John Marshall comments

While Chief Justice John Marshall wrote an important and applicable decision in the case of The Exchange saying that the jurisdiction of the United States was absolute within its borders, he also made a comment in another case that I think characterizes well the novel legal theories about citizenship pushed by the Nobama tribe:

“They may so entangle and perplex the understanding, as to obscure principles which were before thought quite plain, and induce doubts where, if the mind were to pursue its own course, none would be perceived.”

Gibbons v. Ogden

About Dr. Conspiracy

I'm not a real doctor, but I have a master's degree.
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140 Responses to John Marshall comments

  1. jtx says:

    But CJ Marshall was not speaking of concepts relating to either citizenship or natural born citizen status but rather issues or trade/commerce and of perhaps greater interest is the immediately prior sentence in the opinion which reads:

    “Powerful and ingenious minds, taking as postulates that the powers expressly granted to the government of the Union are to be contracted by construction into the narrowest possible compass and that the original powers of the States are retained if any possible construction will retain them may, by a course of well digested but refined and metaphysical reasoning founded on these premises, explain away the Constitution of our country and leave it a magnificent structure indeed to look at, but totally unfit for use.”

    This seems to be speaking more broadly about the Constitution itself and by extension the attempts of the Enabler Conspiracy in trying to reduce even Article II, Section 1, clause 5 to merely mean an Amendment 14 definition of natural born citizen.

  2. jtx, I must admit, you seem to be paying more attention than I thought.

    Let’s consider what you said about the 14th Amendment. I am assuming that you believe a natural born citizen is one who is born in the country to two citizen parents, and you think this is the definition enshrined in the Constitution.

    The first Congress passed an Immigration Act in 1790 that said that a “natural born citizen” could be born outside of the United States. Do you claim that this law was unconstitutional? If it was constitutional, how do you explain the ability of the Congress to change your definition. If it was unconstitutional, how can you explain many of the same people who wrote the Constitution passing such law?

    I would say that the constitutional definition of natural born citizen is a citizen at birth. If this is so, then the Congress did not change the definition in the 1790 act, but did change who the definition applied to. The same may be said for the 14th amendment not changing the definition of natural born citizen, but clarifying exactly who was a citizen at birth.

  3. Greg says:

    It doesn’t talk about citizenship, per se, but it does talk quite specifically and forcefully about how jurisdiction is absolute within our borders and lays out the specific times when someone is within our borders but not within our jurisdiction:

    1. When a sovereign of another country enters with permission.

    2. Foreign ministers / diplomats

    3. Foreign troops here with permission.

    What birthers have to assume, then, is that “subject to our jurisdiction” means something totally different when it’s applied to citizenship than it means every other time it’s spoken of. (Even though those categories of folks outside our jurisdiction are commonly recognized by treatises talking about citizenship.)

    Add this to the list of words that suddenly mean something totally different.

    “Natural born” means the exact opposite when used with citizen than with subject, without a single founder mentioning they were changing the definition.

    And “Subject to jurisdiction,” likewise is turned on its head.

  4. jtx says:

    Dr. Conspiracy:

    As to the 1790 Act, you know full well that it was changed by the 1795 Act (and many following ones on the same subject which continued the 1795 “drift”) to eliminate the “natural born citizen” wording with the rest of the Act being almost identical.

    As such, I think it is clear that Congress realized it’s error or misdefinition and moved expeditiously to correct the mis-statement. Since that time the Act has remained without the NBC wording and indeed the missing wording was not there when the 14 Amewndment was passed into law so making the specious claim that the 14th Amendment referred back to the long-replaced 1790 Act shows a lack of reflection on your part.

    Certainly you know all of this and yet you continue with the pretense that birth as a citizen and birth as a natural born citizen are the same thing. Clearly they are not, and many items both of the founding time and more recently show that they are not – yet you choose to ignore those. I understand your motivation in making such a questionable determination but in no respect do I agree with you either in your motivation or in your view of jus soli = NBC.

    So to answer the hypothetical trap you tried to set, the Act of 1790 was certainly not “unconstitutional” when passed (or at least not then recognized as such) but less than 5 years later the same Legislative body changed the wording to remove the NBC clause. SO – let’s reverse the question; do you think the 1795 Act was as unconstitutional (since you’ve stated you believe the 1790 Act was constitutional and “correct”).

    I think no explanation of the change between the 1790 and 1795 Acts is required on my part since I think most people realize(though perhaps you’ve missed this fine point) that statutes passed actually are changed over time. If you look closely you’ll note that has happened several times with many of the laws of this country.

  5. jtx says:

    Greg:

    Perhaps you’ve missed the distinction that “subjects” and “citizens” are quite different concepts. In many respects that’s what the Revolutionary War was basically about.

    Our founders viewed citizens as quite different from “subjects” who – after all answered forever to a sovereign. A citizen is not that at all.

    The term “natural born citizen” in the Constitution is therein used only a single time and is a term of art rather than some combination of the dictionary definitions of three separate words. You seem to also not recognize that point. So there is NO changing the definition as used in the Constitution even though you fail to understand the meaning or not realize that the meaning of the term means only one thing as it is used in the Constitution and that meaning is not changed by using the term outside of the Constitution when the meaning therein (i.e., in the Constitution) is what is being considered.

  6. Greg says:

    Even assuming that citizen and subject are two completely different terms to the founders, there is nothing in anything any founder has ever written anywhere that suggests that natural born means exactly the opposite when applied to citizen as when applied to subject!

    Natural born subject = parents don’t matter, only location

    Natural born citizen = (according to birthers) parents matter

    Nothing in the change from subject (king is sovereign) to citizen (people are sovereign) necessarily changes the meaning of natural born!

    That’s what you don’t understand!

    And, quit using the word, “term of art!” It does not mean what you think it means. What you want to say is they used it as a neologism, a newly coined phrase entirely unknown to the world at large. Vattel didn’t even use it, at the time of the writing of the Constitution, he used a French word, “indigenes,” which means “native.” Only a decade after the writing of the Constitution was it translated into “natural born citizen.”

    What was a “term of art” – meaning a term in common usage among practitioners of the law – was “natural born subject,” and there’s no evidence, not a whit, not a tittle, that the founders wanted to change the “natural born” part of that term of art!

  7. jtx: “As to the 1790 Act, you know full well that it was changed by the 1795 Act (and many following ones on the same subject which continued the 1795 “drift”) to eliminate the “natural born citizen” wording with the rest of the Act being almost identical.”

    Meaning you think that the Naturalization Act of 1790 was indeed unconstitutional.

    As a mater of historical fact, the 1795 Act is about twice as long as the 1790 Act, so your comment that “the rest of the Act being almost identical” is patently false. Further, they didn’t amend the first act, they repealed it and completely replaced the whole thing. If they were fixing a word, there was no reason to replace the entire act! I wrote an article comparing the two acts way back in January, an article that contains the complete text of both. From a purely compositional view, the 1795 act has tighter wording in the revised language on foreign-born children of citizens.

    jtx: As such, I think it is clear that Congress realized it’s error or misdefinition and moved expeditiously to correct the mis-statement.

    This is the problem with you and many of your tribe. You suppose, but you don’t collect evidence. It was the first Congress that passed the 1790 act and the third Congress (2nd session) that repealed it. That is hardly “expeditiously”. It is just as likely that the revised language was editorial, than correcting a mistake. Why should both the first and second congresses failed to notice this so-called mistake?

    There are debates in Congress, you know, where they talk about things before they vote on them. If you wanted to claim a reason the law was changed, perhaps instead of looking to your own thinking, you might look to the thinking of the people who actually did it! The Bill (which originated in the House) has a lengthy record of debate (running to dozens of pages). I have reviewed them and there is nothing at all about the section under consideration here. They spent quite a long time about titles of nobility, and single words in the oath of allegiance, but not a word on changing the foreign born citizen wording. I think the most likely conclusion is that the rewording was considered inconsequential.

  8. dunstvangeet says:

    That’s not what the Supreme Court has said, jtx. The Supreme Court has said that the only difference is the form of government. The Supreme Court has also said that the Constitution was written in the language of English Common Law.

    In Minor v. Happersett, they stated the following:

    For convenience it has been found necessary to give a name to this membership. The object is to designate by a title the person and the relation he bears to the nation. For this purpose the words “subject,” “inhabitant,” and “citizen” have been used, and the choice between them is sometimes made to depend upon the form of the government.

    This seems to state that the only difference between citizen and subject is the form of government. So, why would the founders take the definition of Natural Born from a swiss Philosopher, when they knew that they grew up under a definition of Natural Born, and that definition of Natural Born would be much more familiar to the people? If they had intended to use it, why wouldn’t they have expressly defined it that way? I’ve asked you this question multiple times. You have yet to really answer that.

  9. jtx says:

    Greg:

    And there is no evidence for the position you espouse and in fact the “subject” and “citizen” terms are quite different – and especially so to the founders.

    Trying to make the case that they mean the same thing falls on it face since they clearly do not – and the founders knew that.

    Also the term “natural born citizen” as used in AII, S1, C5 is indeed a term of art and was recognized as such at least partly due to Vattel’s work. The Law of Nations was widely circulated among many of the founders (and many of them were fluent in French which at the time was the language of diplomacy in the world). The term was hardly unknown to the world as you claim since you suppose that “natural born subject” was a term of art and the use of “citizen” rather than “subject” would be a natural fit (and a natural substitutiomn) to create a term of art for a method of government that no longer had “subjects” but rather “citizens”. In fact, doing otherwise would be silly. One “term of art” begat another I’d think, substituting “citizens” for “subjects”.

    The founders as a group were well-read and many had good educational backgrounds as well. They were hardly the bunch of know-nothing nitwits as you suppose them to be by your various assumptions. And what they created has served us well for over 233 years – despite efforts by you and your pals in the Enabling Conspiracy to dissolve the creation and create mob rule.

  10. jtx says:

    dunstvangeet:

    See my answer to Greg just above.

    The Minor quote you use is merely pointing out that the term used for the humans involved under a government is changed depending upon the type of government. America has “citizens” … but I thought you knew that!

  11. Greg says:

    Natural born subject was a term of art. Natuarl born citizen was not. Vattel’s Law of Nations was widely distributed and read, and was influential on issues not related to citizenship (read every time the Founders cite Vattel, not a single mention of Vattel and citizenship in the same paragraph!), but Vattel’s Law of Nations said:

    Indigenes – not natural born citizen.

    And substituting citizen for subject, even if we assume that citizen means something completely different from subject, doesn’t mean that natural born chagnes meaning!

    Even assuming that every Founder knew that by saying citizen they were saying something completely different from subject, you’d think one of them would have mentioned they were completely reversing the meaning of natural-born – which you acknowledge was widely known.

    The problems of reversing the meaning of “natural born” and not telling anyone they did it is evident in the fact that by 1803 the definition had completely reverted back to its traditional understanding. Even assuming that citizen means something completely different, legal scholars were saying natural born citizen meant born here regardless of parental citizenship (or subjecthood)!

    The Founders were smart people, but you have to assume they were moronic enough to forget to tell anyone that they were fundamentally changing the meaning of “natural born” when they did so!

  12. jtx says:

    Dr. Conspiracy:

    Doc, you’re really mis-casting yourself as a Constitutional know-it-all when you should more properly cast yourself as a Constitutional Comedian. … and you should learn to read more closely.

    I in no way said the 1790 Act was unconstitutional when passed; in fact I said quite the opposite so please stop the attempt to put words in my mouth.

    I did say that Congress recognized its egregious error in using the NBC clause in 1790 and removed that term from the 1795 Act. In a space of less than 5 years with the pace of life and action in those days (when it took weeks to go, say, to Europe) that short a time to me qualifies as “expeditiously”. You seem to be of the mistaken belief that EVERYTHING that has a bearing on laws passed somehow makes it “into the record” of Congressional discussions. Perhaps you should ante up for a B&B or a TripleSec (or just a plain old Bud) with a few of your congressmen and find out how things actually work in Congress. The “extraneous” influences now so common were extant even in those days and if you do not realize that then there’s little help for you and low comedy is your only course to immortality.

    As for the 1790 and 1795 acts being “different” and with differing provisions and lengths; I agree and I did not say otherwise though for the literal minded I should have perhaps said that “the pertinent part we were discussing” (the portion having the NBC comment which is the issue at hand) was almost identical with the remoival of the NBC phraseology. Is that more understandable for you?

    My comment, however, about the provision that followed the NBC wording in the 1790 Act being the same (I now hesitate to say “identical” since a comma or word or two may differ and set off another of your misdirected tirades) which had the provision that daddy being “never a resident” did not qualify the child as citizens. The proviso was (1795 – and you can check the others before and after that):

    “Provided, that the right of citizenship shall not descend on persons whose fathers have never been resident of the United States.”

    This proviso certainly kicks your theory in the head that the 1790 Act applied somehow to the 14th Amendment which, after all was dramatically later in history and your hero’s daddy was never a resident. The 14th never granted NBC status to anyone and certainly not if daddy was an alien.

    You are too funny!! But keep up the good work – it’s entertaining even if not enlightening!

  13. Greg says:

    Even if the meaning of citizen is different from that of subject, that doesn’t imply that the meaning of “natural born” changed!

  14. jtx says:

    Greg:

    The term “natural born citizen” was indeed a term of art and your claim that only the term “natural born subject” was such a term is patent nonsense. The founders were certainly familiar with both terms and viewed them correctly in context (which did not mean that the meaning of each was exactly the same since “subjects” and “citizens” were distinctly different concepts).

    Your desire to negate the meaning of one term to the advantage of your role model accomplishes nothing.

    – and certainly does not trump the use of the term in the Constitution.

  15. Greg says:

    Just saying it was a term of art doesn’t make it so.

    A term of art is a word or phrase that has specific legal meaning to the practitioners in the legal field in question. “Blue Sky Laws” is a term of art. “PHOSITA” (Person Having Ordinary Skill in the Art) is a term of art.

    Natural born subject was a term of art. It had been in use for centuries. Legal practitioners knew what it meant. You can find hundreds and hundreds of citations to the term prior to the founding of the country.

    Natural born citizen, by contrast, you can’t find more than the occasional reference before the writing of the Constitution in 1787.

    If nobody ever wrote it down, how could it be a term common enough to be a “term of art?”

    Just as a rough estimate, a google book search through all books from 1400 to April 1787 (the month before they began drafting the Constitution)

    “Natural Born” – 659

    “Natural Born Subject” – 84
    “Natural Born Fubject” – 40

    “Natural Born Citizen” – 8

    I’ll grant you that citizen was a term of art, different and distinct from subject.

    That doesn’t imply any change in the meaning of natural born.

    There’s not a lick of evidence that the Founders, being smart people, intended to change the meaning of “natural born” when they appended citizen to it.

    Do you really think the Founders were such morons that they would change the meaning of “natural born” so radically and not mention it? They must have been, since less than 20 years later, legal writers had already converted it back to the original meaning, saying that “natural born citizen” in the Constitution meant born here without regard to the citizenship of the parent! If only the Founders hadn’t been such morons and had simply written something, anything, down about this radical change!

  16. Greg says:

    Obama Sr. lived here, was resident here, for several years.

  17. SFJeff says:

    Funny thing is JTX- you have an opinion- Doc has an opinion- yet there isn’t a single legal authority that supports your theory.

  18. jtx says:

    Greg:

    … and about all you have is his word for all of that. Much more is needed in the way of definitive proof since – but perhaps you didn’t realize this – he lies!!!

    Perhaps you’ve too much time on your hands … here’s a bit of light reading for you:

    http://www.phnmedia.com/storage/captured-data/FINAL%20Patriots%20Heart%20v%20Soetoro-PetitionforGJ.pdf

  19. jtx says:

    SFJeff:

    You most likely WISH that were true, however it isn’t!! If anyuthing just the converse is true.

    Here’s some material for you to digest:

    http://www.phnmedia.com/storage/captured-data/FINAL%20Patriots%20Heart%20v%20Soetoro-PetitionforGJ.pdf

  20. dunstvangeet says:

    JTX, I would not call someone who doesn’t even understand the underpinnings of a Grand Jury to resemble anything even close to a “legal authority”.

    JTX, Swensson seems to think that if the Ku Klux Klan wanted to, they could get their members in a Grand Jury, indict every black person in America, and every Prosecutor would have to prosecute those cases, JTX. I’d hardly call that “legal authority”. Swensson’s theory would bog down our legal system for years, with random people believing a certain thing getting on with it.

    Is Swensson even a lawyer? I’d expect a lawyer to know what a grand jury is, and when they are legal, and when they are not legal.

    Why is it always the birthers who rely upon lawyers who don’t know the basics of the law?

  21. Greg says:

    I’m sorry, jtx, are you saying that Barack Sr. never lived in the United States? Really?

    As for the citizen grand jury, who wants to set the over/under on dismissal? I give it a week. Which is longer than it should last.

  22. SFJeff says:

    JTX- I remind you that you have nothing to support you but your own theory and you point me to that ridiculous Grand Jury application- the one filled full of ‘what if’s and rumors that Obama’s parents were never even married(gasp).

    So again- JTX as I ask every single time now- and you never, ever answer- who is a credible authority that agrees with your theory that both parents must be citizens in order to be a NBC? Come on- you must get tired of the same old parroting of other people’s web sites- surely Orly has paid some flack to agree with her that you can cite.

  23. jtx says:

    Greg:

    You got it bassackwards! There’s not a lick of evidence that the NBC term was anything BUT a term of art and in fact it probably came into being around the time of the initial glimmering of the Constitution since our form of government was quite different and a term was needed to express the concept of something similar to NBS (but not exactly the same as has been said).

    Certainly the founders knew what the term meant and discussed it and also shared the readership of the Vattel books between themselves and even commented in writing about that. But no matter what YOU might think it means, most people recognize that is does NOT mean having a daddy who was a furriner!!!

    Even the current governator of CA knows he’s not a NBC and that seems to make him a mark up on the Obamatron. Your attempts at trtying to make the connection that “subject” and “citizen” mean the same thing so you can pretend the 14th Amendment made him a NBC is bound to go down in flames as the 14yth does not do so.

    Presently we can only guess as to whether your hero is even a citizen or, perhaps, an illegal alien. That’s why all that stuff needs to be straightened out. Perhaps, though, you are one of the decided minority of Americans who think that even an illegal Prez is “OK” and the laws don’t matter. THAT will be a bit of uphill sledding for you as we move along.

  24. jtx says:

    dunstvangeet:

    You’re much too eager to attack someone. Please point out to me where I said any such thing.

    Your inane comments about someone’s legal background are really pretty meaningless but perhaps it allows you to feel somehoe superior.

    How does it make you feel to realize that you may have a man inwligible to hold the office he now occupies – or do you really give a good god-damn? Illegal’s OK in your book because you were conned into voting for him??? I guess it’s human nature to not wish to realize you’ve been suckered.

  25. jtx says:

    Greg:

    Wherever do you think I said that? … but if you say so, it must be true since we really know only what The Zero (that’s less than The One) has deigned to tell us – and we know a good bit of THAT is a lie, don’t we? Or perhaps you think he’s been completely honest with everyone?

    Wouldn’t you be shocked to your core if the judge petitioned by the CGJ should decide to empanel a regular criminal GJ?? I imagine that would tighten up a few pucker strings – probably including some on this blog.

    I’m willing to wait and see how that turns out, arent’t you? Silly question … you’ve already shown your bias against any such thing.

  26. jtx says:

    SFJeff:

    Authority??? I don’t need no stinkin’ authority? (There are actually quite a few but I don’t expect you to agree since you’re not bright enough apparently).

    How about B. O. hisself??? Would you take his word for it???

    Actually I’m quite willing to let the court settle the matter under our laws – aren’t you??? (Guess not or you wouldn’t be blabbering on and on thinking you are somehow defending a man who may very well be breaking the laws of the country).

  27. strikefighterxxi says:

    How convenient, JTX. You claim to know of many authorities that agree with you, but you won’t say who they are because people here won’t agree with them. That sounds to me like you don’t have any. Because if you did, you would probably be spouting about them every opportunity you get. But instead, you repeat the same stuff over and over. Its always “he says he was born a brit,” “he has not proven he is eligible,” and then some lame ass insult involving flying monkeys.

    All the evidence (and contrary to what you seem to think, there is a lot of evidence) points to Barack Obama being born in Honolulu in August of 1961, and that the prevailing legal thought is that simply being born on US soil makes you a NBC, and that Barack Obama is eligible to be president, as affirmed by the Electoral College and Congress. Reality and the law are on the side of Barack Obama, and will be for as long as he is president.

  28. jtx: I in no way said the 1790 Act was unconstitutional when passed; in fact I said quite the opposite

    Well that simplifies things…

    The 1790 Nationality Act says that a person who is not born in the United States can be a natural born citizen. You claim the 1790 Act is constitutional. That means that the Constitution cannot DEFINE a natural born citizen to be one born in the United States to 2 citizen parents. (So you might want to rethink your opinion on the constitutionality of the 1790 Act.)

    Having shown that there is no record in the debate (and while the records may not be complete, they are lengthy) that Congress intended to change the intent of the language about natural born citizen in the 1795 act, we must conclude that there is no evidence that they considered the language in the 1790 act in error. Therefore, there is no evidence to support your original claim that the change in the 1795 act supports your views on natural born citizen. You are making an essentially circular argument: the 1795 proves my views because I think my views are why they changed the Act.

    At this point, let’s look at the language from the two acts:

    Naturalization Act of 1790

    And the children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born citizens: Provided, That the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States:

    Naturalization Act of 1795

    and the children of citizens of the United States born out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States, shall be considered as citizens of the United States. Provided, that the right of citizenship shall not descend on persons whose fathers have never been resident of the United States

    The were two substantive changes, the addition of the concept of “jurisdiction” and the removal of the phrase “natural born”. In both Acts, the sentence/phrase beginning “provided” refers back to the children born outside the United States and not to citizens in general (and in any case Barack Obama’s father had been resident in the United States).

  29. jtx again flexes his imagination to supply factoids to help his case. One factoid is the number of constitutional framers familiar with de Vattel’s work. The other is the number that were fluent in French. jtx knows neither, or if he does, he declines to provide authority. (There are some Internet web sites he could cite, but they don’t provide authority either.)

    I will offer a real fact: framer, senator and chief justice of the Supreme Court John Marshall did not speak French (even though he was an envoy briefly to that country) Life of John Marshall Vol II, IV.

    jtx does truthfully say: “The founders as a group were well-read and many had good educational backgrounds” (although the claim that I suppose them “know nothings” is patently absurd.) Some, like John Rutledge of South Carolina were trained in England as lawyers, studying English common law. Mr. Rutledge of South Carolina.

  30. jtx: Trying to make the case that [natural born subject and natural born citizen] mean the same thing falls on it face since they clearly do not – and the founders knew that.

    Flexing your imagination? Have you been channeling founders again?

    jtx: They were hardly the bunch of know-nothing nitwits as you suppose them to be by your various assumptions.

    No, no, you misunderstand. We think you are the know-nothing nitwit, not the founders: they were remarkable.

    Now watch. This is a citation of a relevant authority to make a point. See how it works:

    Subject and citizen are, in a degree, convertible terms as applied to natives, and though the term citizen seems to be appropriate to republican freemen, yet we are, equally with the inhabitants of all other countries, subjects, for we are equally bound by allegiance and subjection to the government and law of the land.

    2 Kent Com. 258, note as cited by the US Supreme Court in US v. Wong Kim Ark 169 U.S. 649.

    And take special note of the convenient hyperlink.

  31. Nullifidian says:

    How convenient, JTX. You claim to know of many authorities that agree with you, but you won’t say who they are because people here won’t agree with them.

    Apparently birther authorities are like Tinkerbell: unless you’re willing to stand up and applaud, they just waste away to nothing.

  32. Certainly “natural born citizen” cannot be a term of art from de Vattel, since he didn’t use the phrase, writing in French. Even in English translation the phrase did not appear in The Law of Nations until a decade after the Constitution was written. So if it is a “term of art” where is it used in the way you claim it is defined? It’s not.

  33. Greg says:

    jtx: “Certainly the founders knew what the term meant and discussed it ”

    And yet, in discussing it, they didn’t make a single mention about completely changing the meaning of “natural born”?

    jtx: “Your attempts at trtying to make the connection that “subject” and “citizen” mean the same thing ”

    Are you illiterate? I am NOT trying to make subject and citizen mean the same thing.

    Let me say it again:

    Even if citizen and subject are two different words that doesn’t mean that natural born has changed meaning!

    As to Vattel, our founders did think he was great. Almost as great as Blackstone. But, that’s not really enough. Actually read (if you can) what they wrote about Vattel. They always talk about how great he is on certain subjects! He’s never cited on the subject of citizenship or allegiance.

    And it’s not like the Founders weren’t debating the meaning of citizenship, or that they didn’t know how to cite their sources. The meaning of citizenship was crucial to their revolution. Britain argued that as subjects, Americans were under the complete control of Parliament. They also argued that as members of the British empire, the colonies owed their allegiance to the empire, Parliament being its embodiment. The colonists argued forcefully against these contentions. But, they cited Calvin’s Case and Blackstone when talking about citizenship! Never Vattel!

    And even as the colonists debated the meaning of citizen, there’s not a hint that they intended to change the definition of “natural born!”

  34. Greg says:

    jtx: I’m certainly interested to see if the courts will hear these cases. However, based on my experience and knowledge of the law, I conclude:

    A. The courts won’t hear any of these cases on the merits.

    B. Obama is a natural born citizen.

    I’m allowed to draw my own conclusions, as are you.

    But, I don’t think we’re relying on just Obama’s word that his father lived in the United States.

  35. jtx says:

    Greg:

    You last post makes you correct about only one thing:

    Born a Brit, always a Brit … and that describes Obama completely. He’s clearly STILL a Brit and by your own description owing allegiance to the Brits. And you, somehow, think that makes him a NBC??? Wow – talk about the predicament of ubi!

    You obviously need to read the latest thread on the Apuzzo website:

    http://puzo1.blogspot.com/

    … which is entitled –

    “The Law of Nations as U.S. Federal Common Law and Not English Common Law Defines What an Article II “Natural Born Citizen” Is”

    You are the one who needs to “read up” on the matter, not I. You in the Enablers Conspiracy are so off-base it isn’t even funny … more like pathetic!!

  36. jtx says:

    strikefighterxxi:

    Almost every unsupported assertion you make in your post is incorrect – sometimes so wildly so it’s difficult to believe that you really think that. Perhaps the Flying Monkey Squadron has elected you as Wing Commander for that reason.

    Your comment that “all the evidence” points to “your guy” being great and legal is complete and pompous BS. Nothing could be further from the truth and there’s the matter of a 181 page presentment lodged with a judge in the District of Columbia that shows such statements to be completely oblivious of the actual situation. I suggest you review it for evidence that exactly contraindicates your statement.

    As for sources contradicting your preposterous claims there are indeed many as I’ve said. Some of them are cited in the latest exposition by Mario Apuzzo entitled:

    “The Law of Nations as U.S. Federal Common Law and Not English Common Law Defines What an Article II “Natural Born Citizen” Is”

    which can be read at this link:

    http://puzo1.blogspot.com/

  37. dunstvangeet says:

    And yet, jtx, you have yet to prove that the founders actually took the definition from Vattel, and there’s a lot of evidence that they didn’t.

    Your whole theory is that the founders took the definition of “Natural Born Citizen” from de Vattel, when English Translations of de Vattel didn’t even have those words until 1797, a full 10 years after the writing of the Constitution.

    You’re argument is basically the same as saying, “Well, Dinosaurs hatched from eggs. Chickens leg eggs. Therefore, Dinosaurs must hatch from chicken eggs!”

  38. Greg says:

    I’m not sure what I like more about that article. The fact that it quotes cases from 1866 to show what the “founders” believed, or the fact that it quotes cases from 1866 that state the exact opposite of what he’s claiming?

    US v. Rhodes, for example, found that the law of the land was that whoever is born here is a citizen, regardless of parents, unless you’re talking about the children of diplomats.

  39. jtx says:

    Dr. Conspiracy:

    Once again you attempt to spin what has been said. I made no claim of constitutionality or unconstitutionality of the 1790 Act but said that Congress believed it to be constitutional at time of passing it or else they wouldn’t have passed it.

    Very shortly after that they recognized their language error and removed the term NBC in the 1795 Act (also believing it to be constitutional otherwise they wouldn’t have passed it). In fact, Congress probably recognized that the NBC language in the 1790 Act WAS unconstitutional since Congress is not allowed to modify the Constitution as I think you know but only to propose Amendments to it. So attempting to modify the Constitution as in the 1790 Act language with the NBC term was – I believe – clearly an effort to make an end run arout that document.

    In fact, it is much like the nonsense we see now where Obama and you Enablers conspire to make a very similar end run by ursupation on AII, S1, C5 by pretending the definition on NBC complies somehow with the 14th Amendment (or even Wong Kim Ark).

    I’d suggest to you Doc, that you read Mario Apuzzo’s current explanation:

    “The Law of Nations as U.S. Federal Common Law and Not English Common Law Defines What an Article II “Natural Born Citizen” Is”

    on his website which is linked here:

    http://puzo1.blogspot.com/

    As you certainly should know by now Obama, Sr. was a British subject making O., Jr. a Brit also – and that precludes any possibility of Jr. being a NBC no matter how you try to spin things. And, Doc, let’s face it, after the 1795 Act became law the 1790 version was such no longer so any (incorrect or unconstitutional) wording as to NBC (which could not in any event override the Constitution since it was not a Constitutional Amendment) would no longer apply – thereby shooting your “born anywhere” argument to hell.

    And BTW, the 1790 Act merely said “considered as natural born citizens” which does not necessarily make them to be such under the Constitutional meaning which I believe was 2 US citizen parents and born on US soil. I believe that that latter NBC definition is also the decision that SCOTUS will render when they finally get the issue on first impression.

    Also you seem to misunderstand “jurisdiction” as well as have the quaint opinion that O., Sr. was a US resident. He was always an alien and here merely on a student visa or allowance and NOT a US citizen or resident which was shown in his return to his (and Jr’s.) native land of Kenya after a few years of taxpayer-paid education in the US.

  40. nbc says:

    JTX Born a Brit, always a Brit … and that describes Obama completely. He’s clearly STILL a Brit and by your own description owing allegiance to the Brits. And you, somehow, think that makes him a NBC??? Wow – talk about the predicament of ubi!

    Even if you were correct, this has no relevance to US law which considers Obama to be a natural born US citizen, regardless of the status the person may have held as a child. Once reaching the age of majority the child, now an adult, indicates which birth right he wishes to continue in the United States.

    Obama clearly has chosen.

    Nuff said.

  41. nbc says:

    I’d suggest to you Doc, that you read Mario Apuzzo’s current explanation:

    Mario Apuzzo’s ‘explanations’ change faster than I change my underwear. I would not place too much hope on Mario’s musings. Certainly since he and his poor clients will fail to gain constitutional standing.

    Ain’t that a drag…

    As to Mario pointing to Vattel, is it not strange how the courts consistently have ruled that common law is the guiding factor and that British common law guides the interpretation of these terms?

  42. nbc says:

    JTXAlso you seem to misunderstand “jurisdiction” as well as have the quaint opinion that O., Sr. was a US resident. He was always an alien and here merely on a student visa or allowance and NOT a US citizen or resident which was shown in his return to his (and Jr’s.) native land of Kenya after a few years of taxpayer-paid education in the US.

    Obama’s father’s status was of no relevance to Obama II who was born under jurisdiction, that is, held and protected by the laws of the US. This terminology is added to exclude children from ambassadors and invading military.

    Born on US soil is by any reasonable standard, sufficient for natural born status with minor exceptions. History, legislation and the courts continue to show this, and worse no contrary evidence has been presented.

    And worse, no standing will ever be granted to plaintiffs.

    Bummer eh…

  43. nbc says:

    The term “natural born citizen” was indeed a term of art and your claim that only the term “natural born subject” was such a term is patent nonsense.

    Other than the fact that for all practical purposes, citizen and subject were mostly equivalent concepts and legally accepted as such.
    Which is explained by the fact that the common law tradition looks back to common law history and shows how the term natural born was rooted in british common law tradition.

    To deny these facts is just plain, well, silly.

  44. jtx says:

    Dr. Conspiracy:

    “Nitwit”??? You should consult Cyrano de Bergerac for some more creative insults if you can dream up none of your own. For example when Christian (like you in effect)said:

    “I need eloquence, and I have none!”

    a proper Cyranic response would be”

    ” I’ll lend you mine! Lend me your conquering physical charm, and together we’ll form a romantic hero!”

    Come, come Doc. You can surely do better than such a paltry effort.

    At any rate it’s difficult to understand why you in the Enabling Conspiracy are such fans of the 14th Amendment or Wong Kim Ark since neither apply to the “natural born citizen” requirement of the Constitution … which (have I mentioned?) the Present Occupant has never shown himself as qualified for.

    At any rate, go read Cyrano as well as Mr. Apuzzo, Esquire’s current thread so you can become more informed on the NBC situation.

    And stop those dreadfully bland comments that you think are insults.

  45. nbc says:

    For example

    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 changed from one man to the collective body of the people and he who before was a subject of the king is now a citizen of the state The State v Manuel 4 Dev & Batt 26

    And

    All persons born in the allegiance of the king are natural born subjects and all persons born in the allegiance of the United States arc 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 2 Kent’s Com last ed 1 Calvin’s Case 7 Coke 1 1 Bl Com 366 Lynch v Clark 1 Sandf Ch Rep 139

    Cheers

  46. Greg says:

    “He was always an alien and here merely on a student visa or allowance and NOT a US citizen or resident…”

    There’s a difference between resident and resident alien.

    The former means living somewhere, regardless of alienage status. See, for example, the proviso you keep quoting “that the right of citizenship shall not descend on persons whose fathers have never been resident of the United States.”

    A US citizen cannot also be a resident alien of the United States. He can reside here. He can reside in another country. He can be a resident alien in another country.

    Obama senior was a resident here, without being a resident alien.

  47. Greg says:

    How about you read James Kettner’s book, “The Development of American Citizenship, 1608-1870?”

  48. SFJeff says:

    JTX: “most people recognize that is does NOT mean having a daddy who was a furriner!!!”

    Ummm there is no evidence to agree with your assertion. As a matter of fact, since it was known to most of the electorate that President Obama’s father was indeed a ‘furriner’ and they still voted for him, I would say the evidence is that most people think your argument is silly.

    “Even the current governator of CA knows he’s not a NBC”

    Ummm since he wasn’t born in the United States, everyone is in agreement he is not a NBC. No one cares what the citizenship of his parents was.

    “Presently we can only guess as to whether your hero is even a citizen or, perhaps, an illegal alien”

    Guess as in wildly speculate in the face of legal documentation to the contrary? President Obama has a valid U.S. Passport, which until proven to be a forgery is proof of U.S. Citizenship accepted by any Federal office. By your reasoning, I can only guess as to whether or not Chief Justice Roberts is a child molester. I can only guess as to whether or not Rush Limbaugh is a wife beater. Luckily, our laws protect us from actions based upon figments of malevolent imaginations.

    “Perhaps, though, you are one of the decided minority of Americans who think that even an illegal Prez is “OK” and the laws don’t matter.”

    Unlike you JTX, I believe in the Constitution. If any President is found to have committed serious crimes or misdeamenors that warrent impeachment, I would honor the impeachment process, whether it is President Obama, President Bush or President Nixon. But I am hopeful no impeachments proceedings will happen without actual proof.

    So JTX- where is the authority who agrees with all your idle speculation? I ask every time- you dodge the question every time.

  49. SFJeff says:

    “Nothing could be further from the truth and there’s the matter of a 181 page presentment lodged with a judge in the District of Columbia that shows such statements to be completely oblivious of the actual situation.”

    I actually read that- what a bunch of innuendo and internet rumors. The fact that you think that 181 pages of innuendo would be considered evidence of anything is really scary.

    “I suggest you review it for evidence that exactly contraindicates your statement.”

    I read it- I just couldn’t find any reliable evidence in there. There isn’t a document in there that hasn’t been discredited. Some of them are outright misrepresentations of the facts. Oh and I love the religious rants of the so-called Pastor who also believes the U.S. Government is behind the 9/11 attacks.

  50. jtx says:

    dunstvangeet:

    Why do you continue with the same old Enabling Conspiracy crap??? Can you think of nothing else? Guess not.

    Your fanciful “a lot of evidence they didn’t” WRT Vattel is nonexistent. There’s ample evidence they did hew to the Vattel definition and in fact since French was the widespread diplomatic language of the time, a writing in French was no hill for a climber
    and some of the founders even discussed in their letters to each other passing Vattel’s treatise around.

  51. I’m about 100 pages in. I’m really enjoying it.

  52. I am assuming that this proviso is given solely in the context of citizens who father children born outside the US.

  53. jtx says:

    nbc:

    So you’re so omniscient that you now know the court’s actions before they do?? Wonder why we even have courts – just to ensure your prophecies are fulfilled making you a GREAT MAN I suppose.

    I think I’ll wait and see. Shouldn’t take too long to get to SCOTUS for a first impression decision. Oops, should ask you first I suppose – what will they decide??? I’m sure you a;ready know!! In fact, why have a SCOTUS anyway since you Enabling Conspiracy dudes already “know” everything???

    Oh, and English Common Law is not the guiding factor followed blindly somehow in the US. You may not notice but we have our own common law (and have had for some time).

    Also, as The Great One hizzelf has pointed out he was born a Brit due to his pappy’s citizenship. That makes pappy not a US citizen since he was never anything but an alien here long enough to knowk up some dame and get a few years of college at taxpayers’ expense and then return to his homies where he was such a “big hit”. And THAT makes little sonny not at all a NBC no matter where he was born which is something more and more folks are tumbling to (but not you).

  54. jtx says:

    Greg:

    Are you claiming that someone’s novel (no matter how entertaining you might find it) somehow trumps the US Constitution???

    Surely you’re not that dumb!!!

  55. jtx says:

    Dr. Conspiracy:

    Since no one knows with any certainty where Jr’s. daddy “fathered” him (but I doubt that’s quite the correct phrasing of the particular citcumstance), your assumption is totally unjustified and unsupported.

    But you’re welcome to it as an assumption; just don’t try qualifying under the NBC clause for holding presidential office using that as people will demand more than just your assumption – sort of like Obama saying “trust me” … and there’s the rub (as Willie S. would say) – they DON’T trust him in greater numbers all the time; just check the polls.

  56. dunstvangeet says:

    Are you being scarcastic, jtx?

    Isn’t that exactly what you’re claiming, is that a book (the Law of Nations) trumps the U.S. Constitution?

  57. dunstvangeet says:

    Actually, we do know, jtx. Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii.

  58. Gordon says:

    Wow jtx, your sheet is showing.

  59. SFJeff says:

    “Also, as The Great One hizzelf has pointed out he was born a Brit due to his pappy’s citizenship.”

    President Obama not only admitted his father was a British/Kenyan national, he obviously(like every other American citizen that has taken a civics class) didn’t believe that this affected his NBC status- since he certified that he was eligible. Funny how you accept his word that his father was Kenyan, but not his word that he was eligible.

    “but an alien here long enough to knowk up some dame”
    2 points:
    a) he was a resident and an alien and
    b) he didn’t ‘knock up’ some dame- he married and sired the current president and this President’s mother deserves the same respect accorded the others. Do you call Barbara Bush ‘some dame’? I mean I am always amazed at how low the birthers get as they call the parents and grandparents of the President names and slander their reputations. Have you no shame?

    “and get a few years of college at taxpayers’ expense and then return to his homies”

    Except that he attended both University of Hawaii and Harvard under scholarships- not government money- and earned a Masters degree in Economics- not just a few years.

    Absolutely none of which affects eligibility in the least.

    Hey JTX- ever find anyone credible to agree with you? I mean somebody other than the schills for the extreme right wing/proto-fascists like Orly?

  60. Greg says:

    A novel? Are you touched in the head?

  61. Exactly how many copies and to whom? No one doubts that SOMEBODY had seen it, but you’re making a stronger undocumented claim. I’m not saying your claim is wrong, just that without details and evidence it is a fart in the wind.

  62. jtx says:

    dunstvangeet:

    Not at all. I’ve said that the Vattel book was widely used as a reference work in many countries while the “… American Citizenship …” book is merely an entertaining novel.

    Neither book TRUMPS anything, but the Vattel book was clearly a reference source for the founders (not the other one – no matter how much you’d like that).

  63. jtx says:

    dunstvangeet:

    Actually “we” know nothing of the sort. SOME of us (you in the Enabling Conspiracy for obvious reasons) ASSUME he was born there but that really has not been definitively established.

    Regardless of that, your hero has never yet demonstrated that he is legally eligible to hold the office he now occupies. A good complete discovery in court would go a long way toward clearing things up since the guy is afraid to release information.

  64. Jez says:

    Obviously you have not read the book. It is far from a novel. This book is a widely respected scholarly work written in 1984 by a man with a PhD in Early American History.

    From a tribute to him on the UC-Berkley site: Though his publications were not numerous, he was a lively and deeply committed scholar. His book, The Development of American Citizenship, 1608-1870, won the Jamestown Prize awarded by this Institute. Kettner’s argument that Americans in the Revolution conceived of citizenship as “volitional” has been accepted and praised by historians and legal scholars. It is an idea and a book that will endure.

    So jtx, this is more then “some novel”. It is the work of a scholar that dedicated his life to American History.

    But you will believe what you need to, because anything else would be too scary.

  65. jtx says:

    Greg:

    “Touched in the head”??? No but perhaps you are since Merriam-Webster’s tells us a novel is”

    “An invented prose narrative that is usually long and complex and deals especially with human experience through a usually connected sequence of events.”

  66. jtx says:

    Gordon:

    In what respect is it “showing”??

  67. jtx says:

    Dr. Conspiracy:

    Speaking of farts in the wind (and I wasn’t … you were), you score greatly on that sort of accountability yourself.

    It would be even nicer if yiour comment were more lucid or even made sense. As it is I’ll just have to ignore it as the hiccup in a tornado that it truly was.

  68. Greg says:

    And how does that dictionary define “invented?”

    History books are not invented.

  69. jtx says:

    Jez:

    Work of a scholar or not (and I’d remind you that Vattel was of even more wide renown than the person who had a “tribute” on the UCB site (which is hardly a claim to undying fame, sad to say).

    The novel may very well be interesting (Vattels work also is considered a novel as are many other reference works although some like to make separate distinctions such as “history”, “fiction”, etc.). The notion of voilitional citizenship did not originate with that author at all insofar as the US Constitution was concerned; it was something the founders considered at great length and with the understanting that it was one of the things that distinguished this country and the form of government being adopted.

    So while the author may report it accurately and/or interestingly, he hardly originated the term or was the first to realize its significance. Just because a book is “scholarly” (whatever you might think that means) does not preclude it from being a novel – or “good” for that matter. Both books being discussed here were novels with somewhat similar topics but one (Vattel) preceeded the other by many decades and was far more influential in forming the founding of our nation.

    So, please … get off your snarky high-horse. (Are you a UCB grad BTW??)

  70. dunstvangeet says:

    And JTX, the founders didn’t use de Vattel’s concept of citizenship. They obviously didn’t, because de Vattel’s work didn’t even include a reference to “Natural Born” until 10 years after the constitution was written.

    Blackstone, on the other hand, had numerous references to “Natural Born” and was a clear source for the founders, as they reference Blackstone many times.

    Again, why would the founders use a book to define a term, when the book didn’t even use the term in the first place? Why would they disregard English Common Law and redefine “Natural Born” which was in common use during their lifetime, to something that wasn’t even in use of?

    Why did James Kent publish exactly the opposite in 1826, a meer 40 years after the constitution, when some of the people who wrote the constitution were still alive, such as William Few, Luther Martin, Rufus King, John Lansing, and James Madison (who lived for another 10 years) were alive and still active in American Politics?

    By the way, James Kent helped write the New York State Constitution. He’d be immensly familiar with both the concepts of Natural Born Citizenship, and Natural Born Subjecthood. Are you telling me that James Kent, with all his legal background both before and after the constitution, wouldn’t have known about the change in definitions? Or are you saying that he was just pushing his own legal theory, with no basis in American Juris Prudence?

    Your theories are falling apart around you, jtx.

  71. dunstvangeet says:

    And JTX, yes, we do know that Barack Hussein Obama was born in Hawaii. The same way that the Federal government knows where you were born when issuing a passport, jtx. The same way that the college confirms that you’re an American Citizen.

    Unless you’re arguing that some part of Hawaii is not part of the United States, that’s enough to satisfy the Natural Born Citizen Clause.

  72. Greg says:

    From Merriam-Webster:

    Novel: an invented prose narrative that is usually long and complex and deals especially with human experience through a usually connected sequence of events

    Why spin pseudo-intellectual arguments to support your insults? You insulted the book and I insulted you. I’m not going to twist the definition of “touched in the head” to mean something it doesn’t mean.

    It does, however, give insight into how you approach questions of definition, like what does “natural born citizen” mean. You’ll keep twisting that definition, keep distorting the historical record, until you get the result you want, won’t you?

  73. SFJeff says:

    JTX- are you deliberately being obtuse? The definition that you cite from the Meriam Dictionary is clearly citing fiction. From a link from the Miriam Webster:

    From Encyclopedia Britanica:
    “Though forerunners of the novel appeared in a number of places, including Classical Rome and 11th-century Japan, the European novel is usually said to have begun with Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote. The novel was established as a literary form in England in the 18th century through the work of Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, and Henry Fielding. The typical elements of a conventional novel are plot, character, setting, narrative method and point ”

    History books don’t have plots. Also note the examples given are all works of fiction.

    Other alternate definitions elaborate upon this:
    “What is a Novel?
    E.M. Forster in Aspects of the Novel cites the definition of a Frenchman named Abel Chevalley: “a fiction in prose of a certain extent” and adds that he defines “extent” as over 50,000 words.”

    Note the use of the word ‘fiction’.

    “Novel
    Definition: A fictitious tale or narrative, professing to be conformed to real life; esp., one intended to exhibit the operation of the passions, and particularly of love.”

    I can’t figure out whether you defend your misuse of the noun “novel” because you truly don’t understand that the word means fiction, or because you just can’t back off from an unsupportable statement.

    Oh and JTX- any credible authorities support your novel theory about citizenship yet? I know….it will all be decided in court soon!

  74. jtx says:

    dunstvangeet:

    My ‘pologies if I said anything to make you think I has a passport or went to college. I actually live in Iceland and enjoy the summers greatly.

    I’m afraid however that you cannot present any sort of irrefutable proof that The Zero was born anywhere since up here we know that he was found under a snowdrift – and the Travelocity Gnome has verified this so it MUST be so.

  75. jtx says:

    Greg:

    Goodness gracious – you don’t believe that the novel being discussed was invented?? You think it just sprang from the earth sort of like The One??? No one actually wrote or dictated it???

    I’ve heard of the virgin birth is some contexts – 2 actually, but one was several thousand years ago and the other we’ve not been able to find the BC (long form, of course) for – but never with respect to novels … pardon me; that wonderfully insightful tome you have discovered that told you something recently that the founders knew several centuries ago from Vattel and their own experiences.

    A statement of fact is not an ionsult my dear. And the fact is the novel was written and did not spring Barrack-like suddenly into being.

    It’s clear to me what the definition of NBC is – born of two US citizens on US soil. And I do believe that SCOTUS will eventually so state, kicking the Enabling Conspiracists and their 14th Amendment/Wong Kim Arkian “feelings” into the dustbin of history where they belong so this sort of fiasco will never happen again.

  76. dunstvangeet says:

    So, you seem to know what the Founders of the United States wanted without actually living here?

    You have yet to answer these questions:

    1. Why would the founders use a different definition of “Natural Born” than the definition of “Natural Born” that they had grew up, and had been in use in England for 300 years?

    2. If they did mean to change the definition of “Natural Born” why would they use that term to reference a book that didn’t have the term in it when the wrote the document?

    3. If they did mean to change the definition, then why were they so idiotic to not realize that the Blackstone Definition of “Natural Born” wouldn’t be more commonly known in a place where most of the people grew up under that definition?

    4. And why if their efforts were so successful that they didn’t need to define it (therefore qualifying as a legal term of art), did one of the premere legal writers of the time (who grew up with the British version of “Natural Born” and knew the founders of the constitution, who were still alive during his writing of his commentaries on the law) directly contradict you?

  77. jtx says:

    SFJeff:

    You have a novel thought there all right. Did you get that from the E. B. or think it up all by your lonesome?

    Even Greg above did a more workmanlike job of realizing what the M-W definition meant. I would normally use either M-W or OED but in this case M-W does just fine.

    I hope that, unlike your compadre Greg, you don’t think I’m insulting a book (doesn’t that have a nice liberal ring to it???) by calling it a novel which is after an invented (meaning it didn’t auro-generate) writted publication that is prose and a narrative, is long and complex and deals especially with human experience through a usually connected sequence of events … by Jove, I think we’ve got it – we’ve described a novel.

    You pipsqueaks can go gather navel lint all you wish and argue about how many angels dance on the head of a pin (I read about that in the E. Brit as I recall so you might try it). Your “alternative definitions” aren’t worth a bucket of warm snot.

    Nor do you seem to realize that a novel is not necessarily fiction. But then I guess that should be expected coming from someone who thinks the 14th Amendment defines a NBC.

    The “theories” you proclaim about citizenship are not “theories at all … they are called “law” using a collective term. You should find out more about same as it relates to your hero … but you won’t like what you find out so perhaps it’s better you continue your liberal daydream and continue Enabling him as long as you can.

  78. jtx says:

    1. The founders were trying to devise a system of government that was quite different from the Brit monarchy thing which had English Common Law (Blackstone, etc.) and “natural born subjects”. The founders certainly observed that “subjects” and “citizens” were greatly different in concept and function so that merely transposing ECL onto the US system some differences had to be made to account for the differences. One of these was clearly NOT using “natural born subjects” as did the Brits since there was no such thing in the coming US plan. But with the philosophical grounding of the Vattel writings they were able to create the concept of “natural born citizen” which – though not identical were somewhat similar in comcept. What many of you miss is that the two terms NBS and NBC (while having a superficial similarity since two of the three words are the same) are quite different in concept, meaning, and operation. In other words having been running and fighting as hard as they could for several years there was no reason AT ALL to use an identical structure as they were creating something unprecedented.

    2. It wasn’t the words “natural born” that were changed but the complete terms NBS and NBC and the concepts contained are quite different since “subject” and “citizen” are quite different. The fact that the reference by Vattel was in French was no impediment since French was the diplomatic language du jour (that means, roughly, “of the day” since you may not be as conversant in French as were many of the founders. They even loaned the book around to each other as books were expensive and treasured (Tweeting had not yet been invented nor even electrons let alone the internet – a bit of history there for you). The French themselves at about this time were literally losing their heads over the idea of “citizens” rather than “subjects” so the “republic” idea was an idea du jour (see above translation). So, you see, the CONCEPTS were “out there” even though the internet was not.

    3. See #1 & #2 since Blackstone (who, like Vattel was well admired) was steeped in ECL concepts which no longer directly applied without change. ECL is not USCL even to today though many concepts are similar in concept. For one important thing – our judges do not wear those silly wigs (but they do have the almost unbearable graduation robes). In short ECL did not apply by moving it directly to a different concept of government.

    4. There was most likely a belief that there was no need to define so simple (lest I say “natural”) a term since they believed that it would be obvious to most informed people and certainly to any who would have been familiar with the Vattel writings. It was taken from the idea of natural law which was at least as widely or perhaps even more widely recognized in most countries that was ECL. As to why your preferred author might have written the way he did I don’t doubt for a minute that even then it was with lawyers (etc.) much as it is now as to their opinions and theories … sort of like (err … hmm) elbows – everyone’s got one and they can be and sometimes are – different. And the differing terms NBS and NBC which deservedly mean different things we see that NBC has worked quite well for over 233 years and now seems poised to rectify a serious political error in allowing an ineligible man into office … but he has the lattitude to show that he IS eligible having not yet done so.

  79. strikefighterxxi says:

    No, “invented” in that definition means that the work is fiction, you twit. It is self explanatory that a literary work did not spring from nothing. Novels are works of fiction, as in the author created a story with characters that they made up, a story that they made up, a climax they made up, a resolution…need I go on? Granted, there is historical fiction, where some of the characters are real but the story is fictional, but that is beside the point.

  80. dunstvangeet says:

    You just don’t get it, JTX.

    Your theory of dual citizenship is interesting, because we have had no less than 8 Presidents who held both citizenship from France and the United States from birth until 1945, when there was a change in the law. Only one of them is covered under the “citizenship at the adoption of this country”.

    They are:

    George Washington
    Ulysseus S. Grant
    Theodore Roosevelt
    William Howard Taft
    Franklin Delano Roosevelt
    Harry S. Truman
    Lyndon B. Johnson
    Gerald Ford

    Are you willing to call every one of those Presidents a Usurper. That’s a lot of Presidents.

    Out of the 7 Presidents, add in Chester A. Arthur, and add in Barack Obama, it seems that nearly a fourth of the Presidents have been usurpers. And out of the 220 years, it seems like 53 of them (nearly a fourth) have been ruled by usurpers.

    So, now that we’ve ruled out your theory of the British Nationality Act trumping U.S. Law, we can get onto your other theory.

    Your other theory is that the Writers of the Constitution were so dumb that they meant to redefine a term that reverted back in the writings of one of the biggest legal authorities of Early American Law that he didn’t even know about it, despite having John Jay as his mentor, he was never told that John Jay (who was the first Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court) what Natural Born Citizenship meant.

    This theory has about as much legitimacy as your previous theory about Dual Citizenship.

  81. Kettner’s book is an excellent exhibit to make the contrast between scholarship and amateur Internet data accumulation (the latter describing this blog). Of course Kettner is not really concerned with presidential qualifications, but he did leave this:

    The Constitution in its final form left critical questions relating to citizenship unanswered. Congress was empowered to establish a “uniform rule of naturalization”–but was this merely an administrative reform designed to standardize admission into state membership, or did it imply a recognition that citizenship fundamentally and primarily meant membership in a national community? There was an implicit assumption that birth within the United States conferred citizenship–the president was to be a “natural born citizen” resident in the United States–but did this encompass all persons born within the states and territories of the new nation, or could the states and federal government distinguish among natives, accepting some as birthright citizens while rejecting others? [p. 231]

    By about 1820 certain central assumptions regularly appeared in discussions of American citizenship…. With the single exception of eligibility for the presidency, [naturalized aliens] … acquired the same status and rights as native citizens…. But who counted as native citizens? No one appeared to reexamine 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 accompanying rights. Natives were presumably educated from infancy in the values and habits necessary for self-government, and there was no need to worry about their qualifications for membership. [p. 287]

  82. jtx is our resident troll. Don’t mind him.

  83. nbc says:

    Your fanciful “a lot of evidence they didn’t” WRT Vattel is nonexistent. There’s ample evidence they did hew to the Vattel definition and in fact since French was the widespread diplomatic language of the time, a writing in French was no hill for a climber and some of the founders even discussed in their letters to each other passing Vattel’s treatise around.

    Sure, Vattel was relevant for international law, but when it came to common law relations British common law was relevant. There is no evidence that Vattel played any role in the natural born clause.

    Sorry my friend.

  84. Greg says:

    Your discourse on “invented” continues to reinforce my assessment of your intellectual bankruptcy. Twist and distort and cherry-pick.

    But, thanks for the bit about how we should learn more about “the law” and would be disappointed in what we learned. That was kinda funny coming from a guy supporting the side that has brought 44 lawsuits only to see 40 of them dismissed for lack of standing.

  85. It is an interesting question, and one to which I don’t have an answer, who among the Framers spoke French well enough to read a book such as the Law of Nations. The only one I know for sure is John Marshall who did not speak French. I read a reference (not 100% sure it is authentic given the lies being seeded all over the Internet to provide faux support for the nObama non-citizenship mythology) saying that Franklin passed around a copy of de Vattel; but that was in English and wouldn’t have had the “natural born citizen” language.

  86. Greg says:

    Benjamin Franklin was sent three copies of the Charles Guillaume Frederic Dumas translation of Vattel. One was intended for the Library Company of Philadelphia, one for Franklin himself, and one for another library of Franklin’s choosing. He chose Harvard. According to Franklin, the Philadelphia one was “much used by the members of the First Continental Congress.”

    Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts

  87. Greg says:

    When Franklin received the English language translation of Vattel’s work, he wrote back to Dumas to say:

    “I received your several favours, of May 18, June 30, and July 8, by Messrs. Vaillant and Pochard; whom, if I could serve upon your recommendation, it would give me great pleasure. Their total want of English is at present an obstruction to their getting any employment among us; but I hope they will soon obtain some knowledge of it. This is a good country for artificers or farmers, but gentlemen, of mere science in les belles lettres, cannot so easily subsist here, there being little demand for their assistance among an industrious people, who, as yet, have not much leisure for studies of that kind.”

  88. ballantine says:

    “At any rate it’s difficult to understand why you in the Enabling Conspiracy are such fans of the 14th Amendment or Wong Kim Ark since neither apply to the “natural born citizen” requirement of the Constitution.”

    Let’s see what Wong said:

    “The constitution of the United States, as originally adopted, uses the words ‘citizen of the United States’ and ‘natural-born citizen of the United States….The constitution nowhere defines the meaning of these words, either by way of inclusion or of exclusion, except in so far as this is done by the affirmative declaration that ‘all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.’ Amend. art. 14. In this, as in other respects, it must be interpreted in the light of the common law, the principles and history of which were familiarly known to the framers of the constitution….U.S. v. WONG KIM ARK, 169 U.S. 649, 654 (1898)

    So gee, just like Minor, the court once again said NBC is to defined by the common law (as has ever other significant legal authority in the early republic). And only an idiot would try to argue that the common law required two citizen parents. Of wait, that is what Apuzzo is asserting now (without any authority, as usual).

    Let’s see what Wong says about the common law:

    “It thus clearly appears that by the law of England for the last three centuries, beginning before the settlement of this country, and continuing to the present day, aliens, while residing in the dominions possessed by the crown of England, were within the allegiance, the obedience, the faith or loyalty, the protection, the power, and the jurisdiction of the English sovereign; and therefore every child born in England of alien parents was a natural-born subject, unless the child of an ambassador or other diplomatic agent of a foreign state, or of an alien enemy in hostile occupation of the place where the child was born. The same rule was in force in all the English colonies upon this continent down to the time of the Declaration of Independence, and in the United States afterwards, and continued to prevail under the constitution as originally established.” Id. at 658

    “[C]ontinued to prevail under the constitution as originally established.” Seems pretty clear doesn’t it? Of course, it’s dicta as is all judicial statements on NBC since the Art. II definition has never been in issue. Wong goes further and approvingly cites (meaning it agrees with):

    “In Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) 19 How. 393, Mr. Justice Curtis said: ‘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.’ Id. 576. And to this extent no different opinion was expressed or intimated by any of the other judges. In U. S. v. Rhodes (1866), Mr. Justice Swayne, sitting in the circuit court, said: ‘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.’ ‘We find no warrant for the opinion [169 U.S. 649, 663] that this great principle of the common law has ever been changed in the United States. It has always obtained here with the same vigor, and subject only to the same exceptions, since as before the Revolution.’ 1 Abb. (U. S.) 28, 40, 41, Fed. Cas. No. 16,151.” Id. at 662-663

    Pretty clear. Guess they didn’t get Apuzzo’s memo, but neither did any other legal authority in our history. Of course, after declaring that the common law continued to define citizenship in the US after the revolution, Wong held the 14th amendment to be merely declaratory of the common law rule. Hence, “born in the US and subject to it jurisdiction” means citizen by birth under the common law which everyone knows was also called native or natural born citizens.

  89. ballantine says:

    “Again, why would the founders use a book to define a term, when the book didn’t even use the term in the first place? Why would they disregard English Common Law and redefine “Natural Born” which was in common use during their lifetime, to something that wasn’t even in use of?”

    Why would common law lawyers, sent to a convention from states that all had adopted English common law, use a common law term of art (whose only documented use at such time was with respect to the common law) if they meant something else? Maybe they thought it would be fun to fool everyone until some dentist/gamblor/internet scholars could unearth their secret intent.

    Kent’s Commentaries on American Law was probably the most influential and cited american legal work of the 19th century, if not our history. But what did he know.

    For Scalia, and most other modern originalists, the question would be simple: What was the term “natural born citizen” understood to mean in the founding generation? If birthers cannot find anyone in the first half century of our republic defining it in accordance with Vattel, which they apparently can’t seem to do, the game would be over.

  90. What I find interesting is what Dumas wrote in the flyleaf of one of the copies:

    “There are generous and broad-minded peoples, whose merits will make them in due time completely independent and self-governing States. ‘My dear friends (some wise man will then say to them), you cannot do better than adopt the English Constitution as your own, with one little alteration which, in my opinion, might bring even nearer perfection this balanced and delightfully moderate form of government. This alteration is to make neither royalty, nor nobility, nor legislative office hereditary.

  91. Welsh Dragon says:

    About a month ago I spent an hour or so trying to to track down connections between the founders and Vattel.

    I’ve seen the Ben Franklin reference in a non-birther context.

    There were multiple editions in both French
    and English in Jefferson’s library that he sold to Congress.

    The John Adams collection in Boston includes a 1809 english edition.

    Hamilton certainly quoted Vattel on International Law issues.(which is where he’s really imp0rtant)

    George Washington borrowed Vattel from the New York Public Library in 1789(July I think)

    Amazing the real facts you can you can find on the Internet!

  92. Nullifidian says:

    Even the current governator of CA knows he’s not a NBC

    Superb evidence that Obama is a natural born citizen. The Governator is a fool and the worst governor the state has ever had. Given Schwarzenegger’s total incompetence, any statement of fact issuing from his yap is almost guaranteed to not be true. If he gave a press conference to announce that the sky was blue, I’d have to open a window to see that it hadn’t suddenly turned yellow.

    Sincerely,
    One of the Governator’s Unfortunate Constitutents

  93. jtx says:

    strikefighterxxi:

    Certainly fictional books can also be novels but there is nothing within the definition extant that restricts novels to be entirely finctional.

    Your interpretation is encompassed by the definition I gave and so is mine (as are the historical novels you mention). Neither interpretation is incorrect and your insistence to the contrary is merely strong evidence of your pig-headedness that anyone who holds a contrary view is, somehow, “wrong”.

  94. jtx says:

    Greg:

    Your assessment holds little weight or validity but you’re welcome to it. I hope you’re today’s verse in your copy of Rules for Radicals autographed for you by your boss!

    Without such guidance you might say stupid things that show you confusing procedural rulings of courts with rulings on the law. But of course you are too learned to mix those up … right???

  95. SFJeff says:

    JTX,

    You have a ‘novel’ interpretation of what a novel is.

  96. jtx says:

    Dr. Conspiracy”

    It is fairly clear that several of the foumnders handled French fairly well – think about it! Some of them served as representatives of one sort or another at the court of the French king at different times. Names such as Franklin, Adams, Hamilton, etc.

    In addition John Jay was of French Huguenot extraction and it is more than likely that founders who were not at least somewhat conversant in French (which was the widely-used diplomatic language of the time) could obtain a functional translation when needed since there were many French-speaking citizens in the newly formed US of A. In fact there were many enclaves of them in several of the states.

    Also, speaking of “faux support” against Obamaa “all over the internet” I’d have to note that a good bit of that has been placed by Obama-lovers such as those in the Enablers’ Conspiracy on this site. In addition, most of those in the MSM appear to be under a strict gag order from above on the matter since it is clearly a valid news story when not being suppressed. There is, I believe, clearly more propaganda unleashed by your side than mine.

  97. John Marshall was a US emissary to France, but did not speak the language. John Jay was not at the Constitutional convention. Hand waving is not facts, and I repeat: we do not know how many of the framers spoke French. In stead of saying what is probable in your own mind, do some research and produce some facts.

    We do, however, have evidence that some of the Framers consulted consulted de Vattel in English. But it matters not, because neither the French, nor the English translation had the phrase “natural born citizen” in it.

  98. dunstvangeet says:

    Adams wasn’t actually at the convention, jtx.

    Neither was John Jay. By the way, John Jay was the mentor of James Kent, who directly contradicts you on your theory of 2-parents.

  99. jtx says:

    Greg:

    So are you claiming that has snything to do with “natural born citizen” or the use of Vattel for that matter?

    If so, please explain.

  100. Greg says:

    I’ve lost the threading at this point, so I’m not sure what you’re referring to, jtx. But maybe Jefferson’s letter to Dumas?

    My point there was that Jefferson was saying that not many people spoke French at the time, so he was hoping Dumas would translate some other works.

  101. jtx says:

    Dr. Conspiracy:

    Selective partial quotations mean very little but can be a tool in the hands of propagandists such as yourself.

    There is an informative passage that IS relevant (unlike the quote you gave which was only a portion of what was written) which says:

    “That copy of Vattel, in conjunction with the one in Philadelphia, has an especial interest for the student of International Law. For those three books, which arrived here in the early stages of the struggle between the colonies and the mother land, not merely influenced the men who sat in the Continental Congresses in shaping our policy towards Great.Britain, but also undoubtedly influenced the framers of the Federal Constitution in the writing of parts of that state document. By the Constitution of the United States the Law of Nations is expressly recognized as being a part of the Law of the land. And if we remember that Vattel’s treatise was recognized in all the Foreign Offices of Europe at that time as the leading authority of the day upon questions of International Law, it may be said that in an actual sense Dumas, as the purveyor of knowledge to the statesmen of the United States of America concerning the Law of Nations, was in a sense the sponsor of the Law of Nations among us. And as that treatise was written by a citizen of Switzerland, a country which up to that time had done more than any other to develop the Law of Neutrality, and as Vattel himself had stated the conception of neutrality probably with more clearness than any publicist up to the time he wrote, it was eminently fitting that the young member of the family of Nations, the United States of America, should help to expand the Law of Neutrality. And, much more than any other Nation, our country has shaped the expansion of the Law of Neutrality. In sending us three copies of the treatise of Vattel, Dumas, as well as the publicist of Neuchatel, helped to influence our course in the early years of the Republic under Washington and Jefferson, and even afterwards, in moulding the expansion of the Law between Nations.”

    – The Beginnings of International Law in the United States of America.

    – The Colonial Society of Massachuisetts, Dec. 1917

    Other passages in this and different writeups show that English language versions of Vattel were indeed available – and used – even prior to the framing of the Constitution.

    You may as well give up on your anti-Vattel propaganda and your selective out of context quotes of bits and pieces of irrelevant balderdash. In addition, claiming that so-and-so was “not at the Convention” means little as such meetings can certainly be influenced by others as communication between various members was available even then despite the folks not having Twitter or even VOIP. They could certainly meet with each other from time to tima and could certainly write their beliefs and intents to others.

  102. jtx says:

    Welsh Dragon:

    What’s even more amaxing is how people with a clear agenda such as yourself (and the rest of those attempting to Enable a man most likely not eligible to hold the office he now occupies) to misuse that “amazing” invormation through selective pruning such as that by several of you n this site.

    See the lengthy quote I just posted to Dr. Conspiracy which relates to the English language version of Vattel and also be aware that elsewhere it clearly shown that there were such versions in the US well prior to the Revolutionary War. Your supposed “language issue” is merely more of your hype and misstatement.

    It’s hard to understand why those of you who wish to see this man NOT have to show his eligibility do so. One can only suppose you are too used to reading from the daily liberal playbook website and take your marching orders from there, Keep in mind that on the Internet, no one knows you’re a dog. That means that others can read that drivel also.

    Many of us would like to see the man prove that he is eligible to hold the office he now occupies. If he can, then that solves the eligibility issue. If not … well, what do YOU think should be done as a fine upstanding American citizen??

  103. jtx says:

    SFJeff:

    Actually, it’s not “novel” at all. It’s called reading and understandiong the words that are there and not overlaying them with your own bias.

  104. jtx says:

    Dr. Conspiracy:

    Nonsense Doc. It matters not how many of the founders spoke French since many of them had a grasp of a smattering of the language. It also matters not if Mr. X or Mr. Y were at the court in France or at the Constitutional Convention since they clearly communicated with each other (but did not use email or VOIP).

    As I have proven to you, there were English language versions of Vattel “in country” prior to the Revolutionary War and the treatise was widely recognized in other countries as an excellent source.

    As to the wording of the pertinent phrase, the founders could hardly have used the term “natural born subjects” as some of your Enablers have claimed since the entire purpose of the then-beginning and ongoing War was to absolve us of any “subjectitude” to a royal. English Common Law was not the law of the US of A; we built our own only somewhat based upon ECL and Blackstone. As I pointed out earlier, there are indeed differences since we no longer wear wigs as judges but we do still wear those graduation-style costumes for the over-formal legal hearings.

    It certainly stands to reason that “NBS” the term would not be useful since the “S” would now be long gone and it was also quite apparent to the founders that the “C” part was not synonomous with “S” so that the new term which they adapted from the Vattel suggestions became “NBC” – indeed a term of art. If you read enough Vattel you should come to see the correspondence between his treatise and the “natural born citizen” term of art.

  105. jtx says:

    Greg:

    Irrelevant. Not too many owned large tracts of land either.

    As I’ve shown in a lengthy quote to Dr. C, there were English language versions kicking around before the Rev. War and the treatise Law of Nations is referenced in the Constitution.

  106. Greg says:

    Nobody disputes that there WERE English language versions of Vattel in the US. Of course there were. They didn’t say natural born citizen, though, they said indigenes.

    By the way, spending pages and pages showing that citizen is different than subject won’t prove that natural born is different than natural born.

  107. Greg says:

    No, the treatise Law of Nations is not referenced in the Constitution, the amorphous “law of nations,” i.e. international law, as described by Grotius and Puffendorf and also Vattel.

    Nobody has argued that Vattel wasn’t read. But the English language version of Vattel in existence said “indigenes” not “natural born citizen.”

    And there’s not a single example of a founder saying “Vattel is Influential on citizenship.”

    If the Founders really wanted to adopt the Vattelian version of citizenship, I’ll bet they were kicking themselves when, a little more than a decade later, the biggest legal thinkers were teaching up and coming lawyers that Natural Born Citizen had no relation to parental citizenship!

    Of course, not kicking themselves enough to say, “Hey, Kent, you’re misinterpreting the Constitution, we meant to adopt Vattel, not Blackstone!”

    I’ve got to think that the founders of your fantasies are complete incompetents. Using a 450 year old term (natural born). Not mentioning once that they were changing its meaning. Not mentioning once that they were overturning the accepted practice of all the colonies. Not saying a single word that they were adopting Vattel’s citizenship over Blackstone’s. Not correcting a single commentator, ever, who said that natural born was irrespective of parental citizenship.

  108. jtx says:

    Greg:

    I guess Alan Keyes is correct, you Deathers just can’t keep from trying to enforce an illegal man to be your master. You’d rather help him tear our country apart for whatever motives you all have.

    The argument is not about the language used (and it was read in the original French by a number of the founders as well as being available in English). Your pathetic efforts to claim that the founders didn’t have any idea what they were doing in using natural law to guide them is just that … pathetic.

    You seem to miss quite a few important points from the 1917 document I gave you Deathers. Even then they realized that the words “Law of Nations” in the Constitution was indeed Vattels treatise and your pretense to the contrary won’t change that fact.

    And your “biggest legal thinkers” couldn’t have been too big if they missed the fact that US laws are not based upon the ECL at all but upon a distinctly different sort of law founded in what is called natural law. Blackstone himself contributed little to that but Vattel was widely known worldwide to be a giant in that field.

    ECL is based upon the precepts of royal sovereignty and the subjects that owe alleigance to the sovereign forever, The ACL, however, is quite different in concept and must be since there is no royal sovereign (sorry, Barry) and no subjects. There are only citizens and the Constitution which in a way is a sovereign.

    And while you Deathers are working very hard to try to destroy the Constitution and all it stands for so that mob rule may prevail it’s not going to work. I realize that your only hope is to declare that English Common Law prevails so that you can make a pretense of your “sovereign” being legal under the 14th Amendment or Wong Kim Ark (the old jus soli BS) but it also will not work.

    I believe that SCOTUS will rule that the man is not eligible under the Constitution unless he suddenly can come up with vast amounts of evidence since evidence to the contrary keeps popping up all the time with the latest being this:

    http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=107678

    You Deathers had better get your shit together and re-start the massive generation of forgeries of same as you tried to do with the earlier Kenyan BC. Have fun, Deathers!!!

  109. strikefighterxxi says:

    Oh right. That evidence to the contrary that you bring up being a questionable document that even the “bastion” of “journalism” that is WND hasn’t even seen, which has been repeatedly put up for auction on eBay (always a reliable source for these sorts of things) by a man with a lengthy criminal record (I’m surprised that WND actually admitted that). Of course how this guy could have gotten this document eludes me.

    And just to make sure we are on the same page with the passage: (From supreme.justia.com)

    “Clause 10. The Congress shall have Power to define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations.”

    Now, is this the holy passage in the Constitution that refers to Vattel’s mythical Law of Nations. Cause if it is, then bullsh*t. Sounds like it deals with what it says, crimes on the seas and against the laws of the nations of the world. Not with crimes against Vattel’s work. But, JTX, if there is some other passage in the Constitution that includes those words but actually refers to Vattel, then prove it.

  110. Greg says:

    Those darn founders, quoting Blackstone much more often than Vattel.

    Some creationists think that God buried fake dinosaur bones to test the faith of people who would believe in evolution.

    You’re starting to sound like those guys. Sure, the founders used Vattel to inform their view of citizenship, the fact that they quoted Blackstone hundreds of times on the subject and Vattel not once is just proof of how wily they were!

  111. jtx says:

    strikefighterxxi:

    You’re right (mercifully, for a change) in that it sounds like the guy Lucas Smity should have been a Deather. Now all of you Flying Monkeys will have to start grinding out more of the fraudulent BS’s you’re getting so much practice at. Idle fingers are the devil’s tools …

    I’m glad to see you now agree finally that Vattel was not only read by founders but actuslly used by them, too. That’s a step in the right direction in your rehabilitation. Keep progressing and you’ll eventually that the man you so love is not eligible to hold the office he now occupies.

  112. jtx says:

    Greg:

    Not “proof” at all since in quoting Blackstone it was necessary to straighten out his concepts to align with what the founders were using which was natural law as represented by Vattels seminal work.

    Keep going on drafting up those fake Kenyan BCs now or the other Flying Monkeys will make you look bad. The Deathers such as yourself have to get busy as beavers to try to kill the Constitution and the country. I wonder what you’ll do when you realize what living in Nazi Germany was like … but you’re most likely too young to know about such ancient history – since you know so little about the founding of our country.

  113. Adrianinflorida says:

    jtx Blahtered:
    ” I wonder what you’ll do when you realize what living in Nazi Germany was like”
    we got plenty of practice between 2001 and January of this year. Thankfully Reichfuher Cheney spared us the German, and spoke English, so that we could understand how we were being sodomized without having to translate.

  114. nbc says:

    I’m glad to see you now agree finally that Vattel was not only read by founders but actuslly used by them, too. That’s a step in the right direction in your rehabilitation. Keep progressing and you’ll eventually that the man you so love is not eligible to hold the office he now occupies.

    Poor logic at best. JTX suggests that since the founders used Vattel to guide their international law, he somehow believes that thus Vattel should also be relevant for common law and municipal law.

    Why is it then that noone really has cited Vattel in a meaningful manner in relevant suits while all seem to cite British Common Law as the guiding principle?

    Poor JTX.

    And no hope that his ‘argument’ will ever be heard in a court of law.

  115. Greg says:

    Sure, quoting Blackstone is proof they didn’t like him and never quoting Vattel about citizenship is proof they loved his version of citizenship.

    And if the Constitution is directly quoting Vattel’s “Law of Nations” in the clause of the constitution that says piracy is against the law of nations, then why did the Supreme Court never mention Vattel in any of the cases interpreting this clause of the Constitution, such as United States v. Smith, United States v. Smith, 5 Wheat. (18 U.S.) 153, 160, 162 (1820) or The Marianna Flora, (24 U.S.) 1, 40–41 (1826)?

    Is this more evidence of how wily the Founders were? Directly citing Vattel but forgetting to mention it to the people who would be deciding cases less than 30 years later?

  116. jtx says:

    Adrianinflorida:

    And you think your hero has not cosialized things even more greatly that the previous administration???

    It’s hard to believe you’re that stupid. It sounds like you’re merely making the false political party distinction when they are both rotten to the core.

    The Nazi experience is coming at us even faster than you Enablers realize. You’ll find out what things were like soon enough – and you won’t find it to your liking (unless you’re actively in the Nazi party).

  117. Gordon says:

    The only thing coming fast is your Godwin’s Law River Dance.

  118. jtx says:

    nbc:

    You seem unaware that none of the suits have yet been heard on merit. Even so there certainly those that do not cite ECL but rather ACL (which includes much of the Vattel philosophies).

    ECL is not and was not the determining factor in America. You Deathers merely like to pretend that is so in the mistaken belief that it somehow makes the Constitution null and void. We have our own common law distinct from Blackstone and ECL.

    Before too much longer we’ll see the eligibility issue before SCOTUS. You’ve missed the 1917 MA Historical Society quote I gave earlier that clearly shows the Vattel influence. The Deathers posturing to try to kill of the US Constitution – and thereby our entire country – is going to go down in flames (no doubt along with the Oborter hisself if he cannot prove his eligibility).

  119. jtx says:

    Gordon:

    Such a “learned” response obviously shows you don’t grasp the parallels at all and are more than “happy” to see history repeat itself.

    Lots of luck there, fool.

  120. I was doing some reading in the Supreme Court decision in Rogers v. Bellei 401 U.S. 815 (1971) (quite an interesting case, by the way). They seemed to think the change from “natural born citizen” to “citizen” between the 1790 and 1795 acts was a minor change. This is what they said:

    1. The very first Congress, at its Second Session, proceeded to implement its power, under the Constitution’s Art. I, 8, cl. 4, to “establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization” by producing the Act of March 26, 1790, 1 Stat. 103. That statute, among other things, stated, “And the children of citizens of the United States, that may be born beyond sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born citizens: Provided, That the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States . . . .”

    2. A like provision, with only minor changes in phrasing and with the same emphasis on paternal residence, was continuously in effect through three succeeding naturalization Acts. Act of January 29, 1795, 3, 1 Stat. 415; Act of April 14, 1802, 4, 2 Stat. 155; Act of February 10, 1855, c. 71, 1, 10 Stat. 604. The only significant difference is that the 1790, 1795, and 1802 Acts read retrospectively, while the 1855 Act reads prospectively as well. See Weedin v. Chin Bow, 274 U.S. 657, 664 (1927), and Montana v. Kennedy, 366 U.S. 308, 311 (1961).

  121. nbc says:

    Exellent find there is another example in which the state congress changed natural born to native born to avoid confusion.

  122. SFJeff says:

    I had a sudden realization that the Birthers are like those who claim that the Income Tax is unconstitutional or that only the Gold Standard is constitutional. These folks will keep making these claims no matter how many times they are rejected by the courts, and regardless of the fact that no credible authority agrees with them.

    They claim the singular ability to read and interpret the Constitution correctly, and anyone who disagrees with them is obviously lieing or conspiring against them and the U.S.

    While it is amusing refuting their lies and/or delusions, I realize it is just amusing, because no amount of evidence will be sufficient to refute their belief of fictional ‘evidence’, no legal interpretations will convince them otherwise of their tortured reading of the law and history.

  123. Greg says:

    They are exactly like the income tax loonies. In fact, some of their arguments overlap significantly. I think that Craig claiming to be a “legacy citizen” looks an awful lot like the racists claiming to be preamble citizens and not 14th Amendment citizens.

  124. nbc says:

    JTX Argues

    You seem unaware that none of the suits have yet been heard on merit. Even so there certainly those that do not cite ECL but rather ACL (which includes much of the Vattel philosophies).

    and then states

    Such a “learned” response obviously shows you don’t grasp the parallels at all and are more than “happy” to see history repeat itself.

    What is fascinating is that no courts have held that Vattel was the standard, and in fact the binding precedents of Wong Kim Ark, have ruled that it is ECL which defines the terminology of the Constitution.

    For good reasons since citizenship cannot logically be guided by the “law of nations” which would mean that no country could define who are its citizens and who are not.

  125. nbc says:

    I am collecting, OCRing and editing the reply briefs in the case of Wong Kim Ark, which show how it is indeed Common Law which defines how the Constitution is to be interpreted. As such, Vattel can never be logically part of Common Law since it deals with laws between nations.

  126. It is Apuzzo’s nonsensical assertion that citizenship is a part of international law, and that de Vattel was copied into the Constitution by tacit reference.

  127. And in some ways it is like a fundamentalist religious argument about the interpretation of Scripture.

  128. Greg says:

    WKA also finds that the “law of nations” wasn’t settled on Vattel’s definition at the time of the enacting of the 14th Amendment, much less at the time of the founding!

    At the founding, European tradition was jus soli with even France subscribing to the theory that “citizens, true and native-born citizens, are those who are born within the extent of the dominion of France,” and “mere birth within the realm gives the rights of a native-born citizen, independently of the origin of the father or mother, and of their domicil.”

    Lynch v. Clarke also looks at the “law of nations” and finds it much less settled than birthers would have you believe. The judge there looked both at the other writers about international law as well as the laws of citizenship in other countries.

    In Judge Story’s Conflicts of Laws, he wrote that there was a general rule that someone born in a country was its citizen and that it made sense that this rule shouldn’t apply to those living there temporarily, but “[i]t would be difficult, however, to assert, that in the present state of public law, such a qualification is universally established.”

    France, at the time of Lynch, allowed children born of aliens to become full citizens at their election upon reaching majority. Spain granted citizenship to anyone born within its borders, regardless of parental citizenship. Vattel says citizenship follows dad, but only if dad hasn’t quit his old citizenship. If he has formed an intention to permanently remain in the new land, then he becomes a citizen and his children are, too. Domat says that children of aliens are citizens. Burlamaqui said that all citizens have the right of election on reaching majority, and doesn’t appear to have excluded children of aliens from this equation.

    So, the major writers couldn’t agree on what the state of the “law of nations” was with respect to citizenship and the nations did not universally practice what Vattel thought was the “law of nations.”

  129. There were periods in American history when parents could not pass on their citizenship.

  130. Greg says:

    The briefs are great. I love that Collins expressly raised the fear of the son of a “Chinaman” becoming President. In response the Appellee briefs:

    “The fear suggested at page 34 of the brief of the amicus curiae that our next president might be a Chinaman is equally uncalled for. If a modern Confucius or a greater than Li Hung Chang should be born upon our soil, and the people of the United States should be of the opinion that he was the best person in this country for their president, it is not plain where, if he were elected, the disgrace would lie; but, if there were any, it would seem to fall, not on the Chinese race, but on the white citizens of the United States, who selected a Chinaman as the highest officer of their government.”

    Donofrio likes to argue, vociferously, based on the fact that WKA didn’t, explicitly, call Wong a natural born citizen, and quoted Binney’s “as much a citizen as a natural born citizen” formulation as proof that Gray decided Wong was not a natural born citizen.

    I think that the fact that the court approvingly cited so many cases saying children of aliens are natural born citizens, and never once distanced themselves from that conclusion, and were presented with a clearly stated argument from amicus and didn’t take even a sentence to state that children of aliens are not natural born citizens is pretty strongly persuasive that they are.

    Also, the appellee’s reply brief, pages 13-14 shows that international law was not nearly so against jus soli.

    For children of aliens, the following rules applied:

    England – citizen

    France, Denmark, Portugal, Holland – citizen unless you decline before coming of age

    Belgium, Spain, Italy, Greece, Grand Duchy of Baden, Russian, Russia-Poland, Ottoman Empire – citizen if you meet certain conditions.

    About the only thing “universal” about the “law of nations” was that every country made their own laws without regard to what the “law of nations” said.

    The laws of the United States determine what persons shall be regarded as citizens, irrespective of such persons’ pleasure or the laws or pleasure of any other government.

    State v. Adams, 45 Iowa 99, 101

  131. John Marshall, in Gibbons v Ogden also commented on the exclusivity of Congress’s power to create a uniform system or naturalization. The same argument might be made that all citizenship legislation is the exclusive prerogative of Congress:

    Of the second class, the power ‘to establish an uniform rule of naturalization,’ is an instance. This power was originally in the States, and was extensively exercised by them, and would now be concurrent, except for another provision in the constitution, that ‘citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States.’ 7 It is not held to be exclusive, from the use of the term ‘ uniform rule.’ This Court has held, that the use of an analogous term, ‘uniform laws,’ in respect to the associated subject of bankruptcy, does not imply an exclusive power in Congress over that subject. 8 The true reason why the power of establishing an uniform rule of naturalization is exclusive, must be, that a person becoming a citizen in one State, would thereby become a citizen of another, perhaps even contrary to its laws, and the power thus exercised would operate beyond the limits of the State.

  132. Sally Hill says:

    This case seems to be based in the fact that Bellei was born in Italy of an Italian father and US Citizen mother. When applying it to the subject matter at hand, are you implying that Obama was born outside of the US? Obama said he was born in Hawaii, and personally, I believe him.

    The issue here seems to be more about reclaiming/retaining US Citizenship to one born abroad, not trying to become a Natural Born Citizen when being born with dual-citizenship. Being born a Citizen of the US, does not automatically make one a Natural Born Citizen. NBC is not a classification of citizenship, rather a pathway of establishing eligibility to be POTUS.

    On that note, I don’t find the case particiularly applicable with one exception; the section on dual-nationalities very interesting:
    “The duality also creates problems for the governments involved. MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN recognized this when, concurring in Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez, 372 U.S. 144, 187 (1963), a case concerning native-born citizens, he observed: “We have recognized the entanglements which may stem from dual allegiance . . . .” In a famous case MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS wrote of the problem of dual citizenship. Kawakita v. United States, 343 U.S. 717, 723 -736 (1952). He noted that “[o]ne who has a dual nationality will be subject to claims from both nations, claims which at times may be competing or conflicting,” id., at 733; that one with dual nationality cannot turn that status “into a fair-weather citizenship,” id., at 736; and that “[c]ircumstances may compel one who has a dual nationality to do acts which otherwise would not be compatible with the obligations of American citizenship,” ibid. The District Court in this very case conceded:

    “It is a legitimate concern of Congress that those who bear American citizenship and receive its benefits have some nexus to the United States.” 296 F. Supp., at 1252.”

    I also found all throughout this decision, the explicit, distinct, and separate references to paternal and maternal citizenships. Therefore, stating that “children born to US Citizen parents” would mean both parents; otherwise, like the decision, a distinction would likely have been drawn.

    Since Obama freely admits that he was a dual citizen at birth and it is unknown as to whether:
    1) Obama ever denounced his British Citizenship, or
    2) Ann Dunham ever became a British Citizen persuant to the British Nationality Act of 1948,

    it would appear, according to the definition at the State Dept. website that should Obama find himself standing on British soil, the Queen could quite conceivably decide that he is her Subject and request that he perform a treasonous act against the US – and if he should decline to do so, would have full authority over Obama to throw him in jail for disobedience.

    Now – I will conceed such an event is not likely to happen, but that is not the point – it is a possibility.

  133. Sally Hill says:

    Still dissing the ‘birthers’ I see. I guess you feel they are less-than citizens of the US – that they have no right to stand up for what they believe (right or wrong).

    I simply don’t get it. I can see why you believe Obama is eligible – I see and fully understand your logic to arrive at that conclusion. I also happen to see another side of the coin, where I fully believe he is not eligible. The problem is – there is NO legal definition of NBC, no real case history, and apparently no SCOTUS with enough guts to hear the case on it’s merits. How is it that We the People have no standing to ask questions of our government?

    I get that – and I get that Obama is President and will likely be President at such time as he is able to declare himself a Dictator or we are lucky enough to have another free election where he is voted out of office. I get that – I’m not in denial – but I’m not ignorant, stupid, or own a tin foil hat. I’m an American – just like the majority that post on the subject.

    I respect your right to your opinion and your right to want me to see your point of view. I respect your right to fully approve of your President, to support him, and to defend him. I just wished you respected my right, as an American citizen to descent and ask legitimate questions of my government. I wished you respected my right to think my government should be afraid of me (their employer – a taxpayer) rather than it being the other way around.

    When many of you were railing for the previous 8 years of how GWB stole the elections – I didn’t think you were idiots, or owned tin foil hats. I thought you were good Americans for standing up for what you believed in – for legitimately questioning your government. I find it odd that We the People had standing to question those elections, but We the People have no standing to question Obama/Government. It should be a right afforded all Americans….

    Just not if I happen to disagree with you apparently.

  134. Bob says:

    Since Obama freely admits that he was a dual citizen at birth and it is unknown as to whether:
    1) Obama ever denounced his British Citizenship, or
    2) Ann Dunham ever became a British Citizen persuant to the British Nationality Act of 1948,

    it would appear, according to the definition at the State Dept. website that should Obama find himself standing on British soil, the Queen could quite conceivably decide that he is her Subject and request that he perform a treasonous act against the US – and if he should decline to do so, would have full authority over Obama to throw him in jail for disobedience.

    Now – I will conceed such an event is not likely to happen, but that is not the point – it is a possibility.

    When rational arguments fail, resorting to wild speculation is not an improvement. (And since when in the modern era has the Queen the power give orders and jail people?)

  135. Bob says:

    I just wished you respected my right, as an American citizen to descent and ask legitimate questions of my government.

    But you are not asking legitimate questions. Arguments devoid of fact, law, and reason are not worthy of respect.

  136. nbc says:

    Being born a Citizen of the US, does not automatically make one a Natural Born Citizen.

    That is for all practical purposes incorrect, especially when born on US soil.

  137. Sally Hill: I respect your right to your opinion

    And in the preceding you say “apparently no SCOTUS with enough guts to hear the case on it’s merits.” That seems to be a distinct lack of respect.

    Stop trying to play the victim. You have no right to escape criticism if you express your views in a public forum.

  138. Greg says:

    You have the right to question the President’s eligibility. The courts, however, are not the right vehicle to challenge his eligibility. They’re set up to deal with people who have an actual injury. The thinking is that people who have an actual injury are going to spend more time and energy prosecuting their claim than someone who has 1/360 millionth of an injury.

    This is borne out by Orly Taitz’ performance. In her recently filed “new” case, she didn’t change the name of the court she was filing in, referred to her plaintiff (a woman) as he throughout the brief, and forgot to sign her name to the brief.

    And if you’ll look carefully, I think you won’t find a single case in which a Democrat challenged Bush’s eligibility in court, much less the 80 cases that have come from birthers. (And it wasn’t “we the people” who brought the case before the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore, it was George W. Bush and Al Gore – people with concrete injuries.)

  139. You are conflating the court’s comments on present dual citizenship with Obama’s non-longer-existing past dual citizenship. The section of the British Nationality Act of 1948 under which Barack Obama was (briefly) a citizen of the UK and Colonies (not a British “subject” by the way) was repealed. So Obama no longer has dual citizenship, and those potential entanglements are all gone.

    Detailed discussion and links to documents are in my article http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2009/04/is-president-obama-a-british-citizen/, and in the comments following.

  140. SFJeff says:

    Sally,
    as a U.S. citizen, you have the right to free political expression. You can object to the President for any political reason you would like. And yes you can question his eligibility. That doesn’t mean that he, or I am obliged to respond to your questions.

    But you raise a very interesting question:
    “The problem is – there is NO legal definition of NBC”

    Now that is a problem- if there is no legal definition of NBC- how do you know if George Bush was eligible? Or were you raising the same question 8 years ago? If there is no legal definition of NBC, how can we know if any previous President was eligible?

    My theory- and my opinion- is that every American I have ever talked to who has any opinion whatsoever on what a NBC is, has thought it was a person born in the United States. It was what I learned in school. If there was a real question about this, Congress could have raised it. Chief Justice Roberts could even have refused to swear the President in. There is no real controversy.

    As a further example- there still are people who believe the earth is flat. But no authority, no scientist- nobody of any gravitas believes this. Does this mean that we must respectfully disagree with each person who claims the earth is flat? Such is the case with those who claim that NBC needs to have 2 citizen parents. No one of any gravitas has made this claim.

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