A spoof of the birther view of Barack Obama was published as a Guest Opinion at the Ashland (Oregon) Daily Tidings web site. The problem with this article is that it illustrates Poe’s Law; it’s hard to tell that it is really a spoof and not real birther blather.
Barack Obama is a Muslim who was born in Kenya. His parents put birth announcements in the Honolulu newspapers just in case he decides to run for president someday in an effort to overthrow the U.S. government and truly turn America into an Islamic nation. They also make arrangements with high-ranking state of Hawaii officials to create a fake birth certificate to assure Barack’s ability to run for the presidency. …
P.S. For something even funnier, check out the Conservapedia entry on Poe’s Law. I can’t think of a better example of Poe’s Law than the Conservapedia.
Poe’s law is a symptom of liberals illogical and superstitious thinking
Personally, I prefer Cole’s Law.
What is also amusing is that the “talk” page of conservapedia’s article on Poe’s Law redirects to its page on evolution. (Wiki talk pages is where editors discuss how to improve the article; the autoredirect prevents any discussion from happening.)
The birther movement long ago abandoned the idea that Obama was born in Kenya, and shifted fundamentally toward the idea that a father who is a UK citizen somehow dilutes one’s “natural born” status.
This premise doesn’t even begin to hold legal merit, but a result of that is the lack of any clear and unequivocal statement in law saying that having a UK citizen as a parent does not make a person ineligible for the presidency.
Basically, to satisfy most of the birthers these days, you would have to find such a law that predates his 1961 birth, or else prove that Obama Sr. isn’t Obama Jr.’s father.
People are still addressing the “Born in Kenya” argument from 2008. They tend to dismiss the “dual nationality” thing out of hand which, by birther reasoning, strengthens their case.
It’s too much to hope for, but it will be hilarious if a candidate for President in 2012 actually raises the “birth certificate” issue in an open forum. To birthers who still cling to the notion that “he refuses to show the certificate”, the only thing I would do is to point out that it’s too valuable a trump card to play for the entertainment of some crackpot with a conspiracy theory.
Run for President against him, and bring up the question in a debate, and watch as the result destroys your campaign. Too much to hope for, but fun to imagine.
“Poe’s law is a symptom of liberals illogical and superstitious thinking.”
So, if a righty interprets something incorrectly, it’s the lefty’s fault?
Makes sense.
That illustrates something I’ve seen a lot from the right: blame someone else for your own problems and never let facts disrupt your argument.
But “superstitious”?
That’s a new one on me (and about a billion Muslims.)
That, or Someone like Bobby Jindal running for President. Jandal is in the same boat with Obama as far as the Natural Born Citizen angle.
Perhaps Obama might arrange to have the original birth certificate put on display for the 2012 election. (who knows, might do more harm than good.)
Mario is claiming that the lower court in the Wong Kim Ark case did not actually state that Wong was a Natural Born Citizen. I believe that I read on this site someone saying that the lower court actually used those words. Does anyone have the reference to the lower court? If so, please post it on http://gatewaypundit.rightnetwork.com/2010/11/funny-indian-official-introduces-obama-as-a-fellow-kenyan/#comment-223369.
Also any other comments to refute Mario’s latest would be appreciated.
Granite here is the appellant briefs
http://www.scribd.com/doc/23965360/Wong-Kim-Ark-US-v-169-US-649-1898-Appellants-Brief-USA
What gets me about the Conservapedia quote is that these supposedly superior conservatives can’t even use apostrophes correctly.
Conspiracy Theorist Alex Jones Claims To Have Discovered FEMA Concentration Camps
“Alex Jones a radio show host and conspiracy theorist from the John Birch Society, Timothy McVeigh/Patriot Movement school of thought has claimed to have discovered FEMA Concentration Camps, which are a part of his New World Order conspiracy theory which believes that the new One World Illuminati government will put “True Patriots” in FEMA concentration camps and take away their guns.’
http://newsone.com/nation/casey-gane-mccalla/conspiracy-theorist-alex-jones-claims-to-have-discovered-fema-concentration-camps/?omcamp=EMC-CVNL
Check out the article on Barack Obama. For quite a while (from April 7, 2010 until September 25, 2010) it said, “Barack Hussein Obama (birth name Barry Soetoro…” My question is how does Barack Obama get a birth name from a guy that his mother didn’t marry until Obama was 6…
http://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Barack_Hussein_Obama&oldid=767915
http://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Barack_Hussein_Obama&diff=prev&oldid=820327
They corrected it to say “aka Barry Soetoro”. But it’s still amusing to think that for 6 months, the people reading Conservapedia thought that Obama was born with a name from a person that wasn’t even met by his mother for 6 years.
You assume said RWNJ’s were and are thinking…..
Off the subject, did this site do an article on the rumor that Obama was not certified by Hawaii as a Presidential candidate?
I seem to remember seeing somewhere a document that shoots down this BS.
Anyone?
“Off the subject, did this site do an article on the rumor that Obama was not certified by Hawaii as a Presidential candidate?”
It hasn’t been helpful, because there was a pretty serious typo on the certification memo — it’s obvious that an entire line was cut.
Specifically, the document doesn’t say “legally qualified to serve under the provisions of the United States Constitution and are duly chosen candidates of both the state and the..”
Instead, the nomination memo from Hawaii omits a line and ends up saying “legally qualified to serve under the provisions of the national Democratic Parties balloting…”
Of course, this is not in itself a disqualifying error, but it is one of the few things in the Birther litany where there is some truth. If this memo mattered, this error might matter a lot.
Re: “the rumor that Obama was not certified by Hawaii as a Presidential candidate?’
Answer: Usually the way it is written is that the Democratic state party of Hawaii “refused” to certify Obama.
I usually reply by asking whether the one who posted the allegation knew whether the Democrat Party OR the Republican Party in Hawaii certified anyone in any previous election. My feeling is that there is no law in Hawaii (there certainly isn’t one nationally) that requires a state party to certify that the national candidate is eligible. Some states, I believe, may require the national parties to send letters on the subject, but the requirements are different for different states.
The birther spin on the national side of this is that the Democrats sent different letters on the subject to the different states. My reply to this statement is usually that the Republicans probably did too, because it makes sense to send specific letters that answer the requirements of specific states and neither give them too much or too little information, and that the Democrats and Republicans probably have done this for years and years.
On another topic, I would welcome any help experts on the Constitutional issue could give me in debating Mario on this site: http://gatewaypundit.rightnetwork.com/2010/11/funny-indian-official-introduces-obama-as-a-fellow-kenyan/#comment-223369. The site is good enough to leave anti-birther postings. I feel that I have not answered some of Mario’s points, or did not do so convincingly.
From over at GW, a birther rehashed and recycled the same discredited birther nonsense…
http://gretawire.forums.foxnews.com/topic/us-supreme-court-affirmed-vattell-as-part-us-domestic-law-obama-eligibility/page/2#post-2253016
TEXAS-RANGER
Member
Natural Born Citizen legally defined
There has been much debate as to whether the term “Natural Born Citizen” has ever been legally defined or will some court have to finally define it, such as the Supreme Court of the United States. The term “Natural Born Citizen” is a requirement for only two positions within our government, President and Vice-President. What did the Founding Father’s and Framers of the United States Constitution mean to do or accomplish by placing this requirement for the highest office?
First off, let us look at what the Framer’s used as a guide.
The Founding Fathers of the United States, used Vattel’s Laws of Nations as their guide and reference to meanings and definitions within our Constitution.
The myth that the founding of American Republic was based on the philosophy of John Locke could only have been maintained, because the history of Leibniz’s influence was suppressed. The American Revolution was, in fact, a battle against the philosophy of Locke and the English utilitarians. Key to this struggle, was the work of the Eighteenth-century jurist, Emmerich de Vattel, whose widely read text, The Law of Nations, guided the framing of the United States as the world’s first constitutional republic. Vattel had challenged the most basic axioms of the Venetian party, which had taken over England before the time of the American Revolution, and it was from Vattel’s The Law of Nations, more than anywhere else, that America’s founders learned the Leibnizian natural law, which became the basis for the American System.
Benjamin Franklin’s (a signer of our Constitution) letter to Charles W.F. Dumas, December 1775
“I am much obliged by the kind present you have made us of your edition of Vattel. It came to us in good season, when the circumstances of a rising state make it necessary frequently to consult the Law of Nations. Accordingly, that copy which I kept (after depositing one in our own public library here, and send the other to the College of Massachusetts Bay, as you directed) has been continually in the hands of the members of our congress, now sitting, who are much pleased with your notes and preface, and have entertained a high and just esteem for their author”?
I am sure most reading this will know who Benjamin Franklin was. However one reference will not squell the unbelief that Vattel’s Laws of Nations, is not clear enough. So do a search on Laws of Nations and you will get HUNDREDS of responses. http://rs6.loc.gov/ammem/hlawquery.html This from the Library of Congress. Another excellent post is the following; The concept of judicial review, which Hamilton had championed in Rutgers v. Waddington, was included in the U.S. Constitution. In {The Federalist Papers,} No. 78, “The Judges as Guardians of the Constitution,” circulated as part of the debate over the new Constitution, Hamilton developed a conception of constitutional law which was coherent with Vattel’s conception. Hamilton stated that it is a “fundamental principle of republican government, which admits the right of the people to alter or abolish the established Constitution, whenever they find it inconsistent with their happiness.” However, the Constitution can only be changed by the nation as a whole, and not by the temporary passions of the majority or by the legislature. Both to protect the Constitution, but also to ensure just enforcement of the law, the independence of the judiciary from the legislature and the executive branch is essential. The judiciary must be the guardians of the Constitution, to ensure that all legislative decisions are coherent with it. This idea championed by Hamilton, that the courts ensured that the Executive and Legislative branches followed the Constitution, was later established as a principle of American jurisprudence by Chief Justice John Marshall
Again proving the Constitution, it’s meaning, it’s wording , and it’s definitions were clearly a result of being referenced to Vattel’s Laws of Nations. So what does the Laws of Nations say about a “Natural Born Citizen”?
Vattel in Bk 1 Sec 212, states the following.
§ 212. Citizens and natives.
The citizens are the members of the civil society; bound to this society by certain duties, and subject to its authority, they equally participate in its advantages. The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens. As the society cannot exist and perpetuate itself otherwise than by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights. The society is supposed to desire this, in consequence of what it owes to its own preservation; and it is presumed, as matter of course, that each citizen, on entering into society, reserves to his children the right of becoming members of it. The country of the fathers is therefore that of the children; and these become true citizens merely by their tacit consent. We shall soon see whether, on their coming to the years of discretion, they may renounce their right, and what they owe to the society in which they were born. I say, that, in order to be of the country, it is necessary that a person be born of a father who is a citizen; for, if he is born there of a foreigner, it will be only the place of his birth, and not his country.
As I have stated before and will state here again. Barack Obama, he has admitted being a British citizen at birth. From his own web-site, “When Barack Obama Jr. was born on Aug. 4,1961, in Honolulu, Kenya was a British colony, still part of the United Kingdom’s dwindling empire. As a Kenyan native, Barack Obama Sr. was a British subject whose citizenship status was governed by The British Nationality Act of 1948. That same act governed the status of Obama Sr.s children.
Since Sen. Obama has neither renounced his U.S. citizenship nor sworn an oath of allegiance to Kenya, his Kenyan citizenship automatically expired on Aug. 4,1982.”
How can a British subject at birth, be free from any foreign influence as described by John Jay in the following;
The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 [Farrand’s Records, Volume 3]
LXVIII. John Jay to George Washington.3
[Note 3: 3 Documentary History of the Constitution, IV, 237.]
New York 25 July 1787
Permit me to hint, whether it would not be wise & seasonable to provide a a strong check to the admission of Foreigners into the administration of our national Government; and to declare expresly that the Command in chief of the american army shall not be given to, nor devolve on, any but a natural born Citizen.
Again Alexander Hamilton (a signer of our Constitution) in the Gazette of the United States, published in Philadelphia, on June 29, 1793 “The second article of the Constitution of the United States, section first, establishes this general proposition, that “the EXECUTIVE POWER shall be vested in a President of the United States of America…The executive is charged with the execution of all laws, the law of nations, as well as the municipal law, by which the former are recognized and adopted.”
“The Law of Nations” provides the Constitutional definition of a “natural born citizen, historical records reveal that Vattel’s work was quoted at the Federal Constitutional Convention of 1787, various State Constitutional Conventions, and was also referenced in a 1785 letter by John Jay regarding a diplomatic matter.
Should any court finally decide that there IS ample evidence that Barack Obama is not qualified to hold the Office of the President of the United States, they will have to rely on Vattel as the defining definition and argument, and stare reality in the face that not only is Barack Obama unqualified, but that he is not even a US Citizen.
As a final note concerning the Supreme Court and Laws of Nations, I direct you to the following;
The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution [Elliot’s Debates, Volume 3]
Saturday, June 21, 1788.
Page 564
There is to be one Supreme Court–for chancery, admiralty, common pleas, and exchequer, (which great eases are left in England to four great, courts,) to which are added criminal jurisdiction, and all cases depending on the law of nations–a most extensive jurisdiction. This court has more power than any court under heaven. One set of judges ought not to have this power–and judges, particular, who have temptation always before their eyes. The court thus organized are to execute laws made by thirteen nations, dissimilar in their customs, manners, laws, and interests. If we advert to the customs of these different sovereignties, we shall find them repugnant and dissimilar. Yet they are all forced to unite and concur in making these laws. They are to form them on one principle, and on one idea, whether the civil law, common law, or law of nations. The gentleman was driven, the other day, to the expedient of acknowledging the necessity of having thirteen different tax laws. This destroys the principle, that he who lays a tax should feel it and bear his proportion of it. This has not been answered: it will involve consequences so absurd, that, I presume, they will not attempt to make thirteen different codes. They will be obliged to make one code. How will they make one code, without being contradictory to some of the laws of the different states?
Allow me to make one more reference;
The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution [Elliot’s Debates, Volume 4]
Seamen’s Bill.–For the Regulation of Seamen on Board the Public Vessels, and in the Merchant Service of the United States.
House of Representatives, February, 1813.
Mr. SEYBERT. The Constitution of the United States declares, Congress shall have power “to establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies, throughout the United States.” Sir, the rule only relates to the mode; it is only operative during the nascent state of the political conversion, and it ceases to have effect the moment after the process has been completed. Your Constitution only recognizes the highest grade of citizenship that can be conferred. The alien is thus made a native, as it were, and is fully vested with every eight and privilege attached to the native, with the exception impressed on the Constitution Your statutes cannot deprive any particular species of citizens of the right of personal liberty, or the locomotive faculty, because the Constitution does not characterize the citizens of the United states as native and naturalized. Our great family is composed of a class of men forming a single genus, who, to all intents and purposes, are equal, except in the instance specified–that of not being eligible to the presidency of the United States. The only exception to the rule is expressed in the Constitution. If other exceptions had been contemplated by the framers of that instrument, they would also have been expressed. None other having been expressed, he said, it followed that your legislative acts could not make individual exceptions touching the occupation of a citizen. All freemen, citizens of the United States, may pursue their happiness in any manner and in any situation they please, provided they do not violate the rights of others. You cannot deny to any portion of your citizens, who desire to plough the deep, the right to do so, whilst you permit another portion of them the enjoyment of that right.
Mr. ARCHER. The framers of our Constitution did not intend to confine Congress to the technical meaning of the word naturalization, in the exercise of that power–the more especially when the comprehensive word rule was made use of. The principle upon which the power was to be exercised was left to the judicious exercise of Congress; all that was required was, that the rule should be uniform throughout the states. In the grant there is no other specification, as to the exercise of it, than that of its uniformity. The term naturalization was borrowed from England. It must be understood here in the sense and meaning which was, there attached to it. Whether it was absolute or qualified, it was still a naturalization. But the grant of a power in general terms necessarily implied the right to exercise that power in all its gradations. It Was in the political as it was in the natural world: the genus included the species. Besides, the power to naturalize was an attribute to sovereignty. It was either absolute or qualified; and if the grant to Congress only implied a power of unlimited naturalization, the power to qualify existed in the states or in the people, for what was not specifically granted was reserved.
In treating of the executive power, the Constitution defines the qualifications of the President. It declares that he should be a natural-born citizen, or a citizen at the adoption of the Constitution. This article is unquestionably no limitation of the power of Congress upon the subject of naturalization. It was impossible to abridge a specific grant of power without a specific limitation, and the article alluded to could not be tortured, by the most ingenious mind, to diminish, even by implication, the authority of Congress upon a subject to which it was totally irrelevant.
Here’s the lower court decision. The judge there, Judge Morrow, never directly says that Wong Kim Ark = a natural born citizen. He does cite Justice Fields’ (Supreme Court justice riding circuit) opinion in In re Look Ting Sing, where Justice Fields used the term to describe the litigant there. There is no mention of any difference between a natural born citizen and a 14th amendment citizen.
To think that the 14th Amendment created a new type of citizenship is to ignore how the writers of that amendment viewed Dred Scott and how completely they wished to overturn it. From Look Ting Sing:
The condition that the slaves were being elevated to? Field explains, citing Lynch v. Clarke, that “every person born within the dominions and allegiance of the United States, whatever the situation of his parents, was a natural-born citizen.”
Justice Field was on the Supreme Court for the arguments in Wong Kim Ark. One imagines that if Gray had not written the decision there, Justice Field certainly would have affirmed a case relying on his own circuit court decision!
To accept the birthers’ position, you have to warp your mind into a pretzel, requiring one to believe that the writers of the 14th Amendment wanted to make freed slaves into, not fully equal citizens, but slightly less equal citizens (the opposite of the pig in Animal Farm, some of us are less equal), and forgot to mention it!
Hi Black Lion. I noticed your reference on the other site to Meese not supporting the two-fer theories. It may be useful to you to show that Meese, Reagan’s attorney general, actively opposes this notion. He said:
“Under the longstanding English common-law principle of jus soli, persons born within the territory of the sovereign (other than children of enemy aliens or foreign diplomats) are citizens from birth. Thus, those persons born within the United States are “natural born citizens” and eligible to be President. Much less certain, however, is whether children born abroad of United States citizens are “natural born citizens” eligible to serve as President …” Edwin Meese, et al, THE HERITAGE GUIDE TO THE CONSTITUTION (2005)
Hi Greg:
Thanks, that will be very useful.
Granite, use the Meese quote all of the time. It gets the birthers up in arms because when you point out who Meese and the Heritage foundation is, they cant call it some sort of liberal site….
It is hardly worth answering these idiot birther arguments as they are so amateurish. Since no court has ever said one needs citizen parents to be natural born, they need to invent this 3rd type of citizen so that every time a court calls someone born on US soil a citizen, and not a natural born citizen, they argue that such means they are differentiating between natural born and just a citizen. Their tiny brains don’t understand that when not talking about presidential eligibility, there is reason to use the term natural born so that failing to call someone natural born when “natural born” status is not relevant does mean the court doesn’t think one is natural born. Duh!!! Hence, when Horace Binney on his paper on the English common law didn’t call a child of aliens natural born, he was not implying such child wasn’t natural born as his paper was on the English common law which everyone knows bestows natural born status by place of birth. There is no second class of subjects due to locality of birth.
Of course, if these clowns read the debates from the 39th Congress they would see how laughable their claims are as pretty much everyone who spoke on the issue said the amendment and the civil rights act were merely declaratory of existing law and many tied the meaning directly to the NBC clause in the original constitution including Trumbull. Not one person suggested they were changing the law of citizenship. At least 3 Congressmen stated that their actions would allow a black to be President which obviously couldn’t happen unless they were overturning Dred Scott’s proclamation that blacks couldn’t be citizens under the original Constitution.
“The Constitution of the United States provides that no person but a native-born citizen of the United States, with other qualifications as to age and residence, shall be president of the United States…. Is the Congress of the United States prepared at this time to adopt a proposition that negroes and Indians and Chinese and all persons of that description shall be eligible to the office of President…” Senator Williams, Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., lst Sess. 573 (1866).
“Now if you pass this bill you will allow the negroes of this country to compete for the high office of President of the United States, because if they are citizens at all, they come within the meaning and letter of the constitution of the united states, which allows all natural born citizens to become candidates for the Persistency…” Rep. Rogers, Cong. Globe, 39th Cong. 1st Sess. 1122 (1866).
“I want to make another extract from the speech from the gentleman from New Jersey. He said ‘If you pass this bill you will allow negroes to compete for the high office of President of the United States.’ As for the fear which haunts the gentleman from New Jersey, if there is a negro in the country who is so far above all the white men of the country that only four million of his own race can elect him president of the United states over twenty six million of white people, I think we ought to encourage such talent in the country.” Rep. Windham, Cong. Globe, 39th Cong. 1st Sess. 1158 (1866)
In fact, according to the birthers, blacks are not eligible for President for if they merely created another class of citizen and did not address Dred Scott’s prohibition of citizenship under the original Constitution.
However, Meese didn’t write it, James Ho did. Meese was the editor. However, it still is in the conservative Heritage Foundation guide.
He acutally re-pastes the exact same thing over and over. I responded to this exact pile of crap a few weeks ago. Comically, some of the stuff he quotes actually hurts him. For example, the Seybert and Archer quotes offer nothing to help his argument and Seybert says that the rights of native and naturalized citizens are the same except for the right to be president. Duh.
That Gretawire story is suspiciously similar to the idiocy spewed by Borderraven, especially in its consistently misused commas. I’m also curious as to how one “squells” anything. It sounds rather unclean.
I think this is the person at Gretawire who actually repeatedly argued to me that because George Washington took the Law of Naitions (the version that did not contain the phrase “natural born citizen”) out of the library AFTER the ratification of the Consitution, it of course meant that the Law of Nations defined an NBC. Hard to fathom how someone can manage to feed themselves with that kind of logical facilities.
Re: Meese was the editor.
Thanks for that fact. Still, I think in such a volume the editor is the key role. They did not pick Meese to check the spelling. If Ho and Meese disagreed, who’s views would get in the book?
Re: George Washington reading Vattel.
My line is usually: “George Washington read a lot of other things too.”
The whole thing seems to be a cut and paste from Nobarack08 in May 2009 (although at least one paragraph is plagarized from a 1997 article by the Larouchist Robert Plant)
http://nobarack08.wordpress.com/2009/05/22/natural-born-citizen-legally-defined/
Good catch….I was unaware of that….Thanks for that. That is what is great about this site….The combined knowledge of the posters…Which is why the birthers that attempt to come here always end up experiencing an epic fail….
Actually Washington not returning the book may mean he never got around to reading it
And he also might have used it to prop up furniture and completely forgot about it. Or he used it for kindling on one of those cold Virginia nights.
I think it more likely that the founders used de Vattel’s treatise as an example of what NOT to do for our nascent nation. If you actually read the “Law of Nations” you will find numerous examples of how our country differs from this Prussian’s ideas.
I have seen these examples and they are numerous.
From the Washington Post…
“The president, whose middle name is “Hussein,” was born in Hawaii and moved to Indonesia at age 6 to live with his mother and stepfather, who was Muslim. While there, he attended Catholic school and Muslim school. He also attended Muslim prayer services with his Indonesian stepfather. According to an interview he did in 2007 with the New York Times, he said that the Muslim call to prayer is “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.”
The president has refused to allow any school records, grades, papers written by him, or other records from his youth to be released. This has led people to speculate, and it did not help when he mis-spoke in a television interview with George Stephanopoulos referring to his, “Muslim faith,” only to be corrected by Stephanopoulos.”
http://onfaith.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/ronald_rychlak/2010/11/a_problem_of_his_own_making.html
Seems like the writer, Ronald Rychlak, who according to his bio is “Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, University of Mississippi School of Law; adviser to the Holy See’s delegation to the United Nations,” might be dipping his toe in the birther hiding his records and being a secret Muslim tome.