Lowering expectations

This is one of those pure blog posts, rather than an article on something. I write it to chide myself for some silly thinking.

As I mentioned a few times, I have been spending an unusual amount of time this month disputing with birthers at Birther Report and WorldNetDaily. In all of that time, I ran across a total of one person from the “other side” that I was able to exchange information with.  Here’s an example of a failure to communicate where I had listed the 6 experts who looked at Obama’s birth certificate and didn’t find it was a forgery: Pex, Broyhill, de Queiroz, Coburn, Zatkovich and Krawetz. This is the reply I got:

I got your so called experts and found that they are Marxist/socialist/demonrats, like you.

I hadn’t even given first names for some of them!

My silly thinking is to expect that when I present a good argument, a well-documented fact, or expose a formal fallacy, that I would at least get some indication that the person on the other side understood what I said, but that’s rarely the case. Generally, the commenters I engage at WND and Birther Report are the bottom of the barrel so far as birthers go. I mean, those folks at WND are still reciting the April Fools “Obama was a Foreign Student at Occidental” joke, and believe it with an unshakable passion! It doesn’t bother these folks for a moment that they cannot articulate any reason for why they believe that. Some folks at Birther Report are saying that the Naturalization Act of 1790 proves that the children of aliens born in the United States were not citizens.

What I should do, and it will be difficult, is to reset my expectations when commenting on birther sites. I have to keep in mind that if the birthers were reasonable, they wouldn’t still be birthers. I am not sure though how to dumb down the conversation enough. It may be impossible.

I suppose this article might come across as haughty and condescending. It is.

About Dr. Conspiracy

I'm not a real doctor, but I have a master's degree.
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348 Responses to Lowering expectations

  1. updradedd says:

    There is no reason for so much hate towards Obama except one… obviously

  2. Rickey says:

    What you’re experiencing at Gerbil Report and WND is not all that different from trying to reason with Nancy Ruth Owens, Linda Joy Adams, and Geir Smith. One would like to think that they could be liberated from their fantasies by showing them that what they believe to be true could not possibly be true, but it doesn’t work that way. For example, all one has to do is look at a photograph of Mike Moore and it is obvious that he is not Mike Zullo, obvious that is to everybody but Nancy. There was no mass killing of Social Security workers in Jersey City in 1989 and Geir Smith is not the messiah (although for all I know he may well be the “”King of Shambhala”).

  3. As for Mike ZulloMoore, I take it you’ve never heard of before and after photos. Certain members of the cartel were well known for seeking out plastic surgeons who could work miracles.

    Since this is a challenge, I’m going to include a link to a video were I confirm Mike Moore’s identity with Mike Volin of wheresobamasbirthcertificate.com

    http://www.liveleak.com/c/Nancy_Owens

    Volin is not happy about this video and has told me that he is working to have it removed from LiveLink just as he did with YouTube.

    Rickey:
    What you’re experiencing at Gerbil Report and WND is not all that different from trying to reason with Nancy Ruth Owens, Linda Joy Adams, and Geir Smith. One would like to think that they could be liberated from their fantasies by showing them that what they believe to be true could not possibly be true, but it doesn’t work that way. For example, all one has to do is look at a photograph of Mike Moore and it is obvious that he is not Mike Zullo, obvious that is to everybody but Nancy. There was no mass killing of Social Security workers in Jersey City in 1989 and Geir Smith is not the messiah (although for all I know he may well be the “”King of Shambhala”).

  4. Obligedfriend says:

    DrC made a claim at Birther Report Justice Daniel’s opinion in Dred Scott was in the minority not the majority.

    Justice Daniel wrote natural born citizens are born to citizen parents and he referenced Vattel.

    Do you still make the claim Justice Daniel’s opinion was in the minority.

  5. ballantine says:

    Daniel’s opinion was a concurring opinion, the opinion of one Justice, and hence not precedent. Furthermore, he quoted Vattel on the issue that citizens have equal rights and privileges. The quote had nothing to do who was natural born and any 1st year law student making such claim would fail. The portion of the Vattel quote he was referencing was:

    “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.”

    Daniels then concludes:

    “From the views here expressed, and they seem to be unexceptionable, it must follow that, with the slave, with one devoid of rights or capacities, civil or political, there could be no pact that one thus situated could be no party to or actor in, the association of those possessing free will, power, discretion.”

    The quote has nothing to do with who was natural born. Law school 101. Of course, one Justice in the case did address the NBC issue and his opinion would later be quoted and approved by the majority of the supreme court in Wong Kim Ark:

    “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.”

    Pretty clear. I am sorry no court or legal scholar is every going to cite Justice Daniel’s opinion over Justice Curtis’ opinion as only one has been cited over and over as defining who is natural born. If you can’t understand that, it is time to take some law classes.

  6. john says:

    Justice Daniels was in the Majority. It was a concurring decision and he did use the term Natural Born Citizen referencing Vattel.

  7. dunstvangeet says:

    I’ll bet you that Doc said no such thing. What he said was that Justice Daniel published an opinion, that was joined by nobody. It’s what’s known as a concurring opinion, and no precedential value. It was the opinion of Daniel. The fact that he agreed with the ultimate outcome (which is why it’s a concurring opinion) doesn’t mean that the opinion is any more highly regarded than a dissenting opinion. It’s not the opinion of the court.

    The opinion of the court (which is the opinion that actually creates precedence) was authored by Justice Taney in Scott v. Sandford. It was joined by 6 other Justices (every one of them filed their own concurring opinion). 5 of those 6 opinions were one-man opinions (like Daniels). Only Justice Daniel mentioned Vattel in his opinion. I wonder why.

    Furthermore, Scott v. Sandford was overturned by a variety of cases, with current law being on U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark.

    Just like Roe v. Wade is not the precedence on Abortion. Planned Parenthood v. Casey is the current case on precedence.

  8. DaveH says:

    Yes, Vattel was referenced but not in reference to natural born citizen.

    It was written “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. The inhabitants, as distinguished from citizens, are foreigners who are permitted to settle and stay in the country.”

    The justice was clearly indicating that slaves were born as foreigners and not as citizens of this country when using the words of Vattel.

    In the end, it doesn’t really matter though. The decision of Wong Kim Ark made clear who was considered a natural born citizen. You need to read the dissenting opinion written by Chief Justice Fuller especially where he wrote “Considering the circumstances surrounding the framing of the Constitution, I submit that it is unreasonable to conclude that “natural-born 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.”

  9. Jeff says:

    I stopped wasting my time at Gerbil Report. Once Carl Gallups slinked away unable to even pretend the Cold Case Posse was ever going to find anything, the Gerbil Report has become readable.

    All they do at GR anymore is reprint articles from other minor league birthers.

    “Larry Klayman to file lawsuit!”
    “A radio host you’ve never heard of, questions Obama birth certificate!”
    “Birther appeals the latest dismissal of his prior appeal”

    And then the same 7 birthers comment on the articles assuring each other that A/Z day and it’s “universe shattering” news is right around the corner.

    I honestly believe that these sad people have invested so much of their very lives emotionally believing this stuff, that the thought that “just maybe” they’re wrong, is more than their egos can deal with.

    I’ve seen it before. The first time was with the Y2K crowd. No matter how much evidence that was provided to them proving without a doubt that their theory was wrong, they persisted in digging their shelters and stockpiling ramen noodles. I bet that even today, many of them still have cases of Chef Boyardee ravioli in the garage.

  10. Andrew Vrba, PmG says:

    Jeff: The first time was with the Y2K crowd.

    Haha! I remember that bunch.
    I was temping at a computer store in late 1999, and this guy comes in. My friend asks him if he wants to buy a PC, and the guy tells him “No. There’s no point! The world is going to end in a couple of months!”
    Then you had all the dopes running out and buying those laughable books…

  11. Arthur says:

    Jeff: I bet that even today, many of them still have cases of Chef Boyardee ravioli in the garage.

    And do forget those cans of survival seeds, and the acres of “crisis gardens” that were never planted.

  12. john says:

    DaveH:
    Yes, Vattel was referenced but not in reference to natural born citizen.

    It was written “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. The inhabitants, as distinguished from citizens, are foreigners who are permitted to settle and stay in the country.”

    The justice was clearly indicating that slaves were born as foreigners and not as citizens of this country when using the words of Vattel.

    In the end, it doesn’t really matter though. The decision of Wong Kim Ark made clear who was considered a natural born citizen. You need to read the dissenting opinion written by Chief Justice Fuller especially where he wrote “Considering the circumstances surrounding the framing of the Constitution, I submit that it is unreasonable to conclude that “natural-born 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.”

    In other words Fuller believes in the birther definition of NBC.

  13. gorefan says:

    john: In other words Fuller believes in the birther definition of NBC.

    Yes, John, in 1898 the minority opinion used Vattel. In fact here is what you and other birthers must believe:

    “Obviously, where the Constitution deals with common law rights and uses common law phraseology, its language should be read in the light of the common law; but when the question arises as to what constitutes citizenship of the nation, involving as it does international relations, and political, as contradistinguished from civil, status, international principles must be considered, and, unless the municipal law of England appears to have been affirmatively accepted, it cannot be allowed to control in the matter of construction.” Chief Justice Fuller in dissent in Wong Kim Ark

    So Johnnie do you agree that the US should use “international principles” to decide who can be President?

  14. I got “Bruce and Stan’s Guide to the End of the World: A User Friendly Approach.”

    Andrew Vrba, PmG: Then you had all the dopes running out and buying those laughable books…

  15. ObligedFriend says:

    DrC did claim Justice Daniel’s opinion was in the minority. I typed his opinion was in the majority,

    DrC typed “Wrong” it was in the minority.

    Justice Daniel referenced Vattel when he wrote “natural born citizens are born to citizen parents”

    WKA never superseded DS and Justice Daniel’s majority opinion. WKA was ruled a citizen, because he was born in the USA to parents who not citizens but had permanent residency.

    Barack Obama Sr. was never a permanent resident.

    Barack Obama is not a natural born citizen based on the majority opinion Justice Daniel and he’s not a citizen due to the holding in WKA.

    A South Carolina resident and signer of the Constitution, a delegate at the Constitutional Convention was a birther.

    You guys know him?

  16. MN-Skeptic says:

    Lowering expectations?

    Why, oh why, would you have any expectation of anything other than an echo chamber hate fest?

    Have you ever seen anything at any of those web sites which led you to believe that they are honestly interested in the truth? Posters go to those sites to get their anti-Obama beliefs reinforced. Not a one is interested in having their beliefs challenged.

    If you enjoy posting at those websites, that’s all well and good. We obots will enjoy reading what you post. But the birthers will never, ever buy anything that you have to say. If they were interested in the truth, they would be here or at Fogbow, not still posting at the birther sites.

  17. john says:

    ObligedFriend:
    DrC did claim Justice Daniel’s opinion was in the minority. I typed his opinion was in the majority,

    DrC typed “Wrong” it was in the minority.

    Justice Daniel referenced Vattel when he wrote “natural born citizens are born to citizen parents”

    WKA never superseded DS and Justice Daniel’s majority opinion. WKA was ruled a citizen, because he was born in the USA to parents who not citizens but had permanent residency.

    Barack Obama Sr. was never a permanent resident.

    Barack Obama is not a natural born citizen based on the majority opinion Justice Daniel and he’s not a citizen due to the holding in WKA.

    A South Carolina resident and signer of the Constitution, a delegate at the Constitutional Convention was a birther.

    You guys know him?

    ObligedFriend: Barack Obama Sr. was never a permanent resident

    Barack Obama Sr. was never a permanent resident

    That is quite true. It one of the essential facts of the WKA case, the fact that parents were permanent residents. (Obots ignore it because Obama Sr. was not a permanent resident) It is probably one of the reason the WKA court ruled in WKA’s favor.

  18. The problem with relying on domicile as the deciding factor is the fact that domicile was not a factor in determining whether or not some was a natural born subject under English Common Law. We see the court’s note of this in this citation from WKA:

    “Mr. Dicey, in his careful and thoughtful Digest of the Law of England with reference to the Conflict of Laws, published in 1896, states the following propositions, his principal rules being printed below in italics:

    “‘British subject’ means any person who owes permanent allegiance to the Crown. ‘Permanent’ allegiance is used to distinguish the allegiance of a British subject from the allegiance of an alien who, because he is within the British dominions, owes ‘temporary’ allegiance to the Crown. ‘Natural-born British subject’ means a British subject who has become a British subject at the moment of his birth.”Subject to the exceptions hereinafter mentioned, any person who (whatever the nationality of his parents) is born within the British dominions is a natural-born British subject. This rule contains the leading principle of English law on the subject of British nationality.”

    and

    “Chancellor Kent, in his Commentaries, speaking of the “general division of the inhabitants of every country under the comprehensive title of aliens and natives,” says:

    “Natives are all persons born within the jurisdiction and allegiance of the United States. This is the rule of the common law, without any regard or reference to the political condition or allegiance of their parents, with the exception of the children of ambassadors, who are in theory born within the allegiance of the foreign power they represent.”

    and

    “The foregoing considerations and authorities irresistibly lead us to these conclusions: the Fourteenth Amendment affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory, in the allegiance and under the protection of the country, including all children here born of resident aliens, with the exceptions or qualifications (as old as the rule itself) of children of foreign sovereigns or their ministers, or born on foreign public ships, or of enemies within and during a hostile occupation of part of our territory, and with the single additional exception of children of members of the Indian tribes owing direct allegiance to their several tribes. The Amendment, in clear words and in manifest intent, includes the children born, within the territory of the United States, of all other persons, of whatever race or color, domiciled within the United States. Every citizen or subject of another country, while domiciled here, is within the allegiance and the protection, and consequently subject to the jurisdiction, of the United States. His allegiance to the United States is direct and immediate, and, although but local and temporary, continuing only so long as he remains within our territory, is yet, in the words of Lord Coke in Calvin’s Case, 7 Rep. 6a, “strong enough to make a natural subject, for if he hath issue here, that issue is a natural-born subject;” and his child, as said by Mr. Binney in his essay before quoted, “if born in the country, is as much a citizen as the natural-born child of a citizen, and by operation of the same principle.” It can hardly be denied that an alien is completely subject to the political jurisdiction of the country in which he resides — seeing that, as said by Mr. Webster, when Secretary of State, in his Report to the President on Thrasher’s Case in 1851, and since repeated by this court,

    independently of a residence with intention to continue such residence; independently of any domiciliation; independently of the taking of any oath of allegiance or of renouncing any former allegiance, it is well known that, by the public law, an alien, or a stranger born, for so long a time as he continues within the dominions of a foreign government, owes obedience to the laws of that government, and may be punished for treason, or other crimes, as a native-born subject might be, unless his case is varied by some treaty stipulations.”

    john: That is quite true. It one of the essential facts of the WKA case, the fact that parents were permanent residents. (Obots ignore it because Obama Sr. was not a permanent resident) It is probably one of the reason the WKA court ruled in WKA’s favor.

  19. ObligedFriend says:

    DrC is ignoring the holding in WKA, Why? Hes ignoring his claim Justice Daniel’s Majority opinion was in the minority.

    DrC claimed its impossible Vattel’s French edition could mean natural born citizens are born to citizen parents. Yet, Chief Justice Fuller, Justice Daniel and other Justices quoted Vattel. Let’s not forget Alexander Porter Morse. Constitutional Law Professor James Gilmore wrote Vattel is all over the Constutution including the Bill of Rights.

    Professor Gilmore mentioned Vattel’s chapter on “NBC” is in the Constitution. WOW.

    The US Supreme Court said Vattel has been a part of our laws for over 200 years. This was 2004-2005.

    You guys are supporting an illegal President. Why?

  20. Andrew Vrba, PmG says:

    Reading comprehension never was a strong suit for birthers.

  21. Delongleggedmackdaddy says:

    The funny thing is that Birthers cite the fact that US Courts have acknowledged or ruled that those with US Citizen parents are Natural Born Citizens which is a fact that Obots do not disagree with.

    In fact, none of the courts that have ruled against Birthers disagree with the fact that those born with US Citizen parents are NBCs.

    The fact that US Courts also hold that children born on US soil are also Natural Born Citizens regardless of parentage is not in conflict with court opinions that those born on US soil with US Citizen parents are NBCs.

  22. Lupin says:

    Obligedfriend:
    DrC made a claim at Birther Report Justice Daniel’s opinion in Dred Scott was in the minority not the majority.

    Justice Daniel wrote natural born citizens are born to citizen parents and he referenced Vattel.

    Do you still make the claim Justice Daniel’s opinion was in the minority.

    What you don’t understand is that EVEN if had referenced Vattel in such a context (which he did NOT), Vattel does NOT say that it takes two parents who are citizens to produce a citizen. Quite the contrary in fact, he states that only the father is sufficient.

    So even if he had done what you claimed, it still would NOT help your case.

    Am I clear enough?

  23. John Reilly says:

    Mr. ObligedFriend: If you truly believe that Pres. Obama is an illegal President, what are you doing here? Get the House to impeach him. Get the Senate to convict him. Call 911 and have your sheriff arrest him. Don’t waste a minute.

    We’ll check the papers daily to see your progress.

  24. Lupin says:

    ObligedFriend: DrC claimed its impossible Vattel’s French edition could mean natural born citizens are born to citizen parents.

    First forget this; this is not what Vattel wrote in French. What he wrote was that citizenship came from blood relatives which is another way to restate the principle of jus sanguinis. Then he went on to say that it was the father (amongst such relatives) who transmitted citizenship. (Later, of course, that was amended to include the mother in the event of an unmarried couple, etc.)

    So Vattel in no way, shape or for, is useful to proving that Obama may or may not be illegitimate.

    That Americans like yourself with barely basic skills in their own language feel able to pontificate about a legal text written is 18th century French is baffling to me.

  25. John Reilly says:

    Lupin, as I understand Vattel, he also noted that the English did not follow the principles of determining who was a citizen that Vattel preferred.

  26. Lupin says:

    John Reilly:
    Lupin, as I understand Vattel, he also noted that the English did not follow the principles of determining who was a citizen that Vattel preferred.

    Yes indeed and I brought that up in the previous thread.

    Vattel was not shy of voicing his opinion (to say the least); not only did he acknowledge the existence of the British jus soli-based system, but what I find more interesting is that he did NOT criticize it as being somehow inadequate or inferior., which he certainly would have done had it felt that way.

    One tends to forget that what Vattel did in those citizenship paragraphs so often quoted here was not to CREATE new laws, but merely to attempt to explain, one might say codify, the customs and practices in force at the time in France, Germany and Switzerland.

    His intent is not to say, this is how it shall be; but merely, this is how it is.

    This makes the Donofio/Apuzzo/Birthers interpretation even more far fetched (if that was even necessary) because we do know for a fact that there was no “twofer” system in force then. Or after.

    “Obliged Fiend” (pun intended) is one of those who believe that only white anglo-saxon protestants ought to be in charge.

  27. The Magic M says:

    My silly thinking is to expect that when I present a good argument, a well-documented fact, or expose a formal fallacy, that I would at least get some indication that the person on the other side understood what I said

    I think I tried for about a year believing that.
    Then it dawned on me that these people are not simply misguided but literally deluded.
    I think the breaking point was when I discussed the Irey claims on WND, showed some obvious stuff on screenshots of Irey’s images and birthers still went “I don’t see it” (like when I showed them things being on the same line with the help of a straight line in Photoshop and they replied “it’s not on the same line on my screen”). This convinced me that any sensible attempt to talk to them was utterly futile.

    Since then, I’ve given up trying to talk sense to birthers. I’m only posting here, countering birthers on non-birther sites to stop their silly stuff from spreading, and trolling BR every now and then (only from home since my work IP is blocked there)

  28. DaveH says:

    So do modern day attorneys like Herb Titus. Doesn’t make them right, though.

    Chief Justice Fuller was in the minority decision for WKA. At this time, WKA is precedent for what defines NBC. President Obama was clearly born in the USA. It doesn’t matter if his parents were US Citizens. HIs mother clearly was but that isn’t even relevant since he was born in the USA.

    Ultimately my point is that birthers have claimed that WKA does not define NBC when it clearly does. The paragraph from Fuller clearly states why he believed WKA and others like him should not be declared citizens at birth as they would be or could be eligible to one day run for and be the POTUS.

    john: In other words Fuller believes in the birther definition of NBC.

  29. bovril says:

    @DaveH

    Well, the real answer for Birfoons is……” But…. But….. But…..HE’S BLACK AND A DEMOCRAT”

  30. Dave B. says:

    Yes, I’m starting to see the Zullo/Moore resemblance. It reminds me of this other uncanny resemblance:

    http://www.ilooklikebarackobama.com

    Nancy R Owens: As for Mike ZulloMoore, I take it you’ve never heard of before and after photos. Certain members of the cartel were well known for seeking out plastic surgeons who could work miracles.

  31. Dave B. says:

    And I would make note of Trevor’s point #2.

  32. Dave B. says:

    Let’s place that in context. You can read Justice Daniel’s opinion here:

    http://openjurist.org/60/us/393

    Starting with, say, paragraph 303:

    “Now, the following are truths which a knowledge of the history of the world, and particularly of that of our own country, compels us to know—that the African negro race never have been acknowledged as belonging to the family of nations; that as amongst them there never has been known or recognised by the inhabitants of other countries anything partaking of the character of nationality, or civil or political polity; that this race has been by all the nations of Europe regarded as subjects of capture or purchase; as subjects of commerce or traffic; and that the introduction of that race into every section of this country was not as members of civil or political society, but as slaves, as property in the strictest sense of the term.”

    Daniel then describes the issue before the court:

    “And it now becomes the province of this court to determine whether the plaintiff below, (and in error here,) admitted to be a negro of African descent, whose ancestors were of pure African blood, and were brought into this country and sold as negro slaves—such being his status, and such the circumstances surrounding his position whether he can, by correct legal induction from that status and those circumstances, be clothed with the character and capacities of a citizen of the State of Missouri?
    305
    It may be assumed as a postulate, that to a slave, as such, there appertains and can appertain no relation, civil or political, with the State or the Government…”

    Justice Daniel turns to Vattel to support his pustulate– I mean postulate, arriving at the Birther’s Favorite in paragraph 307:

    “By this same writer it is also said: ‘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. The inhabitants, as distinguished from citizens, are foreigners who are permitted to settle and stay in the country.’ (Vattel, Book 1, cap. 19, p. 101.)

    308
    From the views here expressed, and they seem to be unexceptionable, it must follow, that with the slave, with one devoid of rights or capacities, civil or political, there could be no pact; that one thus situated could be no party to, or actor in, the association of those possessing free will, power, discretion. He could form no part of the design, no constituent ingredient or portion of a society based upon common, that is, upon equal interests and powers. He could not at the same time be the sovereign and the slave.”

    Daniel moves on to deny citizenship to the freed slave as well, and to address the plaintiff’s argument. Beginning at 320:

    “By the argument for the plaintiff in error, a power equally despotic is vested in every member of the association, and the most obscure or unworthy individual it comprises may arbitrarily invade and derange its most deliberate and solemn ordinances…If that argument possesses any integrity, it asserts the power in any citizen, or quasi citizen, or a resident foreigner of any one of the States, from a motive either of corruption or caprice, not only to infract the inherent and necessary authority of such State, but also materially to interfere with the organization of the Federal Government, and with the authority of the separate and independent States. He may emancipate his negro slave, by which process he first transforms that slave into a citizen of his own State; he may next, under color of article fourth, section second, of the Constitution of the United States, obtrude him, and on terms of civil and political equality, upon any and every State in this Union, in defiance of all regulations of necessity or policy, ordained by those States for their internal happiness or safety. Nay, more: this manumitted slave may, by a proceeding springing from the will or act of his master alone, be mixed up with the institutions of the Federal Government, to which he is not a party, and in opposition to the laws of that Government which, in authorizing the extension by naturalization of the rights and immunities of citizens of the United States to those not originally parties to the Federal compact, have restricted that boon to free white aliens alone…”

    Bad ol’ masters, freeing their slaves and all, messin’ up the nice white society “from a motive either of corruption or caprice.” I can see why birthers love Daniel so much.

    john:
    Justice Daniels was in the Majority.It was a concurring decision and he did use the term Natural Born Citizen referencing Vattel.

  33. RanTalbott says:

    ObligedFriend: The US Supreme Court said Vattel has been a part of our laws for over 200 years. This was 2004-2005.

    a. I don’t believe you. Produce the quote.
    b. The Constitution says it’s not.

  34. Northland10 says:

    ObligedFriend:

    The US Supreme Court said Vattel has been a part of our laws for over 200 years. This was 2004-2005.

    Sosa v. Alvarez-Machaim says no such thing. The term law of nations does not specifically mean Vattel. They did mention Vattel along with Kent, Blackstone and others. This was a case involving international law. Maybe you should try reading it.

    http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/pdf/03-339P.ZO

  35. gorefan says:

    ObligedFriend:

    Gilmore wrote Vattel is all over the Constutution including the Bill of Rights.

    Professor Gilmore mentioned Vattel’s chapter on “NBC” is in the Constitution. WOW.

    Here is what Prof. Gilmore actually wrote:

    “So far as Mr. Vattel states the doctrine on the subject of citizenship in this section [212] he states it correctly, but there are other questions on this subject, not noticed by him, which it would be well to state. These have reference to the following: “

    “I. Children born of the subjects of one power in the territory of another. 2. Illegitimate children born of a foreign mother. 3. Foreign women who have married the subject of a State. Upon these points the doctrine in United States, is, 1, That children of foreigners born here are American citizens if they elect to declare themselves so, whilst the children of American citizens born abroad are themselves citizens of the United States, unless the 14th amendment has changed this doctrine, upon which there is a difference of opinion; 2, Illegitimate children belong to the State of which the mother was the subject; and 3, Except in the United States, the nationality of a wife is merged in that of her husband, so that in those countries, when a woman marries a foreigner she loses her own nationality and acquires his; but here a native woman marrying a foreigner remains the subject of the State, though an alien woman marrying a citizen of the United States becomes herself naturalized, unless she continue throughout her husband’s lifetime, a non-resident. Hall’s Inter. Law, secs. 68, 69, 70.”

  36. Dr. Kenneth Noisewater says:

    ObligedFriend: Professor Gilmore mentioned Vattel’s chapter on “NBC” is in the Constitution. WOW.

    Let me guess you think that the law of nations in the constitution means vattel’s book? So a section having to do with the legislative branch and nothing to do with the presidency according to you somehow means another section of the constitution means some mistranslation of a certain verse in vattel’s book. While at the same time they totally ignored everything else Vattel said. Hmm Of Offenses Against the Law of Nations is a chapter name in Blackstone’s book I guess that means blackstone wins.

  37. Northland10 says:

    Dr. Kenneth Noisewater: Let me guess you think that the law of nations in the constitution means vattel’s book?So a section having to do with the legislative branch and nothing to do with the presidency according to you somehow means another section of the constitution means some mistranslation of a certain verse in vattel’s book.While at the same time they totally ignored everything else Vattel said.Hmm Of Offenses Against the Law of Nations is a chapter name in Blackstone’s book I guess that means blackstone wins.

    He’s like a rabbit, dancing around and dragging his canoe.

  38. Rickey says:

    john:

    That is quite true.It one of the essential facts of the WKA case, the fact that parents were permanent residents. (Obots ignore it because Obama Sr. was not a permanent resident)It is probably one of the reason the WKA court ruled in WKA’s favor.

    Actually, they weren’t permanent residents. In fact, by the time of the Wong Kim Ark case his parents had moved back to China. That is how he came to be detained in San Francisco. He had traveled to China to visit his parents, and he was denied entry to the United States upon his return.

  39. Rickey says:

    Here is a gem I had not seen before, a 1998 story about Wong Kim Ark’s great-granddaughter,

    http://www.sfweekly.com/1998-11-04/news/the-progeny-of-citizen-wong/

  40. Rickey says:

    ObligedFriend:

    WKA never superseded DS and Justice Daniel’s majority opinion. WKA was ruled a citizen, because he was born in the USA to parents who not citizens but had permanent residency.

    You’re wrong. The Supreme Court said that Wong Kim Ark’s parents were “permanently domiciled” in the United States at the time of his birth. In fact, by the time Wong Kim Ark was denied entry into the United States in San Francisco he was returning from a visit to his parents, who had moved back to China years earlier, so clearly they did not have “permanent residency.”

    And SCOTUS never said that the domicile status of his parents was germane to WKA’s citizenship. The Court was merely reciting the facts of the case. The WKA ruling clearly states that anyone born in the United States while subject to its jurisdiction is a U.S. citizen at birth.

    You really need tp read the entire case. And don’t forget to read the government’s brief, which acknowledged that if the Court ruled that WKA was a citizen, it meant that he was eligible to be president, notwithstanding the fact that neither of his parents were U.S. citizens.

  41. The Magic M says:

    Rickey: Actually, they weren’t permanent residents. In fact, by the time of the Wong Kim Ark case his parents had moved back to China.

    Playing devil’s advocate here, john is referring to their status at the time of WKA’s birth (which would be relevant, if any), not at the time of trial.

  42. The Magic M says:

    Dave B.: Yes, I’m starting to see the Zullo/Moore resemblance. It reminds me of this other uncanny resemblance:

    Nancy should call the Sandy Hookers as “experts”, they’re the most outlandish ones when it comes to playing the “X looks totally like Y” game.

  43. Kate says:

    ObligedFriend:
    DrC is ignoring the holding in WKA, Why? Hes ignoring his claim Justice Daniel’s Majority opinion was in the minority.

    DrC claimed its impossible Vattel’s French edition could mean natural born citizens are born to citizen parents. Yet, Chief Justice Fuller, Justice Daniel and other Justices quoted Vattel. Let’s not forget Alexander Porter Morse. Constitutional Law Professor James Gilmore wrote Vattel is all over the Constutution including the Bill of Rights.

    Professor Gilmore mentioned Vattel’s chapter on “NBC” is in the Constitution. WOW.

    The US Supreme Court said Vattel has been a part of our laws for over 200 years. This was 2004-2005.

    You guys are supporting an illegal President. Why?

    If you believe that Vattel has been part of our laws for over 200 years and that Vattel is “all over the constitution” as you say a Professor Gilmore wrote about, then I’m sure you can refer to what is in our laws and in our Constitution that was influenced by Vattel, other than your belief that his writings were used by the founding fathers in regards to NBC.

    Can you translate the portion that Vattel wrote in his Law of Nations regarding natural born citizens? You apparently know what it says, so this shouldn’t be a problem. I’m not fluent in French and have relied upon a poster who lives in France who has done so for Dr. C’s website. Thanks.

  44. Lupin says:

    Kate: I’m not fluent in French and have relied upon a poster who lives in France who has done so for Dr. C’s website. Thanks.

    All modesty set aside, I’m not just a French poster, but one with a law degree from the Sorbonne, once head of the legal department in the US of a major French bank, and now a small press publisher who has edited and published a translation of Vattel from French into English by a renowned British scholar.

    That said, even if i were wrong, it would be a relatively easy matter to find another French legal source showing my errors — but there are none; and even your Congressional Research Service, when they looked into the matter, came to the same — obvious — interpretation.

    In fine, Vattel isn’t that hard to understand; it takes the prejudiced & twisted mind of a birther to make him say the opposite of what he actually said.

    As all too often pointed out here, which normal person would insist that “Only children whose parents are members of the club may use the swimming pool” mean that BOTH parents must be club members? No one. In his right mind. Oh, wait….

  45. Lupin says:

    The Magic M: Nancy should call the Sandy Hookers as “experts”, they’re the most outlandish ones when it comes to playing the “X looks totally like Y” game.

    Normal people do not assume that just become Arpaio bears an uncanny resemblance to Jabba the Hut they’re one and the same.

  46. Lupin says:

    Rickey:
    Here is a gem I had not seen before, a 1998 story about Wong Kim Ark’s great-granddaughter,

    http://www.sfweekly.com/1998-11-04/news/the-progeny-of-citizen-wong/

    What a truly beautiful and enlightening story. Thank you for the link!

  47. Northland10 says:

    ObligedFriend: WKA never superseded DS and Justice Daniel’s majorityconcurrent opinion.

    During reconstruction after the civil war, there were various former slaves who were elected to Congress. If Scott v Sandford still stood during and after WKA in the 1890s, how is it these former slaves who were denied the ability to be citizens by the majority opinion, could be elected and serve in Congress?

    It sounds like DS was superseded by the time of WKA. Funny thing an amendment to the Constitution restating the original concept of US (and English) citizenship can do to remove the ugly, racist, stain plopped by the Taney court.

    Before your try to use the 14th Amendment is a different citizenship, many of these Congressmen and Senators would not have been citizens long enough after ratification to serve in Congress.

  48. Kate says:

    Lupin: All modesty set aside, I’m not just a French poster, but one with a law degree from the Sorbonne, once head of the legal department in the US of a major French bank, and now a small press publisher who has edited and published a translation of Vattel from French into English by a renowned British scholar.

    That said, even if i were wrong, it would be a relatively easy matter to find another French legal source showing my errors — but there are none; and even your Congressional Research Service, when they looked into the matter, came to the same — obvious — interpretation.

    In fine, Vattel isn’t that hard to understand; it takes the prejudiced & twisted mind of a birther to make him say the opposite of what he actually said.

    As all too often pointed out here, which normal person would insist that “Only children whose parents are members of the club may use the swimming pool” mean that BOTH parents must be club members?No one. In his right mind. Oh, wait….

    Thanks, Lupin, your education and experience as an attorney just add more credibility to your posts as you certainly understand what the birthers are trying to twist when it comes to cases where they claim Vattel has been quoted and used to declare that a person born in the U.S. is only a NBC if both of his/her parents are citizens. It’s quite obvious in reading more of Vattel that many of his opinions regarding the functions of government in relation to the citizens were in direct contrast to our Constitution. IIRC, Vattel didn’t believe in the separation of church and state nor did he believe that citizens had the right to bear arms. Instead, birthers would have us believe that the statement he made about citizenship, which they interpreted incorrectly, would apply only to those with two citizen parents.

    I’m still waiting for a textbook from all the birthers who claimed they learned that both jus sanguinis and jus soli were necessary in order to be considered a natural born citizen. We were taught this in 5th grade, that all who were born on U.S. soil were considered natural born citizens unless they were the child of a diplomat or invading military. I’m going to try to find a textbook like the type I used. I wouldn’t be surprised if they still have some of them in storage. They never threw anything away despite being a well-funded private school. Although I doubt it would make birthers take a second look but IMO, until they provide a textbook that agrees with them, they have nothing to stand on.

  49. Rickey says:

    The Magic M: Playing devil’s advocate here, john is referring to their status at the time of WKA’s birth (which would be relevant, if any), not at the time of trial.

    The problem is that “permanently domiciled” is a slippery concept because it involves intent. How does anyone know what the intentions of WKA’s parents were at the time of his birth? You really cannot determine whether someone was “permanently domiciled” in a given place until after the fact.

    Besides, the Supreme Court was merely reciting the facts of the case as presented to the Court, namely that WKA’s parents were permanently domiciled in the U.S. at the time of his birth. It was a sufficient but not necessary condition.

  50. Rickey says:

    Lupin: What a truly beautiful and enlightening story. Thank you for the link!

    It’s fascinating that she had no idea how important her great-grandfather was until she researched him.

  51. Arthur says:

    Lupin: Normal people do not assume that just become Arpaio bears an uncanny resemblance to Jabba the Hut they’re one and the same.

    So are you saying that Mike Zullo really isn’t Salacious B. Crumb, the Kowakian monkey-lizard who’s Jabba’s court jester? Bummers.

  52. Crustacean says:

    Arthur: So are you saying that Mike Zullo really isn’t Salacious B. Crumb, the Kowakian monkey-lizard who’s Jabba’s court jester? Bummers.

    No, Mike Zullo is not SBC. I believe I’m on record as having identified (through very strong circumstantial evidence; see the OCT article “Obot Wars Episode VII: A New Hope”) that Salacious Crumb is, in fact, Carl Gallups.

    Jabba’s monkey-lizard has been described thusly: “To its intelligence it seems to be similar to a parrot. It can respond seemingly intelligently but is limited in what it actually understands. It can know how to laugh and mimic others but does not seem to create its own ideas.”

    If that isn’t a perfect description of Carl Gallups, I don’t know what is…

  53. Arthur says:

    Crustacean: No, Mike Zullo is not SBC. I believe I’m on record as having identified (through very strong circumstantial evidence; see the OCT article “Obot Wars Episode VII: A New Hope”) that Salacious Crumb is, in fact, Carl Gallups.

    Thank you for the clarification, but then who is Zullo? (and don’t say that dude from Florida)

  54. I don’t know what their intent was at the time of Wong’s birth, but the fact is that they returned to China.

    Rickey: The problem is that “permanently domiciled” is a slippery concept because it involves intent. How does anyone know what the intentions of WKA’s parents were at the time of his birth? You really cannot determine whether someone was “permanently domiciled” in a given place until after the fact.

  55. Notorial Dissent says:

    The thing is, they may have been permanently domiciled here at the time of Wong’s birth in what 1873???, and something changed 20/30 years later, that does happen you know. The problem is that at this remove it is hard to tell exactly what was going on at the time, and even at the time of the SCt case, there may well have been information available to them that we aren’t aware of or cognicent of, or it may have been a case of mis-speaking. I can’t remember just how picky they were about resident aliens in the 1870’s, but memory says they were particularly petty about the Chinese and Japanese, and particularly in CA.

  56. Lupin says:

    Kate: It’s quite obvious in reading more of Vattel that many of his opinions regarding the functions of government in relation to the citizens were in direct contrast to our Constitution.

    One of things one learns in Law School here is how the French legal system was codified under Napoleon’s guidance, drawing from previous sources, including Vattel. Equally interesting is how it was modified and updated through the next two centuries to reflect changes in politics and society.

    Trying to apply 18th century Vattel to 21st century France would be idiotic; trying to apply it to 21st century America is even more so.

  57. Kate says:

    Equally interesting is how it was modified and updated through the next two centuries to reflect changes in politics and society.

    Trying to apply 18th century Vattel to 21st century France would be idiotic; trying to apply it to 21st century America is even more so.

    That’s why it’s so appealing to the birthers and why they believe it so readily. It suits their mindset in every possible way 🙂

  58. JPotter says:

    “I suppose this article might come across as haughty and condescending. It is.”

    Not at all, Doc. It is an excellent essay that describes a peculiar phenomena very well, a mindset observed, tested, and confirmed countless times over the birther years. If someone in the future wants to know what is was like to talk to a birther, well, here you go.

    Not that this mindset is new. It’s seen anytime, anywhere, in regards to anything that someone wants to deny and replace with a preferred truth. Any time a person wants opinion, allegation, or wish to be treated as fact. Childlike, magical thinking … aggressive denial if you will! Not unique to birtherism, but birtherism is one of its sillest expressions.

  59. Crustacean says:

    Arthur: Thank you for the clarification, but then who is Zullo? (and don’t say that dude from Florida)

    Zullo thinks he’s Obi-Wan Kenobi, but he’s really Greedo.

    Similarly, Gerbil Report’s BS, ESQ thinks he’s Admiral Ackbar (“It’s a trap!!”), but he’s really the Trash Monster.

    As C3PO would say, delusions of grandeur…

  60. Rickey says:

    Dr. Conspiracy:
    I don’t know what their intent was at the time of Wong’s birth, but the fact is that they returned to China.

    And the government was well aware of that, yet never raised it as an issue.

    The question of Barack Obama Sr.’s “permanent domicile” is a red herring. The birthers misread U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark the same way that they misread Minor v. Happersett.

  61. J.D. Sue says:

    Rickey: The question of Barack Obama Sr.’s “permanent domicile” is a red herring.

    ——
    I think it is fair to say that essentially all appellate opinions contain some word or phrase that may act as a “red herring” down the road. That is the stuff litigation is made of–at least two lawyers arguing about the legal significance and/or meaning of a word/phrase, and about how it should/shouldn’t apply to the case’s unique set of facts at a particular point in time….

  62. Notorial Dissent says:

    The thing is, I’m not altogether sure they actually ever read any of it to begin with. At the very best, they skim it, and then translate it to suit their own purposes.

    Rickey: The birthers misread U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark the same way that they misread Minor v. Happersett.

  63. ballantine says:

    Dr. Conspiracy:
    The problem with relying on domicile as the deciding factor is the fact that domicile was not a factor in determining whether or not some was a natural born subject under English Common Law. We see the court’s note of this in this citation from WKA:

    This is another point made by the birther amateurs who pretend to be legal experts. The supreme court was asked whether a native born child of domiciled Chinese alien parents was a citizen. The court said yes because it said both the original Constitution and the 14th Amendment adopted the English common law which included, but was not limited to, native born child of domiciled Chinese alien parents. Such is all part of the holding of the case for anyone who went to law school who understand the rationale is part of the holding. No court has ever stated that parents need to be domiciled or citizens and saying so is simply a lie or a statement by idiots uneducated in law pretending that their own personal interpretation somehow matter. Children of temporary residents have been treated as citizens since Wong Kim Ark as everyone who can read English understand what the decision says.

  64. ballantine says:

    john:
    Justice Daniels was in the Majority.It was a concurring decision and he did use the term Natural Born Citizen referencing Vattel.

    Seriously, is this supposed to make sense. He joined the majority, meaning he agreed with Taney who didn’t address the NBC issue. No one joined his opinion meaning no one agreed with his opinion. And, as pointed out, his quote of Vattel in his meaningless opinion had nothing to do with who was a natural born citizen but rather who had an “entire equality of privileges, civil and political.” The point Danial was quoting Vattel on was:

    “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.’

    That was it. No court or legal authority in history other than birther with no education in constitutional law has ever claimed such opinion dealt with who was natural born as the quote had nothing to do with that. it is astounding that even amateurs can’t understand such point. Not Wong Kim Ark, other citizenship case, no legal treatise or any1st year law student would make such a stupid claim. so, perhaps, you were ignorant when you first made this claim. To keep making such claim after you have been shown it is without merit means you are simply a liar.

    Of course, one justice did address the NBC issue in Dred Scott and his opinion was later incorporated in the majority opinion in WKA:

    “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.”

    Thus, this was adopted by a majority of the supreme court and continues to be cited by modern courts like Ankeny. Are you taking notes so you don’t embarrass yourself anymore?

  65. ballantine says:

    DrC claimed its impossible Vattel’s French edition could mean natural born citizens are born to citizen parents. Yet, Chief Justice Fuller, Justice Daniel and other Justices quoted Vattel. Let’s not forget Alexander Porter Morse. Constitutional Law Professor James Gilmore wrote Vattel is all over the Constutution including the Bill of Rights.

    Professor Gilmore mentioned Vattel’s chapter on “NBC” is in the Constitution. WOW.

    The US Supreme Court said Vattel has been a part of our laws for over 200 years. This was 2004-2005.

    Fuller lost his argument in the Court, the same argument repeated by Morse, which again was reject by the majority. Duh. That means it is not the law. As se know, Justice Danial was not quoting Vattel on who was natural born unless you are a liar and no legal authority has other claimed otherwise other than legally ignorant birthers. No court has every said any provision of the Constitution was based upon Vattel has no one discussed him the Convention and no one cited his on citizenship. I guess you can just keep making things up. So you simply cite some professor no one has ever heard of. And why should anyone listen to him? How many modern court cases do you need to convince you you are wrong? Oh they do not count. How many modern actual scholars people have heard of? Oh, only people you cite count. I just can’t understand why you lose every case. For example:

    “Natural Born Citizenship Clause. The clause of the U.S. Constitution barring persons not born in the United States from the presidency.” Black’s Law Dictionary, Eighth edition (1999)

    “Natural Born Citizen (a person born within the jurisdiction of the United States)” Barron’s Law Dictionary (2010)

    “[t]he constitutional history, the nearly unanimous consensus of legal and constitutional scholars, and the consistent, relevant case law thus indicate that every child born in and subject to the jurisdiction of the United States (that is, not children of diplomatic personnel representing a foreign nation or military troops in hostile occupation), is a native born U.S. citizen and thus a “natural born Citizen” eligible to be President…”. Jack Maskill, Congressional Research Service Report for Congress, Qualification for President and the “Natural Born” Citizenship Eligibility Requirement, pg. 50 (2011)

    “Under the longstanding English common-law principle of jus soli, persons born within the territory of the sovereign (other than children of enemy aliens or foreign diplomats) are citizens from birth. Thus, those persons born within the United States are “natural born citizens” and eligible to be President… James C. Ho, THE HERITAGE GUIDE TO THE CONSTITUTION, pg. 190 (2005)

    “The unresolved doubt in Minor, concerning the acquisition of national citizenship of children born of foreign parents within the United States, was definitively settled in United States v. Wong Kim Ark…. Hence, the Court felt itself required to determine what was a natural-born American citizen by resorting to common law doctrines.” Arnold T. Guminski, The Constitutional Rights, Privileges, and Immunities of the American People, pg. 78 (2009)

    “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. See, e.g., Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. at 655-66.” Lawrence Tribe & Ted Olson, 154 Cong. Rec. S3645-46 (Apr. 30, 2008)

    “To summarize: a natural-born citizen of the United States, as that term is used in the Constitution of the United States, means a citizen born within the territorial limits of the United States and subject to the laws of the United States at the time of such birth. This does include children born to alien parents who are present within the territorial limits of the United States “in amity” i.e. with the consent of the United States, and subject to its laws at the time of birth.” Pinckney G. McElwee, Natural Born Citizen, Congressional Record, pg. 15875-80 (1967)

    “It is now generally assumed that the term “natural born” is synonymous with “native born…” Lawrence Freedman, An Idea Whose Time Has Come–The Curious History, Uncertain Effect, and Need for Amendment of the “Natural Born Citizen” Requirement for the Presidency, 52 St. Louis U. L.J. 137, 143 (2007)

    “United States citizens born to parents subject to United States jurisdiction in one of the fifty states are unquestionably natural born citizens… unless a child’s parents are protected by the full immunity extended to foreign diplomats and their families, or they are enemy combatants.” Sarah Helene Duggin & Mary Beth Collins, ‘Natural Born’ in the USA: The Striking Unfairness and Dangerous Ambiguity of the Constitution’s Presidential Qualifications Clause and Why We Need to Fix It, 85 B.U. L. Rev. 53, 90-91 (2005)

    “It is clear enough that native-born citizens are eligible and naturalized citizens are not.” Charles Gordon, Who Can Be President of the United States: The Unresolved Enigma, 28 MD. L. R EV. 1 (1968)

    “No one appeared to re-examine and justify Coke’s idea of the ‘natural-born citizen.’ Americans merely continued to assume that ‘birth within the allegiance’ conferred the status and its accompanied rights.” James H. Kettner, THE DEVELOPMENT OF AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP, 1608-1870, pg. 287 (U.N.C. Press 1978)

    “There is near universal agreement that all persons born within the United States are natural born citizens.” Rebekka Bonner, Who May Be President? Constitutional Reinterpretation of Article II’s ‘Natural Born’ Presidential Eligibility Clause

    “Native-born citizens are natural born by virtue of the nearly universal principle of jus soli, or citizenship of place of birth” Jill A.Pryor, The Natural-Born Citizen Clause and Presidential Eligibility: An Approach for Resolving Two Hundred Years of Uncertainty, 97 Yale L.J. 881, at 881 and n. 2 (1988)

    “Those born in the United States are natural born citizens” Gabriel J. Chin, Why Senator John McCain Cannot Be President: Eleven Months and a Hundred Yards Short of Citizenship”, 107 Mich. L. Rev. (2008).

    “Most immigration and citizenship scholars, including me, believe that the answer is that any person who is a U.S. citizen at birth is naturally a part of the political community and hence eligible to be president.” Gabriel J. Chin, Ted Cruz can be president, probably, CNN, August 13, 2013

    “Prior to the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment… [i]t was presumed that the English law of jus soli was incorporated into the law of the several former colonies and then into the Constitution” JM Medina, The Presidential Qualification Clause in This Bicentennial Year: The Need to Eliminate the Natural Born Citizen Requirement, Okla. City UL Rev., 1987

    “Natural-born citizens can acquire that status by being born in the United States, on the basis of jus soli, or by being born of a parent or parents who are citizens of the United States, on the basis of jus sanguinis.…”); William Carroll, Norman Smith, American Constitutional Rights: cases, documents, and commentary, pg. 130 (1991)

    “The requirement that the president be a “natural born” citizen implies that the framers recognized the principle of jus soli” Kermit Hall, The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States, pg. 24 (1992)

    “Americans are accustomed to the concept of automatic citizenship granted to persons born in the United States, who are called “natural-born citizens…” Joseph M. Bessette, American Justice, Volume 1‎ – Page 129 (1996)

    “Natural Born Citizen a person who acquires citizenship by virtue of being born in the United States or a US territory such as Puerto Rico or Guam.” Bill Ong Hingm, Immigration and the Law, a dictionary (1999)

    “Every person born in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction is a citizen and, of course, a natural-born citizen.” Charles Herman Pritchett, Constitutional law of the federal system (1984)

    “Not everyone can be president of the United States. According to the Constitution, presidential candidates must be at least 35 years old and born in the United States.” Bryon Giddens-White, The President and the Executive Branch, pg. 18 (2005).

    “you see that there are two types of American citizens: those who are natural born (born in the United States, or with some exception, such as being born on a US military base overseas) and naturalized…” Constantinos E. Scaros, Understanding the Constitution, pg. 56 (2010)

    “But in keeping with the nativistic tone of the debate over these clauses, and not with the Constitution’s predominant liberal republicanism, it was almost certainly the common-law criterion of place of birth that the delegates meant to install in Article II, as Madison later asserted.” Rogers Smith, Civic Ideals, pg. 130 (1997)

    “No law or court decision has yet defined the exact meaning of natural-born. Authorities assume the term applies to citizens born in the United States and its territories. But they are not sure if it also includes children born to U.S. citizens in other countries.” Thomas E. Cronin, President of the United States, in 15 THE WORLD BOOK ENCYCLOPEDIA 762, 763 (1992)

    “The provision for “natural born Citizen” probably was aimed at immigrants, although the term is so unusual as to be vague….” Michael Nelson, Constitutional Qualifications for President , PRESIDENTIAL STUDIES Q UARTERLY, Vol. XVII, No. 2,at 396 (Winter 1987),

    “But who are “natural-born citizens”? By the so-called jus soli, which comes from the common law, the term is confined to persons born on the soil of a country; and this rule isrecognized by the opening clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which declares to be citizens of the United States “all persons born or naturalized within the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” Edward S. Corwin, THE PRESIDENT, OFFICE AND POWERS, 1787-1984, at 38-39 (5th Revised ed. by Bland, Hindson,and Peltason, 1984).

    “A citizen by birth, as distinguished from a citizen who has been naturalized.” BALLENTINE’S LAW DICTIONARY, at 831 (“natural-born citizen”) (3rded. 1969),

    “Until the late nineteenth century in the United States, . . . the common law—not a statute or constitutional provision—was the source of the rule of territorial birthright citizenship. . . Polly J. Price, Natural Law and Birthright Citizenship in Calvin’s Case (1608), 9 YALE J. LAW & HUMAN. 73, 138-39 (1997)

    “It is clear, for example, that “native born citizens are eligible [for the presidency] and naturalized citizens are not.” AD Miller, Terminating the Just Not American Enough Idea: Saying Hasta La Vista to the Natural-Born-Citizen Requirement of Presidential Eligibility, Syracuse L. Rev. pg. 106, 2006

    “ There is nothing in the Constitution that would bar the dual-citizen president. Assume an American born in the United States-and thus natural born-who subsequently acquires citizenship in, say, Ireland or Italy, alternate nationalities that Americans are garnering in large numbers. That person would clearly be eligible for the presidency.” Peter Spiro, McCain’s Citizenship and Constitutional Method, Michigan Law Review, 2008

    “To cite Minor v. Happersett as the definitive statement of the meaning of the phrase “natural born citizen” is to exhibit an unfortunate lack of understanding of the Supreme Court’s 1874 decision in that case. The Minor case involved Virginia Louisa Minor’s constitutional challenge to the Missouri law that limited voting to adult males. Her unsuccessful argument was that the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of the equal protection of the laws prohibited the state of Missouri from denying women the right to vote. Ms. Minor was born in Caroline County, Virginia on March 27, 1824. Both of her parents were born in Virginia in the 1790?s, and all of her grandparents had been born in the Virginia colony. (One of her grandmothers was a cousin of President James Madison.) Consequently, the issue of whether or not she was a national born citizen had nothing to do with the case. To latch on the comments made by Chief Justice Waite in passing and to claim that those comments are somehow definitive is simply absurd. Moreover, as Prof. Fallone [sic] pointed out in an earlier comment, Waite specifically stated that it was not necessary to define natural born citizen to resolve the case at hand.” Professors J. Gordon Hylton, Marquette Law School Faculty Blog, October 14, 2009

    “The Constitution’s rule that the president be “a natural born citizen” focuses not on where a person became a citizen, but when. To be eligible, one must be born a citizen rather than naturalized at some later date.” Professor Akhil Reed Amar, Slate, February 4, 2008

    “I would read the “natural born Citizen” provision of the Constitution’s Article II to require that a President must have been “born” a citizen—regardless of whether that person acquired citizenship at birth because he or she was born in the United States or because he or she, while having been born outside the U.S., was born to U.S. parents.” Professor Michael Dorf, Dorf on Law, February 29, 2008.

    “A strong argument can be made that the Framers considered natural born to refer to a birth on U.S. soil. Indeed, Alexander Hamilton was viewed as ineligible due to his birth in the West Indies. It has often been suggested that the provision was written in part to block Hamilton by his detractors — though this may be apocryphal. It seems more likely that people like Jay were concerned with a preference among some to have a King, including some foreign princes who might rule the nation. Moreover, Hamilton was a citizen of the United States at the time of the signing of the Constitution. The assumption would likely be that the Framers intended to carry on the English view of natural born status.” Professor Jonathon Turley, February 29, 2008

    “It is well settled that the term “natural born” citizen (or subject) included not only all those born within the territorial limits of England or of the Colonies but likewise all those who were citizens at birth, wherever their birthplaces might be…..It follows necessarily from this that at the time of the adoption of the constitution the meaning in Great Britain of the words “natural born” subject was one who was born a subject whether (a) by birth in Great Britain or (b) by birth outside but of parents defined in the applicable statute. This being the meaning of the term in Great Britain it must be presumed to be the meaning intended to be given to it in the constitution.” Eustace Seligman, A Brief for Governor Romney’s Eligibility for President

    “I have no reason to doubt that President-Elect Obama was born in Hawaii, and is therefore a natural-born citizen.” Professor Eugene Volokh, December 1, 2008

    “The notion of a “natural born citizen” was likely a term of art derived from the idea of a “natural born subject” in English law-a category that most likely did not extend to persons, like Senator McCain, who were born outside sovereign territory… There is general agreement on the core of its meaning. Anyone born on American soil whose parents are citizens of the United States is a “natural born citizen.” Lawrence B. Solum, ORIGINALISM AND THE NATURAL BORN CITIZEN CLAUSE (2008). Professor Solum would update his paper to avoid any confusion from birthers adding a footnote saying “In an earlier version of this article, I used the phrase “whose parents are citizens of the United States.” Some readers have misread the original as implying that someone born of only one American parent on American soil is not a “natural born citizen.” That reading ignores the context of the original sentence, which was meant to provide a case where “natural born citizen” status was indisputable… Based on my reading of the historical sources, there is no credible case that a person born on American soil with one American parent was clearly not a “natural born citizen…”

    “Although the Constitution does not go on to define a “natural born Citizen,” the term is understood to mean a person born in the United States or born abroad to parents who are both American citizens. In Obama’s case, his father was not an American citizen. If he had been born abroad he would have been ineligible for the presidency.” Professor G. Edward White, Re-examining the Constitution’s Presidential Eligibility Clause, University of Virginia School of Law website, Aug. 20, 2009

    “What’s a “natural born citizen”? The Constitution doesn’t say, but the Framers’ understanding, combined with statutes enacted by the First Congress, indicate that the phrase means both birth abroad to American parents — in a manner regulated by federal law — and birth within the nation’s territory regardless of parental citizenship.” Ilya Shapiro, The Cato Institute, August 26, 2013  

  66. Rickey says:

    ballantine: This is another point made by the birther amateurs who pretend to be legal experts.The supreme court was asked whether a native born child of domiciled Chinese alien parents was a citizen. The court said yes because it said both the original Constitution and the 14th Amendment adopted the English common law which included, but was not limited to, native born child of domiciled Chinese alien parents. Such is all part of the holding of the case for anyone who went to law school who understand the rationale is part of the holding.No court has ever stated that parents need to be domiciled or citizens and saying so is simply a lie or a statement by idiots uneducated in law pretending that their own personal interpretation somehow matter. Children of temporary residents have been treated as citizens since Wong Kim Ark as everyone who can read English understand what the decision says.

    Thank you, Ballantine, You expressed it far better than i did.

  67. Adrien Nash says:

    Wow! I’ve never seen such a broad compendium of shear ignorance and idiocy as Ballentine has assembled and shared. Every conclusion stated is framed as an opinion and nothing more… because that is what they all are. Ignorant assumptions of men “informed” by ignorant instructors and “authorities” who were instructed by ignorant men before them, and on back for generations and generations.

    It does not matter how long an erroneous opinion is held. It is wrong regardless, so the juvenile resort to the authority of “authorities” is nothing more than a great way to find yourself believing that bleeding George Washington with leeches is the best medical treatment possible. Opinions are irrelevant to what the facts actually are. Truth stands alone, even in the dark. Facts are not dependent on human awareness or acceptance. They are acknowledged only when light is shined on them. Otherwise they are missed, and good-sounding falsehood is substituted.

    “The Constitution’s rule that the president be “a natural born citizen” focuses not on where a person became a citizen, but when. To be eligible, one must be born a citizen rather than naturalized at some later date.” Professor Akhil Reed Amar, Slate, February 4, 2008

    More ignorance. It is not focused on where or when, but how. How did one become a citizen? By natural membership or by legal allowance? Is their membership natural or artificial? Is it man-made via policy, legal mandate, court opinion, or consensus view? -or is it by natural *inheritance* of one’s political nature?

    Parents give birth to beings just like themselves, -same species, race, ethnic and political membership. That is what “natural” means and has always and only meant. It means nothing else. All of the lofty authoritative quotes should have the word “natural” removed from them and then they would make sense as regards the treasure that is American Citizenship. NOT *natural* citizenship.

    “~which normal person would insist that “Only children whose parents are members of the club may use the swimming pool” means that BOTH parents must be club members? No one.”

    That logic is indefensible. but how about this: “Only children who are natural members of the club may have access to the key to the entire facility.”
    Only a statement like that is analogous to natural citizenship. A natural member of the club could hypothetically be the off-spring of parents that purchased an everlasting family membership that could be passed along to subsequent generations.
    The swimming pool is open to ALL members, but the Presidency is not, -otherwise it would read like the 14th Amendment: “All persons born in the United States… are eligible to the office of the President.” But instead, it reads just the opposite: NO PERSON,…EXCEPT… -except what? a citizen?, a born citizen? NO. a “natural” born citizen.

    That means they are citizens by nature, -not by birth place nor birth time. They are citizens by the membership derived from their blood relationship to citizen parents. They are those predestined to be citizens from conception because of the innate and unalienable right of American sovereign citizens to pass their national membership on to their progeny.

    Either we possess that right and are the sovereigns of our government, -or the government is sovereign and we are its subjects. Both views are wide-spread, but only one of them is the American view. The other is a totalitarian statist view. But people don’t realize that fact and thus hold it without thinking. It’s about time people started to think deeper than the superficial opinions of ignorant authorities. People need to start rethinking some of their most fundamental assumptions about the origin of nationality. \

    Law vs Nature. Legal vs Natural. Blood vs Borders. Natural vs Artificial. Both determine citizenship, even *from* birth, but only one is the origin of citizenship BY birth. Those who are citizens by birth comprise about 96% of the population. Only they are eligible to lead the American nation.

  68. That’s funny because your comment is a poster child for your complaint against Ballantine.

    What I found was that Ballantine’s argument is an appeal to authority, which is a valid argument form. Yours in an appeal to what is self-evident inside your head, which is not a valid argument form.

    I am well aware of your opinions and curious notions, but I do not share them and you have shown no reason for me to change my mind. You’ll never succeed in carrying on a useful discussion until you understand that what is self-evident to you may be completely wrong in the views of someone else. Your argument only works when both sides agree on what is “self-evident” and that is not the case here.

    You might even think in your own mind that you scored some mighty victory over Ballantine, but in my mind, you made a silly and vacuous response that left you farther in the hole than when you started.

    Adrien Nash: Wow! I’ve never seen such a broad compendium of shear ignorance and idiocy as Ballentine has assembled and shared. Every conclusion stated is framed as an opinion and nothing more

  69. Ark’s parents had returned to China.

    john: That is quite true. It one of the essential facts of the WKA case, the fact that parents were permanent residents. (Obots ignore it because Obama Sr. was not a permanent resident) It is probably one of the reason the WKA court ruled in WKA’s favor.

  70. Andrew Vrba, PmG says:

    Adrien Nash:
    -Long winded, incorrect rant-

    Poor Neo-Nazi, you’re just mad that you’ve wasted six years of your life, and Obama is still President.

  71. ballantine says:

    Adrien Nash:
    Wow!I’ve never seen such a broad compendium of shear ignorance and idiocy as Ballentine has assembled and shared.Every conclusion stated is framed as an opinion and nothing more… because that is what they all are.Ignorant assumptions of men “informed” by ignorant instructors and “authorities” who were instructed by ignorant men before them, and on back for generations and generations.

    Someone cited the opinion of a professor and I showed what is obviously the opinion of the legal community at large. Such would be relevant in any court case on the subject. I, of course, can also cite actual case law and executive opinions which are the actual law, not opinion. Again, who was treated as a citizen and who was not is a matter of historical fact that can be shown by what our courts and government did. The fact that you have your own theory of citizenship that has never been followed by the United States does not alter those facts. For the multitude of children of citizens born overseas who were never treated as citizens by the United States, I am sure they will feel better that a no body on the internet thinks they were citizens based upon what he thinks is self-evident. Doesn’t change the fact that to this day there is no jus sanguinis in the US outside of statutes that can be repealed at any time. Such are the facts of the real world. The United States, like all nations, is free to change its citizenship laws at any time to exclude anyone it wants. Doesn’t matter if such law comports with your self-evident theories. Do you really not understand this after all this time?

  72. Notorial Dissent says:

    Poor Nash, still hasn’t figured out that his personal opinion is just that, and that in the grand scheme of things carries exactly no weight with the rest of the real world.

    As Doc points out, Ballantine’s statements are largely an appeal to authority, but that is, in the final analysis, how we determine things in the real world. In this particular case the authorities appealed to all agree that Nash’s personal opinion, is just that, and otherwise not worth any further attention, as fact and reality disagree in toto with him and his presumptions. In other words, more Nash, YAWN!!!!

  73. Thomas Brown says:

    “…shear ignorance…” What is that, Adrien? Running with scissors?

    Your opinion means nothing. The definitions established in law and practice are what counts.

    You might claim that taxation is a type of theft, therefore illegal. U.S. law does not define “theft” that way. Therefore you would be wrong.

    Natural born citizen has been established to mean citizen at birth. Could that change? Sure. Just like some day taxes could be considered theft.

    But probably not. And your idiot theories will never be embraced either. So you can just go on and continue to pound sand, for all the difference it’ll make.

  74. The Magic M (not logged in) says:

    Adrien Nash: Ignorant assumptions of men “informed” by ignorant instructors and “authorities” who were instructed by ignorant men before them, and on back for generations and generations.

    Your particular type of conspiracy theory (that the “real truth” lies somewhere in 1800 and has been deliberately obfuscated for more than two centuries) is even less likely to sway anyone than the “Obama had a time machine” theory.

    Basically you are advocating a Stalinist view – “re-education” of the people until they see things your way.

  75. Adrien Nash says:

    “The definitions established in law and practice are what counts.” I have never disagreed with that. But the two need to be separated. Practice is one thing and it might not be following the law. The accepted view of what the law is may not be following the actual meaning of the law. That is very common because of human bias.

    I have never engaged in the contest of disputing what the consensus opinion is because it is irrelevant to what the truth of the matter is. Opinions, in law as in science, do not determine Fact. It stands as the truth whether nor not anybody recognizes it.

    What I’ve discovered and pointed out are facts that are completely counter to conventional thinking and status quo concepts. That is why I don’t rely on the opinions of men because they do not determine the meaning of English words. The English language does that, not lawyers.
    Sooner or later they always distort the meaning of words in order to serve their selfish clients, and that has been going on forever.
    All angles of ambiguity are exploited for some party’s benefit, and often the precedent set by such error becomes institutionalized. That is what has happened with concepts of nationality and its origins.

    If you blow away all of the smoke of legal thinking and then just look at what is left, what you will see is only natural relationships. Those relationship are the bedrock of natural nations.
    America was almost such a nation, but had a gigantic unnatural element in its midst which was slavery. Otherwise, the Americans had one language, history, tradition, and law. But they also had thirteen separate governments that were sovereign, -with 13 separate Constitutions, histories, and identities. Thus there were thirteen separate countries to which one could belong as a member, but that fact has been entirely forgotten.

    A State citizen was not the same as a national citizen because one could be one without being the other, which was a very unsettled issue that lumbered along confusingly until the Wong opinion which declared the common law of the States to also be the common law of the nation as a whole.
    That made the status of the freed slaves clear, as well as that of children born of alien immigrants.
    But it did NOT make clear in any way that native-born children of NON-immigrants were also American citizens for some completely unexplainable reason.
    Without domicile a foreigner is not fully subject to US jurisdiction and cannot be conscripted into the military nor tried for treason, so children born to him were whatever he was since they inherited his nationality alone.

    That is the truth from the standpoint of the principles involved, not from that of the legal views of the establishment. It does not follow the actual ruling of the high court, nor the principles it based its opinion on. So as a result, we have alien children who are not truly Americans except by the erroneous consensus viewpoint, and Americans who are not literally *natural* Americans because their citizenship is dependent on a legal relationship and not a natural one, but no one is aware of the difference. Worse still is that no one really knows that they don’t know and so they don’t care. It’s nice to hope that they will, but it seems that would take an unlikely miracle.

  76. So if your notions of what is correct are not a consensus view, and they are not judicial precedent, and they are not shared by authorities, in what sense are they valid for anyone but yourself and people, for whatever reason, already agree with you?

    You seem to be trying to make an argument or convince someone of your viewpoint, but you are not using anything in the argument that anyone else here sees as valid. You might as well pile up three blocks of wood and say, “isn’t she sexy?”

    I remember when I was taking a Philosophy of Science class in college, I got into an argument with my professor about something I thought was obvious and after a time of failing to convince him, I said something like “it’s true because it just is!” I immediately realized what I had said, calmed my self down, marshalled a real argument and won the point. I recount that story so say that “it just is” is not an argument.

    My view is that the correct interpretation of what the constitution means is what was understood by the persons who ratified it. One might argue that it’s interpretation if flexible enough to evolve along with American society. I am not willing to agree that your idiosyncratic opinions have any relevance.

    I have one citation to add, not necessarily as an authority, but for the ideas it contains. It shows why your approach is flawed (and FYI it’s from Chief Justice Taft in Ex Parte Grossman):

    The language of the Constitution cannot be interpreted safely except by reference to the common law and to British institutions as they were when the instrument was framed and adopted. The statesmen and lawyers of the Convention who submitted it to the ratification of the Conventions of the thirteen States were born and brought up in the atmosphere of the common law, and thought and spoke in its vocabulary. They were familiar with other forms of government, recent and ancient, and indicated in their discussions earnest study and consideration of many of them, but when they came to put their conclusions into the form of fundamental law in a compact draft, they expressed them in terms of the common law, confident that they could be shortly and easily understood.

    Adrien Nash: If you blow away all of the smoke of legal thinking and then just look at what is left, what you will see is only natural relationships. Those relationship are the bedrock of natural nations.

  77. The Magic M (not logged in) says:

    Adrien Nash: Those relationship are the bedrock of natural nations.

    There is nothing “natural” about citizenship or “nations”, it’s a man-made construct.

    Claiming of various things to be “natural” is often the last resort of people like you who find that everything else (majority opinion, experts, history etc.) disagrees with them. As if that magically made your personal opinion some sort of divine law.

    (I always point to people who simultaneously claim that homosexuality is “not natural”, yet when pointed to the animal kingdom and homosexuality, claim that “we are not animals” and therefore nature somehow isn’t authoritative again.)

    Citizenship and nations are the results of arbitrary drawings on maps and arbitrary collections of man-made rules (aka laws) that have no basis in nature itself (and no, a lion pride is not a “natural” example of a “nation” with “citizens”).

    So maybe what you are trying to say is that even though “nation” is a man-made construct, “citizenship” is something natural (in the sense of: obvious) with regard to that construct? Well, obviously nations in the entire world have different concepts of citizenship (and even different classes thereof), that hardly supports the argument that any specific concept is “natural”.

  78. The Magic M (not logged in) says:

    Adrien Nash: A State citizen was not the same as a national citizen because one could be one without being the other, which was a very unsettled issue that lumbered along confusingly until the Wong opinion

    So now we’re at “even the Founders had no idea what kind of citizenship they were talking about”? Oh wise Messiah Nash, it’s so good you were born to explain to the Founders they created something they didn’t understand and to clear up all the errors that these miserable fools made. It’s really a miracle the US even survived a year with all this incoherent babble about “citizen of the United States” in the Constertooshen.

  79. Lupin says:

    Adrien Nash: The swimming pool is open to ALL members, but the Presidency is not, -otherwise it would read like the 14th Amendment: “All persons born in the United States… are eligible to the office of the President.” But instead, it reads just the opposite: NO PERSON,…EXCEPT… -except what? a citizen?, a born citizen? NO. a “natural” born citizen.

    That means they are citizens by nature, -not by birth place nor birth time. They are citizens by the membership derived from their blood relationship to citizen parents. They are those predestined to be citizens from conception because of the innate and unalienable right of American sovereign citizens to pass their national membership on to their progeny.

    I found this part of Mr., Nash’s rant vaguely interesting because it is sort of a paraphrase what Vattel was writing about.

    Mr. Nash equates Vattel’s “naturels” with “natural-born citizen”, which is arguable, but I’ll let that point stand for the sake of the argument.

    Mr. Nash, you do understand that when Vattel wrote that such status was indeed transmitted by blood, he specified that it was through the FATHER?

    There was NEVER any question that both parents had to be citizens, quite the contrary.

    That was how things stood then.You might be interested to know that this rule was amended in the mid-19th century to make it clear that the MOTHER could transmit citizenship if the child was born out of wedlock.

    Then it was finally updated in the 20th century to place mother and father on equal footing in the eyes of the law.

    At no point there was ever a question of both parents having to be citizens.

    If you wish to apply modern-day Vattelism to President Obama, then he is clearly a natural-born citizen through his mother.

    So I see no point to your argument.

  80. Ah, another disciple of Bob Gard!

    The Magic M (not logged in): So now we’re at “even the Founders had no idea what kind of citizenship they were talking about”?

  81. Arthur says:

    At the Adrien Nash Skool of Law, all tests begin with the phrase, “That means . . . ” and the instructions are, “Write down whatever nonsense you can come up with. Extra points for ignoring actual law.”

  82. Of course Nash, being a birther, would quickly point out that statutes in place at the time prevented Stanley Ann from transmitting her citizenship in 1961. Birthers cite law when it suits them and ignore law and jurisprudence when it doesn’t.

    Lupin: If you wish to apply modern-day Vattelism to President Obama, then he is clearly a natural-born citizen through his mother.

    So I see no point to your argument.

  83. John Reilly says:

    Ah, but consensus is important. Especially a consensus that includes the Supreme Court, the House and the Senate, and hundreds of judges. Mr. Nash ignores the fact that despite the moral certainty he has about his view of the law, not a single member of Congress objected to Pres. Obama when it was time to do so, and not a single member of the House has introduced an impeachment motion. I’ve known about Pres. Obama’s foreign father since 2004.

  84. Dave B. says:

    Adrien stating his credentials over at the Western Free Press:

    “I’ve written well over a quarter million words or so illuminating the meaning of those three simple common English words but you have still not even come to the starting line.”

    http://www.westernfreepress.com/2014/03/13/the-top-ten-birther-arguments-against-ted-cruz-and-why-they-are-completely-wrong/?hubRefSrc=email#lf_comment=267016052

    His comment that follows that one is a bit…revealing, too.

    Arthur:
    At the Adrien Nash Skool of Law, all tests begin with the phrase, “That means . . . ” and the instructions are, “Write down whatever nonsense you can come up with. Extra points for ignoring actual law.”

  85. Arthur says:

    Dave B.: Adrien stating his credentials over at the Western Free Press:

    Adrien is self-taught, so we can blame his teacher for his lack of credentials.

  86. Thomas Brown says:

    Bear in mind, Nash, that proponents of slavery called it “the natural order.” That whites were “naturally” superior to blacks.

    You are saying nothing different about NBCship, and your ideas are equally bankrupt.

  87. Lupin says:

    Reality Check:
    Of course Nash, being a birther, would quickly point out that statutes in place at the time prevented Stanley Ann from transmitting her citizenship in 1961. Birthers cite law when it suits them and ignore law and jurisprudence when it doesn’t.

    What statutes in existence in 1961 discriminating between father and mother in the matter of transmission of citizenship could Nash cite?

    Mr. Nash, I have just demonstrated that, by using your own, let’s call it Vattelist or jus sanguinis-based “logic”, Mr Obama is indeed a natural-born citizen. Do you have any law or statute that would contradict that?

  88. Lupin says:

    Gerbil Report at it again like a scratched record:

    http://www.birtherreport.com/2015/02/unearthed-does-this-further-prove.html

    They will never ever understand that it doesn’t even matter whether Vattel was influential or not on your founding fathers.

    He simply did NOT write that you had to have two parents citizens; they keep repeating that again and again, but it’s simply NOT THERE.

    sigh.

  89. I left this reply to the article:

    It is interesting that the article shows the citation (that the careless reader might mistakenly think came from founder James Monroe) large that says:

    “So far as Mr. Vattel states the doctrine on the subject of citizenship in this section he states it correctly, but there are other questions on this subject, not noticed by him, which it would be well to state. These have reference to the following:”

    And that citation is followed by an image TOO SMALL TO READ, but which one really ought to read says:

    “[Mr. Vattel failed to notice] that children of foreigners born here are American citizens if they elect to declare themselves so.”

    Read more at http://www.birtherreport.com/2015/02/unearthed-does-this-further-prove.html#QdtcxWkUK12cjOjX.99

    Lupin: Gerbil Report at it again like a scratched record:

    http://www.birtherreport.com/2015/02/unearthed-does-this-further-prove.html

  90. The former rules required that “the paternity of the child had been established by legitimation prior to the child reaching the age of 21” in the case of a child born to a US Father out of wedlock. This is not a requirement for US mothers.

    Nit, meet pick.

    Lupin: What statutes in existence in 1961 discriminating between father and mother in the matter of transmission of citizenship could Nash cite?

  91. ballantine says:

    Adrien Nash:

    I have never engaged in the contest of disputing what the consensus opinion is because it is irrelevant to what the truth of the matter is.Opinions, in law as in science, do not determine Fact.It stands as the truth whether nor not anybody recognizes it.

    And here is you basic problem. Law isn’t about truth. Nations can write any law they want. There is no over-riding devine law that supersedes our laws. A nation can define citizenship anyway it wants and such definition will be a fact.

    But it did NOT make clear in any way that native-born children of NON-immigrants were also American citizens for some completely unexplainable reason.
    Without domicile a foreigner is not fully subject to US jurisdiction and cannot be conscripted into the military nor tried for treason, so children born to him were whatever he was since they inherited his nationality alone.

    Your other problem is you are incapable of admitting you are wrong no matter how many times you are shown. A common problem in the birther world. The amendment doesn’t say “fully subject” but “subject” and even a child know any visitor to the US is subject to its laws. Of course, it is an undisputed principle of international law following by all nations and stated repeatedly by our Supreme Court that all visitors are in fact fully subject to the absolute jurisdiction of the US. I have shown you citation after citation, but you don’t care about undisputed principles followed by all nations when you think you have some devine truth in you head. Unfortunately, no one cares about your devine truth.

    And like so many amateurs pretending to be legal experts, you simply insist that you can read and understand case law when you can’t. No court has ever said one needed to be domiciled. WKA said they adopted the common law which included domiciles aliens. It is a lie to say it said it was a requirement. Indeed, the notion that temporary residents should be excluded came up in the debates on the 14th Amendment and was rejected. No one even argued the point.

    Now I can understand that excluding temporary residents might make sense to certain people from a policy standpoint. However, it is not supported by the plain language or the legislative history of the amendment nor our court precedents.

  92. Suranis says:

    On Fogbow had a bit of a running “debate” with TJ McCann, then posting as “Lbert Born”. He typically threw up that such and such said something, and would go off and actually read then and come back and show they said the opposite. In one long exchange found that Vattel has said, flat out that despite his laws being described as Natural Laws… he sad that in all cases THE LOCAL LAWS APPLIED.

    Ths means, Birthers, that Vattel himself said that if Amercan laws say that children born on soil were NBCs, then it did not matter a damn what his book said, they were.

    This resulted in him becoming increasingly hysterical as he claimed he had read and understood all of Vattel, so he was forced to insert different meanings to words claiming that based on other sections of Vattel that he was right, which became more and more ludicrous as I found passage after passage saying otherwise.

    I’m lazy at the moment but you can look up my posts on this thread http://thefogbow.com/forum/topic/7503-lima-bravo-and-the-fake-imaginary-two-citizen-parents-rule/

  93. ballantine says:

    Just went back and found this. I had pointed out that pretty much everyone involved in the writing and adoption of the 14th Amendment said he was wrong. Of course, Adrien just replied that they all were wrong or stupid as, in his view, it doesn’t matter what the people who wrote and adopted the amendment thought. He thinks his divinely inspired vision of true citizenship is all that matters. Seriously, that is what he thinks.

    It is one thing to argue that the law should be changed and to make a rational argue to change the law. To think one’s own personal view, unsupported by history, is actually the law is delusional. Anyway, enjoy the delusional rantings of Adrien that Supreme Court opinions and the intentions of the people who wrote and adopted the 14th Amendment should not count if they disagree with him.

    https://h2ooflife.wordpress.com/2013/07/29/native-birth-as-u-s-law/

  94. Arthur B. says:

    Adrien Nash: That is why I don’t rely on the opinions of men because they do not determine the meaning of English words.

    Unless, of course, the man in question is Adrien Nash, who came to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men.

  95. Adrien Nash says:

    “I am not willing to agree that your idiosyncratic opinions have any relevance..”
    “you are not using anything in the argument that anyone else here sees as valid.”

    You used terms that have no meaning (“valid”, “relevance”) since they were thrown in with no context. Valid or relevant in what sense? In the legal sense? I do not contest what is legally valid, only what is actually true.

    What is factual is not necessarily what is legally valid when no one is aware of what the truth actually is. In the legal realm the truth is not supreme since legal opinion that becomes set in cement is what is supreme, until overthrown by the SCOTUS, -as happened with the long established and accepted Bancroft treaties and their unequal treatment of citizens.
    In the legal arena, the truth may be invalid, while in the truth arena what is legally valid may be invalid because it is based on an unrecognized error of logic. The history of scientific and medical discovery is a history of what was not valid replacing entirely all that which previously was viewed as valid.

    “but when they came to put their conclusions into the form of fundamental law in a compact draft, they expressed them in terms of the common law.”
    Be wary of generalized statements since they omit mention of exceptions. There is nothing in British common law or statutory law that mandates freedom of religion or ownership of weapons, or any number of other things that the Americans embraced and adopted as their fundamental rights. They went far outside of the box of British law in various areas, principally in the democratic form of government without a monarch and his rights, but also in the area of nationality. Britain held to the doctrine of perpetual allegiance, and submission to the Church of England and its head, (the king) while the Americans dumped that legally valid system and adopted no defined system in its place.

    The new constitutions of the States included natural membership as well as common law membership and adoption of foreigners via naturalization. But no principle was delineated as “the” American way or principle. That is why there was State vs Federal conflict and unresolved confusion until the Wong opinion. But Wong gave rise to new confusion.

    Instead of being confused about whether or not common law state citizens were also citizens of the national government or nation (which would have required accepting the rejected odious status of dual citizenship or allegiance), the new confusion was about whether or not those born of foreigners in America were common law citizens or foreigners like their fathers.
    I used the word foreigners instead of aliens to distinguish the difference between those who were totally foreign with their domicile still set in their home country though temporarily present in the U.S., and those who were a part of American society by permanent domicile in the U.S.

    They were less foreign because America was then their home. They were fully subject to the authority or jurisdiction of Washington and could be drafted and tried for treason because they were fellow inhabitants of the country. Foreign visitors were not and could not since they were not co-responsible for the preservation of the nation.

    They remained subject to their home government and that was the view of both governments. So a child born to them in America was not born subject to U.S. jurisdiction and thus was not born as an American by the actual principle involved. Since that principle went unrecognized by those who administered and interpreted what the law or judicial opinion meant, one of two possibilities was chosen but the one chosen was the wrong one, -chosen without even recognizing the ambiguity that they were blind to and which lead them astray. Their blindness may have been innocent or it may have been willful.
    I favor innocent, i.e. in ignorance. After all, neither they nor any of their legal mentors, nor respected legal authors had ever written about or come across a clear and irrefutable illumination of the principles involved. I have certainly never learned of any besides the dissertation of David Ramsay. [I wrote a lengthy exposition interspersed within my transcription of his dissertation, titled: The David Ramsay Dissertation Revelation. It truly is a revelation.]

  96. Adrien Nash says:

    “Citizenship and nations are the results of arbitrary drawings on maps and arbitrary collections of man-made rules”
    “There is nothing “natural” about citizenship or “nations”, it’s a man-made construct.”

    That degree of ignorance is frightening. Nothing fundamental about natural nations is man-made. That is totally true once a strong leader has subdued and united all of a common people into one country and kingdom. Natural nations are composed of a single people with a single language, along with a common history, tradition, and probably religion. One thinks of Japan and how singularly uniform its people are. Its borders were not drawn by men. It has almost zero immigration which makes it extremely homogenous. That is what a natural clan, tribe, or country looks like. Why do I have to point out the obvious? Have you never taken a Sociological Anthropology course?

    The bedrock of all primal associations is blood relatedness, followed by language, then culture and religion. A single people will eventually form a single nation. Like Japan, Germany, England, France, Spain, the United States, etc. What their peoples have in common with each other is not law-made or power-made but naturally made or socially made.
    Countries are natural unions or assemblages of related peoples. The Hawaiian Islands were once similar to a country since they were populated by a single ethnic group. But in time they became a nation under one conquering ruler. Nations are man-made; by choice or by force; like Iraq or Yugoslavia, but countries are not.

    Some such artificial unions eventually dissolve, as have ones that are natural but with deep differences, like the American nation (because of slavery) but the countries that comprise them never dissolve. They only vanish due to genocide or natural catastrophe.
    Membership in countries is natural membership as families grow and the population increases. No permission of government is required for new born members to be…. acknowledged, embraced, understood to be members also.

    When a country becomes a nation under law, then laws are needed for making allowance for outsiders to be accepted as new members. Being as they were born and raised as outsiders, they have no natural right to membership in a group that is not naturally their own, hence the need for laws to be formulated, and processes adopted to allow them to join and assimilate.
    Those laws are not natural laws but are man-made or artificial membership avenues for outsiders to take. But those laws have no bearing on those who are the natural members of the country. They are the ones who are the body of the country and nation, and it is they who give their permission for others to join them, or not, via the laws they make.

    But those laws do not pertain to they who made them. Only to outsiders and “half-bloods”.
    If you allow guests to stay in your home, you will have rules for them which will include punishment for violation, like kicking them out of the house. But such rules do not pertain to you since, even if you break your own rules, you are not going to kick yourself out of your own home. You are the sovereign, not the guest, so your rules are for them and not yourself. Same with citizenship law. It exists for others, not for us.

    That is why Congress has no authority over the citizenship of citizens and their children. It is not the sovereign. We are, and our rights go with us everywhere in our land and outside of our land if a child is born to us beyond our borders. It still belongs to us, and we still belong to America, and thus through us they do also since they are a part of us.
    But understand that “us” only means American parentS, not a single American parent alone. The right belongs only to couples since the only alternative results in “unnatural” “half-blood” children who are the off-spring of two cultures and two nations with two governments (and armies) with competing allegiances.

  97. Adrien Nash says:

    Arthur B.: Unless, of course, the man in question is Adrien Nash, who came to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men.

    You must be confusing me with Leo Donofrio. (very interesting biography, glad to have seen the shared link, I might have to use it to disabuse his die-hard devotees of just how unreliable his thinking can be. -haven’t had any noticeable luck with that so far, especially with the Apuzzians. They are beyond all reason no matter how many times and ways you explain simple facts to them. They won’t respond. Wait a minute… that’s the same sort of response I get here to what I’ve shared. But seriously, I do have a bit of a superior “power” in that all my life I’ve been extra-ordinarily perceptive of logic errors, like when something just doesn’t add up. Even if everyone agrees, and always has, that 2+3+4= 8 28/32 I notice that something is not right. It is almost right, it’s really, really close, so why split hairs? The difference is unimportant, not relevant, not valid. Just ignore it. Sorry, can’t do.

  98. Adrien Nash says:

    Lupin wrote: “Mr. Nash equates Vattel’s “naturels” with “natural-born citizen”, which is arguable,”

    Either his memory is confused or his thinking is. Maybe both. I have never equated “naturels” with natural-born citizen, which itself is a term that I’ve explained has no place in constitutional interpretation since it is purely a British term of legal artifice.

    The American term has NO HYPHEN because it is a term of natural law as described by common English words which have only a coincidental relationship to the British term. Otherwise I would not have had to author the hundreds of thousands of words and sentences that I have written. My life would be in a whole different place due solely to the presence of a hyphen which in fact does not exist in the constitutional concept expressed in Art. 2, Sec. 1

    That would have changed everything, and it does change everything being as it is, and always was, absent. Hyphens mean something very real, as I illuminated in an entire exposition some time back. They connect connected words. Normal words are not connected together, nor are two adjectives defining a single noun.

    A natural citizen. A born citizen. A wise man. An old man. A wise old man. NOT a wise-old man. There is no such term as wise-old. And in the same vein, there is and never has been such a term as natural-born. Both adjectives define their noun, NOT each other. Hence the fallacy of using British legal terminology to define an American term based on a natural concept.
    I know… everyone in US history has made that “mistake”. It does not make them correct just because many “authorities” agree to a mistaken impression. Their authority does not translate into infallibility or correctness. Does any want to argue that it does?

    As for “les naturels ou les indigenes”, I assume that the French had a habit of turning adjectives into nouns as a verbal short-cut. “The naturals” would have to refer to the natural inhabitants or natural members, and “the indigenous” to indigenous people, or natives.
    “Natural born citizen” has no connection to Vattel whatsoever. When he wrote in the 1850s, one can assume that there was little or no talk about national citizens since everyone in the world was a national subject. The only citizens were those comprising the recognized membership of cities. Someone like Locke may have been an exception, but I haven’t read his writing since there has been no time.

  99. Adrien Nash says:

    “Author: Thomas Brown Comment:
    Bear in mind, Nash, that proponents of slavery called it “the natural order.” That whites were “naturally” superior to blacks.”

    Correct. But if you had read my exposition before the latest one, you would have discovered the war between natural law and natural rights. I shine a lot of light on the subject of the difference. The natural order refers to the order of nature; The strong overpowering and dominating the weak.
    Natural rights refers to the order of Man. One’s natural Rights are highly subject to assault under the order of natural law. One is of the animal and demonic realm while the other is of the human and divine realm.

    Animals are not a part of that order, but aggressors make humans a part of the animal order as a justification for dominating or killing them. They have no spiritual consciousness. Everything is about power and selfishness. Conscience? What’s that? Who needs one? Society can get along with people who have no conscience, right? Visit a country jail or prison and it will disabuse you of that idea. Two words: Mad Max.

    The War Between the States was a war between the natural order (with its superior and inferior stratification), and the Human order with its natural rights bestowed by a creator who did not create humans of different qualities, but as equals since there is only one parental origin of the human race.
    Can one sibling be more equal than his twin? Hardly. So everyone’s rights are dependent completely on a source that is immutable and unquestionable, and that would be the concept of equality as a result of creation by “the Almighty”.

    No creation? Then no equality since there would be no basis for it. All of the rights that men claim and exercise and hold dear are dependent on their having an unquestionable origin, even if one does not believe in that origin. Thus it is very dangerous to attack that origin and seek to invalidate it because it is your only philosophical protection against devolving back to the law of the jungle, aka, the natural order in which you end up the slave under a taskmaster with no conscience. That movie “Unbroken” was all about that dynamic. No one would want to end up on the short end of that stick.

  100. SvenMagnussen says:

    John Reilly… not a single member of Congress objected to Pres. Obama when it was time to do so, and not a single member of the House has introduced an impeachment motion.

    The will of the majority of voters cannot be denied even if the President is ineligbile. This is reinforced by the fact the natural born citizenship requirement is undefined and subject to debate.

    Congress is limited in determining the qualifications of the President-elect. Congress is discharged with the duty of observing the unsealing of the envelopes containing the votes of the members of the Electoral college and hearing the vote count read aloud. There are no provisions for Congress to hold hearings, call witnesses or subpoena U.S. federal documents to determine the qualifications of the President-elect prior to the reading of the Electoral college votes. Congress does not have authority to punish or overturn a faithless Electoral college voter. Congress is limited to objecting to an inaccurate reading and counting of the Electoral college votes. Even then, an objection is limited to two hours of debate before a vote occurs to accept the vote count that had been read aloud.

    The Founding Fathers did not intend for a minority of voters to prevent a majority of voters from electing
    an ineligible President. The Founding Fathers did intend for the minorty of voters to use the Eligibility Clause to raise objectilons and seek immunity from the actions of the usurper after the usurper has taken office. After the usurper negatively impacts a minority voter who objects to an ineligible President, the minority voter will have a discrete, particularized injury providing them with standing to sue for relief.

  101. Dave B. says:

    And I bet if you concentrated really, really hard you could…FLY!!!!! Fly, Adrien, fly! Go on, find a window and give it a try! Look– up in the sky– it’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s SUPERADRIEN!
    Don’t forget to count your words here to add to your total of well over a quarter million words or so illuminating the meaning of those three simple common English words, because that’s about all the significance they’ll ever have, and if you’re not keeping score, nobody else will!

    Adrien Nash: But seriously, I do have a bit of a superior “power” in that all my life I’ve been extra-ordinarily perceptive of logic errors, like when something just doesn’t add up.

  102. Adrien Nash says:

    RC wrote: “What statutes in existence in 1961 discriminating between father and mother in the matter of transmission of citizenship could Nash cite?
    Mr. Nash, I have just demonstrated that, by using your own, let’s call it Vattelist or jus sanguinis-based “logic”, Mr Obama is indeed a natural-born citizen. Do you have any law or statute that would contradict that?”

    ~You must be hitting the bottle or something. You demonstrated nothing. Where is what you claim to have demonstrated? Let’s NOT call it Vattelist or jus sanguinis-based “logic”. Let’s just call it what it is: Logic. So far, in all the years that I’ve been sharing the facts with both sides of the issue, no one has attempted to dispute the facts or logic that I’ve presented. They just reject or refute everything outright but without quoting and logically refuting “my facts” and logical conclusions.
    That tells me that they have no come-back and no facts to support their views, only the opinions of others like them who happened to have or had a position of authority. I, unlike Obama, bow to no man’s authority unless it is factual and flawlessly logical.

    Have you seen me quoting a slew of opinions as do the birthers and obots? I’d rather ignore everything written after the founders’ generation since it was not present to have any impact on what the eligibility words meant when written.

    Those words were words of discrimination, of exclusion, NOT inclusion. But that degree of exclusion was not allowed to stand in American law because it disenfranchised probably tens of thousands of Americans who happened to have been born before their fathers were allowed or able to naturalize. That did not seem fair nor acceptable to a large number of people, maybe even the majority in 1795, and so that language in the 1790 act which demonstrated that presidential eligibility was via patrilineal descent had to be excised from public view and public law. That way no one was offended because it left the issue vague and seemingly undecided.

    Here’s how you show that your thinking is totally in a fog: “in the matter of transmission of citizenship”.
    There you have it. “citizenship” is one thing. Natural citizenship is another. Why does your simpleton mind confuse the two? To show that one is a citizen *from* birth is almost unrelated to showing that one is a natural citizen *by* birth.

    If your mind was not so deeply biased and your misconceptions so deeply entrenched you would remember that fact after all of these years of I and others pointing it out to you. But I guess old dogs just can’t learn new things.

  103. Adrien Nash says:

    Author: Lupin
    Comment: “They will never ever understand that it doesn’t even matter whether Vattel was influential or not on your founding fathers.
    He simply did NOT write that you had to have two parents citizens; they keep repeating that again and again, but it’s simply NOT THERE. sigh.”

    Your frustration is wholly justified. Personally, I’m essentially beyond frustrated and into Living Dead territory. The Vattelists are to you what the Vattelist AND the obots and common law citizenship are to me. They are simply willingly blind to the difference. It’s the power of dogmatic certainty. Like Mark Twain said, “it’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they’ve been fooled.”

  104. There was no “Stanley” Anne prior to 1985, RC. How much do they pay you to lie?

    Reality Check:
    Of course Nash, being a birther, would quickly point out that statutes in place at the time prevented Stanley Ann from transmitting her citizenship in 1961. Birthers cite law when it suits them and ignore law and jurisprudence when it doesn’t.

  105. Adrien Nash says:

    Lupin: “What statutes in existence in 1961 discriminating between father and mother in the matter of transmission of citizenship could Nash cite?”

    I believe that would be the Naturalization Act of 1952. Under US law, the citizenship of children born of American mothers overseas was dependent on them having lived in the US for 5 years after the age of 14. I can’t recall if it mentions only the mothers or simply the American parent.

    What must be considered is the fact that a child of mixed parentage born in the US was not under congressional statute but under the Wong opinion and the A.G. interpretation of it. If born in Hawaii, Obama had no connection to naturalization law, thus the nationality of his mother was not statutorily transmitted to him since he would have automatically been deemed a common law citizen.

    If he was not born in Hawaii but in Vancouver, then the statute would have excluded him from citizenship, just as would have the Naturalization Act of 1907 if he had been born 40 years earlier.

    In principle, no one whose citizenship was ever the subject of exclusion by American law would have ever been considered to be a natural born citizen, although slaves and Asians were excluded for long periods of American history .

    No law can, nor ever will, exclude natural citizens from citizenship. Their national membership is not dependent on the whims of government which dictate the rules regarding aliens, their children, and children of mixed-nationality couples.

  106. Funny that. There is a Social Security application obtained via FOIA for Stanley Ann Dunham, with father Stanley Armour Dunham and mother Madelyn Lee Payne, dated May 22, 1959.

    http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2012/12/combinations/

    Nancy R Owens: There was no “Stanley” Anne prior to 1985, RC. How much do they pay you to lie?

  107. Dr. Kenneth Noisewater says:

    Nancy R Owens:
    There was no “Stanley” Anne prior to 1985, RC. How much do they pay you to lie?

    Well Yeah since Barack Obama’s mom was Stanley Ann and not Stanley Anne

  108. Arthur says:

    Nancy R Owens: How much do they pay you to lie?

    How much do you not get paid to be wrong so often?

  109. Adrien Nash says:

    Author: ballantine:
    “And here is you basic problem. Law isn’t about truth. Nations can write any law they want. There is no over-riding devine law that supersedes our laws. A nation can define citizenship anyway it wants and such definition will be a fact.”

    And here is your basic problem: superficial thinking. You did not in writing nor thinking define the word “want”. I’ve always assumed that the hype of the nuclear danger of the cold war was a fraud because neither the US nor the Soviet Union was psychologically capable of launching a nuclear war. Thus the whole trillion dollar military-industrial complex bondoggle was a complete waste.
    If you are in a duel with an opponent, using pistols which fire in both directions, you and he may go through the motions leading up to firing your weapons, but you will not be able to pull the trigger because it would be suicidal to do so. Same with the word “want”.

    Does it imply “can”? as in “Nations can write any law they can”? They cannot do that because somethings could not psycologically be written. Could a nation pass a law requiring the termination of the life of all babies? No, because something is stopping them, and it is self-preservation. It is the same with citizenship laws.
    No sane nation can write a law that says that all future children will be deemed aliens. You cannot say “well, it’s possible.”, because it is NOT possible because of the way that humans are wired. They cannot go against their own nature en mass.

    “There is no over-riding divine law that supersedes our laws”.
    Brilliant! argue against an assertion that no one has ever made. The law of natural membership does not supersede US law because US law in built on top of it. It would be stupid to claim that the foundation supersedes the house.

    The foundation of nations is natural membership. Without it no one has any connection to anyone else. It is so fundamental and primal that there has never been a need to state that fact in any law. It is a given of human life. Is there a law stating that man has a right to breath?
    I guess that right does not exist then since it is not codified. The membership of one’s own flesh and blood is in the very same category of what does not need to be written when a child is the product of co-members of a country or co-citizens of a nation.

    “A nation can define citizenship anyway it wants and such definition will be a fact.” “A nation…it”. There is no “it” when it comes to the passage of law. There is only human beings, not a hive-Borg mind. “It” does not have a choice to write laws that no one would support. Your mistake is thinking that a nation can define citizenship “ANYWAY” it wants. Rather, it is quite limited… by its values and its traditions.

    You mean to say that it has the authority to do “whatever”, but you fail to grasp that what is true for absolute dictatorships is not true of democracies. They are limited also by their constitutions or ancient laws. Unlimited power does not exist in democracies, but statists wish it would. ALL POWER TO THE STATE!

    “Your other problem is you are incapable of admitting you are wrong no matter how many times you are shown.”
    Actually, only one time is sufficient, but your self-blinded idea of what has been “shown” to me is nothing more than a pack of erroneous opinions. Where are the facts? I’m still waiting for something other than opinions and policy based on them. Show me the LAW.

    “The amendment doesn’t say “fully subject” but “subject” and even a child knows any visitor to the US is subject to its laws.”

    That statement is beneath you. Your thought process must have been in first gear. You know full well what one of the authors said about jurisdiction. It means FULL jurisdiction. Not partial. One must be subject to ALL US laws, not just civil laws which apply to everyone within US borders, including foreign ambassadors and kings. And who is subject to ALL US laws? Ready to go down the rabbit hole? It is only those for whom the oath of Allegiance and Renunciation was written: MALES.

    They MUST swear to BEAR ARMS on behalf of their new nation. Women could not take that oath throughout most of US history since it was not written for women being as they were a part of their husband and his nationality. Men were and are the spine of the nation, and only they are subject to ALL of the political laws of the nation.

    Citizenship was allowed to children born to men who were subject to the possibility of dying in battle while serving the nation of which they were not yet even citizens. Men who were NOT subject to that risk and obligation were not subject to the jurisdiction of ALL of the laws of the Unites States government, and thus their children were not either since children were subject solely to their father and not directly to government.

    It should be becoming clear just how damn ambiguous the simpleton language of the 14th amendment really was and is. “Constitutionally simple and elegant language!” “What does it mean exactly?” “Well, that’s another matter.”

  110. Suranis says:

    Its kinda sad to see you don’t read our own blog. But thats ok, no-one else does ether.

    It must be really sad to be the one nut that even Birthers think is completely delusional. FFS they have even had JEDI PAULEY on their shows but you are just too pathetic and nutso for them.

    No-one will have intercourse with poor Adrian. Even when he drips his semenic wisdom on birther blogs or newspaper comment sites no-one will even respond.

    Adrien Nash: Wow! I’ve never seen such a broad compendium of shear ignorance and idiocy as Ballentine has assembled and shared. Every conclusion stated is framed as an opinion and nothing more… because that is what they all are.

  111. Keith says:

    Lupin: What statutes in existence in 1961 discriminating between father and mother in the matter of transmission of citizenship could Nash cite?

    Mr. Nash, I have just demonstrated that, by using your own, let’s call it Vattelist or jus sanguinis-based “logic”, Mr Obama is indeed a natural-born citizen. Do you have any law or statute that would contradict that?

    It is completely pointless engaging with Nash. The “World of Reality” ™ is enclosed entirely within his own skull and anything which did not originate there is not merely wrong, but man defined. Nothing which is defined by man can possibly be included in the “World of Reality” (c) because man is not “Natural Law” (Reg US Pat Off).

    Words don’t mean what mankind says they mean, they mean what Adrian Nash says they mean. Therefore he can never be wrong and you can never be right no matter what.


    “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty Adrian Nash said, in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”
    “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
    “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty Adrian Nash, “which is to be master – that’s all.”

  112. gorefan says:

    Dr. Conspiracy:
    Funny that. There is a Social Security application obtained via FOIA for Stanley Ann Dunham, with father Stanley Armour Dunham and mother Madelyn Lee Payne, dated May 22, 1959.

    http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2012/12/combinations/

    Supposedly the earliest record of her is in a May, 1943 Syracuse, New York newspaper.

    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/2501812/replies?c=237

  113. Adrien Nash says:

    I just read an email which included this link to something that is new to me. Never seen any reference to it before:

    A TREATISE ON AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP
    BY JOHN S. WISE
    EDWARD THOMPSON COMPANY
    NORTHPORT, LONG ISLAND, N. Y
    1906
    ~about 280 pages long.
    http://www.constitution.org/cmt/jswise/citizenship.htm

    Also:

    A Treatise on Citizenship: By Birth and by Naturalization with Reference to the Law of Nations, Roman Civil Law, Law of the United States of America, and the Law of France : Including Provisions in the Federal Constitution, and in the Several State Constitutions, in Respect of Citizenship : Together with Decisions Thereon of the Federal and State Courts (Google eBook)

    http://books.google.com/books/about/A_Treatise_on_Citizenship.html?id=GijrAAAAMAAJ

  114. Adrien Nash says:

    SvenMagnussen wrote: “The will of the majority of voters cannot be denied even if the President is ineligibile. This is reinforced by the fact the natural born citizenship requirement is undefined and subject to debate.
    Congress is limited in determining the ***qualifications*** of the President-elect.”

    Do you even grasp the implications of your own words? Congress, by implication, is charged with determining the qualifications of the President and Vice-President elect. Do you not know what the 20the Amendment says? They both must be qualified or else they are disqualified from assuming office until qualified replacements can be elected. So what you wrote seems to be reasonable and acceptable but it is not the way set down by the authors of the amendment. Which one should the nation go by… the feel good version or the rule of law? Apparently it is too late for such a question. We are no longer living in a constitutional republic but some lame perverse version of it.

  115. Adrien Nash says:

    Author: Suranis:
    “No-one will have intercourse with poor Adrian. Even when he drips his semenic wisdom on birther blogs or newspaper comment sites no-one will even respond.”

    Thanks for confirming in just one more of hundreds of examples (thousands?) of cornered conventional thinkers who found themselves unable to mount even a simple refuting of what I wrote. And the pattern continues…unbroken by any sentient thought from brain-washed minds. Folks like you are like those with Stockholm syndrome, -unable to grasp that their mind is not working normally because of all of the indoctrination that they have consumed.

    Keith wrote: “Words don’t mean what mankind says they mean, they mean what Adrian Nash says they mean.”

    “Mankind”??? Words we use mean what the law says they mean. If the law does not say what they mean then they mean what the English language says they mean. You can’t handle what that is and so you sputter and pout about an invented attitude that you can attack like a straw man. That is much easier than doing some actual thinking. And again, no quote of anything I wrote and a refutation of it. Just a lot of hot air tantrum stuff.

  116. Andrew Vrba, PmG says:

    Sometimes I wonder if Doc lets people like Nash out of the banned box, just to keep things interesting.

  117. John Reilly says:

    Adrien Nash: So far, in all the years that I’ve been sharing the facts with both sides of the issue, no one has attempted to dispute the facts or logic that I’ve presented.

    There’s a Black man living in the White House. That fact really galls you.

  118. Benji Franklin says:

    Keith: “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty Adrian Nash said, in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”

    The power of any nation, ultimately rests solely in the hands of whoever legally or illegally is allowed to officially interprets its laws and Constitution, including deciding if, when, and which so-called “higher” laws prevail.

    Adrian Nash makes all of those decisions for the two-legged, one-citizen imaginary nation in which he is both the absolute dictator, and the entire population.

    But when it comes to interpreting the US Constitution and our laws, Adrian Nash is just ONE of over three-hundred million persons abiding in this country who were not elected by the people to settle disagreements about the meaning of our Constitution and statutes.

    His occasional participation on this blog/forum, egotistically sidetracks the debate here, in all the ways one would expect from a deity masquerading as a civics-minded United States Citizen.

  119. Lupin says:

    Adrien Nash: As for “les naturels ou les indigenes”, I assume that the French had a habit of turning adjectives into nouns as a verbal short-cut. “The naturals” would have to refer to the natural inhabitants or natural members, and “the indigenous” to indigenous people, or natives.
    “Natural born citizen” has no connection to Vattel whatsoever.

    I’m pleased to say that we agree on this.

  120. Lupin says:

    Adrien Nash: Lupin: “What statutes in existence in 1961 discriminating between father and mother in the matter of transmission of citizenship could Nash cite?”

    I believe that would be the Naturalization Act of 1952. Under US law, the citizenship of children born of American mothers overseas was dependent on them having lived in the US for 5 years after the age of 14. I can’t recall if it mentions only the mothers or simply the American parent.

    Since Mr Obama was born on US soil from an American mother, wouldn’t that then make him even by your exacting standards a natural born citizen?

    In a jus sanguinis country like France whose legal system of citizenship sprang from Vattel (amongst others) originally there would be no questions about it for a child born in 1961 of either a French mother or a French father (both not necessary).

  121. Lupin says:

    Mr Nash: I’m as open-minded as anyone else, but ultimately you have failed to demonstrate why Mr. Obama did not fulfill your present Constitutional requirements.

    I have been banned from two birther sites for bringing up the case of James Madison who was offered French citizenship, wrote back to accept it joyfully, was henceforth a dual citizen while Secretary of state, then ran for President while being a dual citizen (and subject to huge conflicts of interest) and won.

    Clearly neither your founding fathers no the electorate cared about alleged divided loyalties. Hence the citizenship of Mr Obama’s father does not matter.

    The only facts that remain are (1) his mother was an American and (b) he was born on US soil. Whether in a jus soli or jus sanguinis country, that would make him legitimately eligible.

    Your theoretical notions may well be valid, but they don’t override the facts in this case.

  122. Adrien Nash says:

    Lupin asked: “Since Mr Obama was born on US soil from an American mother, wouldn’t that then make him even by your exacting standards a natural born citizen?”

    Yes, it would make him a born citizen! But just to be clear, -is a citizen synonymous with a born citizen? And also; is a natural citizen synonymous with a born citizen? And lastly, is a citizen synonymous with a natural born citizen?
    Lesson: loose terminology results in loose thinking and inaccurate conclusions due to ambiguity. Dissimilar terms should NOT be interchanged as if they mean the same thing.

    “…you have failed to demonstrate why Mr. Obama did not fulfill your present Constitutional requirements.”
    If you read and comprehended what I wrote then you would inescapably arrive at the same conclusion that I have (which took two or three years), and that is that Obama is not even a US citizen by the principles of actual US law
    .
    It is easily shown why he is not a natural citizen but it is much more interesting to show why he is not a citizen at all by actual law. I’ve shown why that is in very plain and easily understood terms. You’ve read them and understand them, and yet pretend that you do not and are even unaware of them. I can’t explain such behavior or tactics. I guess that’s all you’ve got.

    As for dual citizenship, it is irrelevant to presidential eligibility if it is not by blood. Dual citizenship by birth place abroad was not recognized by the US Congress as controlling of anything. Only American fathers determined the nationality and eligibility of their sons who might one day be President.

    There is one way that Obama could be considered a natural born citizen and it is that his father was unknown or dead before his birth and unmarried to his mother. In that case the statutory residency requirement for his mother would not apply to his birth since his nationality would be determined by his mother, and no one else. Thus with no competing foreign allegiance or citizenship, the only thing left is the status of a natural born citizen (barring the creation of a whole new rare category of citizenship).

    ~as the great American short story writer Flannery O’Connor once said, “The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”

  123. Keith says:

    Lupin: In a jus sanguinis country like France whose legal system of citizenship sprang from Vattel (amongst others) originally there would be no questions about it for a child born in 1961 of either a French mother or a French father (both not necessary).

    I thought Vattel was describing the French system, not defining it. Am I wrong?

  124. Lupin says:

    Keith: I thought Vattel was describing the French system, not defining it. Am I wrong?

    A legal system existed in France since time immemorial, of course; but the main architect of the present system was Napoleon who had it codified in 1804.

    The Napoleonic Code was drafted in the main by four jurists who drew from many and various sources, of the then-present and past, including Vattel (although the area in which his influence is the clearest is in defining relationships between states at war or on the verge of war, what is known as jus in bello and jus ad bellum, but I digress).

    There is a decent article on the topic on French wiki:

    http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_civil_%28France%29#L.27.C3.A9laboration_du_code

    One interesting fact that torpedoes the birthers’ interpretation is that, like you (with the exception I single out below), we only recognize two types of citizens: those born so, and those naturalized. Even though the criteria for both have evolved since the 18th century (father/mother etc), there never was a “third” class of citizenship.

    (Unlike another false notion propagated by the birthers, to deal with the embarrassing James Madison precedent) France doesn’t have and never had a honorary citizenship, unlike the US (this is the third class of US citizenship I mentioned above).

    The birthers’ notion that somehow “natural born citizenship” is yet another, separate class with different rights is pure fiction, EVEN in a Vattelist country like France.

    If born in France in 1961 from a French mother and a Kenyan father, Mr Obama would have been French from birth and could have been eligible to any kind of political office.

    This is why (amongst other reasons) Mr Nash’s argument fails.

  125. Keith says:

    Lupin: A legal system existed in France since time immemorial, of course; but the main architect of the present system was Napoleon who had it codified in 1804.

    Oh yeah.

    D’oh.

  126. The Magic M (not logged in) says:

    SvenMagnussen: The Founding Fathers did intend for the minorty of voters to use the Eligibility Clause to raise objectilons and seek immunity from the actions of the usurper after the usurper has taken office.

    No. The Eligibility Clause gives Congress the legal power to remove a President found to be ineligible (since the Impeachment Clause does not list “being ineligible” among its prerequisites ” Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors”).

    SvenMagnussen:After the usurper negatively impacts a minority voter who objects to an ineligible President, the minority voter will have a discrete, particularized injury providing them with standing to sue for relief.

    No, because said voter will share that with all other “minority voters”, therefore it’s a generalized grievance.

  127. 1906 must have been a good year. Here’s my entry: it’s 500 pages.

    Adrien Nash: A TREATISE ON AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP
    BY JOHN S. WISE
    EDWARD THOMPSON COMPANY
    NORTHPORT, LONG ISLAND, N. Y
    1906
    ~about 280 pages long.
    http://www.constitution.org/cmt/jswise/citizenship.htm

  128. ballantine says:

    Adrien Nash:
    Author: ballantine:

    “There is no over-riding divine law that supersedes our laws”.
    Brilliant!argue against an assertion that no one has ever made.The law of natural membership does not supersede US law because US law in built on top of it.It would be stupid to claim that the foundation supersedes the house.

    You can keep saying that all you want, but it is simply false as a matter of history. Our government and no legal authority anyone has heard of followed your theories. They are not, and have never been, the law of the United States. This has been pointed out to you repeatedly. Jus sanguinis has always been within the right of Congress to grant or take away and when there was no statute, there was no jus sanguinis. Such are the facts. Every nation has different citizenship laws and they simply can choose anything they want whether you like it or not.

    That statement is beneath you.Your thought process must have been in first gear.You know full well what one of the authors said about jurisdiction.It means FULL jurisdiction.Not partial.One must be subject to ALL US laws, not just civil laws which apply to everyone within US borders, including foreign ambassadors and kings.And who is subject to ALL US laws?Ready to go down the rabbit hole?It is only those for whom the oath of Allegiance and Renunciation was written: MALES.

    So now you want to cite the legislative history? I pointed out quote after quote from the authors expressly stating you are wrong and you just said they were stupid. What they said only counts if you agree with it. Of course, the authors only talked about full and complete jurisdiction with respect to Indians born in Indian nations that we treated as quisi-foreign nations that we had little or no jurisdiction over. They said if these same Indians left such nations and came within territory we had complete jurisdiction over, their children would be citizens even thought the parents could not be naturalized. Sounds like jus soli to me as where they were born, not the status of the parents, that mattered. No suggested that aliens were not fully subject to our jurisdiction outside of the Indians nations. In fact, they repeatedly said native born children of Chinese aliens were citizens and rejected the notion that temporary visitors should be excluded. Thus, your citation of the legislative history is either dishonest or simply ignorant as it in no way supports your theory.

    The attempt to re-write the plain language of the Amendment by adding “fully” based upon an out-of-context snippit from the debates is a pretty weak argument as the plain language is the plain language. However, if it did say “fully subject” you would still lose as all authority on International Law in 1866 said visitors to a nation were fully subject to their jurisdiction. Such is one of the most fundamental maxims of International Law. Have you read McFadden v. the Exchange which is a case cited all over the world on this topic? Of course not. Rather we have simply made up your own law of jurisdiction that has no basis in law or history.

  129. ballantine says:

    Adrien Nash:

    As for dual citizenship, it is irrelevant to presidential eligibility if it is not by blood. Dual citizenship by birth place abroad was not recognized by the US Congress as controlling of anything. Only American fathers determined the nationality and eligibility of their sons who might one day be President.

    There is one way that Obama could be considered a natural born citizen and it is that his father was unknown or dead before his birth and unmarried to his mother.In that case the statutory residency requirement for his mother would not apply to his birth since his nationality would be determined by his mother, and no one else.Thus with no competing foreign allegiance or citizenship, the only thing left is the status of a natural born citizen (barring the creation of a whole new rare category of citizenship).

    Do you really think just making assertions like this mean anything. No court or legal authority anyone has ever heard of supports such nonsense. A child born of a American father born abroad and not covered by a statute is not even a citizen. Read Miller v. Albright. You can make up your own definition of natural born, but you should admit it is simply your definition that has never been the law.

    And, of course, there is no historical a support for the notion that dual citizenship matters. Would be kind of stupid as we can’t control who foreign countries make citizens.

  130. Dave B. says:

    By way of Gerry Nance.

    Adrien Nash: I just read an email which included this link to something that is new to me. Never seen any reference to it before:

  131. Lupin says:

    Adrien Nash: Yes, it would make him a born citizen! But just to be clear, -is a citizen synonymous with a born citizen? And also; is a natural citizen synonymous with a born citizen? And lastly, is a citizen synonymous with a natural born citizen?
    Lesson: loose terminology results in loose thinking and inaccurate conclusions due to ambiguity. Dissimilar terms should NOT be interchanged as if they mean the same thing.

    No. You are simply wrong.

    Since you use a terminology derived from — I don’t like to call it Vattelist, but let’s say Roman-based legal systems, — you have to understand the meanings of the terms you use, or their English equivalent (leaving aside the argument about translation).

    i know far more about this subject than you do, and you are simply incorrect.

    I’m sorry to have to burst your thought-bubble, but unless you can come up with any French, German or Swiss legal scholar who, over the last two centuries, have supported your terminology, then you are purely and simply wrong.

    If you wish to rely on UK law (past or present) I will defer to the other people here; I;m no expert therein; but then, you should not rely on terminology like “natural” which comes from Roman Law to make your point.

    Under any Roman or Roman-derived Law (I won’t speak about any others) Mr Obama fulfills all the necessary qualifications to be classified as a naturel or indigene and a citizen. There is absolutely not a smidgen of doubt about it.

  132. Lupin says:

    Adrien Nash: ~as the great American short story writer Flannery O’Connor once said, “The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”

    This quote seems particularly appropriate to your own case, as you steadfastly refuse to acknowledge your own errors.

  133. Dr. Kenneth Noisewater says:

    Dave B.:
    By way of Gerry Nance.

    Oh whatever happened to our “favorite” teenage girl watcher?

  134. Dave B. says:

    I’ve happened upon him a couple of times lately. He’s been at “The Thing That Wouldn’t Die” over at the Western Free Press:

    http://www.westernfreepress.com/2014/03/13/the-top-ten-birther-arguments-against-ted-cruz-and-why-they-are-completely-wrong/

    I disremember where else I saw him.

    Dr. Kenneth Noisewater: Oh whatever happened to our “favorite” teenage girl watcher?

  135. gorefan says:

    Adrien Nash: A Treatise on Citizenship: By Birth and by Naturalization

    So you agree with Morse when he writes,

    “The Constitution does not make the citizens (it is, in fact, made by them); it only recognizes such of them as are natural, home-born, and provides for the naturalization of such of them as are alien, foreign-born, making the latter, as far as nature will allow, like the former.”

  136. Arthur says:

    ballantine: Do you really think just making assertions like this mean anything. No court or legal authority anyone has ever heard of supports such nonsense.

    Regrettably, there is no “Thumbs Up” so I will do it manually.

  137. Whatever4 says:

    Adrien Nash:

    If you read and comprehended what I wrote then you would inescapably arrive at the same conclusion that I have (which took two or three years), and that is that Obama is not even a US citizen by the principles of actual US law
    .
    It is easily shown why he is not a natural citizen but it is much more interesting to show why he is not a citizen at all by actual law.I’ve shown why that is in very plain and easily understood terms.You’ve read them and understand them, and yet pretend that you do not and are even unaware of them.I can’t explain such behavior or tactics.I guess that’s all you’ve got.

    I know I’ll regret this, but… Can I have the short version of how this is possible?

  138. Dave B. says:

    Short version:
    It’s possible to arrive at the same conclusion as Adrien if you lose your freaking mind.

    Whatever4: I know I’ll regret this, but… Can I have the short version of how this is possible?

  139. Obligedfriend says:

    “The Authority of Vattel has never been questioned by any Department of Government” Thomas Jefferson as Secretary of State

    “The Law of Nation is a part of the laws of the United States” Chirf Justice Marshall United States v Smith

    “the Courts of the United States are bound by the Law of Nations” Chief Judtice Marshall and so are all the Departments of Government. Thomas Jefferson

    University of Virginia Constitutional Law Professor, James Gilmore wrote Vattel’s citizenship chapter is in the Constitution.

    There’s much to post.

  140. Arthur says:

    From what discredited website did our friend crib his spurious quotes and citations?

  141. ballantine says:

    Obligedfriend:
    NORTHPORT, LONG ISLAND, N. Y
    1906
    ~about 280 pages long.
    http://www.constitution.org/cmt/jswise/citizenship.htm
    Also:

    More jibberish. Gilmore admits in his lecture that we followed jus soli.

    “That children of foreigners born here are American citizens if they elect to declare themselves so, whilst the children of American citizens born abroad are themselves citizens of the United States, unless the 14th amendment has changed this doctrine, upon which there is a difference of opinion;”

    However, he is wrong that there was ever an election. There is simply no legalI can cite 100 scholars saying we just followed jus soli. What exactly is your point.

    Whether or not your other quotes are correct is irrelevant. Yes, we followed the law of nations with respect to issues of International Law, however, no one ever said citizenship was a matter of International Law. Jefferson’s draft the citizenship law for Virginia included jus soli contrary to Vattel. Such law continued in place until the Civil War. Marshall expressly stated that we followed jus soli. Again, what is your point?

  142. Suranis says:

    Obligedfriend: “The Authority of Vattel has never been questioned by any Department of Government” Thomas Jefferson as Secretary of State

    Fake quote. Jefferson never said or wrote that. And even if he did, so what. The authority of mickey mouse was never questioned either.

    As for the rest, the were probably talking abut Blackstone. Shockingly Vattel was not the only writer on the Law of Nations nor even the major one

  143. nbc says:

    Obligedfriend: There’s much to post.

    And more for you to check before you look foolish

  144. Adrien Nash says:

    Dr. Conspiracy:
    1906 must have been a good year. Here’s my entry: it’s 500 pages.

    two points: You neglected to share even the title of the book you linked to. I would be afraid that opening that page might freeze my computer since I have so many pages open already, so I’m glad to know it is 500 pages. I’ll pass on it until given some information that would justify checking it out.
    As for the book I shared a link to, it is not in competition with “your” book since I have no idea what is even in it. But the table of contents looks pretty irresistible to a curious mind.

  145. “Citizenship of the United States, Expatriation, and protection Abroad. Letter from The Secretary of State. December 20, 1906 – Referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and ordered to be printed.”

    What I found most interesting in the work was the collection of correspondence in Appendix II. I guess you wouldn’t be interested in the judicial section in Appendix I.

    Adrien Nash: two points: You neglected to share even the title of the book you linked to. I would be afraid that opening that page might freeze my computer since I have so many pages open already, so I’m glad to know it is 500 pages. I’ll pass on it until given some information that would justify checking it out.

  146. Adrien Nash says:

    Nash wrote: “The law of natural membership does not supersede US law because US law in built on top of it. It would be stupid to claim that the foundation supersedes the house of law built on top of it.”

    Balllentine replied: “Our government and no legal authority anyone has heard of followed your theories. They are not, and have never been, the law of the United States.”

    response: As you clearly do not know, I have never claimed what you presume I have claimed. I would proclaim, as I have, that until the 14th Amendment, the US national, federal, central government had no law concerning natural citizens nor any law concerning common law citizens. Those two means of citizenship were purely STATE matters, NOT federal.
    Citizenship was FIRST & FOREMOST a State issue. So, what you wrote is absolutely true but in a very different context than you are giving it.

    There has never been, and will never be, any law written by Congress which elucidates the principles of citizenship in the United States. NO THEORIES have been “followed”. All that has been written is declaratory of that which already was in the sense of laws and practices followed by the states. Nothing has been declaratory of fundamental American principles as revealed in the Declaration of Independence.

    What you need to grasp is that even though you are correct about the legal history of citizenship, there are far more aspects to the story than you are aware of.

    Ballentine wrote: “Jus sanguinis has always been within the right of Congress to grant or take away and when there was no statute, there was no jus sanguinis. Such are the facts.”

    response: Your ignorance of constitutional authority is stunning. The key concept needed to understand congressional power is “LIMITATION”! It had no authority other than to author a uniform rule of naturalization requirements for foreigners which the States were obligated to incorporate in their laws, or constitutions.

    ALL of the power that you ascribe to Congress would be dictatorial unconstitutional authority usurped by its own selfish creep. Can’t you understand plain English? Read the Constitution and believe it for a change.

    As for your poorly worded statement, jus sanguinis is not something that can be granted or taken away since it is a principle and not a thing, like bestowed citizenship.

    “and when there was no statute, there was no jus sanguinis”.
    That is as foolish as saying that when there were no certificates of live birth there were no babies. Your finite mental cage needs to be opened to see the real world outside.
    Natural membership is the universal rule of all life, animal and human.
    Whether or not a legislative body sees fit to codify something so primal is irrelevant to its unavoidable existence.

    To imagine that jus sanguinis did not exist without an expressed statute validating or adopting it is like saying that your children do not belong to you unless a jus sanguinis statute allows you the right to be their parent. You are their parent regardless, -in the absence of an unneeded statute, and no sane government on earth would ever assert that your right of parenthood did not exist without its written approval.

    Ballentine: “Every nation has different citizenship laws and they simply can choose anything they want.”

    There is no “they” because some nations are free and some are dictatorships. As I already reminded you, they are NOT THE SAME! One has very limited rights, -even the government of Cuba is limited by its own constitution, while the other may have almost unlimited authority, as in North Korea.

    But the pertinent point is that NO GOVERNMENT can simply choose the rule that no child of citizens shall be deemed a citizen. What government can make such a rule, pray tell?? You claim than any and every government can make such a rule. Such a mindless dogmatic statement is shear nonsense.

    But it gets even worse, as your lack of logic fails utterly. Please explain how one determines the origin of a child’s citizenship when it is born in its parents’ own nation? If you say that it is a citizen by national common law based on birth location, then that means that it is NOT a natural citizen by birth to citizens.
    How do you prove such an assertion? There is no law that says such a thing. There never was and will never be.

    No legislature in history has ever proclaimed that children of citizens are NOT citizens, but that only children born within the nation are citizens. Do you view that as a challenge? I doubt it because you probably sense that it would be a fool’s errand trying to prove otherwise, -and you would be right.

    No person in American history could point to an American child born in America to American parents and proclaim that their citizenship is ascribable to jus soli alone by American law. You don’t know of any such federal nor state law and neither does anyone else because it has never existed.

    The 14th Amendment is not such a law since it merely declares what the Civil Rights Act stated, and it merely declares what was the general and perhaps universal common law that native birth allows children of foreigners to be deeded to be State citizens from birth.

    The children of foreigners comprised perhaps 3% of the children born in America. Imagine a pie chart with those percentages. Almost all of the pie would be children who inherited their American membership from their American parents as is the rule of nature. Jus soli would apply only to the sliver that represents those born of aliens. THAT was State law! State law determined federal law which was based on its universal, continued adoption of jus soli long before, as well as after, the Revolution.

  147. Adrien Nash says:

    Suranis: Obligedfriend: “The Authority of Vattel has never been questioned by any Department of Government” Thomas Jefferson as Secretary of State

    Fake quote. Jefferson never said or wrote that. And even if he did, so what. The authority of mickey mouse was never questioned either.

    HA! Damned appeals to authority! Its a hoot to see one shot-down so well.

  148. Adrien Nash says:

    Dave B.: Dave B. February 4, 2015 at 10:54 am (Quote) #

    By way of Gerry Nance.

    Adrien Nash: I just read an email which included this link to something that is new to me. Never seen any reference to it before:

    What an utterly juvenile post. What are you? Fourteen years old? How lame to insinuate that Nance, whoever he is, is pushing birther-supporting propaganda from 1906 when not a single quote accompanied the link? Get a clue and get a life.

  149. Dave B. says:

    Huh?

    Adrien Nash: What an utterly juvenile post.What are you?Fourteen years old?How lame to insinuate that Nance, whoever he is, is pushing birther-supporting propaganda from 1906 when not a single quote accompanied the link? Get a clue and get a life.

  150. Adrien Nash says:

    Lupin: “You are simply wrong. Since you use a terminology derived from… ~you have to understand the meanings of the terms you use,… ~unless you can come up with any…legal scholars who…have supported your terminology, then you are purely and simply wrong.”

    Wow! Did you ever make yourself look foolish. In case you did not notice, you are claiming that Truth is determined solely by consensus opinion!!! It takes a lot of arrogant pride to whip that up and send it off without considering its logic. As in science; if it is Science, then consensus opinion is irrelevant (to fact). If it’s consensus opinion that is supreme then it is not Science. To borrow a phrase: think before writing.

    As for the “simply wrong” assertion… it is really lame to claim that something is wrong without stating what it is that is wrong. You have repeated and consistently failed to quote me and refute what is contained in the quote using facts. What I’ve written is like kryptonite that you do not want to touch because it is truth that is toxic to your bias.

    You erroneously try to distort what I’ve written by placing it in a context in which it does not belong. The word “natural”, and the words “natural…born…citizen” are unrelated to anything from anywhere else in the world or in English history unless you go back to before the Norman conquest.

    Lupin: “you should not rely on terminology like “natural” which comes from Roman Law”

    They are not Roman or Latin words or term. They are plain English and they derive their meaning, like all words in the Constitution that are not legal words, from the English language itself and nothing else!
    Any other view of them violates basic constitutional interpretation. That is a plain and simple fact, but it is unacceptable to folks who cannot tolerate the real English language meaning of “natural” as it was used. Natural citizen. Do a Google advanced search of exact words. Then your eyes will begin to be opened. Otherwise, they might always remain closed.

    Lupin: “If you wish to rely on UK law (past or present) I will defer to the other people here;”

    I can’t take that attitude because no one here knows more about it than myself. I’ve examined reams of English nationality statements and laws and found just what I’ve shared. In the matter of natural nationality, as I illuminated in some exposition that I can’t recall the title to (too many) they lost their way due to the Norman invasion in 1066-68, found it again perhaps over the later centuries, but lost it again with the Calvin opinion in 1608 (over 500 years later).

    When dissimilar nations unite, the principle of natural membership may have to be discarded and jus soli substituted, but not so if they are all one people, as was the case in America. That is why jus sanguinis could be the unwritten *principle* of national membership in America (even before the revolution) while jus soli was the actual written law of the colonies.

    If the jus soli common law rule applied in the births of 98% of the population who were real jus sanguinis natural members of the colonies and states, then who would make an issue about which means determines a child’s nationality? NO ONE! Until Barack Obama sought to become an unconstitutional President.

    In his case it is incumbent upon all Americans with a brain to recognize that if he is a US citizen at all, then he is one via common law, not NATURAL Law. Common law in Britain would produce subjects at birth; 98% of whom were natural subjects, the rest, born of aliens, were deemed to be equal and considered the same as natural citizens for the sake of equality. That did not mean that they were *actual* natural subjects, which they weren’t since they were naturalized-at-birth subjects.

    But the law did not allow drawing a distinction between the natural population and children of the alien population. That is because they did not have such a thing as the office of the President. If it did not exist, then none of the efforts and research in this issue would have been needed nor done. I would have about 5 years of my life back, and a lot of money. Cie la vie.

    Lupin: “Under any Roman or Roman-derived Law, Mr Obama fulfills all the necessary qualifications to be classified as a naturel or indigene and a citizen.”

    What an absurd statement. There are NO qualifications to be labeled by terms that do not exist in the English language nor in constitutional law. But you are right, that if Obama was born of an immigrant father, then he would be a “citizen”. Whoop-di-doo! You’ve just disqualified him from the presidency since mere citizens cannot be President.

    He or she must be born as a natural citizen and that requires that one be born only of Americans, not aliens. Aliens, constituting 3-4% of the population, CANNOT produce natural members of a society, country, or nation that is alien to them, their government, and their foreign society.
    But thanks to jus soli, they *can* produce “citizens” that can be anything in America except the Commander-in-Chief (or members of nuclear bomb crews, and nuclear submarines, and Secret Service Presidential guards, -perhaps with some exceptions for children of close allies).

  151. Dave B. says:

    And there you have it.

    Adrien Nash: I can’t take that attitude because no one here knows more about it than myself.

  152. Lupin says:

    Adrien Nash: Wow! Did you ever make yourself look foolish. In case you did not notice, you are claiming that Truth is determined solely by consensus opinion!!! It takes a lot of arrogant pride to whip that up and send it off without considering its logic. As in science; if it is Science, then consensus opinion is irrelevant (to fact). If it’s consensus opinion that is supreme then it is not Science. To borrow a phrase: think before writing.

    Despite all your rambling prose, you are still basically wrong, because in fine, you don’t know what you’re talking about.

    When you rely on English Law, you have been demonstrably proven wrong by ballantine (amongst others) here.

    When you dip into Roman Law (by this I include continental legal systems such as France, Germany, Switzerland etc.) for your notions, you are also wrong in the way you define well-researched established terminology and its meaning.

    As a French attorney and scholar with 25+ years of experience, I know the history of our legal system far more than you do.

    I’d say it is you who are foolish and arrogant when you think to challenge another country’s expert in his own field. I’d bet you don’t even know French, even less so Old French?

    You have put forth certain legal theories which happen to be based on incorrect facts or established legal interpretations.

    In conclusion, I repeat: were we hypothetically to treat Mr Obama as a man born under a Napoleonic Code system, there is zero likelihood that he wouldn’t be consider a naturel with the same rights and obligations of all his fellow citizens.

    This is a FACT (it’s not as if we didn’t have similar cases to his.) Anything else is pure rubbish you made up.

  153. Lupin says:

    Obligedfriend:
    “The Authority of Vattel has never been questioned by any Department of Government” Thomas Jefferson as Secretary of State

    “The Law of Nation is a part of the laws of the United States” Chirf Justice Marshall United States v Smith

    “the Courts of the United States are bound by the Law of Nations” Chief Judtice Marshall and so are all the Departments of Government. Thomas Jefferson

    University of Virginia Constitutional Law Professor, James Gilmore wrote Vattel’s citizenship chapter is in the Constitution.

    There’s much to post.

    You still don’t seem to get it: Vattel never wrote anything saying that one needed two parents who were both citizens; quite the contrary, he spelled it out: one is enough.

    So why does it matter at all if he was influential or not? You can’t build your case on him.

  154. Adrien Nash says:

    Lupin wrote: “you are still basically wrong, because in fine, you don’t know what you’re talking about.

    When you rely on English Law… When you dip into Roman Law…”

    Well you’ve made it very apparent that you are deliberately avoiding reading what I’ve written. Your response is totally bankrupt. It asserts that I rely on things that I totally avoid. I rely on NO HUMAN LAW AT ALL! I won’t repeat myself over and over just because you are so afraid of what I’ve written that you will not read it.

    Worse, or equally bad, is your total failure to yet quote even a single sentence I wrote and refute it with facts. You have NO FACTS that matter. You just have bloated, self-revering hot air concepts of conventional thinking.

    They are IRRELEVANT! Your approach to “debate” is not to debate but to whine that “you’re wrong because you’re wrong! I know better than you do so just give up and crawl into a hole somewhere.” How pathetic and juvenile. That is a sad substitute for facts and logic. The mental matrix of purely legal thinking is blinding you like the trees that block the view of the whole forest. I don’t look at the trees than surround you, I try to look at the entire forest.

    Natural citizenship is not dependent on ANY LAW. It pre-dates all law. It is before and beneath the very system of law that you revere. The entire realm of human law exists within its natural sphere.

    What law did you depend on when you brought your newborn daughter home from the hospital? “Who says she belongs to you?” “Where is the law that allows you to claim her?” “There is none, so we will take ownership of her and sell her to the highest bidder.”
    Natural law need not be written Natural Rights are generally not written. Few other nations have a Bill of Rights. Fewer still, if any, have a Bill of *Natural* Rights, (although the Kenyan Constitution supports a whole lot of them from the socialist perspective).

    National membership is first and foremost the consequence of a blood relationship to members who brought you into the world. Instead of getting a passport from your parents you get a place in their national membership. A seat at their national table. No one has to give you permission to sit at your own table. You were born as a member of the family household, only that household is a national family instead of an individual family.

    Now please, explain how wrong that is. Debunk my glaring errors.

  155. The Magic M (not logged in) says:

    Obligedfriend: “The Law of Nation is a part of the laws of the United States” Chirf Justice Marshall United States v Smith

    “the Courts of the United States are bound by the Law of Nations” Chief Judtice Marshall and so are all the Departments of Government. Thomas Jefferson

    The “Law of Nations” (the abstract legal concept), yes.
    “The Law of Nations” (Vattel’s book), no.

    It’s quite a looney thing to claim that a book that hadn’t even been translated to English when the Constitution was ratified was somehow part of it.
    If Congress passed a law in French today, you RWNJ’s would be all over it.

    Obligedfriend: University of Virginia Constitutional Law Professor, James Gilmore wrote Vattel’s citizenship chapter is in the Constitution.

    No, here’s his quote:

    The word citizen is employed in law in different senses under different circumstances, but its ordinary signification is, a person owing allegiance to a government and entitled protection from it, and it is in this sense that it is used in the Constitution of the United States.
    So far as Mr. Vattel states the doctrine on the subject of citizenship in this section he states it correctly […]

    This means Professor Gilmore understood Vattel – contrary to you.
    He obviously did not say Vattel was in the Constitution and especially not that your warped interpretation of it was.

  156. Krosis says:

    I see the Birthers are back to “Vattelism”. Will this be their last refuge, as the MCSO investigation will continue to be nothing of substance?

  157. Lupin says:

    Krosis:
    I see the Birthers are back to “Vattelism”. Will this be their last refuge, as the MCSO investigation will continue to be nothing of substance?

    I have been on this forum for something like 5 years I think. During that time i have never ever engaged a Birther on matters of US constitutional law, English Law, SCOTUS precedents, etc, etc. because, to put it simply, I am not qualified to discuss them. I leave it to others like ballantine to tackle such issues. I have in fact learned a lot from him.

    Which is why I am constantly annoyed to see unqualified birthers like Adrian Nash, Mario Apuzzo and others step into the fields of Vattel / Roman Law / Napoleonic Codes etc. and — despite the total absence of any qualified quotes supporting their outlandish interpretations — attempt to tell us — me — what such things really mean.

    There is indeed room for discussion and even arguments about such topics, but their interpretations are so outlandish that they don’t deserve a minute’s consideration.

  158. Dave B. says:

    You think ANYBODY, anywhere, is hanging on your every word?

    Adrien Nash: Well you’ve made it very apparent that you are deliberately avoiding reading what I’ve written.

  159. Suranis says:

    Dave B.:
    You think ANYBODY, anywhere, is hanging on your every word?

  160. Suranis says:

    Don’t be silly. Adrian Nash hangs on every word he types, then he turns to a mirror and congratulates Adrian Nash on how he has shown everyone else how clever Adrian Nash is.

    Hell, if he frequents hookers (everyone is too resentful of Nash’s genus to stay in a relatonship with Nash for an length of time) he probably needs them to wear a mirror on their face.

    Dave B.:
    You think ANYBODY, anywhere, is hanging on your every word?

  161. Dave B. says:

    Well, yeah, but anybody ELSE? I figure he’s just running up the word count.

    Suranis:
    Don’t be silly. Adrian Nash hangs on every word he types, then he turns to a mirror and congratulates Adrian Nash on how he has shown everyone else how clever Adrian Nash is.

  162. ballantine says:

    Adrien Nash:

    response: As you clearly do not know, I have never claimed what you presume I have claimed.I would proclaim, as I have, that until the 14th Amendment, the US national, federal, central government had no law concerning natural citizens nor any law concerning common law citizens.Those two means of citizenship were purely STATE matters, NOT federal.
    Citizenship was FIRST & FOREMOST a State issue.So, what you wrote is absolutely true but in a very different context than you are giving it.

    There was a debate over whether national citizenship was based upon state citizenship, but such theory was generally abandoned in the decades leading up to 1866 in favor of the view that there was a separate national citizenship. To say there was no law simply isn’t true. The government needed to determine who were citizens for all kinds of reasons so we have executive department decisions, the practice of the state department and various cases that were cited as authoritative. For example, everyone cited Lynch v. Clark which of course said there was a national citizenship based upon jus soli. I am sorry, but pretty much all pre-1866 authority embraced jus soli and such was the practice of the nation.

    There has never been, and will never be, any law written by Congress which elucidates the principles of citizenship in the United States.NO THEORIES have been “followed”.All that has been written is declaratory of that which already was in the sense of laws and practices followed by the states.Nothing has been declaratory of fundamental American principles as revealed in the Declaration of Independence.

    Is this supposed to make sense. The Declaration does not define citizenship and Jefferson’s statute has jus soli. Some argued our naturalization laws were declaratory of the English common law, but such argument was soundly rejected by Congress and the Supreme Court. No one argued that they were declaratory of some law of nature. Simply a fact that if such laws were repealed we would only have jus soli.

    Natural membership is the universal rule of all life, animal and human.
    Whether or not a legislative body sees fit to codify something so primal is irrelevant to its unavoidable existence.

    You can keep repeating that all you want but such is only your opinion and no one really cares about your opinion. Nations get to decide who their members are. In 1787, jus soli was the near universal rule whether you like it or not. If a nation fails to embrace jus sanguinis such is reality. You saying what a government is allowed and not allowed to do make may you feel important but no on really cares.

    No legislature in history has ever proclaimed that children of citizens are NOT citizens, but that only children born within the nation are citizens.Do you view that as a challenge?I doubt it because you probably sense that it would be a fool’s errand trying to prove otherwise, -and you would be right.

    The law of England for many years excluded all foreign born. Even after, in both the United States and England, naturalization statutes did not grant citizenship to all children of citizens. To this day, certain children born to citizen fathers are not covered under our statutes. Sorry that reality is so hard for you to fathom.

    No person in American history could point to an American child born in America to American parents and proclaim that their citizenship is ascribable to jus soli alone by American law.You don’t know of any such federal nor state law and neither does anyone else because it has never existed.

    No one in history? Try every court case and the near universal opinion or scholars which all said someone born on US soil gets their citizenship from the place of birth not their parents. Seriously, are you really that clueless. How many authorities would you like me to cite. Has anyone we have heard of actually say they got it from their parents?

    The 14th Amendment is not such a law since it merely declares what the Civil Rights Act stated, and it merely declares what was the general and perhaps universal common law that native birth allows children of foreigners to be deeded to be State citizens from birth.

    Is this supposed to make sense? The Civil Rights Act and the 14th Amendment both dealt with national citizenship and both were intended to codify the common law. They made clear children of aliens were to be citizens and even eligible to be president.

    The children of foreigners comprised perhaps 3% of the children born in America.Imagine a pie chart with those percentages.Almost all of the pie would be children who inherited their American membership from their American parents as is the rule of nature.Jus soli would apply only to the sliver that represents those born of aliens.THAT was State law!State law determined federal law which was based on its universal, continued adoption of jus soli long before, as well as after, the Revolution.

    Nonsense. Jus soli applies to all the native born as there is no legal authority other than your imagination that native born citizenship comes from parentage. Show me a court quote that says otherwise.

  163. Suranis says:

    Wow. I didn’t realize the presidency was a state position, so obviously the founders wrote in the criteria for the position that state citizenship rules apply.

    And obvously the states can modfy the rules for NBC as the wish, deciding who gets to be eligble to be Prez

    AND Obama would obvously have to be certifed as NBC b the states, rather than certifing to the states with the Backup of Hawaii if nessesery, that he was an NBC. Like when he signed a document for Arizona certifying hmself as NBC

  164. Adrien Nash says:

    Lupin wrote: “Which is why I am constantly annoyed to see unqualified birthers like Adrien Nash, Mario Apuzzo and others step into the fields of Vattel / Roman Law / Napoleonic Codes etc.”

    Once again you have proven what a fraud you are. After I already repeated that I give zero weight to what Vattel wrote, with you responding that you agree with my view, you turn around like you suffer from dementia and toss me back in with my biggest Vattel nemesis ever, Mario Apuzzo! You are either daft, forgetful, or a Leftist attack dog who doesn’t care about what is actually true, …another Brian Williams.

    You are inhabiting moron-land it would seem since you either have a bad memory problem or have failed to read my comments which you pretend you are responding to when in fact you dare not respond to anything that I’ve written because it undermines and wrecks your embraced “conventional wisdom” beliefs.

    As for not being qualified, please explain what qualifies a person to point out the undisputed mean of English words.

    I’ve just finished writing and posting a full response to one of your statements from yesterday. It’s on my blog because of its length. It’s titled: Citizen Classes Exposed by Surprising Illuminations.

    It is a real eye-opener. I don’t expect you to respond since that would be either impossible or self-defeating. But that’s the way it goes when trying to prove something that is false. It’s awfully hard to do and do honestly and logically.

    https://h2ooflife.wordpress.com/2015/02/05/citizen-classes-exposed-by-surprising-illuminations/

  165. Adrien Nash says:

    Ballentine wrote: “To say there was no law simply isn’t true.”

    I didn’t say there was nothing that was paraded as law, with the force of law, but that such things are not truly law. Only the Constitution and what is passed by Congress is actual Law. All the rest is merely regulation, policy, and opinion.

    “Lynch v. Clark which of course said there was a national citizenship based upon jus soli.”

    That is only true to the extent that it is accurately understood. There was a national citizenship based on State jus soli laws or State constitutional clauses. If one was a member of a State then that qualified one for national citizenship. Nothing else did except birth on federal property, unless one was naturalized by a State statute which failed to conform to the national uniform rule dictated by Congress. A State might have allowed Blacks to be citizens. The national government would not recognize such citizenship.

    Just as “there was a national citizenship based upon jus soli”, there was also a national citizenship based upon jus sanguinis which was the basis of citizenship for the 98% of Americans who were natural born State citizens, as the Constitution required for presidential eligibility.

    I could challenge you to prove otherwise but I know that that would be impossible since such citizenship was an unwritten, unverbalized natural membership that needed no validation of government in a law-making capacity.

    “pretty much all pre-1866 authority embraced jus soli and such was the practice of the nation”

    That was true for children of immigrants (the 2-3%). But do you not realize that there is no way whatsoever to show that it was true for children of citizens? Ask these two simple questions: Could there have been a natural (citizen) born child who was native-born who was viewed as not being a natural born citizen?

    Could there have been a native-born child who was born of citizens who was viewed as not being a native-born citizen?
    The answer to both is “no”. So no one can show which was the origin of such a child’s national membership.

    There was never any law which pretended to have the authority to assert that native-born natural citizens were citizens because of either jus soli or jus sanguinis. That is why it is a falsity to proclaim jus soli as the reason for the citizenship of natural citizens when it was created solely for outsiders, -children of foreigners.

    “The Declaration does not define citizenship”
    True, but it illuminates natural principles of human rights, one of which is the right for one’s own children to belong to the groups to which the parents belong, from medieval cities, to trade unions, to counties and countries and nations. That right of belonging is one that springs from “Nature and Nature’s God”. Who volunteers to explain how those terms are legal terms? Political or natural or spiritual philosophy springs from the spiritual or organic or primal realm, not from the legal realm. Don’t turn to it for an understand of things that are outside of it.

    Nash: “Natural membership is the universal rule of all life, animal and human.”
    B: “such is only your opinion”.

    You know that it is not a matter of opinion, yet you pretend you do not. If I said that maternal bonding is a universal phenomenon of all mammalian life” and you responded that that is only my opinion, which of us would that make look foolish? Opinions can be facts but facts are not opinions. You apparently need to learn to distinguish the difference or stop pretending that you can’t.

    B: “The law of England for many years excluded all foreign born.” That is an ambiguously false statement, like all the ones you rely on. The law did not “exclude” them. It instead stated that native-birth had become in effect the deciding factor in who is a subject. The foreign-born were not a part of such a definition of jus soli nationality. They were left out, not “excluded by law”. No statement ever excluded them.

    They were excluded by extrapolation, just as native-born sons of unnaturalized immigrants were excluded by extrapolation due to the 1790 Uniform Rule of Naturalization which made plain that natural citizenship was via descent, NOT birth location.

    B: “naturalization statutes did not grant citizenship to all children of citizens. To this day, certain children born to citizen fathers are not covered under our statutes.”

    Straw man! I try to avoid expressing that all children of citizens are citizens also because that would be an inherently ambiguous statement since it does not say whether one parent is being focused on or couples only. You statement is true of single American parents but not of American couples. You cannot show any American couple whose child, known to be theirs, was not viewed as being an American citizen like them.

    Nash: “No person in American history could point to an American child born in America to American parents and proclaim that their citizenship is ascribable to jus soli alone BY AMERICAN LAW.

    B: “Try every court case and the near universal opinion or scholars which all said someone born on US soil gets their citizenship from the place of birth not their parents.”

    See what was missing from his superficial knee-jerk answer? “BY AMERICAN LAW” -not custom, not presumption, not policy. But by an actual LAW passed by an actual legislature. Like I said, no such LAW was ever passed.

    B: “The Civil Rights Act and the 14th Amendment…made clear that children of aliens were to be citizens and even eligible to be president.”
    You know that that is a damn lie. How do you have the nerve to make such a bald-faced lie? Is Brian Williams your twin brother?

    B: “there is no legal authority…that native born citizenship comes from parentage.”

    What? You failed to parse the illogical nature of those words. Native-born citizenship comes from native-birth.

    NATURAL citizenship comes from natural relationships, i.e., parentage, and it has no legal authority because it needs no legal authority. It does not need to bow to legal authority. Legal authority bows to it!

    We, the People, are the sovereigns of America, NOT the government. It bows to us and our rights, including the right of all the children of American couples to enjoy the treasure of their parents’ citizenship without the need for permission of law or bureaucrats. We are above the authority of the government that we created when it comes to our membership and the membership of our flesh and blood. It exists for us. We don’t exist for it.

    Would you like to tell us all that that is simply the crazy idea of an irrational ranter? If so, then you will be the one who is seen to be crazy, or a supporter of totalitarianism.

  166. Adrien Nash says:

    Suranis :
    “Wow. I didn’t realize the presidency was a state position, so obviously the founders wrote in the criteria for the position that state citizenship rules apply.
    And obvously the states can modfy the rules for NBC as the wish, deciding who gets to be eligble to be Prez”

    As you also do not realize, the Constitution requires one to be a natural born citizen. Who wrote that and what were they? They were natural born citizens of the nations of Virginia, of New York, of Pennsylvania, of New Jersey, etc.

    What citizenship did they possess? National citizenship when they wrote it but the nations in which they were citizens were the former colonies which had become 13 separate individual nations.

    Your concepts need to be rearranged so they comport with the reality extant in 1787. It was not a convention of members of the States of the Union as we know it because it did not yet exist.

    As for modifying the meaning of nbc, by what authority can any entity or person unilaterally declare that they have changed the meaning of common English words? I don’t know of any such authority because one does not exist.

  167. Keith says:

    Adrien Nash: Natural membership is the universal rule of all life, animal and human.

    I’m going to comment on this line, because it strikes me as one of the fundamental mistakes you make, from which all other mistakes derive.

    There is simply no such thing as “natural membership” because the very concept of “membership” is an artificial concept.

    “membership” depends on a differentiation between “things” that bears a relevance to those things. To say that some “thing” is a “living thing” means that we need to define exactly what we mean by “living thing” and by implication what we mean by “non-living thing”, and by further implication whether or the relationship between “living thing” and “non-living thing” is binary (meaning one or the other) or if there is a third (or more) option that could be discussed (might there be “zombie things”?).

    Those definitions are artificial; all of them, from what we mean by living or non-living, to animal or plant or fungus or virus or whatever, to vertebrate to non-vertebrate, to mammal or bird or lizard or fish, to citizen or non-citizen, to natural born citizen to naturalized citizen. They are devised by man for the express purpose of discussing “things”.

    To say that some animal is a mammal is to say that, first, some “thing” under discussion meets all the criteria that we have defined that puts it into the subclass of “things” we call “animals”, and further that it meets all the criteria that we have defined that puts it into the subclass of “animals” that we call “mammals”.

    At every step of the way, the artificiality of our definition is what controls the membership of the class, “thing” has no “natural” membership in anything whatsoever except the class “things that exist” (and I would guess that there are folks who would argue that point too) until we artificially create a class definition so that it can be said that that “thing” is either a member of or not a member of that class.

    Humans invent those class definitions for their own purposes; even the distinction between “artificial things” and “natural things”. It is irrelevant whether or not humans think it is “natural” to identify some attribute and use that attribute to distinguish between “things”, Nature itself makes no such distinction, except, perhaps, between “thing” and “no-thing”.

  168. Adrien Nash says:

    Nash: “Natural membership is the universal rule of all life, animal and human.”

    Keith wrote: “There is simply no such thing as “natural membership” because the very concept of “membership” is an artificial concept.”

    What Keith is failing to grasp is outside of his conceptual box. Natural membership is not a concept. It is a reality. The *concept* of natural membership is a concept, but natural membership exists regardless of the existence of the concept. They are two completely separate and different things.

    One is real, the other is conceptual. Reality does not cease to exist simply because we close our eyes or cease to exist. The monster is still there, or not, depending on reality, not whether or not we imagine it.

    Keith wrote: “thing” has no “natural” membership in anything whatsoever except the class “things that exist”

    And therein is the truth that you have wasted a lot of words to invalidate. “Thing” IS a natural member of the class of “things that exist” It does not require your definition or approval or understanding for it to be so. It is independent of human life and consciousness and definition making. Reality is what it is. Things are either different or they are alike. There are no other possibilities.

    Natural Citizens are alike because they were born that way. In Genesis, what sort of creatures did Adam and Eve give birth to? Hippopotami? Or human? Why were they human? Because they were born that way via natural inheritance. They were not born different. They were born the same.

    Children of citizens are not born different. They are born the same, -including in the political sense. That is the “law” of natural membership. The children of Adam and Eve were born as members of the human class.

    The children of Americans were/ are born as members of the American citizen class. Children of foreigners were not born as members of the natural citizen class, but as members of the *legal* citizen class because without the intervention of law, they would be and remain outsiders.

    The truth is inescapably evident in the nation of Japan. One is either Japanese or one is foreign. It doesn’t matter where you were born but to whom you were born. There are four generations of Koreans in Japan, and three of them are “native-born Koreans” born in Japan.

    They are not jus soli citizens because they are not citizens of any kind. There is no “amnesty” nor common law citizenship. There is natural citizenship, natural-ization, or nothing because they are not natural members of the Japanese people or nation. They are not natural members by blood.

    If you tried to tell the Japanese that the native-born Koreans were natural Japanese they would think you were crazy. [They are Japanese in a cultural sense if they have been acculturated growing up there, but they are still Korean at home. Half of them (over 300,000) are NORTH Korean by choice.! (???)] So clearly, national membership is either natural or it is artificial. Either the product of natural relationships or the product of law.

    Natural members do not need the law because they are the lawmakers, and, in Japan, are about 99.%+ of the population. Japan is a natural nation because it has almost no immigration, leaving its people homogenous. One People, -not many disparate peoples from foreign lands needing permission to become Japanese.

    It is the same in America only to a much lesser degree since we are the result of immigration. But our children are Americans like us because they are the issue of an American source.

    A huge conceptual flaw afflicts those with a statist, all-powerful government mind-set. They think that children of citizens are Americans because they are citizens. But it is the other way around. They are citizens because they are Americans in every natural sense of the word. Americans born of Americans. Citizens born of citizens, not born of law or borders or government fiat.

  169. John Reilly says:

    OK. I now understand Mr. Nash, and I agree that Obama is not eligible to be prime minister of Japan.

  170. Andrew Vrba, PmG says:

    Half of Nash’s problem is that he keeps comparing apples to oranges. The other half of his problem is that he’s a clueless idiot.

  171. Keith says:

    Adrien Nash: And therein is the truth that you have wasted a lot of words to invalidate. “Thing” IS a natural member of the class of “things that exist”

    Only if some conscious entity (us) agrees that existence defines a class.

    It does not require your definition or approval or understanding for it to be so. It is independent of human life and consciousness and definition making.

    That is not a given and is one of the central unanswered questions of just about every philosophical school ever.

    Reality is what it is.

    And the President is who he is.

    Things are either different or they are alike. There are no other possibilities.

    Of course there are. Things could be congruent for example. Most importantly they could be undifferentiable.

    If you find two things that you claim are alike, but I look at them and say they are different, which of us is correct? Neither? Both? It depends 100% on what criteria you ‘measure’. Maybe you are measuring size, color, mass, atomic composition and find that they are identical in every way.

    But I look at them and measure temperature and manufacture date and find that they are different.

    The claim that two things are either different or alike is just too simple-minded for use in any argument. You MUST frame your discussion to include the parameters you use to define ‘sameness’. Then others can agree with your assessment or disagree; they can decide whether your criteria are the criteria that are important to the discussion.

    Everything about ‘sameness’ or ‘difference’ is totally artificial. You can’t even assert with confidence that a ‘green’ object is seen as ‘green’ by every observer. Many people lack the ability to distinguish ‘green’ from other colors. There is nothing ‘natural’ about our experience of color that allows us to differentiate between colors with confidence.

  172. Lupin says:

    Adrien Nash: Once again you have proven what a fraud you are. After I already repeated that I give zero weight to what Vattel wrote, with you responding that you agree with my view, you turn around like you suffer from dementia and toss me back in with my biggest Vattel nemesis ever, Mario Apuzzo! You are either daft, forgetful, or a Leftist attack dog who doesn’t care about what is actually true, …another Brian Williams.

    You are inhabiting moron-land it would seem since you either have a bad memory problem or have failed to read my comments which you pretend you are responding to when in fact you dare not respond to anything that I’ve written because it undermines and wrecks your embraced “conventional wisdom” beliefs.

    As for not being qualified, please explain what qualifies a person to point out the undisputed mean of English words.

    The basic problems with your approach is:

    1) This is not a philosophical argument; this is Law, where real laws, real precedents, real cases, real terminology apply; you can’t make up your own terms or redefine terms which have been employed in a well-defined meaning for centuries.

    2) you are basically NOT qualified to have a legal argument; a philosophical one, perhaps; but not a legal one.

    3) You scamper back to English Law when it serves your purpose when you argue with me (even though you have been soundly trounced by ballantine), but when discussing the meaning of American/English Law with others, you feel it necessary — despite your repeated denials — to borrow terms and notion from Napoleonic and Roman Law. So in that respect, again despite your repeated denials, you are not very much different from Apuzzo from where I stand.

    Specifically, you try to tell my esteemed American colleagues here how jus sanguinis should function and, according to your terminology, that would somehow disqualify Obama. But this is FALSE!

    You’re NOT an expert on jus sanguinis, and furthermore we KNOW for a fact how it works because we have had three centuries of it in France, Switzerland, Germany, etc., and therefore we can apply Obama’s case to our system and see what would happen. There I’m the expert, and you’re a fraud.

    So If I say that under a jus sanguinis system, Obama would indeed meet all the criteria to be a citoyen naturel, I knowwchat I’m talking about, you don’t.

    Bottom line: stick to the framework of US and UK Law and you won’t hear a peep from me; but start telling others how jus sanguinis works and what is a naturel and what isn’t, and all this nonsense you’ve been spouting about, and I can only conclude that you don’t have a clue.

  173. Lupin says:

    Adrien Nash: You are inhabiting moron-land it would seem since you either have a bad memory problem or have failed to read my comments which you pretend you are responding to when in fact you dare not respond to anything that I’ve written because it undermines and wrecks your embraced “conventional wisdom” beliefs.

    By the way, you asked me to quote from you, here it is:

    He or she [THE PRESIDENT] must be born as a natural citizen and that requires that one be born only of Americans, not aliens. Aliens, constituting 3-4% of the population, CANNOT produce natural members of a society, country, or nation that is alien to them, their government, and their foreign society..

    This is the same rubbishy version of what Apuzzo writes about, ie: that old canard that the President must be born of two parents who are both US citizens. And like Apuzzo, you can’t come up with credible supporting evidence. In his case he misquotes Vattel; in your case you appear to rely on cribbing philosophical arguments from Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

  174. Lupin says:

    Adrien Nash: Children of citizens are not born different. They are born the same, -including in the political sense. That is the “law” of natural membership. The children of Adam and Eve were born as members of the human class.

    The children of Americans were/ are born as members of the American citizen class. Children of foreigners were not born as members of the natural citizen class, but as members of the *legal* citizen class because without the intervention of law, they would be and remain outsiders.

    Not surprising, you are also a racist.

  175. The Magic M (not logged in) says:

    Adrien Nash: The children of Adam and Eve were born as members of the human class.

    No, according to your “logic”, they were born members of the “Citizens of the Garden of Eden” class. When their children were born, both had already been expelled from Eden and therefore their children were aliens on the soil where they were born.

    Besides, if the “human class” is natural, a designation of another class based on arbitrarily drawn lines on a map (which didn’t even exists back then) is necessarily not natural, therefore all citizens of a country are “legal” citizens (in your lingo), i.e. created by man-made law and not by nature.

  176. Lupin says:

    I was jut reading this article which somehow seems pertinent when dealing with Mr Nash’s mindset:

    http://wonkette.com/573934/wingnuts-pretty-sure-it-was-illegals-what-gave-measles-to-all-our-unvaccinated-kids

    The thing is, one of the narratives underlying the birther movement is the notion that somehow foreigners and those born of foreigners disrupt the purity of your country’s essence through I presume some kind of invisible alien cooties.

    It isn’t always this literal, but it seems to be a basic belief.

  177. Suranis says:

    Adrien Nash: Your concepts need to be rearranged so they comport with the reality extant in 1787. It was not a convention of members of the States of the Union as we know it because it did not yet exist.

    The were creating the rules for the legal entity they were creating at the convention. The constitution was in effect for every single second that the USA existed. And the rules they created and agreed to be bound by applied to the USA as a whole and all federal positions. So state rules have no relevance to federal positions.

    As for modifying the meaning of nbc, by what authority can any entity or person unilaterally declare that they have changed the meaning of common English words? I don’t know of any such authority because one does not exist.

    You try and do it all the time.

    “That clause by which only a native born citizen can be President…” St George Tucker, state citzen and revolutionary hero.

    Oh and if Lupin bothered to read our stupid blog he would increase our readership by infinity%.

  178. Dave B. says:

    Nothing new there. Or particularly localized, for that matter. But for a little historical perspective, there’s George D. Collins’ brief in US v. Wong Kim Ark:

    http://librarysource.uchastings.edu/library/research/special-collections/wong-kim-ark/AppellantsBrief.pdf

    “For the most persuasive reasons we have refused citizenship to Chinese subjects; and yet, as to their offspring, who are just as obnoxious, and to whom the same reasons for exclusion apply with equal force, we are told that we must accept them as fellow-citizens, and that, too, because of the mere accident of birth. There certainly should be some honor and dignity in American citizenship that would be sacred from the foul and corrupting taint of a debasing alienage.”

    Lupin: The thing is, one of the narratives underlying the birther movement is the notion that somehow foreigners and those born of foreigners disrupt the purity of your country’s essence through I presume some kind of invisible alien cooties.

    It isn’t always this literal, but it seems to be a basic belief.

  179. ballantine says:

    Adrien Nash:

    That is only true to the extent that it is accurately understood.There was a national citizenship based on State jus soli laws or State constitutional clauses. If one was a member of a State then that qualified one for national citizenship. Nothing else did except birth on federal property, unless one was naturalized by a State statute which failed to conform to the national uniform rule dictated by Congress.A State might have allowed Blacks to be citizens.The national government would not recognize such citizenship.

    Again, there was a difference of opinion as to whether national citizenship was based upon state citizenship. The theory you put forth was clearly the minority opinion and would be rejected by the major ante bellum court cases and other legal authorities which assumed a national citizenship based upon jus soli. I think you might want to read Lynch v. Clark. Dred Scott also debated this issue length. A few persons in the 14th Amendment congress still held you position but were greatly outnumbers by those who saw a national jus soli citizenship incorporated into the original Constitution.

    Just as “there was a national citizenship based upon jus soli”, there was also a national citizenship based upon jus sanguinis which was the basis of citizenship for the 98% of Americans who were natural born State citizens, as the Constitution required for presidential eligibility.

    I could challenge you to prove otherwise but I know that that would be impossible since such citizenship was an unwritten, unverbalized natural membership that needed no validation of government in a law-making capacity.

    LOL. So there was this secret citizenship that no one mentioned. So our courts and other legal authorities said we only had jus soli but secretly knew we had jus sanguinis. Sure. Can you tell us why no one every mentioned this secret citizenship? Why did the supreme Court say repeatedly that for several decades there was no jus sanguinis statute and all foreign born children of citizens were aliens. Oh, they were stupid and didn’t know about your secret. Sorry but in the real world such people were treated as aliens.

    You know that it is not a matter of opinion, yet you pretend you do not.If I said that maternal bonding is a universal phenomenon of all mammalian life” and you responded that that is only my opinion, which of us would that make look foolish?Opinions can be facts but facts are not opinions.You apparently need to learn to distinguish the difference or stop pretending that you can’t.

    You are comparing apples and oranges. Citizenship determines who can vote, be elected to office and has rights in a nation. It is not the same as a family. Again, many nations have chosen jus soli in history whether you like it or not. Your opinion of natural law does change who were given rights in such nations.

    B: “The law of England for many years excluded all foreign born.”That is an ambiguously false statement, like all the ones you rely on.The law did not “exclude” them. It instead stated that native-birth had become in effect the deciding factor in who is a subject.The foreign-born were not a part of such a definition of jus soli nationality.They were left out, not “excluded by law”.No statement ever excluded them.

    Is this supposed the make sense. Calvin’s case and the common law specifically stated who was an alien and who was not.

    They were excluded by extrapolation, just as native-born sons of unnaturalized immigrants were excluded by extrapolation due to the 1790 Uniform Rule of Naturalization which made plain that natural citizenship was via descent, NOT birth location.

    More nonsense. The statute of course didn’t say it applied to native born children and there is no rule of statutory construction that would require such a reading. more importantly, our courts and executive opinion rejected any argument that such provision applied to the native born In fact, our courts made clear that only the foreign born could be naturalized. I know, court don’t matter. Unfortunately, you are not the one who gets to interpret statutes.

    Straw man!I try to avoid expressing that all children of citizens are citizens also because that would be an inherently ambiguous statement since it does not say whether one parent is being focused on or couples only.You statement is true of single American parents but not of American couples.You cannot show any American couple whose child, known to be theirs, was not viewed as being an American citizen like them.

    I thought you said it was the father who mattered. Now it has to be couples. Nevertheless, the court made clear that for several decades prior to 1855, all the foreign born were aliens. Sorry.

    See what was missing from his superficial knee-jerk answer?“BY AMERICAN LAW” -not custom, not presumption, not policy.But by an actual LAW passed by an actual legislature.Like I said, no such LAW was ever passed.

    Statutes are not the only thing that is American Law. The interpretation of the Constitution by our courts and executive department is American Law and it was interpreted as jus soli. No statute was passed for native born persons because the English rule was deemed to be incorporated into the Constitution and hence was unnecessary. Sorry if you don’t like the courts said but their opinion counts, yours does not.

    B: “The Civil Rights Act and the 14th Amendment…made clear that children of aliens were to be citizens and even eligible to be president.”
    You know that that is a damn lie.How do you have the nerve to make such a bald-faced lie?Is Brian Williams your twin brother?

    Great answer. I provided you the quotes. Go read them. They spoke at great length about children or Chinese aliens and Senator Williams pointed out the language would make them eligible to be President. No one said otherwise. I’m sorry, but what the authors of the Amendment that is more important than your secret law that no one seemed to know about.

    What?You failed to parse the illogical nature of those words.Native-born citizenship comes from native-birth.

    NATURAL citizenship comes from natural relationships, i.e., parentage, and it has no legal authority because it needs no legal authority.It does not need to bow to legal authority.Legal authority bows to it!

    Just two definitions you made up. There has never been such a distinction in our history. Simply making up your own definition and repeating them over and over is wasting everyone’s time. Who do you think is actually going to listen to you?

    We, the People, are the sovereigns of America, NOT the government.It bows to us and our rights, including the right of all the children of American couples to enjoy the treasure of their parents’ citizenship without the need for permission of law or bureaucrats.We are above the authority of the government that we created when it comes to our membership and the membership of our flesh and blood.It exists for us. We don’t exist for it.

    Would you like to tell us all that that is simply the crazy idea of an irrational ranter?If so, then you will be the one who is seen to be crazy, or a supporter of totalitarianism.

    I think Congress has generally agreed with you as they have generally passed naturalization laws providing for children. That doesn’t change the fact that the Constitution follows jus soli and pursuant to our Constitution, Congress can take away jus sanguinis. In a democracy, we can still pass law that you consider totalitarian as you yourself are not the one who gets to decide. If Congress ever took such action, you are free to persuade them of their error. However, repeating over and over that there is unwritten, unverbalized natural membership that supersedes what the Constitution actually says and was intended to mean because you say so it not going to convince anyone.

  180. Obligedfriend says:

    It appears we have a match with natives and naturals. Vattel’s 1758 has natives and the 1777 edition has naturels.

    We know the Contintental Congress translated Naturels to natural born, it’s in the Congressional record and a thread on Free Republic.

    Professor Gilmore on page 20 in his Lecture tells us Vattel’s “law of nations” is in the Constitution.

  181. Arthur says:

    Obligedfriend: Professor Gilmore on page 20 in his Lecture tells us Vattel’s “law of nations” is in the Constitution.

    Are you an natural-born idiot or just entirely clueless about the rules of citation?

  182. RanTalbott says:

    Obligedfriend: and a thread on Free Republic.

    Tsk, tsk: every good birther knows that nothing is “proven” unless there’s a Youtube video about it.

  183. gorefan says:

    Obligedfriend: Professor Gilmore on page 20 in his Lecture tells us Vattel’s “law of nations” is in the Constitution.

    Professor Gilmore says that Vattel was wrong on the policy of the United States. He specifically says that Section 212 of Vattel is different in the United States as the children born here of alien parents is a citizen. What’s interesting is he clearing is saying that children born here of alien parents are natural born as that is the section of Vattel he is addressing.

    Game, Set and Match.

  184. Obligedfriend says:

    it’s the 1975 edition not 1977.

  185. Obligedfriend says:

    it’s the 1975 edition not 1977.

    Professor Gilmore wrote Vattel’s citizenship chapter is in the Constitution, the Founders used Vattel in the Constitution and it’s not limited to “citizen parents”. Freedom of speech and religion. Coinage, offenses against the law of nations, and others. Read the book, read Vattel.

    A complete chapter of Vattel is forming a Constitution, another is forming a nation. Vattel gave the Founders the justification to have tha revolution and combine the states/colonies to form a republic.

    I have to verify for certainty but it appears Jefferson wrote Vattel is that ‘Great American Doctrine” and Chief Justice Marshall ‘Vattel is to International law what the ‘New Testament is to Christianity’.

    You guys keep tossing in Strawman to refute Vattel.

  186. Andrew Vrba, PmG says:

    Are birthers even allowed to use the term “Strawman”?

  187. Obligedfriend says:

    The Supreme Court said a foreign student is not Domiciled and or a permanent resident. I cannot recall the specific case.

    We know for a certainty Obama was never Domiciled and or a Permanant resident. He checked his visa extension form student not Permanant resident,

    The holding in Wong Kim Ark “parents must be permanent residents and or domiciled” if they are not citizens to pass citizenship to their child if born in the US. WKA was declared a citizen not NBC.

    We have an illegal President and I’m pretty sure you guys are smart enough to know this fact.

    I’m not going to mention why the Fouders removed “born a citizen” and replaced with “natural born citizen”.

    We have Justice Daniels quoting Vattel, A.P. Morse. Chief Justice Fuller and Marshall and other Justices references to Vattel and citizenship.

    Game, Set Match.

  188. gorefan says:

    Obligedfriend: I’m not going to mention why the Fouders [sic]removed “born a citizen” and replaced with “natural born citizen”.

    You don’t have to mention it because it is not true, it is common mistake made by birthers.

    In his discussion of Section 212, Professor Gilmore specifically says the US did not follow Vattel. That is beyond dispute and in black and white.

    It is not surprising that you chose to ignore Professor Gilmore’s words.

    President Obama, Senator Rubio and Governor Jindal are natural born citizens by the words of the Founders, Professor Gilmore and SCOTUS in Wong Kim Ark. Short of an amendment to the Constitution there is nothing you can do to change that fact.

    It’s over Johnnie.

  189. Arthur says:

    Obligedfriend: We have an illegal President

    Really!! OMG, you better call your congressman, senator, governor, and local sheriff! I sure that once they hear from you, they’ll get right to work. By the way, “president” is only capitalized when it precedes the name of a president, as in President Obama.

    http://grammarist.com/style/president/

  190. Dr. Kenneth Noisewater says:

    Obligedfriend: Freedom of speech and religion. Coinage, offenses against the law of nations, and others. Read the book, read Vattel.

    That’s interesting considering Vattel wrote for restriction of speech, press, religion and restriction of the right to bear arms.

    Even though Vattel called for an organized religion he also said that the state should have total control over it.

  191. aarrgghh says:

    via freeper gulch:

    “it is pretty clear that only the vaginal birth, which is done in an open savanna and without epidural, is to be considered natural.”

  192. gorefan says:

    Obligedfriend: offenses against the law of nations, and others. Read the book, read Blackstone.

    Fixed it for you.

    Blackstone’s Commentaries, Book the Fourth – Chapter the Fifth : Of Offences Against the Law of Nations.

    Please show us where in Vattel he discusses piracy as an offense against the law of nation.

  193. Exactly what did you mean to convey by enclosing that phrase in quotation marks?

    Obligedfriend: The holding in Wong Kim Ark “parents must be permanent residents and or domiciled” if they are not citizens to pass citizenship to their child if born in the US. WKA was declared a citizen not NBC.

  194. Dr. Kenneth Noisewater says:

    Obligedfriend: The holding in Wong Kim Ark “parents must be permanent residents and or domiciled” if they are not citizens to pass citizenship to their child if born in the US. WKA was declared a citizen not NBC

    nowhere did the court declare him “Not NBC”. In fact if you read the appellate briefs the district court for which the case was based on ruled that he was a Natural Born Citizen. it was the governments argument that the lower court was in error in their determination.

  195. RanTalbott says:

    Obligedfriend: The holding in Wong Kim Ark “parents must be permanent residents and or domiciled” if they are not citizens to pass citizenship to their child if born in the US.

    Since that “holding” exists only in your imagination, it’s only applicable in your fantasy world.

    Obligedfriend: We have Justice Daniels quoting Vattel, A.P. Morse. Chief Justice Fuller and Marshall and other Justices references to Vattel and citizenship.

    You’ll probably find some of them quoting the Bible, too. That doesn’t mean Americans are forbidden to eat shellfish: courts cite parts of an author’s work that they believe support their position. That doesn’t make them disciples.

  196. Keith says:

    Lupin: The thing is, one of the narratives underlying the birther movement is the notion that somehow foreigners and those born of foreigners disrupt the purity of your country’s essence through I presume some kind of invisible alien cooties.

    Incorrect presumption. It happens during the physical act of love.

    Precious Bodily Fluids

  197. Rickey says:

    Obligedfriend:

    Game, Set Match.

    Yet Obama is still the President of the United States. That must really gnaw at you.

    As for Wong Kim Ark, you really should take the time to read the government’s SCOTUS brief. The government acknowledged that the lower court had ruled that WKA was a natural born citizen, and the government complained that WKA would be eligible to become president if SCOTUS ruled that he was a citizen. SCOTUS upheld the lower court’s ruling.

    Incidentally, WKA’s parents were not “permanent residents” of the United States. In fact, they had returned to China several years before WKA was detained in San Francisco and the government tried to deport him.

  198. Whatever4 says:

    Adrien Nash:

    As for modifying the meaning of nbc, by what authority can any entity or person unilaterally declare that they have changed the meaning of common English words?I don’t know of any such authority because one does not exist.

    Well, in the Constitution, the Framers changed the meaning of the word “treason.” Fortunately, they defined what they meant as it went against what people at the time thought it meant.

  199. Slartibartfast says:

    Like Lupin, I’ll refrain from commenting on anything but my area of expertise (science). It is only when a consensus occurs–i.e. many experiments by many groups, repeated independently, support a hypothesis–that something becomes science. That’s the whole point of the scientific method. A single person cannot do science on their own in a vacuum, it takes a community of scientists working on the same problem to accomplish the vetting necessary for the process to work. I’d say it was surprising someone could be so obviously and completely wrong, but I’ve seen too much of your writing for it to be any sort of a shock.

    Adrien Nash: Wow! Did you ever make yourself look foolish. In case you did not notice, you are claiming that Truth is determined solely by consensus opinion!!! It takes a lot of arrogant pride to whip that up and send it off without considering its logic. As in science; if it is Science, then consensus opinion is irrelevant (to fact). If it’s consensus opinion that is supreme then it is not Science. To borrow a phrase: think before writing.

  200. gorefan says:

    Rickey: The government acknowledged that the lower court had ruled that WKA was a natural born citizen,

    And the lower court (District Court, Northern District of California) never called Wong Kim Ark a natural born citizen. Judge Morrow ruled that Wong was a citizen. The government simply assumed that if he was a citizen by birth in the US than he must be natural born.

  201. Adrien Nash says:

    Lupin responded: “The basic problem with your approach is: 1) This is not a philosophical argument; this is Law,”

    Your failure to grasp the etymology of the word combination “natural…born…citizen”. From Wikipedia:

    For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts in these languages and texts about the languages to gather knowledge about how words were used during ***earlier*** periods of their history and when they **entered** the languages in question.

    1. No one can show anyone the etymology of that word combination because it had almost no history before it appeared in the Constitution. There was essentially no need for it to exist. Only the presidency required its existence. [and the manning of American ships during the war of 1812]

    2. No one can show that that word combination is indisputably proven to be a legal term of artifice. It is not British. It is not tied to the meaning of what it was to be a British subject. It was tied only to the natural realm. The natural realm is NOT the legal realm. No one needs a law degree to understand simple natural relationships, including political ones. But even a lawyer can look at them and deny what is self-evident. That would be due to bias blindness. You have a bad case of it.

    3. All members of a country which decides to become a nation will be a citizen of that nation. They will be its natural members because their membership is not a gift of government since they would be the creators of the government.

    4. You engage in a snipe hunt when you seek to discredit what I’ve written based on nothing other that assertions that I’m ignorant. That is not factual debate. You cannot debate me on the facts and so you attempt to dismiss what I’ve written en toto since quoting what I’ve written and then attempting to debunk it is an impossible chore for you.

    Your self-declared expertise is irrelevant to the facts in America unless you can illuminate some societal-legal customs and relationships extant during the founding era of the American nation. You have not done that. That is all that I have done. Opinions are not what carries any weight when it comes to discerning what the reality was in the late 18th century.
    One must examine the totality of nationality law and policy, tradition and ancient history, along with judicial and Parliamentary mandates through the ages. The pieces of the puzzle are all over the place, and had never been clearly assembled together until I began to see the connections between them. Only then did many things begin to make perfect sense, and reveal a purpose that had long been forgotten because of changing times and political correctness.

    5. If you’d like a hammer to beat me over the head with, how about this one: I’ve written more original exposition on the subject of nationality than all other writers in world history combined. That is not a brag but may become a regret. Admittedly, its a big world and history is very long, so it might be close. Why would that possibly be true? Because there had not been a situation where an unconstitutional leader assumed power over a nation and proceeded to attempt to implement a socialist agenda that would seek to overthrow all that the nation was built on, “fundamentally transforming” it since the Austrian Adolph Hitler usurped the leadership of Germany in violation of the constitution.)

    ~”you try to tell our esteemed American lawyers how jus sanguinis should function and, according to your terminology, that would disqualifty Obama.”

    Jus sanguinis does not “function”, not in American society and not in law. It is invisible, -except regarding American children born beyond US borders. Do your children belong to you? Did jus sanguinis “function” to make them yours, or is your ownership of your own children something of natural law that is a sociological “given” of all civilizations? Is that a “legal” question or a philosophical question? Where do the two realms diverge? They don’t diverge. They are intimately intertwined. [my educated guess is that you are as childless as I am, and that is part of your comprehension problem. My use of the family meme is strictly second-hand but I come from a family of seven siblings.]

    “There I;m the expert, not you.” Whoop-di-doo. Now please, if you would, share with us some of your expertise regarding the origin of national membership in America. I’m an eager student of all information that I have not yet come across.

    “I say that under a jus sanguinis system, Obama would indeed meet all the criteria to be a naturel,”

    It’s surprising that you actually had the cluelessness to write that. Let’s see… “No person, except a naturel, shall be eligible…” Hmmm, doesn’t seem to be quite right… Better change the Constitution ’cause we can’t understand simple English words until they are translated into French. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

    The unbelievable irony in that is that neither you nor I give any constitutional credence to Vattel’s citizenship description. And yet here you are shining the spotlight on what you do not even believe in? Unbelievable! Alert! Alert! Vattel validates Obama! Obot verifies Obama’s eligibility using Vattel! Snowballs in Hell!

    But seriously, forgive me for calling you a bald-faced liar. You know full well that Vattel said (in three places) that nationality passed via patrilineal descent, so you’d be right perhaps if two hundred years ago Obama were elected President of Kenya. In that day and age your claim would be true: “Obama would indeed meet all the criteria to be a naturel,” OF KENYA!!!
    [……check mate.]

    PS. Today a wrote a deep analysis of the 1790 Uniform Rule of Naturalization. What it reveals will blow your mind. Up-end all of your conventional wisdom concepts. You need to read it to understand just how little you understand about American citizenship. Things are not as you assumed.

    The Unexpected Truth about US Citizenship in 1790
    https://h2ooflife.wordpress.com/2015/02/06/the-unexpected-truth-about-us-citizenship-in-1790/

  202. Adrien Nash says:

    Magic M wrote: “if the “human class” is natural, a designation of another class based on arbitrarily drawn lines on a map (which didn’t even exists back then) is necessarily not natural, [EXACTLY] therefore all citizens of a country are “legal” citizens (in your lingo), i.e. created by man-made law and not by nature.

    WHAT? No logical segue. Almost all citizens of most countries are natural citizens who need no law to make them citizens. They belong to the country into whose membership they were conceived and born. Hence the lack of any need to write and pass a law that would simply and unnecessarily state the obvious.
    That would be stupid and pointless. There is also no law that states that the children that parents give birth to belong to them.
    Again, unnecessary. Why? Because natural law prevails, as it has throughout all of human history, -long before any government was even conceived of.
    Now, to parse your words; it is true that all citizens of a country are “legally” citizens but that does not mean that they are “legal” citizens since a tiny percentage of them (immigrants, their children, and children of mixed nationality unions) are the only citizens by the function of law, common law, statutory law, or naturalization oath. You don’t use the term “legal” in connection with natural law. It only applies to man-made law. It is of the legal realm, not the natural realm.

  203. Adrien Nash says:

    Whatever4: Well, in the Constitution, the Framers changed the meaning of the word “treason.” Fortunately, they defined what they meant as it went against what people at the time thought it meant.

    That is a stretch. What they did was define the meaning of criminal constitutional treason. The common concept of treason was unaltered. Good try though.

  204. Adrien Nash says:

    Slartibartfast “It is only when a consensus occurs–i.e. many experiments by many groups, repeated independently, support a hypothesis–that something becomes science.”

    Wow! what foolishness. Tell me exactly by what process all of those “experiments” were conducted. If they were not following the rules of science, then they would all be worthless. Anyone can do science if they follow its rules. If they don’t, then the result is not a result of science, no matter how many scientist accept it. [which is happening far too often in this day and age.]

  205. Adrien Nash says:

    Rickey: As for Wong Kim Ark, you really should take the time to read the government’s SCOTUS brief. The government acknowledged that the lower court had ruled that WKA was a natural born citizen, and the government complained that WKA would be eligible to become president if SCOTUS ruled that he was a citizen. SCOTUS upheld the lower court’s ruling.

    “Incidentally, WKA’s parents were not “permanent residents” of the United States. In fact, they had returned to China several years before WKA was detained in San Francisco and the government tried to deport him.

    What part of “I don’t give a damn about the ignorant opinions of unenlightened lawyers.” don’t you understand? They were all suffused with misconceptions absorbed from society and law professors who didn’t know nor understand the truth about American principles and American law.

    As for your supposedly wise observation regarding the meaning of “permanent resident”, you are not acknowledging the legal meaning of the term, but the sociological meaning. Shame on you for resorting to ascribing common English language meaning to common English words. You can’t do that, remember?

    Natural born citizen is not allowed to mean what the words say. Obots and Apuzzians both agree; they MUST be a legal term of artifice so that you can ascribe your own preferred meaning to them. Well, I can’t do that anymore. A light went on in my head about three years ago and I realized, out of the blue, as the Apuzzian-Donofion fog dissipated, that the word “natural” was not connected to the word “born” but to the word “citizen”. That changed everything.

    Read what I wrote today for your benefit: https://h2ooflife.wordpress.com/2015/02/06/the-unexpected-truth-about-us-citizenship-in-1790/
    It will change your whole way of thinking.

  206. Adrien Nash says:

    Dr. Kenneth Noisewater: nowhere did the court declare him “Not NBC”.In fact if you read the appellate briefs the district court for which the case was based on ruled that he was a Natural Born Citizen.it was the governments argument that the lower court was in error in their determination.

    Plus, the court did not declare him to NOT be a cumquat. I guess he must be. The issue of presidential eligibility was not before the court, only the issue of common law citizenship. So the court had no justification for pontificating outside of the parameters of the case.
    And btw, I hate to have to break it to you but you just shot your own foot off with the second statement. It shows that it was the expressed legal opinion and policy of the United States government that Wong was NOT a citizen of the United States by common law. You will probably not find any good explanation as to why without reading my analysis of the 1790 Uniform Rule of Naturalization which I posted today on my blog. It targets the reason why, and it is unassailable.

    Even worse for your position, if the government did not consider him to even be a citizen, it would be inconceivable that it would or could consider him in any way, shape, or form to be a natural born citizen. [behold the clouds parting and sunshine breaking through!]

    PS. thanks for the new ammo.

  207. Adrien Nash says:

    Dave B.:
    ~here’s George D. Collins’ brief in US v. Wong Kim Ark:
    http://librarysource.uchastings.edu/library/research/special-collections/wong-kim-ark/AppellantsBrief.pdf

    “For the most persuasive reasons we have refused citizenship to Chinese subjects; and yet, as to their offspring, who are just as obnoxious, and to whom the same reasons for exclusion apply with equal force, we are told that we must accept them as fellow-citizens, and that, too, because of the mere accident of birth.There certainly should be some honor and dignity in American citizenship that would be sacred from the foul and corrupting taint of a debasing alienage.”

    Racism! Alienage = Asianage! or not! The British were a similar sort of alien that was despised from the perspective of fundamental American values. Why? For the same reason that the Chinese were despicable, or radical Islamists; they were diehard ass-kissers of royalty or religious dictators who did not believe in any human rights or human equality! America specifically rejected all royalty and titles of nobility because they reeked with superiority vs subservience.

    Your right to complain is an American right based on the belief in the equality of Man. No other nation embraced our beliefs and that’s why they continued on in the darkness of servitude for generation after generation. Independence and individuality were alien to them, thus the stench of alienness clung to them since they were so inherently subservient. Wong himself obviously was quite American since he asserted his rights and fought for them.

  208. Lupin says:

    Obligedfriend: Professor Gilmore wrote Vattel’s citizenship chapter is in the Constitution, the Founders used Vattel in the Constitution and it’s not limited to “citizen parents”. Freedom of speech and religion. Coinage, offenses against the law of nations, and others. Read the book, read Vattel.

    Maybe you should do that; better yet, consult a French legal scholar that would (easily) tell you what Vattel actually wrote, not what you THINK he wrote.

    Because Vattel never ever said that one needed two citizen parents, as you put it.

    First, “parens” in French doesn’t mean just parents but all blood relatives. (In fact we have no word for “relative” in French, just a single word “parent” for both.) What Vattel wrote was that citizenship was transmitted by relatives, ie by blood. The plural here is a group plural. This sentence merely restates the principles of jus sanguinis.

    In the next sentence, Vattel then proceeds to narrow the field, as it were, saying that it is the father who transmits citizenship. ONLY the father. ONE parent, NOT two. Get that? It’s simple enough.

    Further, the assumption that Vattel meant “natural born citizens” when he merely used the words “naturels” and “indigenes” is highly debatable. I,m for one, do not agree that the two are one and the same.

    In any event, there is nothing at all in all of Vattel’s writings that states that one has to have two citizen parents.

    You find the same notion of a single parent (the father) transmitting the rights and duties of citizenship in the Napoleonic Code which sprang from the same source as Vattel. Again, no two citizen parents.

    I might add that there is about 200 years of scholarship, essays and books, etc on Vattel, and there has NEVER been a single author who put forth your twisted misinterpretation.

    The truth is, you are an ignorant fool who keeps talking about things of which he has no understanding.

    Since this has been explained a million times already, I can only surmise that your stubborn desire to remain in the wrong is explained by the racism you feel towards your President.

  209. Lupin says:

    Obligedfriend: It appears we have a match with natives and naturals. Vattel’s 1758 has natives and the 1777 edition has naturels.

    This is false.

    To begin with, the obvious clue that your statement is rubbish is that “natives” is not a French word! Have you thought of that, you imbecile? It is an English word. Hence Vattel never used it for one obvious reason: he wrote in French!

    The French terms are “natifs” or ‘indigenes” which Vattel did use, equating the last one with “naturels” which is basically a Rousseauist notion of a state of nature that predates citizenship which is a man-made construct.

    In fact Vattel builds his argument on the nature and transmission of citizenship in layers, starting with the natural state (which is pure or blank, if you will), then showing how it evolves into what we know as citizenship under Man.

    Hence, the notion that “naturel” can be equated with “natural born citizen” is somewhat of a contradiction in terms, at least if you want to split hairs.

    You are an idiot who is parroting legal misinterpretations of a text written in Old French in a different historical and societal context, which you are clearly unable to understand and even less discuss.

  210. Lupin says:

    Dr. Kenneth Noisewater: Even though Vattel called for an organized religion he also said that the state should have total control over it.

    Which if you recall is what Napoleon enforced with the Concordat of 1801.

    Once argument which occurred to me only recently (and did not occur to your Congressional Research attorney — not that he needed to go that far) is that if the birthers were somehow correct about their weird interpretation of Vattel with the two citizens parents, well then this would have been the state of things in France under the Napoleonic Code as well when it was drafted. Or we know that was definitely NOT the case.

  211. Adrien Nash says:

    Ballantine wrote: “there was a national citizenship based upon jus soli”
    Nash: “there was also a national citizenship based upon jus sanguinis which was the basis of citizenship for the 98% of Americans who were natural born State citizens, as the Constitution required for presidential eligibility.
    ~ such citizenship was an unwritten, unverbalized natural membership that needed no validation of government in a law-making capacity.”

    Ballantine: LOL. So there was this secret citizenship that no one mentioned. So our courts and other legal authorities said we only had jus soli but secretly knew we had jus sanguinis. Sure. Can you tell us why no one ever mentioned this secret citizenship?

    Nash: Why did no one ever mention that the water is wet? That babies need their mothers? No one is dumb enough to openly state something which has no need to be stated when it is already understood. We’re talking about the national membership of children born in America to American parents.
    Now if there were a reason to state it, that would be different, but there was absolutely no reason to do so. You can’t dream one up and neither can I. Why?

    Because it was a given. The only people who had a relationship to the subject of having or not having citizenship were foreigners and children born to them. Everyone else was already a member of the club, and born that way. There was nothing to talk about. No contest of opinions. No challenges. No questions to be discussed and answered. It was a totally invisible subject until one returned from traveling abroad and had to be allowed re-entrance by a State Port officer.

    Understand, no official of any government entity ever had to ask if someone was a citizen or not except perhaps when it came to voting in well populated areas, serving on juries, seeking travel papers or reentry into the US. There was no such thing as an illegal alien, nor visas. Everyone was welcome to stay as long as they wanted.

    The courts and legal authorities only had the citizenship of aliens to consider and so that was all that was in their view, -legal citizenship acquisition. They had no connection to the automatic citizenship of natural citizens, -with the rare exception of those rare few born abroad.

    B: “Why did the supreme Court say repeatedly that for several decades there was no jus sanguinis statute and all foreign born children of citizens were aliens.”

    That’s right and wrong. As I said, and now you agree, there was NO STATUTE, but it is false to say that the high court held that foreign born Americans were aliens. That is a misconception that has no basis in fact.

    B: “Citizenship determines who…has rights in a nation. It is not the same as a family.”

    You have a very inadequate grasp of how broadly the word “family” can be applied. Do the people of Jordan not consider themselves a family? “A burned-alive pilot? Who cares, I didn’t personally know him”.
    After three decades, less than 60 of the Palestinian refugees have been allowed to join the Jordanian family. Japan allows almost no one to become a member of the Japanese family.
    Membership is still membership, regardless of differences between types of groups.

    B: “Again, many nations have chosen jus soli in history whether you like it or not. Your opinion of natural law does [not] change who were given rights in such nations.”

    Your comprehension of the big picture is way too paltry. Nations “allow” jus soli in addition to jus sanguinis. What anyone says about what the principle is that determines a nation’s citizenship is foolish since it is an exercise of opinion that is totally unprovable in any way. It reveals a failure to grasp that there is no logical basis to presume that there is only one single means to citizenship when the only proof of a legal sort that jus soli is operative is reserved solely for outsiders and their children.

    Show me one modern nation which considers its children born abroad to be actual aliens. By your simplistic reasoning, there should be lots of them. If you claim that they do but make allowance for them by statute, then I would say that you are wrong, and they actually do consider them as members of the national family and that is why they MUST make allowance for them.
    Otherwise they would hold an opinion equivalent to professing that all children not born in their own parents’ home are not their own natural children but must be adopted legally. Even if such an asinine law were in effect, it would be a lie against reality since no one would truly believe what the law asserts.

    To really understand the principles of American citizenship you need to read the analysis I wrote today to explain the unnoticed implications of the Uniform Rule of Naturalization of 1790. That act is the most fundamental, original expression of the mind of Congress.

    re: the 1790 Act: B: “our courts and executive opinion rejected any argument that such provision applied to the native born. In fact, our courts made clear that only the foreign born could be naturalized.”

    You do not grasp the confusion that reigned for over a century. Citizenship was a State matter. Citizenship was a federal matter. Which was it? It was both! Hence the confusion of so many lawyers who were ensconced in only one realm or the other.
    What some judges thought did not dictate the policy of the executive branch nor the preference of Congress. That is why the statutes said one thing, but the courts could misinterpret it based on applying State laws instead of what Congressional statutes said, and the executive officers did know what was what because the States still retained the authority to naturalize their foreign immigrants. In the end, all that was really law at the federal level was what the words said or meant.

    B: “I thought you said it was the father who mattered. Now it has to be couples.”
    You know full well the reality of that fact. Until women obtained a citizenship of their own, they had only the citizenship of their husband or father, depending on a judge and how he felt about any given case. I would like to know of any State which (before the passage of the 19th Amendment) passed a law that honored American women with their own separate citizenship. Maybe there was one or two.
    After the amendment, one has to refer to couples since neither parent alone, possibly having separate nationalities, was capable of producing a natural American citizen.

    B: “Nevertheless, the court made clear that for several decades prior to 1855, all the foreign born were aliens.”

    I believe you are mis-remembering the facts. My recollection is that Congress unnecessarily revised the 1802 Nat Act because they mistakenly bowed to an illogical authority that distorted all common sense in the reading of the act. One of us is wrong about the court being involved in the misunderstanding of ambiguous language.

    Were you actually correct, then why not cite any case? I assume it is because there never was one. That would be because no sane government official ever presumed that the wording of the statute meant what was erroneously read into it by the legal authority whose name I can’t recall.

    end of part 1.

  212. Adrien Nash says:

    Lupin wrote to Obligedfriend: “First, “parens” in French doesn’t mean just parents but all blood relatives.
    What Vattel wrote was that citizenship was transmitted by relatives, ie by blood”

    That is a disingenuous absurdity. You know very well that you have no business picking the English word “relatives” when that is NOT what Vattel wrote, nor what he would have thought. He states quite emphatically, as you even state, that citizenship is by descent from the father.
    The father is not an uncle or grandparent, so “relatives” is pure quackery, which you are all too willing to engage in. Citizenship in connection with “parens” can mean nothing other than membership via natural inheritance from citizen parents. No one inherits anything from anyone but their parents, so you cannot even explain your own falsehood.

    “Vattel then proceeds to narrow the field, as it were, saying that it is the father who transmits citizenship. ONLY the father. ONE parent, NOT two. Get that? It’s simple enough.”

    Being as a woman had no citizenship other than her father’s or her husband’s if married, it is safe to say that it can be said to be both or it can be said to be the father alone, (same thing, same nation) but it cannot be said to be a married mother alone, ever, as is the case that Obama depends on, and you seemed to have overlooked in disqualifying him from the presidency via Vattel and patrilineal descent. Thanks for going birther.

    “Further, the assumption that Vattel meant “natural born citizens” when he merely used the words “naturels” and “indigenes” is highly debatable. I, for one, do not agree that the two are one and the same.”

    “I do not agree”? “highly debatable”? Hardly! It is not debatable at all. Nothing that Vattel wrote has any connection to the American term “natural born citizen” since it essentially did not even exist when he wrote. He wrote about natural citizens. Natural born citizens are natural citizens by birth. The obots want nbc to be interpreted as a legal term of artifice which means the same rejected thing as a “natural-born subject” but no natural-born subject was defined as one who inherited his father’s nationality.

    “Natural-born subject” did exist when Vattel wrote, but the natural citizens that he wrote about are not natural-born subjects since the former derive citizenship from their father while the later derived it from common law allowance based on place of birth.

    “In any event, there is nothing at all in all of Vattel’s writings that states that one has to have two citizen parents.”

    Both the Vattelists assertion and your obot response are lame. Vattel communicated that the “parens” were citizens of the country in which their natural born, natural inhabitant, natural member children are born. So your language is inappropriate, as in: “has to have two…” for what?? For presidential eligibility based by qualifying as a natural citizen by birth, which requires both parents having the same nationality, -with the understanding that a foreign father cannot ever in a million years produce a natural citizen of a nation that is not his, -in which he is an actual alien. Who can possibly not understand this?

  213. faceman says:

    Keith: Incorrect presumption. It happens during the physical act of love.Precious Bodily Fluids

    P. O. E. Purity of Essence. Anti-fluoridation comment by Gen Ripper as he released the bombers under Wing Attack Plan R (which were already at their fail-safe).

  214. What is a disingenuous absurdity is you claiming to be a better translator of 18th century French than a French attorney who is an editor of Vattel in English translation, and a second commenter who is a certified translator. I refer you to this article where this translation was discussed:

    http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/bookmarks/fact-checking-and-debunking/the-translation-of-vattel-from-the-french/

    Adrien Nash: That is a disingenuous absurdity. You know very well that you have no business picking the English word “relatives” when that is NOT what Vattel wrote, nor what he would have thought. He states quite emphatically, as you even state, that citizenship is by descent from the father.

  215. gorefan says:

    Adrien Nash:

    1. No one can show anyone the etymology of that word combination because it had almost no history before it appeared in the Constitution.

    We can show that the word combinations “natural born citizen” and “natural born subject” were used interchangeably by the Founding generation between 1785 and 1791.

  216. Slartibartfast says:

    Anyone can do science if they follow its rules

    So,if I understand correctly, in the world according to Adrien, basic citizenship law isn’t written down anywhere (and case law doesn’t exist at all), but there are rules of science which are apparently so unrelated to the concept of consensus that a single person can do it all on their own. So would you care to elucidate these “rules of science” and prove that you aren’t as completely wrong about this as you are about citizenship to a published scientist like myself? Or do you just make this stuff up as you go with no regard for any meaning, insight or understanding?

    Adrien Nash:
    Slartibartfast“It is only when a consensus occurs–i.e. many experiments by many groups, repeated independently, support a hypothesis–that something becomes science.”

    Wow! what foolishness.Tell me exactly by what process all of those “experiments” were conducted.If they were not following the rules of science, then they would all be worthless.Anyone can do science if they follow its rules.If they don’t, then the result is not a result of science, no matter how many scientist accept it. [which is happening far too often in this day and age.]

  217. Slartibartfast says:

    Adrien Nash: A light went on in my head about three years ago and I realized, out of the blue, as the Apuzzian-Donofion fog dissipated, that the word “natural” was not connected to the word “born” but to the word “citizen”. That changed everything.

    And who are the natural citizens of a nation? They consist of those who were natural born and those who were naturalized.

    What does it say that your own assumptions, taken to their logical conclusions (and they didn’t have to be taken very far at all) completely contradict your claims?

  218. Dave B. says:

    From Lupin’s translation:

    “Natives or indigenes (2) are those born in that country from blood relatives (3) who are already citizens. ”

    Justice Daniel’s use of this passage in his concurring opinion in Scott v. Sandford makes it abundantly clear that this particular passage was most useful as a rationale for denying citizenship to those classes considered not to be “part of the people” of the United States on the basis of race or servitude.

    Dr. Conspiracy:
    What is a disingenuous absurdity is you claiming to be a better translator of 18th century French than a French attorney who is an editor of Vattel in English translation, and a second commenter who is a certified translator.I refer you to this article where this translation was discussed:

    http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/bookmarks/fact-checking-and-debunking/the-translation-of-vattel-from-the-french/

  219. Dave B. says:

    Each time I ask myself “How stupid can Adrien get?” you come up with something even stupider than before. Were British subjects allowed to naturalize as US citizens? Exactly who WERE allowed, EXCLUSIVELY, to naturalize as US citizens before 1870? Who were NOT allowed to naturalize well into the middle of the 20th century?

    Adrien Nash: Racism!Alienage = Asianage!or not!The British were a similar sort of alien that was despised from the perspective of fundamental American values.Why?For the same reason that the Chinese were despicable, or radical Islamists; they were diehard ass-kissers of royalty or religious dictators who did not believe in any human rights or human equality!America specifically rejected all royalty and titles of nobility because they reeked with superiority vs subservience.

    Your right to complain is an American right based on the belief in the equality of Man.No other nation embraced our beliefs and that’s why they continued on in the darkness of servitude for generation after generation. Independence and individuality were alien to them, thus the stench of alienness clung to them since they were so inherently subservient.Wong himself obviously was quite American since he asserted his rights and fought for them.

  220. Rickey says:

    Adrien Nash:

    As for your supposedly wise observation regarding the meaning of “permanent resident”, you are not acknowledging the legal meaning of the term, but the sociological meaning.Shame on you for resorting to ascribing common English language meaning to common English words.You can’t do that, remember?

    I used the “sociological meaning”, as you put it, because the person I was responding to used the phrase “permanent resident,” a phrase which does not appear in the Wong Kim Ark decision.

    I am well aware of the fact that there is a legal distinction between “residence” and “domicile.”

    If you had half the brain that you believe you have, you would understand that the domicile of WKA’s parents had absolutely nothing to do with the Court’s decision.

    The District Court did indeed rule that WKA was a natural born citizen. The U.S. government actually argued that if WKA was ruled to be a citizen, it meant that he was eligible to be president. And the Supreme Court concurred with the District Court.

  221. Dave B. says:

    If Adrien had half the brain he believes he has, Scarlett Johanssson would be starring in the biopic.

    Rickey: If you had half the brain that you believe you have, you would understand that the domicile of WKA’s parents had absolutely nothing to do with the Court’s decision.

  222. gorefan says:

    Adrien Nash:

    it was the expressed legal opinion and policy of the United States government that Wong was NOT a citizen of the United States by common law.

    No, it was the fact that different members of the government were applying the law differently.

    Wong Kim Ark traveled to China in 1890 and returned to the U.S. the same year. He was allowed to enter because he was native-citizen of the United States. But when he went to China in 1894 and returned to the U.S. in 1895, he was denied entry because under the fourteenth amendment he was not born under the jurisdiction of United States and was therefore not a citizen.

    Adrien Nash:

    PS. thanks for the new ammo.

    Sure, if you don’t mind shooting more blanks.

  223. Suranis says:

    Time to apply some mistranslated Vattel

    § 215. Children of citizens born in a foreign country.
    It is asked whether the children born of citizens in a foreign country are citizens? The laws have decided this question in several countries, and their regulations must be followed. (59) By the law of nature alone, children follow the condition of their fathers, and enter into all their rights (§ 212); the place of birth produces no change in this particular, and cannot, of itself, furnish any reason for taking from a child what nature has given him; I say “of itself,” for civil or political laws may, for particular reasons, ordain otherwise. But I suppose that the father has not entirely quitted his country in order to settle elsewhere. If he has fixed his abode in a foreign country, he is become a member of another society, at least as a perpetual inhabitant; and his children will be members of it also.

    Stunning that Vattel sad that local laws apply to citzenship and override “natural law”

  224. Suranis says:

    Also note the part at the top that said

    “The laws have decided this question in several countries, and their regulations must be followed. ”

    Gosh

    Soo what are the regulations n the USA. Oh yeah Native born something…

  225. Dr. Kenneth Noisewater says:

    Adrien Nash: Even worse for your position, if the government did not consider him to even be a citizen, it would be inconceivable that it would or could consider him in any way, shape, or form to be a natural born citizen. [behold the clouds parting and sunshine breaking through!]

    The government lost their case against Wong Kim Ark. It was the government who appealed the lower courts ruling where it was ruled that Wong Kim Ark was a natural born citizen. It’s obvious you haven’t read either case.

  226. Suranis says:

    As he said several times on the fogbow, his intellect is of such a level that he does not need to read something to throw objections to it via speculative scenarios.

  227. Lupin says:

    Adrien Nash:
    Lupin wrote to Obligedfriend: “First, “parens” in French doesn’t mean just parents but all blood relatives.
    What Vattel wrote was that citizenship was transmitted by relatives, ie by blood”

    That is a disingenuous absurdity.You know very well that you have no business picking the English word “relatives” when that is NOT what Vattel wrote, nor what he would have thought.He states quite emphatically, as you even state, that citizenship is by descent from the father.
    The father is not an uncle or grandparent, so “relatives” is pure quackery, which you are all too willing to engage in.Citizenship in connection with “parens” can mean nothing other than membership via natural inheritance from citizen parents. No one inherits anything from anyone but their parents, so you cannot even explain your own falsehood.

    “Vattel then proceeds to narrow the field, as it were, saying that it is the father who transmits citizenship. ONLY the father. ONE parent, NOT two. Get that? It’s simple enough.”

    Being as a woman had no citizenship other than her father’s or her husband’s if married, it is safe to say that it can be said to be both or it can be said to be the father alone, (same thing, same nation) but it cannot be said to be a married mother alone, ever, as is the case that Obama depends on, and you seemed to have overlooked in disqualifying him from the presidency via Vattel and patrilineal descent.Thanks for going birther.

    “Further, the assumption that Vattel meant “natural born citizens” when he merely used the words “naturels” and “indigenes” is highly debatable. I, for one, do not agree that the two are one and the same.”

    “I do not agree”? “highly debatable”?Hardly!It is not debatable at all.Nothing that Vattel wrote has any connection to the American term “natural born citizen” since it essentially did not even exist when he wrote. He wrote about natural citizens. Natural born citizens are natural citizens by birth.The obots want nbc to be interpreted as a legal term of artifice which means the same rejected thing as a “natural-born subject” but no natural-born subject was defined as one who inherited his father’s nationality.

    “Natural-born subject” did exist when Vattel wrote, but the natural citizens that he wrote about are not natural-born subjects since the former derive citizenship from their father while the later derived it from common law allowance based on place of birth.

    “In any event, there is nothing at all in all of Vattel’s writings that states that one has to have two citizen parents.”

    Both the Vattelists assertion and your obot response are lame.Vattel communicated that the “parens” were citizens of the country in which their natural born, natural inhabitant, natural member children are born.So your language is inappropriate, as in: “has to have two…” for what?? For presidential eligibility based by qualifying as a natural citizen by birth, which requires both parents having the same nationality, -with the understanding that a foreign father cannot ever in a million years produce a natural citizen of a nation that is not his, -in which he is an actual alien.Who can possibly not understand this?

    You are an ill-informed idiot who does not know what he is talking about.

    Everything you say is false; all your would-be rebuttals only highlight your ignorance and/or misunderstanding the French text.

    Not withstanding my credentials, notwithstanding the fact that the attorney who wrote the Congressional Research report on the topic said exactly the same things i said (i n a more fluent way), the truth of my classical, traditional interpretation of this section of Vattel can be asserted because:

    (1) One cannot find any other contrary interpretation from any French or German scholar in 200 years of legal scholarship. I challenge you to find anyone credible on my side of the pond who agrees with your delusional interpretation. Go ahead, find one.

    In other words, I; m only repeating what everyone else has said for 200 years; And you’re a nutcase.

    (2) When Vattel was put in practice through the Napoleonic Code, we almost immediately had a body of laws and jurisprudence to help us establish a properly defined and applied system of jus sanguinis and in some cases jus soli citizenship based on the naturel principles. So it’s not as if we had to argue in a vacuum. This is not a scholarly debate.

    We know FOR A FACT what terms mean and how they are to be applied. There are no alternative explanations or theories. I can take the circumstances of Obama’s birth and translate them to 1800, 1900 or 200 in in every case tell you WITH 100% CERTAINTY how he would be considered/treated under a Vattelist system. I.e.: that he is indeed a citoyen naturel. Anything else is the product of your delusional mind..

    In conclusion, you have zero credibility in this matter, having no legal background, no legal training, no knowledge of the language. Further, what you say fly against 200 years of legal scholarship and precedents. And I find it appalling that you can’t even be bothered to find the correct definition of the word “parent” (which in French means both ‘parent” AND “relative”) in a dictionary.

    You remind me of men dressed in dirty clothes hanging out in the subway passing greasy leaflets or standing on a street corner yammering about lizard people or something similar.

    You’re a joke.

  228. Keith says:

    Lupin: You are an ill-informed idiot who does not know what he is talking about.

    Lupin you have my permission to DO what ever the heck it is that you really want to do.

    However just remember that counting to ten quadrillion is often seen as a useful diversion from the electric chair or injection chair or what ever they use in Nash’s state.

  229. Adrien Nash says:

    Dr. Conspiracy:
    What is a disingenuous absurdity is you claiming to be a better translator of 18th century French than a French attorney who is an editor of Vattel in English translation, and a second commenter who is a certified translator.I refer you to this article where this translation was discussed:

    http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/bookmarks/fact-checking-and-debunking/the-translation-of-vattel-from-the-french/

    You failed to grasp the context of what I wrote and what he wrote. First, you falsely accuse me of “claiming” something that I did not claim in order to paint a false impression that I suffer from questionable sanity and you all are the only sane “thinkers” in these here parts.
    Second, contrary to your false assertion, it is not his interpretation of what the French word’s meaning that is in question. It is the insane choice of one of two possibilities that is enormously dubious and illogical. I exposed what a realistic, logical, and accurate choice would have to be in a sane world, but you choose for biased reasons the insane choice.

    No child in American history inherited his US citizenship from his grandparents, or uncles, or cousins, or nephews. After you show the world all of the French or American children who have NOT inherited their citizenship from their father, as per Vattel, but solely from “relatives” only then can anyone claim that somehow, magically, a non-father can be the source of the national membership inherited by someone else’s children.

    The mental gymnastics that your line of thinking requires is astonishing. Lupin self-contradicted himself in his own statement by saying that inheriting one’s nationality from relatives means “by blood”.
    Please show me a single person on earth who inherited his chromosomes from relatives and not his parents. You have no idea how brain-dead any assertion is that Vattel used the only word available to him to imply anything other than “parents” when the matter he was writing about was natural inheritance of one’s political standing, or citizenship. this should not even be a subject of discussion.

    As for Lupin’s claims of 2 centuries of consensus, consensus about what? That the word “parens” has two meanings? Or that Vattel was intending that everyone reading his use of the word should assume the meaning that makes zero sense? Let any sane jury decide, logic would prevail, not absurdity.

  230. Adrien Nash says:

    Lupin: the truth of my classical, traditional interpretation of this section of Vattel can be asserted because:

    (1) One cannot find any other contrary interpretation from any French or German scholar in 200 years of legal scholarship. I challenge you to find anyone credible on my side of the pond who agrees with your delusional interpretation. Go ahead, find one.

    You are daft and oblivious to the context of this entire discussion. It it centered on only one thing: Must the President of the United States have an American father? Please review your 2 centuries of opinions and show us which authorities opined on that subject in relation to Vattel’s words. How about: None! So, even if all of the French language experts illogically choose “relatives” over “parents” in the Vattel translation, Vattel is still IRRELEVANT!

    Or is he? Let’s see…. if he is actually relevant, then there must be a way to show that fact. Please share what it is. tick, tock, tick, tock hmmmm… can’t seem to pull anything specific out of thin air?

    “Natural born citizen” is not a legal term but an anthropological term. The framers had to resort to it because they had to combine the “natural citizen” of Natural Law with “born citizen” which has a dual meaning; born a citizen by descent or by common law.

    Adding “natural” to “born citizen” eliminated all ambiguity and any possibility that the President could be someone who was only a foreigner-fathered common law citizen from the day of his birth. If there were a hyphen between the two adjectives, then everything I’ve written for four years would be false. If you want to identify “authorities” who were ignorant, just spot those who conflated native-born with natural-born, with both hyphenated.
    In their historical legal thinking, there can be no other alternative, but that is because they are blind to the very real possibility seen in the absence of the hyphen. It’s absence changes the use of the adjectives from carrying a single concept as an adjective pair to carrying no concept as a team since they both refer to the noun “citizen”. That fact severs any connection to the similar British term which applied to totally different rules of nationality.

  231. Adrien Nash says:

    Suranis:
    Time to apply some mistranslated Vattel

    § 215. Children of citizens born in a foreign country.
    It is asked whether the children born of citizens in a foreign country are citizens? The laws have decided this question in several countries, and their regulations must be followed. (59) By the law of nature alone, children follow the condition of their fathers, and enter into all their rights (§ 212); the place of birth produces no change in this particular, and cannot, of itself, furnish any reason for taking from a child what nature has given him; I say “of itself,” for civil or political laws may, for particular reasons, ordain otherwise. But I suppose that the father has not entirely quitted his country in order to settle elsewhere. If he has fixed his abode in a foreign country, he is become a member of another society, at least as a perpetual inhabitant; and his children will be members of it also.

    Stunning that Vattel sad that local laws apply to citzenship and override “natural law”

    That quote is dynamite for my illumination of the principle of natural law. But Suranis is oblivious to what is obvious and shoots is own foot off.
    In the 13 liberated nations of north America, there was NO LOCAL LAWS controlling national citizenship. National citizenship did not exist until the new nation was finally formed. And even then, it was merely an extrapolation of membership in any one of the united States.
    Vattel wrote the same thing that I’ve been writing for four years, comprehending reality based on the same natural principle: the principle of natural membership. Every natural group that has ever existed, human or animal, is based on it, and that includes families, clans, tribes, countries, and nations.

    What we need for Suranis to do is quote the United States congressional citizenship law extant across the land before the Constitution was even written or ratified. I will bow to that law as it over-road the natural law which was adopted by the framers of the national government, but even with a Time Machine, no one can uncover such a law.

    His quote was kind of off target for Obot theology since it isn’t ammo in favor of Obama’s eligibility but instead is ammo against the Apuzzo-Donofrio dogma. They worship at the alter of native birth AND parentage. Vattel shoots them down to the ground and yet their warped minds continue blindly on quoting him as if the opposite is true. It’s really astonishing how much milage Donofrio’s false Eureka “insight” has gotten. It’s equivalent to about 1,000 miles per gallon.

  232. Adrien Nash says:

    Dr. Kenneth Noisewater: The government lost their case against Wong Kim Ark.It was the government who appealed the lower courts ruling where it was ruled that Wong Kim Ark was a natural born citizen.It’s obvious you haven’t read either case.

    what is obvious is that you are blind to the implications of your own statement. You take the false and foolish position that the men of the courts were infallible GODS and the GOVERNMENT of the UNITED STATES was run by idiots and ignoramuses. How could the entire executive branch of the US government hold a position, along with Congress, that “lost” in the court of the infallibles? It was because that was the policy of the national government FROM THE VERY BEGINNING!
    Do you think they just pulled it out of thin air??? It was US Law and Policy. The courts blindly placed British common law and the laws of the individual States above that of the American national government.

    The blind and foolish think that they can totally disrespect the intelligence of all of the men who served in the national government from its beginning in the matter of citizenship and it’s legitimate origin, and instead worship the Golden Calf of court opinion when the men of the court were bound by nothing and had to answer to no one.

    They could and did anything they wanted, if they wanted. Reality be damned. Precedent be damned. Policy be damned. Congress be damned. ALL HAIL BRITISH COMMON LAW! WE ARE IT’S SLAVE! Not to mention that if they ruled against Wong then they would have been ruling against the justice that wrote the opinion of the court since he was appointed by a President who was not a natural born citizen. hmmmm…. conflict of interest?

  233. Suranis says:

    Sure will! It was called Calvins’s Case.

    You’re welcome!

    Adrien Nash: What we need for Suranis to do is quote the United States congressional citizenship law extant across the land before the Constitution was even written or ratified.

  234. Dave B. says:

    Yeah, but for what it’s worth, he IS really running up his word count here.

    Lupin: You are an ill-informed idiot who does not know what he is talking about.

  235. Slartibartfast says:

    You should check out the logorrhea over at his blog. He’s barely warming up his keyboard here compared to any random exegesis you look at there. The one thing he says that I absolutely believe is that he’s written over a quarter million words on this topic. A monument to quantity over quality wrapped up in a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

    Dave B.:
    Yeah, but for what it’s worth, he IS really running up his word count here.

  236. gorefan says:

    Adrien Nash: what is obvious is that you are blind to the implications of your own statement.

    Blahahaha.

    It is good to see that you finally admit that President Obama is eligible. As you have pointed out the law is settled by the Supreme Court decision in Wong Kim Ark. Regardless of what the government thinks, Supreme Court decisions trump them. All that’s left for you is to either convince the Court to overturn the Wong decision or failing that get a amendment to the Constitution.

    Good luck on your new quest.

  237. Slartibartfast says:

    Holy straw man, Batman!

    Adrien Nash: what is obvious is that you are blind to the implications of your own statement.

    We understand the implications of our statements, it is you who has proven himself aggressively and willfully ignorant regarding the logical consequences of your positions.

    You take the false and foolish position that the men of the courts were infallible GODS and the GOVERNMENT of the UNITED STATES was run by idiots and ignoramuses.

    No one thinks that the words of the court are sacred. They are, however, the law according to the US Constitution. The government at the time, on the other hand, would never have argued that its position applied to the child of Scots or Germans or Russians or even Africans from Kenya, just Chinamen.

    How could the entire executive branch of the US government hold a position, along with Congress, that “lost” in the court of the infallibles?

    The entire executive branch and Congress were in complete agreement on how the law applied to the child of an African from Kenya and a US citizen (for instance). The courts merely extended this understanding to include the children of Chinese subjects as well.

    It was because that was the policy of the national government FROM THE VERY BEGINNING!

    The only policy that can be claimed to have existed “from the very beginning” is jus soli. It obtained in the colonies before the Declaration of Independence and was never changed by any of the several states. That is the only conclusion consistent with the Virginia citizenship law written by Thomas Jefferson, the plain words of James Madison and the opinion of the court in Lynch v. Clark, among many, many others.

    Do you think they just pulled it out of thin air???

    No, it was a policy that was carefully crafted by those who were prejudiced against the “Mongoloids”. It is an interesting fact that if you track any birther argument back to its origins you always seem to find that it has its roots in some sort of racism. Why is that?

    It was US Law and Policy.The courts blindly placed British common law and the laws of the individual States above that of the American national government.

    No, the courts placed the US Constitution above attempts by the government to institutionalize racism (again).

    The blind and foolish think that they can totally disrespect the intelligence of all of the men who served in the national government from its beginning in the matter of citizenship and it’s legitimate origin, and instead worship the Golden Calf of court opinion when the men of the court were bound by nothing and had to answer to no one.

    They all followed the US Constitution which gave the SCOTUS the last word. Don’t like it, the Constitution can be amended but, short of that, you’ve just got to live with the ruling in Wong Kim Ark because there is no indication that the SCOTUS will change its mind. Your hyperbolic framing only serves to make you look deluded and foolish and your complaints look like sour grapes.

    They could and did anything they wanted, if they wanted.

    Apparently, what they wanted included everyone acting within their proper discretion and authority. The state barred Mr. Wong’s reentry, Mr. Wong took the matter to the courts and the courts decided the state was wrong and that Mr. Wong was a citizen*. The Constitution gave the SCOTUS the power to make that decision (in any manner they chose), why is that a problem?

    * The point that always escapes birthers is that they decided Mr. Wong was a citizen because he was a natural born citizen.

    Reality be damned.

    I don’t think you are any kind of credible authority on reality.

    Precedent be damned.

    You do realize that the SCOTUS is explicitly not bound by any precedent? Not that it matters in this case, since they merely upheld the law that had been in force (for white people, anyway) since the ratification of the Constitution continued the law that had been codified in Calvin’s Case two centuries prior.

    Policy be damned.

    Yes, they completely (and legally) destroyed a racist policy. Yay! Is this a great country or what?

    Congress be damned.

    The authority of the Congress to enact racist policy does not extend to excluding those who were natural born citizens under the Constitution as originally written. You would consider the application of Congressional statute to the determination of natural born citizenship reprehensible if you were in any way consistent in your beliefs. Hypocrite.

    ALL HAIL BRITISH COMMON LAW!WE ARE IT’S SLAVE!

    Like every other birther, you are either unwilling or unable to participate in a nuanced discussion regarding English common law, American common law and the nomenclature which is shared by both. Suffice it to say that, to anyone with a modicum of understanding, it makes you look like a willfully ignorant whacko. Good job!

    Not to mention that if they ruled against Wong then they would have been ruling against the justice that wrote the opinion of the court since he wasappointed by a President who was not a natural born citizen. hmmmm…. conflict of interest?

    No one ever questioned the natural born citizenship of a native-born white person–including President Arthur and his known Irish heritage–before the birthers. I highly doubt even a single person on the losing side of Wong Kim Ark would have had the gall to argue that ruling against Mr. Wong would have implied President Arthur wasn’t natural born. It was universally agreed at the time that President Arthur was natural born provided he was born in the US.

  238. Adrien Nash says:

    Slartibartfast: The government at the time, on the other hand, would never have argued that its position applied to the child of Scots or Germans or Russians or even Africans from Kenya, just Chinamen.

    I can’t know that to be a fact but I would assume it to be true.
    Which nullifies my whole emphasis on the government’s attitude. It would have been accurate if Wong had been Smith, but not so regarding the Chinese.
    So a quick about-face is my response to the assumption I made, which your plain counter revealed to not be the real picture.

    Slartibartfast: It was because that was the policy of the national government FROM THE VERY BEGINNING!

    The only policy that can be claimed to have existed “from the very beginning” is jus soli. It obtained in the colonies before the Declaration of Independence and was never changed by any of the several states.

    This is getting old. The biased mind can’t seem to read what was actually written: -“of the NATIONAL GOVERNMENT”! Not the State governments.

    Slartibartfast: They all followed the US Constitution which gave the SCOTUS the last word.

    That is totally false in two glaring ways: the Constitution contains no American principle of nationality whatsoever, and it could not because citizenship, as I’ve repeatedly repeated, was a STATE matter. Why do you all pretend that I have not made that claim but instead ignore it instead of factually refuting it? Why? Because it is true.
    If you want to claim that a natural born citizen was a term defined in legal terms, you fail because those words were not defined in the law of any State nor in the Constitution, -nor in Anglo-American common law.

    Second, as any one with eyes and a brain can tell, the Constitution nowhere gives the federal courts exclusive jurisdiction over constitutional matters, otherwise the oath of office would be to swear to uphold and defend the Constitution,or what the Supreme Court claims it means by any majority vote split.
    That is not what anyone has ever sworn to do. Every governor, as well as state and national officers, including the President, swear to defend the Constitution, not its perversion. The court is given no authority to implement and enforce the acceptance of its opinions, which is the only thing that it can issue. Not Law, not constitutional infallible truth. Just opinion.

    Many a governor, and State legislature, needs to start nullifying not only government bureaucrat tyranny, but also the tyranny of the President and Congress. As is now happening, having begun with marijuana legalization. Over-reach is the natural tendency of selfish human nature, and people faithful to the limitations put on corrupt government are the only thing between freedom and slavery.

  239. Dr. Kenneth Noisewater says:

    Adrien Nash: what is obvious is that you are blind to the implications of your own statement.You take the false and foolish position that the men of the courts were infallible GODS and the GOVERNMENT of the UNITED STATES was run by idiots and ignoramuses.How could the entire executive branch of the US government hold a position, along with Congress, that “lost” in the court of the infallibles?It was because that was the policy of the national government FROM THE VERY BEGINNING!
    Do you think they just pulled it out of thin air???It was US Law and Policy.The courts blindly placed British common law and the laws of the individual States above that of the American national government.

    The blind and foolish think that they can totally disrespect the intelligence of all of the men who served in the national government from its beginning in the matter of citizenship and it’s legitimate origin, and instead worship the Golden Calf of court opinion when the men of the court were bound by nothing and had to answer to no one.

    They could and did anything they wanted, if they wanted.Reality be damned.Precedent be damned.Policy be damned.Congress be damned.ALL HAIL BRITISH COMMON LAW!WE ARE IT’S SLAVE!Not to mention that if they ruled against Wong then they would have been ruling against the justice that wrote the opinion of the court since he wasappointed by a President who was not a natural born citizen. hmmmm…. conflict of interest?

    Wow are you completely clueless. Did you bother to read the case? In this case the federal government was the immigration authority. Not congress, not the president. I’m not the blind one here. Even the dissenting justices realized the implications of the case that people like Wong Kim Ark would be eligible for the Presidency. The dissent understood what effect the opinion of the court would have. The reason for the issue was that Chinese people weren’t allowed US citizenship through naturalization. The argument was that Wong Kim Ark was born a citizen and therefore was a natural born citizen as the circuit court determined. Since Wong Kim Ark couldn’t be naturalized he could only be natural born.

    I see a bunch of whining from you Adrien. It’s funny how you whine when reality starts to leak in.

  240. Adrien Nash says:

    Slartibartfast: …you are either unwilling or unable to participate in a nuanced discussion regarding English common law, American common law and the nomenclature which is shared by both. Suffice it to say that, to anyone with a modicum of understanding…

    Suffice it to say, you have only a modicum of understanding of my knowledge of Anglo-American nationality history. Exhibit # 1.Natural-Born / Native-Born Subject in British Law ~6,000 words.

    Quote: “I transcribed this verbatim from a Google-Books scan of an expository work probably not available as digital text. Its subject matter was so germane to the issue of nationality and presidential eligibility that it deserved the time required to copy it into modern text with all “s”s converted from “f”s. …it was a collection of writings from long-ago right up to the 20th Century. I’ve inserted my comments in brackets. ~

    https://h2ooflife.wordpress.com/2014/05/15/natural-born-native-born-subject-in-british-law/

    a quote:
    [for probably a thousand years ( perhaps since the invasion of the Norman King William (the Conqueror) in 1066), British nationality rules & policy were a hodge-podge of slapped together doctrines, all attempting to remedy short-comings (due to the abandonment of Natural Law & patrilineal descent) by means of invented fictions and statutory acts to restore what jus soli stole from the English countrymen whose child happened to be born beyond the borders of England / Britain, -and for a time Normandy, France.

    Because jus soli is not based on any natural principle, none can be given to justify the results or policies of its rule. Hence, an ambassador’s home is “reputed” to be sovereign British soil. That’s just dream-world fantasizing, fairy-tale magic talk. Like national pixie dust was sprinkled on it making it transcendentally British-soil linked. What balderdash.]

    It contains dozens of insights that have never crossed you closed mind.

    Here’s another quote you’ll love:
    “In Edward III’s reign, the question of the capacity of children born beyond the seas to inherit the estates of their ancestors was raised at large” (Parliament Roll, 17 Edw. III (1343), p. 139),

    [note that it wasn’t a question of foreigners inheriting property left to them by perhaps their mother or grandmother who was a foreigner who married an Englishman. Rather, it was about nothing other than the remembered and perhaps recorded foreign geographical location of the birth-place of an Englishman who had probably lived his entire life in England being that which he was born as; an Englishman, -but one whose national membership and natural rights were dependent on an authoritarian-elevated, and enthroned long-past, brief event distant in time and memory (like Obama’s mythical “reputed” Hawaiian birth for which no witnesses ever existed).

    But some dumb pencil-pushers felt it was their rule-defending role in life to enforce the status quo rule that foreigners were not allowed to inherit English property. That, no doubt, was the rule when it was first advanced; no foreigners inherit, -NOT no foreign-born persons inherit.

    So how did their little pin-heads turn Englishmen into foreigners? By pointing out that they weren’t born on English soil. So English soil was the god-like determinant of nationality since it was owned by the god-like King, His Royal Highness, and not the English blood of one’s “ancestors” whose estate was left to them?

    Confused thinking by confused little minds ignorant of the foundational principle of natural membership. In their royal-boot-licking, sycophantic little minds, everything was about the King and not the country. Everything!

  241. Adrien Nash says:

    Slartibartfast: No one ever questioned the natural born citizenship of a native-born white person–including President Arthur and his known Irish heritage–before the birthers. I highly doubt even a single person on the losing side of Wong Kim Ark would have had the gall to argue that ruling against Mr. Wong would have implied President Arthur wasn’t natural born. It was universally agreed at the time that President Arthur was natural born provided he was born in the US.

    Are you ignorant of the protest of Breckenridge Long? You shouldn’t be. Why Because THE FIRST BIRTHER WAS A DEMOCRAT!

    Historical Views of Natural Born Citizen 9-22-13
    https://h2ooflife.wordpress.com/2013/09/22/historical-views-of-natural-born-citizen/

    a quote: The Constitution of the United States puts a particular qualification upon those who shall become President and Vice-President. For all other offices it requires that they be “citizens of the United States,” but for the Presidency and Vice-Presidency it requires that they be “natural born citizens.”

    The word “natural” means “of the nature of”; “naturally a part of”; “by the laws of nature an integral part of” a system. Following that line of thought, a “natural born” citizen would be one who was naturally, at his birth, a member of the political society; naturally, -a part of the political system into which he was born; -by the laws of nature a citizen of the society into which he was born.

    It would mean, further, that no other government had any claim upon him; that his sole allegiance was to the government into which he had been born and that that government was solely, at the time, responsible for his protection.

    “Native born” does not mean quite the same thing. He might be born in a country under conditions similar to the conditions under which Mr. Hughes was born, and subsequently become a citizen of that country. In that case, after he became a citizen, he would be a “native born” citizen, but he would not have been a “natural born’ citizen”. From the instant of his birth his government would not be solely responsible for his protection.

    It must be admitted that a man born on this soil, of alien parents, enjoys a dual nationality and owes a double allegiance. Now if, by any possible construction, a person at the instant of birth, and for any period of time thereafter, owes, or may owe, allegiance to any sovereign but the United States, he is not a “natural born” citizen of the United States.

    If his sole duty is not to the United States Government, to the exclusion of all other governments, then, he is not a natural born citizen of the United States.” ~~~~~~~

    There is the truth that is a death sentence to Obama’s legitimacy. It is the axeman’s axe.

  242. Adrien Nash says:

    Dr. Kenneth Noisewater: the federal government was the immigration authority. Not congress, not the president. I’m not the blind one here. Even the dissenting justices realized the implications of the case that people like Wong Kim Ark would be eligible for the Presidency. The dissent understood what effect the opinion of the court would have.

    The reason for the issue was that Chinese people weren’t allowed US citizenship through naturalization. The argument was that Wong Kim Ark was born a citizen and therefore was a natural born citizen as the circuit court determined. Since Wong Kim Ark couldn’t be naturalized he could only be natural born.

    Talk about clueless! You could hardly be more so. The Congress determined the law. The president is chief executive of the executive branch, with the immigration service following the law as the President’s Attorney General understood it.
    Yet your blind pretense is that the INS was some independent agency operation by its own authority. How lame.

    The dissenting justices realized that Wong was NOT a natural born citizen, but perhaps the ignorant among the population and judiciary blindly conflated “citizen” with natural born citizen as long as the oath of allegiance was not involved. They did not “understand” that being a common law citizen makes one presidency eligible. You can understand falsity as well as fact. That is the whole history of science and discovery.
    Everyone “understands” the consensus opinion of the “authorities” but they don’t know the actual truth until it is later discovered and refutes what everyone believed.
    Truth is not determined by opinion or misconception but by known or unknown facts.

    “The argument was that Wong Kim Ark was born a citizen and therefore was a natural born citizen”

    Well that’s a damn lie. There was no such argument in the case at all. Hence no quote. It is what you want the gullible to believe but it’s not true. That logic is no logic at all. No connection is made between the two other than juvenile two-penny presumption.

    The falsity of course is all based on the error that the term is a term of legal artifice, which is an imaginary fabrication of both the self-blinded obots and Apuzzo-worshipping nativists. You both rely on that lie to valid your gross distortion of the AMERICAN use of two adjectives to define one noun. You are as pathetic as Apuzzo, intellectually speaking. I can fix misinformed, but nothing can fix entrenched dogma-embracing self-delusion.

  243. Not the first birther; they’ve been around since 1857 when there were stories that Geo. Washington was born in England. And then there was A. P. Hinman who claimed Chester A. Arthur was born in Canada. Hinman was a Democrat, back when Democrats were the Republicans. Breckenridge Long published his article, and as far as I can tell, no one paid any attention to it. Maybe if he had thought of Vattel…

    Adrien Nash: THE FIRST BIRTHER WAS A DEMOCRAT!

  244. Dave B. says:

    What the heck does the INS have to do with Wong Kim Ark?

    Adrien Nash: Yet your blind pretense is that the INS was some independent agency operation by its own authority.

  245. Dr. Kenneth Noisewater says:

    Adrien Nash: Talk about clueless! You could hardly be more so. The Congress determined the law. The president is chief executive of the executive branch, with the immigration service following the law as the President’s Attorney General understood it.
    Yet your blind pretense is that the INS was some independent agency operation by its own authority. How lame.

    The dissenting justices realized that Wong was NOT a natural born citizen, but perhaps the ignorant among the population and judiciary blindly conflated “citizen” with natural born citizen as long as the oath of allegiance was not involved. They did not “understand” that being a common law citizen makes one presidency eligible. You can understand falsity as well as fact. That is the whole history of science and discovery.
    Everyone “understands” the consensus opinion of the “authorities” but they don’t know the actual truth until it is later discovered and refutes what everyone believed.
    Truth is not determined by opinion or misconception but by known or unknown facts.

    “The argument was that Wong Kim Ark was born a citizen and therefore was a natural born citizen”

    Well that’s a damn lie. There was no such argument in the case at all. Hence no quote. It is what you want the gullible to believe but it’s not true. That logic is no logic at all. No connection is made between the two other than juvenile two-penny presumption.

    The falsity of course is all based on the error that the term is a term of legal artifice, which is an imaginary fabrication of both the self-blinded obots and Apuzzo-worshipping nativists. You both rely on that lie to valid your gross distortion of the AMERICAN use of two adjectives to define one noun. You are as pathetic as Apuzzo, intellectually speaking. I can fix misinformed, but nothing can fix entrenched dogma-embracing self-delusion.

    Where did I say they were an independent agency? You’ve never actually read the case have you? It’s obvious you don’t know how the case even came about or what it actually meant. Actually yes there was in the case which is why they went into the whole meaning of Natural born citizenship. There are only two types either you’re natural born or naturalized. Wong Kim Ark couldn’t be naturalized under US Law at the time. Thus his birth on US soil made him a natural born citizen.

    The losers in the case understood this. Contemporary lawyers from that time period also understood that people like Wong Kim Ark would be eligible to the presidency.

  246. Keith says:

    Adrien Nash: “

    “(Dr. Kenneth Noisewater)The argument was that Wong Kim Ark was born a citizen and therefore was a natural born citizen”

    Well that’s a damn lie. There was no such argument in the case at all. Hence no quote. It is what you want the gullible to believe but it’s not true. That logic is no logic at all. No connection is made between the two other than juvenile two-penny presumption.

    That is just a dumb assertion, Adrien.

    FACT 1) The Constitution gives Congress the power to make laws regarding naturalization. One such law forbade anyone of Chinese descent from being naturalized. Wong Kim Ark could not, under US law in effect at the time, be a naturalized citizen.

    FACT 2) The 14th Amendment to the US Constitution says (in part):
    All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States…

    FACT 3) There was no dispute about where WKA was born: he was born in the United States subject to the jurisdiction thereof.

    FACT 4) The Government contended that since WKA’s parents were not eligible for naturalization, their children, no matter where born, were not eligible either.

    FACT 5) The finding of the court found that although the Congress had the authority to make racist law like the Chinese Exclusion Act that discriminated against Chinese who were not born in the United States (see FACT 1), it did not have the authority to disqualify people born in the US. (see FACT 2).

    FACT 6) Since WKA was “born in the USA subject to the jurisdiction thereof”, he was indeed a citizen by the exhaustive analysis of historical common law firmly established for over 400 years (and by the simple application of the 14th Amendment).

    FACT 7) In descent, Justice Fuller referenced “Minor v Happersett” and admitted that that case allowed for only two sources for citizenship: native birth and naturalization.

    FACT 8) Since WKA was indeed a citizen (FACT 6) and could not have been naturalized because of the Chinese Exclusion Act, there is only one other ‘kind’ of citizen he could be: natural born (FACT 7).

    FACT 9) WKA was a natural born citizen of the United States of America, he was Constitutionally eligible to hold the office of the President of the United States of America.

    FACT 10) The fact of WKA’s natural born citizenship was not a specifically worded sentence in the finding. It is an unavoidable consequence of the 14th Amendment (FACT 2), the finding in Minor v Happerset (FACT 7), and the finding in WKA (FACT 6).

    FACT 11) Eligibility and electability are two different things.

  247. Keith says:

    Keith: FACT 11) Eligibility and electability are two different things.

    Harrumph.

    I ran out of editing time. Please let me feeeennniiiissssshhhhh!

    FACT 11) The lower court case which was being appealed by the Government to SCOTUS did indeed find that WKA was a natural born citizen, specifically and in so many words.

    FACT 12) The finding of SCOTUS in the WKA case was that it agreed with the ruling of the lower court. Completely. In effect SCOTUS specifically agreed that WKA was indeed a natural born citizen.

    FACT 13) Eligibility and electability are two different things.

  248. Adrien Nash says:

    Dave B.:
    What the heck does the INS have to do with Wong Kim Ark?

    that was short-hand for the Immigration and naturalization service. why could you not figure that out? who was it that barred him from free entry at S.F.? the Mint?

  249. Adrien Nash says:

    Keith: FACT 4) The Government contended that since WKA’s parents were not eligible for naturalization, their children, no matter where born, were not eligible either.

    Based on what? Based on nationality status by descent. Whatever status the parents were in, so were the children by their blood relationship to them. That was contrary to the common law of most or all of the States.
    It was not contrary to the nationality law of Congress since it never had in any way accepted dual nationality, and dual allegiance. In fact, its naturalization statutes had rejected it -as I’ve pointed out in my recent exposition on the 1790 act.

    Keith: ACT 8) Since WKA was indeed a citizen (FACT 6) and could not have been naturalized because of the Chinese Exclusion Act, there is only one other ‘kind’ of citizen he could be: natural born (FACT 7).

    Please show us the proof of that statement. i’m taking about real proof, not the fantasies of your illogical imagination. Pretending that since someone said that all citizenship is one or the other is not proof of anything. Please explain which of the two is provisional citizenship, and derivative citizenship, and statutory citizenship.

    It is simpleton logic that fails to recognize that the only true form of naturalization is via the oath of Allegiance & Renunciation, or that other less than true forms could and did exist, namely naturalization at birth via common law.

    Understand this: the very concept of natural–ization is a legal fiction. The government deems an alien to be a natural subject or citizen by a fiction of law, and that fiction does not get restricted to only those who take the oath. It extends to their children, whether born abroad as foreigners or born on American land and allowed to be deemed citizens from birth by its fiction.
    That form of fictional natural citizenship was what Calvin’s case fostered via the development of the common law subjectship. Alien-born children became considered “natural-born subjects” via the evolution from asserting that they were equal to and as much a subject as the actual natural born subjects.

    Children of outsiders were thereby deemed to be insiders, and all insiders were so by descent, -or by the very rare Parliamentary naturalization of the wealthy.

    Keith: FACT 11) The lower court case which was being appealed by the Government to SCOTUS did indeed find that WKA was a natural born citizen, specifically and in so many words.

    FACT 12) The finding of SCOTUS in the WKA case was that it agreed with the ruling of the lower court. Completely. In effect SCOTUS specifically agreed that WKA was indeed a natural born citizen.

    Why would anyone accept that as a realistic characterization of the holding of the court? Oh, because of your non-existent quote of their holding? I have a million dollars cash sitting here on my table. It is all yours if you can show us where in their HOLDING they found Wong to be “a natural born citizen”. It is even unimaginable why they would offer such an opinion in the body of their opinion. All that was in question was whether or not he was a citizen or an alien. Presidential eligibility had nothing to do with the case.

    When Wong was born, his father was an American immigrant, and as such could have been conscripted into the U.S. Army and sent to his death in battle, or sent to his execution for treason since he was a member of the American society and co-responsible for its survival. THAT is what made him, and his son, subject to the full political jurisdiction of the American government, thereby fulfilling the requirement of the 14th Amendment.

    That was NOT true of Obama’s Visa card visitor father. He could never have been drafted or tried for treason. He was subject solely to the British-Kenyan authority, AS WAS HIS SON (as his own 2008 website openly and foolishly stated). THAT is why Obama is not even an American citizen.

    Pleeeeeease, someone show us how that is wrong. Don’t look to the internet for a discussion of the issue because I am the only one to ever raise it or write about it. It never mattered before, -until an unconstitutional socialist was illegitimately elected President.

  250. Adrien Nash says:

    Dr. Kenneth Noisewater: There are only two types either you’re natural born or naturalized. Wong Kim Ark couldn’t be naturalized under US Law at the time. Thus his birth on US soil made him a natural born citizen.

    The losers in the case understood this. Contemporary lawyers from that time period also understood that people like Wong Kim Ark would be eligible to the presidency.

    I believe I DID read the case… a million words ago. I do not recall all or any of its irrelevant details.
    It’s quite disappointing that adult intelligent people can make a logic error as huge as the one that you, and perhaps the lawyers and judges in the case made.

    “There are only two types either you’re natural born or naturalized.”
    That claim is substantiated by NOTHING! No facts. No logic, no philosophy, no principle, no declaration of any legislative body.
    You could not validate it in a court of law for a billion dollar reward.
    False Premise: There are only two types of human races: Black, and White.
    Tiger Woods, and Barack Obama are not “Black”, therefore they are White.

    False Premise: In criminal law, one is either Guilty or one is Innocent.
    Citizen X cannot be declared “Innocent” of the crime because he had nothing to do with it, therefore the only designation left is “Guilty”.

    Get the picture??? Your logic is inherently flawed, as is your premise on which it is based. Stop being a simpleton. Come up with some grown-up logic.

  251. I think it was the collector of customs at the port of San Francisco.

    Adrien Nash: who was it that barred him from free entry at S.F.? the Mint?

  252. Dave B. says:

    It sure as hell wasn’t the INS; and if you’d actually read the case you’d know that.

    Adrien Nash: that was short-hand for the Immigration and naturalization service.why could you not figure that out?who was it that barred him from free entry at S.F.?the Mint?

  253. Lupin says:

    Adrien Nash: Please show me a single person on earth who inherited his chromosomes from relatives and not his parents. You have no idea how brain-dead any assertion is that Vattel used the only word available to him to imply anything other than “parents” when the matter he was writing about was natural inheritance of one’s political standing, or citizenship. this should not even be a subject of discussion.

    We have plenty of cased in the 19th century where children inherited citizenship from uncles.

    You are foolish enough to not understand that Vattel was merely restating the principles of jus sanguinis, in French.

    Your entire construction relies on a but of philosophical hairsplitting that might have been interesting in the 18th but is totally pointless today.

    Again: is obama a natural born citizen in a jus sanguinis country in 1961:yes.

    End of story.

  254. Dr. Kenneth Noisewater says:

    Adrien Nash: that was short-hand for the Immigration and naturalization service.why could you not figure that out?who was it that barred him from free entry at S.F.?the Mint?

    Have you tried actually reading the case?

  255. Dr. Kenneth Noisewater says:

    Adrien Nash: I believe I DID read the case… a million words ago. I do not recall all or any of its irrelevant details.

    Really if that was so how come you didn’t know who barred him entry? You don’t recall any of its details apparently.

    Adrien Nash: That claim is substantiated by NOTHING! No facts. No logic, no philosophy, no principle, no declaration of any legislative body.

    If you bothered to read the case you would know that this was something established in Minor V Happersett that birthers love to quote mine from.

    Adrien Nash: Get the picture??? Your logic is inherently flawed, as is your premise on which it is based. Stop being a simpleton. Come up with some grown-up logic.

    Remind me again how many losses birthers have had in court using your logic?

  256. Arthur says:

    Dr. Kenneth Noisewater: Remind me again how many losses birthers have had in court using your logic?

    I do not recall all the irrelevant details, as it was so many million words ago, but I believe the answer is all of them.

  257. Arthur says:

    Adrien Nash: Don’t look to the internet for a discussion of the issue because I am the only one to ever raise it or write about it.

    Private analysis of law is as valuable as a scientific result that cannot be duplicated.

  258. Dave B. says:

    It’s like hearing the drunk three barstools down talking about how he saw Bigfoot.

    Arthur: Private analysis of law is as valuable as a scientific result that cannot be duplicated.

  259. ballantine says:

    Adrien Nash:

    Ballantine:LOL. So there was this secret citizenship that no one mentioned. So our courts and other legal authorities said we only had jus soli but secretly knew we had jus sanguinis. Sure. Can you tell us why no one ever mentioned this secret citizenship?

    Nash: Why did no one ever mention that the water is wet?That babies need their mothers?No one is dumb enough to openly state something which has no need to be stated when it is already understood.We’re talking about the national membership of children born in America to American parents.
    Now if there were a reason to state it, that would be different, but there was absolutely no reason to do so.You can’t dream one up and neither can I. Why?

    Because it was a given.The only people who had a relationship to the subject of having or not having citizenship were foreigners and children born to them.Everyone else was already a member of the club, and born that way.There was nothing to talk about.No contest of opinions.No challenges.No questions to be discussed and answered.It was a totally invisible subject until one returned from traveling abroad and had to be allowed re-entrance by a State Port officer.

    Understand, no official of any government entity ever had to ask if someone was a citizen or not except perhaps when it came to voting in well populated areas, serving on juries, seeking travel papers or reentry into the US. There was no such thing as an illegal alien, nor visas.Everyone was welcome to stay as long as they wanted.

    The courts and legal authorities only had the citizenship of aliens to consider and so that was all that was in their view, -legal citizenship acquisition.They had no connection to the automatic citizenship of natural citizens, -with the rare exception of those rare few born abroad.

    LOL. Not much of an argument. You are still arguing that the reason no one stated you theory was right is that there was secret definition they never discussed. On the contrary, the courts and legal authorities were quite comprehensive on who was and who was not a citizen and left no room for your secret definition.

    B: “Why did the supreme Court say repeatedly that for several decades there was no jus sanguinis statute and all foreign born children of citizens were aliens.”

    That’s right and wrong.As I said, and now you agree, there was NO STATUTE, but it is false to say that the high court held that foreign born Americans were aliens.That is a misconception that has no basis in fact.

    There has always been a statute expect for several decades prior to 1855. Congress then realized it needed a statute:

    “By the common law, the better opinion always was, although there was a few dicta to the contrary, that children born out of the allegiance of the crown, and under the allegiance of another dominion, were aliens to the former and were subjects to the latter, or not, according to the municipal regulations of the country in which the birth might have happened to take place….I have had sent to me a pamphlet written by one of the most eminent lawywers in the United States, whose fame is known from the northern extreme to the southern boundries of our country, I refer to Horace Binney…He has published an elaborate pamphlet intending to draw attention to the subject to which I have now invited the attention of this house.” Rep. Cutting, Cong. Globe, 33rd. Cong., 1st Sess. pg. 170 (1854)

    Congress then amended the statute to provide for jus sanguinis since it wasn’t part of the common law.

    Show me one modern nation which considers its children born abroad to be actual aliens.By your simplistic reasoning, there should be lots of them. If you claim that they do but make allowance for them by statute, then I would say that you are wrong, and they actually do consider them as members of the national family and that is why they MUST make allowance for them.
    Otherwise they would hold an opinion equivalent to professing that all children not born in their own parents’ home are not their own natural children but must be adopted legally. Even if such an asinine law were in effect, it would be a lie against reality since no one would truly believe what the law asserts.

    Uh, how about the United States:

    “Petitioner, having been born outside the territory of the United States, is an alien as far as the Constitution is concerned, and “can only become a citizen by being naturalized, either by treaty, as in the case of the annexation of foreign territory; or by authority of Congress.” Miller v. Allbright 523 U.S. 420 (1998)(Scalia, J.)

    “Mr. Binney demonstrates that, under the law then existing, the children of citizens of the United States born abroad, and whose parents were not citizens of the United States on or before the 14th of April, 1802, were aliens because the Act of 1802 only applied to such parents, and because, under the common law, which applied in this country, the children of citizens born abroad were not citizens, but were aliens.” Weedin v. Chin Bow, 274 U.S. 657 (1927)

    “And the Court has specifically recognized the power of Congress not to grant a United States citizen the right to transmit citizenship by descent. As hereinabove noted, persons born abroad, even of United States citizen fathers who, however, acquired American citizenship after the effective date of the 1802 Act, were aliens. Congress responded to that situation only by enacting the 1855 statute.” Rogers .v Bellie 401 U.S. 815 (1971)

    “Foreign-born children of persons who became American citizens between April 14, 1802 and 1854, were aliens, Mr. Binney argued… The view of Mr. Blinney and the 1855 Congress that the Act of 1802 had no application to the children of persons who were not citizens in 1802 has found acceptance in the decisions of this Court.” Montana v. Kennedy, 366 U.S. 308 (1961)

    Sorry, their opinion counts, yours does not.

    You do not grasp the confusion that reigned for over a century.Citizenship was a State matter.Citizenship was a federal matter.Which was it?It was both!Hence the confusion of so many lawyers who were ensconced in only one realm or the other.
    What some judges thought did not dictate the policy of the executive branch nor the preference of Congress.That is why the statutes said one thing, but the courts could misinterpret it based on applying State laws instead of what Congressional statutes said, and the executive officers did know what was what because the States still retained the authority to naturalize their foreign immigrants.In the end, all that was really law at the federal level was what the words said or meant.

    Gibberish. Do you actually read what you write? This is all you can come up with to explain why all legal authority says you are wrong? Many authorities spoke only of national law and they all said you are wrong.

    I believe you are mis-remembering the facts. My recollection is that Congress unnecessarily revised the 1802 Nat Act because they mistakenly bowed to an illogical authority that distorted all common sense in the reading of the act. One of us is wrong about the court being involved in the misunderstanding of ambiguous language.

    Were you actually correct, then why not cite any case?I assume it is because there never was one.That would be because no sane government official ever presumed that the wording of the statute meant what was erroneously read into it by the legal authority whose name I can’t recall.

    Have no idea what you are rambling about. Whenever someone says something you don’t like they must be bowing to an illogical authority or something. You can’t understand that those are the people who make the laws, not your view of natural law. Look at the cases cited above. They all say you are wrong and the court’s opinion counts, not yours. No federal court has ever aid children of citizens born overseas are citizens without statute. Rather, everyone said only the foreign born can be naturalized which is the reason the Constitution needed to be amended to overturn Dred Scott. Try these:

    “The general words used, do not prove that general words were necessary. The Statutes were necessary, and every part of them is fulfilled, although children born here were already citizens. They operate on the much larger class of the children: those who were born abroad.” Lynch v. Clarke, (NY 1844).

    “Under the 4th section of the act of April 14, 1802, to establish an uniform rule of naturalization, &c., (2 Stats., 153,) such children, if dwelling in the United States, are declared citizens. That section provides, in brief, that the children of persons duly naturalized under any of the laws of the United States, &c., being under the age of twenty one years at the time of their parents being so naturalized, or admitted to the rights of citizenship, shall, if dwelling in the United States,’ be considered as citizens of the United States. The section, of course, refers to children born out of the United States, since the children of such persons, born within the United States, are citizens without the aid of statutory law.” Attorney General Bates, Opinion on Citizenship (1862).

    “The right of naturalization was therefore, with one accord, surrendered by the States, and confided to the Federal Government. And this power granted to Congress to establish an uniform rule of naturalization is, by the well-understood meaning of the word, confined to persons born in a foreign country, under a foreign Government. It is not a power to raise to the rank of a citizen any one born in the United States, who, from birth or parentage, by the laws of the country, belongs to an inferior and subordinate class.” Chief Justice Taney, Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. at 417

    “It appears, then, that the only power expressly granted to Congress to legislate concerning citizenship, is confined to the removal of the disabilities of foreign birth.” Justice Curtis, Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393, 478 (1857)

    “An alien naturalized is “to all intents and purposes a natural born subject…The power is applicable only to those of foreign birth. Alienage is an indispensable element in the process. To make one of domestic birth a citizen, is not naturalization, and cannot be brought within the exercise of that power. There is an universal agreement of opinion upon this subject.” Justice Swayne, United States v. Rhodes, 1 Abbott, US 28 (Cir. Ct. Ky 1866)

    “NATURALIZATION. The act by which an alien is made a citizen of the United States of America…. ALIEN, persons. One born out of the jurisdiction of the United States, who has not since been naturalized under their constitution and laws. To this there are some exceptions, as this children of the ministers of the United States in foreign courts. See Citizen, Inhabitant.” Bouvier Law Dictionary (1843)

    “Naturalization. That process by which an alien becomes a citizen. ….An alien is one who is born in a foreign country.” Analysis of Civil Government, By Calvin Townsend, (1869)

    “NATURALIZATION. [Lat. naturalizatio.] The act of investing an alien with the rights and privileges of a native or natural-born subject or citizen.* Co. Litt. 129 a. 1 Bl. Com. 374. 2 Kent’s Com. 64—67. ….Alien: In american Law. One born out of the jurisdiction of the United States. Alexander Mansfield Burrill, A new law dictionary and glossary, (1851)

    “What is the meaning of the term “naturalize?” It is investing an aliens with the privileges of a native-born citizen. What is an alien? A foreigner, one born in a foreign country.” Mr. Thorton, Cong. Globe, 39th Cong. 1st Sess.pg. 1156 (1866).

    “They have held expressly in several cases which are referred to in the decision I will read in a moment, the right of naturalization under the Constitution referred only to persons of foreign birth, that it had no reference to persons born in the United States.” Mr. Eldridge, Cong. Globe, 39th Cong. 1st Sess.pg. 1855 (1866).

    “I ask whether Judge Curtis in the opinion referred to, did not take the same ground in reference to a uniform rule of naturalization I take now, that they were only intended to apply, by virtue of power given in the Constitution, to foreigner, persons not born here – persons who come from another country.” Mr. Rogers, Cong. Globe, 39th Cong. 1st Sess. pg. 1153 (1866).

    “To the inquiry propounded as to the power of Congress over this subject of naturalization I respond that this authority to ‘establish a uniform rule of naturalization’ only confers upon the Federal Government the power to admit ‘aliens,’ that is, persons born out of the jurisdiction and allegiance of the United States, to citizenship and does not covey the power to elevate to the rank of citizens persons of an inferior race born within its jurisdiction and allegiance. Mr. Niblack, Cong. Globe, 39th Cong. 1st Sess.pg. 3216 (1866).

    “The American definition of the word “naturalize” is found in Bouvier’s Law Dictionary, as is as follows: “Naturalization: The act by which an alien is made a citizen of the United States.” Bouvier defines a “Naturalized Citizen” to be “one who, being born an alien, has lawfully become a citizen of the United States under the Constitution and laws.” The same author defines and alien to be “one born out of the jurisdiction of the United States who has not since been naturalized under their Constitution and laws.” Mr. Niblack, Cong. Globe, 39th Cong. 1st Sess.pg. 3216 (1866).

  260. Rickey says:

    Adrien Nash: that was short-hand for the Immigration and naturalization service.why could you not figure that out?who was it that barred him from free entry at S.F.?the Mint?

    The Immigration and Naturalization Service was created in 1933, so obviously it had nothing to do with Wong Kim Ark.

    Since you didn’t even know that simple fact, why should we give credence to anything else you say?

  261. Rickey says:

    Adrien Nash: Don’t look to the internet for a discussion of the issue because I am the only one to ever raise it or write about it.

    Which is one reason why no one other than birthers will ever take you seriously. You have no credentials in the law, in history, or in the Constitution. You have repeatedly demonstrated ignorance about both the facts and the rulings in the Wong Kim Ark case.

    You seem to be under the impression that whoever writes the most words is the winner. That approach may have worked for you in high school, but you aren’t in high school any longer.

  262. Adrien Nash says:

    Lupin: We have plenty of cases in the 19th century where children inherited citizenship from uncles.

    That is false. They were merely “deemed” to be members of the nation of their uncles because of his blood relationship to the only person from whom it was possible to “inherit” citizenship. And how many of them were there???? a hand-full, or less?

    You are foolish enough to not understand that Vattel was merely restating the principles of jus sanguinis, in French.

    And you are foolish enough to not understand that you are not Vattel nor were you accurately restating what he intended in your inappropriate application of an English word in place of a French word that had a sane alternate meaning which you deliberately shunned in order to defend your bias.

    : Is obama a natural born citizen in a jus sanguinis country in 1961:yes.

    End of story.

    You’re a fraud who dares to inject your bias regarding Obama’s eligibility by pretending to be an expert on what the American socio-political term means when in fact your French expertise has no connection to the truth about what “natural…born…citizen means in the English language.
    There is no additional basis of dispute regarding your otherwise correct translation of Vattel but being 99% correct does not mean being error free.

    And because you are not very self-aware regarding the logic of what you’ve written, I will point out that you have check-mated yourself by your erroneous and inapropos reference to obamas eligibility in a “jus sanguine country”.
    Guess what? Everyone here and across the whole Obot universe claim mistakenly that the United States is emphatically NOT a Jus Sanguinis nation!!!!

    You fail on two accounts, and its time you finally acknowledged them instead of running from them. Under jus sanguinis, as Vattel heretically teaches you to your dismay, nationality is passed ONLY FROM THE FATHER! Hence your brain-dead claim that it validates his natural citizenship status is dead on arrival.

    Second, whether or not the US is somehow, in the absence of any explicit law, a nation that ONLY honors jus soli, by it Obama is also NOT a natural born citizen since he was not born of a father who was subject to the full political authority of the American government.

    He could not be drafted. He could not be charged with treason. He remained a permanent member of Kenya society. He had no permission to remain in the US on a permanent basis. He was totally an outsider and his son was born solely with his foreign nationality and no other because his birth circumstance failed the test of the 14th Amendment. By it he remains an alien.
    His own election website stated as much, -as you would know if you would stop having amnesia in that regard.

    Why would the author of such a statement have made it? Because he or she was as ignorant of the implications at the time as you are to this very day. Ignorance does not alter what the truth is.

  263. Adrien Nash says:

    Dr. Kenneth Noisewater: Remind me again how many losses birthers have had in court using your logic?

    Why the avoidance of addressing my logic?? Because you have nothing that can counter it and you realize that fact. Hence the juvenile resort to referring to the irrelevant issue of court challenges.
    What are they? They are contests of OPINION! I’m not in the opinion business. I’m in the FACTS business. I have them and no one can refute them except with obviously flawed reasoning or historical opinions of ignorant pontificators.
    But aside from that fact, your statement is wrong on its face because nothing that I’ve discovered has ever seen the inside of any court, -even the Donofripuzzoans reject it out of hand.

    So when exactly did they use my logic when they were either unaware of it or attack it from the same sort of bias as their opponents?
    You really don’t seem to mind making erroneous statements as long as they kiss the feet of King Obama.

  264. Adrien Nash says:

    ballantine: On the contrary, the courts and legal authorities were quite comprehensive on who was and who was not a citizen and left no room for your secret definition.

    “Secret definition”??? When did you invent that? “secret” is false, and “definition is equally false.

    ballantine: B: “Why did the supreme Court say repeatedly that for several decades there was no jus sanguinis statute and all foreign born children of citizens were aliens?”

    There has always been a statute

    Failure to communicate. My reading of your statement was thus: Why did the supreme Court, for several decades, say there was no jus sanguinis statute…

    I can not argue that the claim of the wording of your statement is incorrect. I can give you the benefit of the doubt that at least one justice restated Binneys erroneous technocratic logic. His logic was based not on a normal thought process but purely on that of literalist thinking, foolishly presuming, with no basis whatsoever, that the Congress of 1802 INTENDED the asinine interpretation that their inadequate and ambiguous wording could produce.

    Binney’s legalese-oriented mind spotted the ambiguity and decided to interpret it in a totally illogical manner that the Congress would never have intended.

    Recall, the situation that he stupidly presumed that Congress took was in total contradiction to British law and tradition that was centuries old. I wrote a lengthy exposition explaining the historic record and its actual meaning (but have no recall of its title). Here is a quote from the first page that a simple search just produced: (read it can be reeducated)

    Congress, in which a number of Framers sat, provided in the Naturalization act of 1790 that ”the children of citizens of the United States, that may be born beyond the sea, . . . shall be considered as natural born citizens. . . .” 96
    This phrasing followed the literal terms of British statutes, beginning in 1350, [Queen Ann’s Nativis de la Mar act] under which persons born abroad, whose parents were both British subjects, would enjoy the same rights of inheritance as those born in England;

    -beginning with laws in 1709 and 1731, these statutes expressly provided that such persons were natural-born subjects of the crown. 97 There is reason to believe, therefore, that the phrase includes persons who become citizens at birth by statute because of their status in being born abroad of American citizens. 98

    Whether the Supreme Court would decide the issue should it ever arise in a ”case or controversy” as well as how it might decide it can only be speculated about. – See more at: http://constitution.findlaw.com/article2/annotation03.html#sthash.LqZ35qf4.dpufhttp://constitution.findlaw.com/article2/annotation03.html

    Get the picture? From 1350 and forward, ALL children born abroad of citizens were deemed citizens. There is zero chance that Congress intended to overthrow four and a half centuries of tradition of protection of the unalienable right of descent of all American fathers and their children.
    Binney was probably childless and single, and incapable of grasping just how unthinkable his ridiculous misinterpretation of the 1802 statutes was. No American father would have read into it an intent that his imagination conjured up.

  265. Adrien Nash says:

    Rickey: The Immigration and Naturalization Service was created in 1933, so obviously it had nothing to do with Wong Kim Ark.

    Since you didn’t even know that simple fact, why should we give credence to anything else you say?

    I did not consciously intend to capitalize the word “Immigration”. As you could see, the other two words got no capitalization, which was to indicate their generic meaning, Not the name of a federal department, -only its function by whatever bureau or service existed at the time.

  266. Adrien Nash says:

    Rickey: You have no credentials in the law, in history, or in the Constitution.

    Most of the greatest discoveries in history were NOT by credentialed “experts”. Was Leonardo Da Vinci credentialed? How about Steve Jobs? How about the discoverer of plate tectonics? (rejected for decades by the credentialed “experts”.)
    Your appeal to authority is the last refuge of a scoundrel who has no facts to back his delusional doctrine. Opinions are not facts. I have heard hardly any facts from obots which are new to me in years.
    This is not a contest of dueling experts, but of facts versus no facts. Take any issue and then tell me how many times the experts on the high court got their “facts” straight via a unanimous holding. A majority opinion has no greater chance of being valid than that of any other court or group of intelligent citizens who are just as competent as they are.

    You have repeatedly demonstrated ignorance about both the facts and the rulings in the Wong Kim Ark case.

    “repeatedly”??? really? Name two examples. As for the ruling, the only people who are ignorant of the actual ruling are those who reject its very clear and highly limited words. they apply to no one not born of immigrants. All of the mental gymnastics engaged in to distort and pervert them do not change what they say. Any honest mind can easily comprehend them. That leaves you out.

    seem to be under the impression that whoever writes the most words is the winner. That approach may have worked for you in high school, but you aren’t in high school any longer.

    The impression is strictly in your fertile imagination, as usual. Volume means nothing. Truth means everything. With the ruination of the nation already begun, and the canary in the mine quite dead, would it be more appropriate to apply less effort to preventing our destruction in a sea of financial insolvency?
    You are in the same life raft and will go down with it as well. Your future is currently looking like crap. but you are OK with that because your eyes are wide shut.

  267. Rickey says:

    Adrien Nash: I did not consciously intend to capitalize the word “Immigration”. As you could see, the other two words got no capitalization, which was to indicate their generic meaning, Not the name of a federal department, -only its function by whatever bureau or service existed at the time.

    You’re lying. Yesterday at 6:09 p.m, while discussing the WKA case, you wrote “Yet your blind pretense is that the INS was some independent agency operation by its own authority.” All caps.

    When asked by Dave B. what the INS had to do with Wong Kim Ark, you responded “that was short-hand for the Immigration and naturalization service.”

    You obviously did not know that the INS did not exist in 1894.

  268. Adrien Nash says:

    Rickey: You’re lying. Yesterday at 6:09 p.m, while discussing the WKA case, you wrote “Yet your blind pretense is that the INS was some independent agency operation by its own authority.” All caps.

    Are you dense? Which is longer; INS or spelling out its words? I capitalized INS because ins would not appear as clear. I had no unawaraness of the history of the INS because I read it; at wikipedia, I assume. But you are the one who needs to educate himself about its history because it will open your eyes to how that history is what I have shared in regard to citizenship being a State matter, including immigration and naturalization.

    The feds usurped that authority from the States until the SCOTUS shot them down, then they shut down their operations and immigration was then left in the hands of VOLUNTEERS! since the States had shut down their operations because the feds pushed them out.
    Understand this: nowhere in the Constitution does the federal government have any authority over immigration! It has never be acquired via any amendment. You understanding of federal power is warped by its history of perversion of the Constitution.

  269. ballantine says:

    Adrien Nash:

    Get the picture?From 1350 and forward, ALL children born abroad of citizens were deemed citizens.There is zero chance that Congress intended to overthrow four and a half centuries of tradition of protection of the unalienable right of descent of all American fathers and their children.
    Binney was probably childless and single, and incapable of grasping just how unthinkable his ridiculous misinterpretation of the 1802 statutes was.No American father would have read into it an intent that his imagination conjured up.

    Not really, the 1350 statute did not make them natural born subjects, but gave them the right to inherit, not all rights of the natural born. The later statutes made them natural born subjects for all intents and purposes, but they were treated as second class subject. They did owe perpetual allegiance to England like common law subjects. Rather, England never claimed they owed allegiance to England when in their native country., I quoted the Royal Commission on Naturalization, probably the most authoritative source there is, on this the other day. One can also read English diplomatic correspondence on this point. The foreign born jus sanguinis subjects were second class subjects and no one suggested that they would be subjects without statute. Of course, persons not specifically included in the statutes were aliens just like current US law.

    You can actually read the debates on the 1790 naturalization act where they cited Blackstone and said we followed English law on these issues and said they needed to provide for the foreign born children of citizens like Parliament had done. No one suggested such persons were already citizens by your secret unwritten law that no one talked about. They thought they needed to pass a statute just like Parliament did.

    You can call Binney names because you disagree with him. Congress listened to him because and the Supreme Court agreed with him repeatedly stating he was correct. Thus, his opinion counts. You opinion doesn’t count as no one agreed with you.

    And Binney was not the first to raise this point. All pre-1866 authority anyone has heard of agreed with him. For example, Kent, in the most influential legal treatise of the 19th century, pointed out decades before Binney the issue that the common law probably did not provide for the foreign born and hence such persons would be aliens under the 1802 statute. Show me a legal authority that anyone has heard of that said otherwise. There is one case in 1863 that said jus sanguinis was included under the English common law. Such theory was rejected by pretty much every English scholar and the Supreme Court in Wong Kim Ark. But the argument was over whether English law was both jus soli and jus sanguinis or just jus soli, not some other natural law.

  270. As a fully-qualified information processing professional, I can verify that the string length of “INS” is shorter than that of “Immigration and Naturalization Service.”

    Adrien Nash: Are you dense? Which is longer; INS or spelling out its words?

  271. ballantine says:

    Adrien Nash: But you are theone who needs to educate himself about its history because it will open your eyes to how that history is what I have shared in regard to citizenship being a State matter, including immigration and naturalization.

    Just repeating an assertion over and over is not an argument. Again, there was a debate on this subject early on, but the notion that the states got to decide citizenship was rejected when eventually addressed by the Court and pretty much all significant legal authority in the early 19th century. In the 14th Amendment Congress, there were still a few Senators who thought the States should control citizenship, such as Senator Johnson and Henderson. But at that point they were completely outnumbered for at that point legal authority overwhelming believed there was a separate national citizenship distinct from state citizenship which they pretty much all agreed was jus soli. Would you like to see the quotes again? You can read Justice Taney and Justice Curtis arguing this point in Dred Scott. But to claim your view was the law is simply wrong as a matter of history.

  272. Rickey says:

    Adrien Nash: Are you dense?Which is longer; INS or spelling out its words?I capitalized INS because ins would not appear as clear.I had no unawaraness of the history of the INS because I read it; at wikipedia, I assume.

    You are doubling down on your lie, I see. Earlier today you wrote “who was it that barred him from free entry at S.F.? the Mint?”

    You obviously believed that it was the INS which barred WKA from entry into the U.S., and you obviously did not know that it was the Collector of Customs who detained him.

    You are pathetic.

  273. Dave B. says:

    Here you go, sport:

    http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=6702132

    But then, what force do mere facts have against the power of your presumptions?

    Adrien Nash: Binney was probably childless and single, and incapable of grasping just how unthinkable his ridiculous misinterpretation of the 1802 statutes was.

  274. Dr. Kenneth Noisewater says:

    Adrien Nash: Why the avoidance of addressing my logic?? Because you have nothing that can counter it and you realize that fact. Hence the juvenile resort to referring to the irrelevant issue of court challenges.

    You haven’t presented any logic just your complete misunderstanding of American law. How is referring to the birther losses in court juvenile? The losses establish a track record of failure with your claims.

    Adrien Nash: What are they? They are contests of OPINION! I’m not in the opinion business. I’m in the FACTS business. I have them and no one can refute them except with obviously flawed reasoning or historical opinions of ignorant pontificators.

    If that’s the case then you should put your business into chapter 7 bankruptcy and sell what little assets you have. Thus far you’ve failed to produce any functional product.

  275. Jim says:

    Dave B.:
    Here you go, sport:

    But then, what force do mere facts have against the power of your presumptions?

    But more importantly…to Nash…was he an NBC?

    Naturally Buried Congressman?

  276. Rickey says:

    Dr. Kenneth Noisewater: You haven’t presented any logic just your complete misunderstanding of American law.How is referring to the birther losses in court juvenile?The losses establish a track record of failure with your claims.

    Nash doesn’t believe that precedent has any value. It doesn’t matter what courts have ruled in the past. If Nash doesn’t agree with those rulings, they don’t count.

  277. Adrien Nash says:

    ballantine: the 1790 naturalization act where they cited Blackstone and said we followed English law on these issues and said they needed to provide for the foreign born children of citizens like Parliament had done. No one suggested such persons were already citizens by your secret unwritten law that no one talked about. They thought they needed to pass a statute just like Parliament did.

    Your obtuseness is remarkable. Everything in that statement is incorrect. Nothing was as your illusions tell you it was. Americans were not subjects. THEY WERE SOVEREIGNS! Do I need to repeat that a thousand times before it sinks into your head? You are an imperialism-blinded statists. The founders were not. They, in Congress, rejected British dual-citizenship common law as is shown in the naturalization acts. ALL children of naturalizing aliens were made citizens through them.

    That means only one thing; they WERE NOT NATIONAL CITIZENS BEFORE just because of native-birth. The statutes do not read: “and the FOREIGN-BORN children…. instead it just says “the children dwelling in the United States. I’m pretty sure that those born here were also dwelling here, and they were not citizens in the eyes of the Congress because that would create the rejected and despised dual-allegiance. Is that attitude of the founders unknown to you? Are you ignorant of it or just pretending to be so?
    If you are ignorant than I’m wasting my time attempting to educate a closed mind. If you are pretending, then you are a fraud and we are all wasting our time on you.

    Congress needed to mention foreign-born Americans for one particular reason: to state the limits of natural citizenship within the wording of the naturalization rule because the issue belonged there. The limit was crossed when a child was born abroad (and presumedly raised) to an American father who had never lived in the United States.

    They did not originate that idea. It was British and it was in accordance with natural law, which they followed. ALL Americans born abroad were natural born citizens by nature, by “right of descent” (can you read? that is right there in the act itself!)

    EXPLAIN IT by any means other than the fact that their citizenship was AUTOMATIC. No statute was needed. No permission of Congress was needed. No authority was given to Congress to decide such a matter because that would have nullified the unalienable right of all American fathers to pass their national membership to their heirs.

    What part of “unalienable right” do you not understand?? The right of descent is an unalienable right. Pleeeeease attempt to explain why it is not by using American values. You will go to the cupboard for ideas and it will be bare. Give it up already.

    It is irrelevant how many ignoramuses were unaware of their own rights. If you want to win this challenge then you will need to quote the founders themselves, and even some of them were mired in the brain-washing of their British law training and practice, and could not think outside of its box. Any opinion that espouses subservience to the subservient doctrines of the loyal royalist is totally worthless and anti-American! (and that is what you are defending! unbelievable!)

  278. Keith says:

    Adrien Nash: Based on what?

    Based on the Government’s understanding of the law as enacted by Congress and signed by the President.

    The law sought to exclude Asians from American society. The Constitution gives Congress the authority to decide to not allow Asians to be naturalized, but the 14th Amendment clearly and unambiguously says that ANYONE, even Asians, who are born in the USA under the jurisdiction thereof are citizens.

    The specific ‘wedge’ the Government argued was the ‘under the jurisdiction thereof’ part.

    The court found that ‘under jurisdiction’ simply means subject to the U.S. legal system. That means every person on US soil is ‘under jurisdiction’ except certain accredited foreign Diplomatic personnel, an invading Army, and maybe some Indians on reservations. WKA and his family was none of those things.

    The Government’s argument failed.

  279. Adrien Nash says:

    ballantineThe 1350 statute did not make them natural born subjects, Not really./blockquote>

    What a boneheaded straw man statement! It refutes no claim made anywhere in the quotation given. Your brain just can’t stay on the straight and narrow path of straight-forward refutation of what was actually written.
    And then you gloss over the matter of the false accusation regarding my knowledge of common law and history. No apology needed, right?

    ballantine: The foreign born jus sanguinis subjects were second class subjects

    You blindly make that assumption in the absence of any context whatsoever. You failed to differentiate between those born and raised and living abroad, and those born abroad, but raised and living their whole life in Britain.

    ballantine: they needed to provide for the foreign born children of citizens like Parliament had done. No one suggested such persons were already citizens…They thought they needed to pass a statute just like Parliament did.

    Your two-dimensional thinking is woefully inadequate to understanding the actual dynamics of the situation. They in Congress did NOT have the delusion that foreign-born Americans were in need of their almighty permission to be that which they were born as by birthright descent (unlike the almighty Parliament which had zero constitutional limits on its power and could declare anything conceivable, as was once stated about its virtually *unlimited* powers. Guess what? Congress was established with just the OPPOSITE authority, -highly limited)

    ballantine: Congress listened to Binney because and the Supreme Court agreed with him, repeatedly stating he was correct. Thus, his opinion counts.

    There are two issues and you are conflating them when you have no business doing so. It was argued and believed that technically speaking, the 1802 act’s language was the law, although it was not written in the legalese by which it was analyzed. the 1790 act was the least legalistic of all of them. But as time went by in the Anglo-American world, sharp minds like Binney recognized ambiguity where very extensive “Terms of Service” type language was not used in an act. Such language is from the realm of trusts and will so there is no dispute. It was not an element of legislative thinking since the acts were not written by professional contract writers but by elected representatives.
    That fact that his notice of the short-fall of the act, and its lack of a full spectrum time frame does NOT in any way show that the effect that he claimed the act produced was INTENDED BY CONGRESS, or should have and would have been the logical interpretation, since it would instead be the ILLOGICAL interpretation.

    Do you dare to argue in defense of the logic of his interpretation? Have at it, you will lose all day long. Four hundred and fifty years! of history was supposedly thrown out by a technical oversight of non-professional non-contract-writing congressmen? You want to argue in favor of that?
    Just because some dunderheads in the courts accepted his absurdity on its technically accurate face does not work in your benefit because it does not change the logic, or lack thereof, that they violated in embracing his “opinion”.

  280. Keith says:

    Adrien Nash: Please show us the proof of that statement. i’m taking about real proof, not the fantasies of your illogical imagination. Pretending that since someone said that all citizenship is one or the other is not proof of anything.

    The Text of the Finding of the Supreme Court in the case Minor v Happersett (1895

    Chief Justice Waite’s Majority Opinion: (paragraph 8)


    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 provides 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,” 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.

    Chief Justice Waite said it not once, but twice in the same paragraph, with the plain English explanation in the middle. Tell’em what you are going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told’em.

    Now you may wish to argue (and I know you do), that the Supreme Court are nobodies; that they have no business deciding who is and who is not a citizen. You would be right in a way, because they did not decide who is and who is not a citizen. The Supreme Court merely affirmed what the Constitution says about citizenship, and the Constitution says that there are two ways to become a citizen: birth and naturalization. Period. It says it in the plain text as unamended, and it repeats it in the 14th Amendment.

    In the context of the case in front of it the point of that affirmation was to show that the plaintiff, Miss Minor, was indeed a citizen according to the Constitution – women were not excluded from Citizenship because of their gender. The finding then went on to explain the crux of the case, which was that voting was not an automatic right afforded to citizens by virtue of their citizenship – the Constitution was (at the time) silent on that matter and there was nothing preventing laws excluding various classes of citizens, for example, women, from voting.

    And the Constitution gives the Supreme Court the authority to make that decision when Constitutional controversies arise – that is the express purpose of the Supreme Court.

  281. Adrien Nash says:

    Rickey: You obviously believed that it was the INS which barred WKA from entry into the U.S., and you obviously did not know that it was the Collector of Customs who detained him.

    You are both right and wrong. I already disabused you of the notion that I imagined the INS has existed in perpetuity so you are completely wrong. I thought it was a service that handled immigration, which would probably include some naturalization service as well.
    You are correct in that I was unaware that it was the customs authority.

    Whoop-di-doo! Two points for you! I’ll buy you a trophy. Now please show us all the relevance of your lame nit-picking again. It’s that I know nothing, right? That isn’t even worthy of a counter response.

  282. Adrien Nash says:

    Keith: Additions might always be made to the citizenship of the United States in two ways

    That is what he actually wrote, but that is NOT what your bias-blinded mind continually reads. instead, it reads this:”

    Additions might always be made to the citizenship of the United States in ONLY two ways”

    Keith: Thus new citizens may be born or they may be created by naturalization.

    You read: “Thus new citizens may be born or they may be created ONLY, ONLY, ONLY by naturalization.”
    THAT IS FALSE. -unless you choose to define ALL avenues of citizenship acquisition as naturalization with the lone exception of by descent.

  283. Adrien Nash says:

    Keith: The court found that ‘under jurisdiction’ simply means subject to the U.S. legal system. That means every person on US soil is ‘under jurisdiction’ except certain accredited foreign Diplomatic personnel, an invading Army, and maybe some Indians on reservations. WKA and his family was none of those things.

    If the court, or Gray actually stated such a simpleton idea about the meaning of subjection then he and it were idiots. ALL of the sorts of persons you listed are/ were not subject. All foreign visitors are also NOT SUBJECT.

    I tell you the truth plain and simple but you cannot handle the truth. It does not matter whether or not the court erred in its highly limited understanding of the real world, but the real world includes the very serious jurisdiction of MARTIAL POWER.
    They never experienced it a day in their elite lives. IT is what forges the backbone of a nation via the discipline and order of the military. Without it no nation would survive. Just ask 1939 Europe.

    Invisible to your understanding is a system by which able-bodied males permanently resident in the United States can be conscripted against their will into the US Army or Marine Corps. That includes foreign immigrants. I knew one who refused to serve and ended up in the federal penitentiary during WWII.

    THAT is the full subjection to “the full jurisdiction” that the authors of the 14th Amendment were referring to. Nothing can be done about the high court or Gray not being aware of that fact, but it remains a fact nevertheless. An unavoidable fact in fact when it comes to interpretation of the court’s holding regarding who? Children of IMMIGRANTS. THEY are subject. Foreign visa card students ARE NOT.

    No nation on earth thinks it has the right to conscript or charge with treason their own foreign guests. Show me one. there’s something called “The Law of Nations” which they all must abide by, and by it the US government does NOT have such authority over outside visitors.
    This is not ROCKET SCIENCE. It’s common sense. Don’t you have any?

  284. Adrien Nash says:

    Keith: The Supreme Court merely affirmed what the Constitution says about citizenship, and the Constitution says that there are two ways to become a citizen: birth and naturalization. Period. It says it in the plain text as unamended, and it repeats it in the 14th Amendment.

    That’s it. I done with you. No person who could make such an asininely ignorant statement like that is capable of discerning and remembering actual facts. Not only is that statement false about the Constitution, completely false, but is also false regarding the 14th Amendment.
    So you are either an ignorant ignoramus or a deliberately lying buffoon. Neither possibility is acceptable to me or to others who care about the actual facts.

  285. Adrien Nash says:

    Dr. Kenneth Noisewater: Adrien Nash: Why the avoidance of addressing my logic?? Because you have nothing that can counter it and you realize that fact. Hence the juvenile resort to referring to the irrelevant issue of court challenges.

    Rickey:How is referring to the birther losses in court juvenile? The losses establish a track record of failure with your claims.Nash doesn’t believe that precedent has any value. It doesn’t matter what courts have ruled in the past. If Nash doesn’t agree with those rulings, they don’t count.

    The court loses are a travesty of jurisprudence, and completely unrelated to what is true and what is false, and yet you trotted them out anyway to play king of the hill when that is not the game being played.
    The opinions of men wearing black robes has no impact on what is true or false. You are under the delusion that it does, and that I am under a compulsion to argue what the consensus opinion is.
    I do not care what any human claims as an opinion when it comes to deciding matters of truth or error. Only the facts matter, but no one in the “establishment” knows them, so it is very easy and almost automatic for uninformed minds to fall for the group-think consensus view of contested matters.

  286. Rickey says:

    Adrien Nash: You are both right and wrong.I already disabused you of the notion that I imagined the INS has existed in perpetuity so you are completely wrong.I thought it was a service that handled immigration, which would probably include some naturalization service as well. You are correct in that I was unaware that it was the customs authority.

    Whoop-di-doo!Two points for you!I’ll buy you a trophy.Now please show us all the relevance of your lame nit-picking again.It’s that I know nothing, right?That isn’t even worthy of a counter response.

    The relevance is that you don’t know history, you don’t know the law, and you don’t understand the Constitution. And you most assuredly do not know or comprehend the Supreme Court decision or the underlying District Court decision in the Wong Kim Ark case.

  287. Keith says:

    Adrien Nash: Please explain which of the two is provisional citizenship, and derivative citizenship, and statutory citizenship.

    These classifications have nothing to do with the topic under discussion. You have your classification tree upside down.

    It is as if I had said that the United States was composed of “States” and “Territories” and you asked me to explain which of those was a “city”, which a “county”, and which a “national park”. The question, even when mounted in the proper context, has no place in the discussion at hand, and the answers don’t shed any light on your nonsensical assertions except to give you another chance to expand the discussion to the outer limits of thread hijack while arguing about those answers.

    But just to humor you:

    The term “Provisional citizenship” has no real significance in the U.S.. For discussion sake only, (and it could conceivably be a useful classification under some circumstances in a court case; IANAL), the term could be applied to a child, under the age of 18, born overseas, who immigrated with his/her non-citizen parents who not yet fulfilled the criteria outlined by law. Such a ‘provisional citizen’ is NOT a citizen, however.

    “Derivative citizenship” is a subset of “Natural-Born” citizenship if that citizenship is gained at birth even though the birth occurred overseas because at least one of the parents is a U.S. Citizen. There are very complicated rules on who is and who is not eligible which are beyond the scope of this comment. (Example: Ted Cruz)

    In the case of a citizenship gained after birth due to the parents becoming naturalized after the child was born (but before the 18th birthday, “Derivative Citizenship’ would be a subset of “Naturalized”. (Example: Madeleine Albright).

    “Derived Citizenship” is a classification that has nothing to say about “natural born” or “naturalized”. A person who obtained his citizenship through derivation might be “natural born” or “naturalized” depending on the status of the parents at the time of the birth. About the most general thing you can say is that the child was born overseas.

    “Statutory Citizenship” is a subset of “naturalized”. Or maybe “natural-born”. This is an area of genuine controversy. It is the source of the joke that was made in a Congressional hearing about the eligibility of a Puerto Rican to be President, and the source of the reason that Congress made a non-binding resolution to declare that John McCain was a “Natural Born Citizen”.

    Again, it refers to children born outside the borders of the United States, but within certain territories and possessions of the U.S. that the Congress has chosen to name citizens due to the nature of the relationship between their birth home and the U.S. So people born in Puerto Rico are “natural born citizens” of Puerto Rico, without question, but they are also citizens of the United States – at birth.

    While those Puerto Ricans who are already born are citizens (at birth) of the U.S. and cannot by any act of the U.S. lose that citizenship, Congress can, if it so chooses stop granting citizenship to Puerto Ricans yet to be born. Thus it is controlled by statute.

    The controversy is whether or not such statutory citizenship constitutes ‘naturalization’, or, since it is a fact of birth it is ‘natural born’. The question has no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answer – the only course is to follow the path that is most ‘just’. So far, the answer that obtains is that it is such citizenship must be considered ‘natural born’.

    The most important exemplar, John McCain, who was born in the Panama Canal Zone, is not a pure example however. Since his parents were both U.S. citizens his ‘natural born’ citizenship could be considered to be ‘derived’ from them as described above. The legal environment of the Canal Zone is/was different from that of Puerto Rico. So the matter is still open to discussion.

    The bottom line is that you have your classification trees upside down. “Natural born” and “Naturalized” are the only classifications mentioned in the Constitution and the only classifications that matter. All citizens, each and every one, is either natural-born or naturalized. Period.

    Any other classification you might choose to identify is a subset of one or both of those – there are no exceptions. There might be some extremely rare classification where is it just not known which of the two Constitutional classifications is applicable, but it is certainly one or the other.

  288. Adrien Nash says:

    ballantine: the notion that the states got to decide citizenship was rejected when eventually addressed by the Court

    “rejected by the court” Ha! The states in turn could have constitutionally rejected the court’s interpretation since it was they who created the possibility of the courts existence via their chosen union, giving Congress authority over them, to fashion them as they saw fit.

    The high court had no constitutional authority to usurp from the States the sovereignty that they did not surrender to the central authority. Read the 9th and 10th amendments.
    So the bottom line is: what was the understanding of the founders of the nation when it was first established? Did the States, or did they not, have full authority over immigration and naturalization in accordance with the uniform rule?

    The answer is that they did. What point does that reinforce? The fact that citizenship was a State matter right from the beginning, and not something determined by the federal executive branch.
    Nor was it a power that the Constitution gave to Congress. Congress had no authority in the matter except to the extent of managing foreign affairs, which included the matter of who was actually an American when abroad and who was not. But within the United States Congress had no authority over the operation of naturalizing foreigners. After it made known what its rules were, it was done.

  289. Adrien Nash says:

    Keith: Any other classification you might choose to identify is a subset of one or both of those – there are no exceptions.

    What you choose to hide from, and must, is the fact that all natural citizens are citizens by derivation. Their national membership is derived (via a blood relationship) from their American parents. NO OTHER form of citizenship is natural citizenship. Rather, it is all legal citizenship. Care to prove otherwise?

    What is common law citizenship? It is national membership bestowed beneficently by government. What is that which is bestowed by government? It is something of a legal nature and not a natural nature. Care to prove otherwise?

    No common law citizen is a citizen by derivation, by descent, by blood. They are ALL legal citizens. They are made into natural citizens at birth by fiction of law, not by nature. That means that they are natural–ized by American political philosophy and legal fiction. Prove otherwise.

    If you want to claim that there are only two means of obtaining citizenship, then common law citizenship has to be lumped in with those in the same category; those made citizens by the authority of law. The location of one’s birth is irrelevant to citizenship by descent, by derivation. Prove otherwise.

    No citizen by common law is a citizen by descent, and that means they are not a natural citizen except by legal fiction. Prove otherwise.

    But no citizen by legal fiction was BORN being a natural citizen. So none of them are constitutionally eligible to be President.
    [But that does not impact Obama since he was born in Vancouver. B.C. -see the discussion at Fogbow FEMA Camp 7 1/2 1,500 comments]

  290. Adrien Nash says:

    Rickey: And you most assuredly do not know or comprehend the Supreme Court decision or the underlying District Court decision in the Wong Kim Ark case.

    I have explained that the decision actually means what it says. You argue incorrectly that it does not. You are in the same camp as the A.G., John Griggs who bastardized the heck out of the holding by enlarging it far beyond the limits of it wording. He had no authority to do so. His unwitting or deliberate error has been the POLICY of the government ever since,…NOT the actual LAW of the LAND. It is pretend law, and you and a million other unwitting saps have fallen for the pretense.

    THAT is the fact that you need to grasp, -not that I think the policy is something that it is not. The policy is supreme, entrenched, institutionalized, unchangeable, unquestionable, and WRONG. It does not conform with the holding no matter how many time suckers claim that since it is the consensus opinion that it must be in conformity with the holding of the court.

    There was nothing in the universe to prevent a misunderstanding, or deliberate distortion, from taking place and with no one to question it or oppose it.
    Native-birth became synonymous with citizenship by law, even though it was required to pass the subjection test. The children of immigrants pass that test. The children of tourists to not. Otherwise…
    a child born in Guam to the wife of a Communist Chinese General would be considered what? “subject to the jurisdiction of the United States”, a U.S. citizen? a common law citizen? A natural born citizen? Eligible to be Commander-in-Chief one day? Answers of “Yes” are absurd and dangerous, and unthinkable to our founders.

    They should be unthinkable to any and every sane American. Using the power of the presidency, a president can begin to ruin a nation, as BHO has amply demonstrated with his unconstitutional transformation away from what he himself firmly believed in and stated while serving in the United State Senate. Where the heck is that Obama? Co-opted by puppet masters and long-held ideological extremism.

  291. Keith says:

    Adrien Nash: If the court, or Gray actually stated such a simpleton idea about the meaning of subjection then he and it were idiots. ALL of the sorts of persons you listed are/ were not subject. All foreign visitors are also NOT SUBJECT.

    Don’t be stupid. I know you understand plain English, and I know you understand word context.

    The word “subject” in “subject to jurisdiction” is a VERB (specifically a TRANSITIVE VERB) not an ADJECTIVE or NOUN – the phrase means “under the authority of”.

    ALL foreign visitors (except accredited diplomatic or invading armies) are subject to the jurisdiction of the American legal system. They are responsible to answer for everything under the law just as every citizen is. Parking tickets, skipping on hotel or restaurant bills, bomb jokes in Airport Security queues, illegal drug distribution, bank robbery, rape, murder, EVERYTHING. Likewise, they are entitled to the protection of the legal system against fraud and personal harm, just as any citizen is.

    That is what ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ means.

    To seriously claim otherwise is beyond ignorant, it is positively non-sentient.

  292. Keith says:

    Adrien Nash: That is what he actually wrote, but that is NOT what your bias-blinded mind continually reads. instead, it reads this:”

    Additions might always be made to the citizenship of the United States in ONLY two ways”

    You read: “Thus new citizens may be born or they may be created ONLY, ONLY, ONLY by naturalization.”
    THAT IS FALSE. -unless you choose to define ALL avenues of citizenship acquisition as naturalization with the lone exception of by descent.

    You are 100 percent correct in your assertion that my mind is adding the words ‘only’ into the Justices statement. There is a simple reason for that: it is EXACTLY what the Justice meant.

    The Justice is interpreting the Constitution, and his interpretation is based on the words in the Constitution. When he says the Constitution describes two ways for citizens to be added to the country he is providing an exhaustive list of those methods as found in the Constitution.

    He says “two ways” and any person who can read and understand English and the Constitution knows exactly what he means: “there are exactly two ways, and only two ways”.

    If he meant to imply that there might be more than two ways, he would have said so, maybe something like “at least two ways”, but he didn’t. He gave an exhaustive list, and no one can dispute that, least of all you, because there are no other ways mentioned in the Constitution.

    By birth or by naturalization. That is it Adrien. End of story.

  293. Adrien Nash says:

    Understanding the 14th Amendment
    It does not say: “All persons subject to the jurisdiction of the United States are citizens thereof.” Nor does it say:
    “All persons born in the United States are citizens thereof.”
    Rather, it requires both. Neither one alone produces citizenship.

    Who is subject to the full jurisdiction of the U.S. government? Easy, foreigners who are members of the U.S. Armed Forces. The military can send them to their death in battle because it is totally in control of their lives.

    Therefore any child born to them within US borders is granted citizenship by the 14th Amendment since the child is born in the US and born to a parent or parents who are fully subject to American authority.

    That is not true of children born of tourists and guests, -like foreign students from Kenya named Barack Obama. If the father is not fully subject, and his child is subject to his father, then the son is not subject either, and thus is not qualified for citizenship since he is a citizen of his father’s foreign nation where he will be raised. He has no need of US citizenship since his father can’t stay and so neither can he because he is in his foreign parents’ custody.

  294. Keith says:

    Adrien Nash: Invisible to your understanding is a system by which able-bodied males permanently resident in the United States can be conscripted against their will into the US Army or Marine Corps. That includes foreign immigrants. I knew one who refused to serve and ended up in the federal penitentiary during WWII.

    An immigrant to this country is one who intends to make his home among the people of the country, become a citizen, and partake of the benefits that all citizens partake. He is, by definition, not a visitor. Why should such a person object to obeying the law of the country he wishes to join as an otherwise equal matter? From this remove we could agree on the unjustness of a mandatory conscription law, but such a law was in fact a law, and that law treated him exactly the same as it would have treated an citizen.

    That law, in fact, did NOT attempt to draft ‘foreign visitors’ (immigrants are NOT visitors), but if it did, they would have been subject to its jurisdiction. Their home countries would, no doubt, complain, and justifiably so; but that does not change the fact that they would have been subject to its jurisdiction.

    THAT is the full subjection to “the full jurisdiction” that the authors of the 14th Amendment were referring to.

    Exactly.

    As I said, the law is the law. A law that applies to citizens also applies to immigrants, permanent residents, illegal aliens, and visitors alike unless is specifically says that it doesn’t.

    It doesn’t have anything to do with ‘martial’ anything. It has to do with the legal system. Any law, not just conscription, the entire legal system.

    Nothing can be done about the high court or Gray not being aware of that fact, but it remains a fact nevertheless. An unavoidable fact in fact when it comes to interpretation of the court’s holding regarding who? Children of IMMIGRANTS. THEY are subject. Foreign visa card students ARE NOT.

    Foreign visa card students are most certainly subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S. legal system. Absolutely 100% subject to the jurisdiction. If they are ‘exempt’ from some law or procedure, it is because the law explicitly ‘includes them out’; if there are law or procedures that apply to them only, it is because Congress has imposed those rules explicitly. Either way, those rules are part of the U.S. legal system and the students are ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ of that legal system. That includes responsibility for parking tickets, bank robbery, and satisfying the scholarship requirements to qualify for the visa.

    No nation on earth thinks it has the right to conscript or charge with treason their own foreign guests. Show me one.

    A quick search reveals that South Korea conscripts foreign citizens who visit Korea during their eligibility. South Koreans who give birth in the United States have given birth to a ‘natural born citizen of the U.S. (unless they are diplomats, of course) under U.S. law AND under South Korean law a Korean citizen – so the child has dual citizenship. Under current South Korean law it is almost impossible to ‘denounce’ Korean citizenship even if you wanted to. These children are “naturally” foreigners to South Korea, but if they visit there, the are “subject to the jurisdiction” of South Korean law just as they are “subject to the jurisdiction” of American law when at home.

    Another point, which may or may not be relevant to TODAY, but was very relevant 100 years ago, is an exchange recorded in “Hansard” (the official record of the Parliament of the UK). During “Question Time” (the time set aside for ‘regular’ members of Parliament to question ‘the Government’ about various goings on).


    CONSCRIPTION OF FOREIGNERS.
    HC Deb 18 June 1917 vol 94 c1407 1407

    § 18. Mr. MOLTENO

    asked the Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will give the dates of the treaties with the twenty-two countries with which we have mutual agreements not to conscript their nationals and the names of the countries.

    § Lord R. CECIL

    I will send the hon. Member, if he wishes, a list of the countries with which we have these treaties, together with the dates of the treaties. They are fully set out on page 1,099 of the last edition of the “Handbook of Commercial Treaties.”

    Since there were more than 22 countries, even in 1917, by implication there were not treaties with the rest and the U.K. could have “legally” conscripted those foreigners from countries not listed on page 1,099, had so chosen. I don’t know if it ever did that, but it is clear that the restriction was dependent on treaty and on nothing else. It is also clear that historically the U.K. is not adverse to conscripting foreigners from anywhere is darn well likes, whether they are visitors on UK soil or sailors on the high seas or in foreign ports. A war was fought over that issue (in part), and neither side won – it was basically called off due to lack of interest on either side.

    From the same time frame, that is relating to conditions during WW1:


    The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Mexico (Fletcher)

    Washington, May 16, 1917—6 p. m.

    186. Department has given following to the press:

    “Reports coming from the Mexican border indicate that a general belief exists among Mexican laborers that if they remain in the United States they will be subject to conscription. There is, of course, no intention on the part of the American Government of drafting foreigners into military service, and it is hoped that the press and citizens generally will do all they can to make this clear to Mexicans and other foreigners residing in the United States.”

    Bring foregoing to attention Foreign Office, for its information. Suggest advisability sending instructions to Mexican consuls along border, to correct misunderstanding of Mexican citizens.

    Lansing

    I am not bothering to look for information from the WW2. The point is clear: there is no law or global understanding that prevents a country from conscripting foreign visitors. The only actual prevention is the internal values, politics, and needs of the country that is considering it.

    I emphasize that this discussion applies to foreign visitors, and has nothing to do with immigrants, however it still remains up to each country whether it wants to conscript immigrants or not. During WW2, the U.S. locked up immigrants and natural born citizens alike in interment camps all over the west – it wasn’t about to conscript them. Australia did the same thing by the way.

    there’s something called “The Law of Nations” which they all must abide by, and by it the US government does NOT have such authority over outside visitors.

    There are books and chapters of books called “The Law of Nations”, true. But those books and chapters of books are not binding on any Government, let alone the Government of the United States. What is binding between nations are treaties. There are treaties that apply to all countries and give authority for reparations for violations of those treaties. To the extent that treaties between countries can be called a “law of nations”, that is the extent that you can say that the law of nations prevents such behavior.

    This is not ROCKET SCIENCE. It’s common sense. Don’t you have any?

    Now I’m lost. Who are you quoting here, and what is your argument against his judgment of your comments?

  295. Adrien Nash says:

    Keith: He says “two ways” and any person who can read and understand English and the Constitution knows exactly what he means: “there are exactly two ways, and only two ways”.

    If he meant to imply that there might be more than two ways, he would have said so, maybe something like “at least two ways”, but he didn’t. He gave an exhaustive list, and no one can dispute that, least of all you, because there are no other ways mentioned in the Constitution.

    By birth or by naturalization.

    Your limited mental capacity leaves you oblivious to the larger context which you are blind to. You talk about what a single justice wrote as an observation regarding not the subject of the basis and origin of citizenship in the United States from its founding, but merely the subject of the mention of citizenship in the Constitution, as if that observation was some sort of definitive analysis or dissertation on the subject when in fact it was nothing of the sort. Not definitive, not exhaustive, not analytical, not final.

    What is written in the Constitution is not anywhere near being about the source of citizenship yet you are forced to believe that it is in order to support the lame claim that if a certain form of citizenship does not fall into category B then it must fall into category A.

    That is asinine, and here’s why: Someone says: “The only way to get to the top of that mountain is to climb it barefoot or wearing boots.” And along comes a guy who simply flies to the top in a helicopter. Oops! There goes the authoritative statement.

    You are already aware that defining forms of citizenship that are by neither descent nor the oath of allegiance and renunciation is a tricky and inexact chore. Yet you turn around and pretend that 14th Amendment American jus soli citizenship by law is natural citizenship by descent which needs no law. What is wrong with your logic center? Is it that broken? -or bent by bias?

    No sane person can claim that naturalization at birth by law and legal fiction is a natural thing or even remotely tied to natural citizenship by birth to citizen parents. Birth to aliens is unrelated to birth to citizens. Outsiders do not produce natural insiders, not even by legal fiction. Only legal-fiction insiders can be deemed to be able to do that. And to be such, the couple must be immigrants.
    They are quasi-insiders. They are, as I’ve written about, at the polliwog stage of development. They are tadpoles as aliens who become polliwogs as immigrants and fully developed frogs as naturalized citizens.

    ” If he meant to imply that there might be more than two ways, he would have said so,”

    Lame attempt at legitimate logic, which would reply:
    “If he meant to imply that there might be no more than two ways, he would have said so,”

    With that being a factual statement, your imaginary assumptions fall flat on their illogical face.

    “any person who can read and understand English and the Constitution knows exactly what he means: “there are exactly two ways, and only two ways”.

    A blatant attempt to appeal to authority and consensus opinion to reinforce your contrived and artificial contortion of logic. Observations are NEVER definitive statements, and what is stated was NOT definitive nor exhaustive. It was merely a simple observation that any child just as easily could have made.
    But even if supposedly true, that does not rescue Obama and jus soli naturalization-at-birth from NOT being a citizen by descent. Only citizens by descent are born as natural citizens.
    Understand? It isn’t about what someone said or wrote or thought, or about what everyone agree on, it is only about facts; what they are and what they mean.

    And what they mean is the reason why Pelosi struck from the Democrat Party Certificate of Nomination in 2008 the sentence describing their candidate
    as constitutionally qualified. She and he knew that he was not but that no one would call him on it in Washington because he would bedazzle the nation and have racism as a weapon to use against any constitutional opponents.

  296. Adrien Nash says:

    Keith: CONSCRIPTION OF FOREIGNERS.
    HC Deb 18 June 1917 vol 94 c1407 1407

    § 18. Mr. MOLTENO

    asked the Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will give the dates of the treaties with the twenty-two countries with which we have mutual agreements not to conscript their nationals and the names of the countries.

    § Lord R. CECIL

    I will send the hon. Member, if he wishes, a list of the countries with which we have these treaties, together with the dates of the treaties. They are fully set out on page 1,099 of the last edition of the “Handbook of Commercial Treaties.”

    Since there were more than 22 countries, even in 1917, by implication there were not treaties with the rest and the U.K. could have “legally” conscripted those foreigners

    Learn how to comprehend your own quotes. “nationals” is NOT “foreign guests”. It is foreign residents, immigrants, settlers. Parliament could have conscripted anybody in the whole darn world “by law” since there was no law limiting their power. try to keep up, I’d rather not have to repeat myself within the space of a few hours.

    Keith: It is also clear that historically the U.K. is not adverse to conscripting foreigners from anywhere is darn well likes, whether they are visitors on UK soil or sailors on the high seas or in foreign ports.

    That is an incorrect understanding of the facts. they conscripted, kidnapped, people and made them slaves at times, but regarding the Americans, they only kidnapped those who were born British. That is why the only natural born citizen statute every passed was written regarding adult naval occupations.
    The captain and a high percent of the officers of US Naval vessels had to be natural born citizens during the 1812 war or the ship’s leadership might be decapitated by conscription or jailing.

    Keith: The point is clear: there is no law or global understanding that prevents a country from conscripting foreign visitors.

    Again you simply fail to get the facts straight. You mistakenly employed the word “visitors” instead of immigrants.
    Governments can and do only conscript IMMIGRANTS. They are not visitors! They are settled down. America is their new home. They are not here today and gone tomorrow, theoretically.
    No government that observes the Law of Nations feels it has any right to conscript its foreign visitors. THEY ARE NOT SUBJECT to it full political and MARTIAL authority.
    Nations are built on martial power, as was the case with the liberation of the 13 colonies. It was via military POWER and a disciplines military force which sacrificed its liberties to secure the liberty of all. It WAS NOT LIBERATED by a “system of law”. Law becomes a sideshow in war.

  297. Adrien Nash says:

    Keith: there’s something called “The Law of Nations” which they all must abide by, and by it the US government does NOT have such authority over outside visitors.

    There are books and chapters of books called “The Law of Nations”, true. But those books and chapters of books are not binding on any Government, let alone the Government of the United States. What is binding between nations are treaties.

    You make a lame error of logic by confusing “books” on the law of nations with the actual law of nations. Books are named after the real thing. And what is it? It is what is mentioned in the Constitution, violations of which Congress was imbued with the authority to punish. It is the understood rules of comity between nations.

    No treaty is needed to follow it. You don’t shot our citizens on sight and we won’t shot or kidnap or enslave yours. You don’t rape our wives or steal our daughters and we won’t do that to yours. Rule of common civilized behavior were not put into treaties. They were understood.

    Keith: the law is the law. A law that applies to citizens also applies to immigrants, permanent residents, illegal aliens, and visitors alike unless is specifically says that it doesn’t.

    That is dumb. “A law applies to all human and animals in the country unless it specifically says it doesn’t. ” All a law needs to do is spell out who it applies to, NOT who it does NOT apply to. Oh, and that was great of you to quote no law whatsoever to support your inane claim.

    “illegal immigrants”???????????? When did laws start to need to specifically “excluded” them as if they are even on the legislative horizon when it comes to national obligation?

    It doesn’t have anything to do with ‘martial’ anything. It has to do with the legal system. Any law, not just conscription, the entire legal system.

    The United States military is under its own legal system. Where have you been during all the seasons of JAG that you didn’t learn that? How about “A Few Good Men”? Never seen it??? The military is tied to one’s political obligation to defend the nation that is their home when it is threatened and they are called to its defense.

    THAT jurisdiction is something that only males are subject to. The oath of Allegiance and Renunciation was specifically written only for them, and no foreign women could take it.
    The jurisdiction that one must be born under for the 14th Amendment to benefit a native-born child did not end at the authority that US resident women were subject to, but that which all able-bodied MEN were subject to.
    Citizenship and national obligation were purely male areas of national life. Women and children were not a part of that, and mostly still are not.

    Keith: those rules are part of the U.S. legal system and the students are ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ of that legal system. That includes responsibility for parking tickets, bank robbery, and satisfying the scholarship requirements to qualify for the visa.

    That is bankrupt reasoning. The law states that all MALE citizens and immigrants, and children of immigrants, between 18 and 25 must register with Selective Service. THAT is the current full jurisdiction of citizenship. Nothing less than being in that class, or being “of” that class (but too old or unfit) is able to meet the implied requirement of national obligation that a father must be under for the privilege of jus soli citizenship to be granted to his children.
    If you are not subject to conscription, not now or ever in the past, then you are not a legitimate member of American society and therefore there is no reason under heaven that your foreigner-fathered children should be considered to be Americans. Any other policy would be insane, and everyone realizes it.

  298. Lupin says:

    Adrien Nash: You fail on two accounts, and its time you finally acknowledged them instead of running from them. Under jus sanguinis, as Vattel heretically teaches you to your dismay, nationality is passed ONLY FROM THE FATHER! Hence your brain-dead claim that it validates his natural citizenship status is dead on arrival.

    You accused ballantine (wrongly) of being “obtuse” but i have rarely argued with someone as obtuse and muddled as you.

    The fact is, you keep shifting your position like a mad leprechaun, while I have never varied in my statements, i.e.:

    The “parens citoyens” sentence in Vattel is meant to include all blood relatives and is merely a restatement of the principles of jus sanguinis and in no way implies TWO parents are necessary to produce a naurel.

    I’m not the one saying this; EVERYONE is the french or german or swiss legal universe says this. To pretend different is simply moronic.

    This is further verified by Vattel’s subsequent sentences which make it clear that in the late 1770s/early 1800s, it was the Father (and the father only, ie: ONE parent) who transmitted citizenship.

    The point to retain here is: ONE naturel parent for a naturel child; not TWO. That’s where you keep flipping that switch in your head.

    This was later amended in the 1870s to include the mother (alone) in cases of children born out of wedlock; prior to that, in the absence of legal father, the male uncle (ie the mother’s brother) was the one who transmitted citizenship. If no uncle, the mother’s father. Etc. We have thousands of cases. France has excellent birth records. Stop pontificating about things you don’t know.

    Finally, in the 20th century, both parents/sexes were made equal before the law. Ouf! Better late than never! 🙂 But it still only requires ONE parent. Actually nowadays, even ONE naturalized parent is enough to make a citoyen naturel child.

    We know that in every case like the ones mentioned above, children were considered naturel and not naturalized. In jus sanguinis countries there is only one third category of citizenship, Honorary Citizenship, but France doesn’t have it; it was abrogated by the Revolution.

    There is even a famous precedent, that of Emile Zola who had a brilliant political career despite being born of an Italian Father and a French mother.

    So ultimately, if Obama had been born in France in 1961 of a Keuyan father and a French mother, he would be considered a citoyen français naturel, in direct legal descendence of principles going back to Vatel (and in fact, before Vattel).

    Whether or not anty of this applies or translates into American Law or concepts, I don’t particularly care. Probably not. It should not.

    But then you are expressly forbidden to use, twist and distort any of these concepts (as you have steadfastly been doing) to come p with your indefensible definition of a natural born citizen requiring two naturels parents. This is just rubbish where you try to have your cake and eat it too.

    Stay within the parameters of US and UK Law and you won’t hear another peep from me. Try to prove your theories to others using Blackstone or other English sources, but stop pilfering & ,misusing notions from my side of the legal fence.

  299. The Magic M (not logged in) says:

    Adrien Nash: They belong to the country into whose membership they were conceived and born. .

    Again, what is “natural” about arbitrarily drawn lines in the sand? Nature knows no “countries” and therefore no “citizens”.
    The most you can get out of nature is “family” (i.e. people related by blood).

    Adrien Nash: There is also no law that states that the children that parents give birth to belong to them.

    Define “belong”. Define “children”. Is it “natural” that parents decide what their children are allowed to do? At what point does nature say the children can decide for themselves?

  300. faceman says:

    At the risk of sounding like an ‘ad hominem’ attack, I must interject that the mere usage of ponderous phraseology does not impute intellectual superiority to your philosophical cogitations. Verbiage such as ‘I had no unawaraness’ (sic), rather, illustrate the adage about ‘If you can’t convince them, confuse them.’ (Or, in the vernacular: ‘You’re blowing smoke.’)

    Do not become intoxicated with the excessive exuberance of your own inexhaustible verbosity.

    You said: ‘The opinions of men wearing black robes has no impact on what is true or false. You are under the delusion that it does, and that I am under a compulsion to argue what the consensus opinion is.’

    To an extent, you are correct. But there is a differentiation between ‘True’ and ‘Legal’ that you fail to incorporate into your framework. One has only to consider the example of Canute and the tide. As supreme interpreter of said Constitution, the SCOTUS does, in fact, have the authority to determine the validity (i.e., legality) of certain definitions in the light of the aforementioned Constitution. When the SCOTUS makes a declaration, that declaration IS legally binding. At least, until such time as the Congress and the States nullify that decision by the enaction of a Constitutional Amendment. E.g, the passing of the 14th amendment rendered the Dred Scott decision inoperable.

  301. Lupin says:

    faceman: To an extent, you are correct. But there is a differentiation between ‘True’ and ‘Legal’ that you fail to incorporate into your framework.

    Mr Nash mostly cribs his philosophical argument from Jean-Jacques Rousseau or his successors.or like minded British philosophers. They never had any legal value whatsoever even way back then.

  302. faceman says:

    To further bloviate upon ‘I had no unawaraness’: I do, indeed, comprehend the gist of what you are trying to convey. But, in contrast with the many others of your ilk who conclude that the mere utilization of such terminology elevates their aphorisms to unassailable heights, I do not concur. ‘Unawareness’ is such a contrived usage it causes me to opine that you do not manifest felicity in such verbosity. It is an awkward means of expressing ‘I am not unaware’; or, better yet, dispose of the double negative altogether and just say what you mean: ‘I am aware.’ By indulging in such grammatical flights of fancy, you detract from, rather than buttress, your pseudo-intellectuality. At least, it does in the eyes of someone who does occasionally promulgate his esoteric cogitations with a certain degree of concatenated cogency.

    Adrien Nash: Are you dense? Which is longer; INS or spelling out its words? I capitalized INS because ins would not appear as clear. I had no unawaraness of the history of the INS because I read it; at wikipedia, I assume.

    Further, incorrect usage of the semicolon is contra-indicated.

  303. ballantine says:

    You blindly make that assumption in the absence of any context whatsoever.You failed to differentiate between those born and raised and living abroad, and those born abroad, but raised and living their whole life in Britain.

    Do the research. They were second class subjects as the allegiance they owed was secondary to that native allegiance. And, persons not covered by statute were aliens. Sorry you can’t deal with that.

    They in Congress did NOT have the delusion that foreign-born Americans were in need of their almighty permission to be that which they were born as by birthright descent..

    Who said so? Simply making things up and stating it as fact just makes you look like an idiot. As I pointed out, the legislative history does not support you.

    There are two issues and you are conflating them when you have no business doing so.It was argued and believed that technically speaking, the 1802 act’s language was the law, although it was not written in the legalese by which it was analyzed.the 1790 act was the least legalistic of all of them.But as time went by in the Anglo-American world, sharp minds like Binney recognized ambiguity where very extensive “Terms of Service” type language was not used in an act.Such language is from the realm of trusts and will so there is no dispute.It was not an element of legislative thinking since the acts were not written by professional contract writers but by elected representatives.
    That fact that his notice of the short-fall of the act, and its lack of a full spectrum time frame does NOT in any way show that the effect that he claimed the act produced was INTENDED BY CONGRESS, or should have and would have been the logical interpretation, since it would instead be the ILLOGICAL interpretation.

    Is this supposed to make any sense?

    Do you dare to argue in defense of the logic of his interpretation?Have at it, you will lose all day long. Four hundred and fifty years! of history was supposedly thrown out by a technical oversight of non-professional non-contract-writing congressmen?You want to argue in favor of that?
    Just because some dunderheads in the courts accepted his absurdity on its technically accurate face does not work in your benefit because it does not change the logic, or lack thereof, that they violated in embracing his “opinion”.

    Yes, all the courts and scholars are stupid because you say so. If the language of 1802 was a mistake, it is still the fact that our leading scholar, Congress and the Supreme Court thought unless the language was changed, all foreign born persons were aliens under our laws. These are simply historical facts as to who our authorities determine who was and who was not a citizen. The notion that no statute was needed is simply made up in your head.

  304. ballantine says:

    Adrien Nash:
    Understanding the 14th Amendment
    It does not say: “All persons subject to the jurisdiction of the United States are citizens thereof.” Nor does it say:
    “All persons born in the United States are citizens thereof.”
    Rather, it requires both. Neither one alone produces citizenship.

    And again you are just showing yourself to be dishonest. The amendment does not say “fully subject” and you have been shown the context of such snippit from the debates. Why are you re-writing the Constitution to try and make your pathetic argument?

    And, you have been shown that the question of children of Chinese Aliens came up and was answered:

    “The proposition before us, I will say, Mr. President, relates simply in that respect to the children begotten of Chinese parents in California, and it is proposed to declare that they shall be citizens. We have declared that by law; now it is proposed to incorporate the same provision in the fundamental instrument of the nation. I am in favor of doing so. I voted for the proposition to declare that the children of all parentage whatever, born in California, should be regarded and treated as citizens of the United States, entitled to equal civil rights with other citizens of the United States.” Senator Conness, Cong. Globe, 39th Cong. 1st Sess. 2890 (1866).

    The question of children of temporary residents came up and was answered:

    “I have always believed that every person, of whatever race or color, who was born within the United States was a citizen of the United States…The Senator says a person may be born here and not be a citizen. I know that is so in one instance, in the case of the children of foreign ministers who reside “near” the United States in the diplomatic language. By a fiction of law such persons are not supposed to be residing here, and under that fiction of law their children would not be citizens of the United States.” Senator Wade, Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., lst Sess.2768-69 (1866).

    I can go on and on and on, but no one suggested children of aliens were only citizens if part of the military. You just keep making things up. Show me the court that ever said any alien was fully subject to our jurisdiction. Why don’t you try reading the actual law or practice of nations was rather than just making your own law. I can post many citations, but you have already seen them and just say they are stupid as the actual practice of nations with respect to the law of jurisdiction doesn’t count if you say so.

  305. ballantine says:

    I’ll help you out Adrien. 3 Senators, Howard, Trumbull and Johnson, talked about complete jurisdiction when discussing Indians born in Indian nations we had little or no jurisdiction over. Everyone agreed that their children would become citizens if born outside such Indian nations. Now you may try to read some other meaning into this, but these 3 Senators all made clear statements that you are wrong. Now, will you keep repeating the same lie over and over again or for once be honest and admit you are wrong.

    Senator Howard:

    “But I held that in the sense of the Constitution every person born free within the limits of a State, not connected with a foreign minister’s family, is born a citizen whether he be white or black. Nativity imparts citizenship in all countries and that is sufficient for my purpose.” Senator Howard.

    “A citizen of the United States is held by the courts to be a person who was born within the limits of the United States and subject to their laws…..They became such in virtue of national law, or rather of natural law which recognizes persons born within the jurisdiction of every country as being subjects or citizens of that country. Such persons were, therefore, citizens of the United States, as were born in the country or were made such by naturalization; and the Constitution declares that they are entitled, as citizens, to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States.” Senator Howard.

    Senator Trumbull:

    “And, as is suggested by a Senator-behind me, even the infant child of a foreigner born in this land is a citizen of the United States long before his father.” Senator Trumbull

    “the children who are born here of parents who have not been naturalized are citizens.” Senator Trumbull

    “I am afraid that we have got very few citizens in some of the counties of good old Pennsylvania if the children born of German parents are not citizens.”‘ Sen. Trumbull

    “Undoubably.” Sen. Trumbull (reply to Sen. Cowen’s question on whether native born children of Chinese aliens and Gypsies would be made citizens).

    “Every person born within the jurisdiction of a nation must be a citizen of that country. Such persons are called subjects of the Crown in Great Britain, in this country citizens of the United States. It is an entire mistake to suppose that there was no such thing as an American citizen until the adoption of the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States. American citizenship existed from the moment that the Government of the United States was formed…. in order to be President of the United States, a person must be a native-born citizen. It is the common law of this country, and of all countries, and it was unnecessary to incorporate it in the Constitution, that a person is a citizen of the country in which he is born. That had been frequently decided in the United States. It has been acted upon by the executive department of the Government in protecting the rights of native-born persons of this country as citizens of the United States. It has been held in the judicial tribunals of the country that persons born in the United States were citizens of the United States. I read from Paschal’s Annotated Constitution, note 274: “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 as well as of England. There are two exceptions, and only two, to the universality of its application. The children of ambassadors are, in theory, born in the allegiance of the powers the ambassadors represent, and slaves, in legal contemplation, are property, and not persons.” Sen. Trumbull

    Senator Williams:

    “One Francois A. Heinreich, now resident in Austria, was born in the city of New York in 1850, of Austrian parents, who were then temporarily residing in that city, but who never became naturalized….As a general rule, a person born in this country, though of alien parents who have never been naturalized, is under our law deemed a citizen of the United States by reason of the place of his birth, (10 Opin., 321, 328, 329; and see also section 1 to the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution.) But the article of the convention just quoted—the right of an American citizen to change his national character, and become a citizen of Austria—is clearly recognized; but it is required that he shall have had a residence of five years in that country, besides being naturalized there, before the United States are bound to consider and to treat the person so naturalized as an Austrian citizen. In the case under consideration, therefore, though the said Francois is a native of this country, and as such was originally clothed with American nationality, yet, he having resided in Austria uninterruptedly far beyond the period mentioned, the question submitted resolves itself practically into this inquiry, whether during that time he has acquired Austrian citizenship?” Senator Williams, as Attorney General

  306. faceman says:

    Lupin: Mr Nash mostly cribs his philosophical argument from Jean-Jacques Rousseau or his successors.or like minded British philosophers. They never had any legal value whatsoever even way back then.

    Thank you. I never meant to imply they did. When I said that he was correct to an extent, it was in applying “The opinion of men in black robes..(etc)” to such things as the way people used to believe the world was flat. Just because everyone had that opinion didn’t make it true. Hence, the difference between “true’ and ‘legal.’ When the men in black robes decided, for example, Wong Kim Ark was a citizen then, legally, he was.

    I confess that, while I am familiar with the name Rousseau, I have never actually familiarized myself with his writings. On the other hand, I did enjoy using all the big words.

  307. The reference in Paschal is online here:

    http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=miun.aew4768.0001.001;view=1up;seq=304

    The citation in Paschal for this statement is:

    (2 Kent’s Com. 3d ed. 1; Calvin’s Case, 7 Coke; 1 Black. Com. 366; Lynch v. Clark, 1 Sandf. Ch. Rep. 139.)

    ballantine: I read from Paschal’s Annotated Constitution, note 274: “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.

  308. ballantine says:

    Some more quotes from the members of the 39th Congress that authored the 14th Amendment I would like Adrien to respond to. Does anyone doubt he will call the authors stupid and say what they wrote doesn’t count?

    “In the great case of Lynch vs. Clarke, it was conclusively shown that in the absence of all constitutional provision or congressional law declaring citizenship by birth, “it must be regulated by some rule of national law coeval with the existence of the Union” it was and is that “all children born here, are citizens, without any regard to the political condition or allegiance of their parents.” Rep. Lawrence.

    “This provision, I maintain, is merely declaratory of what the law is now…..The English Law made no distinction on account of race or color in declaring that all persons born within its jurisdiction are natural-born subjects. This law bound the colonies before the revolution, and was not changed afterward. The Constitution of the United States recognizes the division of the people into the two classes named by Blackstone – natural born and naturalized citizens.” Rep. Wilson.

    “The term ‘citizen,’ as understood in our law, is precisely analogous to the term ‘subject’ in the common law, and the change of phrase has entirely resulted from the change of government. The sovereignty has been transferred from one man to the collective body of the people, and he who before as a ‘subject of the king’ is now ‘a citizen of the State.” Rep. Wilson.

    “On this question of citizenship, Mr. Marcy, while he was Secretary of State, in a note dated March 6, 1854, expressed himself as follows: ‘Although, in general, it is not the duty of the Secretary of State to express opinions of law, and doubts may be entertained of the expedience of making an answer to your inquiries an exception to this rule, yet, I am under the impression that every person born in the United States must be considered a citizen of the United States, notwithstanding one or both of his parents may have been alien, at the time of its birth.” Rep. Wilson.

    “This bill provides that all persons born within the United States, excepting those that do not owe allegiance to the United States government, as children of ambassadors of foreign powers, and such are not subject to our laws, and Indians not taxed who owe a tribal allegiance, are citizens of the United States.” Rep. Cook.

    “It is a principle of universal law that every person born in a country, and not a slave, is a citizen or subject of such country, and unless excluded by special laws is entitled to all privileges or citizens or subjects. ” Sen. Davis.

    “It is a rule of universal law, adopted and maintained among all nations, that they who are born upon the soil are the citizens of the State. They owe allegiance to the state, and are entitled to the protection of the State. Such is the law, whether you put it into this bill or not. So far as this declaration of the bill is concerned, it is but reiterating an existing and acknowledged principle of law.” Rep. Thayer.

    “Mr. Justice Curtis held that the Constitution of the United States assumes that citizenship can be acquired by nativity. That is the common law, that is the law of the civilized world, that he who is born in a country, and not made a slave at the moment of birth by any municipal law, becomes, by virtue of his birth, a citizen…” Senator Johnson.

    “The honorable Senator from Kentucky…forgets this general process of nations and or nature by which every man, by his birth, is entitled to citizenship, and upon the general principle that he owes allegiance to the country of his birth, and that country owes him protection. That is the foundation, in my understanding, of all citizenship…” Senator Morrill.

    “Why, all the world knows, the most unlettered of our people understand, that every human being born within the jurisdiction of any nation, or naturalized under its laws, is, by virtue of those facts alone, a citizen of that country in the fullest and amplest sense of the term.” Rep. Kerr.

    “Now where is the authority to except the native-born African from the application of the general rule of law that every native shall be a citizen of the country on whose soil he is born?” Rep. Raymond.

    “As a positive enactment this would hardly seem necessary….What is a citizen but a human being who, by reason of his being born within the jurisdiction of a government, owes allegiance to that government?” Congressman Broomall.

    “The freedmen of the United States are citizens of the United States; not citizens under the naturalization law, not citizens by virtue of any treaty, but citizens because they are born native to the soil.” Sen. Lane.

    “in other words to assert the axiom that every man born on American soil is an American citizen, and as such heir to all the rights, privileges and immunities or all other American citizen…Simply because the Constitution recognizes every man born in the United States as possessing the rights of sovereignty…Then, now, if the States have no power to elevate any man to citizenship, and Congress has no power to do so except exclusively in the case of aliens, does it not follow that citizenship is the natural, inherent right of every man born on the soil…” Rep. Newall

    “That article of Amendment is substantially that all persons born in this land, within the jurisdiction of the United States, without regard to complexion or previous condition are citizens of the Republic.” Rep. Bingham

    “I hold in my hand Paschal’s annotated edition of the Constitution, four pages and a half of which are filled with references to decisions of the courts, from .the beginning of the century until now, declaring in the plainest terms that all free persons, born or naturalized in the United States, are citizens thereof. A weak attempt was made in the Dred Scott case to exclude free colored persons from the rights of citizenship, but that feature of the opinion was in opposition to the main body of previous precedents and to all subsequent decisions. I will quote but one or two of the many declarations of our constitutional teachers. Chancellor Kent says: ” Citizens, under our Constitution and laws, mean free inhabitants born within the United States or naturalized under the laws of Congress.” Rep. James Garfield.

    I know of no better way to give rise to citizenship than the fact of birth within the territory of the United States, born of parents who at the time were subject to the authority of the United States.” Sen. Johnson.

    “We must depend upon the general law relating to subject and citizens recognized by all nations for a definition, and that must lead to a conclusion that every person born in the United States is a natural born citizen of such States, except it may be that children born on our soil to temporary sojourners or representatives of foreign Governments are native born citizens of the United States. Thus it is expressed by a writer on the Constitution of the United States: “Therefore every person born within the United States, its territories or districts, whether the parents are citizens or aliens, is a natural born citizen in the sense of the Constitution, and entitled to all the rights and privileges appertaining to that capacity.” Rep. Wilson.

  309. ballantine says:

    Forgot to add Senator Edmunds, one of the top lawyers in the 39th Congress, who was still around in 1898 and wrote Justice Gray after Wong Kim Ark saying he “interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment exactly as we the members of the Senate understood it at its passage.” Stephen R. Mitchell, Mr. Justice Horace Gary, pg. 162 (1961). Another idiot.

  310. Rickey says:

    ballantine:

    I can go on and on and on, but no one suggested children of aliens were only citizens if part of the military.

    Nash insists that aliens on student visas are not “fully subject” to the jurisdiction of the United States because they cannot be conscripted. But alien residents were subject to the draft during the Vietnam War. My friend Kevin Cahalane was born in England of Irish citizen parents. He and his sister moved to the U.S. while children because his father got a good job in the U.S., but Kevin never became a U.S. citizen and his parents never became U.S. citizens. Nevertheless, when Kevin turned 18 he was drafted in the U.S. Army. Luckily for him, he was sent to Germany to serve out his active duty.

    In fact, while aliens are student visas are not required to register with Selective Service, undocumented aliens are required to register.

    http://www.sss.gov/FSwho.htm

    The Congress could conceivably pass a law making aliens in the U.S. on student visas subject to conscription. Of course it would be a foolish thing to do, even if the draft were to be reinstated, because the practical effect would be to scare foreigners away from going to school in the U.S.

    To say that aliens in the U.S. on student visas are not subject to U.S. jurisdiction because they cannot be conscripted is like saying that I am not subject to U.S. jurisdiction because I am too old to be drafted. Just because a person is not affected by a particular law it does not mean that the person is not subject to the law.

  311. ballantine says:

    Rickey: Nash insists that aliens on student visas are not “fully subject” to the jurisdiction of the United States because they cannot be conscripted.

    Adrien has made up his own law of jurisdiction. That fact that International Law may proscribe gassing one’s own citizens, does not mean such citizens are not fully subject to its laws. And, of course, the 14th Amendment does not say “fully subject.”

    As a matter of comity and custom, International law proscribes the drafting of aliens, at least in 1866, even if domiciled in the nation. There was much debate on this during the Civil War, but no one said domicile by itself was sufficient to subject an alien to the draft. No one.

    Adrien will not look at actual court cases or authority stating the uniform practice of nations with respect to jurisdiction as he is not capable of admitting he knows nothing about actual law, just his own truth as he sees it. We all need to heal to Adrien’s notions of the truth. Of course, such has no basis in history:

    “[e]very independent state has full and complete jurisdiction over all persons and things physically situated within its territorial limits, whether those persons and things are permanently or transitorily present.” John Norton Pomeroy, Lectures on International Law in Time of Peace, pg. 202 (1886);

    “All persons found within the limits of a government, (unless specially excepted by the law of nations,) whether their residence is permanent or temporary, are subject to its jurisdiction; but it may or may not, as it chooses, exercise it in cases of dispute between foreigners.” Henry Halleck, Elements of International Law and Laws of War, pg. 92 (1885)

    “Territorial jurisdiction attached (with special exceptions) upon all persons either permanently or temporarily resident within the territory while they were within it, but it did not follow them after they had withdrawn from it and when they were living in another independent country.” Sir William Henry Rattigan. Private International Law, pg. 228 (1895).

    “From the definition of a sovereign state it follows that “the jurisdiction of a nation within its own territory is necessarily exclusive and absolute. It is susceptible of no limitation not imposed by itself. Any restriction upon it deriving validity from any external source would imply a diminution of its sovereignty to the extent of the restriction, and an investment of that sovereignty to the same extent in that power which could impose such restriction.’ This jurisdiction extends to all subjects and over all persons within its territorial limits, it matters not whether those persons be native-born, or naturalized citizens, or aliens.” George Breckinridge Davis, Elements of International Law, pg. 39 (1887)

    “To be resident within the territory of a Nation is to be subject to its Jurisdiction; but Nations, from considerations of mutual Comity, do not apply the same Laws in all matters to persons who are only temporarily resident, as to persons who are permanently resident within its territory. The discretion, however, of a Nation as to the particular Law which shall be administered in its Courts is absolute, and it may decline to allow its Courts to give any effect to Foreign Law: the other hand, if it allows its Courts to administer Foreign Law in disputes between foreigners, or otherwise, it adopts tacitly the Foreign Law as its own for the settlement of such disputes.” Travers Twiss, The Law of Nations, pg. 260 (1863)

    “One of the fundamental rules of international law is that an independent State has absolute and exclusive jurisdiction over all persons and property within its boundaries.” Freedman Snow, International Law, pg. 31 (1898).

    “Every nation has the right to territory within defined boundaries and to exercise exclusive jurisdiction over its territory, and all persons whether native or foreign found therein.” Otfried Nippold, The Development of International Law After the World War, pg. 194 (1923)

    “The jurisdiction of the nation within its own territory is necessarily exclusive and absolute. It is susceptible of no limitation not imposed by itself. Any restriction upon it deriving validity from an external source would imply a diminution of its sovereignty to the extent of the restriction and an investment of that sovereignty to the same extent in that power which could impose such restriction. All exceptions, therefore, to the full and complete power of a nation within its own territories must be traced up to the consent of the nation itself….When private individuals of one nation spread themselves through another as business or caprice may direct, mingling indiscriminately with the inhabitants of that other, or when merchant vessels enter for the purposes of trade, it would be obviously inconvenient and dangerous to society, and would subject the laws to continual infraction and the government to degradation, if such individuals or merchants did not owe temporary and local allegiance and were not amenable to the jurisdiction of the country.” The Exchange v. McFaddon, 11 U.S. 7 Cranch 116, 136 (1812)

    I know, I know, everyone in history is stupid and you are right because you say so because it is self-evident to you.

  312. Northland10 says:

    Adrien Nash: If you are not subject to conscription, not now or ever in the past, then you are not a legitimate member of American society and therefore there is no reason under heaven that your foreigner-fathered children should be considered to be Americans. Any other policy would be insane, and everyone realizes it.

    Huh? Really?

  313. Dave B. says:

    I’m just amazed that anybody reads these screeds all the way through. But there you have it– Adrien hates women.

    Northland10: Adrien Nash: If you are not subject to conscription, not now or ever in the past, then you are not a legitimate member of American society and therefore there is no reason under heaven that your foreigner-fathered children should be considered to be Americans. Any other policy would be insane, and everyone realizes it.

    Huh? Really?

  314. Northland10 says:

    Dave B.: I’m just amazed that anybody reads these screeds all the way through.

    I didn’t. He leaves enough misogynist and bigoted statements, a quick skim will usually find one.

  315. Adrien Nash says:

    Lupin: The “parens citoyens” sentence in Vattel is meant to include all blood relatives and is merely a restatement of the principles of jus sanguinis and in no way implies TWO parents are necessary to produce a naurel.

    I’m not the one saying this; EVERYONE is the french or german or swiss legal universe says this. To pretend different is simply moronic.

    Your disingenuous manipulation of language is first rate. “in no way implies TWO parents are necessary to produce a naturel.”
    There is no claim that it does. Why? Because of the red herring language you used. “necessary”? Two parents are not “necessary” because one might be DEAD! -or divorced and long gone.

    The logic of what you claim is intrinsically flawed. You mention nationality passing from a non-parent, an uncle, and yet who knows that an uncle is an uncle?? Answer: those who know who the father was.
    If the father was known, then it is his nationality that would be imputed to his child. No relative is needed if the father was known. If he wasn’t known, then no relative is possible. Either way, your claim is illogical. If you say it is the law anyway, then you should add that “the law is an ass”.

    As for the claim that Vattel’s naturel citoyen *meant* to refer to an entire family tree, that is equally absurd. One’s bloodline is important but those who gave you life are heads and shoulders above everyone else. Almost no comparison.

    So Vattel, by any rational understanding of the social principle he was illuminating, would have not cared about one’s greater family but one’s parents since they are the sole source of the life and sustenance of their children, not uncle Bob.

    Don’t talk to me about everyone’s opinion, authoritative consensus views, since you have no logic on your side and no quotes to even substantiate such an ambiguous ill-defined claim.

    This is further verified by Vattel’s subsequent sentences which make it clear that in the late 1770s/early 1800s, it was the Father (and the father only, ie: ONE parent) who transmitted citizenship.

    The point to retain here is: ONE naturel parent for a naturel child; not TWO. That’s where you keep flipping that switch in your head.

    You are hiding and avoiding two points central to your false claims: The source of the nationality of the mother, and the nature of the term citoyen naturel.
    Was the mother in 1750’s France like she was in the rest of the European world, -subject to her husband and deemed to be under his jurisdiction and nationality? Or did she have a citizenship of her own?
    I boldly argue that you are a prevaricator by forwarding your claim about only ONE parent when in fact she had no nationality other than her husband, as in America.
    To claim that only one parent would make one a citoyen naturel you need to show that in Vattel’s day that was even possible if the citizen parent was other than the father.
    I say that no women married to a Frenchman had any French-recognized nationality other than her husband’s. If true, as elsewhere, then your whole defense collapses.

    If you claim that a French woman married to a foreigner in France would give birth to a “natural citizen” then you need to show something to prove that. And then you need to prove that the term was a natural term and not a term of legal artifice, with an altered meaning which included damn near everyone, -as in Britain.

    By your claims of the modern status quo if would appear that the words are a non-literal legal fiction / legal term of art. That means that they are meaningless and not literal language.

    Lupin: Finally, in the 20th century…even ONE naturalized parent is enough to make a citoyen naturel child.

    There is even a famous precedent, that of Emile Zola who had a brilliant political career despite being born of an Italian Father and a French mother.

    So ultimately, if Obama had been born in France in 1961 of a Keuyan father and a French mother, he would be considered a citoyen français naturel, in direct legal descendence of principles going back to Vatel (and in fact, before Vattel).

    Zola is an unacceptable example since he was born in1840 and by the time he embarked in politics he was probably into the 1870’s or later. During that era women were gaining individual rights, including a citizenship of their own, so his mother would have carried more political weight on his behalf as a French woman than a hundred years earlier or more.
    If Obama were born in in France to a British father and French mother in 1776 or 1787 then he would be considered to be a British subject because his mother’s nationality would not be a factor since children inherited the nationality of the head of the family, and that was the father.

    “Whether or not any of this applies or translates into French Law or concepts, I don’t particularly care.”

  316. Adrien Nash says:

    Lupin: Mr Nash mostly cribs his philosophical argument from Jean-Jacques Rousseau or his successors.or like minded British philosophers. They never had any legal value whatsoever even way back then.

    FYI, I’ve never read any of them and have no intention of doing so. Everything I’ve realized comes straight from the real world and the philosophical framework of the Genesis account of the creation of man that our nation’s founders based their understanding of Natural Rights on. No philosopher is needed to see what I’ve come to realize. It only takes awareness and contemplation… a whole lot of it…continuously.

  317. Adrien Nash says:

    Dave B.: I’m just amazed that anybody reads these screeds all the way through. But there you have it– Adrien hates women.

    Northland10: Adrien Nash: If you are not subject to conscription, not now or ever in the past, then you are not a legitimate member of American society and therefore there is no reason under heaven that your foreigner-fathered children should be considered to be Americans. Any other policy would be insane, and everyone realizes it.

    Huh? Really?

    I guess you missed the nuanced pseudo-quote of speaking from the mind-set of the distant past. That was the American attitude. You need to understand the past as it was, -not through the prism of the present.

  318. Adrien Nash says:

    ballantine: Nash: You blindly make that assumption in the absence of any context whatsoever.You failed to differentiate between those born and raised and living abroad, and those born abroad, but raised and living their whole life in Britain.

    Do the research. They were second class subjects as the allegiance they owed was secondary to that native allegiance. And, persons not covered by statute were aliens. Sorry you can’t deal with that.

    Damn! Can’t you comprehend plain English? Even your reply is as blind as the earlier statement that I countered, -which you failed to address.
    Who the hell is “they”??? I defined two sorts of “they” and you addressed neither. Do you need a brain transplant or something? You simply cannot tell a sane person that an Englishman who lived his whole life in England, albeit born across the channel, was treated as a second class citizen. You talk about allegiance? What allegiance would he feel for a nation that he never visited in his whole life post-birth? What allegiance could any sane person even suspect that he harbored for a nation not his own?
    Please, do tell. If they were second-class nevertheless, you need to say in what way that was true. What part of “natural-born subject” inequality under the law are you arguing existed?

    Nash: They in Congress did NOT have the delusion that foreign-born Americans were in need of their almighty permission to be that which they were born as by birthright descent..

    Who said so? Simply making things up and stating it as fact just makes you look like an idiot. As I pointed out, the legislative history does not support you.

    Legislative history?? I didn’t know such a thing existed in 1788. Please explain. I would explain for you but that is what I spent the day writing about. It will be “earth shattering” when you read it. All of your delusions will be laid bare. But I need to add some more things to it before posting it probably tomorrow. I’d be doing that right now but I’m side-tracked at the moment answering various comments.

    ballantine: Nash: Do you dare to argue in defense of the logic of [Binney’s] interpretation?
    Just because some dunderheads in the courts accepted his absurdity on its technically accurate face does not work in your benefit because it does not change the logic, or lack thereof, that they violated in embracing his “opinion”.

    B: If the language of 1802 was a mistake, it is still the fact that our leading scholar, Congress and the Supreme Court thought unless the language was changed, all foreign born persons were aliens under our laws.

    That cannot be shown because it cannot be shown that their concern was not what the law needed to say in order for legal citizenship to be legally recognized. Rather it can only be presumed that their concern was that as worded, some dunderheads in the port authority might misconstrue the intent of the legislation and interpret it incorrectly, which was possible by putting on a technocratic legalese mind-set. They wanted to avoid what happened to Wong, and all the litigation that would be needed to resolve such a suit.
    You can claim otherwise but you cannot definitively show what was behind their effort to “correct” the language in a lawyerly all-possibilities-covering manner.
    The problem was merely a matter of inadequate language, not an intent to overthrow four hundred and fifty years of precedent. Just go ahead and try to argue the opposite. Logic will utterly fail you. Just because some were sucked-in to the idea of the law not being exact and therefore asininely detrimental to foreign-born American children does not show that that was even in the minds of those who wrote it, not expecting its easily understood intent to be twisted like a pretzel.

    These are simply historical facts as to who our authorities determine who was and who was not a citizen. The notion that no statute was needed is simply made up in your head.

    “needed” is completely undefined. Needed by who? By dense minds with no capacity of abstract rational thought? Yes. That is it. Bureaucracies always contain plenty of such people. They might even be the norm. But no normal person would assume what you erroneously assume the act meant. You seem to have totally avoided stating what you think that was. Why is that? Because you cling to the false belief that children of American couples “needed” the permission of government to be what they were born being.

    I challenge you; go ahead and attempt to argue that “the right of descent” was not a right but a mere privilege granted by the all-powerful Congress which controlled all of the puppet-strings of citizenship for all natural born Americans.
    Good luck with that. You will be decapitating your own natural rights by such an assertion.

  319. Adrien Nash says:

    ballantine: The amendment does not say “fully subject” and you have been shown the context of such snippit from the debates.

    Where is the snippet of Senator Howard (?) who when asked what subjection to the jurisdiction meant, answered that it meant subjection to the fully authority, or full subjection to the authority, and owing allegiance to no foreign power. Where is that deadly snippet?
    You need to think deeper before writing something like “does not say “fully subject” because the only alternative is “partially subject, but not fully subject”.
    I’ve shown you the fundamental logic why that is false and it is born out by the reality of how nations are governed. That reality is fundamental to the survival of nations.
    It is not an optional thing. It is absolutely mandatory, as the Revolutionary and 1812 Wars demonstrated.
    Elite members of the political aristocracy are unaware of it because it has never touched their lives in the modern era in which noble warrior knights are no longer the front line defense of the nation.

    “All persons born in the US and subject to municipal traffic laws are citizens of the United States.” Is that subject enough? “All persons born… and subject to murder prohibition statutes are citizens of the United States.” How about that?

    Gee, that would really protect the nation from “ALL ENEMIES, FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC”, ISIS and COMMUNIST, NAZI and IMPERIAL JAPANESE?

    “NO! That’s too much, let’s just make it the tax laws, or the Visa laws, ok?” Anything but what actually benefits the nation and requires equal burden-sharing between citizens and immigrants.

    The principle is fundamental, -the practical application is more theoretical than literal, but it is NOT non-existent. ALL 18-25 year old immigrants MUST register. They are under a very real national obligation of subjection to the ultimate authority of the nation. NOT partial subjection.
    And NO VISA card visitors are required to register. They are NOT subject, just like ambassadors.

  320. Rickey says:

    The other thing which Nash does not understand is that it does not matter if Obama’s father was subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S. (even though he was). What matters is whether his child was born subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S. The Constitution says nothing about parents.

    All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.

    The 14th Amendment only refers to “persons born or naturalized,” not to their parents.

    Children of diplomats are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States because at birth they are afforded the same diplomatic immunity as their parents. Even if President Obama’s father was not subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S., Obama the younger most certainly was. His father was not a diplomat, so President Obama was not afforded any immunity from U.S. law. His father was not subject to conscription, but President Obama was. His father was not eligible to vote, but President Obama is. His father was not eligible for a U.S passport, but President Obama is.

    Nash’s fixation on Obama’s father is misplaced. Obama’s father was not a diplomat and he was not a member of an invading army, so his status is irrelevant.

  321. Keith says:

    Adrien Nash: That is dumb. “A law applies to all human and animals in the country unless it specifically says it doesn’t. ” All a law needs to do is spell out who it applies to, NOT who it does NOT apply to. Oh, and that was great of you to quote no law whatsoever to support your inane claim.

    This is the WW2 conscription law:

    The Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, also known as the Burke-Wadsworth Act, Pub.L. 76–783


    SEC. 2. Except as otherwise provided in this Act, it shall be the duty
    of every male citizen of the United States, and of every male alien residing
    in the United States,
    who, on the day or days fixed for the first or
    any subsequent registration, is between the ages of twenty-one and
    thirty-six, to present himself for and submit to registration at such time
    or times and place or places, and in such manner and in such age group
    or groups, as shall be determined by rules and regulations prescribed
    hereunder.
    SEC. 3. (a) Except as otherwise provided in this Act, every male
    citizen of the United States, and every male alien residing in the United
    States who has declared his intention to become such a citizen
    , between
    the ages of twenty-one and thirty-six at the time fixed for his registration,
    shall be liable for training and service in the land or naval forces
    of the United States…

    Notice that it says that every (of age, etc) male citizen and every male alien must register, except as otherwise provided. It also says that every every (of age, etc) male citizen and every male alien who intends to become a citizen (i.e. immigrants) are liable for training and service, except as otherwise provided.

    So what does it mean ‘except as otherwise provided’?


    SEC. 5. (a) Commissioned officers, warrant officers, pay clerks, and
    enlisted men of the Regular Army, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the
    Coast Guard, the Coast and Geodetic Survey, the Public Health Service,
    the federally recognized active National Guard, the Officers’
    Reserve Corps, the Regular Army Reserve, the Enlisted Reserve Corps,
    the Naval Reserve, and the Marine Corps Reserve ; cadets, United
    States Military Academy ; midshipmen, United States Naval Academy
    ; cadets, United States Coast Guard Academy ; men who have
    been accepted for admittance (commencing with the academic year
    next succeeding such acceptance) to the United States Military
    Academy as cadets, to the United States Naval Academy as midshipmen,
    or to the United States Coast Guard Academy as cadets, but
    only during the continuance of such acceptance ; cadets of the advanced
    course, senior division, Reserve Officers’ Training Corps or Naval
    Reserve Officers’ Training Corps ; and diplomatic representatives,
    technical attaches of foreign embassies and legations, consuls general,
    consuls, vice consuls, and consular agents of foreign countries, residing
    in the United States, who are not citizens of the United States, and
    who have not declared their intention to become citizens of the United
    States, shall not be required to be registered under section 2 and shall
    be relieved from liability for training and service under section 3 (b)
    .

    That is a whole swag of people who are not included, and your assertion that laws do not list people who they don’t apply to is shown to be wrong.

    Foreign visitors (including students) are specifically NOT excluded from the requirement to register, but they are not required to serve because section 3 (b) that puts that requirement only on citizens and foreigners who intend to become citizens.

    So that was the 1940 law. What is the CURRENT law?

    From the Military Selective Service Act 1948 §453. Registration (and as amended several times since)

    §453. Registration

    (a) Except as otherwise provided in this title [sections 451 to 471a of this Appendix] it shall be the duty of every male citizen of the United States, and every other male person residing in the United States, who, on the day or days fixed for the first or any subsequent registration, is between the ages of eighteen and twenty-six, to present himself for and submit to registration at such time or times and place or places, and in such manner, as shall be determined by proclamation of the President and by rules and regulations prescribed hereunder. The provisions of this section shall not be applicable to any alien lawfully admitted to the United States as a nonimmigrant under section 101(a)(15) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, as amended (66 Stat. 163; 8 U.S.C. 1101), for so long as he continues to maintain a lawful nonimmigrant status in the United States.

    So foreign students are explicitly excluded from the provisions of the act (as of the amendment in 1971).

    Foreign students and other nonimmigrant aliens are absolutely subject to the ‘jurisdiction’ of American law. In the case of the MSSA that jurisdiction includes the proviso that registration provisions do not apply to them as long as they “maintain a lawful nonimmigrant status in the United States”.

    This is not Rocket Science.

    People who are physically present in the United States are under the jurisdiction of the U.S. That means that they must obey U.S. law, and in return, the U.S. must give them the full protection of U.S. law while they remain in the United States.

    Likewise, people who are physically present in Mexico are under the jurisdiction of Mexico. This includes Americans, Russians, Lichtensteinians, Timorese, anybody.

    And that classifies as one of your ‘laws of nations’.

  322. Adrien Nash says:

    ballantine: The question of children of temporary residents came up and was answered:

    “I have always believed that every person, of whatever race or color, who was born within the United States was a citizen of the United States…”

    And there he was, doing what I warn you about… expressing an OPINION! He absorbed it from others but never went any deeper. What he said is likely even false since few Americans considered Native Americans to be citizens as he claimed. “whatever race or color”? That was not the American attitude then nor for a long time after, until about the 1920’s in fact. And even until my lifetime in regard to some Chinese.

    The Senator says a person may be born here and not be a citizen. I know that is so in one instance, in the case of the children of foreign ministers who reside “near” the United States in the diplomatic language. By a fiction of law such persons are not supposed to be residing here, and under that fiction of law their children would not be citizens of the United States.” Senator Wade,

    Guess whose brain-dead “fiction” he was referring to? British! -with their entrenched jus soli system which reason could not justify.
    Why was the foreign-born child of a minister not a subject of the foreign king? Because of magical legal fiction infecting the imagination within the jus soli matrix of manufactured concepts.

    But under jus sanguinis there is no resort to a silly fiction at all. Such children were not foreign subjects because they were subject only to their own father, and through him to his king. It was the same with all foreign visitors who were not settled in the foreign king’s kingdom. They did not surrender their allegiance to their own king and nation, so their children born abroad during a visit remained within the realm of the parents and not within the realm of a foreign monarch with a foreign language, culture, history, and government.

    Did professional politicians comprehend such things? They would not have since they were not being taught by anyone. All instructors were brain-washed into the perpetuation of the British system and were oblivious to their own
    American rights.

    no one suggested children of aliens were only citizens if part of the military. Show me the court that ever said any alien was fully subject to our jurisdiction.

    No such thing was ever said or written by anyone, thus no court ever opined on the matter. But truth is not dependent on what a court never said or considered.
    You make the knee-jerk focus on what is legal truth but I have no interest in what courts or congressmen believed. Actual truth is not dependent on their knowledge or opinion.
    Also, they were almost all of a wrong generation, and unknowledgeable about fundamental values of the nation’s founders. It was all remote and conceptual to them, not real.
    What was real to them was the exercise of authority, and there was a far longer history of the exercise of British authority in America’s history than American authority exercised in defense of individual rights and liberties. And all of the American lawyers were trained in British law, with all of its treasures and toxins.

  323. Adrien Nash says:

    Rickey:
    ~it does not matter if Obama’s father was subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S. (even though he was). What matters is whether his child was born subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S. -The Constitution says nothing about parents.

    All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.
    The 14th Amendment only refers to “persons born or naturalized,” not to their parents.

    Even if President Obama’s father was not subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S., Obama the younger most certainly was. His father was not a diplomat, so President Obama was not afforded any immunity from U.S. law. His father was not subject to conscription, but President Obama was. His father was not eligible to vote, but President Obama is. His father was not eligible for a U.S passport, but President Obama is.

    Your basic assumption is false. Minors are NEVER subject to civilized governments. They are subject to their PARENTS. Their parents are subject to the government. If a father was not subject, then neither was anyone under him in his family because they were all (under the law of society) an extension of him.
    Neither wives/mothers nor minors were subject to the basic responsibilities of civic and national life, which included the obligation to “BEAR ARMS”.

    That is the citizen’s responsibility to this day in Switzerland. All men are to own and be proficient in the use of automatic weapons. And train with then annually. That is how the nation remains unconquerable.
    That is not a responsibility that is on the shoulders of women or minors.

    This is a fundamental national survival thing, not a civic, civilian life thing. It is outside of the realm that you have lived in all of your life. It is alien to your experience. And to that of most lawyers and judges and politicians.
    Very few veterans of foreign wars serve in those occupations, but they are the ones that maintained the liberty of all of the rest. Yet they are invisible in American law. It is oblivious to national responsibility except in the one lone area of Selective Service. And even that is almost totally overlooked because there is no national draft.

    Children of diplomats are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States because at birth they are afforded the same diplomatic immunity as their parents.

    Why??? What’s behind affording them anything? It is because the parents remain subject to their own government, and their children are under their wing, their cloak, their jurisdiction, and are therefore not viewed as subject to the American government and its political rules and obligations of citizenship.
    The entire doctrine of jus soli citizenship can be tossed in the shitcan of history and nothing would change except the elimination of an asinine fictional, magical explanation of why an ambassador’s child isn’t an alien to him and his nation.

  324. Keith says:

    Adrien Nash: That is bankrupt reasoning. The law states that all MALE citizens and immigrants, and children of immigrants, between 18 and 25 must register with Selective Service. THAT is the current full jurisdiction of citizenship. Nothing less than being in that class, or being “of” that class (but too old or unfit) is able to meet the implied requirement of national obligation that a father must be under for the privilege of jus soli citizenship to be granted to his children.

    That noise you heard just now is point going over your head.

    Women citizens and immigrants and foreign students are absolutely 100% subject to the jurisdiction of U.S. Law in general and that law in particular.

    The MSSA is part of the U.S. Legal System. Can we at least agree on that?

    It happens that the MSSA is a law that places an obligation on a certain subclass of the inhabitants of the United States. That subclass specifically includes males in a certain age-range with a few exceptions. The law does not place an obligation on women.

    Women are 100% subject to the jurisdiction of the MSSA, it just so happens that the law does not place any obligations on women. It does place obligations on foreign students (specifically that they remain exempt from those obligations only as long as they remain in good standing with the immigration law regarding academic standing and so on).

    The fact that there are no obligations placed on women by the MSSA doesn’t mean that they are not subject to the MSSA. It only means that to satisfy the obligations placed on them by that law is to do absolutely nothing.

    “jurisdiction” doesn’t have anything to do with an obligation to register for selective service and serve if called up. “Jurisdiction” has to do with “authority of the legal system”. Selective service law is just one small part of that legal system.

    If you are not subject to conscription, not now or ever in the past, then you are not a legitimate member of American society and therefore there is no reason under heaven that your foreigner-fathered children should be considered to be Americans. Any other policy would be insane, and everyone realizes it.

    This is approaching the most stupid idea you have regurgitated so far. The MSSA places obligations on individuals, not the children of individuals. If Senior is not subject to conscription, it has no bearing on whether Junior is American or not. That is what would be insane. Some of those people who are “not now or ever in the past” are faith workers (ministers, theology students, etc, etc). Are their children to be denied citizenship by you because you have some insane idea of what makes an American an American?

    Talk about insanity.

    Adrien Nash: That’s it. I done with you.

    Promises, promises.

  325. Keith says:

    Rickey: To say that aliens in the U.S. on student visas are not subject to U.S. jurisdiction because they cannot be conscripted is like saying that I am not subject to U.S. jurisdiction because I am too old to be drafted. Just because a person is not affected by a particular law it does not mean that the person is not subject to the law.

    You put it much simpler and better than my rant above.

  326. Keith says:

    ballantine: And, of course, the 14th Amendment does not say “fully subject.”

    What is the difference between “fully subject” and “partially subject”. Is like “fully pregnant” and “partially pregnant”?

  327. Keith says:

    Rickey: Nash’s fixation on Obama’s father is misplaced. Obama’s father was not a diplomat and he was not a member of an invading army, so his status is irrelevant.

    bingo

  328. Adrien Nash says:

    Keith: who are not citizens of the United States, and
    who have not declared their intention to become citizens of the United
    States, shall not be required to be registered under section 2 and shall
    be relieved from liability for training and service under section 3 (b) .

    That is a whole swag of people who are not included, and your assertion that laws do not list people who they don’t apply to is shown to be wrong.

    You are not grasping the logic of what you’ve read. It is stating that all persons who are not among the listed are subject. That is exactly what I said. It spelled out who is subject by listing those who were exempt. But it did not spell out all who were exempt. Where is the mention of the sick and dying citizens and foreigners, or those in prisons and insane asylums? What about those working for the federal government already?

    Keith: The provisions of this section shall not be applicable to any alien lawfully admitted to the United States as a nonimmigrant under section 101(a)(15) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, as amended (66 Stat. 163; 8 U.S.C. 1101), for so long as he continues to maintain a lawful nonimmigrant status in the United States.

    So foreign students are explicitly excluded from the provisions of the act (as of the amendment in 1971).

    Foreign students and other nonimmigrant aliens are absolutely subject to the ‘jurisdiction’ of American law

    UNFREAKING BELIEVABLE! So they are subject by being exempt??? That is bass-ackwards. That means that they are exempt because they ARE NOT SUBJECT! But if they become immigrants, then they become subject. Hence the need to not change their non-immigrant status by becoming permanent residents because it gives them IMMUNITY TO US POLITICAL LAW.
    Foreigners subject to a foreign power remain non-subject to US power. If they join the American society by legally settling here, then their foreign subjection is nullified in the eyes of the United State government. They have thereby become one of us, and therefore share our obligation of national defense.

  329. Adrien Nash says:

    Keith: It happens that the MSSA is a law that places an obligation on a certain subclass of the inhabitants of the United States. That subclass specifically includes males in a certain age-range with a few exceptions. The law does not place an obligation on women.

    You cannot begin to grasp just how delusional you are. The obligation of men is not placed on them by law. It is placed on them by membership in a self-governing and sustaining democratic republic. If you live in a home with your family, you have an obligation to prevent them and yourself from dying in a fire. That is not the result of a man-made law, but a law of human relationships.
    It is the very same with nations. The law is based on an obligation what already exists without it. But the law makes it legally enforceable.
    In your warped view of law, the government is god and the People are its slaves, but that is not the way it works in America and all free nations. The People are the sovereigns not the government. They must fulfill their natural obligation, one which they agree should be codified to force the shirkers to fulfill it.

    Women are 100% subject to the jurisdiction of the MSSA, it just so happens that the law does not place any obligations on women. The fact that there are no obligations placed on women by the MSSA doesn’t mean that they are not subject to the MSSA. It only means that to satisfy the obligations placed on them by that law is to do absolutely nothing.

    That is one of the most insane statements ever witten. Exactly the opposite is what is true. Women are 100% exempt from conscription and registration. Show the language where women are even mentioned. They are not mentioned, and your entire imaginary subjection to the MSSA is a figment of wild imagination, which is self-evident.
    “Prison rule number 1. All prisons are required to wear prison clothing. All civilians in America are subject to the rule but are granted an exemption. Nevertheless they are fully subject to the prison rule even though they are not prisoners nor convicts.” BRAIN-DEAD!
    Now that I’ve addressed your mental breakdown, I’ll explain a fundamental fact to you. No women in the history of the Western world, and probably the entire civilized world, were ever subject to the obligation to engage in combat or combat training. Same with children. THEY ARE NOT SUBJECT to the duties of men.
    It is shear idiocy to claim they are subject to an obligation and the rules that enforce it when it ignores them altogether and claims no authority over them AT ALL!
    Here’s the bottom line: in America the only thing that could change that would be a fundamental change in the Constitution. That is how women obtained the right to vote. That was a fundamental change, and the nation actually followed the Constitution back then, unlike now when the abomination of desolation known as obamacare was unconstitutionally forced on the American people without any amendment to legitimize it. That is as corrupt as your statist thinking.

    It does place obligations on foreign students (specifically that they remain exempt from those obligations only as long as they remain in good standing with the immigration law regarding academic standing and so on).

    That is true of all students, primarily citizen students. But you are oblivious to what an obligation even is by claiming that it exists as something “placed” on foreign students.

    Nothing is placed on them. They can voluntarily get good grades and remain a student, or if they prefer, not get good grades and get deported, or if they manage to obtain legal residency, get registered.
    Without residency no foreign student is obligated to register because they remain subject to their own foreign government, and the U.S. follows policies that avoid dual-subjection whenever possible.

  330. Adrien Nash says:

    Keith: Some of those people who are “not now or ever in the past” are faith workers (ministers, theology students, etc, etc).

    They share in the mutual obligation of American men in matters of national defense, which you would realize if you ever read the history of conscientious objectors. It is an eye-opener into American history. They are obligated, but with much effort, may be granted an exemption.

    An exemption does NOT mean that they are automatically exempt. It is something that must be granted by men of society or government tasked with deciding such things. In such instances, the objector may be required to perform non-combat functions, or if they are extremely pacifistic, non-military functions. Otherwise they will be imprisoned for the duration of the war. Everyone who is subject must do his share. Foreign visitors have no share, and thus their children don’t either since they are under the father and he is under a foreign government. Just like Obama’s 2008 election website stated of his father and his children. They were subject to the British Nationality Act of 1948, father and children. Obama’s people ignorantly outted him.

  331. Adrien Nash says:

    Keith: “People who are physically present in the United States are under the jurisdiction of the U.S. That means that they must obey U.S. law, and in return, the U.S. must give them the full protection of U.S. law while they remain in the United States.”

    That is a simpleton’s viewpoint. They must obey the laws even as Presidents and foreign ambassadors must also, but the jurisdiction only BEGINS there. It does not end there.

    It goes all of the way to the point of wielding the authority to send you to your death in battle, as occurred at Gettysburg and Normandy and Iwo Jima. The jurisdiction that affords an alien’s US born children American citizenship is the jurisdiction that all male citizens are under. National defense. Everything else is just the irrelevant superficiality of civilian life, like yours.

    “Likewise, people who are physically present in Mexico are under the jurisdiction of Mexico.”
    Another simpleton statement. There are multiple jurisdictions in Mexico. There is the Mexican civilian jurisdiction, the foreign tourist jurisdiction, the military jurisdiction, and the naturalized citizen jurisdiction. Are all people physically present in Mexico subject to all of them?
    Can any person who is subject be President of Mexico? Can natural-ized citizens be policemen, mayors, judges, governors, legislators, soldiers, or President? No, they can not.

    Why not? Because they are not natural nor native-born Mexicans, -neither born in Mexico nor born of Mexican parents. They have no right to equal treatment because they are not equal because Mexico has no national fiction of citizenship equality like America does.

    So their naturalized citizens are legally unequal. That is the natural way, but we follow a higher way, the way of equality. In American everyone is a natural citizen by birth or by legal fiction. We are all equal, -except…. when it comes to the position of Command-in-Chief.
    He must be born as a natural citizen. That requires that he be born of Americans, -not foreigners.

  332. Adrien Nash says:

    I just counted 11 comments I just took the time to write and they are all awaiting moderation. That is an unacceptable status. Let me know when it is removed and I might return. Otherwise, I’ve had enough of the second-class un-American unequal treatment.

  333. Suranis says:

    The frst Agency dealing with immigration and Nationalization came into existence in the USA in 1891, with The Immigration Act of 1891. And it wasn’t an agency, it was a single officer. Then t went through a lot of different forms of agencies till 1933, none of them called the INS

    For someone who constantly clams to be dealing with FACTS and who touts your advanced knowlage, you always seem to fall apart when exposed to what actually happened in real history.

    Plus you wouldn’t have made that stupid mistake if you had actually read the case as the circumstances of the detention were clearly written there.

    So go back to stroking yourself in front of the mirror.

    Adrien Nash: I did not consciously intend to capitalize the word “Immigration”. As you could see, the other two words got no capitalization, which was to indicate their generic meaning, Not the name of a federal department, -only its function by whatever bureau or service existed at the time.

  334. Lupin says:

    I’d like to summarize if I may —

    Mr Nash feels that Obama cannot be a natural born citizen because his father wasn’t himself born American.

    (Is that a fair statement of his point?)

    To support his theory, Mr. Nash relies mostly on a number of theories which are more grounded in philosophy than the American legal system.

    His theories appear to date back to the 18th century, and be at least in part similar to pre-Napoleonic / Continental European / Roman Law (well summarized by Vattel).

    Some of his understanding of the details of these legal systems appears erroneous.

    Further, he refuses to consider how these same legal systems evolved over the last two centuries in the countries which use them, and, in effect, insists on applying 18th century, possibly foreign, law to a 20th century American birth.

    Have I boiled it down accurately?

  335. Arthur says:

    Lupin: Have I boiled it down accurately?

    Thank you for cutting through Nash’s prolixity to get to the heart of the matter. Nash wants to turn concrete matters of law into matters of interpretation, in which only his rebarbative analysis is correct. It’s the most comically solipsistic bungling since Mario Apuzzo’s court room failures.

  336. John Reilly says:

    Mr. Nash’s theory is that a society could, if it wanted, restrict membership to the children of citizens, including a restriction that both parents must be citizens. A society could restrict voting, if it wanted, to while males who own property. Or a society could restrict voting membership to a few descendants of a ruling family.

    That those propositions are true, what a society could do, they fail to recognize what our society has expressed, through the 14th Amendment, that if you are born here (with a few exceptions not relevant) you are a citizen without regard to the citizenship of your parents. We don’t even care if you were born at ORD if your pregnant mother just landed from some foreign country. (Although, to be sure, there are proposals to deal with anchor babies, though those proposals seem to have little traction.)

    Rather than recognize that the weight of court decisions is against the policy he espouses, Mr. Nash doubles down and insists that his construct is the only possible way of doing things. It’s not. We do it different here in America. If he wants to move elsewhere where another society follows his teachings, there are daily flights from most big airports.

  337. Arthur says:

    John Reilly: If he wants to move elsewhere where another society follows his teachings, there are daily flights from most big airports.

    I suggest Nashistan. It has no industry, no commerce, and the people are self-important fools who talk too much.

  338. Arthur says:

    Adrien Nash: Otherwise, I’ve had enough of the second-class un-American unequal treatment.

    You’re getting the treatment you would give to others. Thank goodness you’re just an insignificant little maniac without the power to do anything. How unsurprising that a birther bemoans inequality, when inequality is at the heart of his politics.

  339. ballantine says:

    Adrien Nash:
    Please, do tell. If they were second-class nevertheless, you need to say in what way that was true.What part of “natural-born subject” inequality under the law are you arguing existed?

    You refuse to do research and just keep repeating the same thing. They were second class because if they left England they would not be protected by the crown the way common law jus soli subject would. A pretty big difference.

    Legislative history?? I didn’t know such a thing existed in 1788.

    All the naturalization acts had legislative history you can read if you want. In particular 1790 and 1854 where it was made clear that they thought they needed to provide for foreign born children of citizens. No one suggested such wasn’t necessary. Go read the cutting’s speech in 1854 where he used Binney’s paper to convince Congress to change the law:

    “By the common law, the better opinion always was, although there was a few dicta to the contrary, that children born out of the allegiance of the crown, and under the allegiance of another dominion, were aliens to the former and were subjects to the latter, or not, according to the municipal regulations of the country in which the birth might have happened to take place….I have had sent to me a pamphlet written by one of the most eminent lawyers in the United States, whose fame is known from the northern extreme to the southern boundries of our country, I refer to Horace Binney…He has published an elaborate pamphlet intending to draw attention to the subject to which I have now invited the attention of this house.” Rep. Cutting, Cong. Globe, 33rd. Cong., 1st Sess. pg. 170 (1854)

    That cannot be shown because it cannot be shown that their concern was not what the law needed to say in order for legal citizenship to be legally recognized.Rather it can only be presumed that their concern was that as worded, some dunderheads in the port authority might misconstrue the intent of the legislation and interpret it incorrectly, which was possible by putting on a technocratic legalese mind-set.They wanted to avoid what happened to Wong, and all the litigation that would be needed to resolve such a suit.

    Again, you putting forth conjecture. You have no evidence anyone involved with such statutes didn’t agreement with Kent and Binney. You can stomp your feet all you want but no one anybody heard of in such period said they agreed with you. You really think your theory would be accepted by everyone and no one would every talk about it? Seriously?

    I challenge you; go ahead and attempt to argue that “the right of descent” was not a right but a mere privilege granted by the all-powerful Congress which controlled all of the puppet-strings of citizenship for all natural born Americans.
    Good luck with that.You will be decapitating your own natural rights by such an assertion.

    What challenge. I show you all legal authority agrees with me and you say it doesn’t count. If the 14 Amendment specifically said there was no right of descent, you would say it doesn’t count as any law you disagree with you you say is wrong. however, there is a reality of who gets the rights of citizenship and who does not and it has nothing to do with your silly arguments.

  340. ballantine says:

    Adrien Nash: And there he was, doing what I warn you about… expressing an OPINION!

    Yes, the opinion of one of the persons who wrote and adopted the Amendment. You have gotten to the point where you think their opinion doesn’t count. Forget what the framers of the Constitution thought, all that matters is what Adrien thinks. Do you even read your nonsense.

    Why was the foreign-born child of a minister not a subject of the foreign king?Because of magical legal fiction infecting the imagination within the jus soli matrix of manufactured concepts.

    Because of the privilege of extraterritoriality, a fundamental principle of International Law agreed to by all civilized nations.

    Did professional politicians comprehend such things?They would not have since they were not being taught by anyone. All instructors were brain-washed into the perpetuation of the British system and were oblivious to their own
    American rights.

    No such thing was ever said or written by anyone, thus no court ever opined on the matter.But truth is not dependent on what a court never said or considered.
    You make the knee-jerk focus on what is legal truth but I have no interest in what courts or congressmen believed. Actual truth is not dependent on their knowledge or opinion.
    Also, they were almost all of a wrong generation, and unknowledgeable about fundamental values of the nation’s founders.It was all remote and conceptual to them, not real.
    What was real to them was the exercise of authority, and there was a far longer history of the exercise of British authority in America’s history than American authority exercised in defense of individual rights and liberties.And all of the American lawyers were trained in British law, with all of its treasures and toxins.

    So you are arguing that we shouldn’t listen to the people who wrote and adopted the Amendment. Interesting vision of Constitutional Law. It doesn’t matter what the Constitution says or what its authors thought. Adrien has decided it is not the truth.

  341. Dave B. says:

    How’s that again?

    Adrien Nash: I guess you missed the nuanced pseudo-quote of speaking from the mind-set of the distant past.That was the American attitude.You need to understand the past as it was, -not through the prism of the present.

    Adrien Nash: If you are not subject to conscription, not now or ever in the past, then you are not a legitimate member of American society and therefore there is no reason under heaven that your foreigner-fathered children should be considered to be Americans. Any other policy would be insane, and everyone realizes it.

  342. ballantine says:

    Adrien Nash: Where is the snippet of Senator Howard (?) who when asked what subjection to the jurisdiction meant, answered that it meant subjection to the fully authority, or full subjection to the authority, and owing allegiance to no foreign power.Where is that deadly snippet?

    Yes, he was talking about Indians born in Indian nations we treated as foreign nations and hence owed allegiance to such foreign nation. Everyone agreed if such Indians left such nations and came within our territory there children would be citizens even tough the parents could not be naturalized and were subject to military service. Pretty simple, born in the Indian nation to alien parents, not a citizen. Born outside Indian nation to alien parents, a citizen.

    How many quotes did I post by Howard and other expressly stating you are wrong? You just ignore them. How dishonest are you with yourself.

    You need to think deeper before writing something like “does not say “fully subject” because the only alternative is “partially subject, but not fully subject”. I’ve shown you the fundamental logic why that is false and it is born out by the reality of how nations are governed. That reality is fundamental to the survival of nations.
    It is not an optional thing.It is absolutely mandatory, as the Revolutionary and 1812 Wars demonstrated.

    You try to use fundamental logic and ignore what the law of jurisdiction agreed to by all nations under International Law was. The change what the Amendment says and then make up your own law of jurisdiction and think anyone will listen to you. I cite authority showing what the courts said and the practice of nations with respect to jurisdiction. Sorry, that is the law, not what you reason out on your own.

  343. faceman says:

    Adrien Nash: I guess you missed the nuanced pseudo-quote of speaking from the mind-set of the distant past. That was the American attitude. You need to understand the past as it was, -not through the prism of the present.

    Your grandiloquence might be more persuasive were it not for your substandard grammar. I reiterate: the mere utilization of bombastic verbiage does not confer intellectual superiority. On the contrary, attempts to sound ‘hifalutin’ whilst unable to conform to grammatical proprieties result in the antithesis thereof. When I dismiss the excessive exuberance of your language, I find your arguments sorely lacking in substance.

    If, as it does, the Constitution, via the 14th amendment, confers citizenship upon anyone born in the United States, absent the progenitors’ allegiance to another country as evidenced by diplomatic status or the inclusion in an invading army, then that is the law of the land; and any esoteric philosophical treatises to the contrary are invalid.

  344. Dr. Kenneth Noisewater says:

    Adrien Nash:
    I just counted 11 comments I just took the time to write and they are all awaiting moderation.That is an unacceptable status.Let me know when it is removed and I might return.Otherwise, I’ve had enough of the second-class un-American unequal treatment.

    awww poor nash just like last time he runs away after having a tantrum.

  345. Jim says:

    Adrien: “Officer, I wasn’t speeding. That sign that says “Speed Limit 50″ secretly says the speed limit is 80 according to my interpretation. So I was just going the speed limit according to my interpretation.”

    Officer: “Yeah right, sign here. Why l do I get all the nutjobs?”

  346. That’s a hint as to why you’re in moderation. Nevertheless, I approve them when I see them.

    As a general observation, any debate that goes anywhere has to have some common ground to start with. If there is a disagreement on what evidence means, what is considered authority or even something so basic as the role of logic, then nothing gets resolved. You don’t have that common ground with commenters here, which is why you find that you have to repeat yourself over and over, and get nowhere, and similarly for those who respond to you.

    Adrien Nash: I just counted 11 comments I just took the time to write and they are all awaiting moderation.

  347. faceman says:

    Adrien Nash: If you are not subject to conscription, not now or ever in the past, then you are not a legitimate member of American society

    As someone who was too young to serve during Vietman, I was not required to register for the draft. After Vietnam, the government no longer required people to register. By the time they did reinstitute that requirement, I was too old to be affected. So, no, I was never subject to conscription. Am I not a legitimate member of American society?

    And if, as you say, women are not subject to conscription, does that mean that they are not legitimate members of American society?

    Note to all: I did enlist and serve 20 years in the Navy. I was allowed to do this, even though I had never registered for the draft.

    Have a fine Navy day.

  348. Jim says:

    faceman: As someone who was too young to serve during Vietman, I was not required to register for the draft. After Vietnam, the government no longer required people to register. By the time they did reinstitute that requirement, I was too old to be affected. So, no, I was never subject to conscription. Am I not a legitimate member of American society?

    Ditto with me, I was born in 1958…

    “NOTE: Men born from March 29, 1957, through December 31, 1959, were not required to register with Selective Service because the registration program was suspended when they would have reached age 18. The requirement to register with Selective Service was reinstated in 1980, but only for men born January 1, 1960, or later.”

    https://www.sss.gov/men1960.html

    YO ADRIEN! Bet that doesn’t mean that I’m not a citizen eligible for the Presidency. Another of your made-up theories proven to be complete and utter BS. No surprise there…showing your stupidity again.

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