All birther eyes are now on Atlanta — and this time, consequences might attach.
Of course, what does eligibility matter when you are genuinely trying to do good for the US? By, you know — fundamentally transforming it.
Here’s a little bit of advice for Bill O’Reilly: most of us don’t judge a person’s “goodness” by his willingness to appear on our TV show, just as most of us don’t judge a person on his purported conservatism because he happens to insist he’s looking out for the folks.
Why anyone without a loofah fetish continues to watch this faux-populist buffoon is beyond me. But then, the GOP is running Mitt freakin’ Romney, so, well, such is the state of the supposed guardians of liberty these days, I guess.
And there’s no accounting for tastes.
Yet another argument in favor of what I call “The Grover Cleveland Amendment”.
No one who holds the office of President, Senator, or Representative prior to the final year of the term of that office will be eligible to serve the next consecutive term of the same office.
That allows a VP who is a candidate for POTUS to succeed in the event of the death, resignation, or removal of the sitting POTUS, provided that it happens after noon EST 20 Jan of the election year, or for a replacement Representative or Senator to fill out the end of one term and continue for the next, but otherwise eliminates running for re-election.
I find this form of term limit far superior to the sort normally proposed, and quite similar to that in the Articles of Confederation, which allowed a state to send any individual person as a delegate to Congress only three out of any consecutive six years.
It completely disconnects the “rally around the leader” impulse from the question of who should be the leader. And it takes away the incentive for POTUS and Congress to conspire to produce short-term improvements around election time, but long-term detriments.
If, after you’ve sat out a term, the people of your district/state/country want you back, fine. But no running for re-election; just do your job.
If it turns out Obama is ineligible will the Dems have to forfeit all their victories?
Wow, if President Obama is found to be a usurper that means that every single bill he’s signed is invalid. No more Obamacare. All recess appointment vacated.
So, naturally, President Obama will be found to be a “de facto” resident, because he was voted into office prior to being properly vetted.
“Lookin’ out for the
folksa good man“…“Then Obama’s counsel filed a request to quash the subpoena compelling Obama to attend the hearing complaining that [His] duties as president of the United States would be interrupted”
yea the golf outing
Small world. I went to school with Obama’s lawyer for the case in Atlanta.
By the time it worked its way up to SCOTUS he’d be out of office and the issue would be moot.
What’s good for Ted Baxter is good for America.
Donald, Bmoe you have email….
Not just laws; every executive order and arguably executive order and Cabinet appointment (and every regulation that department has issued while operating under a Cabinet he didn’t have the authority to assign.
Which is why the appeals court will squash this like a bug.
I suspect what they also want is to rule him ineligible for the upcoming election.
I think anyone who wants to be eligible to run for president must spend at least one year as a customer service rep at Wal-Mart.
What a fantastically symbolic way to “end too big to fail”. I’m sure Obama has used those words before, and now we have a chance to enforce a law that might be inconvenient.
No more too big to fail.
I’d want to see a whole lot more on this before I got all hopeful that it was going to lead anywhere. Having one parent as a non-citizen isn’t a disqualifier, as far as I’ve been able to determine.
The multiple SS numbers issue is interesting and I’d like to see more on that. The Selective Service thing is also interesting.
Anything that might incite Obama into one of his “Ah am the Presn’t of the United States and you will respect mah ahthoritah!” tirades is a reason to be hopeful in my book.
By the time it worked its way up to SCOTUS he’d be out of office and the issue would be moot.
At least it would put a dent in the whole “historic first (half) black President” when the next generation’s history texts are written.
Truth doesn’t matter to leftist Historians. They’ll write whatever the hell they want anyway.
Just posted.
Actually, I doubt the qualifications issue would ever make it into federal court. The Obamarrhoids will fight an adverse ruling, if there is one, on standing and jurisdiction instead.
Slartibart, as long as he was born on US soil, his parentage doesn’t matter. (Cf., anchor babies.) While I would love it if he were born in Kenya, the more reasonable argument I’ve heard was that he was born in Vancouver; apparently, Stanley Ann had an apartment there while she was pregnant.
There’s also the question, regardless of where he was born, on whether he ever repatriated when he became an adult; he was definitely an Indonesian citizen as a child.
The Indonesia thing depends I think on whether he held dual citizenship during those years. If so then it would be a non-issue.
But if there was an interruption of his U.S. citizenship, that could be an issue — except that I don’t actually find a requirement of uninterrupted citizenship.
That would be a worthwhile question to settle, I think.
I think the main problem here is what you’ve heard lacks the force of law.
If there’s any evidence at all to support that he had Indonesian citizenship, I haven’t seen it.
Ditto for evidence he was born in Vancouver. I haven’t seen ANYTHING material to that effect.
If you think that by making these allegations, you can disqualify the guy because he can’t prove his mom DIDN’T deliver him in Canada, well, good luck with that.
He would have been too young to renounce his American citizenship, and again, there’s no evidence he ever had Indonesian citizenship.
This is the basis of the argument being made in Georgia. Quoted from an interview with the attorney in the case. My paragraph breaks for ease of reading.
It might if Georgia refuses him ballot access.
How about we just vote his ass out of office tout de suite? Or just plain old toot sweet.
That argument is for crap, geoffb. Having both parents be citizens has never been a requirement.
That’s embarrassing, right there.
Just ask Chester Arthur.
Was he, Arthur, challenged? If not then it has not been put to a test.
Apparently, the legal issue is going to be was the “natural born” definition an actual part of the case or was it dicta. The waters are so muddy because of all the bullshit and partisanship who knows what is really going on.
Slart, geeze, what put your panties in a wad? I wasn’t saying I had a legal argument he was born in Vancouver; I’m saying only what I’ve read — that Stanley Ann had an apartment in Vancouver and there is a possibility that that is why he has such difficulty producing a US birth certificate.
As for the Indonesian citizienship — the US allowed dual citizenship, but Indonesia didn’t Stanely Ann renounced her US citizenship to become an Indonesian citizen when she married Lolo Soetoro, and young Barry was legally adopted by Soetoro, and he had an Indonesian passport in college.
That is what introduces the “repatriated” question.
Again, Slart, this is all speculation because Obama hasn’t released any of this paper work. Even little things, like college transcripts that would have listed if he enrolled as a foreign national. I am bringing this up speculatively, not to run over your puppy.
I have unwadded panties, Ella. I am just saying there is nothing concrete to ANY of this. It’s all smoke, until something material is presented.
Sure his college transcripts would be interesting, if only to calibrate his creds as a brilliant Constitutional scholar. But I don’t think he’s required to cough those up.
I agree with Slartibartfast. Minor doesn’t say what that attorney says it says:
It’s not enough to cite Minor. You also have to cite cases citing Minor, so we know how Minor has been interpreted (or misinterpreted, as the case may be).
This is the wording of the decision.
It is interesting how much editing and other internet tricks have been done around that one case by the left. Along with them using an edited Wiki entry as proof.
Ella, I’ve heard these things too, but I’ve never seen any evidence of them. Have you?
Since another party can’t renounce your citizenship for you, it doesn’t matter. At worst, Barry is guilty of financial aid and/or admissions fraud.
And we already know he’s a fraud. don’t we.
I say again: the Obamarrhoids will only fight the decision on standing and jurisdiction grounds, not qualifications.
Ernst,
In your #34 it seems that there are 3 distinct classes being made and defined. Naturalized Citizen, Citizen, and Natural-born Citizen. At least that is how it reads. If there are to be only two classes then why use both “natural-born citizen” and citizen?
Geoffb, where is “citizen” used as a class separate from the other two, rather than as an umbrella term including both?
Is it this?
…because that’s a stopgap class that ceased to be an issue once the last person alive in 1789 died.
McGeehee that umbrella is what confuses it. When they say “declared to be citizens also” or “his widow and children should be considered as citizens of the United States, and entitled to all rights and privileges as such upon taking the necessary oath” it is not stating what kind of citizen is being created, naturalized or natural-born and since those terms are used elsewhere then why the use of the umbrella term which only makes for a confusion or a third intermediate/indeterminate class?
YMMV
For myself these are simply interesting puzzles and interest me only because of the adamant refusal of the Democrats to deal with an issue that should never have been in doubt to begin with.
Here’s what I think about being born elsewhere:
If your parents (both naturalized citizens of the US) were traveling abroad and your mother was rushed into a Paris hospital for emergency C-section, should that be reason you can’t be President?
That seems kind of silly to me.
What the court was being asked to decide in Minor is whether the right to vote was a “privilege” and/or “immunity” afforded to all citizens according to the 14th amendment. Plaintiff’s were arguing it was, and because women were citizens too, the right to vote could not be infringed. The court is holding that yes, women are citizens if they’re natural born or naturalized (brief discussion of what a citizen is, without ruling on what a natural-born citizen isn’t), but, the right to vote isn’t a privilege or immunity afforded to all citizens —so get back in the kitchen and make some sammiches ladies.
For our purposes, there’s only one difference between natural-born and naturalized citizens: only the former are eligible for the Office of President and Vice-President. What the court held, as far as I can tell is : of course a child born of citizen parents is himself a citizen, nobody disputes that. And while some think that anybody born in the U.S. or a U.S. possession is a citizen regardless of the status of the parents, others dispute that, but we’re not deciding one way or another because that doesn’t matter to our voting rights case.
The part that I find more interesting is the 1855 provision for granting natural born citizen status to the child of an American father regardless of where that child is born. Citizen father, non-citizen mother, your a citizen. What about non-citizen father, and citizen mother? Does citizenship attach from only the father? What’s the thinking here?
In slart’s hypothetical, the Paris special would be legally a natural-born citizen in spite an unnatural birth on foreign soil: “the children of citizens of the United States … born beyond the sea, or out of the limits of the United States, should be considered as natural-born citizens.”
But what if only one parent was a citizen of the U.S.?
Depends on what they meant. Citizens but not citizen means that the children of one citizen aren’t citizens? How about if it’s only one child?
What if we were to regard citizens as referring to all citizens having, together in marriage or not, childbirth occurring overseas? What then?
What happens to the citizen/citizens discussion if the father dies prior to birth?
Sounds like an equal-protection case, I think. But IANAL. Still, the mother contributes half the genetic material; citizenship should devolve equally from either parent.
Are C-sections or in-vitro really natural born?
Heh.
What I think here is that what the thinking here is is
…
…
(trigger-alert)
3
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2
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1…
PATRIARCHICAL!!!
Ultimately slart, they didn’t care to specify what they meant beause it was a voting rights case, not a eligibility for election to the office of President case.
If you want to decide this definitively, you have to find someone with circumstances similiar to Obama’s, and then get him to file for election as a candidate for POTUS in a state where that state’s Sec. State (or whomever the chief elections officer happens to be) obligingly disqualifies him from appearing on the ballot because he doesn’t meet the definition of a natural- born citizen.
If Hillary Clinton reminds us of our ex-wife (the first one) in Rush’s memorable characterization, Newt can only remind us of that ex-girlfriend who a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty (and really, who among us hasn’t had one of those?)
Now that you’re older and wiser, you recognize that the excitement and the melodrama went hand in hand, and your leary of getting back on that roller coaster,
but man, what a ride!
Not only can I not proof-read, I can’t keep my threads straight.
Geoffb, in the second example an oath is required, implying naturalization. If no oath or process is required and the “declaration” extends into the future, that implies they’re considering those people natural born citizens.
Extends into the future, to people not yet born, is what I intended to mean.