“There is no debate about where Marco was born (Miami in 1071”—— wow he looks good for 940 years old :-p
FWIW, I agree with you 100% about the rest of your post. The people who define “natural born” as requiring American citizen parents are full of it- all it requires is that the candidate be born in the country. To hold otherwise would mean that Thomas Jefferson (English mother), Andrew Jackson (both his parents were Irish immigrants), James Buchanan (Irish father),Chester Arthur (Irish father), Woodrow Wilson (English mother) and Herbert Hoover (Canadian mother) would have been ineligible for the presidency, something I’ve NEVER heard seriously debated anywhere.
Are you what is passing for useful idiot from david axelfraud’s cadre now? You really do need to consider where you’re spewing that vomitous deceit, ax. Arthur’s father had not naturalized by the time Chester was born, and your other lies are why the founders wrote an exception clause into the Constitution. You stealth liars are disgusting.
We have debated this issue ad nauseum here. It gets tiresome after a while. HOWEVER, NBC DOES require TWO citizen parents as well as an in-country birth. That’s the way the founders understood it (To them, Vatel’s definition was so well-known and obvious that they saw no need to define the term in the Constitution.)
If having US citizen parents were unimportant, please explain why Chester Arthur went to extreme lengths to conceal the fact that his Irish-born father failed to become naturalized until Chester was a young man. Arthur went so far as to burn his personal papers to stop investigators.
Be careful whom you call “full of it.” All but Arthur fit the “Laws of Nations” definition. The other parents had become naturalized in a timely fashion or the candidate was grandfathered in by the Constitution itself as were the Framers.
If you think I am wrong, produce some factual evidence to prove it and lay off the cheap ad hominem crap.
The gutless SCOTUS refuses to rule on eligibility-—they avoid “political” cases-—so we have to look at the times, the authoritative books the Founders used, as well as texts of congressional debates argued during the adoption of the 14th Amendment.
They took the question VERY seriously and would doubtless be appalled at the way our Constitution is regularly and cynically trampled under foot for nothing more than crass political reasons.
I can’t believe how many FReepers would bury constitutional principles just to enable success for this or that politician. People here can do what they want but I’ll stick to the Framers’ interpretation. Strict constructionism is for me because once we start to take liberties with the Constitution and use the liberal “living document” rationale, we head down the road to national doom.
Want some good, solid info on this? Go to Leo D’Onofrio’s Natural Born Citizen blog. Leo is a brilliant and very convincing teacher. http://naturalborncitizen.wordpress.com/
Where do you types come from? Why is it you will do research to find out who the parents of various Presidents were, but never bother to learn WHY it didn't matter?
The early Presidents were exempted specifically by article II,
"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."
and the later Presidents (except for Chester Arthur) had parents that naturalized PRIOR to their birth.
Now you have just been demonstrated to be incredibly ignorant on this subject, so You should just stop offering YOUR opinion until you LEARN WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT! You ought to be horribly embarrassed about beclowning yourself, but my experience with you types is that you have no shame.