an aside. The Indiana Supreme Court doesn’t need to consider whether the appeals court was on drugs when it wrote about natural born citizenship, but just on whether the plaintiff sufficiently stated a justiciable claim against the defendant. This has no direct bearing on the cases presented to the U.S. Supreme Court, although they may have failed over similar procedural issues and not how they perceived Obama’s eligibilty.

Edge is correct on justiciability. Thus far 69 different courts have in effect said, “there’s nothing we can do. The Constitution does not give the power to the judiciary to remove a sitting president.”

The way to remove a president is via impeachment in the House and trial and conviction in the Senate.

However the Indiana Court of Appeals went a step further than simply stating that the plaintiffs had no standing to sue. They laid out a definitive position that Article 2, Section 1 has nothing to do with whether one’s parents are American citizens or not, as long as the president himself was born in the United States.
Thus far no court, federal or state, original jurisdiction or appeals has taken a divergent position.

As a conservative federal judge (Chief Judge Royce Lamberth), appointed by Ronald Reagan said in dismissing birther attorney Orly Taitz’s quo warranto suit: “This is one of several such suits filed by Ms. Taitz in her quixotic attempt to prove that President Obama is not a natural born citizen as required by [the] Constitution. See U.S. Const. art. II, § 1. This Court is not willing to go tilting at windmills with her.”

NO court has been willing to do tilting at windmills with birthers.

Yes. That’s right, she would have to have been 19.

It's an interesting theory, but still goes against the stated US policy. Do you have any evidence that Secretary Dean Acheson personally intervened to issue a CLN to 0bama against the stated policy?

However the Indiana Court of Appeals went a step further than simply stating that the plaintiffs had no standing to sue. They laid out a definitive position that Article 2, Section 1 has nothing to do with whether one’s parents are American citizens or not, as long as the president himself was born in the United States. Thus far no court, federal or state, original jurisdiction or appeals has taken a divergent position. NO court has been willing to do tilting at windmills with birthers.

You overstate the court's opinion. It's not definitive in any form, especially since they avoided declaring Obama to be a natural born citizen. And how could they?? They don't know if Obama was really born in the United States. Also, the comment about 'tilting at windmills' is complete bufoonery. If you want to go by the broken Ankeny decision, then they admit there's a reasonable question that needs to be answered: whether the person in question was born in the United States or not. Since such a question can be answered, then it should allow for a justiciable claim - that a candidate/elected official can be discovered and declared to be ineligible for office.

You overstate the court’s opinion. It’s not definitive in any form, especially since they avoided declaring Obama to be a natural born citizen. And how could they?? They don’t know if Obama was really born in the United States. Also, the comment about ‘tilting at windmills’ is complete bufoonery. If you want to go by the broken Ankeny decision, then they admit there’s a reasonable question that needs to be answered: whether the person in question was born in the United States or not. Since such a question can be answered, then it should allow for a justiciable claim - that a candidate/elected official can be discovered and declared to be ineligible for office.

I overstated nothing.

The words of the Indiana Court of Appeals speak for themselves, and I quote:
“...we conclude that persons born within the borders of the United States are ‘natural born Citizens’ for Article II, Section 1 purposes, regardless of the citizenship of their parents.”
What Edge doesn’t understand or else ignores is that “Ankeny et. al.” stipulated that Obama was born in Honolulu. This case hinged on the separate “birther” argument that even if he was born in the US, he is ineligible due to his Kenyan born and Kenyan citizen father. Under that presumption, Governor Daniels should have disqualified Obama from receiving Indiana’s Electoral College votes. That argument failed in Superior Court, at the state Court of Appeals and was denied a hearing by the state Supreme Court

Since the Indiana Appeals Court’s decision, no other court in the nation has entertained ANY Obama eligibility lawsuit beyond taking legal briefs and then dismissing the lawsuit.

I can guarantee you that every defense attorney (such as the Attorney General of Indiana in Ankeny v Daniels) will submit a copy of the Indiana Court of Appeals’ decision with their motions for dismissal, whether they are a private attorney representing former candidate Obama, a US Department of Justice Attorney defending President Obama or a state or private attorney defending a different defendant such as Mitch Daniels, the current Governor of Indiana and former Bush Administration Director of Management and Budget.

Weak sauce and you can lay off the “lighten up” comments.

First, I apologized up front acknowledge that I was being a bit of a tug.

Second, part of participating IN the forum is bringing the information INTO the forum.

I’m quite familiar with the list, but the “numerous” sources doesn’t include the >90% of the posts on FR. If you look at 1 page of FR posts, almost all of them will be excerpted even when they don’t have to be.

It’s just weak. And, it’s ok to admit it too; no need for you to defend it. Most everyone around here knows it.

The words of the Indiana Court of Appeals speak for themselves, and I quote: “...we conclude that persons born within the borders of the United States are ‘natural born Citizens’ for Article II, Section 1 purposes, regardless of the citizenship of their parents.”

Sorry, but this conclusion is out of cherry-picking and ignorance. They present it in a way in which it could not be challenged, especially since it's immaterial.

What Edge doesn’t understand or else ignores is that “Ankeny et. al.” stipulated that Obama was born in Honolulu.

So, can you find a direct quote stating this??

“Sorry, but this conclusion is out of cherry-picking and ignorance. They present it in a way in which it could not be challenged, especially since it’s immaterial.”================================================

You’re entitled to your opinion, the Justices are entitled to their’s. The difference is that their opinion carries legal weight and your’s doesn’t.

“So, can you find a direct quote stating this??”

The direct quote comes from the Indiana Court of Appeals’ decision itself.

The Ankeny decision focuses on two issues only: whether a sitting Senator can be an elector and whether Obama and McCain were Native Born.

In the Court of Appeals’ decision the justices clearly note that the plaintiffs are arguing NOT about where Obama was born but whether a person with a foreign born parent can be president.

Here are their exact words, and I quote: “As to President Obama’s status, the most common argument has been waged by members of the so-called ‘birther’ movement who suggest that the President was not born in the United States; they support their argument by pointing to ‘the President’s alleged refusal to disclose publicly an “official birth certificate’ that is satisfactory to [the birthers].”

THE PLAINTIFFS IN THE INSTANT CASE MAKE A DIFFERENT LEGAL ARGUMENT BASED STRICTLY ON CONSTITUTIONAL INTERPRETATION. [capitalization, mine] Specifically, the crux of the Plaintiffs’ argument is that “[c]ontrary to the thinking of most People on the subject, there is a very clear distinction between a “citizen of the United States”; and a “natural born Citizen;” and the difference involves having [two] parents of U.S. citizenship, owing no foreign allegiance.”

With regard to President Barack Obama, the Plaintiffs posit that because his father was a citizen of the United Kingdom, President Obama is constitutionally ineligible to assume the Office of the President.

The bases of the Plaintiffs’ arguments come from such sources as FactCheck.org, The Rocky Mountain News, an eighteenth century treatise by Emmerich de Vattel titled “The Law of Nations,” and various citations to nineteenth century congressional debate. For the reasons stated below, we hold that the Plaintiffs’ arguments fail to state a claim upon which relief can be granted, and that therefore the trial court did not err in dismissing the Plaintiffs’ complaint.”

You’re entitled to your opinion, the Justices are entitled to their’s. The difference is that their opinion carries legal weight and your’s doesn’t.

This is a poor argument. Whether the Justices' opinion has more legal weight than mine doesn't prove that my opinion is wrong, nor was the amount of legal weight being disputed.

The direct quote comes from the Indiana Court of Appeals’ decision itself.

You said I failed to understand that the court stipulated Obama was born in Honolulu, yet you've failed to show any such stipulation in anything you've quoted. Can I expect a retraction??

“This is a poor argument. Whether the Justices’ opinion has more legal weight than mine doesn’t prove that my opinion is wrong, nor was the amount of legal weight being disputed.”

I see, so you have no interest in whether there is an adjudication of the issue of whether Barack Obama is a legitimate president or not as long as you feel that you are right. Interesting.

“You said I failed to understand that the court stipulated Obama was born in Honolulu, yet you’ve failed to show any such stipulation in anything you’ve quoted. Can I expect a retraction??”

By arguing the “two American born parents are required to be natural born” argument and not the “Obama was not born in the US” argument, the plaintiffs were stipulating to Obama being born in Hawaii. The plaintiffs even used the factcheck.org article on Obama’s COLB as was mentioned in the Justices’ decision.

I see, so you have no interest in whether there is an adjudication of the issue of whether Barack Obama is a legitimate president or not as long as you feel that you are right. Interesting.

I supported my reasoning and showed where this particular court got it wrong and undermined their own reasoning by failing to show precedent for anyone being declared a natural born decision. It was moot to the court's real action as we already discussed anyway, which was basically to uphold a motion to dismiss. What they did was akin to throwing a sucker punch after ringing the bell to end a fight.

By arguing the “two American born parents are required to be natural born” argument and not the “Obama was not born in the US” argument, the plaintiffs were stipulating to Obama being born in Hawaii. The plaintiffs even used the factcheck.org article on Obama’s COLB as was mentioned in the Justices’ decision.

Right, so it still wasn't the court who made this stipulation as you claimed earlier. Thus, I'm still waiting for your retraction.