Free Republic

I don’t think Hugo Chavez would be a very good ally for Obama. Chavez died almost three years ago.

Check the poll that the article is reporting on. The results will surprise you.

There is something odd about this article. According to the poll it links to,
44% of Hispanic-origin registered voters believe the best solution for illegal aliens is to provide them with a pathway to citizenship.
29% believe the best solution is to provide a pathway to legalization (basically a green card, I guess)
26% No immigration until the borders are secure.
1% Dont’t know.

I gather these are the only choices. In any event, that means almost three-quarters believe in a path to legalization at least. That is not the impression I got from the Daily Caller summary.

We make the sign of the cross when we make a silent prayer.

Loretta was obviously well-loved by her co-congregants. The priest who spoke in the videos is now at different church:

Rev William Kunisch
Resurrection of the Lord Catholic Community
94-1260 Lumikula St, Waipahu, HI 96797

He's a VA military chaplain as well (Navy reservist). If anyone knows any vets living in Hawaii, perhaps someone might know him. In any event, if you really believe he presided over the burial of an urn in a casket, perhaps you should just write him a letter and ask him to comment.

You may or may not be familiar with James Madison's defense of William Loughton Smith, but it has been argued quite a lot in these threads. [...]

I am familiar with these cases and the uses to which they are put in Article II discussions; however, I haven't gone over many of the older threads here, and while I still believe what I was taught 40 years ago (nbc = born in the US with a few specific exceptions [I also believe Obama was born in Hawaii, FWIW]), I generally don’t bother to engage these arguments unless I have something to say that I believe is new to those I’m addressing. I can’t judge what might be novel here until I’ve read more, so I shouldn’t have commented on the Eldred argument at all [Frankly, on bread-and-butter Vattelist positions I doubt that I have anything to say that contributors here haven’t seen many times before, but I’ll explain my views if anyone asks.]. Also, I was being a bit of a pendant - I know that the particular point that DiogenesLamp was making logically only relies on Eldred et al being born in the 13 colonies and being citizens thereof in 1776 (and in the case of McClure, “Publius” of the McClure comment being Madison or “the Madison administration”) – so carping about when the US came into existence was irrelevant anyway.

Anyway, it was the slavery stuff that made me post in the first place – for me, there is something new there. I have never seen a discussion of the obvious, logical consequence of the Vattelist position: that men, born of at least one slave (or ex-slave before the 14th Amendment*) were not (and shouldn’t have been) legally treated as NBC’s. Meaning that, for example, George Washington Carver would not have been eligible to serve if nominated (I know he was a scientist & not a politician. I’m only picking him because he was famous & respected & born in 1864). BTW – I understand the “technicality” point : the details of the constitution absolutely matter. If the Vattelists are right*, and if I had been around in 1868, I would have advocated modifying Article II to allow ex-slaves etc to be eligible for President. If I failed to get that amendment, then my position would have been: if you want Carver to run, you better amend the constitution, and if you don’t, and he’s elected, then Congress should do its duty, call him unqualified, and pick someone else.

Anyway, since I posted earlier I discovered that there exists at least one ex-slave who was nominated for VP, albeit, under weird circumstances. Fredrick Douglass, in 1872, was nominated by the “Loyalty Party” even though he wasn’t a member of the party and he was not at the convention. He refused to campaign, or even acknowledge the nomination. He also got a vote for the VP slot in 4th round at the national Republican convention of 1888. And the ex-slave Blanche Bruce got votes for the VP slot at the Republican conventions of 1880 & 1888. Both of Douglass’s parents were slaves; Bruce was fathered (and raised) by his mother's owner.

So my view is: if it was generally believed by the legal community in the era during & immediately after Reconstruction, that ex-slaves, and children of at least one slave (or ex-slave etc) were ineligible for the Presidency, then I would expect to be able to find, in the public record or the historical literature, at least some debate or comment on the topic. I’m not saying there isn’t any – I’m not really sure how to look for it. Google won’t be enough, anyway. But there is a real prediction here: hypothesis & implications to test. I consider that new, but maybe this suggestion has already been discussed somewhere on this site.

Two other points:

*First, by “Vattelist” I don’t mean merely the two-citizen parent claim, but the stronger claim that Article II was generally understand this way for some longish period of time after 1789 (until Wong Kim Ark, perhaps – maybe longer. Maybe until 2008!). Obviously, if the founders were Vattelists, but their views were lost or distorted before the Civil War, say, that would change things – though I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anyone take that view.

*Second, I know that we all learned in school that the 14th Amendment overturned Dred Scott, and, in practical terms that’s true. But the Republican framers of the 13th Amendment believed that ex-slaves became citizens as soon as it was ratified – which means it killed Dred Scott all by itself (The Civil Rights Act of 1866 didn’t create new citizens – it protected their rights as citizens.). The citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment was put there so that a future congress couldn’t repeal the one in the Civil Rights Act – and as a backstop against a future court taking a narrower view of the 13th Amendment than the framers did. Obviously, the Democrats at the time didn’t buy into this view. I’m guessing that Vattelists didn’t (and don’t) either.

1) The United States did not exist when Elldred wa born.
2) A man born of Anericann slaves could not have tried to run for President until after the 14th amendment was ratified (not old enough).
My question is: would that have been illegal in, say,1920, on the grounds that our hypothetical candidate would not have been an NBC?

Elderd was born on British soil, not in the iUnited States, obviously. More interestingly, yours is the first suggestion I “ve read that a man born of American slaves in, say 1864, would have been legally barred from running for President. Are you sure of that?

I’m pretty sure these are numbers from pg 47 of the CDC report:

Jan:  1490 (start: #151 61 00001)
Feb:  1254 (start: #151 61 01491)
Mar:  1510 (start: #151 61 02745)
Apr:  1388 (start: #151 61 04255)
May:  1400 (start: #151 61 05643)
Jun:  1374 (start: #151 61 07043)
Jul:  1532 (start: #151 61 08417)
Aug:  1472 (start: #151 61 09949)
Sep:  1594 (start: #151 61 11421)
Oct:  1624 (start: #151 61 13015)
Nov:  1440 (start: #151 61 14639)
Dec:  1538 (start: #151 61 16079)
Tot: 17616

Excellent article. And no, to Ashely White’s family, no joke at all.