McCain is 'father of birther movement' (McCain paved the way for Obama)

World Net Daily ^ | 2010-04-13 | Joseph Farah

[Arcy]

I will lose a lot of respect for the intelligence of people living in Arizona if they decide to re-elect McCain. One of this nation's biggest dangers is its open borders, which McCain is a proponent of. When it comes to defending our own country, McCain is a coward.

Arizona, DO YOUR DUTY and ELECT J.D. Hayworth.

[Arcy]

Yes, the ad is real and it is paid for by McCain.

[BluH2o]

The McCain BC that I saw confirmed what was already well known - McCain too was not eligible to be president, albeit for a different reason than Obama.

First I'm no defender of McCain, I didn't like McCain long before 2008. However, McCain was the product of two married U.S. citizens who both can trace their roots back in this country several generations. Albeit he was born overseas, however, his father was a U.S. Naval officer assigned to the Panama Canal zone the time. If your premise holds true a U.S. foreign service employee with his/her family serving with them on assignment, in a foreign country, have a child (children) their offspring don't qualify as natural born U.S. citizens. This is ridiculous ... of course they qualify as natural born U.S. citizens. Same thing with McCain.

[Just A Nobody]

Good post -- thanks! It may be that I have not consumed sufficient amounts of coffee yet this morning to parse this section of your post, but I have a question.

There were over a dozen law review articles denouncing Article II natural born citizenship in the five years before Obama. One was by a junior partner at Kirkland and Ellis, employed by a senior partner who led McCain's defense team in the law suits questioning his eligibility.
... and two law suits defended by Obama-connected law firm Kirkland and Ellis.

Are you saying that an employee (Junior Partner) from Kirkland and Ellis wrote a NBC eligibility article prior to the '08 campaign?
And another employee (Sr. Partner) from the same law firm -- Kirkland and Ellis -- and also employed above referenced Jr. partner, led McCain's defense team in the eligibility suits?

McCain probably did not participate in the Obama elections as an Obama supporter, but he did receive significant financial support from George Soros.

Thank you for pointing out this information. Some how this fact always gets left out of any discussion of McCain.

He certainly knew his running would prevent the Republicans from saying anything about Obama’s British/Kenyan - non-citizen - father.

Agreed! Which is probably why McCain was pronounced the winner when only 7 states had voted and he had only received 25% of the vote at that time.

Funny stuff going on.

Indeed! The entire 2008 campaign was a laugher from start until the nightmarish finish.

[Spaulding]

You have clearly been reading, and that is certainly what Vattel believed, but it is not what our framers chose to include in their interpretation of natural born citizen. The passage you quoted dealt with citizenship, but if you go a bit further in Vattel to Section 217 there is a somewhat stronger argument supporting children of military born overseas but “reputed” born of the soil. “Reputed” will need clarification, but the Nationality Act of 1790 suggested that some legislators thought including children of overseas military and diplomatic corp as natural born citizens a good idea (that is the act cited by Tribe and Olson writing to support Senate Res. 511, where all senators including Obama said McCain was natural born because both of his parents were citizens). But they repealed the law in 1795 and never took it up again. Of course to affect the Constitution would have required an amendment, but the law might have hung around for a while awaiting a legal test.

It is possible that a court would extend the interpretation, and comments in Minor v. Happersett suggest that there have been questions, but there are many reasons that our framers didn't take Vattel’s suggestion. Even today, a child of citizens in the military could be born overseas, not on our soil, live overseas with relatives until majority and come back, perhaps to attend Columbia and Harvard. After being groomed for fourteen years the child would be eligible to be president. John Jay spent the first four Federalist Papers explaining the danger of a clever usurper as commander in chief. Our framers never intended the presidency to be a right. The constraints were a protections from usurpers, certainly not absolute, but based upon ideas traceable at least to the Romans.

Questions about McCain's eligibility had been simmering for ten years before 2008. McCain knew well of the Obama’s background, and of his Kenyan/British father, and knew, having been through law suits and court hearings, as well as two attempts by Clair McCaskill, Hillary and Obama, to get his status approved by the Senate, which of course they have no authority to do. He put his ambition ahead of protecting the republic, perhaps with some persuasion from Soros’ money.

Had McCain won I have no doubt he would have been challenged legally. There were too many well argued legal reviews of his eligibility problems. He would probably have challenged Obama, who had the next highest number of votes and Hillary would be president. Obama is relatively experienced at invalidating his opponents. In fact the other two positions he won were won by invalidating the signatures of one candidate and by unsealing court records of a messy divorce and custody battle in the other.

In Obama’s world the end justifies the means. It appears that the same principle applied to McCain.

[Just A Nobody]

Thanks! Again I say, OMG! MeInsane is worse than even I thought he was...and that was pretty bad!

[Just A Nobody]

Bump for a sane perspective on the McCain NBC status.

I despise McCain, second only to Jaawn sKerry, BUT, as you say, BOTH his parents were US citizens, BOTH were subject to the jurisdiction of the USA and his father was in the military serving his country. He gets a pass from me -- on the NBC question only!

[Spaulding]

The definition of natural born citizen is “born in the country of citizen parents.” To some it is ridiculous, but our framers had good reasons for imposing these constraints upon only the office of the presidency. I suggest the Dr. David Ramsay essay included in the supporting material for the Kerchner/Appuzo lawsuit.

The large majority of citizens are natural born. The power of our presidency, which includes the commander and chief of our armed forces means the strongest reasonable measures to try to insure absolute allegiance. A child born and raised overseas, even of patriotic citizen parents, will have connections to the land of his or her early years. It is also a fact that some countries had citizenship laws which claimed as citizens anyone born on their soil, regardless of their parent's allegiance. England as well as other nations has all sorts of permutations of jus soli and jus sanguinis. In the War of 1812 English frigates boarded U.S. merchant ships and conscripted the U.S. born sons of subjects of the crown, in spite of their having immigrated to the U.S. There was no reason to risk electing a president who might have some obvious reason for divided allegiances.

It wasn't a ridiculous enough idea that our legislature has failed twenty four times to pass on to the states attempts to amend Article II Section 1.

[Spaulding]

A tangled web huh? Christopher Landau, a Kirkland & Ellis senior partner ran the McCain Justice Committe, defending him from charges of election fraud because of his ineligibility. Sarah Herlihy worked for Landau and wrote a lengthy polemic in the Chicago Kent Law Review, which was scrubbed at the law review site but is still floating about. I know it was once on ScribD, because it was scrubbed once and I complained. Not sure my complaint was the reason, but it reappeared. (If you really want to read it ask and I'll find a pointer. It would be handy if FR had a repository for scrubbed articles, since many of us have taken to saving anything of value in anticipation of scrubbing.)

Herlihy completely avoids chief justices Marshall and Waite as well as 14th amendment author John Bingham, as well as Kent, Wilson, Hamilton, Hughes (who ran against Woodrow Wilson knowing full well he was ineligible like Obama and Chester Arthur because his father was, and remained, a British citizen.) She claims globalism requires a president of the world, and cites people who claim that racism is behind the natural born citizen definition (even though her review essay, written in 2005, did not mention Obama anywhere).

It is conjecture that the path was being paved for Obama in 2005, but another Kirkland senior partner was on Obama’s campaign committee.

[Electric Graffiti]

It is beginning to dawn that those close to our seat of power understand that our judicial system is so corrupt, so beholden to both the legislative and the executive branches that they will continue to act as if the troublesome articles of our Constitution don't exist. It seems as well that our conservative pundits are either not what they claim, or they have been promised incitement charges effectively ending their careers if they speak openly about the obviously ineligible president.

Excellent posts Spaulding.

[RobaWho]

Hello Joseph! – As a former USAF Captain-Pilot-Veteran & staunch conservative, I’m appalled at McCain’s latest ad against JD and his Alinsky style ridicule of the eligibilty issue.   McCain is scared and JD has him on the run. Thank you, Jesus!
 
JD should take a page out of Sara Palin’s playbook, and run a counter-video ad, with dripping sarcasm, making this simple challenge. 
 
“Hey John, I will gladly resign from this 2010 AZ Senate campaign against you and will aggressively support your re-election IF you’ll simply join with me in asking President Obama to put this entire silly, ridiculous eligibility issue to rest, once and for all, for the good of our nation.  You and every “real” American understand this issue is so utterly silly and easy to squash, right?  You should not allow this issue to fester one day more. If it was important enough for you to be transparent, it’s even more so for our sitting President, right? 
 
John, here’s the deal; I’m willingly sticking out my jaw and I’m begging you to knock me out of this campaign with one easy punch!  Please, just reach across the Senate isle and strike another one of your infamous “bi-partisan” deals with your famously liberal Democrat friends, and together, ask Obama to put this issue to rest, for the good of our nation, OK?
 
If you can’t negotiate this one simple thing, with all your years of experience and powerful DC connections, then how about you step aside and shut down your campaign?  Fair enough?
 
I’m putting my campaign where my heart and my beliefs are.  And where the facts lead. Will you call my hand or will you fold yours - and renounce your petty ad?
 
Good luck, sir! 
 

[Frantzie]

McCain is a POS. McStain and O are Soros stooges.

[AuntB]

The idea that McCAin ever represented us is a joke. He didn't even bother to show up for his job most of the time.

Given that McCain has spent the last ten years running for president, with more time in Iowa & N.H. than Arizona, I thought it would be interesting to see just how often 'the maverick' bothers to show up for Senate votes.

Well, guess what, as bad as Obama was, McCain was even worse.

[snip]Sen. John McCain (AZ) -- the only current Republican presidential candidate who is a sitting U.S. senator -- has missed more votes than any other senator since Congress convened in January, with the exception of Sen. Tim Johnson (D-SD), who spent months recuperating from a brain hemorrhage.

According to washingtonpost.com's U.S. Congress Votes Database, Obama has missed 74 out of 93 roll-call votes (79.6%) since the end of the August congressional recess. McCain has missed 63 out of 93 roll-call votes (67.8%) since the end of the August congressional recess. But for the entire year, McCain has missed 79 more votes than Obama; since January, McCain has missed 212 out of 403 (52.6%) roll-call votes in the 110th Congress,while Obama has missed 133 out of 403 (33.0%) roll-call votes.

http://mediamatters.org/research/200711020015

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eiUNzrpxBo

AntiConformist911 — June 29, 2008 — Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) became the most absent member of the Senate. According to the Washington Post's votes database, McCain has "missed 367 votes (61.4%) during the current Congress." In fact, CQ reports today that McCain hasn't voted in the Senate since April 8.

On the other hand, J.D. Hayworth has missed only 1% of his votes in congress

McCAin

Hayworth

John Hayworth missed 95 (1%) of 7,172 roll call votes between Jan 4, 1995 and Dec 9, 2006.

The absentee rate is in red. The two thin black lines provide a context for understanding the significance of the absentee rate. The lower dotted line shows the median value for all Members of Congress in that time period. The upper dotted line shows the 90th percentile. A Member who approaches the upper dotted line is in the worst 10 percent of Congress.

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/person.xpd?id=400173&tab=votes

[curiosity]

When the press and obviously partisan groups like FactCheck.org and even McCain's colleagues in Congress raised questions about his constitutional eligibility to become president as a "natural born citizen," McCain quietly provided the long-form birth certificate and other supporting material to the U.S. Senate for its investigation.

No he didn't. All he did was show it to a Washington Post reporter.

[curiosity]

The McCain BC that I saw confirmed what was already well known - McCain too was not eligible to be president, albeit for a different reason than Obama. The birth certificate, which WND apparently didn't reproduce, says that McCain was born in Colon.

That BC is a fake, forged and presented in court by a plaintiff who was trying to disqualify McCain int he primary.

McCain wasn't born in Colon. He was born on the naval base within the canal zone.

[Spaulding]

That is an issue not worth arguing because the Canal Zone was not under full U.S. jurisdiction at the time, and not under our jurisdiction at all any more. The argument was what was U.S. soil. The Canal Zone wasn't. Any arguing about the validity of birth certificates is a waste of time in both McCain's case and Obama’s. McCain was not a natural born citizen, as all the fuss in congress, at least four hearings, a dozen legal briefs and essays, and two law suits which were never decided make it clear there was an issue. It is a fact that no law could retroactively make the Panama Canal Zone exclusive U.S. jurisdiction. McCain was not born on our soil.

I would support, not that anyone would care, a carefully constructed amendment to extend our existing natural born citizen definition to include the children of military born overseas, providing the preponderance of their childhood years was spent in the continental U.S.

[Spaulding]

No the foreign service employee's children wouldn't qualify as natural born citizens. There is only one definition for natural born citizens and only one law was ever written which attempted to modify the common law definition, the Nationality Act of 1790. It was repealed in 1795, perhaps because the legislature knew it could not modify or reinterpret the Constitution. John Marshall was perhaps the greatest supreme court chief justice, and took care on many issues to clarify the meaning of articles. His statement in The Venus, both citing and quoting Vattel is a wonderful example of the importance he placed on discipline in the law. There is nowhere a definition making the children of either military or foreign service deployed overseas natural born citizens. The children would however be citizens, and even that was not always the case. Many countries claimed children born on their soil of aliens to be natural born subjects. The British observed strict jus soli citizenship for a while, but then made exceptions for children born to ambassadors and foreign service personnel, but only if they are on assignment.

Being president was never intended to be a right. The Constitution was written to protect us from the the power of a centralized government. Had those protections not been included in the Constitution many states would not have ratified it. John Jay's concern, and probably his greatest, since he devoted the first four Federalist Papers to the issue, was the risk to our republic from foreign intrigue. Someone will have more authoritative numbers, but my recollection is that about thirty percent of the British subjects in the colonies were openly supportive of a revolution. That is why the framers insisted that the parents of a president must have been citizens. All those who fought against the British were our first citizens.

Isn't it obvious how correct they were as we wonder what the son of a Marxist, a British/Kenyan subject at birth, whose father (and cousin Odinga) aggressively supported the defeat of capitalism and the replacement of our legal system with Sharia law, will do next in his obvious efforts to cripple our nation?

[curiosity]

It is a fact that no law could retroactively make the Panama Canal Zone exclusive U.S. jurisdiction. McCain was not born on our soil

Doesn't matter. He was born to US citizen parents, which gives him natural born status no matter where he was born under common law.

[curiosity]

That is why the framers insisted that the parents of a president must have been citizens.

The framers insisted on no such thing.

[Spaulding]

Looks like some trolls are still awake! When many people cite “common law” they are referring to Blackstone - English common law. Our framers didn't remove all of the common law in place in states, but did change the citizenship laws because they were in conflict with the laws needed to protect a republic and not a monarchy. Actually, our choice of jus soli and jus linguinis for president is identical to the 1608 definition proclaimed by lord Coke in Calvin's Case. But typically of English common law, it was changed a number of times latter, though it was said to have prevailed until 1918.

Vattel, according to James Wilson, was U.S. common law. It was taught in law schools, for example by Thomas Jefferson at William and Mary in 1779. Vattel, cited by framer, member of the Virginia Ratification Convention, AG and later Chief Justice John Marshall, stated “born in the country of citizen parents”. The only exceptions were the “grandfathered” presidents, because we had no U.S. citizens before 1789.

Quote me any statement, either a federal law or supreme court decision granting natural born citizen status to someone not born on our soil. You know, of course that none exist, and the only law ever asserted, the 1790 Nationality Act, was repealed in 1795.