What Did the Law of Nations Writers Say Relevant to Natural Born Citizenship? Pictured: Vattel, Pufendorf, Grotius, Bynkershoek, Burlamaqui, and Wolff
Note: This article continues and concludes a series of three posts on “American common law” that began here and has continued with consideration of the Law of Nations, here. In a broader sense, it also completes a series of articles clearly establishing the legal meaning of “natural born citizen.” That larger series began in April 2012 with an article on the 1898 Supreme Court case of US v Wong Kim Ark.
Recently, some commentators — most notably “birther” lawyers Mario Apuzzo and Leo Donofrio and those who follow them — have claimed that the definition of “natural born citizen” is “someone born on US soil of two citizen parents.”
We are told that this definition of “natural born citizen” came to us from Swiss philosopher Emer de Vattel. But there seems to be absolutely no evidence at all that the phrase — or the concept — for our Constitutional “natural born citizen” came from Vattel, and plenty of evidence it did not.
Next we are told that it came from American common law. But the ordinary definition of common law is “law created by judicial precedent.” And there seems to be no evidence whatsoever of any such judicial precedent in our courts.
As noted in our last article, there are some very serious problems with this claim.
Moving beyond the observations already made, one of our best tests of whether “natural born citizen” came from “American common law” (which in turn came, we are told, from the Law of Nations) would be to examine the Law of Nations itself.
So in this article, we will look at the actual content of the “Law of Nations,” to see whether it supports the birther Constitutional claim.
If the Founding Fathers and Framers of the Constitution Looked to the “Law of Nations” to Define “Natural Born Citizen,” They Would’ve Had to Get the Idea from at Least One — Or More Likely, Several — of These Writers.
There were only a handful of major writers on the “Law of Nations.” Vattel was one of these.
But the idea that our concept of “natural born citizen” comes from Vattel, as noted above, has been utterly destroyed.
If it wasn’t Vattel, then who would it have been? There are really only half a dozen candidates left.
These include:
- Samuel von Pufendorf, of Germany
- Hugo Grotius, of the Netherlands
- Cornelius van Bynkershoek, of the Netherlands
- Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui, of Switzerland
- Thomas Rutherforth, of England
- and Christian Wolff, of Germany.
And that was it, as far as the major writers on the Law of Nations are concerned.
Did anybody else write anything on the “Law of Nations?” Yes, a few others did. But our list of seven are certainly considered to be all of the major Law of Nations writers.
It is very unlikely that any writer not on this list had any significant influence at all on our Founders or on the development of our Constitution. In fact, only 3 of the above 7 writers — Vattel included — are counted in the top 37 writers that were quoted by our Founding Fathers.
An examination of the works by these writers shows they had very little to say relating to the concept of “natural born” citizenship. And what little they did have to say generally seems to have supported the same concept enshrined in English law: that a person’s country was the country he or she was born in, with little if any regard as to the citizenship of his or her parents.
The only real exception to this rule is Vattel, who has already been ruled out as showing any evidence of any influence on the Founders’ definition of citizenship at all.
Did you ever wonder why the birthers never seem to quote any writer on the Law of Nations other than Vattel?
Now you know.
He’s the only writer on the Law of Nations that appears to support their position.
Let’s look at the Law of Nations writers one by one.
1) Emer de Vattel (Switzerland)
Vattel
Was Vattel influential on our Founding Fathers? Absolutely. But his level of influence — particularly on our idea of citizenship — has been rather exaggerated by Mario Apuzzo and other birthers.
While by some accounts Vattel was the most influential writer on the Law of Nations, two of the other Law of Nations writers were actually quoted more frequently by our Founding Fathers.
According to the research conducted in 1984 by Professor Donald Lutz, Emer de Vattel was the 30th most cited author by the Founding Fathers. Out of every 200 times they quoted an authority to support their views, they quoted Vattel once.
By comparison, they quoted Sir William Blackstone — the commentator on the English common law (from which our phrase “natural born” actually came) — some sixteen times.
Vattel’s flagship work was Le Droit des Gens (The Law of Nations, 1758). As noted elsewhere, an English translation of this work using the phrase “natural born citizens” appeared 10 years after that phrase was popularized by its use in our Constitution. Most other translations, however, including all up to that time, used the phrase “natives, or indigenes.”
If you haven’t read it yet, much more information on Vattel is available here.
2) Samuel von Pufendorf (Germany)
Pufendorf
Pufendorf was the 10th most cited author by the Founding Fathers. For every 200 times they quoted a writer, 2 or 3 of those quotations would have been from Pufendorf.
One of Samuel von Pufendorf’s major works was De Jure Naturae et Gentium (Of the Law of Nature and of Nations, 1672). This runs close to 1000 pages. However, Pufendorf appears to have nothing to say here about the definition of citizenship.
The only quote I could find in the entire book that appears relevant is in a footnote that implies that one’s allegiance (and therefore citizenship) belongs to the country of his birth: “He that is born under a Prince, doth originally engage his faith and allegiance to him.” Since this was apparently added some 50 years later by French jurist Jean Barbeyrac, however, we won’t count it for much.
Pufendorf also published De Officio Hominis et Civis Juxta Legem Naturalem, or On The Duty of Man and Citizen According to the Natural Law, in 1673.
In this work, Pufendorf generally uses the words “subject” and “citizen” interchangeably — which only tends to undermine any argument by Mario Apuzzo and any other “Law of Nations” birthers.
There is, however, a passage in which he addresses citizenship in a bit more detail:
The state being thus constituted, the central authority, according as it is one man, or one council of the few, or of all, is called a monarch, a senate, or a free people. The rest are styled subjects, or citizens, understanding the latter term in its wider sense. There are some, however, who, in a narrower sense, usually call only those citizens, who by their union and consent formed the state in the first place, or else their successors, namely, the heads of households. Moreover, citizens are either original or adopted. The former are those who were present in the beginning at the birth of the state, or their descendants. These it is the custom also to call indigenous. The adopted citizens are those who from without join themselves to a state already constituted, with the purpose of planting the seat of their fortunes there. As for those who sojourn in the state, merely to tarry for a time, though subject just so long to its authority, they are still not regarded as citizens, but are called strangers or immigrants.
There are several things to note about this passage.
- Pufendorf uses the terms “subjects” and “citizens” pretty much interchangeably.
- He says here are some who give a stricter definition of the word “citizens,” indicating that this is not a universal practice.
- He divides citizens between those who are “original” (which he also calls “indigenous”) and those who are “adopted.”
- The “original” or “indigenous” citizens would include those who formed the state, and their descendants. “Adopted” citizens would apparently include all immigrants and their descendants. For example, one’s grandparents might all have immigrated into the United States from Germany; one’s parents might have been born in the United States, and one might have been born of such parents in the United States himself. Such a person — although clearly a natural born citizen even by birther standards — would apparently be considered an “adopted citizen” by Pufendorf.
- That constitutes Pufendorf’s division of citizenship. Nowhere does he mention a concept or definition of “natural born citizen” or “natural born subject.” And other than his mention of “original” or “indigenous” citizens versus “adopted” citizens, nowhere does he engage in a discussion of place of birth versus citizenship of parents in the determination of an individual’s citizenship status.
Pufendorf also wrote Elementorum Iurisprudentiae Universalis (Elements Of Universal Jurisprudence, 1660). A search of this work turns up nothing at all defining or attempting to define either a “natural born subject” or a “natural born citizen,” and nothing that appears relevant to the question.
Samuel von Pufendorf thus has little to say on the subject. He provides no definition of “natural born citizen,” and no use of the term “natural born” at all.
3) Hugo Grotius (Netherlands)
Grotius
Grotius was the 15th most cited author by the Founding Fathers, with about 2 quotes out of every 200.
His major work is De Jure Belli ac Pacis (On the Law of War and Peace, 1625).
This says nothing that appears to be relevant to the question.
Grotius also wrote De Origine Gentium Americanarum Dissertatio (Dissertation on the Origin of the Native Races of America, 1642). This was a 15-page work in Latin that consisted merely of speculation on where the races of the Native Americans had come from.
Hugo Grotius appears completely silent on the issue of “natural born citizenship.”
None of the our remaining leading authors on the “Law of Nations” appear on Donald Lutz’s list of the 37 writers most cited by the Founding Fathers. Still, they were influential in their narrow field.
4) Cornelius van Bynkershoek (Netherlands)
Bynkershoek
The one work by Bynkershoek which appears to actually be relevant is his Quaestiones Juris Publici (Questions of Public Law, 1737).
Bynkershoek taught that a person has the right to remove himself from a society and renounce his allegiance to the sovereign of the country from which he departed.
In regard to parentage versus place of birth: All references by Bynkershoek to a person’s national allegiance seem to do with the place of their birth, and not to the nationality of his or her parents.
For this reason, it seems obvious that Bynkershoek would regard foreign-born persons who had established residence in the United States as members of the United States; and their children as “natural born citizens” of the United States.
5) Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui (Switzerland)
Burlamaqui
Burlamaqui’s work included Principes du Droit Naturel (1747) and Principes du Droit Politique (1751), sometimes published in a single volume (The Principles of Natural and Politic Law).
According to Wikipedia: “His vision of constitutionalism had a major influence on the American Founding Fathers; for example, his understanding of checks and balances was much more sophisticated and practical than that of Montesquieu.”
In Burlamaqui’s view, foreigners who established permanent residence in a new country were no longer even subjects of the country that they had left!
For this reason, it seems quite obvious that Burlamaqui would have regarded the children of such persons as being “natural born citizens” of the country they were born in.
6) Thomas Rutherforth (England)
Rutherforth’s sole relevant work appears to be his Institutes of Natural Law (1754-56).
In this, he writes:
It will be necessary… to consider by what means men naturally become members of any particular nation or civil society; and by what means, after they are so become members, they may be at liberty to separate themselves from it again. Civil societies, in general, are willing to consider persons who are born amongst them, as members of those societies where they are born… There does not appear to be any natural reason why a child, though he is born of parents who belong to any particular nation or civil society, and is likewise born within the territories of that nation, should be obliged, after he is come to years of discretion, to continue in it.
The only difference between a native and a foreigner, in respect of their becoming members of any particular civil society, is that the native was certainly never united to any other society; whereas, the foreigner may possibly have been united to some other, before he came to settle within the territories of this… These principles, however, are not applicable to foreigners, who have been brought by their parents into the territories of any nation, and have settled there, whilst they were in their infancy. For at that time of life, they could naturally owe no allegiance elsewhere.
It is thus clear that Rutherforth regards a young child brought by non-citizen parents into a country as having NO allegiance whatsoever to the country his parents came from. And this refers to a child already born elsewhere! For this reason, Rutherforth further undermines the claims of Apuzzo and the birthers.
7) Christian Wolff (Germany)
Wolff
Wolff wrote Jus Gentium Methodo Scientifica Pertracatum (The Law of Nations Treated According to a Scientific Method, 1764).
And he seems to disagree with Vattel on who are natives.
Those who are born of citizen parents either on the unoccupied sea, or an occupied part of it, are natives. For those who are citizens remain such, wherever they may live for the purpose of any business, consequently they do not lose the right of citizenship for the reason that they are living on the unoccupied sea or on an occupied part of it. Therefore, since a state is preserved through the children who are born of citizens, the children through their birth become members of the state, consequently citizens; and since therefore those are natives who are citizens of that region in which they dwell, those who are born of citizen parents either on the unoccupied sea, or on an occupied part of it, are natives.
So he says that the state is preserved through its citizens’ children, and that those born on the sea of citizens are also citizens. So far, so good for the birthers. But…
Foreigners, as long as they dwell in alien territory or stay there, are temporary citizens. For when they enter an alien territory they tacitly bind themselves that they wish to subject their acts to the laws of the place, and the laws have the same force over them as over citizens… since civil laws bind only the members of that state in which they are passed, foreigners, as long as they dwell in alien territory or stay there, are to be considered as members of that state to which the territory belongs; consequently, since members of a state are citizens, foreigners, as long as they dwell in alien territory or stay there, are temporary citizens.
Uh oh… Wolff regarded foreigners dwelling in a country as temporary citizens of that country. This is not good for the birther position. Not at all.
He who dwells in alien territory or stays there, since that cannot be done without the consent of the ruler of the territory, associates himself with citizens, not indeed permanently, but at all events for a certain time. And he cannot be considered otherwise than as one received into the state on a certain condition for a certain time. Therefore the idea of a temporary citizen, such as we conceive foreigners to be as long as they dwell in the territory of another or stay there, contains nothing absurd, and there is no one who does not know that foreigners staying in alien territory are called temporary citizens.
He even says “there is no one who does not know that foreigners staying in alien territory are called temporary citizens.”
Let’s see what Wolff says about a person’s native country:
A native country is defined as a place, namely, a land or city, in which one’s parents have a domicile, when he is born, the reference being to the nation or some particular corporation of a nation, to which the land or city belongs. In the native vernacular, we say with the broader meaning das Vaterland [Fatherland], in the narrower die Vaterstadt [Father-city], as the land or city in which our fathers dwelt from whom we have derived our stock.
Moreover, the place of birth, which is the place in which we have been born, differs from native country. When any one is born in his native country, a thing which usually happens, place of birth is synonymous with native country especially in the stricter significance, but if any one is born on a journey or in a foreign land, where his parents are living on account of some business, his native country differs from his place of birth… It is not without reason that the native land is discussed in the law of nations, since on it depend certain rights, which men do not enjoy unless they have this native land. Therefore, since these rights belong to any one because he is born of parents who have a domicile either in this territory or in this city or in this district, this is the reason why native country admits the broader and narrower significance…
…he who is born of parents who have their domicile in London in England, is called a Londoner and an Englishman, even if his parents at the time of his birth have been living in some place outside of England, for example, if they were in Germany on account of military service or if the father was performing the duty of an ambassador in the court of the most Christian King.
Since a native country is a place where the parents have domicile at the time of one’s birth, moreover, since vagabonds have no domicile anywhere, he who is born of parents who are vagabonds has no native country, except so far as vagabonds are supposed to have retained their natural domicile, consequently the native country of the parents is considered their native country also. So those who are born of Gipsies have no native country, just as their parents do not.
Since your native country depends upon birth, moreover, since what has been done cannot be undone, your native country remains your native country, even if you establish your domicile outside of it, or abandon it, or even if you are driven out of it. So England or France remains the native country of an Englishman or a Frenchman, even if he has established a domicile for himself outside of England or France, intending never to return to England or France. And although those born of French parents in Germany or Holland are still called French, because they derive their stock from a Frenchman; nevertheless their native country is Germany or Holland, or the city of which they are natives in the narrower sense.
Wolff’s view is therefore a bit complex, but clear:
A person’s native country is the place where his parents have a permanent residence or domicile, when he is born, without regard to the citizenship of the parents. Therefore, if a person was born to Italian citizens merely visiting the United States on business, his native country would have been Italy. But if he was born to Italian citizens with a permanent domicile in the United States, then his native country would have been the United States and not Italy.
It also follows, by Wolff’s view, that if a child was born to Italian parents on a trip to Italy, but their only permanent domicile was in the United States, then their child’s native country would be the United States. And that native country was permanent.
For this reason, according to Wolff, the “native country” of a child born in the US to non-citizen parents living in the US is… the United States.
He thus further undermines Apuzzo and the birthers.
Conclusion
We have looked at every relevant work by every major writer on the Law of Nations.
Except for Vattel, those Law of Nations writers who actually have anything to say on the subject appear to hold concepts of citizenship that were virtually identical to the English common law concept of “natural born subject.”
Vattel is the ONLY writer on the “Law of Nations” who claims that in order to be “of” a country, you must have parents who are citizens of that country. Generally speaking, a person’s country was the country in which he was born, without regard to whether or not his parents were citizens.
And this was true not only according to the English common law — it was also true according to most of the major writers on the Law of Nations.
Summary of the Relationship between “Natural Born Citizen,” American Common Law, and the “Law of Nations”
- The evidence is unclear whether and to what degree the “Law of Nations” was ever incorporated into American common law.
- Even though the Law of Nations was incorporated “in its full extent” into the English common law, that in no way ever prevented the child born on English soil of non-citizen parents from being a natural born subject.
- Therefore, even if the Law of Nations were fully incorporated into American law, there is absolutely nothing that would prevent the child born on US soil of non-citizen parents from being a natural born citizen.
- Meanwhile, not one of the 7 major writers on the Law of Nations ever used the term of art “natural born citizen.” The term therefore did NOT originate with the “Law of Nations.”
- Neither is it true that a concept of “natural born citizen” as being born exclusively of citizen parents originated in the Law of Nations. Many of the Law of Nations writers in fact clearly undermine the Mario Apuzzo / birther concept of who the natural citizens of a country are.
- As we’ve seen, there is NO specific evidence linking “natural born citizen” to the writings or concepts of Emer de Vattel at all. Nor is there anything to link “natural born citizen” to similar writings or concepts from any other major writer on the Law of Nations.
- All available evidence of any substance at all links the term to the English common law term and concept of a “natural born subject.” And under that concept, children born in a country, even of non-citizen parents, were always “natural born.”
- As mentioned in our last article, Minor v Happersett emphatically did not rule in favor of a “birther” definition of natural born citizen (“Strike One.”) And US v Wong Kim Ark emphatically ruled against a “birther” definition of natural born citizen (“Strike Two.”)
Mario Apuzzo and the Birthers Have Completely Struck Out.
- The Law of Nations was therefore the third strike and last chance for the main legal claims of Mario Apuzzo and the birthers. They have thus completely struck out.
There is simply no specific evidence whatsoever that “natural born citizen” legally means that a person must have two citizen parents. And as we’ve seen elsewhere, there is an abundance of legal evidence against the idea.
“Quod erat demonstrandum.”
With the addition of our analysis on what the Law of Nations actually had to say that might be relevant to the question of natural born citizenship, and finding nothing there, I now consider the significant birther legal claims not just suspect, or shaky, or partly invalid, but disproven.
Of course, it was already clear from US v Wong Kim Ark that their claim had no legal status as far as being the law of the land. But an understanding of what the Law of Nations actually said shows that the claim doesn’t even have any basis in past legal theory.
It is simply — and totally — without merit.
Good article. I think Mario really doesn’t understand the relationsip between the the common law and the law of nations. They were apples and oranges. Every nation by its common law, statutes and Constitution has the right to determine the law within its borders. Such is called municipal law. The law of nations, or public law, is only relevant when there are disputes between nations and their municipal laws. The law of nations doesn’t have rules of decision on domestic issues and the common law doesn’t have rules of decision on international disputes. Simply two different areas of law that have little to do with one another. In theory, all civilized nations were deemed to be bound by the law of nations. Accordingly, Blackstone said the law of nations was part of the common law in that England, like every other civilized nation, meaning that they should look the law of nations to settle international disputes or disputes been citizens of different nations. While this sounded good in theory as nations who decided international disputes by international law would be less likely to go to war. However, the law of nations had little practical value as there was no actual law of nations, only a bunch of treatises that were all over the map on many subjects. Not surprisingly, nations had little problem arguing that the law of nations favored their position.
With respect to citizenship, no one looked to public law to determine who its citizens were. Every nation by its own municipal law had its own rule. When these rules conflicted with respect to the obligations of citizenship, nations, in theory, were supposed to look to public law. Of course, there was no established rule of public law as the US fought with England and other nations over these issues all the time. For years, our State department couldn’t even make up its mind on the rule of public law for naturalized citizens. However, both England and the US agreed that jus soli was the rule of the public law. Thus, both nations protected its foreign born from all claims of foreign allegiance. At the same time, neither nation would protect foreign born children of citizens or subjects against claims of foreign allegiance outside their territory as they claimed that jus soli trumped jus sanguinis. Other nations might have disagreed, but such was the position of the US and England. I am not aware of anyone in the early republic that thought Vattel represented the rule of public law, much less the rule of our municipal law. Story said jus soli was the rule of public law and the notion that jus soli was the universal rule was very common in the US as one can see from Swift, Bates, Paschal, Pomerory, and by my count, 9 members of the 14th Amendment Congress. This is all way over the head of Mario’s head as all he can do is exaggerate Vattel’s influence as he has no actual authority to back him up.
Thanks for those comments, ballantine, which I think add a good deal of background information to the Law of Nations and its relationship to national laws.
It’s still a bit of a mystery to me why Mario persists in pushing claims that have been debunked on so many different levels.
I think it is time to become a Birther. Life is so much simpler. As a Birther you can
– Lose every time in the courts and pretend it doesn’t matter
– Pretend case law says something it doesn’t
– Ignore page after page of well reasoned of research that disproves your conclusions
– Ignore questions you know you cannot answer
– Give quotations but never provide the source.
– Use quotes out of context
– Disagree with 99.9% of the legal scholars and proclaim you are right
– When all else fails just make it up
– Declare victory even when you’ve been completely shown to be a fool
Such is the easy life of a Birther. All you have to do is check your conscience at the door.
Man, it is time to become a birther, isn’t it?
I meant to post that on the other article where Mario left the crazy comment but it fits about anywhere.
It does, doesn’t it?
It’s quite interesting that John in citing these writers, cites a very important and fundamental fact – That a foreigner had PERMANENT RESIDENCE or DOMICILE in the United States. This was clearly not the case with Obama Sr. In addition, this fact was carried through as an essential fact in the Wong Kim Ark case where is his parents were foreigners but had PERMANENT DOMICILE in the US. Again this fact was not true of that of Obama Sr. Such a fact undermines the notion that Obama would be considered an NBC as his parents (both parents) has not established permanent domicile or residence in the United States.
@John: What the heck are you talking about? Did you even bother to read the case? WKA’s parents had moved BACK to China and WKA went to visit them. That’s why there was even a case! President Obama’s father was permanently domiciled at that time in the US! He was living in Hawaii at the time going to school there. And, the President even had a citizen parent permanently living in the US at the time too! You haven’t a clue what you’re talking about! BTW, the 2 citizen parent theory has been totally debunked here and by the courts.
The historical principle from English common law was that a parent’s allegiance that was local — meaning only applying within a country and vanishing placewise when the person left — and temporary — meaning also vanishing timewise when the person left — was sufficient for a parent’s child, born on the soil of the country, to be a natural born subject.
There were some who had different ideas. Vattel demanded that to be “of” a country, a person had to be born in the country of citizen parents. Wolff said that a person’s country was the place where his parents had their domicile when he or she was born (see above).
However there is no evidence whatsoever that the Founding Fathers intended any use of Vattel’s definition or Wolff’s. The fact that they clearly converted the term “subject” directly to “citizen,” and the fact that the used the term “natural born citizen” to describe what the President had to be, is both prima facie and strong evidence that they intended the English common law concept, and nothing else.
John Woodman insists that Minor used the English common law when it said that a child born in a country to parents who are citizens of that country is a “natural-born citizen.”
He also insists that Minor did not give us a definition of a “natural-born citizen,” because there could be more such definitions such as the definition that Wong Kim Ark gave (which, in any event, is not a definition of an Article II “natural born Citizen,” but rather that of a Fourteenth Amendment “citizen”).
Here is my response to him at his previous thread on this blog:
**********
John Woodman,
What a pleasure to watch you squirm.
I love how you avoid answering the question of how could Minor have relied upon English “common law” if it said that those who were born in the country to citizen parents were “natural-born citizens.” Why would the Court need to include in its formula the citizenship of the parents if the English common law considered the citizenship of the parents irrelevant? The absurdity of your position that Minor referred to the English common law is shown by this example. Let us assume that the Court said: “Those born in the country with brown hair are “natural-born citizens.” Why would the Court even mention brown hair if it is irrelevant? So why would Minor mention citizen parents if they were not relevant under English common law?
Your logical analogy, that a Frenchman is a European does not mean that a European is a Frenchman (other [offensive, slanderous term deleted] have used that a dog is a creature with four legs does not mean that all creatures with four legs are dogs) does not apply to the “natural born Citizen” issue. Being French is only one of many nationalities (one of many subsets) that make up the larger class of many nationalities combined which we call European, just like a dog is a subset of the larger class we call creatures with four legs. In other words, there is more than one nationality that comprises the European class just like there is more than just dogs that make up the class of creature with four legs. Your logical analogy does not work with “natural born Citizen,” for the Founders and Framers, writing a bright line standard for presidential eligibility, provided for only one definition of the clause, i.e., a child born in the country to citizen parents. In other words, being a “natural born Citizen” does not have the same numerosity characteristic as does Europeans and creatures with four legs, i.e., there is only one definition of a “natural born Citizen” unlike there are many types of Europeans and creatures with four legs. Again stated differently, there is only one definition of a “natural born Citizen” in the class that we call “natural born Citizen.”
Continued . . .
II of II
So, yes, there are many nationalities that make up the Europeans and there are many creatures that make up creatures with four legs. But really, your argument is absurd when applied to writing bright line eligibility standards for the President. How many types of “natural born Citizens” do you think the Founders and Framers had in mind when they said the President had to be a “natural born Citizen? Are you going to tell me as many as there are Europeans and four-legged creatures? Are there still some more definitions of a “natural born Citizen” yet to be discovered, depending on who may want to run for the Office of President in any given moment? Do you not see the absurdity of your argument? Do you not see that the Framers would have had in mind only one definition of a “natural born Citizen” when they said a would-be President had to have that status in order to be eligible to be elected President? Minor confirmed that one definition of a “natural-born citizen” as had other previous U.S. Supreme Court cases. Even Wong Kim Ark confirmed that same definition (agreeing with Horace Binney and confirming that a “natural born Citizen” is a “natural born child of a citizen” “born in the country”). There never have been any other definitions of the clause. Do you think that the Founders and Framers expected a court to come along and just change the definition of terms they used in the Constitution, all done without constitutional amendment? We cannot change the constitution at whim every time political circumstances require it. The current constitutional definition of a “natural-born citizen,” as confirmed by Minor and Wong Kim Ark, can be changed, but only by constitutional amendment.
Now that you have made your ridiculous logical argument, why do you not defend your position and tell the whole wide world how many definitions of a “natural born Citizen” the Founders and Framers had in mind when they wrote the clause into the Constitution.
@Mario, since you reposted the same thing, I will do the same.
Oh Mario…avoiding the direct quotes from Minor makes your argument very weak. I agree with you, Minor DID define natural-born citizen.
“Additions might always be made to the citizenship of the United States in two ways: first, by birth, and second, by naturalization. This is apparent from the Constitution itself, for it provides6 that ‘no person except a natural-born citizen, or a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President,’7 and that Congress shall have power ‘to establish a uniform rule of naturalization.’ Thus new citizens may be born or they may be created by naturalization. ”
I repost the DIRECT QUOTE IN ITS ENTIRETY so that you can see the definition…complete with direct connection with Presidential qualification. And, as you have stated, it has been confirmed in previous cases and cases since. Pick a case. Go ahead. Find any other SCOTUS case where you think it defines natural-born citizen the way you state, and within that same case, you will be proven wrong. It isn’t difficult to do, because you are wrong.
Mario,
I’m going to serve you notice that use of the term “Obot” is not going to be tolerated. I find it offensive, and since it is completely, 100% untrue in my case, it constitutes slander. Any further use of that term on this blog on your part, especially as it applies to myself, will be moderated and edited, and a correct, accurate term of “Constitutionalist” or “honest researcher” will be substituted instead.
You have been warned.
And yes, I’ve answered this already, over here.
Jim,
In Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857), Justice Daniels concurring cites Vattel and The Law of Nations and provides his definition of natural born citizens and takes out of Vattel’s definition the reference to “fathers” and “father” and replaced it with “parents” and “person,” respectively. He states:
“The citizens are the members of the civil society; bound to this society by certain duties, and subject to its authority, they equally participate in its advantages. The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens. As society cannot perpetuate itself otherwise than by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their parents, and succeed to all their rights.” Again: I say, to be of the country, it is necessary to be born of a person who is a citizen; for if he be born there of a foreigner, it will be only the place of his birth, and not his country. . . .”
You will also note that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Daniels also says that “natural born citizens” “are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens” (A is B) This is a definition of the clause. I raise this because many on this and other [offensive, slanderous term deleted] blogs and in [offensive, slanderous term deleted] arguments say that Minor did not give a definition of the “natural born Citizen” clause because the Court said “all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens . . . were natives or natural-born citizens (B is A), thus presenting the [offensive, slanderous term deleted] argument that B is A does not mean that A is B and therefore Minor did not provide a definition of a “natural-born citizen.” The quote by Justice Daniels shows that A (natural born citizen) is B (born in the country to citizen parents) and only if one is B (born in the country to citizen parents) will one be A (natural born citizen). This confirms that when Minor said B is A, it was the same as saying A is B, and that there is no difference between the two expressions when it comes to defining a “natural born Citizen” which clause only has one definition and no more and does not belong to any populated class such as Europeans or creatures with four legs.
Please show case when citing SCOTUS opinions. That way, others can look them up and weigh the statements. Thanks
Well thanks Mario! You finally answered a question. Too bad you’re unable to answer any of John’s questions…but hey, we all know you’re wrong and unable to do it so, on with it!
Judge Curtis, dissenting opinion
“The first section of the second article of the Constitution uses the language, “a natural-born citizen.” It thus assumes that citizenship may be acquired by birth. Undoubtedly, this language of the Constitution was used in reference to that principle of public law, well understood in this country at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, which referred citizenship to the place of birth. ”
And, tying that in with Minor, which backs up Judge Curtis’ statement
“Additions might always be made to the citizenship of the United States in two ways: first, by birth, and second, by naturalization. This is apparent from the Constitution itself, for it provides6 that ‘no person except a natural-born citizen, or a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President,’7 and that Congress shall have power ‘to establish a uniform rule of naturalization.’ Thus new citizens may be born or they may be created by naturalization. ”
Note that nowhere in Dred Scott do they declare that Vattel’s statement is the condition for being a “natural-born” citizen. They just say it in passing and move on. Further, in case you didn’t know, Dred Scott was overturned. And nowhere is there any dissent to Judge Curtis’ statement, and Minor even backs up the accuracy of his statement. So, using the case you cite, I have proven that President Obama is a natural-born citizen and eligible. I do want to thank you for playing, it’s always entertaining to watch you fall. BTW, there’s a BUNCH of questions that John would like you to answer…unless you’re too scared and want to just concede all the points to John.
Hooray! Mario finally is able to cite an authority who actually agrees with him — and it’s a US Supreme Court Justice!
Of course, as already noted, his opinion on the matter is contradicted by one of the other Justices in the exact same case. Hmmm. Kind of cancel each other out, don’t they?
Oh, and Mario — I’m sure you must agree with ALL of Justice Daniel’s Opinion, right? Like the part where Daniel said that 62-year-old Mr. Dred Scott was
“strictly property, to be used in subserviency to the interests, the convenience, or the will, of his owner.”
Or how about the part in that Opinion where Daniel says:
“…in the establishment of the several communities now the States of this Union, and in the formation of the Federal Government, the African was not deemed politically a person. He was regarded and owned in every State in the Union as property merely, and as such was not and could not be a party or an actor, much less a peer in any compact or form of government established by the States or the United States.”
Maybe you can promote that at your blog: the idea that “the African American is not politically a person, but was historically regarded as mere property, and as such can’t be a party at all, much less an equal in any compact or form of government in the United States.”
I am soooooooo glad you’ve finally found an authority who agrees with you!
Mario,
You should in your appeal hold the court to the essential fact that Obama’s parents DID NOT have PERMANENT DOMICILE in the United States. Obama Sr. was a Kenyan National who returned to Kenya with no intention of becoming a US Citizen. This fact undermines the Precedent in Wong Kim Ark because Wong Kim Ark’s parents were permanantly domiciled in the US and thus underminds the claim that Obama in an NBC based on Wong Kim Ark. This fact also taints many of the authorities that John Woodman cites and thus this blog post does not provide any help to [offensive term deleted] that Obama in an NBC.
John, you must not have read WKA. His parents moved back to China, and because of Chinese exclusion laws, could NEVER HAVE BECOME US citizens. Your argument holds no water.
john,
I’m going to serve you notice that use of the term “Obot” is not going to be tolerated. I find it offensive, and since it is completely, 100% untrue in my case, it constitutes slander. Any further use of that term on this blog on your part, especially as it applies to myself, will be moderated and edited, and a correct, accurate term of “Constitutionalist” or “honest researcher” will be substituted instead.
Oh, and by the way: Obama’s mother was not only a US citizen, she was permanently domiciled in the United States at the time.
And while the Wong Court does cite the fact that they were domiciled here, that does not necessarily appear to be crucial to the decision. Under the common law, the allegiance of aliens that made for the “natural born” status of their children born in the country was recognized as being “local” and “TEMPORARY.” And the Wong Court very specifically quoted the temporary nature of this allegiance in the rationale for their decision.
And in fact, it has WELL been noted that before Wong Kim Ark was ever arrested, his parents had already moved back to China! So it was quite clear that his parents were not permanent residents of the United States. It was also, very abundantly, clear by the laws of the day that they could NEVER become citizens of the United States.
One of the most common experiences in human history has been for a known truth, a long held belief, something considered sacred to be over turned by new evidence. Although an ancient Greek scientist determined that the earth revolved around the sun, almost two thousand years later that idea was considered heretical. Even today we talk about the sun rising. Ideas firmly fixed in the mind are not happy to be moved out and replaced.
So my question to John Woodward is this: should some irrefutable information, some documents come to light which made Mario”s position self-evidently correct, would you be able to handle it? I am not saying that such will occur but only are you prepared for such an eventuality? This is important since a mind detached is more reliable than one that is stuck on something come even death. Having read your material as well as Donofrio’s and Apuzzo’s I find both men to be reasonable and to have worked diligently to find the truth. It seems to me that you are more attached to being right than to the truth. Of course, I could be mistaken but that is my impression. You may be right. Time may or may not tell. But if you are wrong, I do wonder how you will take it. I suspect there are documents yet to be located that will resolve this dispute in a clear cut way. Of course I do not know when. At this point I am placing my money on natural born citizen means born in the land of two citizen parents–partly because it makes the most sense and seems the wisest and most sensible meaning. That would be my preference if I were starting a nation.
John B.,
I didn’t start with a dog in this fight. If the evidence had said the Founding Fathers wanted “natural born citizen” to mean “born on US soil of US citizen parents,” believe me, that’s what I would have gone with.
That is absolutely, unequivocally, NOT what the evidence says. It’s not even close.
Every significant claim that Mario Apuzzo has made has been debunked. You might or might not recognize that, but it’s the truth.
You say:
One of the most common experiences in human history has been for a known truth, a long held belief, something considered sacred to be over turned by new evidence.
Actually, that’s not what I would call “one of the most common experiences in human history.” It certainly happens, but it’s relatively rare.
You want to know what one of the truly most common experiences in human history is? It’s for some huckster to come along and tell people lies that they want to hear, and get them to buy into those falsehoods. THAT is what’s truly common in human history, whether it takes place on the used car lot, in the form of a Ponzi scheme, or in the form of someone weaving an attractive political tale that sounds great but just happens to be 90% BS.
And THAT, without the slightest shade of a doubt, is the case here.
PS – If you’re interested in the truth on this particular issue, I would encourage you to read and understand every word of the articles linked from here.
What I run into quite often, unfortunately, is quite a few people who say they’re interested in the truth, but who are so attached to their desired outcome — that Mr. Obama is ineligible — that they won’t actually accept any truth that doesn’t say what they want to hear.
It’s the “Oh, I’m not a birther — really!” syndrome.
Oh, and in answer to the question:
…should some irrefutable information, some documents come to light which made Mario”s position self-evidently correct, would you be able to handle it?
Of course I would be able to handle it. Like I say, I didn’t start out with a dog in this fight. I did the research and then reached a conclusion.
But do you know what? If a piece of evidence emerged that indicated that Mario was correct — even ONE piece of evidence — it would fly directly in the face of EVERYTHING that is known about the issue.
Literally EVERY area of this question that I have EVER investigated has all come down on the same side of the issue.
One of the areas I didn’t delve into until later in the game was the Congressional debates regarding the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Fourteenth Amendment. When I started going through those weeks worth of debates, I frankly expected — given the quotes that birthers had produced that SEEMED to back their position — that I would run into some significant contrary evidence to the idea that “natural born citizen” includes children born on US soil without regard to the citizenship of their parents.
I expected SOMEONE in those debates to make a statement that, read in context, would support the birther position.
I was frankly sort of surprised at the COMPLETE lack of support for the birther position that I found.
Yes, they have a few quotes that when taken completely out of context can appear to support their position. But when you actually read those quotes in context, it becomes clear that the persons saying those things intended NO SUCH THING as what the birthers claim they intended.
I cannot tell you what an absolute, bald-faced lie the entire birther movement is. This is not a conclusion that I came to in any REMOTE way lightly or suddenly. I can’t tell you how many HUNDREDS of hours of research I conducted before reaching this firm conclusion.
And now knowing exactly what the details are, I have moved from having no particular opinion at all to being utterly, absolutely, 100% convinced that the entire birther movement is an absolute lie and a scam. It’s a scam on conservatives. And about that fact there really is not the slightest doubt in my mind. Because I’ve done the homework that has uncovered lie after lie after lie. Roughly at least 60 of them in all — and not one single significant claim has EVER turned out to be the truth.
So… would I accept unequivocal evidence? Absolutely. What do I think the chances at this point are of any such unequivocal evidence emerging? Fairly close to the odds that Bigfoot is going to land a hot-air balloon on the roof of your garage.
Your response is what I guessed it would be. Can you imagine what it was like for most persons in the 17th century when they were being told that the earth went around the sun . . . and yet the sun was rising every morning as it always had. The problem here is the way we determine what is evidence. To say you had no preconceived ideas would be the same as saying you had perfect self knowledge–and that is not likely.
Or imagine how the mathematical world responded to Godel’s work. This was not happy news. And frankly a first time through it seems like the kind of tricks kids play on each other doesn’t it?
Strictly speaking the world is one illusion inside of another illusion and so on until you get tired and have lunch or go for a walk as Hume pointed out.
Your work in mathematics may not be serving you well in a matter like this. You have to put yourself into the mind of a Washington or Jay or Madison and see the matter from their points of view. Why do people put double and even triple locks on their doors? Thieves. Why would the Founders want to be doubly careful about who became president? Treachery.
You don’t really know for sure what “natural born citizen” means. That would be impossible. But you might have some idea about Goldbach’s Conjecture. Someday we might have that one solved. But we won’t likely get anything in the way of that kind of proof for “natural born citizen”. So I ask myself, if I were forming a nation, what would I do? Personally I would got for the two lock solution: born in the land of two citizen persons thereby avoiding two sources of divided loyalties. That is, one by land and two by the sea of parenthood!!
Your response is what I guessed it would be.
And frankly, your response is pretty much what I guessed it would be, which is essentially, on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, to call me a liar.
Some of the people who show up here are so predictable. You just know by the way a person starts out, which direction he’s going to go.
Can you imagine what it was like for most persons in the 17th century when they were being told that the earth went around the sun . . . and yet the sun was rising every morning as it always had.
I’m frankly quite open to evidence leading to a conclusion that goes against the conventional wisdom, and against my preferred conclusions. I’ve reached quite a few conclusions, on the basis of the evidence, that went against either the conventional wisdom. This is not one of them. And I’ve reached quite a few conclusions that went against my preference. I’m pretty much a supporter of anybody but Obama and frankly would not have minded seeing him driven from office — except that then we would’ve ended up stuck with Joe Biden, which I think is an even worse deal. But I certainly didn’t care about preserving Obama’s Presidency.
The problem here is the way we determine what is evidence.
No, the problem is your attachment to your desired result.
To say you had no preconceived ideas would be the same as saying you had perfect self knowledge–and that is not likely.
I never said that I had no preconceived ideas. I’m sure I had some, although when it comes to children born on US soil of parents who had not yet become citizens, frankly, they were not strong enough that I can really recall now exactly what they were.
What I said was that if the evidence had said the Founding Fathers wanted “natural born citizen” to mean “born on US soil of US citizen parents,” then that’s what I would have gone with.
People like Mario Apuzzo can get away — to some degree – with their bogus claims for three reasons.
The first is that there exists just enough evidence that is ambiguous to allow them to proof-text the issue.
The second is that most people will NEVER do the massive amount of research required to really understand the issue, so they are going to rely on some authority, and if Mario keeps a straight face and speaks in a dignified way, he can generate enough confidence to look good.
That, by the way, is exactly what a “confidence man,” or “con man,” does.
The third is that a certain percentage of people want to believe, more than they want the truth. Who wants to be told that the politician they don’t like actually is Constitutionally eligible, when they can be told that he’s a usurper who’s going to be driven out of office any day now by a lawsuit… if only we can get a judge who’s not corrupt to listen to us? It’s a lovely fantasy. And obviously one that you yourself are attached to.
John, you are so right on! I just recently became involved in this issue. My hatred for Obama wanted me to take the birther side; but the evidence just wasn’t there. In my postings I have paraphrased much of your work and if you find that inappropriate please tell me and I’ll stop. I have taken to posing the following supposition to anyone who berates me for my opinion:
Vattel wrote: “The natives, or indigenes, are those born in the country of parents who are citizens.” If Vattel coined the phrase as such, then why didn’t the framers do likewise if they meant it to be that way? Did they forget? Are they stupid?
Guess what the response has been? LOL
I can guess.
That particular question really, in a very succinct way, expresses the entire heart of the matter, I think.
John B. says: “Personally I would got for the two lock solution: born in the land of two citizen persons thereby avoiding two sources of divided loyalties.”
Here’s the question, what divided loyalties did President Obama have? He neither knew his father nor ever even visited his father’s country. Are you saying loyalty is transferred by blood? Genetics? How does that work exactly? And, even if born in the country to two-citizen parents, it is still possible that a person can be claimed to be a citizen of another country by that same blood. Or, maybe even by marriage, as in the case of Congresswoman Bachmann? Does she suddenly become divided in her loyalties because her marriage makes her a Swiss citizen? If that’s the case, there’s not much loyalty in the world.
However, the Constitution does provide you with a voice to show your displeasure. It is called the vote. You get one. Use it wisely.
Why wasn’t his book called Dreams of My Mother then?
Read the book, it’s self-explanatory. People who really want to know things, are willing to do the reading and work to discover them. People who are close-minded allow others to tell them what they want to hear. Are you a discoverer or a sheep John B?
John B your opinion on how you would start a country doesn’t matter. “Natural Born” has a history well before the Founders. If they were that paranoid, why would they use words so well associated with English Common Law. If you were starting a country and you wanted to distance yourself from those ideas you held in contempt, wouldn’t you change it, specifically define it, so that it couldn’t possibly be confused with that which you held to be contemptuous? It makes no sense, logically, legally, or historically.
Yes, they could have adopted Sanskrit for the national language. Good thinking.
Your reply makes no sense.
The point is: If they had really wanted to say that citizen parents were required, then they would have used a term that specified that citizen parents were required, instead of one that specified that citizen parents were not required.
If they had wanted Vattel’s definition, then they would have used Vattel’s terminology — naturel or indigene. They didn’t. They chose a term which had a well-known meaning. And that meaning does not require citizen parents.
Ooops, I just worked my down to this. I see I have borrowing another question from you. I have read so much of your stuff it’s all becoming a blur and incorporated into my brain.
Human beings unlike mathematical entities or computers and their programs are gifted with a higher consciousness. We might sometimes simply say a matter of taste. My taste goes towards The Founders wanting a president who would be very loyal–as much as one could get by the qualifications. Since we will never get certainty in this matter we are reduced to taste . . . to preference. Sweet or sour. With or without hash browns. I will take my eggs sunny side up. Thank you. Beyond a certain point I do not see the value of more research, more digging into old books and diaries and letters. But if you enjoy it, well then go right ahead. I am just letting you know that for me I will be happy if we ever get that rare person: a genuinely good president.
Oh, I will also be happy if we get a genuinely good President, and I will agree with you that they are rare.
Having said that:
Words have meanings, and legal terms have meanings, and those meanings are not simply a matter of taste. I am not free to interpret the law as saying that theft is illegal, except that the word “theft” means you taking things from me and not me taking things from you. That definition might please me, but I am not allowed to simply define the law according to my preference. It has a specific meaning.
Likewise, the term “natural born citizen” has a specific meaning, and it keeps that same meaning whether you or I like it or not. And the meaning both from the historical and legal perspective is quite clear. And by that meaning, US citizen parents are not required in order to be a natural born citizen.
John B. says: “My taste goes towards The Founders wanting a president who would be very loyal–as much as one could get by the qualifications.”
Really? In a country created completely by foreigners? I would think that the founders, having fought next to people from different nationalities would consider a more open approach. One that recognizes that the differences are our strength, and that strength is what created our country. I would think your ideals would go more with a closed society with a distrust of all things different, that excludes all except the pure…like a monarchy or a dictatorship.
Yeah, some Hessians who were paid by the British in the Revolutionary War and killed many Americans were offered citizenship if the colonies won if they fought flipped and fought for our side. So under the Constitution they would have been able to be President. If the Founders were that paranoid, why would they do such a thing? How could they know that the British still weren’t paying them to be double agents and infiltrate our government?
Sorry just posting in jest. Not because of the facts above, but because I hardly think the Founder were paranoid purists.
John Woodman,
Like all your other articles, this is another fail. You know darn well that I have always maintained that the Founders and Framers favorite was Vattel. That means that they went with his definition of a “natural born Citizen,” found in Section 212 of The Law of Nations. They were most likely influence by what the other publicists said, like: (1) Samuel Von Pufendorf on what he says regarding the original citizens and their descendents being the indigenous citizens. Pufendorf would have considered any child born to a citizen parent to be indigenous, not as you say “adopted;” (2) Cornelius van Bynkershoek on his view that individuals had the right to expatriate, which the English common law denied; (3) Thomas Rutherford when he explains like Vattel that the natives are the children born in the country to citizen parents who can renounce their citizenship and take on a different one when reaching the years of discretion. As far as his children having no citizenship, Congress disagreed. Starting in 1790, Congress told us that children took on the citizenship of their parents; and (4) Christian Wolf when he said that natives are children born in what constitutes a nation to citizen parents and that such natives are also citizens. Sounds a lot like Minor v. Happersett here. He also said that a nation is preserved by the children of the citizens. Vattel says the same. As far as his “temporary citizens,” according to Congress, starting from 1790 to the present, there is no such thing. But in the end, for the Founders and Framers, the one that said it best was Vattel.
You also know that the Founders and Framers went with Vattel, given all the evidence I have produced on that score.
Proof that the Founders and Framers went with Vattel is even found in the early Naturalization Law of Congress and Jefferson’s 1779 law on citizenship.
And this is not even to mention Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay, Ben Franklin, George Washington, and other founders, David Ramsay, James Wilson, Robert Yates, St. George Tucker, and the teachings at the College of William and Mary. … and more.
Even cases like The Venus (C.J. Marshall), Dred Scott (J. Daniels), Minor (only paraphrase), Ex parte Reynolds, Ludlam, Ward, and Wong Kim Ark (only paraphrase) all cite and quote Vattel and all show that as a nation we went with Vattel on citizenship.
What you have done here is short change Vattel. You do not present any quotes from him because you know they are the strongest. You do not even give Vattel a chance and right away, you throw Blackstone into the mix and give us your silly statistics.
Again, you just keep playing your intellectually dishonesty. You can fool the uninformed, but not the informed.
Fail, Mr. Woodman.
Wow….John Woodman….
I’m a Libertarian, and Constitutionalist (not related to the extremist religious party)
And after Mario’s latest post which obviously avoids answering any of your questions. Have to say Mario is a liar or completely delusional.
Keeping it simple, a few questions….
Why would the Founders use a term that was well known “Natural Born” if they went with Vattel (who never used the term in life or in death for that matter…never)?
Why would the Court in Minor have any doubt if they were thinking about Vattel? (Mario never answers that question)
I will say that I was wrong before about English Common Law not addressing that issue. In WKA they do address and cite the fact that even under English Common Law that there were some instances that a child born in a country that was not an ambassador or an enemy invader may still not be under the allegiance of that country. So my idea that the Indians were different is in fact incorrect. I was wrong. Apparently there was even doubt under English Common Law many many years before Minor when it came to being born when there was question as to the protection and allegiance such as American Indians…..for example the American Indians born in the colonies of the British Empire.
Leo Donofrio posted a great answer to your question.
Check it here; The English Common Law Definition of Natural Law Is Not Part Of The Law Of Nations.
A basic summary;
“Furthermore, Vattel’s famous treatise didn’t create the Law of Nations. His text is an observation of customs that developed between nations, such customs going back centuries well before Christ walked the Earth.
Christian nations, Atheist nations, Islamic nations, etc., all respect customs of the Law of Nations, but they do not share the same concepts of natural law. To a Pagan, nature is God. To a Marxist/Atheist, science is God. And so on… But all nations do agree that procreation is part of nature.
The English common law was absolutely Christian, and their entire system of Government was based upon their unique view of natural law being issued directly from Jesus Christ as enforced by the English monarch.”
For the founding fathers to establish English Common Law as US Common law, they would have established the Government as a branch of the Church. That concept is an abomination of what they actually delivered to us.
Another thing, the founding fathers had every chance to conclude that issue. The Brit’s used the term Natural Born SUBJECT. All power was vested in the Monarch. Instead, they used CITIZEN. Citizen, correct me if I am wrong, originated in France. The Brits didnt actually have citizens until what…1973?…meaning…that the sovern power of the United States came from its Citizens, (read the Declaration of Independence)…and the idea that we would exert the Common Law of a Monarchial state over the Sovereign Power of the Citizens of the United States is absurd.
Wake up.
1) In Smith v. Alabama, Mr. Justice Matthews, delivering the judgment of the court, said: ‘There is no common law of the United States, in the sense of a national customary law, distinct from the common law of England as adopted by the several states each for itself, applied as its local law, and subject to such alteration as may be provided by its own statutes.’ ‘There is, however, one clear exception to the statement that there is no national common law. The interpretation of the constitution of the United States is necessarily influenced by the fact that its provisions are framed in the language of the English common law, and are to be read in the light of its history.’ 124 U.S. 478 , 8 Sup. Ct. 569.
— Supreme Court, US v Wong Kim Ark
2) As you’ve noted, we changed the word “subject” to “citizen.” “Natural born citizen” is therefore directly analogous to “natural born subject.”
3) As noted many times, the Framers of the Constitution did not choose Vattel’s terminology — naturel or indigene — to describe Presidential eligibility. If they had used Vattel’s terms, then you would have a strong case that they meant Vattel’s meaning. Instead, they clearly used the language of the common law. That they used the language of the common law is absolutely clear given the FACT that not one single writer of the law of nations ever defined the term “natural born” or even once used the term “natural born citizen” (see the exhaustive examination of the writers of the law of nations, above).
4) In spite of Mario’s claims to the contrary, he has not produced even one single quote or piece of evidence directly linking Vattel’s concept to the Framers’ use of “natural born citizen” in the Constitution. NOT ONE. 99% of what he has is sheer speculation which goes directly against the prima facie evidence. And the very best he has been able to do is to claim — ridiculously — that the British translator of the 1797 translation of Vattel’s work used the phrase “natural born citizens” because he understood exactly what the American Founding Fathers meant by the phrase, and that they had meant Vattel’s definition. There in fact appears to be no real evidence linking Vattel to the term or the concept of natural born citizen at all.
5) As documented in the article above, most of the writers on the Law of Nations didn’t even agree with Vattel’s concepts! He is the ONLY writer on the law of nations to claim that in order to be “of” a country you must have citizen parents. MOST of the writers of the law of nations seem to support a view of citizenship that is in line with the English common law concept.
6) In fact, we know that the “law of nations” was deemed to be incorporated into the English common law “IN ITS FULL EXTENT.” Such incorporation did not for one moment prevent a person born on English soil of alien parents from being a natural born subject. Therefore, there is not the slightest reason to imagine that incorporation of the law of nations into US law would prevent any child born on US soil of alien parents from being a natural born citizen.
Again, these points have been documented — and Apuzzo has proven completely unable to refute the documentation. All he can do — and all you can do — is to repeat things that are known and confirmed to be false.
I will add one thing, though.
Leo Donofrio’s work is full of provably false assertions. Some of them have been noted and documented at this very blog. His claim about Frederick Van Dyne leaps immediately to mind, along with his claim that Minor v Happersett established a binding precedent giving a birther definition of natural born citizen. But (once again demonstrating that even a blind pig finds an occasional turnip) Donofrio is dead-on correct when he makes the following statement:
The English common law was absolutely Christian, and their entire system of Government was based upon their unique view of natural law being issued directly from Jesus Christ as enforced by the English monarch.
And that in fact is where the phrase “natural born subject” originally came from — it came from a Christian view of natural law. And in that Christian view of natural law (see Romans 13:1) God himself had established a natural order for the world. In that order, kingdoms and authorities were ordained by God himself. Kings derived their power from God and from the natural order that he had set up.
And if you were born under an authority, you had a duty to obey that authority as far as good conscience would allow you to. If the King said taxes were due, as a good citizen, you were to pay your taxes. (“Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and to God that which is God’s.”)
In that view, all persons born within a kingdom were natural, born subjects of that Kingdom.
And THAT view of natural law — not the clumsy idea, devoid of any actual historical or theological substance, that “it takes two leopards to make a leopard,” is where the term “natural born subject” — and by extension, “natural born citizen” — historically derived from.
sorry johnny boy…
your history of half truths, omissions and lies prevent me from taking you seriously…your rebuttal fails…you are not ignorant by nature….but you are ignorant by choice…and that is a shame
Okay, JS.
It’s not like I’ve been exactly quiet on this matter. I estimated a few days ago that if I were to compile my posts on the “natural born citizen” issue at this blog into printed format, it would span about 150 pages of material.
And if this post is anything to judge by, I’ve probably added about an additional 150 pages worth of material in my comments.
And it’s not like I’ve been vague, either. Those 300 or so pages of material are FULL of very, very specific and definite claims.
You state that I have a “history of half truths, omissions and lies.”
Okay, JS. Do this for us.
Out of those 300 or so pages worth of very specific claims, I would like for you to identify ONE real half truth, ONE truly significant omission — not counting things I just haven’t gotten around to writing on yet, given the massive number of birther claims — or ONE demonstrable lie.
Just one. That’s all I’m asking for. But it has to be completely clear and demonstrable that I have publicly promoted a confirmed falsehood, or cherry-picked a quote, or clearly taken a quote out of context, etc.
Actually, in order to prove your point, you’ll have to produce a lot more than one. But one is all I’m asking for.
So, let’s see who’s telling the truth, and who isn’t. Prove your claim.
And if you can’t do that, then it will be abundantly clear that you have falsely accused me of things I am in no way guilty of.
oh, wow…do you intend to pawn 150 pages of your bs as a book too…history will not look nice upon that…
btw…didnt you notice the headlines this afternoon…check breitbart out…obie one’s bio from his college days…say he was born in kenya….now how could they have ever made that mistake!! this is too funny
So in other words, you have nothing — except for completely false accusations against someone whose only crime is to speak the truth.
Thank you for confirming that.
As for the bio, yes, I saw that earlier today. It’s frankly the best evidence I’ve ever seen suggesting that Obama might have been born in Kenya. However, as mentioned in the Breitbart article, other contemporary articles on Obama, published around the same time, give Obama’s place of birth as Hawaii.
What I do in the face of conflicting evidence is look for the preponderance of such evidence. Personally, I still don’t see a way that Obama could realistically have been born in Kenya. If better evidence emerges to suggest he was, then I’ll happily change my opinion.
In my mind, if the bio demonstrates anything, it demonstrates that Mr. Obama may have “shifted facts” according to the situation. And frankly, that would not surprise me in the least.
But back to the main point. Can you produce that one example, or do you admit to having falsely accused me?
That’s about what I thought.
so funny how you tried to pull that off…to insinuate the vattel was clumsy…devoid of actual history or thrological stance…when you outright claim that we, as under british law are all subjects of the united states…but that omits something hey? the fact that anyone that wasnt a christian…was considered an enemy of the state…this is a fact you dont like isnt it…that every muslim, buddist, atheist, hindu, or any other person that did not suscribe to the christian faith…no matter if the family was perpetually, generation after generation born on british soil….NONE OF THEM were subjects of the crown…OH!!!
how stupid of you to assert such nonsense johnny…you need professional help…this is a pathological issue with you…its not going to go away by itself….
JS,
Speaking of needing “professional help…”
I would not describe your last post as being particularly coherent.
Let’s take your one interesting point:
the fact that anyone that wasnt a christian…was considered an enemy of the state…this is a fact you dont like isnt it…that every muslim, buddist, atheist, hindu, or any other person that did not suscribe to the christian faith…no matter if the family was perpetually, generation after generation born on british soil….NONE OF THEM were subjects of the crown…OH!!!
I have no information at this time that any religion test was ever applied as to whether people were British subjects. If it was, that’s news to me.
I also fail to see exactly how that would change anything. Discrimination based on religion, in itself, is neither a matter of place of birth, or of whether one’s parents were aliens or not. You can say that one’s parents might have been excluded from being citizens or subjects on the basis of their religion, but again, even the child born on English soil (and later on US soil) of non-citizen parents, as long as those parents were white Europeans and/or “Christians,” was a natural born subject/citizen.
So I don’t really see how that would matter, even if true. So far, you haven’t established it as true. I am willing to look at any evidence you may have, though, that non-Christians were not allowed to be English subjects.
I can already imagine Mario’s argument. But looking forward to him addressing my questions. I have a feeling he’ll avoid and go off on a tangent with no supporting evidence.
“and the teachings at the College of William and Mary. ”
Do you mean these teachings,
“Wythe began teaching law at the College in January 1780. His students learned the nuances of the English common law, relying in significant measure on Blackstone’s Commentaries. Wythe also had his students read the work of contemporary political theorists, such as Montesquieu, and classical writers such as Horace and Virgil. ”
http://law.wm.edu/about/ourhistory/index.php
Mario,
How can you keep claiming support from Madison, who said this (and has been repeated for the last 3 years on various sites):
Then you dismiss Blackstone, yet, when they were attempting to “sell” the new proposed Constitution, they published various writings (the Federalist Papers) that quoted many time, Blackstone. In the Federalist Papers, they quoted Vattel, zero times.
Dred Scott, again? The Daniels court may have agreed with you, but the American people decided, the Daniels court was wrong.
For 3 years, various sites have been telling you the same things, and the courts have rules the same way. Yet, you still state John W. fails? Fascinating.
Northland10,
That the holding of Dred Scott was overtuned has nothing to do with Justice Daniel’s Vattelian definition of a “natural born Citizen.”
Based on the definition, all races and colors can be a “natural born Citizen.” Indeed, Malcom X, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jessee Jackson, and Al Sharpton, are all Article II “natural born Citizens.”
So, you are stating that Justice Daniel’s definition is dicta in a case where holding was overturned?
If you take that quote in context, it appears as if you are forgetting what Madison was talking about..hence…you post his statement out of context, which is the same thing Woodman does. Omission is a lie, out of Context is also a lie.
Madison was speaking about the citizenship status of those who were present in the colonies during the war. He was not making a statement about the birth status of everyone born long after the event. It was a specific and direct discussion of the rights of those citizens to US Citizenship. Nothing more.
SO
Is this all ya got?
Let’s be more specific.
Madison was speaking in the context of William Loughton Smith, whose eligibility to serve in the US House of Respresentatives had been challenged by David Ramsay (who lost the election against Smith).
When Madison said that, he was enunciating a general principle.
Madison even describes it as a general principle, in the paragraph before:
It were to be wished, that we had some law adduced more precisely defining the qualities of a citizen or an alien; particular laws of this kind, have obtained in some of the states; if such a law existed in South-Carolina, it might have prevented this question from ever coming before us; but since this has not been the case, let us settle some general principles before we proceed to the presumptive proof arising from public measures under the law, which tend to give support to the inference drawn from such principles.
It is an established maxim that birth is a criterion of allegiance. Birth however derives its force sometimes from place and sometimes from parentage, but in general place is the most certain criterion; it is what applies in the United States; it will therefore be unnecessary to investigate any other. Mr. Smith founds his claim upon his birthright; his ancestors were among the first settlers of that colony.
If anyone wishes the full context, they can find it here.
And those with Madison agreed wholeheartedly with his reasoning, and voted Ramsay (whom Mario quotes as supposedly being one of his authorities on the views of the Founding Fathers on citizenship!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) down — in a staggering, embarrassing THIRTY-SIX TO ONE slapdown!
Please explain why this very general principle identified by James Madison, Founding Father, 4th President of the United States, and the Father of our Constitution, does not equally apply to people born after the Revolution.
only after you explain why you lie so much johnny…
People like you regularly accuse people that vote for Obama of being idiots. It must take one to know one because you are an idiot with a capital I. Most honest people vote their conscience and that is their right and duty to do. You are an embarrassment to real conservatives – if that is what you think you are! You aren’t a conservative; you belong in the parallel universe on Fringe.
If you have a FACTUAL point to make against the man, then make it. Why do you insist on character assignation? Tell the man where he is wrong. We are all searching for the truth – honest people that is.
You have at least twice accused me, on the basis of absolutely zero evidence whatsoever, of being a liar. I’ve asked you to prove it, by producing one single demonstrable, provable falsehood out of the roughly 300 pages worth of specific claims regarding the natural born citizen issue I’ve made on this site.
You provide absolutely no proof of your false claim, but persist in making it. I am going to put you on moderation until you can either answer the question asked of you, or produce a single example of anything I’ve ever said that was a “lie.”
By the way, you don’t represent birthers very well. One would easily conclude by reading your comments that if you’re a typical birther, then birthers are simply false accusers who say things that aren’t true and refuse to deal honestly with the issues.
Come to think of it, that’s a pretty decent description of most birthers that I’ve dealt with.
Note to readers: I don’t like putting people on moderation. If JS03 is willing either to respond to my question above, or to give some actual reason for his claim that anything — anything I have ever posted here is false, then I will let that comment through. But I don’t think it’s really fair either to me or to you, as readers of this blog, to simply let people post false accusations with no evidence to back them up.
Plus, I’m getting a bit tired of being personally, viciously and falsely attacked simply for writing the truth. Frankly, I don’t really see why I should just put up with that.
Again, if he can behave reasonably and post an actual criticism based on something specific, I’ll approve it, and respond. But a blanket accusation that I am supposedly a “liar,” accompanied by no actual reason whatsoever for making such a statement, will not get through. Nor will any other comment, until he’s willing to at least take some kind of crack at responding to the question I asked him. I think that refusal to do so indicates he’s not interested in a real discussion, or the truth.
Actually, it’s at least FOUR times, in one day, that JS03 has accused me of lying, taking quotes out of context, lying by omission, etc.
All without producing even the slightest shred of any evidence that that any of those are actually the case.
There is a certain amount of enjoyment in researching, in finding out the truth about a matter, and then doing what you can to present that truth to the public, doing as good a job as you can.
And then people like JS03 come along and “reward” your good-faith efforts with vicious, false personal attacks.
If he has a genuine beef, or even one that’s plausibly genuine, we’ll air it. Otherwise, he can take his garbage elsewhere.
Justice Waite was writing on limitations on voting rights for all citizens. He was not making a statement on who is a citizen then or now. You are right, context is important.
Like all your other articles, this is another fail.
If my articles are such a fail, then why are you unable to refute any of the substantive points?
You know darn well that I have always maintained that the Founders and Framers favorite was Vattel.
Sure, I know that. I also know that they actually cited Pufendorf almost 3 times as often as they cited Vattel, and that they cited Grotius nearly twice as often as they cited Vattel.
And I also know that they cited the English common law, which you ridiculously maintain they utterly rejected, a whopping SIXTEEN TIMES as often as they cited Vattel.
That means that they went with his definition of a “natural born Citizen,” found in Section 212 of The Law of Nations.
Really? I’m sorry, I must have missed that.
I’ve READ Section 212 of Vattel’s Law of Nations, and oddly enough, I didn’t find a definition of “natural born citizen” there. In fact, I didn’t find the term “natural born citizen” written there at all. I found naturels, ou indigenes.
And the fact that some anonymous BRITISH guy in LONDON, ten entire years AFTER our Constitution was written, created a translation in which he translated the word “INDIGENES” as “natural-born citizens,” does not, contrary to your opinion, mean that he was expressing some deep understanding that our Founding Fathers, an ocean away, meant Vattel’s concept when they wrote “natural born citizen” in the American Constitution.
They were most likely influence by what the other publicists said, like: blah, blah, blah.
1) “Indigenous” by Pufendorf does not equal “natural born.”
2) The right to expatriate is a completely separate issue from who is a natural born citizen.
3) Rutherforth taught, completely contrary to your opinion, that even the YOUNG CHILD brought by an alien into a country had no allegiance whatsoever to the country of his parents and his own birth!
4) Wolff was very clear that aliens in a country were “temporary citizens,” and a person’s country, in his opinion, was where his parents lived at the time of his birth.
Again, Vattel is the ONLY one of the writers on the Law of Nations who expresses his particular view of citizenship, MOST of the writers on the Law of Nations (4 out of the remaining 6) obviously regarded a person’s country as the country in which he was born, without regard to whether or not his parents were citizens, and NONE of them EVER even ONCE used the term “natural born citizen.”
Not once.
And “natural born” is a very characteristic term of art. It is a VERY characteristic idiom. And legally speaking, it is only ever found in ONE place.
In the English common law.
So answer me this. I know you won’t answer it, because you never have before, but I’m going to ask it anyway.
If the Framers of the Constitution meant Vattel’s concept, then why didn’t they use Vattel’s terminology? Why didn’t they SAY naturel, or indigene? Why did they instead use a term of art which was found ONLY in the English common law and NO PLACE ELSE, if that term of art from the English common law was not what they meant?
Perhaps you can explain that for us.
Starting in 1790, Congress told us that children took on the citizenship of their parents;
IF they were born to American citizens overseas. As noted MANY times, every single occasion of which you have utterly refused to acknowledge, the Naturalization Acts had absolutely NOTHING to say about any person born on US soil!!!
You also know that the Founders and Framers went with Vattel, given all the evidence I have produced on that score.
Oh, really? What evidence would that be?
You mean all those quotes you’ve produced from Founding Fathers that say, “When writing the natural born citizen clause, we relied on Vattel?”
Oh, I forget — you have none. Not one single quote.
You mean all those quotes you’ve produced in which the Framers of the Constitution said, “In order to be a natural born citizen, one must have citizen parents?”
Oh, I forget — you have none. Not one single quote.
You mean all those historical references which link Vattel to the phrase “natural born citizen?”
Oh, I forget — it turns out there seems to be absolutely no evidence linking Vattel either to the phrase or the concept at all. Only what you’ve pulled out of your birther fantasy.
Proof that the Founders and Framers went with Vattel is even found in the early Naturalization Law of Congress and Jefferson’s 1779 law on citizenship.
Would those be the same Naturalization Acts that you’ve told verified falsehoods about?
And might that be Jefferson’s 1779 law on citizenship that clearly stated that all white persons born on the territory of the Commonwealth of Virginia were citizens — and that conspicuously did not mention that the parents of such persons born on the territory of the Commonwealth had to be citizens? The falseness of your claim regarding that is verified, as well.
And this is not even to mention Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay, Ben Franklin, George Washington, and other founders, David Ramsay, James Wilson, Robert Yates, St. George Tucker, and the teachings at the College of William and Mary. … and more.
Would that be the same Alexander Hamilton who told us that when defining terms in the Constitution, we ought to look to the English common law?
And notice who he didn’t say we ought to look to in order to understand the terms written in the Constitution — Vattel, Pufendorf, Grotius, or the law of nations.
Would that be the same James Madison, who, speaking of the allegiance that makes for citizenship, said, “It is an established maxim that birth is a criterion of allegiance. Birth however derives its force sometimes from place and sometimes from parentage, but in general place is the most certain criterion; it is what applies in the United States?”
Would that be the same John Jay, who when writing the phrase “natural born citizen,” underlined the word “BORN” instead of the word “natural?”
Would it be the same David Ramsay whose views on citizenship — which you touted as being highly representative of our Founding Fathers — were stomped down an embarrassing 36 to 1, in a vote led against him by the REAL Father of Our Constitution, James Madison?
Would that be the same James Wilson who, as Supreme Court Justice, subscribed to the first American legal treatise ever produced, written by Zephaniah Swift, who said in that treatise, ““It is an established maxim, received by all political writers, that every person owes a natural allegiance to the government of that country in which he is born,” and “The children of aliens, born in this state, are considered as natural born subjects, and have the same rights with the rest of the citizens?“
Would that be the same George Washington, who not only subscribed to Swift’s legal treatise while President of the United States, but who also was presumably in on approving Swift to write up the first official compilation of the laws of the United States of America?
Would it be the same St. George Tucker who wrote, “A very respectable political writer makes the following pertinent remarks upon this subject. ‘Prior to the adoption of the constitution, the people inhabiting the different states might be divided into two classes: natural born citizens, or those born within the state, and aliens, or such as were born out of it?’”
That one quote alone decisively refutes your entire claim that you’ve spent 3 years trying to back up, because it clearly shows the DEFINITION of “natural born citizen” before and up to the time of the writing of the Constitution. If that is the definition of “natural born citizen” at that point in history, and the Framers did not very specifically redefine the term — and they did not — then that is the definition of “natural born citizen” that was in force at the time the Constitution was written.
Would that be the same College of William and Mary whose first Law Professor, George Wythe, “began teaching law at the College in January 1780,” thus founding our nation’s very first Law School, and whose students “learned the nuances of the English common law, relying in significant measure on Blackstone’s Commentaries?”
And don’t forget our most influential Founding Father of all, whom you claimed (both at ObamaConspiracy.org and in the 199-page legal brief you filed in Kerchner and Laudenslager v. Obama) represented the Founding Fathers’ views… Peter Van Schaack!
(For those who might not remember Mr. Van Schaack among our very influential Founding Fathers… not only was Peter Van Schaack not a Founding Father — he was an adamant British loyalist who actively opposed the Revolution and who moved to England for 7 years after American Independence.
Even cases like The Venus (C.J. Marshall) [which has to do with international law on the seas and didn’t even use the phrase “natural born citizens” but instead quoted Vattel as saying, “The natives or indigenes are those born in the country of parents who are citizens.”], Dred Scott (J. Daniels), [who also stated that Dred Scott was “strictly property, to be used in subserviency to the interests, the convenience, or the will, of his owner,” and stated that black people were not deemed politically to be people, and whose opinion on citizenship was contradicted in the exact same case by that of Justice Curtis] Minor (only paraphrase) [which manifestly and absolutely DID NOT say what you claim it says], Ex parte Reynolds [maybe you can point us to that one so we can read it], Ludlam [which states clearly, ““…in the absence of any statute, or any decisions of our own courts, state or national, on the subject, the question of citizenship can only be determined by reference to the English common law, which, at the time of the adoption of the Constitution of the United States, was, to a greater or less extent, recognized as the law of all the states by which that Constitution was adopted,” Ward, and Wong Kim Ark (only paraphrase) [which clearly found that the child born on US soil of non-citizen parents was a natural born citizen] all cite and quote Vattel and all [ABSOLUTELY DO NOT] show that as a nation we went with Vattel on citizenship, [and some of which show the exact opposite.]
What you have done here is short change Vattel. You do not present any quotes from him because you know they are the strongest. You do not even give Vattel a chance and right away, you throw Blackstone into the mix and give us your silly statistics.
Believe me, I’ve given Vattel a chance. But there is not the slightest REAL evidence that either the term OR the concept of “natural born citizen” came from Vattel, and there is literally tons of evidence against it, a good deal of which I haven’t even had the time to post here.
Again, you just keep playing your intellectually dishonesty. You can fool the uninformed, but not the informed.
Yes, keeping people UNINFORMED is why I post all these links to the original sources, such as the links above to every single relevant work by every major writer on the Law of Nations, and the links I’ve included to sources in this very comment. It’s reverse psychology, you see. I understand that if I post links to the actual source material and make it convenient, people won’t bother to click on them.
Nonetheless, how about this: Let everyone read everything you’ve written on the subject, and everything I’ve written on the subject, and go to the original sources and read them for themselves.
When they do, they will find that every significant claim you’ve ever made on the subject — and that you persist in making — is an absolute falsehood.
But you knew that already.
What astonishes me, Mario, is that you still seem to think you can continue to put your falsehoods over to the public, when it’s become so abundantly clear that they are falsehoods.
There are times, Mario, when sticking consistently to the same falsehood no longer gives you plausibility — it only confirms in people’s minds that there is no possible way that you could be making the statements in good faith.
In any event, you really can’t blame me and others for exposing the falsehoods. I in fact tried my best to advise you months ago on how best to extract yourself from the issue. I would rather have seen you look like a hero. You’re the one who chose to go down with the sinking ship.
Mario’s opening brief is due tomorrow in Pupura & Moran v Obama in New Jersey Appellate Division Court. I am sure Mario plans to lie to Judges Fisher, Baxter, and Carchmann and tell them Minor v Happersett defined the term natural born citizen and that Wong Kim Ark confirmed that. He will lose just as he did when he made similar false arguments before ALJ Jeff Masin. Will Mario be man enough to come here and admit he was wrong?
Reality Check,
Can you tell me what ALJ Masin said that proves me wrong? Include in your answer his analysis, for as our grade school teachers taught us, answers do not count without showing your work.
Judge Masin said:
[emphasis added]
He said more than that but there is no need to re-argue the case here. The bottom line is, to paraphrase Chevy Chase, he’s Judge Masin and you’re not. What most people learned in school is that when you take a final exam and get an “F” it does count. You keep trying to tell us that big fat “F” you got from Judge Masin doesn’t count because he didn’t take time to refute your nonsensical arguments to your satisfaction. That big fat “F” is on the record along with the other ones in Kerchner v Obama and the Pennsylvania ballot challenge. I look forward to your extending your perfect record at the next level in New Jersey.
Reality Check,
I guess you had very low scores in reading comprehension in grade school.
Mario disingenuously demands an analysis from Judge Masin, knowing full well that lower courts do not analyze issues at great length that have already been analyzed at great length by the high Court.
There is no need to reinvent the wheel. In a case where the issue has been analyzed for more than 50 pages by the United States Supreme Court and a clear precedent has been decided, all lower courts will simply quote that precedent, exactly as Judge Masin did.
And in fact the lower courts are obligated to cite the precedent rather than re-analyze it.
That’s what precedent is, and what it demands of a lower court.
I am curious, Mario, are you making a living doing this? Do people actually pay you for your obvious ignorance of the facts? Does the birther movement line your pockets? Are you molded in the vein of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson?
Hey, you took a shot at me a few weeks ago, right back at ya!
Also, we have added this case to the Birther Events Calendar.
So you reality chuck and dont answer mario? How clever.
JS03
You and even Mario seem to have a misunderstanding of how our legal system works at the most basic level. I don’t know your background but I find it very shocking that Mario Apuzzo who is apparently licensed to practice law would be so ignorant.
Judge’s do not have to disprove legal claims. They rule on them. They look at the pleadings, at previous rulings in similar cases and most importantly they look at the law. Then they rule based on their investigation. Judge Masin had obviously read the pleadings. He had read the applicable portions of Minor and WKA. He had read Judge Malihi’s decision in Georgia. He even said he knew Judge Malihi. Judge Masin weighed all of these and said “Apuzzo’s legal position has no merit in law”. That is a strong statement. That statement leaves no wiggle room. He threw Mario a bone when he said they were “well intentioned” but he left no doubt what he thought of Mario’s pleadings. Some of us would disagree with the “well intentioned” comment. Judge Masin was showing professional courtesy.
I find it very shocking that Mario Apuzzo who is apparently licensed to practice law would be so ignorant.
Sir, you are too kind. Since Mr. Apuzzo has apparently made his entire career in the legal profession, I personally find it impossible to accept that Mr. Apuzzo’s ignorance is so great as to prevent him from understanding that lower courts do not re-analyze at length points which have already been exhaustively analyzed and ruled upon by the US Supreme Court, but instead rule according to that precedent.
All of which backs up my contention that Mario is faking sincere belief in his theories. I maintain that he knows they’re tripe, but will do everything he can to damage this President in the public eye. It is irrelevant to his cause whether he wins or loses, as long as WND etc. can point to him as a Defender of the Constitution, blah blah blah.
A charlatan and demagogue, plain and simple.
I’m glad Mario didn’t stand before the Supreme Court on the Obamacare issue!
Reality Check says: “Will Mario be man enough to come here and admit he was wrong?”
BWAHAHAHAHA!!! Probably not, but the Judges will be more than happy to explain it to him!
Will Mario be man enough to come here and admit he was wrong?
No.
Ah@@@!!!
Another John Woodman work of…well…so you call this work? Get real.
Every time I investiage your so called “work” that you post on so many websites, the same tactics appear over and over.
You take quotes out of context. This is a form of lying.
You omit information that, if included, would make your conclusions invalid. This also, is a form of lying.
You draw conclusions from undocumented sources, which normally are misquotes and nonexistent. This also is a form of lying.
When you challenge other posters, which you certainly have a passion for doing, and your conclusions are solidly refutted, you just disappear. You do that every time, then show up somewhere else, spewing the same lies and omissions that already were debunked, on other blogs.
You sir, are a liar. You have no honor and it is a waste of time to debate because you are, as I said, a liar. The natural born citizen issue has been hashed out, and the facts that you refuse to debate have well established that you have no clue what you are doing. Stop wastine our time.
This is one of the most fascinating things about this entire phenomenon:
Telling the simple truth, and being accused of exactly what the birthers are doing.
Every time I investiage your so called “work” that you post on so many websites, the same tactics appear over and over.
You take quotes out of context. This is a form of lying.
And which quotes, exactly, have I taken out of context? Perhaps you can explain the proper context of those quotes.
You omit information that, if included, would make your conclusions invalid. This also, is a form of lying.
And what information, exactly, have I omitted? Perhaps you can enlighten us.
You draw conclusions from undocumented sources, which normally are misquotes and nonexistent. This also is a form of lying.
My sources are generally very well documented, and anybody can look them up for themselves. I won’t say that I’ve been 100% diligent in documenting absolutely everything, but I’ve certainly tried.
For example, in this very article, I have included direct links to every single work that even appeared relevant, by ever major writer on the Law of Nations — covering 7 major writers, at least 10 books in all. Anyone can pull up these books and search them for themselves.
When you challenge other posters, which you certainly have a passion for doing, and your conclusions are solidly refutted, you just disappear. You do that every time, then show up somewhere else, spewing the same lies and omissions that already were debunked, on other blogs.
You sir, are a liar. You have no honor and it is a waste of time to debate because you are, as I said, a liar. The natural born citizen issue has been hashed out, and the facts that you refuse to debate have well established that you have no clue what you are doing. Stop wastine our time.
Which facts would it be that I have refused to debate? I believe I’ve answered just about everything pretty well, except some of Mario Apuzzo’s latest comments on this blog, which I simply haven’t had time to get around to.
All of this, in fact, is such a perfect description of the behavior of Mario Apuzzo and the birthers that I can only imagine that the poster has decided to identify the tactics that Apuzzo and the birthers use and baldly assert that I’m the one using them.
JS03 says: “When you challenge other posters, which you certainly have a passion for doing, and your conclusions are solidly refutted, you just disappear. You do that every time, then show up somewhere else, spewing the same lies and omissions that already were debunked, on other blogs.”
BorderRaven, is that you? Or maybe NaturalizedCitizen? Or may Obamacornlies? Or maybe one of the dozen birthers you describe to a ‘T’? Man, whoever you are, you’ve just described the birther movement perfectly!
Should anyone want to know how this debate will eventually turn out, he would be well advised to study the history of Scholasticism. With reason one can prove anything or disprove anything. Bertrand Russell is a wonderful example of a very gifted thinker and disputer. I remember reading some very fine arguments in philosophy only later on to find them demolished by Russell. Of course, sometimes someone else would demolish Russell’s brilliant display of reason. Is it then hopeless? Probably. Did the Scholastics ever determine with any certainty how many angels could dance on the head of a pin? Or what their favorite music was?
I won’t ask how many great presidents America has had, but merely how many good ones. A single digit will be more than adequate. As far as I know only Arthur lacked the parental aspect–and this was not known at the time. So with or without citizen parents we have not been overwhelmed with fine presidents. In fact the last four have been especially, even uniquely, awful.
Perhaps we should all turn our attention now to what we might do to improve things though in the midst of an avalanche there is not much one can do but run for safety. But later after the last rock has fallen, some changes might be in order.
Suggestions anyone?
The debate will turn out exactly as it has turned out so far.
Those intelligent observers who think for themselves, read things in context and are willing to accept the facts, will reach the same conclusions regarding the meaning of “natural born citizen” as such people have reached throughout American history.
The hucksters will never admit the falsity of their position. Those who really want to believe the hucksters will continue to believe them.
And birthers will continue to lose in court. There is not the slightest chance that they will prevail in the court system with their insistence that “natural born citizen” requires two citizen parents, because it is abundantly clear that it does not.
You have missed my point. Unlike the sum of a large set of numbers which can eventually be determined with complete accuracy, the matter at hand will always be one of interpretation. Historians and philosophers of history have lengthily debated just what a fact is. And without a definitive answer.
To my knowledge you have produced very little to justify your “through out American history” as though this were a regularly debated and discussed matter. I am afraid the phrase is more a rhetorical flourish than anything substantial. But provide all this historical material you have to back up your use of “through out American history”. Please.
Since as a matter of fact we have only the case of Chester Arthur where it is obvious that he at least was concerned to conceal his father’s naturalization date–something he clearly knew, he at least must have been what you call a birther. Odd don’t you think. Donofrio has a good deal of information on his site regarding Arthur which you can study if you wish.
What I would like to see is a multitude of references “through out American history” where the phrase “natural born citizen” comes up and is spoken of as you think it must have been. We need an historical mode of Google that will bring up a vast number of instances over the whole of American history.
Given the really deplorable state of the American judiciary I can only assume you are being witty when you speak of our current courts as authoritative sources on the matter. Surely this is a kind of insider joke which your followers are meant to chuckle over. Ha, ha.
No, argument alone will never decide this matter in satisfactory form. Some day it may make its way to the Supreme Court whose ruling may be quite arbitrary and political. Such a decision would not be the first of that sort.
Here John B pleads the “aw, well we can’t really know what it means, one argument is good as another” argument.
To my knowledge you have produced very little to justify your “through out American history” as though this were a regularly debated and discussed matter. I am afraid the phrase is more a rhetorical flourish than anything substantial. But provide all this historical material you have to back up your use of “through out American history”. Please.
Okay. Here’s a page that gives approximately 70 quotes from authoritative legal and government sources, from 1789 up through 2008, all of which basically say the same thing. NOT ONE of these 70 or so authorities from throughout American history says that citizen parents are required to be a natural born citizen.
Not one.
These particular quotes date from 1789, 1795, 1803, 1805, 1806, 1813, 1822, 1826, 1829, 1830, 1834, 1835, 1838, 1843, 1844, 1845, 1854, 1856, 1857, 1862, 1865, 1866, 1868, 1871, 1872, 1883, 1888, 1894, 1897, 1898, 1904, 1908, 1910, 1914, 1967, 1980, 1991, 1992, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1999, 2004, 2005, 2007, and 2008.
I do note that there is a gap of 53 years in this particular set of quotes, that appears between 1914 and 1967. Other than that, not more than 13 years in our entire history passes between these quotes.
Next, here’s a list of quotes from Google Books that talk about Presidential qualifications from throughout American hitstory. There are roughly 400 of these, and again, NOT ONE of them EVER mentions any requirement whatsoever that a person have US citizen parents. Not one.
Incidentally, in regard to the “gap” in years on our other set of quotes, the Google Books list also includes quotes from the years 1915, 1916, 1918, 1919, 1921, 1922, 1923, 1924, 1925, 1926, 1927, 1937, 1940, 1942, 1944, 1946, 1947, 1950, 1951, 1952, 1953, 1954, 1955, 1959, 1961, 1962, 1965, 1966, as well as 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1979, and many other years.
I frankly don’t think you can get much more “throughout American history” than that.
Since as a matter of fact we have only the case of Chester Arthur where it is obvious that he at least was concerned to conceal his father’s naturalization date–something he clearly knew, he at least must have been what you call a birther. Odd don’t you think.
Since Chester A Arthur was supposedly so interested in burning his papers in order to conceal his father’s naturalization date, it is interesting that that particular document survived. Odd, don’t you think?
Donofrio has a good deal of information on his site regarding Arthur which you can study if you wish.
I’ve read Donofrio’s site. As with Apuzzo, the very authorities he cites refute him.
I am also fascinated by your eagerness to give credibility to someone who admits to having had a failed law career, admits to having done “magic mushrooms” and ecstasy, and admits to having previously publicly claimed to be the “Paraclete” — the Holy Spirit of God on earth; and that the drummer from his favorite rock band was the Messiah.
What I would like to see is a multitude of references “through out American history” where the phrase “natural born citizen” comes up and is spoken of as you think it must have been. We need an historical mode of Google that will bring up a vast number of instances over the whole of American history.
You’ve got it, above.
Given the really deplorable state of the American judiciary I can only assume you are being witty when you speak of our current courts as authoritative sources on the matter. Surely this is a kind of insider joke which your followers are meant to chuckle over. Ha, ha.
You state that our judiciary is “deplorable.” By this do you mean that every single judge in America is corrupt or bought by Obama? Does it not occur to you that maybe… just maybe… birthers have lost well over 100 court cases in a row, in literally dozens of different jurisdictions across the nation, because their claims have no merit?
For anyone who still thinks that the birther “natural born citizen” claim might have the slightest bit of legal or historical merit, I would refer you to my series of well over a dozen articles on the matter, not one of which has actually been shown to be anything other than entirely factual.
No, argument alone will never decide this matter in satisfactory form. Some day it may make its way to the Supreme Court whose ruling may be quite arbitrary and political. Such a decision would not be the first of that sort.
The Supreme Court is not perfect, and I will agree with you that not all of its decisions have been proper or even Constitutionally correct. But it’s the best thing we have, and as far as the law of the land goes, its decision is final. That’s the meaning of “Supreme Court.”
And the reason why all attempts to bring this particular matter up before the Supreme Court have failed, and will continue to fail, is that they already addressed the matter, finding clearly that children born on US soil of non-citizen parents are natural born citizens, 114 years ago.
Yet you cannot produce ONE single definitive authority or point of law that says you need two citizen parents to be NBC. I remember in school (a very long time ago) I had to prove my math or I received a failing grade. What is your problem here?
You’ve taken a position – after careful consideration hopefully – and you are required to defend it. You and your kind have made a positive statement that NBC requires two citizen parents. So prove the math or get off the pot.
We are a nation of laws so I’ll abide by that law if you can show it to me.
You people better not call yourselves Conservatives because what you are foisting off is not conservative at all. As a Conservative I respect the Constitution. You, sir, disrespect it in your inane attempt to place words in it that were never intended.
The Angels dancing on the head of a pin was a trick question to see had you understood the basics of the ideas of existential philosophy. The answer was “Angels have no physical bodies so take up no space in the physical realm. So, thinking about now many beings with dimensions of 0 by 0 by 0 can inhabit any amount of space is pointless”
And Scholasticism endured well up until the 1970s and was an enormously successful method of thought and reasoning. To which “Pretending the law is something its not because you don’t like the President” looks like the half witted and magical thinking it really is.
PS Bertrand Russell was a socialist, so your admiration for the guy proves you know sod all about him. He also was a logician and your idea of a “natural law” he would have found laughable
John B. says: “What I would like to see is a multitude of references “through out American history” where the phrase “natural born citizen” comes up and is spoken of as you think it must have been.”
I recommend you read Wong Kim Ark in its entirety. It is a VERY good read on the history of citizenship from old England, through the American Revolution to where we are today. It is thorough and has references throughout that you can read yourself and see where the phrase came from and how it is applied today. If you don’t wish to do that, then you obviously aren’t that curious and have made up your mind reading charlatans and con men who are only interested in seeing how much money they can con out of the rubes.
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=169&invol=649
I am familiar with Wong Kim Ark–but that hardly justifies such a broad brush stroke as “through out American history”. Such language suggests strongly that in the last one hundred years we should be able to find dozens if not more references to “natural born citizen” –something I have not been able to do. But apparently John Woodman has. So I am asking him to provide these.
For example, just today we have “Fifty leading U.S. legal scholars cast fresh doubt on the constitutionality of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement in an open letter to the Senate Finance Committee today.” –Activist Post
When it matters to the law school as this clearly does, out come the prominent law professors. This is the sort of thing I am looking for. And in one hundred years surely to justify his claim John Woodward should be able to dig up at least a dozen similar outpourings from the legal profession. Or perhaps he was overstating the case. And we would be luck to find even a dozen references of note in the whole history of the nation since the Inauguration of George Washington.
As regards Wong Kim Ark this has nothing to do with presidential eligibility. Neither does the 14th Amendment. So these are dead ends. Now there is no law that says a Justice could not in passing make some reference to “natural born citizen” as Chief Justice Waite does in another decision having nothing to do with presidential requirements. But search as you may you will not find a single Supreme Court decision regarding the matter. It has only now come into such public view and disagreement as to justify one. So why doesn’t the Supreme Court set aside a few minutes and tell us all what the phrase “natural born citizen” means. Surely if it is self evident to Mr. Woodman what it means, these august jurists surely know it like the back of their hands.
[I have been researching this since early in ’09 and have come to the conclusion that Donofrio and Apuzzo have hit the nail on the head. ]
And in one hundred years surely to justify his claim John Woodward [sic] should be able to dig up at least a dozen similar outpourings from the legal profession.
Done. Not a dozen. Approximately SEVENTY such references directly from the legal profession, and literally hundreds more from books on the subject.
As regards Wong Kim Ark this has nothing to do with presidential eligibility. Neither does the 14th Amendment. So these are dead ends.
Wong Kim Ark was not running for President. But his case was ENTIRELY about the citizenship, at or by birth, or a child born on US soil of non-citizen parents (Minor, by contrast, was a voting rights case which had absolutely nothing to do with the citizenship of a child born on US soil to non-citizen parents, since that did not describe Virginia Minor.)
And along the way, the Supreme Court CLEARLY found that the child born on US soil of non-citizen parents was a natural born citizen, and established that fact as a binding precedent.
I have been researching this since early in ’09 and have come to the conclusion that Donofrio and Apuzzo have hit the nail on the head.
If you believe the writings of Donofrio and Apuzzo — shown to be false again and again and again, and refuted by the very authorities they cite — then that frankly either doesn’t say much for your research, or says great volumes for your gullibility and eagerness to believe them.
Show me the way to all these 20th century references.
“every child born in England of alien parents was a natural-born subject unless the child of an ambassador or other” & ” The same rule was in force . . . ” & “in the United States afterwards, and continued to prevail under the Constitution as originally established.” Natural born subject is not the same as natural born citizen. But that is what you are deducing. I guess. I find this whole presentation enough of a tangled mess that I think it would be a great topic for a law school seminar. And I would certainly unless I were a highly experienced attorney or a law professor want to treat the material with great circumspection. One could very easily come away mistaken–which I believe you have. But that is the opinion of another non-attorney like yourself. And this blog is fortunately not a court. As I mentioned in another comment, I do not have the time dwell excessively on these matters–and my opinion will effect nothing in any case as I am certainly no authority. Good luck.
John B. says: “As regards Wong Kim Ark this has nothing to do with presidential eligibility.”
So, you obviously DID NOT read the opinion. Such a shame, you could learn so much if you’d just take the time.
Mario pointed me to an article the other day that shows Congress understood what a “natural-born Citizen” was.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/20829167/Natural-Born-Citizen-Congressional-Record-6-14-1967-p-15875-80
Notice that Mr. Vigorito cites WKA for use in Presidential Eligibility, so obviously they understand how the ruling ties into eligibility.
The case was not about a man wanting to be president and running into obstacles. I suppose almost anything could be related to anything else. Did you read it thinking this man wanted to run for the presidency? These comments are not parts of a doctoral dissertation so I hope readers will not fine point too much as Jim seems to be doing. Anyway the goal was to dig out these justifying references to Woodman’ s “through out American history”. I notice you have no word to say on Woodman’s behalf. One instance is hardly a start.
John B, you continue to prove your ignorance to all the readers. There is a DIRECT QUOTE from one of the Justices as to how this would affect Wong Kim Ark and the Presidency. See what I mean about not reading, it makes you look ignorant. It also shows your complete disrespect for the Constitution and our great country. You have now shown that to you, it is not about whether the President is eligible or not, just your own biases.
I can not see the DIRECT QUOTE you are referring to. I also have limited time and many responsibilities that prohibit me spending long hours reading and rereading and remembering.
Please supply the direct quote you refer to. And keep in mind that pursuing this matter is not and could not be my primary occupation.
I still await this abundance of material John Woodman speaks about.
John B. says: “Please supply the direct quote you refer to. And keep in mind that pursuing this matter is not and could not be my primary occupation.”
I’m sorry it took so long to get back to you on this. However, like you, this is not my primary occupation. But, it has been enjoyable to me to explore our great history, something I probably wouldn’t have done if these crazy people who call something a forgery with no proof and call everyone who disagrees with them liars and other things hadn’t come along 3+ years ago. So, I read and I learned. One thing I learned is to not take blogs, like this, and web sites at their word. You really DO have to do the research if you really want the truth, because people will, knowingly or unknowingly, paint a picture on how THEY see it and not necessarily how it truly is.
Chief Justice Fuller dissenting opinion
“Considering the circumstances surrounding the framing of the constitution, I submit that it is unreasonable to conclude that ‘naturalborn citizen’ applied to everybody born within the geographical tract known as the United States, irrespective of circumstances; and that the children of foreigners, happening to be born to them while passing through the country, whether of royal parentage or not, or whether of the Mongolian, Malay, or other race, were eligible to the presidency, while children of our citizens, born abroad, were not. ”
John B. says: “I notice you have no word to say on Woodman’s behalf.”
I don’t believe I need to defend or repudiate JW at all. He provides links and info that I may or may not find useful and interesting. As with all my readings, if he provides something I might find interesting, I read his stuff and also the reference material. Some things I find absolutely useless, like the debunking of Sheriff Arpaio CCP’s claiming that the BC on the government website is a forgery. Unlike some, I know that Arpaio’s analysis is totally useless in that he cannot use that analysis to say that the underlying document is/is not a forgery. You just can’t do that with a web image, you have to examine the document. And, from reading JW’s stuff I can tell you, we have stark differences politically. But, he does run a nice site and is very good about allowing all sides to hash out their differences…without a lot of the BS that goes on with other sites I’ve commented on.
I apologize for my words to you, I was rushing through and got a little short. Have a good evening and hope to see you here again soon.
Somewhere in the comments here I posted links to a couple of treatises written within the first decade after the Wong Kim Ark decision was issued that noted that citizens like Wong Kim Ark could become president some day. I looked for similar articles or treatises written after the Minor decision saying that it defined the term natural born citizen and I found zilch.
“It also shows your complete disrespect for the Constitution and our great country.” This is rather childish of you. Obviously my failure to have read or more likely to have forgotten one quote hardly makes me guilty of complete disrespect of the Constitution. As for the USA being a great nation, I regard this as highly improbable. But you might want to take the matter up with some Vietnamese or Iraqis or Afghnis or others. We have certainly a right to being called the world’s greatest bully and exploiter since the demise of the British Empire, the former champ!
If America were a truly great nation, we would not hear people say it so often. Humility is a big part of true greatness.
As for the USA being a great nation, I regard this as highly improbable. But you might want to take the matter up with some Vietnamese or Iraqis or Afghnis or others. We have certainly a right to being called the world’s greatest bully and exploiter since the demise of the British Empire, the former champ!
Wow — poke him with a stick, and his true views come out!
I regard the United States as being a great nation.
After defeating the Japanese, we helped them rebuild their country — and today Japan is one of the most prosperous and peaceful nations on earth.
We fought to preserve freedom for the South Koreans — and as a result the South Koreans enjoy a prosperous life, while their neighbors to the north eat wallpaper, bow before the dictator, and starve.
Yes, we made some major messups in Vietnam — but we also welcomed more than 100,000 Vietnamese refugees into our land, and those people and their descendants prosper today, while the relatives they left behind struggle on in what is still a poor country today.
We set the Iraqis free from an absolute dictator whose sons used to troll the streets looking for young women to abduct and rape — a dictator who slaughtered thousands of his own people. We gave those people a voice in their own government, and they emerged from polling places with purple fingers and smiling faces.
And unlike so many other nations would have done, we didn’t simply go in and plunder their resources and claim them for our own.
As far as Afghanistan goes, we set the people of that nation free from an oppressive regime in which girls were not allowed even to go to school. And — absolutely unlike other nations in which rape and murder have been a part of official policy — in the very few instances in which US soldiers have committed crimes against the people, we have court-martialed those criminals and held them responsible for their crimes.
If you don’t like America, sir, then I recommend that you permanently relocate to Vietnam, Russia, the Congo, South Africa, Cuba, China, or France. I personally will make a donation toward your verified one-way ticket.
I have been abroad but not as extensively as John Woodman but I will never forget the unique feeling of returning home and how good it was. Of course some of that is being back in the comfortable environs of home but I think much of it is because this is a wonderful country to call home.
In what other country could a group of zany citizens get away with abuse of the courts to attack a legitimate leader as have the Birthers and not find themselves in jail or lined up against a wall and shot? I am proud of the judges who have had more patience with these nuts than I ever could have and ruled correctly and with wisdom. It may be time to dissuade further nonsense with monetary sanctions, however.
One instance is hardly a start.
One instance, when it consists of the United States Supreme Court exhaustively researching an issue, expounding upon it for more than 50 pages, and clearly establishing a fact in law, as an integral part of the ratio decidendi of a Supreme Court case, is more than a start. It’s the law of the land.
A start in a mile long race is important–but 20 feet don’t complete the race. Just provide the justification for your phrase–“through out American history.” I will settle for half a dozen twentieth century instances. Also, John, you are not an experienced attorney with many years of reading legal documents and knowing by heart all that makes up the lingua franca of the legal world. Without that I believe you make the amateur’s mistakes. For example, confusing dicta and precedent.
A start in a mile long race is important–but 20 feet don’t complete the race. Just provide the justification for your phrase–”through out American history.” I will settle for half a dozen twentieth century instances.
First, as noted, a clear finding by the US Supreme Court, in the rationale for a case, constitutes binding precedent. It is much more than a “start” — whether you or I like it or not (and I don’t agree with all decisions that have been made by the USSC), it IS the law of the land.
Second, I’ve already given you a list of not half a dozen, but of approximately SEVENTY quotes from legal authorities that elaborate on the meaning of “natural born citizen,” and some FOUR HUNDRED quotes from Google Books that further discuss the matter, and not one of these specifies that citizen parents are required.
Here that information is again.
Also, John, you are not an experienced attorney with many years of reading legal documents and knowing by heart all that makes up the lingua franca of the legal world. Without that I believe you make the amateur’s mistakes. For example, confusing dicta and precedent.
John, it’s quite obvious that you are grasping for any possible reason not to accept the truth. In this post, I engage in a detailed discussion — far more detailed than anything Mr. Apuzzo, for example, has ever offered, on the distinctions between ratio decidendi, obiter dicta, and judicial dicta.
Those distinctions have their subtleties, but they are clear enough. It is quite clear, for example, that the finding in US v Wong Kim Ark was part of the ratio decidendi and is therefore binding precedent; and it is also quite clear that in spite of the claims of Mario Apuzzo and Leo Donofrio, Minor v Happersett DID NOT establish a binding precedent defining “natural born citizen” the way they want it to be defined. I refer you to my series of five articles on Minor v Happersett, beginning with this one.
Thanks for your response. I can see you are very dedicated. My intuition is nonetheless that you are mistaken. I suggest you send your findings to Lawrence Tribe at the Harvard Law School and see what he says. He is supposedly a national expert on the Constitution. Or, perhaps there are others who will critique your work. I will check in again in a few months and see the results should you take my suggestion.
Professor Tribe does not need my analysis. He says the exact same thing I do.
In speaking of the question of whether John McCain was eligible to the Presidency, Professor Laurence Tribe, along with former United States Solicitor General Ted Olson, wrote:
The Constitution does not define the meaning of “natural born Citizen.” The U.S. Supreme Court gives meaning to terms that are not expressly defined in the Constitution by looking to the context in which those terms are used; to statutes enacted by the First Congress… and to the common law at the time of the Founding… These sources all confirm that the phrase “natural born” includes both birth abroad to parents who were citizens, and birth within a nation’s territory and allegiance…
If the Panama Canal Zone was sovereign U.S. territory at the time of Senator McCain’s birth, then that fact alone would make him a “natural born” citizen under the well-established principle that “natural born” citizenship includes birth within the territory and allegiance of the United States…
Historical practice confirms that birth on soil that is under the sovereignty of the United States, but not within a State, satisfies the Natural Born Citizen Clause…. And [giving examples of this] Senator Barack Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961– not long after its admission to the Union on August 21, 1959. We find it inconceivable that Senator Obama would have been ineligible for the Presidency had he been born two years earlier.
— Letter by Theodore Olson and Laurence Tribe, reported in 154 Cong. Rec. S3645-46 (Apr. 30, 2008).
How about Professor Jonathan Turley:
http://jonathanturley.org/2011/10/23/holdings-dicta-and-stare-decisis/
To be accurate the article you mentioned was on Jonathan Turley’s blog but was written by guest blogger “Nal’ who often posts there.
Minor was not about Natural Born citizenship either or eligibility for the Presidency either, but that does not stop you trying to claim it defined it.
Interesting. If I were young and full of energy I would now read your articles and see what I could make of them. But I am not. And for me this site is beginning to remind of the Tar Baby in the Uncle Remus story. Personally I do not think it will ever be resolved. I suppose Tribe and Olson had a vested interest in seeing the progressive Obama elected. I am not much of a fan of this nation in any case having seen it go into way too many foolish military adventures. The USA has too much blood on its hands for my taste in nations. It has exploited too many third world countries. Probably too big. Instead of a Civil War the Southern states ought to have been seen as a blessing that would make America more livable. Again good luck.
And good luck to you. Thanks for your visit, and the discussion.
Ok, Mr Woodman….I’m sure you have heard the latest bombshell news coming out regarding this issue…A booklet published in 1991 by the President’s OWN literary agency which says he WAS born in Kenya….this is going viral in case you haven’t noticed.
Let’s see how you try to debunk that….oh and please explain why the White House is keeping silent about this booklet.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/05/17/The-Vetting-Barack-Obama-Literary-Agent-1991-Born-in-Kenya-Raised-Indonesia-Hawaii
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2146034/Obama-born-Kenya-raised-Indonesia-Hawaii-Presidents-literary-agency-promotional-booklet-1991-claims-WAS-born-Africa.html?ICO=most_read_module#socialLinks
Hi Ed,
I almost never listen to Rush Limbaugh — a bit too bombastic for my tastes — but just happened to catch some of his comments today on a radio that was tuned to his program.
Here was Limbaugh’s take (paraphrasing because I don’t remember his exact words): There’s really no doubt that Obama was in fact born in Hawaii. The fact that this brochure says he was born in Kenya may indicate an effort on his part at that time to portray himself as being more exotic, or to take advantage of some affirmative-action type opportunities that may have been more readily available to someone who wasn’t just born in the USA.
I also note what Breitbart noted: That there are other biographies of Obama, published around the same time, that clearly state he was born in Hawaii.
So much for the “bombshell”. Yawn. Literary Agent Says 1991 Booklet Was a Mistake
So if it was a mistake why did it take the literary agency 16 years to correct it…seems odd that it was corrected 2 weeks after Obama began running for president.
http://www.wnd.com/2012/05/shocker-obama-was-still-kenyan-born-in-2003/?cat_orig=us
Probably because it wasn’t a big deal till now.
There was no reason to correct anything before then. Its only when everything about Obama was reviewed because the man was running for president that the mistake would have been spotted.
Obama would not have read every piece of print with his name on it. And let me tell you, once something is printed it would be very hard to get a recall on it and go through the whole cost of a reprint just for one or 2 mistakes. Organisations I’ve been involved with have lived with worse ones simply because the cost of a reprint is too high.
Mario has been reduced to invoking what is by consensus the worst decision in the history of the United States Supreme Court, Scott v Sandford, that institutionalized such injustice that it spawned at least three amendments to the Constitution to correct. I hope Mario cites Dred Scott liberally in his future motions. I am content to wait for the rulings in New Jersey and in the Fourth District on cases in which Mario is either the lead attorney or has injected himself. In just a few months down the road we will have much more to discuss on the validity of his arguments.
Reality Check says: “In just a few months down the road we will have much more to discuss on the validity of his arguments.”
I hope he keeps posting…he’s the best friend that President Obama has at proving he’s eligible.
Andy has left a new comment at http://puzo1.blogspot.com:
@MichaelN
No Michael, I’m refusing to play your game. I honestly don’t care what common law the Minor ruling was talking about. Do you know why? Because it doesn’t matter. If they were talking about English Common Law, they were wrong. If they were talking about an “American” Common Law, they were also probably wrong. Even if that was the intention, a later court used actual law to establish precedent.
So no, I won’t hazard a guess with you. I’ve seen how hazarding a guess about things like this can lead to problems. (See. the recent case of Mr. Strunk in New York.)
@Puzo
You’re making up arguments for me now? Weird. Let me know how that works out for you.
About doubts: I’m not sure how closely or thoroughly the court actually looked at the common law – this is exact point I’ve been trying to get across to Michael N (though he seems much more intent on trying to score non-existent points). That’s probably why the court specifically used phrases like:
“At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also.”
Notice they specifically say “it was never doubted.” They aren’t citing specific sources. They are speaking in the general understanding, without looking at the actual details because it wasn’t necessary. No one had ever doubted those specific conditions made one a citizen.
Apuzzo response:
Andy,
The Minor Court said: “At common-law” . . . “it was never doubted” who was a “natural-born citizen.” That “common-law” came from the law of nations which was incorporated into Article III’s “Laws of the United States” which under the supremacy clause of Article VI, became binding upon the nation. That law of nations or “common law” became our national law on the definition of a “natural born Citizen.” Solid evidence of this, among many sources that I have cited, is the Naturalization Acts of 1790, 1795, 1802, and 1855, which treated a child born in the U.S. to alien parents as an alien, and by a process of elimination considered to be a “natural born Citizen” only a child born in the United States to citizen parents. It has always been said that the Constitution does not define a “natural born Citizen.” But the Founders and Framers defined one through the early Congress in these naturalization acts.
Your comment about Chris Strunk and the New York court is really intellectually dishonest. You know that Judge Schack did not correctly state and analyze Strunk’s definition of a “natural born Citizen,” i.e., a child born in the country to parents who are “citizens” of that country either “at birth” or after birth. Strunk never said that the parents had to be born in the United States. In other words, Strunk never said that the parents had to be U.S. “citizens” “at birth,” for his definition also included parents who become U.S. “citizens” after birth (i.e., through naturalization after birth). So you persist in this lie, just like John Woodman persists in so many of his lies, distortions, manipulations, bombast, and political propaganda.
John Woodman,
Your citing and quoting Smith v. Alabama as done by Wong Kim Ark does not help you.
Justice Gray in Wong Kim Ark said:
“In Smith v. Alabama, Mr. Justice Matthews, delivering the judgment of the court, said: ‘There is no common law of the United States, in the sense of a national customary law, distinct from the common law of England as adopted by the several states each for itself, applied as its local law, and subject to such alteration as may be provided by its own statutes.’ ‘There is, however, one clear exception to the statement that there is no national common law. The interpretation of the constitution of the United States is necessarily influenced by the fact that its provisions are framed in the language of the English common law, and are to be read in the light of its history.’ 124 U.S. 478 , 8 Sup. Ct. 569.”
There are several problems to using this quote as a justification that a “natural born Citizen” has the same meaning as a “natural born subject.”
First, the provision of the constitutions are not only to be read in the light of the history of the English common law, but more so in the light of the American Revolution and the changes brought by that revolution to America’s political, legal, social, and cultural institutions.
Second, the key part of this quote is: “The interpretation of the constitution of the United States is necessarily influenced by the fact that its provisions are framed in the language of the English common law, and are to be read in the light of its history.”
The first key words of the above quote are: “its provisions are framed in the language of the English common law.” Clearly not all the provisions of the Constitution are framed in the language of the English common law. On the contrary, most of them are not. One clear example is the “natural born Citizen” clause which not only did not exist in the English common law, but was totally unsuited for a monarchy.
The second key words are: “are to be read in the light of its history.” Reading something in light of the history of something does not mean that what is being read takes on the same meaning as the history of whatever someone is reading. To take this statement and use it to mean that a “natural born Citizen” has the same meaning as a “natural born subject” is going way too far and is not at all what the quote is intended to mean. In fact, while Justice Gray used the English common law to give controlling effect to being born in the country, he did not go as far as the English common law would have permitted him to go and did not say that Wong was a “natural born Citizen,” but rather only a “citizen” under the Fourteenth Amendment.
But taking Vattel’s (NON-COMMON LAW) words that aren’t even close to Natural Born Subject is perfectly okay. ROFLMFAO. Mario you are a freaking moron.
Too bad for Mario that Vattel didn’t name his book something like “Common Law of Nations.” Imagine the twists and turns of logic we would see then.
Yes, I realize that the law of nations was part of common law, English and American, as was previously shown here, and infused so to speak, but still Natural Born remained the same. Mario’s argument holds no water. No Government Religion as Vattel recommended??? Required??? No Gun control as Vattel recommended??? Required??? lol
JRC,
You know what’s even funnier, perpetual allegiance.
By the way, your name fits you well. Figure it out.
Without even a hint? LOL You are too funny. So what about those Hessians that could be President? You are a moron. You don’t even address my original post. That should tell anyone reading here that his arguments hold no water.
Instead of addressing the issues, he comes up with some cryptic message about how funny I am. ROFLMFAO
LOL, Mario, you crack me up. You probably believe in perpetual motion machines too. It’s all a conspiracy by the law of physics and the laws of nature. LOL
Very funny Mario. I looked up the word “jerk” in the dictionary and guess whose picture I found? When did you drop the “T”? Tee-he-he-he. Enough childishness for today.
Mario,
Your citing and quoting Smith v. Alabama as done by Wong Kim Ark does not help you.
You’re awfully fond of saying that a particular point that illustrates that falsity of your claims “doesn’t help me.”
You’re the one claiming a novel legal theory that runs against Supreme Court precedent and virtually every authority that has ever spoken on the issue, throughout our entire American history.
And I would never have gotten involved in this issue at all if you weren’t out there deceiving people with your many verifiably bogus claims.
The point was made by the United States Supreme Court in Smith v Alabama. It was reiterated and reaffirmed by the US Supreme Court in US v Wong Kim Ark. It’s their point, not mine. If you don’t like it, take it up with them.
Oh, I forget — you can’t get the US Supreme Court to listen to you. And every court that does listen to you throws your cases out.
Frankly, I hope one of these courts sanctions you for your frivolous nonsense. You can’t even defend it against a computer guy — though you try with all your might — and here you are wasting the time of our court systems with it, again and again and again.
Justice Gray in Wong Kim Ark said:
“In Smith v. Alabama, Mr. Justice Matthews, delivering the judgment of the court, said: ‘There is no common law of the United States, in the sense of a national customary law, distinct from the common law of England as adopted by the several states each for itself, applied as its local law, and subject to such alteration as may be provided by its own statutes.’ ‘There is, however, one clear exception to the statement that there is no national common law. The interpretation of the constitution of the United States is necessarily influenced by the fact that its provisions are framed in the language of the English common law, and are to be read in the light of its history.’ 124 U.S. 478 , 8 Sup. Ct. 569.”
That’s pretty clear, isn’t it?
There are several problems to using this quote as a justification that a “natural born Citizen” has the same meaning as a “natural born subject.”
First, the provision of the constitutions are not only to be read in the light of the history of the English common law, but more so in the light of the American Revolution and the changes brought by that revolution to America’s political, legal, social, and cultural institutions.
I must have missed the part where the Supreme Court said that. Maybe you could cite the case for us. I thought the Supreme Court said — twice — that the provisions of the Constitution are framed in the language of the English common law.
Or do you maintain that because we gained independence from England, we stopped speaking English, and that legal terms in the English language ceased to have the meanings they had always held? Because that seems to be what you’re claiming.
I could believe you if you could produce a quote from the Founding Fathers or Framers of the Constitution where they clearly, definitely and authoritatively said, “We changed the meaning of ‘natural born.’ Now it means thus-and-such.”
You have no such quote. And the reason you have no such quote is because it doesn’t exist. Therefore, it is quite clear that “natural born” means what it always meant.
Second, the key part of this quote is: “The interpretation of the constitution of the United States is necessarily influenced by the fact that its provisions are framed in the language of the English common law, and are to be read in the light of its history.”
The first key words of the above quote are: “its provisions are framed in the language of the English common law.” Clearly not all the provisions of the Constitution are framed in the language of the English common law. On the contrary, most of them are not. One clear example is the “natural born Citizen” clause which not only did not exist in the English common law, but was totally unsuited for a monarchy.
Let’s see how this works. Let me rephrase what you just said. Basically, you just said:
“I want to prove that “natural born citizen” means something really, really different than what “natural born subject” always meant. Both Alexander Hamilton and the United States Supreme Court — and the latter, at least twice — have told us that the Constitution was written in the language of the English common law. But I say it wasn’t, at least in regard to this one phrase. My proof is that NOT ALL of the provisions of the Constitution are written in the language of the English common law. And here’s my example to prove that: This particular phrase that I want to prove doesn’t get its meaning from the English common law… does not get its meaning from the English common law.”
A more perfect example of circular reasoning could not be produced. “The thing I want to prove is true… because I say the thing I want to prove is true.”
Nor could we come up with a more perfect example of a lawyer twisting words and using false reasoning to “prove” a point that we know from plenty of other, genuine facts and evidence is factually false.
The second key words are: “are to be read in the light of its history.” Reading something in light of the history of something does not mean that what is being read takes on the same meaning as the history of whatever someone is reading. To take this statement and use it to mean that a “natural born Citizen” has the same meaning as a “natural born subject” is going way too far and is not at all what the quote is intended to mean.
As time goes on, your arguments only get more hollow-sounding and weaker, like a headless snake slithering its way across the floor.
I could hardly give a better answer to this than JRC has already done:
“But taking Vattel’s (NON-COMMON LAW) words that aren’t even close to Natural Born Subject is perfectly okay. ROFLMFAO. Mario you are a freaking moron.”
Although I personally might phrase it a bit differently, from the point of view of the facts of the matter I disagree with JRC in only one point here. I don’t for a moment believe that you are a “moron.” I simply don’t believe it’s possible to tell as many falsehoods as you have, and repeat them as often as you have — even after it’s been clearly pointed out that they’re false, and why — unless you were doing it quite deliberately.
In fact, while Justice Gray used the English common law to give controlling effect to being born in the country, he did not go as far as the English common law would have permitted him to go and did not say that Wong was a “natural born Citizen,” but rather only a “citizen” under the Fourteenth Amendment.
This, of course, is one of the falsehoods you repeat most often. Reasserting it doesn’t make it any more true than it was the last five times you said it. And every time you make the statement, I or someone else is going to point out that it’s simply false. The Court quite clearly found Wong Kim Ark to be not only a citizen, but also “natural born” — and therefore a natural born citizen. And you have not the slightest excuse whatsoever for not knowing, 100%, that your claim is false.
Or, to be a bit more specific:
1) You claim that the Court “only found Wong Kim Ark to be a ‘citizen'” — NOT a NATURAL-BORN citizen.
2) Your claim has been documented to be false. The evidence showing conclusively that the claim is false has been presented to you not just once, but many times now, and very, very clearly called to your attention.
3) You are completely unable to refute the evidence that shows your claim is false.
4) You persist in publicly making the claim anyway.
5) The exact same story has been repeated with your claims regarding Minor v Happersett, your claims regarding Thomas Jefferson’s 1779 law for the Commonwealth of Virginia, and so forth. Those two instances come to mind as particularly egregious examples of you being completely and absolutely unable to refute the analysis that demonstrates your claim is false and without merit, and yet you persist in making those claims anyway.
Mario, what do you call someone who persists in publicly making claims that are known and verified to be false? I know what I call such a person.
Mario proudly repeated his logically fallacy on Smith v Alabama over at his blog. I think the correct name for that is “asserting the consequent” but it has been a while since my logic class.
Also, check out his black widow spider – NBC analogy. It is a hoot. I plan to have some fun with that later.
Mario, when are you planning to post your brief in the NJ Ballot Challenge?
Thanks for pointing me over there. I honestly hadn’t read any of the commentary on his latest post.
Hmm… I seem to have become kind of unpopular over there. I wonder why?
The fallacy in Apuzzo’s spider analogy, of course, is that the construction used in Minor is, in essence:
It has never been doubted that members of group A are natural born citizens. Members of group B may well be also, but we’re not going to spend the time researching the question because we don’t need to know that for this case.
He of course claims that the statement “members of group A are undoubtedly natural born citizens” defines the term “natural born citizen,” and that the term therefore excludes members of group B.
And as his “proof” he uses the fact that he can create a similar sentence in which he substitutes in for “group A” a restrictive description which actually is a definition of the term he chooses to replace “natural born citizens.”
It’s more outright deception on his part, and the “tell” is:
I have a question for you. Please answer “yes” or “no.” I do not need or want evasive commentary.
Translation: “First, let’s prevent you from demonstrating the logical fallacy I’m about to produce, by setting things up so that we don’t let you point out the logical fallacy.”
The interesting thing is how many people will rally around clearly demonstrable lies.
Sometime in 1999, I ran across a “virtual stock market” “game” on the internet that was being played with real money. It was called “Stock Generation.”
The way it worked was, people purchased shares in imaginary companies. And the price of the shares went up. There were two “markets.” The shares in the “safer” market were supposedly guaranteed to only go up in value, and they provided an extraordinary “rate of return” — far “better” than you could get in any real stock market. The second market didn’t have such a guarantee, but it had a track record (so far) of really extraordinary “returns.”
And in fact — so far, at least — people had put in a little bit of money and gotten out a WHOLE bunch.
I recognized a Ponzi scheme when I saw one, and this was a classic. I tried, for a little while at least, to warn people that this was an absolute scam, and that they were going to lose all of their money.
What I found was: Participants in the scheme did not want to know they were being scammed. They would, in fact, argue against anybody who was attempting — for the sake of their own good — to enlighten them with the truth.
So after a while, I pretty much gave up on trying to warn people, and just sat back and watched what I knew the inevitable result was going to be.
That fall, participants began experiencing difficulty getting money out of the scheme. In March of 2000, they “crashed the market,” making everybody’s shares worthless, and stopped responding to participant requests to withdraw funds.
In other words, they took every participant still in the “game” for every penny they had in it.
People who’ve bought into a scam often don’t want to know the truth. They are frequently beyond rescue. The only thing you can do is point out the truth. Those who are a bit more circumspect will recognize what’s the truth, and what isn’t.
Wow. Unbelievable. The guy who started Stock Generation is back.
With a new scam.
He may make more money this time around, but I think his recent situation is more reflective of the guy’s future.
Mavrodi was recently jailed because, after defrauding thousands and thousands of people of somewhere between $50 million and $1.5 billion, he was flat broke and couldn’t come up with $33 to pay a fine.
In the end, scams never seem to be as profitable as the scammers think they’re going to be. Oh, they work for a while. But not only do they bite those taken advantage of, they eventually seem to catch up with the scammers themselves.
Look at Bernie Madoff. Raked in billions. Where is he today?
We did not revolt against all things English but the arrogance displayed by the Crown and Parliament. We were not giving up English law but asking for an equal protection of that law. The colonists were primarily English and were upset that the rights of Englishmen were being denied to them by the Crown. We sought, as stated in the Declaration of Independence, to separate our political institutions. Any changes in legal and social institutions were only those required by our somewhat different situations and protections to prevent the same arrogance from afflicting us again.
When the colonists came to the new world, they brought the English mercantile and legal systems. The revolution was fought, not to throw off those systems, but to retain an equal participation in those systems.
Very well put, Northland.
My point — which complements yours — is that we didn’t throw away the English language, either. We didn’t throw away English legal terminology. On the contrary, the Founding Fathers quoted Blackstone, the authority on the English common law, sixteen times as often as they quoted Vattel. In fact, they quoted Blackstone three times as often as they quoted Vattel, Pufendorf and Grotious combined. And while Vattel’s ideas were taught at the College of William and Mary, when they instituted our nation’s first law school in January of 1780, the foundational text book was Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England.
To claim that we changed the meaning of “natural born” while providing “evidence” that consists of nothing but baseless speculation — against the entire record of the plain meaning of the words, plus virtually all legal and historical authority, is beyond ridiculous.
And to keep doing so in the face of having the falsehoods pointed out, and the real evidence brought forward, is nothing less than a brazen attempt to twist the Constitution and deceive the public.
Great point Northland10. The Colonists were proud of their English heritage and would have been content to remain as Subjects of the Crown unless Parliament had not decided to treat them as second class subjects beginning with the passage of the Sugar Act in 1764 and continuing with the Stamp Act, the Townshend Acts, and the Tea Act. The Americans resisted taxes imposed by Parliament where they had no representation. They believed in the English Constitution but believed it had not been followed. England’s response was to attempt to “bring the unruly child under control” by sending troops to enforce the laws. The Americans came to the conclusion after 11 years that separation was the only way to obtain the rights as subjects they felt had been denied.
The idea of a second class of born subject/citizen that Mario proposes that the Founders invented would have been an anathema to the them. In my opinion (but I believe shared by the vast majority of historians) they included the concept that only a person born a citizen could be the leader of the new Executive rather reluctantly only because of what they had seen happen in Europe where external leaders had been installed in some states through royal succession.
The Americans came to the conclusion after 11 years that separation was the only way to obtain the rights as subjects they felt had been denied.
As I recall, in fact, there was an earlier meeting of representatives from across the Colonies, in which they sent a letter back to England pleading that they ought to have all the rights of “natural born subjects.”
You might be thinking of the Virginia Resolves that were promoted by Patrick Henry and passed by the House of Burgesses passed in response to the Stamp Act in May 1765. The second resolve read “2. Resolved, that by two royal charters, granted by King James I, the colonists aforesaid are declared entitled to all liberties, privileges, and immunities of denizens and natural subjects to all intents and purposes as if they had been abiding and born within the Realm of England.”
These were adopted by some of the other colonial legislatures.
Mario Apuzzo, Esq. says: “There are several problems to using this quote as a justification that a “natural born Citizen” has the same meaning as a “natural born subject.” ”
Lynch v Clark: “By the common law, all persons born within the ligeance of the crown of England, were natural born subjects, without reference to the status or condition of their parents…
The term citizen, was used in the constitution as a word, the meaning of which was already established and well understood. And the constitution itself contains a direct recognition of the subsisting common law principle, in the section which defines the qualification of the President. “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,” … The only standard which then existed, of a natural born citizen, was the rule of the common law, and no different standard has been adopted since. Suppose a person should be elected President who was native born, but of alien parents, could there be any reasonable doubt that he was eligible under the constitution? I think not.”
Mario Apuzzo, Esq. says: “The first key words of the above quote are: “its provisions are framed in the language of the English common law.” Clearly not all the provisions of the Constitution are framed in the language of the English common law. On the contrary, most of them are not. One clear example is the “natural born Citizen” clause which not only did not exist in the English common law, but was totally unsuited for a monarchy. ”
U.S. v. Rhodes, 27 F.Cas. 785, C.C. Ky. 1866 (Swayne): “All persons born in the Allegiance of the King are Natural-Born subjects, and all persons born in the Allegiance of the United States are Natural-Born Citizens. Birth and Allegiance go together. Such is the Rule of the Common Law, and it is the Common Law of this country…since as before the Revolution.”
Mario Apuzzo, Esq. says: “To take this statement and use it to mean that a “natural born Citizen” has the same meaning as a “natural born subject” is going way too far and is not at all what the quote is intended to mean.”
Luria v. United States, 231 U. S. 9 (1913): “Citizenship is membership in a political society, and implies a duty of allegiance on the part of the member and a duty of protection on the part of the society. These are reciprocal obligations, one being a compensation for the other. Under our Constitution, a naturalized citizen stands on an equal footing with the native citizen in all respects save that of eligibility to the Presidency.”
Seems that SCOTUS doesn’t agree with your OPINION Mario. And, as you well know, you’re opinion carries no weight. Nice try, but you haven’t anything to back it up, while the President has over 400 years of precedence.
Thanks Jim. I’m just playing with Mario, but you totally destroy his argument.
Jim,
(1) Lynch is a state law case. It does not trump, among other U.S. Supreme Court cases, Minor v. Happersett which disagrees with it. Without doubt, we take the word of the U.S. Supreme Court over that of a state court on the question of what is a “natural born Citizen.” Minor said:
“The Constitution does not in words say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners. Some authorities go further and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their parents. As to this class there have been doubts, but never as to the first. For the purposes of this case, it is not necessary to solve these doubts. It is sufficient, for everything we have now to consider, that all children, born of citizen parents within the jurisdiction, are themselves citizens.”
We can see what our U.S. Supreme Court thought about Lynch.
(2) U.S. v. Rhodes, 27 F.Cas. 785, C.C. Ky. 1866 (Swayne): “All persons born in the Allegiance of the King are Natural-Born subjects, and all persons born in the Allegiance of the United States are Natural-Born Citizens. Birth and Allegiance go together. Such is the Rule of the Common Law, and it is the Common Law of this country…since as before the Revolution.” I see HONEST RESEARCHERS [ed.] constantly repeat this quote. But I have yet to see anyone tell me what the court meant by “born in the allegiance of the United States.” If anything, Congress told us what that means when it passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866. It means born in the United States “not subject to any foreign power.” That my friend means born in the country to citizen parents.
(3) Luria v. United States, 231 U. S. 9 (1913): “Citizenship is membership in a political society, and implies a duty of allegiance on the part of the member and a duty of protection on the part of the society. These are reciprocal obligations, one being a compensation for the other. Under our Constitution, a naturalized citizen stands on an equal footing with the native citizen in all respects save that of eligibility to the Presidency.” And did Luria define what a “native citizen” is? No. And by the way, do not forget that as of the last time that I read Article II, Section 1, Clause 5, one must be a “natural born Citizen,” not a “native citizen” to be eligible to be President.
Seems that you have produced nothing which shows that I am wrong. And about over 400 years of precedence, it supports my position, not yours.
Justin said on my blog, http://puzo1.blogspot.com/2012/05/purpura-moran-new-jersey-obama-ballot.html , in reference to Minor v. Happersett: “The ‘no doubt’ part isn’t about the definition of natural born Citizen, it’s about the citizenship status of natural born children.”
I disagree.
(1) The Court’s ultimate goal in Minor was to determine whether women, as “citizens of the United States,” had the constitutional right to vote which states could not abridge because of the privileges and immunities enjoyed by “citizens” under Article IV and the protection from state abridgement that they received under the Fourteenth Amendment.
(a) While the parties did not contest that Virginia was a “citizen,” before it could answer the underlying question, the Court sought to first determine whether the first premise of its question was true. Hence, the Court set out to first determine through a thorough and well reasoned analysis which took it back to the founding and to the present, whether Virginia Minor was a “citizen.”
After explaining who the Founding “original citizens” were and how more citizens could be made by Congress under its naturalization powers, it accomplished that goal of determining whether Virginia Minor was a “citizen” by confirming what the definition of a “natural born Citizen” had been under American “common-law” or national law, i.e., a child born in a country to parents who are citizens of that country which definition was a paraphrase of Emer de Vattel, Section 212, The Law of Nations (1758). The Court then told us that all “natural born Citizens” are necessarily also “citizens.” Hence, Virginia Minor, born in the United States to citizen parents which made her a “natural born Citizen” under the definition confirmed by the Court, was also necessarily a “citizen.” Being a “citizen,” she was therefore entitled to the “citizens[’]” privileges and immunities of Article IV which received protection from state abridgement through the Fourteenth Amendment.
Here is a logical syllogism that shows what the Minor Court held in its initial holding:
All “natural-born citizens” are “citizens.”
Virginia Minor was a “natural born citizen.”
Virginia Minor was a “citizen.”
(b) With respect to the ultimate holding of the Court, unfortunately for Virginia Minor, the Court also held that voting was not included as part of Article IV privileges and immunities. Hence, the state of Missouri could decide through its own state laws whether women would be given the right to vote. Since Missouri through its constitution and statutes decided that it would not allow women to vote, there was nothing the U.S. Supreme Court could do about it. Therefore, Virginia Minor won the battle to show that a woman was as much a “citizen” as any man was, but lost her battle to establish that as a woman and “citizen,” she had the constitutional right to vote which Missouri or any other state could not abridge because of the Fourteenth Amendment.
What all this shows is that all “natural born Citizens” are necessarily “citizens.” Hence, there is no doubt that someone who is a “natural born Citizen” is a “citizen.” It was never doubted that any child who was born in the country to citizen parents, which made them “natural born Citizens,” were also “citizens.” There were “no doubts” that such a person was a “citizen” because there were “no doubts” that such a person is a “natural born citizen,” and there were “no doubts” that all “natural born Citizens” are necessarily “citizens.” So Minor’s “no doubts” go to both what a “natural born Citizen” is and also to the fact that anyone who is a “natural born Citizen” is also necessarily a “citizen.” But ultimately, being a “citizen” did not give one the right to vote under the privileges and immunities of Article IV.
(2) Another important point about Minor, which has been unjustifiably exploited by those who argue that Obama is a “natural born Citizen,” is the Minor Court’s statement:
“Some authorities go further and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their parents. As to this class there have been doubts, but never as to the first. For the purposes of this case, it is not necessary to solve these doubts. It is sufficient, for everything we have now to consider, that all children, born of citizen parents within the jurisdiction, are themselves citizens.”
In all, the Court did nothing more than say that there were two types of “citizens,” “natural-born citizens” and naturalized “citizens,” with both being “citizens.” It added that “some authorities” “include” as “citizens” “children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their parents.” Given what the Court had explained was a “natural-born citizen,” the Court was not suggesting that this other “class” of person could be included with the “natural-born citizen” class. Rather, it said that there was a question whether it was proper to “include” the members of this other class of persons as “citizens.” And the reason there were doubts whether it was proper to “include” them as “citizens” is that, unlike Virginia Minor, they were not “natural-born citizens” which would have automatically qualified them to be “citizens” and therefore removed any doubt about their status. And they could not be “natural-born citizens” because they were not born in the country to “citizen” parents.
So this other class of persons that Minor referred to and which it said created doubts concerning whether it should be “include[d]” as a “citizen” class was comprised of neither “natural-born citizens” nor naturalized citizens, for if its persons fell into any one of these categories, there would be no question that that class too was to be included as a “citizen” class. This other class was made up of children who had been born in the United States to alien parents and still sought birthright citizenship. We know that under the exiting naturalization acts of Congress, they could not even be “citizens of the United States” through naturalization after birth until their parents naturalized if done during their minority or on their own thereafter, let alone born “citizens.” But because of the Fourteenth Amendment and its new “subject to the jurisdiction” clause, a new question now needed to be answered. Were these children, born in the United States to one or two alien parents, born “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” and therefore “citizens of the United States?” Minor did not and did not need to answer that question because Virginia Minor was a “citizen” by virtue of being a “natural born Citizen.”
The question left open by Minor was eventually answered by U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) which held in 1898 that a child born in the United States to domiciled alien parents was born “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” and therefore a Fourteenth Amendment born “citizen of the United States.” So, Wong created this other class of born “citizen” (a new birthright U.S. citizenship ). While not holding him to be a “natural-born citizen” because of not meeting the “no doubt” definition of a “natural-born citizen” confirmed by Minor, Wong Kim Ark held Wong to be a “citizen of the United States” under the new Fourteenth Amendment.
Minor confirmed the precedential definition of a “natural born Citizen.” Wong Kim Ark did not change that definition, but rather created a new born “citizen of the United States” under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Finally, there is a constitutionally critical distinction between an Article II “natural born Citizen” and a Fourteenth Amendment born “citizen of the United States.” The former is born with allegiance and loyalty only to the United States. The latter is born with allegiance and loyalty not only to the United States, but through jus sanguinis, also to the nation of any parent who is not a U.S. citizen at the time of his or her birth.
Under Article II, Section 1, Clause 5, only a “natural born Citizen,” not having any allegiance or loyalty to any foreign power from the moment of birth, is eligible to be President.
That is the most backwards analysis I have ever read. The court had to debate, research, and make a finding that a “natural born citizen” is a “citizen”? My goodness, Mario. I do apologize for calling you a moron, but honestly sometimes when the shoe fits, and you are definitely in the process of having your foot measured.
Congrats to Andy over at Mario’s site.
He pwned Mario on the Black Widow question. Truly hilarious. 🙂
His response is indeed kind of funny. But what’s even more interesting is Mario’s response, which is frankly idiotic.
The response is to claim that whether Andy answers, “Yes, that’s a definition of black widow spiders,” or “No, that’s not a definition of black widow spiders,” he “loses” either way:
You see, regardless of whether you answer “yes” or “no” to my “black widow spider” question, you lose. If you answered “yes,” you would be admitting that Minor v. Happersett gave us a definition of a “natural born Citizen.” Of course, you think you are real slick so you say “no” as not to fall into that trap.
But then your “genius” does not realize that by saying “no,” you are denying that a child born in a country to parents who are citizens of that country is a “natural born Citizen” which is what the English common law, you and your [offensive term deleted] clan, and the whole world has always conceded.
What an idiotic response. Stating that the sentence does not give a definition of “black widow spider” (or, in the original, of “natural born citizen”) is not at all the same thing as stating that the sentence is false.
If I say that the statement, “A Frenchman is a European” does not define the term “European” — which also includes Belgians, Austrians, and so on and so on — I have not said that the statement, “A Frenchman is a European” is false.
I’ve simply noted that while the statement may be perfectly true, it does not define for us precisely what a European is, since there are plenty of other kinds of Europeans besides Frenchmen.
So once again, Mario peddles his wares using fallacy and outright falsehood as tools of promotion. Nothing new there.
Two can play this game Mario. Please answer the following question yes or no:
So are only Birther attorneys dishonest?
ROTFL!!
Actually… using Mario’s logic, I think you’ve just created a definition of “dishonest attorney.”
John Woodman,
Laugh all you want. Actually, I’m the one laughing because you did not even understand my point.
I understand perfectly and so have the judges.
Your point is that all your arguments hold no water and have been found to be without merit and have no standing in the laws of the US. That is why you cannot find any legal backing for your position and we have found many SCOTUS opinions that DIRECTLY contradict you. You need to go back to doing the job you do well, because Constitutional Law is definitely out of your league.
I understood your point well enough.
Glad we’ve found something we can both laugh about.
Mario,
Cut the HONEST RESEARCHERS [ed.] some slack.
You made it too complicated for them. It’s way above their pay grade.
Mario…
You have been weighed.
You have been measured.
And you have absolutely…
Been found wanting.
Welcome to New World. God save you, if it is right that he should do so.
From a Knight’s Tale, but fitting.
He laughs best, who laughs last.
Rest assured, when Birfoonery goes down in flames I will be literally rolling on the floor. You are the joke and butt of public ridicule. Congratulations.
And since, as JRC says, you have been weighed and measured, it is high time you were fitted with the Jester’s Motley.
It’s a slow burn. Already we’re pretty much down to two groups of people:
1) those who only get their news from WorldNetDaily,
and
2) the unreasonable folks who are determined to believe in the birtherism fantasy no matter what the facts are.
Birtherism will gradually fade away, like the 9/11 Truthers, with its few remaining proponents muttering to themselves that they were right all along, that the US has become a dictatorship, etc.
So I would get my laughs in along the way, because there won’t be a grand finale.
Andy’s answer on Mario’s black widow spider question was brilliant.
Andy’s answer on Mario’s black widow spider question was brilliant. That was the put down of the month. I wonder why Mario has not published his brief in the NJ appeal?
Mario, why haven’t you published your brief in the NJ appeal?
John,
I published my brief. Check my blog.
Brief it ain’t!
I see that in your 158 page brief you seem to have failed cite several cases including but not limited to:
Kerchner v Obama
Tisdale v Obama
Allen v Obama
Hollander v McCain
Farrar v Obama (GA Ballot Challenge)
Swihart v Obama (Indiana Election Commission hearing)
Strunk v New York State Board of Elections
(I could cite 100 more cases.)
I think the defendants will probably notice the oversight. Also, you told a complete lie that Obama used the name Soebarkah. There is no evidence that notation on a passport application is a name that was used by Obama. Only someone as stupid as Orly Taitz and now you has ever made that claim.
John Woodman,
I said: “That the definition of a “natural born Citizen” (“black widow spider) is broader, as you incorrectly maintain, does not mean that a child born in the country to citizen parents is not a “natural born Citizen” (is not a “black widow spider”).”
In my example, I am not stating that by admitting that a child born in the country to citizen parents is a “natural born Citizen,” one has defined a “natural born Citizen.” Hence, your “A Frenchman is a European” does not define a “European” does not show that I have erred in my logic.
Driven only by his desire to win which blows his credibility, the error that Andy made is not simply admitting that what I described is, indeed, a “black widow spider,” even though as he contends there may be other types of “black widow spiders.” So, I used the HONEST RESEARCHER [ed] logic against him and he did not realize it.
Clearly the U.S. Supreme Court in Minor was just paraphrasing Vattel’s definition of a “natural-born citizen.” Here is more evidence:
The Venus, 12 U.S. (8 Cranch) 253, 289 (1814): Chief Justice John Marshall, concurring and dissenting for other reasons, cites Vattel and provides his definition of natural born citizens and said:
“Vattel, who, though not very full to this point, is more explicit and more satisfactory on it than any other whose work has fallen into my hands, says ‘The citizens are the members of the civil society; bound to this society by certain duties, and subject to its authority, they equally participate in its advantages. The natives or indigenes are those born in the country of parents who are citizens. Society not being able to subsist and to perpetuate itself but by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights.’”
Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857): Justice Daniels concurring cites Vattel and The Law of Nations and provides his definition of natural born citizens and takes out of Vattel’s definition the reference to “fathers” and “father” and replaced it with “parents” and “person,” respectively, stated:
“The citizens are the members of the civil society; bound to this society by certain duties, and subject to its authority, they equally participate in its advantages. The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens. As society cannot perpetuate itself otherwise than by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their parents, and succeed to all their rights.” Again: I say, to be of the country, it is necessary to be born of a person who is a citizen; for if he be born there of a foreigner, it will be only the place of his birth, and not his country. . . .”
As we can see, the Supreme Court justices in both these examples have not only quoted Vattel, but actually cited him. And there is no doubt that Vattel actually defined a “natural-born citizen” in Section 212 of his acclaimed treatise upon which the Founders and Framers so heavily relied during the Founding.
The HONEST RESEARCHERS [ed.], including John Woodman, make the frivolous argument that Minor did not define a “natural-born citizen” because the Court first said born in the country to citizen parents and then followed with “natural born citizen.” They say the Court only gave an example of what a “natural-born citizen” is. This interpretation of what Minor said is rather absurd given how the Supreme Court has always stated the sentence. It is also absurd from a policy point of view. I have continuously asked them to provide all the other “examples” of these other alleged definitions of a “natural-born citizen” that the Founders and Framers had in mind when the wrote “natural born Citizen” into the Constitution. Of course they do not and cannot answer. And all this comes from the intellectual righteous HONEST RESEARCHERS [ed.].
Vattel defined a “natural-born citizen” as follows:
“The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens.” Emer de Vattel, The Law of Nations, Section 212 (London 1797) (1st ed. Neuchatel 1758).
Minor, in 1875 held:
“At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners.”
Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162, 167-68 (1875). Clearly the U.S. Supreme Court in Minor was just paraphrasing Vattel’s definition of a “natural-born citizen.” Here is more evidence:
The Venus, 12 U.S. (8 Cranch) 253, 289 (1814): Chief Justice John Marshall, concurring and dissenting for other reasons, cites Vattel and provides his definition of natural born citizens and said:
“Vattel, who, though not very full to this point, is more explicit and more satisfactory on it than any other whose work has fallen into my hands, says ‘The citizens are the members of the civil society; bound to this society by certain duties, and subject to its authority, they equally participate in its advantages. The natives or indigenes are those born in the country of parents who are citizens. Society not being able to subsist and to perpetuate itself but by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights.’”
Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857): Justice Daniels concurring cites Vattel and The Law of Nations and provides his definition of natural born citizens and takes out of Vattel’s definition the reference to “fathers” and “father” and replaced it with “parents” and “person,” respectively, stated:
“The citizens are the members of the civil society; bound to this society by certain duties, and subject to its authority, they equally participate in its advantages. The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens. As society cannot perpetuate itself otherwise than by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their parents, and succeed to all their rights.” Again: I say, to be of the country, it is necessary to be born of a person who is a citizen; for if he be born there of a foreigner, it will be only the place of his birth, and not his country. . . .”
As we can see, the Supreme Court justices in both of these examples not only quoted Vattel, but actually cited him. And there is no doubt that Vattel actually defined a “natural-born citizen” in Section 212 of his acclaimed treatise upon which the Founders and Framers so heavily relied during the Founding.
The HONEST RESEARCHERS [ed.] make the frivolous argument that Minor did not define a “natural-born citizen” because the Court first said “all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens” and then followed that description by the statement that such children were “natural born citizens.” They say that because the description comes before “natural-born citizen,” the Court only gave an example of what a “natural-born citizen” is. This interpretation of what Minor intended is rather absurd given how the Supreme Court has always understood the meaning of “natural-born citizen” and stated its definition. See Vattel at Section 212; The Venus; and Dred Scott. Minor was well aware of how Vattel defined a “natural-born citizen” and how The Venus and Dred Scott treated what Vattel said.
The HONEST RESEARCHER [ed.] argument is also absurd from a policy point of view. I have continuously asked them to provide all the other “examples” of these other alleged definitions of a “natural-born citizen” that the Founders and Framers had in mind when they wrote “natural born Citizen” into the Constitution. Of course, they do not and cannot answer. And all this comes from the intellectually righteous Obots.
John Woodman: If “natural born citizen” means as you affirm merely born in the land, it was hardly worth the time spent in writing or the ink . . . this would be like putting an eye and hook on a door to inspire confidence the no one could enter the room. And as most of us know, a good pull and the locking device is kaput.
Consider the following realistic scenario. A couple traveling on a train back to Canada. The woman goes into labor a few weeks early. Fortunately a doctor is aboard and a compartment is made available, and the woman delivers a boy about ten miles before the border. An half hour later in Canada out comes the second identical twin.
The first can return to America in his twenties. Wait until he is in his 40’s and even become president. Not much there to guard against divided loyalties or foreign influences or ideologies. Of course nothing is perfect. But even a good dead bolt would secure the room better than our eye and hook.
With citizen parents the prospect is a good deal better and brighter. In the East they say the mother is the first guru. And a citizen mother is apt to be the best person to inspire a sense of patriotism in the child. Better than flags and posters of Uncle Sam and school propaganda. Even better than patriotic films. Better even than apple pie.
Of course this is dust in the wind.
John, you fail to understand two things.
1. “Natural born citizen” derived directly from the phrase or term of art “natural born subject,” which had a very long and undisputed meaning in law. When we changed, in general, the word “subject” to the word “citizen,” we changed “natural born subject” to “natural born citizen.”
It is extremely simple, and extremely straightforward. That’s it.
You can argue, if you like, that “natural born subject” was overly verbose. But the fact is, those words were in there for a historical reason.
Under the theology and philosophy of England of the Middle Ages, God set up natural laws for mankind. Under those laws, certain people were “natural subjects” of a particular kingdom.
And if you were BORN a natural subject, then you were a natural born subject.
And that’s how it was since at LEAST the early 1600s, although there is evidence to suggest that the term could go back as early as 1100 or before.
Everybody in America who was trained in LAW — and that describes MOST of those who framed the Constitution — knew EXACTLY what a “natural born subject” was. And when we changed the word “subject” to “citizen,” they knew exactly what a “natural born citizen” was.
The Framers of the Constitution would be astounded that we are even having this conversation.
2. The Framers of the Constitution were NOT concerned about the children born on US soil of non-citizen parents having influence from their parents or “divided loyalties.” If they had been, then the Convention would NEVER have approved the wording of the Presidential eligibility clause WITH NO OBJECTION WHATSOEVER on the part of anybody — which is exactly what James Madison tells us they did.
He doesn’t even record any QUESTION as to what the wording meant — indicating again that everybody understood exactly what it meant.
And no, there is NO evidence WHATSOEVER to suggest that it meant anything other than what it had always meant.
But back to the main point here. They were not at all concerned about the children born on US soil of non-citizen parents having influence from their parents or “divided loyalties.” What they WERE concerned about was a) rich royalty from Britain or Europe coming over here with an impressive retinue and a shipload of money and dazzling the natives and buying up the Presidency, and b) the public PERCEPTION that a) was a possibility.
The more you understand about the history and legal aspects of this issue, the more it comes into focus. It is a process that looks very much like this.
Incidentally, the more you understand about the whole thing, that is the pretty much the same picture that emerges of Mario Apuzzo as well.
The hand the rocks the cradle rocks the world. So their concern was merely about the immediate future? We of course are guessing a great deal here by relying on scanty information.
“He doesn’t even record any QUESTION as to what the wording meant — indicating again that everybody understood exactly what it meant. ” This is a leap of faith I would not make–everybody, exactly?
I know you feel very confident of your position but you are not as careful as I would be.
Keep in mind that in those times persons could not run out to Walgreens and buy notebooks and ball point pens. This is not mathematics or computer science. We don’t get exactitude in human affairs. Studies of witnesses are not encouraging.
I would be more convinced by your arguments if they showed a little less certitude . . . if there was just a pinch of humility a la ‘I might of course be mistaken’.
In my work I have noticed that the more confident the man the more likely he is to be wrong. Wives have also made that observation!!
It depends on the subject. In areas where little objective data is available (say, economics or social sciences) you are correct… claims of total certainty are highly suspect. But in a case like this, where there are literally reams of evidence that says that there are only two types of citizen, and that “natural born citizen” applies to people born abroad of citizens or here even of aliens, then the certainty Woodman expresses on this topic is no flimsier than my assertion that water is wet.
This is typical birther hogwash. It’s the same thing I’ve seen about a zillion times now.
Notice that John B is REALLY, REALLY careful about agreeing with someone who comes to a conclusion that John doesn’t like, based on reams and reams of evidence.
But he has no such reservations about reaching a conclusion that he wants to reach, based on the flimsy, invalid arguments of a man who has been shown to make false points again and again and again.
None of those failures — even though they represent a complete failure of Mr. Apuzzo’s legal claims — bother John B in the least.
But he wants to be very “cautious” about reaching a conclusion against that failure:
— John B wants to be very “cautious” about thinking that the words “natural born” in “natural born citizen” just might have meant the same thing they had always meant in the virtually identical and directly analogous phrase “natural born subject.”
The way that Mr. Brown has put the matter bears repeating:
But in a case like this, where there are literally reams of evidence that says that there are only two types of citizen, and that “natural born citizen” applies to people born abroad of citizens or here even of aliens, then the certainty Woodman expresses on this topic is no flimsier than my assertion that water is wet.
Under John B’s scenario the woman traveling on a train toward Canada would not be under the jurisdiction of the United States, just passing through – much like illegal aliens, don’t you think? I’m sure the parents didn’t get off the train and apply for an American birth certificate. I’m assuming that you’d have to be a legal resident. This is nothing like the Wong Kim Ark situation.
Here is what the James Madison (the Father of the Constitution) Administration thought about a child born in the United States to alien parents.
Publius (probably James Madison) stated in October 7, 1811, in The Alexandria Herald, concerning the “Case of James McClure:”
“Mr. Rodman hints, that it would have been sufficient for James McClure to have been born in the United States—he is mistaken. The law of the United States recognizes no such claim. The law of Virginia, of 1792, does—for, “all free persons born within the territory of this commonwealth,” is deemed a citizen. The law of Virginia considers him as a son of the soil. An alien, as well as a citizen, may beget a citizen, but the U. States’ act does not go so far. A man must be naturalized to make his children such.”
Secretary of State, James Monroe, eventually declared James McClure to be a “citizen of the United States” under the Naturalization Act of 1802. But that was, as the historical record of the James McClure case clearly shows, only because his father naturalized several months before he was born. And this historical record totally supports my interpretation of the Naturalization Acts of 1790, 1795, 1802, and 1855. The James Madison Administration did not even considered that child a “citizen” at the time of birth and John Woodman wants us to believe, without providing any evidence supporting his personal opinions, that the Founders and Framers considered that child a “natural born Citizen.”
This historical evidence, from none other than James Madison, completely destroys John Woodman’s thesis that the Founders and Framers gave to a “natural born Citizen” the same meaning as the English common law gave to a “natural born subject.” On the other hand, it completely supports my position that a “natural born Citizen” under American common law which became national law is a child born in the country to citizen parents.
Once again, you misrepresent history — not that anybody is even remotely surprised.
Even though that pseudonym — “Publius” — had been quite famously used by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay when writing The Federalist decades before, there’s simply no good reason to think that its reuse was by Madison, and plenty of obvious reason to think otherwise.
For one thing, everybody knew it had been used by Madison.
Quoting Atlanta lawyer Loren Collins (who is apparently a far more honest and better lawyer than Mario Apuzzo will ever be),
…Madison and Co. did their Federalist writings as “Publius” in 1787 and 1788. They were all published in The Independent Journal and The New York Packet.
Leo [and Mario] would like to believe that 23 years later, in 1811, then-President Madison dragged his old pseudonym out of retirement to send a letter to the Richmond Enquirer. A somewhat odd choice, given that Madison had been publicly known to be one of the authors of the Federalist for a decade.
One is forced to wonder why, if the President of the United States wanted to expound a legal opinion as to who is born with U.S. citizenship, he would need to do so in an quasi-anonymous letter to to a Virginia newspaper.
Or, as ballantine puts it:
To claim that an anonymous writer was really the sitting president without any proof is pretty delusional.
For another thing, Madison’s own administration went to bat on McClure’s behalf weeks later, stating clearly to the French that he was an American citizen.
It seems unlikely that Madison would argue that he wasn’t a citizen at one moment, then argue that he was a citizen just a short while later.
And in fact, the letter from Madison’s administration makes no mention of McClure’s father whatsoever.
Why not? His citizenship was never dependent on his father’s naturalization. It was dependent on his birth in Charleston, South Carolina — which IS mentioned in the letter from Madison’s administration.
So Mario does what birthers always do: He takes anything that sounds even plausibly supportive of his argument and counts it as hard fact. “Publius” wrote the letter? Why, then, it’s a “fact” that “Publius” was James Madison, President of the United States — never mind the other evidence which indicates that it wasn’t.
And Apuzzo, as always, bald-faced denies the mountains of legal and historical evidence — including some truly hard evidence — which all says that his argument is as cracked as the Liberty Bell.
Oh, and of course, we do know what James Madison actually DID say:
“It is an established maxim that birth is a criterion of allegiance. Birth however derives its force sometimes from place and sometimes from parentage, but in general place is the most certain criterion; it is what applies in the United States.”
Mario
Leo hung it up after his last piece of shoddy research on the McClure case was debunked (when it was revealed Madison’s own Secretary of State ruled McClure a citizen). You should take a lesson from Leo. He apparently had his fill of being embarassed.
John Woodman,
You really blew this one.
No, Mario,
You blew it when you didn’t take the advice I emailed you back in March:
Hi Mario,
I’m sure at this point you probably don’t like me very well.
I do hope you understand, though, that the beating you’ve taken at ballot-access.org was inevitable. If it hadn’t come from me, it would’ve come from somebody else.
I’m sure you understand, when you think about it, that you really can’t expect to push an entire false legal theory on the Constitution without also expecting that sooner or later, people are going to call you on it.
I would like to reiterate my invitation to you to join me on the side of the truth. I am happy to do what I can to help you figure out how to withdraw as gracefully and positively as possible from the unfortunate corner that you’ve painted yourself into. Just let me know.
Best wishes,
John Woodman
John Woodman,
Here is the side of the truth.
I. The Early Naturalization Acts
We know how the Founders and Framers defined a “natural born Citizen” by looking at the early Congress’s naturalization acts (1790, 1795, 1802, and 1855). Under these acts, if a child was born to alien parents, then only upon the parents naturalizing did the child become a naturalized “citizen of the United States” after birth. Since the wife by choice followed the citizenship of her husband, if the father was an alien, both father and mother were aliens and both would become U.S. citizens upon the naturalization of the husband. Hence, the Founders and Framers did not believe in separate citizenship between husband and wife, so both had to be U.S. citizens in order to give that status to their minor children.
Given these acts, there is simply no way that the Founders and Framers would have considered Obama a “citizen of the United States” “at birth,” let alone a “natural born Citizen” given that he was born to a foreign father who during the Founding would have also made his mother an alien. In the eyes of the Founders and Framers and therefore the People of the United States who adopted and ratified the Constitution, only upon his father naturalizing, if done during Obama’s minority or if Obama petitioned on his own upon reaching adulthood, could Obama be a “citizen of the United States” and then only a naturalized one after birth and thus not a “natural born Citizen.” Hence, Obama did not fit the Founders and Framers and the People’s definition of an Article II “natural born Citizen.”
II. The Fourteenth Amendment and Wong Kim Ark
The Fourteenth Amendment per Wong Kim Ark created a new birthright citizenship for children born in the United States to alien parents. But it neither intended to nor did it amend the definition of an Article II “natural born Citizen” which specifically applied to the President and which requires not only U.S. citizenship from birth, but birth in the country to citizen parents. The Founders and Framers were highly concerned that the President and Commander in Chief not have divided allegiance, loyalties, and attachment. Given that he was going to be the Commander in Chief of the Military and also wield enormous civil power that impacted not only on our domestic matters but also on our relations with foreign nations, they wanted a President with allegiance from birth only to the United States. Only with birth in the country to citizen parents, thus avoiding foreign allegiances created by jus sanguinis and jus soli citizenships, could they achieve their policy goal.
Hence, it is not sufficient to simply proclaim that any “citizen of the United States” “at birth” is a “natural born Citizen,” for even a person with divided birth allegiance, loyalties, and attachments can be a “citizen of the United States” “at birth” under the Fourteenth Amendment, Wong Kim Ark, or Congressional Acts.
Mario Apuzzo, Esq. says: “We know how the Founders and Framers defined a “natural born Citizen” by looking at the early Congress’s naturalization acts (1790, 1795, 1802, and 1855). Under these acts, if a child was born to alien parents, then only upon the parents naturalizing did the child become a naturalized “citizen of the United States” after birth.”
Please show me the sections and quotes in the acts that say a child of one or more foreign parents, born in the country, are now a citizen when they weren’t before.
Your response would make better sense if you knew what my position was. Hence, my suggestion of caution and care. While I prefer Apuzzo’s and Donofrio’s work and conclusions, I have not put any money on them yet.
Here would be my suggested position for anyone, but I will use you as an instancing: ‘While I am not a trained and experienced attorney or historian, I have diligently researched this matter and have confidence that my conclusions are accurate. Nonetheless, I may be mistaken and would welcome more information and analysis.’ The touch of humility is never amiss in any investigation. Obviously neither you nor anyone knows the following with the kind of certainty expressed–“Everybody in America who was trained in LAW — and that describes MOST of those who framed the Constitution — knew EXACTLY what a “natural born subject” was. And when we changed the word “subject” to “citizen,” they knew exactly what a “natural born citizen” was.” I know you are fond of EXACTLY but it is a give away. People who know usually say so quietly and modestly. I read EXACTLY to mean “I do have some doubts in the matter.’
The other thing I notice is that you are too quick to throw insults like birther and hogwash. This might be fine in the bar drinking beer with friends . . . but in the public it gives you a common & ignorant tone. Not what a scholar needs.
You may be right and you may be wrong–but we will never know with CERTAINTY–to use your type of lingo.
How different things would be if you were to actually work with Apuzzo to try to find the truth . . . instead of treating him like a nobody. You don’t really take his responses in and respond in a way that seems useful. There is too much competition and not enough cooperation.
You have forced me to the conclusion that there is something in this besides truth for you, some benefit or advantage which you are not sharing with us. What might it be?
Finally, as a bit of advice from an older man, take a vacation from being right. Put yourself in Apuzzo’s shoes for a while until you really know what his position is like. See what you see then. This is a form of reductio ad absurdum. If you assume his position and find yourself spouting absurdities, then you will feel genuinely confident and have far fewer doubts. As it is you just make others like myself think you are hiding something. And you are.
John B. says: “While I prefer Apuzzo’s and Donofrio’s work and conclusions, I have not put any money on them yet.”
I would recommend saving your money and not putting any into their work. All their cases have been found to be without merit and will do nothing to get President Obama out of the White House. You’re better investing your time and money in getting someone else elected.
John,
I don’t notice you — either here or over at Mario Apuzzo’s blog — giving him similar advice and criticizing him for his “confidence.”
If you assume his position and find yourself spouting absurdities, then you will feel genuinely confident and have far fewer doubts.
I did that, many months ago.
MONTHS ago, I realized that Apuzzo’s position was completely absurd.
Nearly 4 months ago, I had come to such a clear understanding that none of Mario Apuzzo’s claims had any merit whatsoever, that I wrote an open letter to him in which I observed, “Face it, Mario. Your theory is over. The cat is out of the bag, and it can never be put back in… [The US Supreme Court] undeniably found [Wong Kim Ark] to be a NATURAL-BORN CITIZEN. And it wasn’t even close. It was 6 to 2. It is now similarly clear that you are on the losing side of the argument. You have a choice at this point. I am inviting you to join the winning side. You can admit reality, end up salvaging a significant amount of your dignity, and go down in the history of this issue as the guy who helped bring reality back to America. Or, you can stick stubbornly to your guns and go unrelentingly and inevitably down with the sinking ship. The choice is up to you.”
It was already clear, at that point, that Apuzzo’s argument was absurd and irretrievably doomed. And I actually posted that, and then attempted to retire from the issue, only to be pulled back in by a poster claiming that I was the one who was all wrong. So I said, “Okay. Well, maybe some of the information I have needs to be made more fully published and explained to the public.”
Since that time, I’ve also done plenty of ADDITIONAL research. And everything I’ve learned since then only confirms the conclusions I had already reached earlier — which again, were already so firm as to see no way out.
Or, to put it another way:
At some point in an investigation of a big pile of hogwash, you say to yourself, “You know, this started out sounding quite plausible, but it’s increasingly looking like hogwash.”
And then you get a bit further on, and you say, “You know what? Every single point that has been made in favor of ‘position A’ has turned out to be total rubbish. I honestly think there’s nothing to any of this, and it’s ALL absolute hogwash.”
But you don’t say it. Not yet.
And then you get a bit further, and you say to yourself, “You know, this entire thing is such an enormous mound of absolute rubbish that I can’t believe that ANYBODY buys it.”
And maybe you still don’t say it, but you start wondering, “How can people even believe this, when it’s such a truckload of falsehood?”
And you realize: It’s because there’s this guy pushing this absolute rubbish onto the public, and he’s very skilled at selectively picking anything that seems to support his point, and creating an argument that makes it sound like he’s right, but every single significant point he makes is a complete misrepresentation of the truth. And it’s because he speaks with such apparent confidence and presents himself as being this ‘expert,’ and people want to believe him, so they do. And hardly anybody is standing up to clearly and unequivocally point out what is now a great big huge obvious elephant in the room, which is that virtually every public claim the guy is making is not only false or invalid, but is verifiably false or invalid.
And so one day, you finally stand up and clearly say: “Look, folks, what this guy is telling you is just absolute rubbish. And here’s why.”
That’s the point I’m at, and it’s the point that a number of other people are at, as well.
As it is you just make others like myself think you are hiding something. And you are.
The only thing I’m “hiding” is bits of research I’ve done but never written on — all of which confirm every single thing I’ve ever written at this blog.
I will gladly take John B.’s money. Thomas and I offered to wager Mario that he would never prevail in a lawsuit and have President Obama declared ineligible to hold office. Mario is too chicken to take the bet. Maybe John B. will sign on.
If we can find some way to make the payout assured without my having to put up cash in advance, I’m in for a grand. Heck, I could be willing to go considerably higher than that.
My wager still stands against all comers: $1000 says the President will not be removed from office by reason of ineligbility. And I am extending it to cover his entire second term if re-elected.
So all you who claim to “know” BHO’s documents are forgeries, and they will be proven so “any day now,” AND those who claim that NBCship requires two citizen parents and are sure the Courts (at any level) will find accordingly, “proving” he is ineligible…
Please: TAKE THE BET. Or admit that you may be wrong. That’s how certain I am that the birth records are extant and correct, that no other of his records are falsified, that his life story is just what he had always said it is, that the people who count (Congress and the SCOTUS) will never rule that anyone born to one or more alien parents on US soil is not a NBC, and that the leading demagogues of the Birther movement are, to use the clinical term, full of shit.
Incidentally, this is a description, in words, of the same process that I earlier described to you using this picture.
So there’s this guy, dressed in a nice suit, with all these nice credentials, who’s telling you (in the first frame) that he has a pink bunny with a really big gold nugget, and you can have a substantial share in that huge nugget of 24 carat gold, if you’ll tag along with him.
And that sounds really, really plausible. Because with the amount of understanding and focus you have on the issue, it looks like, heck, it probably is a pink bunny holding a great big huge nugget of gold.
But as time goes by and you learn more about the issue, the picture comes into focus. And it’s not a pink bunny holding a huge nugget of gold.
When it comes into focus, there’s no denying what it is.
And if you’re honest, and keep researching, this is the picture that will come into focus for you.
Actually, John, do you want to know what you hear from me when I occasionally put things in all caps?
What you are hearing is a bit of frustration that there are people — such as yourself — maintaining that things that are completely false are absolutely true, and that things which are completely true are absolutely false.
You have this entire fantasy narrative. Not a single significant component of it is true. And yet you have people going around not only believing this huge pack of lies regarding our Constitution and history — because that is exactly what it is — but promoting it to the American public.
It’s a bit like being a witness to a destructive cult, or hundreds of people investing in a Ponzi scheme or other scam. Only in a financial scam, it’s mostly only those who invest who are harmed. Apuzzo and his followers are damaging not only each other, but also our American history, laws and Constitution, and the current political climate with it. Because if people are falsely convinced that our system is hopelessly corrupt, when it isn’t, that damages our country. And if we don’t demand truth in the public sphere, instead of false narratives, that damages our country as well.
That’s why I’ve taken the time to document the falseness of Mr. Apuzzo’s claims.
I knew you would get a bit testy eventually. Because this is not just about Barack. This sort of vile, baseless smear campaign by a vicious partisan cabal could be aimed at any future President, to the detriment of America.
I have fantasized about how I could go about using Birther tactics to try to destroy a Republican President. Distortions, lies, invented conspiracies, ad hominem attacks, claims that he is illegitimately occupying the White House, encouraging citizens or even whole States to defy him, questioning his parentage and his loyalty…
But I won’t. Why? For the same reason Mr. Woodman is not a Birther: because I refuse to engage in damaging my Country for political gain, no matter how satisfying it might feel.
If you were rich would you leave your children in the care of the Mafia? The American Judiciary is a disgrace. Asking them to decide would be like asking a blind man for a decision on which color looks best on a wall. Or what the person who pushed him down looked like.
As for putting money on any position I am not in such financial abundance to be doing that these days. And with American judges(?) for judges, never!
As I mentioned before in these matters certainty can not be given as in mathematics or logic. Some famous person made the remark that he was never so apt to be wrong as when he was certain(I believe it was Robert Frost). I fault John Woodman for presenting what will always be probable as something that can be firmly determined. With Schrodinger’s cat we look in the box. Here we have no box to look in. What we have is evidence of which there will never be a definitive list . . . some will always come to light from an attic or an archive or in some old book. And interpretation which will vary from person to person and from time to time. For the most part the world is very short on certainties and long on speculations.
Notice how long intelligent persons worked to square the circle–it went on for centuries until a proof that it could not be done came forth. We will never find a proof of that sort to please everyone regarding “natural born citizen”–as it belongs to a different realm of objects.
It is clear to me that philosophy has not been much pursued in America as most make the obvious mistakes of reason. John certainly does. And the “certainly” is the Real McCoy.
Finally it is important to realize there is a difference between naivete and innocence. Americans can not claim innocence–but they are certainly (not mathematical by the way) naive. Naivete is a form of denial. This nation is now a disgrace and most everything in it: families, marriages, business, government, etc. And no, the solution is not to leave. The solution is an immense amount of pain as the place is thoroughly cleaned and repaired which I believe will take several generations of grinding labor.
I don’t disagree with you in some of the things you said.
And as for certainly, I ALWAYS admit the possibility of being wrong. And I ALWAYS view things as a probability, rather than as absolutes.
Having said that, it is not uncommon to encounter probabilities that are so high as to be practical certainties.
What is the probability that you will die if you jump out of an airplane at more than 3 miles up — without a parachute or anything at all to catch you, other than whatever happens to be below?
I’d call that a virtual certainty. It’s not 100%, but it’s a virtual certainty.
What’s the probability that even if you survive, you’ll be crippled for life or otherwise seriously injured?
It’s not 100%. But it is a virtual certainty.
In fact, it turns out that there is one person in human history who jumped out of an airplane at 18,000 feet without a parachute — the airplane was on fire and he decided he preferred to die from impact rather than burn to death — who not only survived, but walked away from the crash with only minor injuries.
His name was Nicholas Alkemade, he was a British tail gunner in World War II whose airplane was shot down over Germany, and he limped away with a sprained leg.
He appears to be the ONLY person in history to have ever jumped out of an airplane at such a height and not at least been seriously injured.
So is it possible? Absolutely. Is it possible that Mario Apuzzo is correct in his basic claim, that the Founding Fathers specifically intended for “natural born citizen” to exclude the children born on US soil of non-citizen parents? Sure, it’s possible. But if you want a probability estimate, I would put those odds at something easily less than 1%. Because in spite of his spinning claims of certainty from the flimsiest of historical and legal points, there is no real and substantial evidence in favor of his claim. And there is plenty of substantial evidence against it.
Funny how that 1% is turning up all over the place these days.
Birthers have been claiming that 1% has been turning up all the time for the past 4 years.
It’s amazing that every single claim they have made as the final proof has been debunked, generally within hours.
And amazingly despite their avowed scepticism you lot fell for every 2 bit forged Kenyan BC that came along. They even fell for a Canadian BC that had Barack Obama’s Canadian birth certified by Dudley Doright. Yes birthers tried to enter that as evidence in a case. And you tried to do the same with the one one with “This is a fraud” repeated in the background in Dutch.
Every single ordinary circumstance needs extraordinary proof, and every extraordinary claim that is favourable to you needs no proof whatsoever.
Such as the claim that the framers used Vattel’s definition, despite there not being one scrap of evidence for it.
Such as a 17 year old pregnant girl flew to Kenya and back, on a trip that would have taken nearly 2 weeks as she would have had to use propeller Aircraft, and would have cost 2 years salary. And to a country that was in the grip of an Epidemic at the time. To a place where her husbands other wife and kids would not have beat the shit out of her.
These claims need extraordinary proof. And so far all you are doing is accusing them and expecting the other side to prove you wrong. Because you have no proof of any of it.
John B. says: “We will never find a proof of that sort to please everyone regarding “natural born citizen”–as it belongs to a different realm of objects.”
We will also never find enough proof that President Obama was born in Hawaii that will please everyone. That is an impossibility because some will never be convinced. Not because there isn’t enough proof, but because they just don’t want to believe the facts. But, we can look at the facts as they are presented, weigh them, and decide for ourselves what we believe. And then, we can use our opinion to make our voice heard with our vote. That is the American way. It’s not a perfect system, but it is better than all the alternatives.
Douglas Adams, who wrote the famous “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” also wrote the less well-known “Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency” (which if you ask me, is a better book).
In the book, a guy with a small software company has become a wealthy software tycoon by writing and selling a particular software package. In this case, he sold it to the US government.
Traditional software programs would advise you on a conclusion to reach: put in a bunch of evidence, and it will help determine the conclusion the evidence leads to.
In Adams’ book, his software guy became filthy rich by turning the process around. You put into the program the conclusion that you want to reach, or the course of action you want to take, and then the program generates a bunch of evidence to justify it. (In the book, this turns out to be of enormous value to people in the federal government.)
This is exactly the process that birthers, including Mario Apuzzo, have obviously gone through.
Actually what you have described is common place with scientists. They have a hunch and set about proving that their hunch is correct. I suppose sometimes it gets out of hand. I think we all do this.
You are mostly incorrect on this as far as scientists are concerned. They look at the real world and try to explain it. It’s not just a hunch and they try to find only the evidence to prove it their hunch. They look at the evidence, data, observations and try to explain it. Many fail to do so, and many times over. As I believe Thomas Edison once said…”I have not failed 700 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
The scientific method is one of the greatest gifts ever to be revealed to mankind. From the time that people thought the earth was flat, to the Sun revolving around the earth, to spontaneous generation…Scientists were there to find the truth and showing with evidence that those ideas were incorrect. Not to mention we have scientists to thank for modern medicine, physics, biology, genetics, and the list goes on. It irks me when arrogant, ignorant fools like you make such stupid statements when your life has been filled with all the wonders that are from scientific discovery.
See, Jim, you just made one of those Matix statements:”That is the American way. It’s not a perfect system, but it is better than all the alternatives.” You don’t know whether that is true or not. It is just one of those popular remarks that float through the media. Tell me, how would you go about determining the truth value of that statement.
Here is another opinion: “Not because there isn’t enough proof, but because they just don’t want to believe the facts.” Surely the one way to resolve the doubts, and why not, would be for the original to be viewed by forensic document experts (approved by the court). Politically speaking that would be a very smart move on Obama’s part. If you are correct, it would cause a great many folk who oppose Obama some long moments of embarrassment.
Assuming that you have watched the Matrix I am of course speaking of the American socially constructed reality. Books have been written about it. Schools and the media provide young people with what they should believe and then cause them to be ridiculed when they diverge. Divergers are made to feel out of place whether it is global warming, Obama’s origins, the war in Iraq, WMD . . . and bravery and courage are not Americans strong points.
Instead of welcoming a range of divergent points of view and debating them people are called Truther or Birthers in a way meant to be derogatory. Freedom of expression? How about, oh, you must be a conspiracy theorist? Makes a person feel real bright.
No, Jim, America does not and never has welcomed dissent. That’s another myth. There is apple pie and mom, and you had better not forget it. And if you criticize the nation, then you should leave. Wow. But one of the Founders remarked that America’s bitterest critics were its greatest patriots. You don’t hear that one quoted often by the media or the President. So, wake up and divest yourself of the myths and opinions and then see what is out there.
I’ve seen some of what’s out there, Jim.
I’ve lived and traveled in around 20 different countries, on 4 different continents. I’ve spent around 1/3 of my adult life outside of the United States, including 6 years in Britain.
I definitely agree with you to a point about the media and the schools.
On the other hand, America is about as free as it gets, and you’re not going to find very much greater freedom to dissent in any other country of the world. There are certainly some other countries that embrace freedom of speech and diversity of opinion, but the difference between the best in the world and America, if there is any, is not much.
And if you think otherwise, you’re kidding yourself.
There are plenty of places in the world where if you put out the same kind of stuff Mario Apuzzo’s putting out, your door will suddenly get knocked down in the middle of the night — whether your claims are true or false. The fact that Mario is perfectly free to publicly promote his fantasies and deceive people is a measure of the extraordinary freedom we have in this country.
You just don’t seem to like my freedom of speech. You like being able to publicly promote baseless conspiracy theories — but if I exercise my freedom of speech to (correctly) label someone a “birther,” wow, that’s really over the line.
Well, now that American citizens can be indefinitely detained and even executed without due process, we do need to take more care.
I would be interested in knowing what your opinion of Obama is. Better than, the same as. or worse than type response would suit.
We also need to not protest if Secret Service personnel are present( it’s a new felony)–of course, this does not apply to houses of ill repute where they may be relaxing.
Or in any way shape or form say or do anything that might weaken the new regime in Yemen.
Carry much cash in Tennessee. Or smoke marijuana and end up in a for profit prison.
I am just counting our blessings. I remember the good old days of college life in the early ’60’s. Then, yes, thanks to the Soviet Union, we had lots of freedom in the USA and almost no police trouble unless one were black. Now being white is as bad as being black was back then. The terrorists unlike the Soviets have had a terrible (of course that’s logical) effect on America’s civil liberties. I have four grown children. I would feel very concerned if even one of them married and had children in this country–or for that matter in England. All the lovely vaccines, the corn syrup and GMO’s. Who could they play with and where. Other children on Ritalin or anti-depressants? But I will have to admit the world is going into the Dark Ages. And in the dark ages one has to be very clever and resourceful.
If you had grown up as I did around people born in the 19th century, in a small rural town in an area where most were the children of homesteaders, with really good schools and decent people for the most part . . . and really good food . . . then your idea of freedom would be more like mine–and you would know the contrast I write of. But you probably didn’t.
Yes, I am terribly (in this age of terrorists) critical of this place and the people running it who are no different than the Mafia. The same mind sets. It has become America the Ugly. America with little in the way of social justice. Huffington Post is America today–a soft porn news site!! Ha,ha. Sex and money. There you have it and drugs to top it off. Good luck to all who have at least now read the “presidential qualifications”. Ten years ago not one in a thousand had. I doubt Obama had. He gets the Declaration confused with the Constitution, I note.
I fear he is another Lincoln. With this difference. Lincoln was all fiction afterwards; Obama has been all fiction before hand. Anyway Clinton said he was the first black president so Obama is the second.
I would be interested in knowing what your opinion of Obama is.
My opinion of Obama? I think he should be voted out at the earliest opportunity.
When we needed a President who would act effectively on economic matters, he took our tax dollars and squandered them by the billions on an ineffective “stimulus.” I’m not saying that some kind of “stimulus” was necessarily wrongheaded, but this one does not seem to have been well thought through. The debt that he ran up for every single American household with that turkey, and the degree to which he wasted future American productivity, is astonishing.
In my opinion.
Then, he shoved Obamacare down our throats.
When we needed a President who would stoke the fires of job creation, Mr. Obama showed his friendliness to America’s primary jobs creators — small businesses — by giving us the now-repealed onerous 1099 requirement that he and the Democrats put into Obamacare.
His lack of understanding of unintended consequences is illustrated by the disastrous “Cash for Clunkers” program that drove up the price of used cars for those who can’t afford to buy new.
A President can also be judged, to some degree, by the people he puts into place around him. If they are the best, wisest, most intelligent and competent people in the country, the strongest leaders, that says an awful lot about the President.
When it came time to pick a Vice-President, a man — or woman — capable to taking the nation’s reins as our new leader if the President should be unable to fulfill the duties of his office, this President chose… Joe Biden.
In short, I’m not impressed with his Presidency. I never thought from the beginning that he was anything other than a media-hyped photogenic candidate with a nice smile, a rather thin resume, and no particular indication that he possessed the level of good judgement and commitment to the good of the country that we needed. In the past four years, I really haven’t found any reason to think differently.
John W.
I wish you would go back and read the unsupported allegations you just made and examine how “Birtherish” they appear. I will pick two:
I believe the majority of economists disagree with you. The non-partisan CBO disagrees: http://blogs.ajc.com/jay-bookman-blog/2011/11/23/cbo-reports-stimulus-package-was-a-major-economic-success/
Last time I checked the Affordable Care Act was passed by our duly elected representatives. Yes, there was give an take and cajoling to get it passed but that is the way our system works. By your definition every bill passed in Congress is “shoved down our throats”.
I do not want this to be a political discussion because I know that is not the thesis of this blog but I thought I should point out the irony.
I don’t want it to be a political blog, either. That’s not its purpose.
I will withdraw some of my commentary on the stimulus. As you point out, most economists think it was worth doing. However, I do think that not all aspects of the stimulus were remotely well managed or thought through, and I am hardly alone in this opinion.
When you start looking at some of the specific aspects of it, you find — for example — that using the most optimistic figures for jobs saved and created — including future jobs — it cost $188,000 per job.
I know that some of these, at least, are infrastructure jobs for which a significant portion of that cost is materials. Still, as an average figure for the whole that seems pretty high to me and to a lot of other people.
Another point here is that I think you go a little bit far in comparing me to birthers. You note that most economists think the stimulus worked, implicitly acknowledging that at least some think it didn’t, or at least could have been better done.
The stimulus ALONE — not including other federal programs which have driven up our deficit by $5 trillion under Mr. Obama — cost around $2,700 for every single man, woman and child in the entire United States of America. This was money the government did not have and had to borrow against future tax revenues. This means, in effect, that if you have a family of four, this government borrowed nearly $11,000 ON YOUR BEHALF, just for the stimulus alone.
Are you satisfied with the way they’ve spent those funds borrowed on your account? When I read, for example, that the government, under Mr. Obama, spent an average of $349,234 per household to extend broadband access in Montana, Kansas and Minnesota, I have some serious questions about the stewardship of the spending that the government is going to come after me, my children and grandchildren to pay for in the future.
As far as shoving the Affordable Care act down our throats, you maintain that could be said for all Acts passed through Congress. Yet not very many Acts passed by Congress and signed into law are of such dubious Constitutionality that they get sent to the Supreme Court on the ground that if government can force Americans to obey this particular law, then they can essentially force private citizens to buy or not buy pretty much anything the government wants them to and find a rationale for.
And as far as how it was passed — I cannot remember in my entire lifetime one single law that was ever passed over the vociferous objections of so many. The majority of Americans now think that particular piece of legislation should be REPEALED. Can you say that for any other piece of legislation that’s been passed in the past 10 years? If not, then perhaps you ought to rethink your characterization of my statement as “birtherish.”
In all, our national debt has gone up an additional $5,000,000,000,000 under Mr. Obama. That’s more than $16,000 per person for every man, woman and child in the entire country.
In other words, if you have a family of four, this administration has essentially run your government credit card up more than an additional $64,000 in the less than 4 years that Mr. Obama has been in office. This is on top of the $137,000 or so the government had already borrowed on your behalf before Mr. Obama took office.
Have you run your own family’s debt up $64,000 over the past 3-1/2 years? Does it not disturb you that the Obama administration has done this on behalf of every single American family? If it doesn’t, it should.
John, just to point out a few things. you are entitled to your opinions, And I immensely respect them but you are not entitled to your mathematics
Obama has presided over the slowest growth in spending of any president in the last 60 years using raw dollars, and the second-slowest if you adjust for inflation. My source for that assertion is this
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/may/23/facebook-posts/viral-facebook-post-says-barack-obama-has-lowest-s/
As for the debt, the proportion of it that comes from the Obama administrations policies and the previous administration is presented in this graph
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/07/24/opinion/sunday/24editorial_graph2/24editorial_graph2-popup.gif
And the fact is that 2 trillion of the 5 trillion of debt was added in the first year as Obama moved the cost of the off balance sheets spending back onto the balance sheets, the effects of the financial crises, and the economy was still running on the last Bush budget. In April 2010 the debt stood at 12.9 trillion from a starting 10.7 trillion the day Obama took office. That’s nearly half the increase in the first year odd.
By comparison Bush started at $5.73 trillion. When he left, it was $10.7 trillion. Reagan tripled the Debt. If things go on as they are, Obama will be the first Democratic President since World War II not to have reduced the debt in his term. But that’s for a host of reasons I wont go into here.
Check it yourself at http:// starting http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np
Like I said, I respect your opinions and I don’t doubt their sincerity, but the correct raw data is the correct starting point.
Have a great rest of your day!
Suranis,
You make a good case for your points and I admit that I may have overstated the amount of blame for our current situation due to Mr. Obama, and understated the amount of blame due to previous Presidents, including Mr. Reagan and Mr. Bush. I agreed with those two Presidents in many respects, but it does seem to me that their contributions to our levels of debt were significant.
One thing I particularly did not understand in Bush’s Presidency was his introduction of the new prescription drug benefit, and perhaps particularly (as with Obama’s stimulus) the way in which it was done. That baffled me.
I will also admit to not being an expert on economic policy. Perhaps in the future I will have the time and resources to become one. I will say this, though: It doesn’t make a whole heck of a lot of sense to me to run up the debt level for everybody in the country in order to provide broadband to some citizens at the cost of $349,234 per household.
I do also have some issue with the graphic chart you linked to. This chart was made 2-1/2 years into Obama’s administration, and attempts to project 8 years of new Obama spending against 8 years of Bush spending. What is the presumption? That Obama is not going to introduce any new spending over the next 5-1/2 years? The chart appears to me to be pretty fallacious in its entire approach.
Some of your other points, though, are certainly valid.
Maybe in a future life we’ll have time to hash it all out. 😉
I withdraw the Birther comparison. I think whatever opinions you hold are held honestly and I take them seriously.
Thanks, RC. My opinions of course are not always correct. But hopefully in those instances where they aren’t correct, I’m at least open to changing them on the basis of reasonable new evidence.
And sometimes you and others here present new evidence that does modify those opinions. That’s a better kind of internet interaction, if you ask me, than the echo chambers where people simply reinforce each others’ opinions.
Of course, it all depends on the participants.
John W.
Again I apologize for the “Birtherist” remark. I regret that.
I think issue polls not always accurate. The Quinnipiac poll was taken in the middle of a primary season where we have seen nothing but bashing the law in Republican debates for six months. I can show other polls where the support for the law has not declined. It is pretty much along party lines. Regardless, I think it shows Obama is willing to stand up for what is right even when the issue may be unpopular right now. I think that the health insurance industry has a vested interest in maintaining status quo and has many friends in the Republican party and a news network (Fox News) willing to act as a non-stop commercial against the bill.
I can relate one personal success story for ACA. One of my relatives has a 23 year old son who was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. He is a new college graduate and working at a low paying job with no health insurance. Because and only because of the ACA his son is still on his father’s plan with good coverage provided by a large chemical company. He also cannot be denied coverage because of his condition in a few years when he has to find his own coverage.
I will not dispute the cost per job number you cited for the stimulus. However, the money spent went into the economy at a time when the private sector was not risking investment. The money did go somewhere. How many other jobs were indirectly saved or created by that money that were not counted in the study? Nobel laureate Paul Krugman thinks the stimulus was too small.
President Obama stepped in even before he was inaugurated to direct the country out of an economic crisis. We saw what a pathetic response there was from the Republicans. President Bush was ready to go back home to Texas. John McCain’s actions were pathetic. The Republicans in Congress were almost cheer-leading for the auto industry to fail. Obama seemed to be the only adult in the room who was willing to assert leadership. He was willing to support President Bush on TARP when many in his own party were against it.
The ACA is far from perfect and the SCOTUS may find the mandate portion unconstitutional. (I disagree with that notion but if they rule thus it is the law.)
The US health care system is broken and something will be done to fix it eventually regardless of how this court rules on ACA.
There’s also the fact that “50% of the people disaprove of the ACA!!!” headlines always lump together the numbers of those who want the whole thing repealed, those who just disapprove of the individual mandate part but otherwise think health reform was a good idea, and those who don’t support the ACA because it did not go far enough.
Labelling all those opinions with a flat “50% DON’T SUPPORT IT!!!” is very misleading at best. Firedoglake, which you linked to, is definitely in the “repeal it because it does not go far enough” camp, for example, and has been from the beginning.
That’s something I have had to train myself to be so careful of keeping in mind when looking at single issue polls.
Its why I sometimes understand the appeal of birtherism. You don’t have to think, and you can dismiss every other piece of evidence with a flat “they are lying”. Who needs shades of grey in their life?
Anyway, there’s a much more detailed poll breakdown of opinions on the ACA here from the Pew research centre that you might find interesting to read over.
http://www.people-press.org/2012/03/26/public-remains-split-on-health-care-bill-opposed-to-mandate/?src=prc-twitter
The most telling statistic that shows how deeply divided Americans are over that particular law is the close figures between the four alternatives:
* Repeal it, and don’t replace it
* Repeal and replace with GOP alternative
* Keep it as it is
* Expand it.
“Well, now that American citizens can be indefinitely detained and even executed without due process, we do need to take more care.”
Liar. President Obama passed by executive order, on the 28th of febuary, a waiver that removed the power of the federal Government to do that. Mentioning that is an attempt to start a discussion on your smear.
The way he did that is discussed here.
http://www.lawfareblog.com/2012/02/initial-comments-on-the-implementing-procedures-for-ndaa-section-1022/
Once again you present some bald statement without any proof as though it were a fact.
Now it is up to congress to actually repeal the bill in its entirety. No doubt you are calling your congressmen to support the bills which are going through congress to do just that. Oh right, you aren’t. Silly me. Its much more important to lie about constitutional law.
Can’t disagree with that aspect, I suppose.
On two occasions that I know of presidential candidates were forced to take as running mates men they did not like or trust. In 1944 Roosevelt had Truman forced on him; and in 1980 Reagan had Bush similarly forced on him. We know how those turned out. Stalin doubted the story his ambassador told him and wanted that ambassador to see the body–but the casket remained closed. Some, myself included, think Roosevelt’s death was premature.
Obama is a criminal and so are the folks pulling his strings. Either that or the mainstream media news is really sprung. Just what goes out everywhere should put the man in prison for the rest of his life–along with Bush, Cheney and too many others to name. By letting the non violent drug offenders out, there should be enough room.
Imagine a nations overflowing with PhD’s and JD’s that can not smell a rat when it is right under their noses. So higher education is of no use. Consider all the still wealthy men and women, so that has been of no value either. Must I conclude that Americans love more than apple pie and mom the gangster mind? So it would appear. I have to turn to the city shadows to find the like minded. The pariah seem to have wised up in their wanderings. Probably even the felons know what the score is. But apparently the Congress critters are in the dark or in cahoots. Or both.
When the hurly burly’s done and the sums are run it will be a merry day for some.
Then of course John B. it could be the case that you are imagining conspiracies and crimes that exist only in your mind. Calling someone a criminal based on nothing is immature and unbecoming.
If there are suspicions of wrongdoing, then a matter can be investigated. If an investigation reveals evidence of wrongdoing, then the question turns to who has committed the wrongdoing.
Here’s the process we’ve gone through with birthers:
1. Suspicions that something might be wrong. Nothing wrong with that. Suspicions happen all the time.
2. Claims, based on invalid or simply false evidence, that wrongdoing has actually taken place. At this point, because of the invalidity of the evidence, we begin to depart from what is normal or acceptable.
3. Demonstration that the claims are, in fact, invalid or false.
At this point, any rational, mature person drops the claims of wrongdoing, or else genuinely refutes the evidence that says that the claims of wrongdoing are invalid or false.
That’s not what we have with the birthers. We have trumped-up fake evidence that continues to be propped up by further trumped-up fake evidence, in order to try and “substantiate” false charges. And all debunkings of the false claims aren’t factually answered.
Instead, the debunkings are either flatly denied, or reams of new false “evidence” are produced to try and overcome the fact that the claims have been shown to be false, or the person pointing out the facts is personally attacked.
Birthers are often fond of accusing others of “Alinksy-style” tactics; by which I presume they mean the use of disinformation, personal attacks, and other unfair practices simply to promote a false agenda. I have never seen such extensive and blatant use of such tactics, and it has almost 100% been on the part of the birthers.
Speaking of which, guess who shows up while I’m posting this, with personal attack (falsely accusing gorefan of being a liar), and false “facts?”
Incorrect terms of reference as any student of history would know. For example, Nixon had Spiro Agnew forced on him. He hated Spiro but needed him to grab the Greek vote. George Bush Senior distrusted Dan Quayle so much that when he had to have surgery he insisted on a local anaesthetic to prevent Quayle being president for any length of time.
And there is no proof that Obama is a criminal. he has not been convicted in a court of law, and indeed 8 courts so far have specificly ruled him eligible, even ones with the LFBC and the evidence of social security fraud presented as evidence.
By assuming guilty before proving innocence, you are displaying a really anti-American attitude and are bringing shame upon your country.
Gorefan,
You are the one who is a liar.
Did it ever occur to you that I did not think that the Ramsay-Smith debate was relevant to Ramsay’s definition of a “natural born Citizen,” especially in a limited-space appellate brief? The William-Smith debate had nothing to do with David Ramsay’s explanation on who was entitled to birthright citizenship following July 4, 1776. He said in 1789 it was only the children of citizens who were entitled to birthright citizenship by birth in the country. This was the same thing that St. George Tucker, Thomas Jefferson, early Congress, the James Madison Administration, and others said.
Smith was born before July 4, 1776 and only had to be a “Citizen of the United States” for 7 years to be eligible for the Office of U.S. Representative. The definition of a “natural born Citizen” had nothing to do with William Smith.
You, John Woodman, and your other buddies on here are the manipulators of the truth and you accuse me of doing that.
Well, Mario, I can think of one appropriate response to that, and that from a proud moment in American history.
NUTS
I love that proud moment of American history. 🙂
In fact, a few months ago, I spent about half an hour dramatically relating that entire story (including some various bits of background and implications) to my wife. She was not familiar with the story.
The William-Smith debate [sic] had nothing to do with David Ramsay’s explanation on who was entitled to birthright citizenship following July 4, 1776. He said in 1789 it was only the children of citizens who were entitled to birthright citizenship by birth in the country.
Mario, what was the first thing David Ramsay asked the printer to do after printing up copies of his “Dissertation on the Manner of Acquiring the Character and Privileges of a Citizen of the United States?”
I’ll save you the trouble of finding it out for yourself.
Ramsay instructed the printer to send a copy to every member of Congress. This was taking place in March and the beginning of April, 1789.
And what was the occasion for this?
The occasion was that Ramsay was contesting the eligibility of the rival who had beaten him in the recent election for the House of Representatives.
Ramsay’s petition to find Smith ineligible was then brought before the Congress on April 15, 1789.
These are the FACTS of history.
Now, what was the result of Ramsay’s lobbying of the members of Congress, weeks later, on May 22, 1789?
The result was an absolute repudiation of Ramsay’s position (backed up by his Dissertation that you quote as being representative of the citizenship views of our Founding Fathers, remember?) — in an embarrassing THIRTY-SIX TO ONE slapdown by the first Congress, made up of Founding Fathers and members of their generation.
This was led by none other than the Father of our Constitution, James Madison himself, who gave a speech in which he said, of the allegiance that makes for citizenship:
“It is an established maxim that birth is a criterion of allegiance. Birth however derives its force sometimes from place and sometimes from parentage, but in general place is the most certain criterion; it is what applies in the United States.”
Mario adds, regarding his false position:
This was the same thing that St. George Tucker, Thomas Jefferson, early Congress, the James Madison Administration, and others said.
St. George Tucker:
“A very respectable political writer makes the following pertinent remarks upon this subject. ‘Prior to the adoption of the constitution, the people inhabiting the different states might be divided into two classes: natural born citizens, or those born within the state, and aliens, or such as were born out of it.'”
[Note, for general interest of readers: The unnamed “very respectable political writer” whom St. George Tucker here quotes is Col. George Nicholas, former prominent Virginian, graduate at William & Mary, and first professor of law (1799) at Kentucky’s Transylvania University. This school was founded in 1780 as the new nation’s 16th university. Nicholas was also a Kentucky legislator and Attorney General, and a friend of James Madison. The remark appears in a November 1798 letter to “friends in Virginia.”]
Thomas Jefferson:
Authored a citizenship law in 1779 that clearly provided that “all white persons born within the territory” of the Commonwealth of Virginia were citizens, without mention of the citizenship of their parents.
And no, your denial of the plain fact that this is what the law said does not make it so; the referenced link contains an explanation of why your claim is irrefutably false.
We have already seen what James Madison and the first Congress had to say. The first Congress agreed with Mr. Madison’s position on citizenship, a whopping thirty-six to one. That could hardly be closer to unanimous.
Further confirming evidence of Madison’s position can be seen in the fact that when his administration intervened on behalf of James McClure, proclaiming him to be a citizen of the United States, their communication to France had nothing to say about the citizenship status of McClure’s father; only that he had been born in South Carolina and was a United States citizen.
Your claim that Madison was the writer of the McClure letter is based on no hard evidence at all, only conjecture that Madison recycled a by-then-quite-famous pseudonym that could have been used by anybody else. This flies in the face of the facts that a) if Madison had wanted to comment on the matter there was no particular compelling reason for him to do so anonymously, b) if he had wanted to comment anonymously, he would have hardly chosen to use the handle “Publius” again, and c) his views on citizenship are clear from both his speech in Congress in 1789 and from the fact that his administration never mentioned the citizenship of McClure’s father.
Even the author of the anonymous letter to the Richmond Enquirer, whoever he may have been, was honest enough to admit, of the McClure case, “a very honest and enlightened man might honestly differ with me on the occasion.” And yet, what the original anonymous author himself put forth tentatively and with some reservation, you proclaim as the certain and indelible law of the land.
In fact, in extensive research of the meaning of “natural born citizen” during our nation’s early history, I have uncovered nothing of any substance to indicate that citizenship of parents was ever a factor at all for those born in the United States. The ONLY occasion in which the citizenship status of parents ever came into play was, quite reasonably, in the question of children born outside of the United States to US citizen parents.
Since virtually all of the actual facts are on the side of those of us who maintain that, as has always been understood throughout American history, persons born in the United States are natural born citizens without regard to the citizenship status of their parents, it is clear that (contrary to your assertion) we are not the people who are lying and cherry-picking and manipulating.
Some say, though others deny, that there are two kind of people. I tend to agree with both. In this case here debated it would be those who affirm that natural born citizen means two citizen parents in addition to born in the land, while the others say merely born in the land.
In philosophy it is the Aristotelians versus the Platonists. This debate has gone on for almost two and an half millennia. To date I have not come across tags for either group of eligibility types. But as you can see there is time. Even should the USA vanish physically it can be part of a board game. Perhaps a century will pass and then two perfect names will appear. Until then NBC(2pl) & NBC(l).
That’s all well and good, John, except that your tacit claim is that it’s all just debatable, there’s no right answer, history and law doesn’t really tell us what the term means, and each side has about as valid a claim as the other.
Let’s try this with your house, John.
I maintain that your house belongs to me, and therefore should be legally signed over into my name.
Now you might claim differently, but hey, you’re Aristotle and I’m Plato. We’ve each got an equally valid claim, don’t we?
So let’s do this to settle the matter. Let’s put your house up for sale, and we can split the proceeds, right down the middle.
Note that I’m not being greedy here, John. I’m not demanding the entire thing for myself. I’m offering to settle the dispute on some very reasonable terms.
Do you accept the terms?
I would venture to guess that you probably won’t accept those terms, as you know that your house is legally yours, and I don’t have a leg to stand on.
But wait a minute here — your confidence betrays that you’re hiding something.
You’re hiding that doubt that says you think the house is really supposed to be mine.
Right, John?
Because that’s what you’ve been arguing regarding the meaning of “natural born citizen.”
The fact is, when it comes to your house, I don’t have a leg to stand on. It’s clear that your house legally does not belong to me. And any confidence that you might have in that fact is not at all misplaced. We can even go to court over the matter, and I will lose — every single time.
As regards the meaning of “natural born citizen” — one side in this debate has the facts and reality behind them, including the entire weight of past history and legal precedent. The other side has made a frankly fraudulent case out of theory with no basis in history or law, quotes taken entirely out of context, ambiguous evidence inflated into supposed proofs, the twisting of logic and legal opinions, the quiet ignoring of the vast weight of genuine history and law, and outright lies.
Not surprisingly, that side is the same side that has lost every court case on the matter, and that will continue to lose in the courts.
Because that side has a false position.
If you sincerely are not convinced of this, it is either because you have already made up your mind and are not convinceable by the facts, or it’s because you are still only at Frame 2.
At Frame 2, it’s possible to say, “You know, it could still be that pink bunny with the enormous gold nugget that the guy promised me it was. Okay, maybe it’s not a nugget, per se. Maybe it’s a gold bar instead. Yeah, I know the guy told me it was a nugget, but there’s really no big difference between a gold nugget and a gold bar.”
By the time you get to Frame 4, though, it’s undeniable: You’ve been lied to about there ever being any pink bunny with an enormous gold nugget. By Frame 4, all you can do — if you’re honest — is admit that you were duped, that there’s no pink bunny and no huge treasure of gold, and that all you’re looking at is a rather ordinary clown.
And if you aren’t honest, you might sit there, at Frame 4, and claim that you still see a pink bunny with a gold nugget.
But whatever stage you’re at — whether you’re at Stage 1, and you think it’s entirely likely the gold nugget is there, or Stage 2, or still denying what you see at Stage 4, the underlying reality is that… the only thing there ever was in that picture… is a clown.
Let’s just check in 500 years and see how this debate is doing. By that time only the very serious historians will be mulling it over. Of course, earth may be just a memory by then. Conditions on our new “earth” may more resemble ancient Greece.
Keep in mind there is no box we can open and see whether the cat is alive or dead. There is just evidence–and no way of knowing when we have come to last the bit of evidence. And the pieces of evidence have their own life and breed new evidences.
The interpretation of evidence will advance and decline. Perhaps in the second century a totally new approach will be discovered. Soothsayers will appear who claim they read the Akasha. But unfortunately they will not agree on many points. And so it will go because people love a puzzle. I believe we have a riddle here. The Argentine Borges will in his new manifestation write a series of tales about the American Constitution, and one will be a kind mystic version of the presidential qualifications. I do not know the title yet but will let you know when I do. Good luck.
Perhaps in the second century a totally new approach will be discovered.
Perhaps.
And maybe we will discover that the earth really is flat, after all.
I guess you haven’t been following the news! Not perfectly flat of course but more so than most thought.
Uh… the Earth is a Geoid shape. Welcome to Astronomy 40+ years ago.
And to quote Carl Sagan on your overall point “They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.”
And of course, following on from that, Columbus was completely wrong in his maths anyway. That’s why people laughed at him. If America hadn’t been in the way the buffoon would have died.
But the odds are that you are Bozo the clown.
A rational person would say this debate is settled and move on to something more useful. President Obama won the election when everyone knew his father was a British subject. No one cared. He is running again, and despite the fact that a two attorneys with otherwise mediocre or nonexistent legal careers and no background in Constitutional law think they discovered something no other scholar in 133 years knew about, Obama is going to be the Democratic candidate again on all 51 ballots. He has a better than even chance of winning and the small group of people who are Birthers will make no difference at all.
Our court system does not favor re-litigating the same issue over and over again. We have seen an uptick in activity because the aforementioned mediocre attorneys didn’t do their Google searches and find de Vattel and Minor in time to concoct their theory and impact the cases in 2008, which concentrated on the born in Kenya lie. There have now been decisions in both state and federal jurisdictions against the new theory. Courts are starting to ask why they are seeing these cases again. Poor Mr. Strunk may be the first to pay for pushing the discredited theory one to many times. He will not be the last. Orly Taitz is working herself into a mess down in Mississippi. Apuzzo will lose in New Jersey and if he is lucky he will escape sanctions. Any further litigation based on the same theory will probably lead to penalties.
In the future any candidate who has only one or no citizen parent will just be able to reference the many cases from 2012 and that President Obama served based only on jus soli. The issue is settled. Like most watershed events there are always people who are the last to figure out something has already happened.
A rational person would say this debate is settled and move on to something more useful.
Are you saying it’s time for me to stop posting? 🙂
No John, we all know you aren’t rational LOL 🙂 Just kidding.
As long as the lunatics are out there, we need a rational, logical, and well reasoned voice out there and I’m sorry to say (not personally sorry, just sorry that you have to spend so much time on this) that is you until someone else does.
Oh wait, it really doesn’t matter even if it did go the the Supreme Court and they rule on this issue in favor of Obama (the only rational, logical, and well reasoned decision), the birthers will say that even the Supreme Court is in on the conspiracy.
Different argument, but that was why they have life time appointments. So they can’t be threatened with political blackmail. The Founders were pretty smart.
I think someone should think about a book or a movie where the Birthers were the Founders of this country. It would be a horror film at best. LOL
You’re very kind.
But it’s not only me. It’s you, and everyone else who points out the truth. Ballantine in particular pioneered this area long before I showed up, and Dr. Conspiracy, ehancock, Reality Check, Suranis, you, and many others — I apologize for those who slip my mind at the moment — are rational, logical, well reasoned and key voices as well.
As for the horror film… Nightmare at Independence Hall?
Or, possibly: Alien.
The tagline could be: “In space, no one can hear the sound of you birthering.”
John
As you have found it is very difficult to walk away when someone is there spouting nonsense and you can tell them why it is nonsense. It is human nature I suppose.
“Keep in mind there is no box we can open and see whether the cat is alive or dead. ”
“Die gegenwärtige Situation in der Quantenmechanik”
“Möchtest Du eine Darmspülung?”
John Woodman,
(1) Again, the Ramsay-Smith eligibility debate had nothing to do with “natural born Citizen” which Ramsay defined as those born after July 4, 1776 to citizen parents. Rather, it had all to do with whether Smith was a “Citizen of the United States” for seven years so as to meet the requirements of Article I, Section 2. The only thing Congress decided was whether Ramsay was right or wrong on whether Smith was such a 7-year “citizen,” belonging to the class of the “original” “citizens.” Smith did not have to be nor could he be a “natural born Citizen, for he was born before July 4, 1776. Hence, Congress did not decide whether Ramsay’s definition of a “natural born Citizen” was right or wrong, but rather only if his claim that Smith did not deserve to be a “Citizen of the United States” for seven years because he did not show that he adhered to the American Revolution by actually being present in America while the Revolution was occurring or shortly thereafter. So, again you lie about our history.
(2) Your St. George Tucker quote does not show that what is stated in the quote was Tucker’s own position. Rather, Tucker only repeated what some “respectable political writer” said. Also, HONEST RESEARCHERS [ed.], in quoting Tucker, always left the beginning part of this quote off which is needed to understand that Tucker was only repeating what some other person believed and not giving his personal position on the matter. Only after I took the HONEST RESEARCHERS [ed.] to task for this deceit have you now started to include the first part of the quote. So, again you lie about our history.
(3) You continued to misrepresent the clear and plain text of Jefferson’s citizenship law of 1779. I cannot believe that you do not understand that “infants” trumps “all white persons.” You fail to understand that “infants” followed the condition of their “white” parents. Hence, there was no need for Jefferson to require that the “infants” also be “white.” Only if an infant was born to “citizen” parents could that infant be a “citizen” of Virginia. This same principle was adopted by the early Congress when they wrote the naturalization acts. So, again you lie about our history.
(4) It is clear from the historical records that the James Madison Administration declared James McClure a “citizen of the United States,” not because he was born in the United States, but rather because his British father naturalized several months after McClure was born and McClure was dwelling in the United States at that time. This was the James Madison Administration’s interpretation of the Naturalization Act of 1802 which is consistent with what I have always maintained about the early naturalization acts, i.e., that they also applied to children born in the United States and treated any child born in the United States to alien parents as aliens themselves. Also, it does not matter who wrote the Publius piece. What does matter is what it says and that it explained how the 1802 statute was interpreted. So, again you lie about our history.
What I have noticed about you, John Woodman, is that you cannot state one truth on anything. Everything that you write is your own manipulation of the historical record. It is all lies, pawned off with your self-righteous attitude as some authoritative scholarship.
John Woodman,
Why have you stopped accepting my responses to your nonsense on here? I have tried to post the same comment many times, but it does not appear.
Mario – why have you not returned to Dr. C’s site with the “natural born citizen” quotation from Dr. Ramsay’s dissertation?
Are you having trouble finding it?
Mario,
I haven’t changed anything. You’re still absolutely free to post.
Where are you trying to post a comment? And what exactly is happening? Does the blog appear to accept the comment?
You can also email a comment to me if need be and I can try to figure out why it doesn’t seem to be appearing.
Its possible that this thread has gotten too long for the software to support. it happens at Doc Cs sometimes. You are probably just better off closing this page and telling people to post on another.
Either that or the Internet has had enough of Mario’s stupidity.
Suranis says: “Either that or the Internet has had enough of Mario’s stupidity.”
What an idyllic world we would live in if the Internet came with a stupidity filter. But, then again, it would probably put Facebook out of business. 😀
Mario, I suggest you post your comment to my new thread. Since it undoubtedly won’t address the fact that the Law of Nations writers never even mentioned the phrase “natural born citizen,” it will go just as well there as it would here.
Mario.. you used the O word that John asked you not to use or you end up in moderation.
Even if he had used the O word, I still should’ve seen the comment. I haven’t seen anything from Mario come through that hasn’t posted.
Mystery solved.
After my asking him not to, Mario has persisted in using the word “Obot” in his posts. I expected such posts to be placed in the moderation queue. Instead, they were routed to the spam folder.
For now, I’m going to let such comments through, edited to use a more correct term of “honest researcher,” as I earlier stated. If Mr. Apuzzo doesn’t get the message, though, I may in the future put such comments back into the spam queue and ignore them.
I tried to log into Apuzzo’s blog but it was next to impossible so I am posting his ridiculous comment here and maybe by chance he will find it but everyone here should see what an idiot he is and laugh as loudly as I do at his ignorance.
On http://www.blogger.com/comment.do Mario stated:
“Thomas Jefferson in his citizenship law of 1779 in order to give citizenship in Virginia to infants required that they be born to citizen parents. Jefferson also did not use the word “subject” or “natural born subject” in Virginia.”
I tried to respond with the following:
Mario, will you ever learn how to read a sentence properly? Aren’t you supposed to be a lawyer? You said in your post of May 1, 2012, “Thomas Jefferson in his citizenship law of 1779 in order to give citizenship in Virginia to infants required that they be born to citizen parents.”
That is an out and out lie. Read the sentence very carefully, here it is:
“Be it enacted by the General Assembly, that all white persons born within the territory of this commonwealth and all who have resided therein two years next before the passing of this act, and all who shall hereafter migrate into the same; and shall before any court of record give satisfactory proof by their own oath or affirmation, that they intend to reside therein, and moreover shall give assurance of fidelity to the commonwealth; and all infants wheresoever born, whose father, if living, or otherwise, whose mother was, a citizen at the time of their birth, or who migrate hither, their father, if living, or otherwise their mother becoming a citizen, or who migrate hither without father or mother, shall be deemed citizens of this commonwealth, until they relinquish that character in manner as herein after expressed: And all others not being citizens of any the United States of America, shall be deemed aliens.”
This is probably the longest sentence I have ever read so I can appreciate that you would find it hard to understand. It includes ALL kinds of people separated by comma’s and semicolons. But it very plainly says “all white persons born within the territory of this commonwealth….. shall be deemed citizens of this commonwealth.”
All the other people spoken of in the “……” are additional people who may become citizens under the conditions specified.
I would never hire you as a lawyer because you wouldn’t recognize a loophole if it jumped out in front of you.
Mario has been schooled on his misreading of the 1779 law several times. John Woodman made it simple for Mario here: https://www.obamabirthbook.com/http:/www.obamabirthbook.com/2012/04/vattel-and-natural-born-citizen/#comment-1483
We can take Mario’s feckless pseudo-legal pandering as a game… Whenever he cites authorities, without even checking we know that the authority will not only actually fail to support Mario, but will substantively refute him. Then we can guess how, and see if we’re correct!
Some of the best games are invented to relieve monotony. And in this, Mario is utterly predictable.
Mario is incredibly predictable and somewhat irony deficient. While he happily posts claims without sufficient references to verify the context, he does insist that others provide him with the context for their claims.
Of course, I have recently checked Mario’s comments about Gordon and his paper and found them to inaccurately describe Gordon’s sentiments on the topic. I find this somewhat shameful as such behavior in any scientific or scholarly context would be considered quite counter to good scholarly practices.
Of course, one may hope that the Court will find out for themselves or will be informed by those pursuing these cases and properly award Mario for his efforts.
The fact that Mario was invited to give an oral presentation inside the court room rather than by telephone, as was earlier scheduled, may have some ominous consequences.
We can all predict a dismissal, given the lack of merits of Mario’s musings and the solid precedent countering him, but we also may hope that the Court will end this foolishness in an appropriate manner.