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Lately, we have been bombarded by various people trying to say what is was/wasn't that Vattel had to say, and whether his opinions mattered or were even known to the founders and early America. So I did a bit of research. Emmerich De Vattel was born 1714 of Swiss parentage. At an early age he became interested in literature and philosophy. Now there are much better and detailed biographies on the web, so I won't bore everybody with all the details I read. Suffice to say he spent many years with positions provided by the courts (the royal courts) and...

Yeah, Okay, It's Racism, You Liar Dean C. Haskins If there is one thing I have learned since the last presidential campaign, it is that Obama's myriad supporters (common folk) and worshipers (media) are either incapable of, or unwilling to, understand that our forefathers, when framing the Constitution, used a then-commonly-understood term when defining the requirements for holding the office of president; and, because that requirement has never been altered through the process of amendment, nor has the simple, historic definition of the term ever been changed, many of Obama's followers commonly take the path of least intellectual resistance, and...

General Trump has accomplished what no others have managed in three years, the release of Obama’s birth certificate. I do not see any incriminating information on Obama’s birth certificate that would indicate he was not born in Hawaii. In fact the certificate is so vanilla looking it leaves me with puzzling questions. Why didn’t Obama release this certificate three years ago? Why has Obama spent a considerable amount of money fighting the release of this seemingly normal certificate? Those unanswered questions will undoubtedly forever haunt many of us. None the less, I now consider the case of his eligibility for...

What I find so amazing about the "birther bashers" (or "afterbirthers" as I call them) is that they have so little appreciation for the complexity of Obama's citizenship dilemma. They also do not appreciate the trap doors that exist at various points in his life regarding adoption and immigration between countries where he resided. Most of all, though, they don't understand the basic terms that they banter about. In short, Obama's life path is fraught with potentially disqualifying conditions for the office he holds. As a constitutional law instructor, perhaps no one understands these conditions like he does, and that...

Time to turn to the real issue, 'Does Obama qualify as ‘natural-born'? The issue with Obama’s eligibility not only involves his place of birth but also whether he qualifies as a 'natural-born-citizen'. After Obama played his 'Trump' card his supporters are trying to divert voters away from the 'natural-born' issue and obfuscate the definition of 'natural-born'. It is generally believed the Founders considered 'natural-born' to mean born in country to parents who were citizens at the time of the person's birth. As Holmes said to Watson, "The game is afoot." Attempts have already been made to use 'native-born' interchangeably with...

At long last, Barack Obama Jr. released his long form birth certificate today, clearly proving he is NOT a natural born citizen. So, why has there been virtually no call in the Senate to begin impeachment proceedings? And why are so many news reporters acting as if all Obama needed to substantiate he was a Natural Born Citizen was to prove he was born in the U.S.A? The U.S. Constitution and U.S. law, as of the time of Obama Junior’s birth, still required a President to have a father (pictured top left) who was a U.S. citizen. Clearly Obama’s father...

Here’s the long-form birth certificate, so birthers can get to work on explaining why we now need a photograph of President Obama’s parents standing in front of Kapiolani hospital with a copy of the August 4, 1961 edition of the Honolulu Star Advertiser  in one hand and a complete genome in the other. Here’s White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer’s full statement on the matter: In 2008, in response to media inquiries, the President’s campaign requested his birth certificate from the state of Hawaii. The state sent the campaign the President’s birth certificate, the same legal documentation provided to all...

Yet another investigation has determined that, contrary to claims by "birthers," there is no doubt that President Obama was born in the United States. The latest inquiry into Mr. Obama's birthplace, conducted by CNN in a report that airs tonight on AC360, concludes that "Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961. Period." Doubt surrounding Mr. Obama's American citizenship has been thoroughly debunked by multiple sources since the issue arose on the 2008 campaign trail. Still, the matter has resurfaced in recent months, thanks in large part to Donald Trump's recent "birther"-friendly media blitz, in which he has repeatedly...

A new CNN investigation reveals what most analysts have been saying since the "birther" controversy erupted during the 2008 presidential campaign: Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961. Period.

How eager is CNN for a Trump/Birther traffic windfall? Not only did they rush a story about this “scoop” onto their website hours before Cooper’s show airs, they posted a sneak preview of the exchange to entice viewers to watch. Who can resist a rainbow of extra page views? Not I, my friends, not I. Real estate mogul Donald Trump’s latest claim about President Obama’s birth certificate is that it’s missing.“Well I’ve been told very recently, Anderson, that the birth certificate is missing,” Trump told CNN’s Anderson Cooper Monday. “I’ve been told that it’s not there or it doesn’t exist....

When Barack Hussein Obama was Democrat Party presidential nominee in the 2008 national election, he presented himself to the American public as a sort of New Messiah of “Hope and Change,” the new god of “Yes We Can!” (whatever these vaporous, vacuous statements could actually mean). He probably garnered the vote of every passionate ignoramus in the land. Moreover, there was evidence of irregularities in polling procedures in certain jurisdictions. Few people bother to investigate such matters these days, and certainly not the Dept. of Justice. In the end, with the help of union and left-progressive interest money and the...

[snip]The focus on President Obama's birth certificate diminishes the true questions about the unfairness of the conditions in the Constitution to run for president, which are long overdue for change.

What might the phrase “natural-born citizen” of the United States imply under the U.S. Constitution? The phrase has always been obscure due to the lack of any single authoritative source to confer in order to understand the condition of citizenship the phrase recognizes. Learning what the phrase might have meant following the Declaration of Independence, and the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, requires detective work. As with all detective work, eliminating the usual suspects from the beginning goes a long way in quickly solving a case. What Natural-Born Citizen Could Not Mean Could a natural-born citizen simply mean citizenship due...

While channel-surfing Friday evening, I happened upon the end of this week's installment of PBS's Need To Know program. Pulitzer Prize-winning former Newsweek editor Jon Meacham began his piece as follows: Donald Trump made me do it. Those are not words I ever expected to say, but, as Margaret Thatcher once observed, it's a funny old world. For several years, I -- like, I suspect, many of you -- have watched the nativist and irrational obsession with Barack Obama's birth certificate with disdain, horror, bemusement -- and then back to horror. Apparently, in Meacham's world, it is irrational (and horrifying)...

It is a rule of legislative construction, that one law must explicitly say it is changing or amending an existing law, if that is the desired objective. If such explicit language is not found in the text of the "amending" law, then recourse is made to the "intent" of the amending law. This intent is determined by the debate and other language used during the process of enacting the new law. If after this, the intent is stll not clear, then a determination must be made whether both the new and old law can both be read to give effect...

Video Below: Via CNN; - Trump says he has doubts about Obama’s birth place - Alexander Mooney (CNN) – Donald Trump, the business mogul who continues to claim he is seriously interested in mounting a bid for the White House, says he has doubts about whether President Obama was born in the United States. In an interview with ABC, Trump said he finds it strange “nobody knew” Obama as a young child in Hawaii. “Let me tell you, I’m a really smart guy. I was a really good student at the best school in the country. The reason I have...

AND WHAT TO DO BEFORE IT GETS HERE… by William Lolli, ©2011 (Mar. 15, 2011) — Back in 1975 I was stationed at Clark AB, Republic of the Philippines. When a new, wet-behind-the-ears Airman arrived from the States, the base had a protocol to prepare the “kids” to recognize and resist the dangers of living overseas. The setup for the 3 Card Monte is now in place for the 2012 election cycle: As alluded earlier, Abercrombie is the Dealer. The missing card is the COLB Long Form Birth Certificate. The general public has become the Marks. And the naïve Birthers...

CNN’s Anderson Cooper may actually think he is a fair-minded journalist. But probably someone in a mental institution somewhere thinks he is Anderson Cooper. Which just goes to prove that thinking something, doesn’t make it so. The problem, however, isn’t what Anderson Cooper thinks about himself, but that other people actually take him seriously as a journalist and opinion maker, too. I know, it’s hard to believe. After all, Cooper is the guy who popularized calling Tea Party protesters “Teabaggers” even though he knew it was a derogatory term that referred to a sex act popular among homosexuals. He had...

A famous Holmesian dictum provides that "a page of history is worth a volume of logic."

While Republican Congressman Frank Pallone read the "natural born Citizen" clause of the U.S. Constitution on the House floor last Thursday, a spirited female in the audience shouted out, "Except Obama! Except Obama! Help us, Jesus!" Later that day, NBC's Brian Williams improbably chose to assign blame for the woman's outburst on newly elected House speaker John Boehner. "How much responsibility do you feel?" Williams asked pointedly. "The state of Hawaii has said Obama was born there," said Boehner, who is no more intimate with the "Birther" movement than Williams himself. "That was good enough for me." The person Williams...