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To: AuH2ORepublican

More than 100 Civics textbooks editions from elementary and middle schools over the last 150 years have taught that “natural born” required two citizen parents. None have ever taught contrary to that.

You are a revisionist, and a deliberate deceiver.


691 posted on 05/17/2012 8:18:11 PM PDT by editor-surveyor (Freepers: Not as smart as I'd hoped they were.)
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To: editor-surveyor

Making up stuff and calling me names won’t make you any less wrong when it comes to interpreting Minor. You are waaaaay off on what the Court said in that case. You would be wise to stick with citing Blackstone and such rather than embarrassing yourself by claiming that Minor says what it doesn’t come close to saying.

I’ve read several articles on the NBC Clause that espouse your view, some of which are quite good (particularly one by a Democrat arguing in 1916 that Republican presidential candidate Charles Evans Hughes wasn’t a natural-born citizen because his father was a British subject when Charles was born), but none are convincing. And the “this is how the clause has always been interpreted” argument falls flat when one considers that not only was Hughes on the ballot in all 48 states in 1816 and had his electoral votes counted by Congress, but that Chester Arthur was elected VP in 1880 (remember, the 12th Amendment provides that VPs have the same constitutional qualifications as presidents) despite his father being a British subject at the time of Chester’s birth. In fact, that Americans in 1884 did not believe that the NBC Clause required both parents to be citizens at the time of birth is proven by the fact that Democrats falsely claimed that Arthur had been born in Canada and was thus ineligible (because his father was not a U.S. citizen and mothers couldn’t transmit citizenship by themselves back then), instead of merely claiming that Arthur wasn’t an NBC even if he was born in Vermont (as he was) because his father wasn’t a U.S. citizen. If the NBC Clause was really so universally understood to require both jus sanguinis on both sides and jus soli, the Dems would have been able to stop Arthur from running in 1884 and Hughes from running in 1916. But that didn’t happen, because those who held such views on the NBC Clause were in the fringes of constitutional scholarship.

BTW, in case you’re interested, here’s an excellent, scholarly note on the NBC Clause that reaches a different conclusion from yours: http://yalelawjournal.org/images/pdfs/pryor_note.pdf


697 posted on 05/17/2012 8:47:39 PM PDT by AuH2ORepublican (If a politician won't protect innocent babies, what makes you think that he'll protect your rights?)
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