Something from high school civics class came to mind today from the old constitution of the Soviet Union that guaranteed:
freedom of religious worship and freedom of anti-religious propaganda
Birthers have used their freedom of speech. They speak in person, they speak in meetings, they carry signs, they speak in email, they talk on the radio, and they speak on web sites. Some even take out half-page ads in major newspapers. Jerome Corsi’s birther book is a best seller before it even comes out. Even though “birther speech” is of low quality (by that I mean fallacious argument, rumors and outright lies) it still travels unfiltered through many channels. As I am fond of saying, “any fool can make a web site.”
Something fundamentally changed this past month when Donald Trump hit the television circuit with his recitation of rumors about Barack Obama’s birth certificate. There was an immediate backlash of birther debunking and fact checking from all over. My Google alerts on “birther” suddenly filled up. Hundreds of newspapers were carrying wire stories, all of which said one way or another that the birther claims had long been disproven. Even Republican leaders and deep south editorial pages were denouncing the birthers as kooks. The TV networks skewered Trump. The fact checking web sites such as FactCheck.org and PolitiFact.com did special reports. The New York Times did a major story on the psychology of why birthers cling to false ideas.
Everybody’s heard about it now; I think the birthers have saturated the market. Even though Corsi is a first-rate political smear artist, we’re not likely to see much new in his book about the basic question of where Barack Obama was born. Those who are not birthers have the facts readily at their fingertips.
The startling number of birthers (whatever that number really is) certainly shakes my confidence in the rationality of my fellow citizens, but I don’t see those numbers going up. I think the birther movement has peaked.
I hope it is understood that the reader is invited to insert “birther” in the place of “religious” in the Soviet constitution citation.
Since there have been no cases (at least that I know of) of birthers transforming into obots or vice versa, it is safe to say that for the birther movement to grow, they need to convince currently uniformed (or ‘weakly’ informed) people to become birthers. Since the evidence and facts are all on one side, the more the general public is informed on the issue, the worse off the birthers are. Donald Trump is a huge disaster for the birthers – he’s a complete publicity whore who is always going to attract media attention when he chums the water. Even though the birthers have been clamoring for attention all along, I think they’re finding out that it isn’t good for them. Millions of people are being inoculated against the birthers by having someone they trust say that the birthers are whackjobs spewing long-debunked theories. I can’t see any way for the birther movement to grow when their pool of potential converts is shrinking and they have no way of controlling the attention they’ve garnered. I agree that we’re living in the ‘golden age’ of birtherism – the height of their political power (which seems to be limited to the ability to move Quixotic bills through state legislatures [maybe they’ll get one signed into law yet…] – which could be significant (cf. Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio) if the birthers weren’t so completely naive and incompetent. It’s not surprising that we’ve seen most of the big birther brands raising their profiles of late – if they are honest with themselves, they realize that this is probably the last big PayPal boom…
Take a look at “The Science of Why We Don’t Believe Science,” by Chris Mooney:
“A MAN WITH A CONVICTION is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point.”
Source link: http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/03/denial-science-chris-mooney#disqus_thread
Does anyone know whether the Chester Arthur birthers continued their rumor-mongering against him after the election? Was there an upsurge after he succeeded to the Presidency? My sense it that after the election it petered out..
So what explains the current birther persistence, especially in the absence of a single new fact? Part is certainly race. But I also think part is the internet. We live in the age of the self-appointed expert. Spending long years studying and practicising a profession doesn’t elevate you above any Joe Schmo with a keyboard. Again to return to Arthur, his opponents felt it necessary to hire a well-respected attorney, Arthur Hinman, to invvestigate him. The modern birthers seem to think a mentally unbalanced conspiracy theorist, a dentist, a poker player and a DWI shyster will do the trick. Clearly birrthers have slid down the evolutionary tree in the last 110 years.
As for whether they have peaked (I might rather say reached maximum depths) it’s a common phenomenon in infectious disease that very virulent pathogens fairly quickly infect all the susceptible individuals in a population and either kill them or are fought off. At that point the infection peters out, because the only individuals left are those who are resistant.
I think Ann might appreciate a little help against Puzo1 on this site:
http://thedailypen.blogspot.com/2011/04/final-report-obamas-birth-announcements.html?showComment=1303691392617#c3240602333748305521
Yes, they did, but I presume that it was in preparation for a re-election campaign that never happened (Arthur was dying and didn’t run for another term). A. P. Hinman’s book, How a British Subject Became President of the United States, was published in 1884.
I think Ellen would appreciate a little help against a-pen on this site: http://thedailypen.blogspot.com/2011/04/final-report-obamas-birth-announcements.html?showComment=1303691392617#c3240602333748305521
Sorry, that should be on this site: http://www.westernjournalism.com/obamas-ineligibility-the-american-press-has-dishonored-itself/
That is a great article. Thanks!
Well said! Unfortunately, way too true…and I wish I knew how this real modern problem could be effectively addressed….
“Peaked,” probably — like everything else, there’s a maximum audience, and the market for it has robably been saturate.
But as long as Obama remains your President I doubt it’s going to go away or decrease significantly.
Sorry to buck the opinion trend but it seems I’m far more pessimistic than most on here about the ability of the general public to separate facts from fiction and innuendo. Hoping for the best but expecting and planning for the worst is kinda ingrained in my psyche.
I think birtherism has very far from peaked and is going to spike considerably, in at least the short term, upon release of the Corsi book. The reality that the book will contain mountains of reconstituted and already comprehensively debunked nonsense is really neither here nor there.
Birtherism is going nowhere in a downward direction the next 6 years at least (Obama being a shoo-in bookmaker’s certainty for another term), irrespective of whether Obama pulls a 1961 bunch of flowers out of his sleeve with a theatrical flourish at precisely what has been calculated to be the most politically opportune moment or whether in the other extreme he decides to never produce it at all.
Has birtherism peaked? Meh, we’ll see; I remember John Cole taking about peak wingnut back in 08.
Scientist:
I agreed that the Internet is a problem, but partially disagree as to why. I think it’s the perennial echo chambers that many people tend to read and obtain news from.
We’re sadly in a time where someone can guarantee that all of the news, “facts”, and information that they receive is pre-sorted to ensure they will agree with it. Any evidence to the contrary is eliminated, dismissed as debunked without actually debunking it, discredited, or presented for mocking. In addition, all of the discussion they have with others online, is guaranteed to be also with people they agree with, as others tend to be banned or the site itself is moderated and contrary views are not welcome.
I cringe looking at places like freep or the Post and Email and seeing a thread that amounts to “Is Obama bad? Yes or no?” and seeing 500 posts of everyone agreeing and the only discussion is who hates him more. Or how much to curtail this, or how much to increase the defense budget, or whatever.
Why do birthers believe there’s actually millions of themselves, rather than a small but fervent group? Because they frequent all the same echo chambers and the few contrary posts that get through end up in a ban. If everyone I spoke to day in day out agreed with everything I said I’d probably start feeling like everyone in the world agreed too.
The sad part to me is seeing the people who, blinded by these who chambers, admit they’ve started to shun (or be ostracized by) their husbands, wives, family, etc. They really believe their family is part of that tiny percentage that disagrees with them, since day in day out they only talk to people that all believe the same things they do.
if obama was a republican you DEATHERS would be screaming bloody murder.
what part of the following is not clear to you DEATHERS?
Senate Resolution 511: Recognizing that John Sidney McCain, III, is a natural born citizen…
Mrs. MCCASKILL (for herself, Mr. LEAHY, Mr. OBAMA, Mr. COBURN, Mrs. CLINTON, and Mr. WEBB) submitted the following resolution;
“Recognizing that John Sidney McCain, III, is a natural born citizen.
Whereas the Constitution of the United States requires that, to be eligible for the Office of the President, a person must be a `natural born Citizen’ of the United States;…
…Whereas John Sidney McCain, III, was born to American citizens on an American military base in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That John Sidney McCain, III, is a `natural born Citizen’ under Article II, Section 1, of the Constitution of the United States.” – (April 30, 2008)
On the House floor with no objections…
“All from other lands, who by the terms of [congressional] laws and a compliance with their provisions become naturalized, are adopted citizens of the United States; all other persons born within the Republic, of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty, are natural born citizens. Gentleman can find no exception to this statement touching natural-born citizens except what is said in the Constitution relating to Indians.” – (1862)
“Every human being born within the jurisdiction of the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty is, in the language of your Constitution itself, a natural born citizen….” – (1866)
Rep. John Bingham, Principal Framer of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution -Source.
From the Supreme Court of the United States…
“The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners. Some authorities go further and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their parents. As to this class there have been doubts, but never as to the first. For the purposes of this case it is not necessary to solve these doubts.” – MINOR v. HAPPERSETT, 88 U.S. 162 (1874) U.S. Supreme Court
I’m usually not one to call for censorship, because banning birthers means we don’t have the fun of batting them around any more. Still, this guy “The Far Left View” is particularly nasty. Why hasn’t he been banned yet?
Also, didn’t Congress also pass a unanimous resolution stating that Barack Obama was a natural born citizen born in Hawaii?
hey, farleftview. If you are going to copy and paste http://obamareleaseyourrecords.blogspot.com/2011/04/bloomberg-on-fox-news-sunday-obamas.html wholesale you should at least give attribution to the guy.
Anyway, Alkeny Vs Daniels
Based upon the language of Article II, Section 1, Clause 4 and the guidance provided by Wong Kim Ark, we conclude that persons born within the borders of the United States are “natural born Citizens” for Article II, Section 1 purposes, regardless of the citizenship of their parents. Just as a person “born within the British dominions [was] a natural-born British subject” at the time of the framing of the U.S. Constitution, so too were those “born in the allegiance of the United States [] natural-born citizens.”15
I believe that more experts on the constitutional meaning of Natural Born Citizen would be very helpful on: http://www.westernjournalism.com/obamas-ineligibility-the-american-press-has-dishonored-itself/
Re: Minor v Happersett
The fact that there were doubts at one time does not mean anything. There were doubts that the world was round at one time. The fact is that the US Supreme Court in the Wong Kim Ark case ruled after the Minor case. And in that ruling, six to two with one justice not voting, the US Supreme Court ruled that EVERY child born in the US is natural born. That is the constitutional meaning of Natural Born. A person who is both Natural Born and a US citizen is, duh, a Natural Born Citizen.
That is why the US Congress voted to confirm Obama’s election unanimously, because not one member among the 535 thought that Obama was born outside of the USA, and not one member agreed with the crazy theory that two citizen parents are required for Natural Born Citizen status.
Re: Minor v Happersett
I love it when this is the best Court Case Birthers can come up with- because Minor explicitly acknowledges that anyone born in the United States may be a natural born citizen- it only acknowledges that there are ‘doubts’- but it doesn’t address the doubts.
Birthers claim that Minor shows that NBC requires two parent citizens and birth in the U.S. is just a blatent lie, but they use it because it is the only court case they have.
WRONG! They’ve got Dredd Scott, too…
Here are some:
http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/page/6/?s=great+mother
http://naturalborncitizenshipresearch.blogspot.com/2010/10/view-of-constitution-of-united-states.html
While I have a huge problem with the justices’ mangling of the historical differences between British and American law in Wong Kim Ark with respect to the constitutional construct of natural-born citizenship (see: Righting the Confusion of Citizenship and Nationality: The Facts, The Myths and Other Riddles: “Was Senator John McCain a U.S. Citizen at Birth?”, “A Critique of the Chin Argument” and “Wong Kim Ark meet Rogers” especially; http://michaeldavidrawlings1.blogspot.com/2011/03/righting-confusion-of-citizenship-and.html), which some have sited in the above as a matter of authority, it is clear that Obama was born in the United States and is a natural-born citizen.
Roughly, birthers fall into three groups: (1) those who are ignorant of the facts and tend to believe the claims because they simply do not like Obama or his policies, (2) those who know the facts and yet go on peddling this nonsense (scoundrels) and (3) those who have examined the facts but cannot wrap their heads around them and dispel their suspicions (kooks). It’s the last category of birthers that is the most bizarre.
“Who are the Real Conspirators?”; http://michaeldavidrawlings1.blogspot.com/2009/12/house-of-cards-case-against-birther.html
“A House of Cards: The Case Against the Birther Movement”; http://michaeldavidrawlings1.blogspot.com/2009/12/house-of-cards-case-against-birther_22.html
Is there a web site where we could learn more about that? 👿
The birther movement has peaked in the sense that anyone who really cares about the issue has made up their minds one way or the other. I expect, though, a spike in media coverage of the subject on the day Corsi’s book is released, and again when it’s close the 2012 election. In the fall of 2012, I expect Obama will address the issue.
He may, but I don’t think it will be via the release of any document that hasn’t been released. I could see him exhibiting the COLB in a forum where it will be seen by the large number of people who haven’t actually looked at it (possibly a commercial). He might have also have other prominent, well-known figures order current birth documents to show that theirs look just like his. Imagine the effect of Bruce Springsteen showing a freshly-minted New Jersey COLB side-by-side with Obama’s (showing the same information) with “Born in the USA” playing in the background.
And that would only be if the polls showed a close race. If he’s comfortably ahead, I don’t think you’ll hear a word.
Mr. Rawlings
I poked around your website (not sure that I agree with your positions, but you present them well…). I do, however, have a couple of nits to pick on your article about Indonesian Citizenship (references for my comments can be found under ‘birther mythbusting’ at the blog ‘BadFiction’ linked below): You repeat the assertion that foreign children were not allowed to go to school in Indonesia – this is false. Indonesian children had a RIGHT to go to school (which may be why Lolo Soetoro listed President Obama as ‘Indonesian’… or he may have just thought that his marriage to Dr. Dunham made President Obama a citizen of his country…) – why would any country make a law denying foreign children an education? Also, Indonesian law would have required President Obama and Lolo Soetoro to be witnessed in his home (in Indonesia) by a government official before the age of 5. According to the only available accounts, President Obama arrived in Indonesia after his 5th birthday. So you can add ‘highly improbable’ to ‘not relevant’ regarding President Obama’s alleged adoption. Finally (and this is just a criticism of your writing, not your facts) I don’t think that you do a very good job making it clear what a country ‘not recognizing dual (note spelling [or I may have to challenge you to a dual]) citizenship means (to be fair, most everyone glosses over this colossal birther fail*) as well as that the determination of who is a US citizen is based solely on US law (Indonesian law is irrelevant) and vice versa.
*The US not recognizing dual citizenship means that even if President Obama was recognized as a citizen by another country, the US would not consider him anything but a US citizen. In fact, for the birther theories to work, the US MUST recognize dual citizenship (how can they exclude something they deliberately ignore the existence of?)
I would argue that the ‘kooks’ are really just a subset of 1 (they are certainly ignorant and biased against President Obama…) and that all members of that group share the primary characteristic of bigotry against President Obama. In other words, if you are a birther then you are either a con man or a bigot…
How about at a campaign event in October 2012? – and Bruce should be SINGING the song (and not in the background, either… [he can have his NJ COLB hanging off of his guitar or something {and have an appropriate local official validate them both}])
Actually, I’m with Bluemoon that there are overall, 3 major categories here and I have pretty much been alluding to as much for the past several years.
My personal groupings would tend to fall in line quite similar to what Bluemoon listed and I would add that I think a fair amount of Birthers could exhibit a combination of any or all three…or transition from one type to another over time.
So yeah, simply put in closest match to Bluemoon’s list, I see them as:
1. Willfully gullible/ignorant/in denial (receptive audience looking for confirmation bias)
2. Intentional Liars/ Con Artists / Smear Merchants (including both propaganda agitators and profit scam artists)
3. (And I go further here than Bluemoon in painting these folks) – The perpetually paranoid/crazy and seriously mentally ill. -I see Scientist’s point that some of these are just the more extreme end of #1 who have snapped, due to ODS. But I think there are also a bunch of true loons who were always truly crazy and with types of inherent brain damage that makes them incapable of rational/logical thought or proper comprehension skills. The real world will never make sense to these folks and they are overly ripe as a mark for any conspiracy theory con that can stoke their fears. Quite a few of the ones that are a perpetual danger to themselves and others probably fit in this broad group of True Kooks.
I was going to lambaste you for logic more irrational than a Vulcan’s… during the pon-far, but your comment got me to thinking about how to estimate the size of the various groups (in both the context of Bovril’s project and the birther model I mentioned in my last email). My guess is that the kooks are a very small fraction of the birthers (although they may well be some of the most vocal…) – I think that this could probably be estimated by looking at the size of various conspiracy theories and controlling for other factors (difficult, but possible in my opinion – in fact, I just had a good idea about how to try to do it…). The way I think of it is that the potential size of true believers in a conspiracy is the kooks (who are susceptible to all CTs) and people that (for one reason or another) are susceptible to a particular CT. When I look at the size of the birthers vs the size of the truthers, for example (or the moon hoaxers [otherwise known as ‘Buzz’s bitches’] – they would be more apolitical…) I would expect the differences in the size of the movements (viewed as a whole) to reflect differences in the particularly susceptible people rather than the kooks – the birthers may even have fewer kooks since left-wing kooks (moonbats [as opposed to wingnuts on the right]) may not be susceptible to (or vulnerable to inoculation against) birtherism.
In other words: you’re wrong all day long and your [sic] a dirty filthy liar for disagreeing with me!
[Sorry, I just wanted to see how my argument would look through a birther confirmation bias – birther-colored glasses are scary! *shudder*]
p.s. We agree about 2 so there seemed to be no need to mention it… but I did anyway 😉
I think the federal government should fund a study of this using stimulus money. 👿
I was joking about about federal funding, but not that I think someone should do a study, maybe the Pew foundation.
I’m working on it. Seriously. I would like to discuss it with you via email.
Well, my favorite part of your post was moon hoaxers = “Buzz’s bitches”… LOL! That’s awesome!
Other than that, I got some laughs and generally didn’t see anything in disagreement between what you’ve said and what I’m trying to grasp at in a generalized sense.
So, I took away that we agree on point #2 and the early part of your post seemed to be a better explanation of my point #3, so I guess I’m at a loss to understanding where you take issue?
All that really remains is #1 (1. Willfully gullible/ignorant/in denial (receptive audience looking for confirmation bias))
Not sure what I’m missing here, but I think that #1 is the biggest group of Birthers overall – call it the general “masses” of the movement, if you will, with #2 being the smaller but louder manipulators driving the picture and #3 being a mix of just crazy folks that stand out when they pop up, because they are both vocal and driven like a moth to flame to stuff like this)…
Anyways, I look forward to more of your insight as to what I’m missing and where it breaks down.
I just wanted to throw in some insults and divisiveness so the birthers wouldn’t feel picked on… (I did really start off disagreeing with your comment before thinking of a better way to see it in which we were both more or less correct after which I became distracted by the idea of estimating the kook population [I fight a constant battle against SOS {Shiny Object Syndrome}]).
LOL! Ok, I see.
Well, either way, my hypothesis was mere postulation based on my observations over time. I don’t have solid statistical data to go on, just the patterns I’ve perceived. I feel that my generalizations make sense, but I’m definitely open to additional ideas.
Unlike Birthers, I’m always happy to have valid criticism and to be challenged in a way that might lead to better conclusions. I’m open to other interpretations and refinement.
Half of Congress did. The House of Representatives approved a Resolution commemorating the 50th Anniversary of Hawaii statehood which contained the following sentence: “The 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961.”
The resolution (HR Res. 593, 111th Congress [2009]) was approved on a vote of 378-0.
Actually, my site. I address the matter in detail. It’s complex though and requires some patient reading, careful thought and study.
Link: http://michaeldavidrawlings1.blogspot.com/2011/03/righting-confusion-of-citizenship-and.html
See the articles under Righting the Confusion of Citizenship and Nationality: The Facts, The Myths and Other Riddles:
“Citizenship and Nationality: Historical Foundation and Framework”
“The Natural-Born Citizen Clause of the Constitution”
“A Compendium of the History of Jus Sanguinis”
“The Straight Dope on U.S. Territories”
“Was Senator John McCain a U.S. Citizen at Birth?”
“A Critique of the Chin Argument”
“Wong Kim Ark meet Rogers”
These should be read in the order listed as each informs the next, including those that seem unrelated, as they actually provide a general foundation on citizenship and nationality that will be needed in order to understand the observations in the last three articles, especially, which address the matter directly. I trust you’ll find these articles to be well documented and researched by one who is in fact an expert on the law of citizenship and nationality.
Well, we’ll just have to disagree here. My facts are right. At the time, the Indonesia government did not allow non-citizens to attend its public schools. That is not the case today. That’s all.
But, so what? It’s has absolutely nothing to do with the price of citizenship in the United States.
I find your criticisms mystifying, as my whole point is that none of this makes any difference at all with respect to the status of Obama’s U.S. citizenship. The argument of duel citizenship is bogus. You missed the point entirely. It does not matter whether Obama was made a citizen of Indonesia or not, by way of adoption or not, as far as U.S. law is concerned. Obama was a minor and a citizen of the United States by birth. Period. A minor cannot surrender, denounce or lose his U.S. citizenship. Period. It doesn’t matter what his parents did or did not do. As far as U.S. law is concerned he was never a duel citizen. His adoption, his attendance of public school in Indonesia, even his Indonesian citizenship: these things have no bearing whatsoever!
I suggest you carefully reread the article. I make all of this abundantly clear.
It would be nice if you cited a source for that statement. Nevertheless, let’s say that was the law. The question is how was that law enforced? Was a statement by an Indonesian citizen parent or step-parent that the child was a citizen sufficient? Perhaps if that was accompanied by a small “donation” to the school and a “gift” for the Principal? Most US school districts limit attendance to residents, yet we read of many cases where non-residents attend a school in a good district for years before being found out. The NY Thruway has a speed limit of 65 mph, yet I can set my cruise control for 72 and drive unmolested from Buffalo to NYC. So, regardless of what the Indonesian law at the time was, I don’t think merely the fact of attending a public school there proves Indonesian citizenship, rather than a step-parent simply writing that on a form. I would have to see an Indonesian passport to consider the matter proven.
I agree with you that it has no impact on eligibility, but we need to be clear on the differences between what a law might say and what actually occurs in the real world.
I see a lot of claims with little authority to back them up. For example:
“Originally, under constitutional law, persons born on the soil of the nation were not necessarily natural-born citizens of the United States, and the original rule of exclusion did not just apply to the children of slaves and indentured servants. One had to be born of both the soil and the blood of the nation, with the natural-born citizenship of children born abroad of U.S. citizens predicated on the citizen parents’ prior claim on the soil of the nation. In 1898, the Court superimposed the British common-law rule of birthright citizenship on the constitutional rule of jus soli in the landmark case of Wong Kim Ark.”
I have no idea what “both of the soil and the blood of the nation” is supposed to mean. If you mean the parents had to be citizens, there is simply no early authority to support such claim. Rather, all early evidence suggests that persons born in the states from the beginning considered themselves to be natural born citizens and the grandfather clause was added to apply to foreign born founders such as Hamilton and Wilson. I suggest you read Wong Kim Ark more carefully, as it cites pretty much every legal giant in the early republic and could have cited dozens more as the evidence is overwhelming that we always followed English law.
While I think there is a good argument that children of citizens born oversees were intended to be natural born, it is far from certain as there is little early authority to support such claim as the many arguments on such subject on this site have shown.
What is your source?
I couldn’t find any links on your site to back this up. I must have overlooked it.
What is your source for proof of Indonesian adoption and citizenship?
Well, I can’t agree with that. My encounters with birthers, of which there have been many, have not lead me to believe they are bigots. On the contrary, while some may in fact be bigots, by and large they simply don’t like the man or his policies. BTW, neither do I. I’m a conservative. I despise everything Obama stands for, and that has nothing to do with the color of his skin. I‘ve even run into some black conservatives who were birthers. Are they bigots? Im not a birther or a bigot. No. This is a matter of dishonesty or ignorance or both for the most part. Nothing more.
You are confusing bigoted with racist.
bigoted |ˈbigətid|
adjective
obstinately convinced of the superiority or correctness of one’s own opinions and prejudiced against those who hold different opinions
You can be a bigot and not be a racist. But all racists are bigots.
Remember Logic 101?
From my anecdotal experience, most birthers are bigots. Many of them exhibit confirmation bias, xenophobic opinions of immigrants and foreign nations and a distorted view of reality. They have a blatant disdain for authority and the law, consistently move goalposts when confronted with facts and can’t seem to comprehend the concept of Ockham’s Razor.
And some birthers are con artists who steal from those with blind hatred. They may or may not be bigots.
And a person of any color can be a bigot.
Once again: “obstinately convinced of the superiority or correctness of one’s own opinions and prejudiced against those who hold different opinions”
Obstinate is an understatement.
“by and large they simply don’t like the man or his policies”
Then I would expect far more debates on his policies or ideology rather than the never ending onslaught of accusations of fraud leveled against the legal authority of the former Republican administration of the state of Hawaii if that was true.
“A House of Cards: the Case Against the Birther Movement”
See Link: http://michaeldavidrawlings1.blogspot.com/2009/12/house-of-cards-case-against-birther_22.html
Especially, “Obama an Indonesian Citizen?” (see sources below article)
But in any event, it does not matter whether Obma was adopted by his step-father or not, and it does not matter whether Obama was made an Indonesian citizen or not. A minor cannot renounce or lose his U.S. citizenship, and his parents cannot renounce it for him or take any action against his citizenship. It does not matter what they did or did not do. Period! That’s the point. Obama is a natural-born citizen of the United States from birth. Period. Nothing that occurred in Indonesia could have changed that.
Only an adult can renounce his U.S. citizenship or take an action that might undermine it. Obama never did any such thing. Period.
I’m getting the impression that many of you have been disputing birthers’ claims that Obama was adopted/made an Indonesian citizen as if these things mattered. They don’t. I know what I’m talking about. I’m an expert on U.S. citizenship and nationality law, and the works on my blog clearly demonstrate that. The birthers’ claims of disqualification on the basis of these things is bogus! It’s as simple as that.
Although I am British I have spent most of my adult years (about 40 of them) living and working from a base in The Middle East. My work takes me all over the world including Indonesia, Malaysia and other countries in that region, though usually short trips. I have several Indonesian acquaintances and know several non Indonesians who have lived there.
This is not exactly scientific class research but I have e mailed two of them and spoke to one by telephone. Only two are old enough to remember anything about schooling in Indonesia in the 70’s (later part). None knew anything about the 60’s.
None are aware of any specific ‘ban’ on foreign nationality children attending schools in their eras although two said they thought certain selected schools were reserved for Indonesian nationals only.
On a separate note it strikes me as a little bit of an oddity for a school which was operating in an era in which it was an essential prequisite of attendance for all children to be of Indonesian nationality to even have sections on the registration form which required the nationality of the child to be selected and filled in.
You haven’t been here long enough or you would know that such an impression is inaccurate. There are no regular birther debunking members of this board who think that adoption or dual nationality ‘matter’ to his right to US citizenship or his eligibility.
However they do tend to view things objectively and seek verifications. They certainly aren’t prone to just taking someone’s word for everything. Don’t take offence.
Where is the link to the appropriate Indonesian law?
Where is the proof of Indonesian citizenship from the government of Indonesia?
Why would a school record be considered credible evidence if it’s not backed up by a certified government document?
I think we’re getting sidetracked here. From all indications, it appears that he was adopted by his step-father as he was enrolled under his step-father’s sir name and was enrolled as a citizen of Indonesia. That’s all. But of course, who cares? Birthers either believe or insinuate that a minor can hold duel citizenship in the same sense as that of an adult, and that Obama therefore lost his U.S. citizenship. Nonsense. The birther’s argument is bogus from beginning to end. That’s the only point I’m making. I don’t care if he was actually adopted or made an Indonesian citizen or not. It has no relevance to the aim of the piece. The piece is meant to expose the birther’s dishonesty and his ignorance of U.S. law, as that’s all that matters here.
But check out the sources below the article.
http://michaeldavidrawlings1.blogspot.com/2010/01/obama-indonesian-citizen.html
For crying out loud. Who cares? It’s not relevant. Get over it. I just got to this site. Are you always this annoying? Beyond mere historical detail, it doesn’t friggin’ matter! The point of the piece is that either way, it has no bearing on Obama’s U.S. citizenship. End of story. If you can dig up more definitive info on that particular matter, let us know. Okay? LOL!
You mean surname, right? Enrolled as does not mean is. I see no evidence that the Prresident ever held Indoonesian citizenship, the school form notwithstanding.
I entirely get your point about it not mattering legally whether he held Indonesian nationality as a child. It might matter politically, however. Regardless of whether it matters or not, I think one should have one’s facts straight, especially if one wishes to have one’s opinion taken seriously. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, “everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not to their own set of facts.”
You made a claim that the President was adopted. Back it up with credible, legal evidence or be rightfully mocked.
A link to World Net Daily propaganda is not credible nor is a school registration form.
I know dual citizenship doesn’t affect eligibility. You’re missing the point spectacularly.
You claimed, “I know what I’m talking about. I’m an expert on U.S. citizenship and nationality law, and the works on my blog clearly demonstrate that.”
No, it doesn’t. Saying you’re an expert doesn’t magically make it true.
Yes, I am always this annoying to people who make claims they can’t back up and then who desperately try to move the goalposts by protesting, “Get over it.” like a petulant child.
You made the claim. Back it up with credible evidence or watch what little credibility you may have initially had slip away like a fart in the wind.
“If you can dig up more definitive info on that particular matter, let us know.Okay?LOL!”
Sure. This was EXTREMELY difficult to find: 🙄
http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2009/02/hollister-v-indonesian-citizenship-law/
LOL, indeed.
If you spent some time checking out the discussions on this site (and if you didn’t, it’s your own damn fault for not doing recon…), you would know that I was treating you with kid gloves compared to my treatment of lying, hypocritical, stupid, ignorant, moronic, idiotic, dishonest, unpatriotic, unAmerican, seditious birthers. How I treat people depends on whether on not I think that they are acting in good faith (not whether they agree with me or not – it happens that almost all of the people who act in good faith here more or less agree with me, but the former is the standard I use to judge them rather than the latter. I thought that you had some interesting ideas (one of which I wanted to explore in a way you hadn’t) and made a couple of minor (i.e. easily corrected) errors. We’ve been discussing on other threads the fact that birthers will never acknowledge errors while most obots (and people of good character in general – Professor Chin and Doc C were cited as examples) acknowledge the argument and either admit their mistake or rebut the criticism. You chose to say “my facts are right” without any additional argument. This sends up red flags to many of us here. I urge you to try to prove that these misgivings that I (and I believe others) have about your character wrong. Fair warning – you have the right to remain silent. If you choose to give up that right, then anything you say can, and will, be held against you.
Know your rights, these are your rights… – The Clash
But if they merely don’t like the man or his policies, than why don’t they simply focus on those HONEST disagreements with him, instead of having to manufacture a bunch of nonsense smears.
There is no SANE nor HONORABLE justification to just smear and demonize someone merely because you differ with them.
If the strength and merit of your argument for disagreement can’t be made by honestly debating those issues and you have to resort to tabloid-style gossip rumors… then there IS no merit to your argument.
You say those folks aren’t bigots… but I would tend to be very skeptical of that. If you have to go to the level of making excuses and making up “sinister” stories to justify your reasons for not liking someone, you are not being rational and instead operating on some gut-level predjudice.
Whether that predjudice is based on issues of generalized condemnation of someone based on their assumed political identification, religion or race, those are ALL forms of BIGOTRY.
If you are against President Obama for his policies, fine (if you’re against him because of the right-wing straw man of his polices, that’s another matter entirely and not one for this blog…). But if you are against President Obama because you think he’s a… negro, communist, socialist, left-wing, Kenyan, muslim, CIA agent, Soviet spy, nazi, etc. (I think you get the point) then you are making a prior judgement of the man rather than judging him by his actions. Another way of saying that is that you are prejudiced against President Obama and prejudiced people are known as bigots. Birtherism is based on some sort of prejudice against the president – ergo, all birthers are bigots.
What indications? The single unsigned school document? The school yearbooks from the time he returned to the US at age ten until high school graduation all list him as Barry Obama, not Soetoro. So when did his name change back?
My own opinion is that had the marrage lasted, there probably would have been an adoption. And that may explain the school form. Although it is also possible that they listed his name that way in order to facilitate him getting into school.
lmao 😀
*snort*
At least I didn’t start talking about the space of all linear functionals on a metric space (otherwise known as the DUAL space…) 😉
Look, we DO agree with what you said in your earlier post:
If there is a side-tracking causing a quibble it is when you’ve dovetailed away from law to unsupported speculation that gives a false impression:
Yes, WE all know what you’ve said above. But YES, there are a substantial amount of birthers up there that like clockwork, ressurect all these crazy long-debunked themes of him being a foreigner because of his time in Indonesia and often starting by claiming he was adopted there.
The problem with your statement is that other than the school enrollment form, there is NO EVIDENCE AT ALL that has emerged indicating ANY adoption ever occured.
Trust us, many people including many birthers have spent the past 3 years trying to find ANY evidence of such and NADA.
In fact, the FOIA request info on the Soetoro divorce that Struck received shows the disposition of the children in the marriage. The way Obama Jr. is referenced in that document is NOT in line with him ever being adopted. He’s only mentioned in passing as that SHE had one other child. He’s NOT part of the terms of the divorce at all.
So, that more solid legal document as evidence speaks strongly AGAINST the idea that any adoption ever occurred.
In summary, you are being challenged academically because you’ve posited that you believe it “appears he was adopted”, yet you provide NO evidence (beyond the school enrollment form, which really isn’t solid evidence to substantiate that claim) to back it up.
You are receiving strong push-back here because we expect claims to be evidentiary based and because all of our efforts on dealing with or looking at the issue have turned up NOTHING that supports an adoption theory.
Racism is a form of bigotry as well. But okay. So we’re talking about bigotry proper and therefore in the broader sense. I don’t know about any “blatant disdain for authority” or “xenophobia”, but they most certainly do “consistently move goalposts when confronted with facts and can’t seem to comprehend the concept of Ockham’s Razor.” That’s for sure. Where’s the birth certificate? Idiots. But most of those who do this in my experience irrationally hold to this belief because of their hatred for the man’s policies, for his ideology. But then I’m talking about persons who are otherwise rational. It’s rather mysterious, but they tend to divorce themselves from their usual objectivity when it comes to this guy. Go figure.
There’s plenty of folks on the left who do the same thing as in Bush derangement syndrome. “Truthers to the left of me, birthers to the right.”
It’s a very strange phenomenon, but nothing new to human nature. I find it fascinating, and that’s why I researched the matter and wrote the articles. Either way, I think we can both agree that Trump is just an opportunistic charlatan. As a Republican and a conservative, I’m lookin’ for the man who will take this cretin down and rid the nomination race of him.
Generally, I agree with a majority of what you said.
However, I want to make a few further points, just so that we are clear and we don’t have any false memes going on here. Any rational person would agree that crazies exist on ALL aspects of the political spectrum – right, left, up and down.
When we get to the irrational Derangement Syndromes (whether BDS or ODS or otherwise) ALL of it is WRONG. Further, NONE of one form of xDS is justification for adopting another. This should not be a matter of Right/Left but a simple common sense matter of Right/Wrong.
What can be said is that in the current enviornment, the Right specifically needs to do a better job of not pandering and supporting their crazy elements and kick them to the curb. Sadly, this hasn’t really happened since the Birchers were properly marginalized and scorned decades ago…sadly, EVEN THEY are now back and even given prominent sponsor booths at certain conservative events these days… that is definitely a cancerous problem and has been more and more tarnishing the entire GOP.
Nor should any false equivalencies enter into the mix. Case in point – 9/11 Trutherism is utter crazy cr*p. I think we all can agree on that and get a laugh out of the general intent of your clever quip, “Truthers to the left of me, birthers to the right.”
However, if we actually looked at that example seriously, it becomes apparent that there is more to that picture than meets the eye. A certain segment of Birthers also happen to be crazy 9/11 Truthers. Chalk it up to the segment of Birtherism that comes from simply being predisposed to an anti-government and paranoid conspiracy mindset. These are the folks that are often ranting about other nutty stuff like black helicopters, chem trails, FEMA camps and “lizard people”, regardless of who is in office. There is no clear right/left necessarily in that mix…just paranoid crazy.
a lot of these left/right “equivalencies” are a result of simple projection. ie, here’s an original freeper quote (about columnist cynthia tucker):
let’s flip it 180° (substituting born-again birfer donald trump):
see how easy that was? note: it’s not a derangement syndrome when you’re right …
Nixon started federal loan guarantees with Lockheed. He also had wage and price controls, founded the EPA, and recognized China. No one called him a socialist or communist.
I have a comment about socialism in moderation. Guess I’ll have to wait for Doc to get back from his trip.
[If it’s about socialism, post it on a political science blog. Doc]
What a crybaby rant for the ages…
Musical Interlude;
Immanuel Kant was a real pissant
Who was very rarely stable.
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
Who could think you under the table.
David Hume could out-consume
Wilhelm Freidrich Hegel,
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
Who was just as schloshed as Schlegel.
There’s nothing Nietzsche couldn’t teach ya’
‘Bout the raising of the wrist.
SOCRATES, HIMSELF, WAS PERMANENTLY PISSED…
John Stuart Mill, of his own free will,
On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.
Plato, they say, could stick it away;
Half a crate of whiskey every day.
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle,
Hobbes was fond of his dram,
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart: “I drink, therefore I am”
Yes, Socrates, himself, is particularly missed;
A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he’s pissed!
That was “the Philosophers Song,” by Monty Pythons flying circus. *bows*
Weird auto-correct.
Mr. Rawlings, I would appreciate you limiting your discussion to the topics of this web site, Obama Conspiracy Theories or at least something tangentially related. Left vs Right vs Libertarian, economic theories, government policy (including that of the Obama administration) are not appropriate for this site.
If I weren’t on vacation with a lousy Internet connection, I would be deleting this stuff (whether by you or in reply) wholesale, but as it is, I just warn you to stop doing it.
And by the way, advertising your web site is not appropriate either, since as you have said, it is not on topic for us.
s’rry Doc…
Excellent! A classic! 😀
Uh . . . no. Prior to Wong Kim Ark there was no guarantee that one was a U.S. citizen just because one was born on the soil of the nation. That’s the whole point of Wong Kim Ark. One’s parents had to be citizens as well, and for years “parents”, more at “parent”, meant “father”. Children born on U.S. soil of foreigners were not recognized as citizens prior to the 14th Amendment for sure. But the matter is complex. It requires a knowledge of the fundamentals first.
Had you read them from the beginning you would know what being born of the soil and the blood of the nation means, as it goes to the distinction between native-born and natural-born citizenship.
As for the foreign-born children of U.S. citizens. No evidence . . . as many have shown?! What? Huh? You didn’t read the foundational articles. You’re trying to race into complexity without the fundamentals.
Chapter III, Section 1, Statute II of Session II (pg. 103 – 104) of the Naturalization Act of 1790 of the First Congress:
“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.”
Citizenship and Nationality: Historical Foundation and Framework
The Natural-Born Citizen Clause of the Constitution
A Compendium of the History of Jus Sanguinis
The Straight Dope on U.S. Territories
Was Senator John McCain a U.S. Citizen at Birth?
Then tackle:
A Critique of the Chin Argument
Wong Kim Ark meet Rogers
Read or don’t read. I don’t care. I’m not here to argue with you, I’m telling what the facts are. Don’t tell me that a work that is meticulously referenced provides no support for its observations. Read.
Nay-saying without reference is not an argument. What’s this stuff that people have shown on this site that makes the history of jus sanguinis magically go away? LOL!
My comment was intended to be a joke, pointing out that you have been plugging your web site to excess.
Personally, I thought that Mikey’s obliviousness was hysterical – good one, Doc!
p.s. At least Mikey’s making an ass of himself on topic now…
Not according to guys like Prof. James Gilmore, and A. Morse.
“Notes on a Course of Lectures on Vattel’s Law of Nations” by James Gilmore, 1891.
“So far as Mr. Vattel states the doctrine on the subject of citizenship in this section he states it correctly, but there are other questions on this subject, not noticed by him, which it would be well to state. These have reference to the following: “
“I. Children born of the subjects of one power in the territory of another. 2. Illegitimate children born of a foreign mother. 3. Foreign women who have married the subject of a State. Upon these points the doctrine in United States, is, 1, That children of foreigners born here are American citizens if they elect to declare themselves so, whilst the children of American citizens born abroad are themselves citizens of the United States, unless the 14th amendment has changed this doctrine, upon which there is a difference of opinion; 2, Illegitimate children belong to the State of which the mother was the subject; and 3, Except in the United States, the nationality of a wife is merged in that of her husband, so that in those countries, when a woman marries a foreigner she loses her own nationality and acquires his; but here a native woman marrying a foreigner remains the subject of the State, though an alien woman marrying a citizen of the United States becomes herself naturalized, unless she continue throughout her husband’s lifetime, a non-resident. Hall’s Inter. Law, secs. 68, 69, 70.”
For A. P. Morse, in his 1881 “Treatist on Citizenship”,
“§ 5. In the law of nations, “citizen” is a term applicable to every member of the civil society, every individual who belongs to the nation.”
“This character is acquired in various ways, according to the laws of each state. In many states birth is sufficient to confer it; so that the child of an alien is a citizen from the fact of having been born within the territorial limits and the jurisdiction.2
“In other states parentage suffices, and the child of a citizen,8 although he may never have placed his foot on the soil of his fathers, is likewise a citizen.4‘
And for footnote #2, he writes, ” 2. It is so in England and in the United States [but the births must be “within the jurisdiction”‘].”
For a foreign viewpoint we could look to Chief Justice Cockburn’s 1869 work “Nationality”
“Nationality by birth or origin depends, according to the law of some nations, on the place of birth; according to that of others on the nationality of the parents. In many countries both elements exist, one or other, however, predominating. Thus, by the law of England, the status of a subject depends generally on the place of birth: nevertheless, the descendants, of a natural-born subject, for two generations, though born out of the dominions of the Crown, are, to all intents and purposes, subjects. In like manner, by the law of France, though, generally speaking, it is necessary to be born of French parents to be a Frenchman, an exception is made in favour of the child of a foreigner, if born in France, subject only to the condition of the French nationality, being claimed within a prescribed period.”
“By the common law of England, every person born within the dominions of the Crown, no matter whether of English or of foreign parents, and, in the latter case, whether the parents were settled, or merely temporarily sojourning in the country, was an English subject; save only the children of foreign ambassadors (who were excepted because their fathers carried their own nationality with them), or a child born to a foreigner during the hostile occupation of any part of the territories of England. No effect appears to have been given to descent as a source of nationality. * * *
“The law of the United States of America agrees with our own. The law of England as to the effect of the place of birth in the matter of nationality became the law of America as part of the law of the mother country, whiich the original settlers carried with them. * * *”
The history of jus sanuinis consists of a single completely repudiated supreme court decision that was called a self inflicted black eye when it was written. Your pointing to an irrelevant statute that was expanding the definition of what a natural born citizen and any discussion of McCain, who doesn’t fall under the core jus soli defintion of natural born citizen do es nothing to support your claims and shows a lack of understanding of the legal concepts. The Eastman (who has political asperations, has run for office, and is pandering to the Republican base) is a fringe opinion in the legal community.
Do a search of this cite. The number of times that quotations supporting jus soli as the basis for citizenship, going back to the founding of this nation that have been posted here would dwarf anything I could repost here. To sum it up…your claim that the country ever had a requirement for parent citizens has been throughly been debunked.
I think Michael David Rawlings has left the building. Hopefully, he is off revising his website.
I think Mike D. Rawlings has left the building. Hopefully, he is off revising his website
I know I’m a duurty furrener, but can someone explain what the hell a quote from a section dealing with birth outside the US has to do with birth on soil?
Do you understand what a reference is?
I read the beginning article and I’d point to this, for example, as a key example of an unsupported contention:
There’s no support for this contention? In fact, while many of the facts in the article are correct, there are precious few references cited for any of the facts. Having now scanned the rest of the articles, you have left that particular contention entirely unsourced.
May I suggest that you read Kettner’s Development of American Citizenship? There is a work with references, hundreds of them, hundreds per chapter, IIRC.
As Kettner demonstrates, and as Garrett Epps more recently demonstrates, the children of aliens, as long as they were born to non-slaves, have always been considered natural born citizens of the United States. It was only later, in attempting to rationalize slavery, that theorists hit upon jus sanguinis as a citizenship requirement.
Nothing, M. D. Rawlings was trying to impress everyone with his superior intellect. I know I was impressed.
Sadly, I doubt it. Having just read many of his disturbing and bile filled responses that were appropriately moved to the Off-Topic Dump, it is clear that he IS a total bigot. His form of bigotry is political spectrum based and from his rants, is a farily severe case of such. He’s so close-minded and locked into believing that only his ego and world-view have any value at all that he blindly demagouges and demonizes any difference of opinion and gets hostile to facts and data that contradict his carefully built smug wall of personal perception. He’s an idealogue…and not a nice, sincere one like Ron Paul.
He’s able to shout, but unable to listen. Unfortunately, there is no point in wasting time trying to have a polite conversation with folks like that. All he wants to hear is the sound of his own voice and he’s made himself impervious to real dialogue.
Well, Trump’s loud splash on the issue may be bringing the “birther” topic into the fore of the conversation again…but that really isn’t a good thing – for either Trump or the Birthers.
Now don’t get me wrong – I actually think Trump could use this “base” and even choose to remain in the race long enough compete with a strong showing in the GOP primaries or even run a “spoiler” 3rd party campaign.
(Although he is thin-skinned towards “push back” and challenges in interviews), between his ego and indications that that his form of sensantionalized business hucksterism views “any” press on him as a good thing – he might doggedly march forward with a campaign, no matter how badly he performs in interviews and debates and no matter how much he’s mocked in the media, by comedians and by even the GOP power-brokers.
As long as he sees poll numbers that indicate sufficient GOP base support, he’s got the money, ego and media connections to move forward as long as he wants to, on that alone. Considering that enough of the GOP base has gone barking mad and are impervious to facts or reality, he could retain sufficient poll numbers from that block of folks no matter how much he’s mocked or debunked. We’ve seen that such folks don’t think rationally and sometimes just dig in and become more determined when the evidence goes against them. (Case in point – Palin still has a sufficient and utterly devoted hard-core following that back her no matter what…and when she does something bad – they actually come to her defense and become even more committed to her as a result).
So, no matter how much of a clown, bigot and utter disaster he makes himself to a larger national stage, he could easily retain and even shore-up a sufficient hard-core cult-like constituency that keeps him seriously in the “GOP” game as long as he wants to stay in.
That being said, such a scenario would obviously be a disaster for the GOP as a whole and would become nothing but a total joke once the general election rolls around.
Here is a new poll that provides ominous signs for Trump, which bear that out:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0411/53707.html
Greg: That is absolutely correct. In fact, the Wong case arose in the first place only because of the Chinese Exclusion Laws. Had the Wongs been Wronkowskis no one would have ever considered their child born in Callifornia anything other than a US citizen, regardless of whether the parents were citiizens of the US, Poland or any other country.
In fact, here is a challenge for Mr Rawlings and his “meticulous research”. If the US-born children of non-citizens had at some point in history not been considered citizens at birth, then they would have had to undergo naturalization. Since there have been 10s of millions of such children born during the history of the United States, it should be a trivial matter to find many such cases.
So, Mr Rawlings, find me a case of anyone born in the US who was ever naturalized as a US citizen,
Excluding of course ex-diplomats and the children born in the US thereof, I think we can ignore invading military for this exercise……Just saying, we know how our lovely bretheren like to twist stuff.
Of course, El Putzo would argue that the 14th “naturalized” children born in-country. That’s what happens when you try to use dictionary definitions in a legal context. His thesis has been thoroughly debunked, but he never agrees to any of his mistakes.
In effect, the 14th simply reversed the Dred Scott decision which stole citizenship from free black,s which they had held since the earliest days. It also, of course, etched in stone the natural born citizenship that slaves had been rightly entitled to and which had been stolen from them. Wong simply gave Chinese-Americans what the exclusion laws stole from them.
I maintain that the child of a pregnant white woman who arrived on the docks in New York and gave birth 10 minutes later was always regarded as a natural born citizen and never in history is there a record of such a child naturalizing.
Bovril is correct about diplomats as an exception, of course. i believe there have been a few cases of the children of diplomats returning to the US and being naturalized.
Do you know what else is a huge disaster for the “Birthers”? Obama’s birth certificate.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42779923/ns/politics-white_house
Not really. They’re already claiming it’s a fake, just as we predicted they would if it was ever released.
Zahpod is right – this is disastrous for the birthers (even though they don’t realize it). Millions have been immunized against them and the body politic has gained a herd immunity. Sucks to be a birther today (or any day, really…)
> just as we predicted they would if it was ever released.
Just as they have stated multiple times in the past. E.g. at Dr Kate’s, the general consensus has always been “if he releases anything in the future, it will be a forgery”.
But then again Obama didn’t release it for the birthers, he released it for the sane people.
Who didn’t really need it.
> Of course, El Putzo would argue that the 14th “naturalized” children born in-country.
Then why not narrow the challenge down to pre-14th US-born babies. Is there one proven case of naturalization for this category, birfers?
> Who didn’t really need it.
Well, you never know.
While it was a brilliant tactical move to not release the LFBC and let the Republicans chew on the birther issue and shoot themselves in the foot with it, at some point you have to be careful that your tactics don’t backfire on you. Maybe Obama’s advisors thought it would be prudent to “end this” (again) before people actually started buying into the birther crap. After all, it never had more publicity than in the last few weeks.
And so he came up with another brilliant move even we did not expect. The birthers are totally toast now, but the GOP will still lose the fringe if they let it be. But putting forth the birther agenda has now become an almost impossible task as you would have little options left.
The “he’s hiding *something*” meme is gone now.
All that’s left are a highly complicated NBC issue (trying to get the “two citizen parent” theory across to the masses will be like trying to teach them quantum theory) and conspiracy madness (“Hawaiian officials plus … plus … plus … are all lying and part of a huge conspiracy”).
I always predicted that would be the result of releasing the LFBC.
I just didn’t consider that the issue is *not over* for the GOP!
The birfers will remain as they are, so if the GOP does not continue to cater to them, they will feel the impact. Yet when they cater to them, they will appear even more foolish to the general public than they already have before the LFBC release.
I only thought Obama would wait a bit longer, maybe until early 2012. But then again I don’t have experienced political analysts to advise me. 😉
I think Juan Williams just lost his place on the birther hero list. He and Shep Smith were highly critical of Republican leaders for pushing the birther issue.
A really good assessment, “The Magic M” !
You’ve also hit on a good point – certain elements of the GOP “base” are so rabid and delusional…that they are beyond reach of sanity or reason…and unfortunately, they’ve been bred and brainwashed for so long on all this BS and bile that the GOP is stuck with them and unable to control them any longer… they’ve also metasticized into too large of a force within that “base” that they are a factor for the GOP no matter what.
It is the old stuck between a rock and a hard place dilemma – these folks will attack and not vote for any GOP member that doesn’t support their crazy and with today’s move by Obama, it most assuredly would be general election disaster to be caught still catering to these clowns…
Up yours. Had you read my piece carefully, you would have picked up on the fact that the refutation is primarily leveraged against the birther’s claims with the point being that either way these things have no bearing on Obama’s U.S. citizenship. You people are just a bunch of anal-retentive jerks. Why should I be mocked for a relatively minor error or over a matter for which there is evidence, speculative in nature or not? I acknowledged that the adoption and Indonesian citizenship things were speculative.
Once again, get over it.
Let’s take inventory.
It’s clear that there’s no support for the idea that the Indonesian government did not permit non-citizens to attend public schools. Okay. I had that one wrong. Good to know.
However, it is a matter of speculation either way as far as his adoption and Indonesian citizenship go. There is evidence that supports these possibilities.
There is a typo on a few of the articles which I missed: “duel”, instead of “dual”. I didn’t do the editing, btw, another did. Apparently, this typo was repeatedly inserted by spell check. Big Whoop. But thanks for the tip.
“Hey, Mike, did you know you had a typo on your site?”
But instead, ridicule over a trifle. Petty, snotty little twit.
We have the complaint that there exists no credible evidence solidly supporting the idea that children born abroad of U.S. citizens were always considered to be natural-born citizens (insofar as provision was made at any given time), despite the history of jus sanguinis comprehensively documented on my blog clearly showing otherwise. Indeed, being quite jealous of its prerogative, that has always been the position of Congress as evinced, for example, by its insistence that McCain is a natural-born citizen despite the fact that due to a certain legislative glitch he was not, technically, a natural-born citizen at the moment of birth. Oh yeah, and apparently prior to Wong Kim Ark it was universally understood that all persons born on U.S. soil, whether their parents were foreigners or not, just passing through or not, were necessarily citizens at birth?!
Oh yeah? Then why Wong Kim Ark in the first place . . . which countervailed the State Department’s finding? Logic anyone? Why the protestations of dozens of Senators and Congressman regarding the Court’s decision at the time, including those who drafted the 14th Amendment? Logic? The arguments of the dissenting justices lambasting the majority’s imposition of the British construct of birthright citizenship? There’s nothing cut and dry about it. There is real dispute that is both ideological and historical. Hello!
As for updating my blog, it makes sense to do so. I’ve already corrected the typo.
Close-mindedness? Hmm. If you have problems with the citizenship-nationality articles let me know on the blog in the comment section, let’s see who knows what he’s talking about and who doesn’t. Obviously, many of you refused to follow good advice, i.e., to acquaint yourself with the basics first, freely provided. “But I didn’t see.” No. You didn’t read; it’s there.
No one mocked you; we asked you to support your statements. factual accuracy is not anal-retentive; it is the starting point of intellectual inquiiry. Building theories based on false information is a waste of time. i am glad you corrected it.
I don’t recall anyone mocking you for a typo.
But on to a more substantive issue. You claim that those born in the US to non-citizens were at some point not considered citizens. I say that free white people born in the US were ALWAYS considered born citizens from colonial timmes to the present. If Patricck and Mary O’Leary arrived from ireland and landed on New York and Mary gave birth 10 minutes after docking that child was a citizen, even though the parents obviously were not. The questions about citizenship were only raised about slaves, free blacks (from Dred Scott until the Civil War) and Asians under the Exclusion Acts.
I asked you to cite a single case where a free white person born in the US had ever been naturalized (barring a few cases where they were born to diplomats and not under US jurisdiction). Let’s see if you can do that,
While the core of the brither movement will never be satisfied, this is good for the Republican Party. If I were Obama, I would have milked it a bit longer, tactically speaking you understand, not being a supporter, for in the long term it’s worse for the Republicans in spite of the left’s redistribution delusions and the potential “backfire” Magic M. astutely talks about. After all, Obama is likely to be just another failed, one-term Democratic president given that his policies are so economically disastrous and his phony talk about tackling the debt. In other words, very few of any repute in the conservative movement pay any attention to the birthers, but Trump. . . . Well, he’s a real problem that Obama just neutralized for us. Fortunately, the Democrats are still stuck with the likes of “I Heard the Tape” Sharpton, Kucinich and others. I look forward to taking back the Senate and the Presidency in 2012.
Excuse me, but I was . . . unnecessarily. Nevertheless, I picked up good information, and will put it to good use. I’m fine with that.
Actually ,no, because here is what you said at 12;12 PM yesterday.
But I’ll drop it and ask you to find me a case of wnyoone born in the US whho was ever naturalized (barring a few childrenn of diiplomats). Thanks.
Oh noes! Mikey called me a petty, snotty little twit! Whatever will I do?
I tried to point out something that I thought made you look like a complete idiot (a spelling error in the very term that you were discussing) in a subtle and playful way (I like wordplay) which you ignored (using the term ‘DUEL citizen’ in your response). I responded in an obvious and playful way (making fun of you a little because your ego clearly needs deflating). You had a snit. Now you look like an egotistical, self-important, pseudo-intellectual idiot (at least to me).
The conservative movement is a haven for white nationalists, anti-semites, theocrats, anti-tax rebels, misogynists and assorted other kooks.
What you write is basically drivel.
Were what?
No matter, just see if you can find a case of anyone born in the US who naturalized. I submit that those born in the US were always considered citizens at birth, in the absence of racial laws that forbade them to be citizens.
As for your political opinions, remember this is not the place for them. If you’re a betting man I will happily place a small wager that Obama is re-elected
Obama will be re-elected, and Cory Booker will follow.
I’m willing to place money on the first. Not on the second.
how much scientist?
As a friendly bet, say $20.
Scientist, I know what I said. The matters of his adoption and Indonesian citizenship are speculative. So what? Either way, one speculates. We’ve got a boy, after all, enrolled under the sir name of his mother’s husband. It’s not unreasonable to speculate that he was adopted. Indonesian citizenship would follow by default. The matter of non-citizens being prohibited from attending public school is clearly wrong. My bad. I misremembered the nature of that contention. I wrote those pieces over a year ago. I’ve acknowledged I had that wrong, and worse, I repeated the error.
That does not change the fact that I was not the first to launch ugly. Misunderstanding the first or even the second time around what another is trying to tell doesn’t warrant the crap that came my way. I prefer civility. But I can shove back too. Okay?
As for your question. I will have to get back to you either Saturday or Sunday. I’m out of town tomorrow on an errand. Do me a favor, in the meantime, please. Carefully read:
Citizenship and Nationality: Historical Foundation and Framework
The Natural-Born Citizen Clause of the Constitution
A Compendium of the History of Jus Sanguinis
The Straight Dope on U.S. Territories
Was Senator John McCain a U.S. Citizen at Birth?
A Critique of the Chin Argument
Wong Kim Ark meet Rogers
http://michaeldavidrawlings1.blogspot.com/2011/03/righting-confusion-of-citizenship-and.html
All of these articles are pertinent.
The Senators and Congressmen who objected to the majority’s decision in Wong Kim Ark, the dissenting justices, did not base their objections, over one-hundred years after the ratification of the Constitution, by the way, on thin air. I discuss the matter, step-by-step, through these articles. My argument, my reasoning and my conclusion are contained therein. Those articles are annotated. Also, you should search and read the various Naturalization Acts of Congress, beginning with the Act of 1790. Note in particular that citizenship was predicated on the status of the father and the steps by which citizenship was conferred on his children—how and when.
That way we’ll at least be on the same page, whether you agree with us or not. It is not a cut-and-dry matter. It is complex and academically controversial. Leftists tend to line up on one side, conservatives on the other. I thoroughly understand the reasoning and the nature of the arguments on both sides.
Also, you’re asking for a case. Well, there were no Asians born on U.S. soil prior to the ratification of the 14th Amendment who ever thought they had a chance in hell of challenging congressional prerogative. Ark’s race or ethnicity, because he was born on U.S. soil after the ratification of the 14th, was of little to no relevance in this case as far as the decision went, and he based his argument on the 14th, not on the Constitution proper or prevailing Naturalization Law. That’s for sure. I’m hinting at something here that you should not comment on until you’ve followed the argument to its conclusion, as you will encounter the very same caveats regarding indentured servants, slaves, Asians (and dont forget American Indians) with which you prefaced your question.
Is “default” a word to mean “just because I sorta think it oughta?” I ask because what you said is not true. Indonesian law forbids dual citizenship, requiring anyone acquiring Indonesian citizenship to first renounce his own citizenship and that his country have a mechanism whereby he can renounce that citizenship. The US essentially does not allow children to renounce their citizenship. Discussion and references here:
http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2009/02/hollister-v-indonesian-citizenship-law/
Not, as I pointed out, after a child’s 5th birthday. President Obama didn’t arrive in Indonesia until after his 5th birthday. Another thing that I forgot to mention (which argues against adoption) is that for a muslim to change an adopted child’s name is an offense against Allah and the child’s biological family. If formally adopted in Indonesia (a muslim country), his name of record would have still been (President) ‘Barack Obama’ (just one more reason all the ‘Barry Soetoro’ nonsense is puerile…).
I read your stuff and you need to do a lo more research. The members of the 14th Amendment Congress could not be clearer that they intended to make the children of chinese aliens citizens. A leading lawyer in such Congress even contacted Justice Gray after Wong Kim Ark to tell him he was right. No one in such Congress said one needed citizen parents or citizenship descended from parents.
.
I don’t understand why you cite naturalization statutes. They don’t help your argument. The jus sanguinis language in the 1790 Act came about after someone pointed out that they should provide for children born oversees like the English had done and they hence mimicked English naturalization statutes. The clear implication of this and later similar statutes was that, like in England, children born oversees were not citizens without statute. This position remains in place today and was reiterated in the recent oral arguments before the supreme court in Flores-Villar. Of course, statutory English subjects did not have all the rights of common law subjects as they could not sit in Parliament and England would not claim their allegiance outside of England.
After the jus sanguinis language in the 1802 statute sun-setted, many scholars pointed out that children of citizen born oversees were not citizens. Congress would eventually listen acknowledging the under the English common law the better view was that such children were not citizens without statute. No court every said a native born person needed a statute to be a citizen. Rather, the courts said that “natualization” by definition, only applied to the foreign born.
Finally, the notion that citizen parents were ever necessary for natural born status is completely without basis unless one counts the dissent in Wong Kim Ark. The dissent is the losing side. Such theory was a fringe theory in the late 19th century that was rejected by the court and has no support in the pre-civil war era. As you clearly need to do some research I suggest these links:
For the 14th Amendment:
http://naturalborncitizenshipresearch.blogspot.com/2010/10/quotations-from-39th-congress-relevant.html
For the pre-civil war period try this:
http://naturalborncitizenshipresearch.blogspot.com/2010_02_01_archive.html
No. I mean that if Obama was adopted by Lolo Soetoro he may very well have been made an Indonesian citizen as well. And if he was? So what. Neither of these things would have had any bearing on his U.S. citizenship whatsoever. None. A minor cannot renounce his U.S. citizenship. Period. And as far as Indonesian law would have been concerned, he would not have been a U.S. citizen. Now, an adult would have had to renounce his U.S. citizenship prior to acquiring Indonesian citizenship. It works the same way here. There’s really nothing more to it.
Okay. But we agree that with regard to his U.S. citizenship none of this matters. The birthers simply disregard U.S. law—some out of ignorance, others out of dishonesty. However, I have yet to see anything that dissuades me from believing that it is unreasonable to hold that he may have been adopted by Soetoro and may have been made an Indonesian citizen. Soetoro was not a seriously devout Muslim. But I don’t understand what you’re getting at with regard to Obama’s age. I don’t understand why that would matter. Perhaps you have something there. Please thoroughly explain. Thanks.
Slartibartfast, as for those other concerns, I agree.
I know what you mean, and I know that what you mean is impossible under Indonesian law for the reasons I already gave you.
Take as much time as you like, especially to ensure that you make no factual errors whether they be central to your argument or peripheral. If you don’t KNOW and can’t document something to be true, then either don’t say it or label it clearly as opinion.
Since Obama is currently 4/7 odds to win and 5/4 odds to lose I suggest that you should bet as much as you can with every Obama hater you can find willing to bet against him at 1/1 odds.
Make it say $2 million in total.Then yourself place say $1.8 million on Obama not winning which is available with the bookies at 5/4 odds against. If Obama wins you outlay $3.8 million and return $4 million thus make $0.2 million profit.
If Obama loses you outlay $3.8 million and return $4.05 million thus make $0.25 million profit.
Refine the amount staked on Obama to lose if you want to change the split of guaranteed profit on each of the contingencies.
Then send me 12.5% of the profit 😉
Wow! I’m trying to make sense of your diatribe Mr Rawlings and quite honestly, it makes none. The Wong case had nothing whatsoever to do with those born outside the US to US citizens. They were citizens from birth (i.e., natural born citizens) before Wong and after, subject to residency restrictons in the citizenship satutes at the time of their birth. Such citizenship was never at issue in the case, since Wong was born in the US. He was denied citizenship, desite his birth in the US, because his parents were not citiens (they were denied the right to naturalize by anti-Chinese laws).
In fact, such chidren born in the US, if they were white, were ALWAYS considered natural born citizens regardless of their parents’ citkizenship. I gave the example, which you never address of an Irish couple, the wife being pregnant
Oops, I hit “submit” by mistake. to continue;
In fact, such chidren born in the US, if they were white, were ALWAYS considered natural born citizens regardless of their parents’ citizenship. I gave the example, which you never responded to of an Irish couple, the wife being pregnant, who land on the docks in New York where she gives birth 10 minutes later (obviously too soon for the parents to have naturalized). Was the child a citizen (and a natural born citizen)? I submit the answer was yes: Yes in colonial times, yes in the early days of the US, yes after Dred Scott, yes before the 14th Amendment, yes after the 14th Amendment, yes before Wong and yes after Wong. The child was only not a citizen when they were non-white and their path to citizenship was blocked by various racial laws and court decisions.
The Wong case did nothing unusual or new. It simply recognized the common law practice that all born on the soil are citizens, save the children of diplomats and invading armies (not subject to the jurisdiction) It clarified that no racial laws could overthrow that practice and that even where the parents belonged to an excluded race, their US born children were citizens. That’s all.
No, it’s really not. Doc should delete both of your steaming piles. I note that you said:
I also note that in the district court record, the following appeared:
“Petition for a Writ of Habeas Corpus. Petition granted, and petitioner, Wong Kim Ark, discharged”
http://bulk.resource.org/courts.gov/c/F1/0071/0071.f1.0382.pdf
(at the top of the second page)
Sorry Mikey, but your credibility is thinner than tissue paper. Why should anyone take the time to even read, let alone debunk, someone who so boldly lies about something so easy to check?
Doc,
I would request that you delete Mr. Rawling’s comments to save the lawyers here the trouble of wading through his crap to debunk it.
So this birther is arguing from whole cloth that the Founders really meant Jus Sanguis WITHOUT TELLING ANYONE but they suspended it in 1802 without telling anyone, which explains all those vexing law cases and statements from then on. And even Kong Kim Ark New that they were flouting a fringe notion, without telling anyone, and the 14th amendment which was to overturn Dred Scott was also based on this frings notion and they all worked at it without telling anyone that it was based on false law…
What a theory. Its pretty much Tom levels of crazy. You believe they all had little thought transmitters installed? I doubt even the Borg Collective could work as tightly as this.
Of course it kinda falls apart even if you look back even before that date.
James Madison, The Founders’ Constitution Volume 2, Article 1, Section 2, Clause 2, Document 6 (1789)
“It is an established maxim, received by all political writers, that every person owes a natural allegiance to the government of that country in which he is born. Allegiance is defined to be a tie, that binds the subject to the state, and in consequence of his obedience, he is entitled to protection…
The children of aliens, born in this state, are considered as natural born subjects, and have the same rights with the rest of the citizens.”
Oops
Slarty: How anal-retentive of you to dispute Mr Rawling’s facts. So he got his facts wrong. His arguments could stll be brilliant, no? I mean, let’s say i write a scientific paper with a wonderful discussion, even though all my experiments are garbage. Are you saying you would reject it?
Well, if it came from someone of Mikey’s stature… yes.
If it came from someone that had done good work in the past, I MIGHT let them (massively) revise it and take another look – but I’m a softie in some ways…
You actually read that thing?
I skip everything Rawlings posts. It’s drivel, and it goes on for about an hour.
No, but i thought if I took the first letter of every thrid word and read it backwards it would give me the lyrics to “I am the Walrus”. Paul is dead…..
For something so long and dense it was surprisingly easy to cherry pick a major error of fact used in a highly dishonest way – I wonder why that is?
I. Am. Not. A. Birther. LOL! I refute the nonsense of “birtherism” on my bog. Oops.
Further, jus sanguine is natural-born citizenship that is provided by statute as its recipients are born abroad, albeit, of U.S. citizens. Ballentine has that part right. He and I agree on that . . . well, insofar as it’s provided by statute. I’m not sure what his/her sentiments are regarding its nature beyond that point.
In statute and statute only, harking back to Roman Law and British royal decree, it was established in American legal tradition in the Naturalization Act of 1790. In 1802 it was suspended/revoked for children born abroad of U.S. citizens who were not already citizens of the United States at the time of the revision’s enactment. Persons who were already citizens at the time could pass their citizenship down to their children born abroad. But, obviously, after two to three generations, most, if not all, of those persons were dead. In 1855, Congress revised the code again and reinstated it. Also, anyone born within the jurisdiction of the United States—i.e., born on the soil of the nation and not subject to the allegiance of a foreign power—is and has always been a natural-born citizen beyond all dispute.
I never argued any such silly thing, that is, that the Founders/Framers suspended natural-born citizenship—with or without telling anyone. We’d be talking about a constitutional amendment for that, not any statute. How could you have made that mistake if you understand the matter? Oops.
The grant of natural-born citizenship via jus sanguinis, unlike that automatically conferred via the rule of jus soli, are two separate concerns. Oops.
Nevertheless, both were predicated on the joint operation of the Natural-Born-Citizen Clause and the Naturalization Clause of the Constitution. The construct of natural-born citizenship, in and of itself, is universal, but the British common-law rule of jus soli, with its inherent jurisdictional proviso, is not universal! The indivisible essence of the construct is understood from legal tradition, predicated on territorial-hereditary allegiance relative to the moment of conferral, with the claim on the soil in the case of a child born abroad being tentatively attributed to it in effect via the parent’s prior claim on the soil in fact.
There is no definition for “natural-born citizenship” in the Constitution. Hence, the conditions and extent of U.S. jurisdiction for purposes of citizenship/nationality must be spelled out in American statute or case law respectively.
Prior to the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment with respect to the provisos clearly spelled-out in naturalization law, there was little-to-no serious dispute that the jurisdictional concerns of common-law only applied to the basic rights and protections of jurisprudence, not to the privileges and other jurisdictional concerns of citizenship/nationality. The terms “limits” and “jurisdiction” were understood to mark that distinction, respectively, for decades The majority’s merging of the two terms, making them synonymous in Wong Kim Ark threw naturalization law into chaos. Hence, for example, the necessity of judicial intervention just a few years later in the Insular Cases, wherein the judiciary essentially filled the legislative void with necessarily arcane, albeit, sound jurisdictional provisos.
After the Fourteenth’s ratification, the view that common-law jurisdiction reached beyond the realm of mere jurisprudence and enveloped the concerns of citizenship/nationality—at least in part, touching on citizenship acquired within the “limits” of the United States proper, regardless of the nationality of paternity—gradually arose. But since Wong Kim Ark, the established law of the land beyond all dispute, citizenship conferred via the rule of jus soli has been predicated on the Natural-Born-Citizen Clause alone . . . relative to a common-law construct of jurisdiction.
Finally, Suranis shares the following:
I’m aware of Madison’s position, that of the British common-law rule of jus soli. Certainly, that was the “maxim . . . received by all political writers” while America was under British rule and, later, under the Articles of Confederation as an independent state. But that is not the view that eventually prevailed at the constitutional convention, Sir.
The British view was not internationally universal, and the movers and shakers of the American body politic were not by any means universally enamored with it, particularly those of the South for obvious reasons. The view that eventually prevailed is that the construct of natural-born citizenship would not be defined in the Constitution, its essence already understood, and that its application relative to the jurisdictional concerns of paternity would be left for Congress to sort out in statute. Oops.
Naturalization Act of 1790; Session II, Chapter III. – IV., Section 1:
http://library.uchastings.edu/library/topical-and-course-research-guides/wkadisplay/1%20Stat.%20103.pdf
The Naturalization Act of 1795 (Section 3.) is even more emphatic (See
Section 1. – Section 2.) and easier for the modern English-speaking person to understand:
Nope. No language here even remotely suggesting a common-law rule of jus soli after the British tradition. There’s no mention about the time or place of birth at all. The children of foreigners were not citizens at birth unless proscribed as such by any of the several states and as long as they were not of any race or nationality prohibited by other federal statute or federal case law. Otherwise, children born of foreigners became citizens via naturalization upon the naturalization of their father, not before.
http://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/milestones/naturalization/naturalization_text.html
Ye of little knowledge. Oops.
Or on the other hand, one can just engage in argument by marginalization surrounded by fellow ideologues, like you, and pretend to have refuted something of real substance without first putting a name on anything else more significant than a minor error (see below) in an argument that irrefutably exposes an avalanche of major errors. Or perhaps, beyond the central dispute over jurisdictions and their nature, something we’re not going to agree on, it’s your position that the things I identify to be out-and-out errors in Balentine’s post are not errors. Identify? Argument? Yes? No? Anyone can say “garbage”. That’s easy.
Now let me give you something to gnaw on below, and let’s if I get a real argument or more of the same.
Specifics? No. Of course not. That would be too much like making an argument. Typically, leftists don’t make arguments. They launch insults. Though wrong on a number of things, Balentine was at least sincere and put forth a real effort. He put himself out there; he attempted to address at least a portion of what I had actually written, though he clearly didn’t read as much as he claimed or thought was necessary, or if he did, not with great care.
Yes, indeed, I was thinking that it was Ark that appealed the district-level decision, not the government. I remembered that wrong. But the reason I was thinking that was because it was in Wong Kim Ark (District Court, N. D. California; 1896, No. 11, 198.) that for the first time in case law the central question of the matter was definitively or starkly couched with regard to the distinction between “the limits of the United States” and “the jurisdiction of the United States” (see above). This is crucial, for that is precisely what the matter turned on.
Are they synonymous relative to the jurisdictional concerns of citizenship/nationality or not? This consideration was also crucial in the Insular Cases as the Court had to wade through extant statute featuring the same phrase and terms just a few years later in order to untangle them from the recent finding and the challenges of the newly acquired territories formally held by Spain.
Virtually all of previous scholarship and opinion, albeit, in dicta (hence the district court in this case was not bound to any stasis), had consistently held that they were not synonymous. I could have avoided the error in the above had I simply shared yesterday what I was going to share with Scientist today, but will share here instead. In other words, I would have caught the error myself anyway. I considered searching and citing the case yesterday in order to underscore the absurdity of Balentine’s dismissive characterization of the countervailing argument as being a “fringe theory”. Hogwash. The citations of scholarship and case law, though not the decision, in this very case clearly demonstrate that was not the case at all. The district court’s opinion primarily turned on the Fourteenth Amendment and the fact that previous opinion was the dicta of that which was material but not central to previous issues. Nevertheless, we’re still talking about a decision occurring thirty years after the Fourteenth’s ratification against a mountain of judicial opinion contrary to the decision of the Gray Court.
Like I said, I haven’t thought about much of this for over a year. The matter is voluminous and very complex. These sorts of errors happen. I’m sorry. But that error sure as hell does not detract from the bulk of my observations or the thrust of them. It’s not even close.
Turning an honest error into a “steaming pile” is beyond exaggeration. It’s hysterical, particularly in light of the voluminous errors of fact and understanding in Balentine’s and Suranis’ posts that I undisputedly expose. Hmm. But I didn’t accuse them of lying, as it is clear that they earnestly believe a great number things that are wrong, which you let pass.
I don’t understand the nastiness. Accusations of lying and all the sarcasm? I thought we had come to an understanding to which I agreed. You know civility and the old adage: two heads are better than one? Did I misunderstand the nature of the olive branch? I’m not a machine akin to a computer. I didn’t knowing lie about anything or commit any mortal sin. Are you going to refute the substance of the argument or just grandstand on a relatively minor error?
I never expected that we would agree on the central issue: the role of common-law jus soli in American history prior to the Fourteenth or Wong Kim Ark respectively, the question of jurisdictions. But I didn’t expect this from you either after your e-mail. Never mind, I gave my word on the matter. I will not return your incivility.
Moving on. . . .
As for the so-called “fringe theory”, more damning evidence against that absurd claim:
Sorry Mikey,
It’s not worth my time… I was wrong about something, however: when I said that ‘pseudo-intellectual’ described your behavior rather than your erudition, I was mistaken – it obviously describes both. And never doubt that you are a birther – but guess what? Our Commander-in-Chief just marginalized you and all the other birthers and your juvenile crap – keep gnawing out your own liver if you wish, but the only people that are going to be paying attention to your antics are those of us who are laughing at you…
(by the way, I don’t think you are nearly as smart as you think you are… ;-))
Sorry, Mikey, maybe you haven’t heard, but you birthers are completely irrelevant now – real Americans listen to our Commander-in-Chief when he tells us that we have serious problems that we must address. Your attempt to continue to waste time on this puerile, discredited nonsense is nothing more than a demonstration of your petty bigotry and juvenile nature. Go outside and play in traffic – the adults are talking about grown-up stuff.
The two are equivalent with minor exceptions: Children born to ambassadors, invading military or native indians not paying taxes are not under the jurisdiction of the US but within the limits.
It’s like native and natural born…
In fact, the court was merely following the obvious route, so clearly explained in its ruling as well as various precedent rulings. And not to mention scholarly opinions.
The argument is quite simple
1. The Constitution uses the term natural born
2. The Constitution does not define it
3. Its meaning should be found in common law
4. Common law was based on English Common Law, which had been accepted by most of the early states
5. English Common Law defined natural born to mean born on soil
In Ankeny v Daniels that Court traced the steps of the WKA court which traced the steps outlined in Lynch v Clarke.
It’s really quite straightforward.
Sure there were historical differences between the two which explains why there is no such thing as a US Common Law but for purpose of determining the meaning of words left undefined one has to look at how the term was used contemporaneously. The evidence is quite overwhelming, as for instance evidenced in the interchanged use of native and natural born, where subject to jurisdiction thereof reflected the common law exceptions.
If the Founders had meant Vattel, then there would have been no reason to pass the naturalization act which declared children born abroad to be citizens.
QED
I’ve had some requests to delete your postings. However, that’s not something I do except in rare cases of unusually cruel remarks, disclosure of personal information or extreme obscenity.
I would suggest, however, that if you actually want people to read your stuff, that you try to be more succinct. I generally don’t read your comments because they are overly long, but from what I have read, you seem more interested in displaying how erudite you are, than advancing a particular argument.
To those who would like to see less of Mr. Rawlings: that is why God invented the scroll button.
No evidence of any adoption, adoption under Indonesian law was not possible due to the age of the child so Obama would have had to wait until age 18 to become a citizen.
There is no logical route to citizenship and even if Obama had become a citizen, a child can decide to continue when reaching the age of majority, which citizenship to continue, even Vattel understood this. Since Obama returned to the US and continued to live there ever since, there is no foundation for either adoption nor loss of US birthright citizenship.
Since children cannot denounce citizenship and parents cannot take away their child’s citizenship, there is not much more to your position other than pure speculation at best.
Wow I checked out Michael David Rawlings’s ramblings on evolution and citizenship, both equally uninformed.
Color me surprised. Is there a single argument he proposes which has any relevance to Obama other than the dislike of the Court’s opinion in US v Wong Kim Ark which came from a long tradition of recognition of birth on soil being the relevant determining factor in a child’s citizenship, at least in the United States?
I thought it sort of evolved.
Not true. Justice Field, who was on the Supreme Court with Horace Gray during the oral arguments for Wong Kim Ark, ruled the same way in In re Look Ting Sing, 21 F 905 (1884). Look Ting Sing was born here, so the court found that the only question presented was whether he was “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” This case was the first to deal with the effect of the 14th Amendment on the Chinese and, since it was not appealed, was the law applied by the District Court in Wong Kim Ark. The District Court in WKA also listed several other cases that held the same way as Look Ting Sing.
The rest of what you post, well, word salad. I’m not sure what you’re trying to prove. I’ll go back to reading Kettner’s Development of American Citizenship and Garrett Epps The Citizenship Clause: A Legislative History. Oh, me of little knowledge.
Perhaps…
But did God intend for us to actually have to wear that scroll button out?
🙂
The problem is that there appears to be no evidence to support this and in fact some arguments against this.
But let’s accept for a moment that this is true. The question now revolves around: Was Obama an Indonesian citizens? The answer is that under Indonesian law there was no path for him to citizenship. So it is more likely that someone may have lied, if your position on the Indonesian government not allowing non Indonesian citizens to attend public schools has any merit.
Furthermore, even if Obama, under some unlikely scenario had obtained Indonesian citizenship, neither parents nor children can denounce the citizenship granted by birth on US soil. I discussed this in some detail at my site
In the 60’s the Indonesian regime had banned Indonesians from attend non-Indonesian (alien) schools. This prevented Chinese Indonesians from attending Chinese schools. The indonesian public schools had a strict Indonesian curriculum, language, history etc.
When I read Supreme Court decisions, like Wong, I find them interesting and pleasant to read. In contrast your stuff is turgid and painful to read. Nevertheless, I forced myself to read this one, and while a lot was said, I failed to find the argument running through it. I do have these comments, though.
The Supreme Court said said in Smith v Alabama, that one must resort to the British Common Law to define the terms in the Constitution, one of which must surely be “natural born citizen.”
The other comment is that it was Chief Justice Marshall who said: “The jurisdiction of the nation within its own territory is necessarily exclusive and absolute. It is susceptible of no limitation not imposed by itself.” That would seem to be where limits and jurisdiction were merged, not by Justice Gray in Wong.
You said:
However, you never provided any argument or support for this assertion that I found. Can you support it?
I never claimed that the children born on American soil of free, white, foreign nationals—provided that they were not indentured servants or officially engaged by a foreign power, as you rightly observe—were not regarded to be natural-born citizens of either Great Britain or the United States in the American historical experience. I didn’t make that claim in the post that prompted your initial challenge or in my most recent post. Nor did I make any such claim on my blog. I simply said that such persons were not necessarily natural-born citizens; i.e., there was no guarantee, well, at least not before the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment. Hence, I was talking about post-constitutional America. I assumed you understood that from the context. Obviously, there’s no question that the common-law rule of jus soli after the British tradition in terms of jurisdiction prevailed under British rule and, again, under the Articles of Confederation.
There were and are two internationally recognized principles that come into play here as well: (1) barring criminality, once free, always free; barring a voluntary act of expatriation, once a citizen, always a citizen. The Constitution, for example, does not give Congress the power to strip one of one’s citizenship without due cause. The various colonies and soon to be states already allowed that children born on American soil of free, white foreigners were citizens at birth.
Under the Constitution, however, jurisdiction for purposes of citizenship/nationality was left to Congress. Hence, natural-born citizenship via jus sanguinis and jus sanguinis only (For obviously those born of both the soil and the blood of the nation are constitutionally guaranteed citizens, not statutory citizens in any sense.) and naturalization proper became a matter of statutory jurisdiction, regardless of birthplace. Statute can be revised or rescinded.
Congress could not have stripped citizenship from anyone upon whom it had already been conferred, but it could have voided the laws of the several states that granted citizenship at birth to children born on U.S. soil of free whites who were not U.S. citizens, trumping them with a federal statute that emphatically barred all such persons from citizenship in the future. Naturally, it wouldn’t and didn’t do anything like that. Instead it emphatically allowed for the established practice in the Naturalization Act of 1790.
In other words, under the Constitution, Congress provided for the continuation of the practice on the behalf of free whites, not out of any necessity with respect to the common-law rule of British jus soli or on the basis thereof as the majority in Wong Kim Ark cynically implied or argued, it did so as a matter of prerogative and political continuity. That’s all.
Laying aside the political realities, I say that it could have done that without violating the Constitution because there was no common-law jus soli after the British legal tradition to which the dictates of the Constitution or the provisos of statutory law were beholden from 1788 on.
If that were not the case, where, as the minority rightly asked, was this emphatically stipulated in the Constitution? In statute? How is it that the majority rightly argued on the one hand that the several states could not dictate the terms citizenship/nationality to the federal government, but on the other hand, the only thing to which it could point was an extra-constitutional tradition observed by the colonies/states under British rule and the former Articles, and permitted by the post-constitutional federal government, albeit, on the behalf of free whites only after 1790?
The majority simply merged the formerly distinct jurisdictions in federal statute, changed their meaning to make its argument work against decades of Congressional intent and the practice of the State Department.
(BTW, when the majority in Wong Kim Ark claimed that the opposing view would put the citizenship of all those who had already thusly attained it in doubt, they were knowingly muddling things, throwing out a straw man. Once again, Congress permitted the practice for free whites to continue past the ratification of the Constitution and the passage of the first naturalization act onward. It was provided for in both state and federal statute. It’s as simple as that, and the Court knew that. No one ever argued otherwise. They were citizens. Period. Citizenship once granted cannot be revoked without due cause, voluntary acts of expatriation only. It was the minority that proposed nothing new or unusual.)
Doc, I’ve got an Apple Magic Mouse and I think that even the small stroke of my finger on the mouse required to scroll past Mr. Rawlings’ posts takes more time and effort than Mr. Rawlings’ posts are worth – but I like making fun of him, so it’s okay with me… birther pseudo-intellectuals are funny when they’re being debunked.
Mikey,
Hopefully you’re out taking my advice and playing in traffic, but if you should come back and take issue with the ‘liberals calling you names’ and ignoring your precious arguments and just making fun of you, I would point out that several people have been debunking your crap and that any ridicule you are receiving is only your just reward for the disingenuous trash that you’ve been waving in our faces.
Almost correct. Congress was responsible for citizens who became such through naturalization, the Constitution outlined the other kind of citizen: namely the natural born who by virtue of birth on soil would become a citizen.
You are almost correct. There may not have been a federal tradition of common law, for the simple reason that the courts found that there is no such thing. However that does not mean that there was no common law jus soli tradition in the various states, nor does it deny that the term natural born was found in the common law which had been adopted in most of the states and to mean jus soli.
There have been several rulings which outlined the continuation of the jus soli doctrine, most noticable Lynch v Clarke but also continued in US scholarly works.
No violations of the Constitution were needed to reach the obvious conclusion in US v Wong Kim Ark which was based on simple though powerful logic supported by evidence, precedential court rulings and legal scholarship.
But natural born citizenship cannot and is not under control of statute but rather under control of our Constitution which left the meaning of the term undefined.
If, as you said, jus soli was the constitutional foundation then Congress would not have had to pass the initial naturalization laws that extended citizenship to foreign born children of US citizens, nor would they have to continue such laws until today.
In fact in Rogers v Bellei, the citizenship of such children, since it is based on statute, can be taken away by Congress, which means that it is a naturalization power not a citizenship power. While naturalization powers define statutory citizens, it cannot define nor restrict constitutional citizenship.
Not completely true. See Rogers v Bellei. But I understand what you are attempting to say. However, the 14th, which continued the Constitutional tradition clearly establishes two kinds of citizens
Born in – Jus soli and natural born, under the US constitution
Naturalized – Statutorily declared citizens, not natural born
The court in US v Wong Kim Ark simply observed that in order to understand the term natural born, its meaning had to be found in common law. That common law of those days was based on British common law which defined natural born quite clearly, is unfortunate for your arguments but it lays the foundation as to how the Court decided on the meaning of the term natural born, which is not a statutory citizenship unlike those naturalized under the statutory powers of Congress.
Where’s the placenta?
Look, the matter is complex, and a number of the notions shared on this board are clearly wrong, not just certain facts about citizenship and nationality in general, but about the Fuller-Harlan argument against the Court’s decision in Wong Kim Ark. What is the point of rejecting something you don’t properly understand? Or how about this: whether you agree with the dissenting opinion or not, shouldn’t you at least properly understand it and not be arguing against a straw man as a matter of sound scholarship?
I understand the Court’s argument. I even argued it in a debate, drawing the “for” card. Unless you knew me personally, you wouldn’t have known that I disagreed with it.
I don’t expect to convert anyone. I was asked about my position. It appeared that these questions were asked in good faith. Also, it was alleged that I was wrong about some of the basics of citizenship/nationality law, when in fact I was not. And, clearly, others misunderstood me precisely because of their own factual errors or misunderstanding of things. So I laid some groundwork in order to help others understand the fundamentals more perfectly. For without those, one cannot rightly understand the dissenting argument. That’s all.
There’s no reason for you to assume that I’m trying to display erudition for its own sake. How about giving me the benefit of the doubt, that I’m merely sharing certain things that must be rightly understood and require more than just “I’m right, you’re wrong”. Sometimes it’s necessary to unravel an error before you can demonstrate the fact.
I think the facts speak for themselves Michael, not to mention the somewhat shoddy supporting evidence or understanding of the majority ruling in US v Wong Kim Ark and its various precedent cases.
This is when you try to hide in ‘benefit of the doubt’ and ‘must be rightly understood’ while failing to support your claims when asked.
Combine this with your position on evolution and creationism and we are starting to see a real trend.
Michael,
If that view didn’t prevail at the Convention, then why did Madison say on May 22nd, 1789,
“It is an established maxim that birth is a criterion of allegiance. Birth however derives its force sometimes from place and sometimes from parentage, but in general place is the most certain criterion; it is what applies in the United States”
Wasn’t May 22nd 1789 after the Constitution was already ratified and adopted? And doesn’t that sound a lot like English Common Law?
Mikey,
You may be trying to display erudition, but you are failing miserably. I just took another look at the junk you posted twice (after all, I’ve been pretty hard on you and wouldn’t want to be mistaken in my evaluation of your dishonesty…) and here’s what I found:
I’m sorry, but if you think that this sort of intellectual dishonesty is erudite then you are a moron – which mean that you fit right in with the rest of the birthers…
Well, yes, that’s what the Court argued—kind of, sort of. But despite its unwarranted characterization of jus sanguinis as a form of naturalization in dicta, which was later renounced by the Taft Court, it did not make your mistake of which you are unaware.
One would have to understand English Common Law for sure as far as the rule of jus soli goes. But that’s only one aspect of citizenship and nationality law relative to both natural-born citizenship and naturalization. There’s two concerns here: territorial allegiance and hereditary allegiance. Neither aspect of citizenship and nationality can be properly understood without comprehending the whole. Further, to understand jus sanguinis one has to begin with Roman law and observe that in Great Britain natural-born citizenship was also imparted by statute, by royal/parliamentary decree as a matter of prerogative above and beyond the common-law rule of jus soli. Common law is case law, the law of the British judiciary. It’s not legislative law or the provisos of executive privilege. But all of that went to the dictum of the Court.
Its Ratio decidendi was concerned with whether or not “the limits of the United States” and “the jurisdiction of the United States” were distinct concerns, synonymous or were somehow or another simultaneously applicable to children born on U.S. soil of foreign nationals.
News flash for you: aside from the Court’s characterization of jus sanguinis as a means of lending logical support to a decision they knew to be a finagling of the historical understanding of jurisdictions, there’s nothing in the above with which the majority would disagree. And no doubt that blows your mind because you do not grasp the fundamentals behind the Court’s rhetoric. The fact that citizens born abroad of U.S. citizens to this very day are still regarded to be natural-born citizens by Congress and the State Department despite the Court’s rhetoric should alert you to the fact that your understanding is muddled somewhere about something. Further, later Courts handed down both dictum and binding declarations that inarguably refute the implications of the Gray Court’s decision, but without reversing its Ratio decidendi. How could that be?
Again, it goes to understanding the fundamentals of citizenship and nationality all at once as a whole, not in bits and pieces.
Aside from the fact that my side lost, there’s no “unfortunate for my arguments”; that is to say, unlike you, I do accurately and comprehensibly understand what the Gray Court argued and why. I simply don’t agree with its conclusion and its dictum regarding the nature of citizenship acquired via jus sanguinis.
Do you accurately and comprehensibly understand the minority’s argument, at the time, backed by the majority of case law and practice? Hell no. You think it argued things that it didn’t as you attribute validity to aspects of the majority’s argument that you shouldn’t.
So, cutting through the mountain of verbiage, this seems to be your answer to my question. In your opinion (no support provided) Congress could have (but never did) passed a law that said those free, white persons born in the US to non-citizen parents after a certain date would not be citizens. Well, Congress is free to pass whatever it likes. Congress could pass a law that no one under 5’6″ is a citizen or no one with blond hair is a citizen. In fact, Congress could say that no one born in the US is an automatic citizen, regardless of parental citizenship, and that citizenship must be earned in adulthood by some service to the country (this was actually Aristotle’s position). The question of course is would any such laws be upheld in court? As we can infer, not just from Wong, but from Lynch v Clark and other cases, the answer is quite definitely, “No”.
Coming back from the realm of rhetoric and speculation to the fact based world we have the following:
1. Free white persons born in the United States have always been natural born citizens regardless of their parents (except for the children of diplomats).
2. Besides diplomats, the other exceptions were those barred by racial exclusion laws at various times-slaves, free blacks between Dred Scott and the Civil War, Chinese.
3. When you remove the racial exclusions, then all are considered as #1.
It’s a very weak argument to say “could have”, when they didn’t. In fact, long-standing practice acquires force within the law and cannot be changed willy-nilly. And the long-standing practice, enshrined in the common law and the Constitution, is that those born in the US are citizens. Full stop. In fact you didn’t address my original challenge, which was to find a single case of someone born in the US who underwent naturalization (barring a few children of diplomats). Since several hundred million folks have been born in the US since 1787 and none have ever been naturalized that speaks volumes to those who live in the real world.
All I meant is that there was no guarantee, which is a better way to put it, not that Congress could revoke citizenship once conferred, but that it could revoke the practice of conferring citizenship to persons not born of both the soil and the blood of the nation, whether directly in the case of native-born persons or indirectly in the case of persons born abroad of duly established citizens with a prior claim on the soil.
Your analogy is no good. Remember natural-born citizenship obviates the need of statue. Why? Because its essence, the moment of conferral, predicated on the soil of the nation, is understood and commanded by the Natural-Born-Citizen Clause. But which construct? A construct that is strictly based on the soil of the nation or one that is based on both the soil and the blood of the nation? with the soil of the nation being attributed to persons born abroad of U.S. citizens in effect because of the prior claim of their parents on the soil in fact. Elegance. Uniformity. No divisions. No confusion. No chaos.
There’s only two and both are legitimate.
Begging the question from the outset, the Court argued that in order to ascertain the meaning or the terms of natural-born citizenship we must begin with British common law . . . as if the international law of territorial-hereditary allegiance didn’t exist, as if the Constitution did not empower Congress to establish either one, as if the Court were not already aware of the alternatives and the executive and legislative branches’ historical position.
Fuller-Harlan’s objection:
Michael references Weedin v. Chin Bow which quotes the Gray court on the position of jus soli as the foundation of citizenship in the US. The court then discusses the meaning of the 1790 naturalization act which extended citizenship to children born abroad, similar to English statutory law.
What is important to realize here that English Common Law never accepted jus sanguini and thus explicit statutory provisions were needed, just like in the United States. In other words, the Court recognized that under common law at the time of the Constitution, there was no concept of jus soli.
In Rogers v Bellei, the Court ruled that children born outside the US, and naturalized, are not protected by the 14th Amendment. In fact, in Weedin, the court recognizes that an oath is required at age 18th, similar to those who naturalize.
Weedin recognizes that
and then argues
The simple fact remains that jus sanguini is a statutory implementation not a Constitutional citizenship by birth.
Even if we accept that Congress may extend citizenship at birth to those born to one or more US citizens, which they have done, this does not deny the fact that jus soli is what dictates the acquisition of natural born status in the United States.
Perhaps Michael should read the actual opinions to which he refers to or outline in better detail, how he has reached his conclusion?
A mere assertion is just not very convincing.
Of course, the courts in Tin Sing, Wong Kim Ark, Lynch v Clarke and other precedents all rejected this and observed that the term natural born was well understood in common law, which was the British construct. In fact there is NO evidence that a different interpretation was intended by the Founders. In fact. the Founders realized that by defining Natural Born as jus soli, they needed to take care of children born abroad to US citizens as they had, under the Constitution, no status and required statutory declaration of citizenship.
It’s that simple.
See also Ex Parte Chin King, 13 Saw 333, 35 Fed 354, Cir Oregon (1888)
There are just too many cases that disagree with Michael’s novel interpretation.
Or In Re Yung See Hee, 36 Fed 437
And the list continues… Sorry Michael, you do understand that the arguments raised by the minority appear to not have been accepted by the Courts, before or since US v Wong Kim Ark? Nor by the majority of scholars.
Where is my case of anyone born in the US who naturalized (other than diplomats)?. No discourse, please. Just a name and date. If you can’t find one out of hundreds of millions of births, then they don’t exist. Therefore all born here are citizens. THE END.
A well established position based on precedent. And no, the court stated it slightly different which may explain your confusion. The Court observed that the term natural born was left undefined by the Constitution, thus its meaning had to be found in common law (citing several precedents to support this). The Court then explored the meaning of Natural Born in common law at the time of the Constitution and observed how the states had incorporated most of English Common Law, and continued to use it. As such, the Common Law in the early republic was based on English Common Law and the term natural born, had to be found in said Common Law.
Even Vattel, accepted that while he preferred his definitions, that the laws of the Country in the end were more relevant, pointing to English common law as an example. In other words, even Vattel would support the findings by Gray.
Does this help?
Uh…. Well, that’s where the “Meaningless long-winded blather” response comes in. Unable to reject the facts, what is Michael but to do than reject it based on a logical fallacy?
That’s all he’s got.
Ooops, seems the browsers across the various computers I am using have a different Name. Passerby and NBC are the same nicks.
I apologize
The Courts have already addresses this by observing that under the Constitution it was jus soli and that Congress used its naturalization powers to extend citizenship jus sanguini, under statute.
The latter can be and has been taken away, the former is inherent to the Constitution.
Jus soli is far stronger than jus sanguini it seems. No surprise.
If the Founders really believed that natural born included ‘jus sanguinis’, they would not have insisted on passing a statute to deal with the status of children born abroad to us citizen parents, now would they.
That by itself destroys any of Michael’s ‘arguments’
That’s hilariously ironic…
Someone needs to tell Mikey that being unnecessarily verbose doesn’t make you sound smarter, and it doesn’t cover up the fact that nothing he has said thus far has any support in the law.
It’s obnoxious. And his website of blather is also painful visually. Maybe that’s the plan. Just believe him or he’ll make it too uncomfortable for anyone to debunk.
His position on evolution, creationism and atheism is similarly infected. Poor Michael.
I’m wondering, under Michael’s theory, which legal entity gets to determine who is natural born and who isn’t. Is it the province of the judiciary? Is it the province of the legislative branch?
Was Chester A. Arthur “natural born” with a father who naturalized when Arthur was 14 years old?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Passerby, your point about finding an example of someone whjo was born here who nevertheless naturalized, I had mentioned before in one of these threads. And from what I’ve seen, records are available although you might have to be very organized, disciplined and willing to devote a lot of time to get at them.
But under statistical sampling theory, you wouldn’t have to look through millions of births. The best sampling method might be to choose some finite slice of time, wuch as a year or a small number of years, and try to look at all avaiable naturalization records. If no instance of anyone born in the U.S.A. but yet later naturalizing, would prove, to a rational person, that birth in this country was enough to confer citizenship, with limited exceptions. Besides the offpring of invading armies and diplomats, a Native American whose nation was deemed to be his tribe would have had to natrualize before the law was changed in the early 20th Century, right? But those would have been easy to pick out. But if you find a Johann Schmidt born in St. Louis, who’s later naturallized — that would be evidence that I’m wrong.
However, the burden of proof is on those who assert that people born in the United States to non-citizen parents were not citizens at birth. So they’re the ones who would need to slog through the musty records, if they wish to be believed.
Indians were naturalized because they were deemed to be born of a foreign nation. I suggest you read the debates of the the 14th Amendment Congress where it was repeatedly pointed out that persons born in the United States could not be naturalized and hence they needed to amend the Constitution.
There is no need to slog through records as all legal authority of the period said that “naturalization” only applied to the foregin born. For example:
” I maintain that a negro can not be made a citizen by Congress ; he can not be made a citizen by any naturalization laws, because the naturalization laws apply to foreigners alone. No man can shake the legal truth of that position. They apply to foreigners alone; and a negro, an Indian, or any other person born within the United States, not being a foreigner, can not be naturalized; therefore they can not be made citizens by the uniform rule established by Congress under the Constitution, and there is no other rule. Congress has no power, as I said before, to naturalize a citizen. They could not be made citizens by treaty. If they arc made so at all, it is by their birth, and the locality of their birth, and the general operation and effect of our Constitution.” Sen. Davis, quoted in History of the thirty-ninth Congress of the United States, William Horatio Barnes, pg. 208, (1868)
“The right of naturalization was therefore, with one accord, surrendered by the States, and confided to the Federal Government. And this power granted to Congress to establish an uniform rule of naturalization is, by the well-understood meaning of the word, confined to persons born in a foreign country, under a foreign Government. It is not a power to raise to the rank of a citizen any one born in the United States, who, from birth or parentage, by the laws of the country, belongs to an inferior and subordinate class.” Chief Justice Taney, Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. at 417
“It appears, then, that the only power expressly granted to Congress to legislate concerning citizenship, is confined to the removal of the disabilities of foreign birth.” Justice Curtis, Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393, 478 (1857)
“But what is naturalization? It is the removal of the disabilities of alienage… Congress has power ” to establish an uniform rule of naturalization….An alien naturalized is “to all intents and purposes a natural born subject…The power is applicable only to those of foreign birth. Alienage is an indispensable element in the process. To make one of domestic birth a citizen, is not naturalization, and cannot be brought within the exercise of that power. There is an universal agreement of opinion upon this subject.” George Washington Paschal, The Constitution of the United States defined and carefully annotated, note 274, (1968)(“quoting Justice Swayne in US v. Rhodes).
“Mr. Madison did not think that Congress, by the constitution, had any authority to readmit American citizens at all. It was only granted to them to admit aliens.” Abridgment of the Debates of Congress, from 1789 to 1856: From Gales and Seatons’ Annals of Congress; from their Register of debates; and from the official reported debates, by John C. Rives, pg. 556 (1860)
NATURALIZATION. The act by which an alien is made a citizen of the United States of America. Bouvier Law Dictionary pg. 189 (1843)
ALIEN, persons. One born out of the jurisdiction of the United States, who has not since been naturalized under their constitution and laws. To this there are some exceptions, as this children of the ministers of the United States in foreign courts. See Citizen, Inhabitant. Bouvier Law Dictionary (1843)
Naturalization. That process by which an alien becomes a citizen. Analysis of Civil Government, By Calvin Townsend, pg. 325 (1869)
An alien is one who is born in a foreign country. Analysis of Civil Government, By Calvin Townsend, pg. 325 (1869)
NATURALIZATION. [Lat. naturalizatio.] The act of investing an alien with the rights and privileges of a native or natural-born subject or citizen.* Co. Litt. 129 a. 1 Bl. Com. 374. 2 Kent’s Com. 64—67. Alexander Mansfield Burrill, A new law dictionary and glossary, pg 737 (1851)
Alien: In american Law. One born out of the jurisdiction of the United States. Alexander Mansfield Burrill, A new law dictionary and glossary, pg 81 (1871)
Well, yes, and also the failure to meet the requirements of retention. But I know that, as you can see from a piece I wrote more than a year ago that wades through the entire Graysian line of dicta with which the left thought to destroy the congressional power of prerogative and expatriation.
See link: Wong Kim Ark Meet Rogers
Ah! I see now. You’re a soiler. The belief that Justice Gray necessarily held that citizenship acquired by the law of the bloodline (jus sanguinis) is a form of naturalization in the sense that its recipients are not natural-born citizens eligible to hold the Office of President is wrong. He never asserted any such thing, but it is true that his dunderheaded characterization of it, simply because it is conferred through the operation of the Naturalization Clause, has been the source of a great deal of mischief and confusion. For the essence of natural-born citizenship is the moment of conferral and the fact that it is ultimately predicated on the soil of the nation via the blood of the citizen parent.
Birth is the essence of allegiance. Place and parentage are the terms of allegiance. Natural-born citizenship is conferred at the moment of birth; naturalized citizenship proper is conferred after birth. Those of the former class of citizenship can hold the Office of President regardless where they were born; those of the latter cannot. These are the only constitutional classifications of citizenship: natural-born or naturalized. There are no others. All natural-born citizens are born of either the soil of the nation, the blood of the nation, or both. Naturalized citizens are born of neither.
That’s all there is to it.
Further, the person born abroad of U.S. citizens is actually made a natural-born citizen through the joint operation of the Natural-Born-Citizen Clause and the Naturalization Clause by Congress. And the characterization of citizenship acquired via the law of the bloodline is a dictum, and this characterization has never been asserted in anything but dicta or in the losing arguments of dissent. And all of those were directly predicated on the dictum of Wong Kim Ark which is no longer valid. It was renounced, rendered null and void by the Taft Court in 1927.
You’re arguing a dictum and a voided one at that as if it were the law of the land.
Link: http://michaeldavidrawlings1.blogspot.com/2011/03/righting-confusion-of-citizenship-and.html
The fact that the law of the bloodline confers natural-born citizenship in every sense for constitutional purposes, including the right to hold the Office of President, has been irrevocably established in American legal tradition. It’s status is beyond dispute.
It was my point.
I am of course asserting that there are none. I am inviting Mr Rawlings to prove me wrong and am confident that he will be unable to do so.
I KNOW that, Ballentine. But occupying Mr Rawlings with a good long slog through the records might keep him from typing more crappola for a while. We should all encourage him to look and not come back until he has found a case.
Using words like “fact” and pharses like “beyond dispute” doesn’t make your unsupported arguements, that are completely rejected by the legal community any less fictional. There’s no point in even arguing your word salad.
(Oh…and gotta love an amatuer internet hack calling a Supreme Court justice a dunderhead, particularly on an opinion, that contrary to his contention, is still good law, and quite frequently cited, a century later….what exactly are your qualificatons again, because I’m not finding any articles by you in any law journal?).
The problem is you don’t cite authority to support your opinions. You simply make claims without support. No legal authority in the founding period said bloodline was relevant to citizenship. Certainly, the 14th amendment Congress did not think so. The claim that children of citizens born oversees are NBCs is pretty modern as there is almost no 19th century authority to support such notion. Rather, the majority view in the 19th century was that, without statute, children born oversees were aliens. This was the view in both England and America. Have you read Kent and Binney on this issue? Have you read the naturalization debates? This view remains the law today. For example:
“Persons not born in the United States acquire citizenship by birth only as provided by Acts of Congress.” Miller v. Albright, 523 U.S. 420 (1998)
Please show me on legal authority that has ever said one needed citizen parents to be natural born. Simply doesn’t exist.
JoZep, I can assure you as a PhD molecular biologist and immunologist that Mr Rawlings’ opinions masquerading as fact on evolution make his legal ramblings look almost coherent.
It appears that you not only fail to comprehend the meaning of dicta but also are under the impression that the ‘piece you wrote’ has any relevance to the argument. Now I understand that you are unable to address the issues raised and thus have to refer to some mythical ‘rebuttal’, but the simple fact remains that you have failed to present any logic, reason, let alone legal arguments which support your position.
The issue of expatriation is an interesting one but of relatively minor interest to the question at hand other than observing that the right of expatriation, slowly evolved through the US courts. Nothing however addresses the simple fact that the term Natural Born was left undefined in the Constitution and thus its meaning had to be found in Common Law (as explained by Justice Gray, referring to various well established precedents). The Court then observed how in Common Law, accepted by the States and in fact, at work in the various states, natural born had a specific meaning to mean ‘born of soil’.
It’s that simple really
That is what the dissenting Judge surely thought.
ROTFL…
It’s a good thing that he’s too much of a coward (or understands that his ideas cannot withstand honest debate) to allow comments on his blog. Besides, there is proof that Mr. Rawlings is incorrect regarding evolution written in the DNA of every cell in his body – which is a lot stronger than every relevant reference of law which says he’s a dishonest fool on the subject of citizenship…
I never understood the expatriation argument. There was much debate in the early republic as to whether we adopted perteutal allegiance. Yet, no one said that adopting the right of expatriation meant we abandoned jus soli. Jefferson drafted a Virginia statute providing for bith jus soli and the right of expatriation. Madison and Kent were unsure about the right of expatriation but clear that we followed jus soli in the US. Try reading the 1868 Congressional debates that eventually adopted such right. No one disputed the jus soli rule adopted in the previous Congress. By my count, 8 members of such Congress, the most important legal scholars, said that jus soli was the univeral rule and I can cite members of such Congress all day saying jus soli was the rule. No one mentioned jus sanguinis. Justice Fuller’s claims that expatriation had anything to do with jus soli is without any historical support.
Too bad Justice Fuller could find so little authority to support his opinion or he might have done better. Unfortunately, there pretty much is no such authority. Ludlam v. Ludlam is the only case that comes to mind and such case made clear the English common law defined citizenship in the United States. The courts have always held that the foreign born can only be made citizens by statute and Congress only has the power of naturalization. Accordingly, foreign born children of citizens were considered naturalized in the 19th century. There are those today who have a different view but history does not support such notion.
“The fact that the law of the bloodline confers natural-born citizenship in every sense for constitutional purposes, including the right to hold the Office of President, has been irrevocably established in American legal tradition. It’s status is beyond dispute.”–Michael
I guess Barack Hussein Obama II’s bloodline extending from Stanley Ann Dunham is good enought then. After all, he is the duly elected 44th President of the United States.
Just to remind Michael of the part of the dissent that he appears to have overlooked
Your turn…
Ugh! Agreed!
I wasted some time looking at some of that on his site…boy, does he ever drone on and as usual, misunderstand and misinterpret arguments of science at every turn. I really can’t stand these Creationist-Lite “ID” folks and their pseudo-clap trap nonsense.
These people suffer from having some desperate innate need for “God of the Gaps” and for some reason, feel completely threatened by empirical science and a secular world.
I find it both laughable and offensive how they wail and howl and try to live in some constant state of perceived “victimhood” when they can’t force their personal version of a Theocracy down everyone else’s throats.
Sad and annoying, yet completely consistent with a faith-based mindset that wants to leap (cling) to predetermined conclusions because of what their “emotional gut” wants to be true, as opposed to allowing for where actual facts and evidence lead…
Scientist, can you summarize the dissenting argument in the Wong Kim Ark decision in an objective, academically responsible fashion or not?
As merely a JD, I find his legal declarations of “fact” and “beyond dispute,” without the need to support it with any citation, topped with a heavy dose of unnecessary wordiness and faux intellectualism rather tedious. It’s so much meanless pomp, that I just can’t suffer through all the fluff to draft a meaningful response to it. Many moons ago, one of my profs in law school said if you find yourself trying to pad your arguments with fluff words rather than clear and consise arguments, stop writing. Nothing gives away the fact that you have nothing to say than just piling on words for the sake of words. A good argument is clear and to the point.
It’s been done a hundred times, here and in law journals ad nauseum.
Do your own damn homework.
And why do we care about the losing decision. Fuller really didn’t make much of an argument anyway. He asserted that abandonment of perpetual allegiance meant the abandonment of the common law claiming the the former was a necessary part of the latter. Of course, he can offer no historical support for such argument as it is contrary to history as I pointed out above. He argued that we had adopted an international rule of law with respect to citizenship which is again contrary to pretty much all 19th century authority and ignores that most American authority cited jus soli as the international rule. Comically, he tries to cite Story who had expressly told us the English common law defined citizenship in the United States. Other than that, Fuller cherry picks a few quotes from the 39th Congress which he thinks support him and ignores that mountain of quotes supporting jus soli. Really weak decision.
Can you support your various specious assertions my friend?
Surely you are not projecting here now are you?
Hint: The dissenting argument has no legal relevance, and at best shows how Michael’s arguments were rejected by the Majority of the Court, based on precedent, legal scholarship, historical analysis, logic and reason.
So Michael, what now?
As to the dissent, they did argue that
How am I doing so far…
The dissent clearly recognized that the majority had rejected that children born abroad to US citizens would be eligible to run for the office of the President. Or is this just all irrelevant dicta from a losing party?
Present what you believe to be your best argument, provide the necessary references and direct quotes and see how far you can get in presenting a more coherent
argument.
Could you also see if you can answer Dr Conspiracy’s request?
You saying…
Mikey,
You seem to have been completely outed as a fraud. You have been shown to have acted with bad faith beyond a shadow of a doubt and your arguments have been completely debunked by people who have actually made the kind of supporting which you falsely claim to have. Since you probably have neither the courage nor the integrity to admit your dishonesty (let alone curtail it) and no one can engage in an honest, rational discourse with you while you are failing to act in good faith and ignoring the logical rebuttals of your arguments why don’t you just leave? What are you accomplishing here besides further proving that you are a pseudo-intellecutal birther hack?
I would not call him a fraud, he just is forced to let his beliefs guide what aspects of information he is willing to consider and what information becomes too complex to handle and should thus be rejected.
Michael insists, without further argument, that the Gray decision is somehow flawed, dicta, etc while relying on the losing dissenting opinion to make a case without any real arguments beyond: Have you read the decision?
All one can do is work slowly through the facts and hope that Michael can accept his errors.
Oops – used a bad word (feel free to delete the version in moderation, Doc)
I respect what you and others do NBC (slogging through Mikey’s bull$hit to substantively refute it isn’t easy…), but I still think that the pseudo-intellecual hack needs to understand what a completely irrelevant, dishonest lowlife he really is…
I suppose some die-hard Chicago Cubs fans can recount all the various ways in which they have failed to win over the years…
From Michael’s own site:
“Revised Statutes Act of 1802, Section 4:
[A]nd the children of persons who now are, or have been citizens of the United States, shall, though born out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States, be considered as citizens thereof. Provided, that the right of citizenship shall not descend on persons whose fathers have never been resident of the United States.”
So, why after “shall” does it say “though born out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States”? Does not the word “though” imply that this is a deviation from the rule? The rule being the constitutional jus soli?
I think the phrasing “the right of citizenship shall … descend” is also telling – it seems to imply citizenship in such a case is not automatic – you have to ask for it. Surely you would wind up with having practically no citizens at all, and at times of war, you’ll have to intern most of the populationm even those born in the USA. Unless somehow, Michael manages to convince the Supreme Court that applying for a drivers’ licence or a birth certificate somehow means you are applying for the US citizenship that you have a right to.
In other words, this whole argument is a farce. Simple comme bonjour – to quote Vattel.
These novel nativists and neo-filopietists should walk around with an apple on their head.
Oops…
The law of the bloodline has nothing whatsoever to do with Obama. Obama was born on U.S. soil proper. You’re an idiot.
Your point, whatever it is is not clear.
Pot. Kettle. Black.
Soilism is the commonly held fallacy that one must be born on American soil in order to be a natural-born citizen of the United States. Despite more than two-hundred years of statutory history showing otherwise, adherents desperately cling to this doctrine with the feverish, cult-like fanaticism of a Truther. The Soiler’s typical response to anyone who attempts to talk them down, as it were, is to cover his ears and sing, “la-la-la-la-la, I can’t hear you, la-la-la-la-la”.
Morons.
Ding. Bat. Pile.
Constructive. Well thought out. With that, I rescind my last complaint. Your arguments are all the model of concision and precision. I understand them perfectly.
You are just here to blather and insult.
Thank you. Saves me some time.
NBC, pad it out with a couple thousand words of puffery and perhaps he will be able to understand the point.
Because jus sanguinis necessarily confers citizenship on persons, “though born out of the limits and jurisdiciton of the United States. . . .”
What don’t you understand, retard?
Let’s see. I could compare Charles Gordon’s thesis in “Who can be President of the United States: The Unresolved Enigma,” 28 Md. L. Rev. 1 (1968) (natural born includes those born abroad) with Pinckney McElwee’s argument entered into the Congressional Record (it doesn’t). Or, I could read Michael’s citation-free blather.
I’ve argued with NBC before about whether the term NBC encompasses those born abroad to citizens. He’s not a retard, Michael. He bases his view that it doesn’t on the same thing that Gray did – that common law did not encompass those born abroad. It required statutory law in England and in the United States. Legal scholars who take issue with that conclusion, like Gordon, do so not because the viewpoint is completely retarded, but because they have a more expansive view of the common law. Common law, in their view, includes the long-standing statutory pronouncements.
The argument continues today, see the law review articles written about McCain.
When you call NBC a retard, Michael, you say more about yourself than about him.
Mikey,
Do you know what the difference between my insults and yours are? Mine are honest and truthful… yours are just sad.
I am glad to see that you’re concentrating your BS to make it easier for people to ignore, though. Hopefully someday you will come to be ashamed for your behavior here.
Yes. Its AMAAAZING that the 200 years of staturory history were only discovered on free republic in June 2008. And that a magna cum laude of Harvard would have put on his fight the smears website that his dad was non naturalized if it was such a clearly known thing in law.
And before 2008 no mention of it appears. Not in Jerome Corsi’s book on Obama published in May 2008. Not in Hillary Clinton’s primary campaign’s press statements. Not in John McCain’s press statements. Its amasing that this 200 years of clear history were not known to anyone.
Not even a dentist, a truther, an ambulance chaser and a forger.
Other than you, Orly, Berg, Leo the poker player, and Mario the Putz, WTF cares?
Jus Soli indeed is a well established tradition which makes any one born on US soil to be a natural born citizen, not through statute but through our Constitution and Common Law. Under English Common Law, the concept of jus sanguinis never existed which is why it had to be explicitly expressed in statute. This happened both in England as well as in the US where the Founders, realizing that they had not taken care of the status of children born on foreign soil to US citizens, and passed a naturalization statute making them a citizen (initially the term natural born was used, but that oversight was quickly removed in later versions).
Now, Greg and I and others have discussed in quite some detail the arguments in favor and against why children born abroad to US citizens are or are not natural born citizens. I believe that, like the dissenting Judge in Wong Kim Ark, whom you were quoting with such admiration, had observed that under the majority’s opinion it appeared that they had found children born abroad to US citizens to not be natural born. SImilarly, this argument was not addressed in Ankeny v Daniels, but the court pointed out that it did not take a position on this issue.
I am glad that you admit that it is statutory law and not the Constitution which makes such children citizens and thus, as has happened in the past, Congress can take away their citizenship status at will. Because of our Constitution, they can however not do the same for those born on US soil.
Sorry Michael, but your comments show a certain level of unfamiliarity with common law, legal precedential rulings, as well as the scholarly arguments on this topic. Needless to say, there are some good arguments as to why such children may still be found to be natural born, but such arguments are much better developed in reason, fact and logic than your somewhat childlike name calling.
Trying to get banned rather than have your arguments further destroyed by logic and reason? I love how your ‘arguments’ have devolved to nothing more than insults, which is only one level below where your arguments were previously.
Still I am impressed how allergic you appear to be to facts, reason and logic?
It hurts doesn’t it, when people look straight through your nonsense and point out the logical flaws, the lack in support in fact, legal precedent, scholarly articles and so on…
Not true, Jus Sanguinis is an alternative to jus soli which assigns citizenship based on bloodline, whether born in the country or outside. No wonder your ‘arguments’ are so lacking.
ROTFL…. I doubt that he would understand either way. Look at how he has mangled the ruling and the dissent in US v Wong Kim Ark, how unfamiliar he is with legal precedent, scholarly research, logic, reason, and the development of an argument based on consistent references rather than to pure speculation.
Now he has been reduced to nothing more than name calling. Love it when one reaches the point of seeing the true colors of one’s ‘opponent’, especially when he is so self-inflated that he believes that his arguments are impervious to logic and reason and especially to legal precedents.
And so, believing himself wise, he has become a fool (Rom 1:22)
A fitting conclusion to the discussion really.
Especially when a retard like me can so utterly destroy Michael’s position that he has to resort to insult and name calling.
Says a lot about our friend, does it not?
An absolutely apt aphorism for finishing with Mikey and his sophomoric inanity.
Bye-bye Mikey, hope you grow the f*ck up someday.
I’m willing to give an awful lot of benefit of the doubt to someone who engages with the issue in a good faith manner, but comments like this:
Especially when coupled with errors like this:
(See the long string of cases cited by the lower court in Wong Kim Ark ruling the same way as the Supreme Court ultimately did, and In re Look Ting Sing did years earlier.)
Or:
(McCain – see Michigan Law Review’s symposium. Romney – see Pinckney McElwee’s report in the Congressional Record and Charles Gordon’s article)
Or:
(Again, see the long string of citations in the District Court’s decision in Wong Kim Ark. Or, for a fuller understanding, see Congress’s response to Jackson’s veto of the Civil Rights Act of 1866. Or see Garrett Epps’ article tracing the legislative history of the 14th Amendment, which I’ve cited above)
I have to conclude that the speaker is all hat and no cattle. There is a real, actual, and lively debate about whether the term “natural born citizen” includes those born abroad. The fact that the consensus is that it does is not the same as saying that it is “manifest.” And someone who can make such errors is not “light years ahead” of anyone, much less Ballantine.
Or read some more on my blog US Congress – Mr Dowdy reports on the meaning of Natural Born
Thank you, I was looking, but not very hard, for McElwee’s report.
Thanks to your research I have been privy to quite a few relevant papers. I thank you for the education through scholarly discussion Greg.
I am sometimes amazed at what I find on my own site 🙂 So much information collected, and not all fully remembered.
Michael’s position is not only fully undocumented by references but also contradicted by much what we do know.
What happened to our previously so ‘erudite’ friend? Cat caught his tongue…
Fetal position.
I am remember countless papers, and the thesis, I composed during graduate school and I can see the blood-red pen markings that would accompany this little paragraph. Who irrevocably established it? To be irrevocably established, you have to have hundreds upon hundreds of sources, what are they? Beyond dispute, then why is there a dispute?
And, in a legal tradition, how is anything irrevocable? There can be an amendment to the Constitution, which then may “revoke” a legal tradition. That is what the founder’s provided.
You post a comment on my Google Blog. I get an e-mail. I answered via e-mail. Ya That’s how it works on Google. No need to respond on the blog. Turned out to be the same message, a duplicate. Right?
How high do you want to be hung?
Ah! Civility. Wow. Perhaps an open mind.
Initially I was just trying to lay a foundation, which I’ve done. Basics. I find it odd that the local “experts” don’t recognize them. In my circle and presumably in the circle in which some think they run such things would not be necessary. They’re given. Trust me on that, for things are going to become quite clear about a few of your members.
But no worries. I’ve got material here now to copy and paste that the honest will reexamine in new light.
Now. Tighter. Smaller. Concentrations of observations back to the hilt.
Who’s honest around here and who’s not.
But sure. Would you refresh me, please. What was I referring to? Do you have any particulars in mind that you want from me. Sources, that is. No problem.
Found my US-born naturalized citizen yet? Hundreds of millions of births in the US since 1788. If you can’t find one that would make the odds of you being correct ,1 in 500,000,000 or so. Statistically speaking, that is approaching 0 asymptotically.
Hotter. Wetter. Tighter. Sexier.
Here’s another interesting question to ask: How many Presidents, or Presidential candidates, have been asked to provide documentary proof of their eligibility, over and above the sworn affidavit they provide with their filing. I would hazard a guess that the number is less than 2.
The question is a foundation to establish what? Your insanity?
That is because many of the “experts” which I’m sure don’t actually consider themselves experts, are actual lawyers, and have done at least a cursory examination of the law, and scholarly debate on the issue. Needless to say, the legal community has quite a different view than your generally uncited ramblings.
I’m guessing there aren’t very many people formally trained in the law in your circle.
Is that why you fail to provide decent citations for your ramblings? I guess that whole formal legal education thing has kind of got me in the rut of thinking that pretty much nothing is “given” and if someone is telling you its “given” than you better ask for them to prove it, because odds the reason they’re claiming it to be “given” is because they pulled it out from where the sun don’t shine.
Sure….I’m going to trust you over every court opinion, journal article, or scholarly text I’ve ever read…..at this point, if you said the sun rises in the east, I’d probably stick my head out the window to double check.
Well first off, I don’t know what you’ve been trying to say in the number of large comments you have left (that its, I don’t know to what point they are aimed). How about picking a thesis that you agree with that you think others here would not agree with and make a tight argument for it.
“How high do you want to be hung?”
Ooh, threaty.
Words, empty words my dear confused friend who cannot even provide support for his claims and blames us for his own lack of prowess.
Fascinating.
Seems you have learned nothing here so you now resort to name calling. The fact is we cite authority, you do not as you have none. Can you name one legal authority prior to the civil war saying a native born person needed citizen parents to be citizens? Even one? No. I provided a link with a mountain of legal authority supporting the common law view including every legal giant of the period.
We know that the US has had a statutory jus sanguinis tradition like England. However, the law has been, and remains, that such persons are only citizens by statute and Congress at any time could take such right away. There was, of course, a period in the 19th century where there was no statute until it was pointed out to Congress by scholars that without statute children born to citizens abroad were aliens. Whether such statutory citizens are natural born is an open question but you probably don’t know that natural born subjects by statute were not eligible to sit in Parliament. Accordingly, not clear that the framers would have thought statutory citizens would be natural born for office eligibility since they were clearly copying England. Of course, the framers in the Convention only talked about place of birth.
You obviously still have not read the 14th Amendment debates or the link of citations I provided. Only an idiot that read such would think that they were not adopting the common law rule and that they repeatedly said that the children of the Chinese would be citizens. No one talked of jus sanguinis. The language itself could not be clearer and really is not subject to any other rationale interpretation. It was Senator Edmunds, member of the judiciary committee of such Congress, that told Gray he was right. What does he know? After the republicans lost power, Democrats and some courts tried to gut the Amendment and succeeded with much of it such as the equal protection clause and privileges and immunities clause. However, the majority of legal scholars and court cases prior to Wong Kim Ark continued the common law interpretation as Greg pointed out. However, there was some debate until Wong Kim Ark due mostly to racists unable to accept the Chinese as citizens. You can keep saying Wong Kim Ark is wrong all you want, but pre-amendment law, the legislative history and the plain meaning of the language all say you are wrong.
Oh the irony my friend, the irony…
Empty words… I assume you are still desperately searching for some?
Proof by assertion, such a common fallacy… Now, as others have shown, this statement lacks not only in supporting evidence, reason, logic or even legal precedent, but is actually strongly contradicted by such.
No worries, we will give you some time to properly educate yourself on these matters, allowing you to provide us with some relevant quotes, references, legal cases, scholarly opinions etc.
Why have I called him a retard, you ask? Because I have told him more than once that Gray’s assertion is dicta. DICTA. DICTA. DICTA. In fact, the issue regarding the nature of citizenship conferred by the law of the bloodline has never been addressed by any court at any level except in DICTA.
I told him nicely.
But instead of politely reflecting on the matter and checking it out, I was treated with contempt.
1. There’s absolutely nothing profound about the well known and widely appreciated understanding that common law does not encompass those born abroad. *Yawn* There is no controversy over that whatsoever among legal scholars. NONE. The debate centers on Gray’s dicta.
2. See the article I wrote about McCain and his questionable status. There’s nothing remotely mysterious about that particular legal glitch. Those of us who really know this stuff have known about it for years. Professor Chin made it famous again. That’s all.
http://michaeldavidrawlings1.blogspot.com/2009/12/was-senator-john-mccain-us-citizen-at.html
http://michaeldavidrawlings1.blogspot.com/2009/12/critique-of-chin-argument.html
3. With all do respect, there are no “statutory pronouncements” in common law. None. Common law is English case law, the law of the judiciary.
Common law, also known as case law or precedent, is law developed by judges through decisions of courts and similar tribunals rather than through legislative statutes or executive branch action. –Wikipedia
4. That’s the reason why jus sanguinis, statutory law, unless the law of the land, is not in common law.
5. The law of the bloodline and the common-law rule of jus soli have co-existed and coordinately operated side-by-side in one nation or another for centuries. These two methods of conferring natural-born citizenship have been used in Great Britain for centuries, and they have operated in this country side-by-side as well, before Wong Kim Ark, with jus soli, in effect, operating at the state level, up to this very day. Albeit, since Wong Kim Ark the constitutional method of conferral is jus soli, and the statutory method of conferral, jus sanguinis.
Many nations have a mixture of jus sanguinis and jus soli, including the United States, Canada, Italy, Israel, Germany, Greece, the Republic of Ireland and others. –Wikipedia
Perhaps a Biblical reminder may help our friend
2 Thesselonians 2;
Interesting thought really… Somewhat ironically, some appear to believe that the passage refers to President Obama even though they have been warned how God would cause them to be greatly deceived and believe these lies.
If you don’t wish to be ridiculed, don’t be ridiculous.
This discussion, with all the posts of Michael David Rawlings, reminds me of a passage in Isaac Asimov’s novel “Foundation”:
[Hardin is discussing the Origin Question — the origin of the human species — with Lord Dorwin.]
Hardin remained silent for a short while. Then he said, “When did Lameth write his book?”
“Oh — I should say about eight hundred yeahs ago. Of cohse, he has based it lahgely on the pwevious wuhk of Gleen.”
“Then why rely on him? Why not go to Arcturus and study the remains for yourself?”
Lord Dorwin raised his eyebrows and took a pinch of snuff hurriedly. “Why, whatevah foah, my deah fellow?”
“To get the information first hand, of course.”
“But wheah’s the necessity? It seems an uncommonly woundabout and hopelessly wigmawolish method of getting anywheahs. Look heah, now, I’ve got the wuhks of all the old mastahs — the gweat ahchaeologists of the past. I wigh them against each othah — balance the disagweements — analyze the conflicting statements — decide which is pwobably correct — and come to a conclusion. That is the scientific method. At least” — patronizingly — “as I see it. How insuffewably cwude it would be to go to Ahctuwus, oah to Sol, foah instance, and blundah about, when the old mastuhs have covahed the gwound so much moah effectually than we could possible hope to do.”
Hardin murmured politely, “I see.”
So why not repeat Hardin’s question? Why not go to the 14th Amendment itself and study the language for yourself?”
If you read the 14th Amendment and apply its terms, then you conclude that a person who was born in the United States, and was subject to its jurisdiction at the time, was a citizen by birth.
But that would be woundabout and hopelessly wigmawolish.
Instead of reading the law and applying it to the facts, Rawlings looks at all the old masters, founders, and framers; analyzes the conflicts, balances the disagreements, decides what is probably correct; and comes to a conclusion.
The wrong one.
So I am a retard because you do not understand the concept of DICTA? The concept of the bloodline indeed has never been addressed, so there may still be some hope that a Court will recognize that children born abroad to US citizens could still be natural born but the argument would not follow from our Constitution as it clearly recognizes birth on soil as the determining factor.
Jus Sanguinis has been admitted into US law through explicit statutes, not through Common Law and thus, when the Court in US v Wong Kim Ark (and its predecessors and successors) looked at the meaning of the term natural born as used in our Constitution, it could not find evidence for jus sanguinis in our Common Law tradition, but it did find strong and convincing evidence that jus soli was the relevant foundation for the term used.
Even the dissenting Judge, after all Michael approvingly references the losing side, recognizes that under the majority ruling, children born abroad to US citizens would not be eligible for the office of the President.
Faced with the facts, what other choice would our friend Michael have but to resort to name calling rather than to the use of reason, logic, supported by factual evidence, legal precedents, and scholarly research?
Yes it seems that Michael is quite enamoured with Wikipedia as his research tool. I am sure that he is far less aware that there exist in fact much better sources, known as primary sources. Oh well…
So let’s explain to Michael how indeed the US has a mixture of jus soli and jus sanguinis, nobody has denied this. In the US there are two sources of citizenship: Natural-born and natural-ized. The former comes from the Constitution, the latter comes from statutory enactments by our Congress, which has, under the Constitution the right to provide for uniform laws regulating naturalization.
By conflating the two concepts, Michael has ignored the clear rulings in US v Wong Kim Ark, as well as various of its predecessors which have outlined the origin and meaning of the term natural born as used in our Constitution.
Well, finally we have some sanity here. Indeed, there is no doubt that natural born, as defined by the Constitution refers to the concept of jus soli.
Statutory law has co-existed with common law when common law was unable to provide for aspects. Which is why in 1790, Congress passed a law which granted citizenship to children born abroad to US citizens.
It’s satisfying to see how Michael has come around to the arguments we have presented. I am proud of you… Now if you had only not made such a foolish argument of name calling and you could have held up your head high. Too bad.
And btw, your ‘explanation’ as to why you called me a retard appears to be at odds with the history of the threads above….
Let’s make sure we are not rewriting history now shall we. You called me a retard for quoting someone else’s observation about the use of ‘though’.
It’s all about reading comprehension my friend, and proper citations.
Perhaps this is also a good moment to correct some of Michael’s many errors
But the Court did not rule that permanent domicile is a requirement, in fact it observed that all children born on soil, under jurisdiction, and regardless of the status of the parents, would be natural born. The ‘under jurisdiction’ and ‘owing allegiance’ references indicate the common law exceptions: children born to foreign dignitaries (Ambassadors etc), children born to invading military. In the US there was a third class: Children born to Indians not paying taxes, an exception necessary to deal with the overlap in territory between the US and Indian tribes.
Michael, misunderstanding Horace Binney and the Court
You are almost correct. The Court observed that the meaning of natural born, as a term left undefined in the Constitution, had to be found in Common Law, not statutory law (a principle that hed been in place for quite some time). As such, since jus sanguinis had never been part of common law, something with which you agree, it could logically not include it.
So as defined in the Constitution, natural born was simply ‘jus soli’.
The question now becomes: Could Congress extend the Common Law status of natural citizenship through its powers of naturalization? And the answer to this question is far from resolved. The law which extended citizenship to foreign born children of US citizens was a naturalization law, passed under the powers of Congress to provide for uniform laws in this area. If the argument is that Congress can thus extend and restrict a Constitutional term then we have in fact a way to amend our Constitution without the process that the Constitution lays out for such.
While initially these children were granted natural born status, probably because of a cut and paste of the English statute, this was quickly removed in subsequent acts, never to be repeated.
The only closed mind here is you: closed to the facts, closed to the law, and closed to the Constitution. Dishonesty is not civil Mikey.
Contrary to Michael’s proclamations, we have provided quite a bit of evidence that contradicts Michael’s insistance the the framers were not told:
James Madison: “It is an established maxim, received by all political writers, that every person owes a natural allegiance to the government of that country in which he is born. Allegiance is defined to be a tie, that binds the subject to the state, and in consequence of his obedience, he is entitled to protection…
Act of 1790: Declaring children born abroad of US citizens to be citizens (natural born for a few years, a term which was then quietly removed). The act was passed to deal with the issue of foreign born children who under our Constitution were found to not be considered citizens and thus required explicit statutes, just as they had done in England.
Members of the Court: See Lynch v Clarke, Look Tin Sing, and the various other legal rulings outlining that birth on soil was the definition of natural born.
The things one can learn when one ventures away from Wikipedia are just amazing…
> since Wong Kim Ark the constitutional method of conferral is jus soli, and the statutory method of conferral, jus sanguinis
That is again an astoundingly layman-like statement. “*Since* Wong Kim Ark”? You do know that courts do not *invent* law. They simply apply it. So the legal situation was the same before WKA and after WKA.
Your statement is like saying “since the day the court found in my favour, my neighbour owes me the $200 I sued him for”. No, he owed them to you before, otherwise you wouldn’t have gotten a verdict in your favour. *duh*
What bothers me about this whole extraterritorial citizenship at birth is that Congress in the INA of 1952 has “defined” United States to include areas other than the states & DC. Does this bother anyone else? See https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/United_States_nationality_law
In an attempt to widen Michael’s perspective and exposure to more immediate sources I present
James Kent, COMMENTARIES ON AMERICAN LAW (1826)
St. George Tucker, BLACKSTONE’S COMMENTARIES (1803)
Justice Story, concurring opinion,Inglis v. Sailors’ Snug Harbor, 3 Pet. 99, 155,164. (1830)
State v. Manuel, 4 Dev. & Bat. 20, 24-26 (1838)
Lynch vs. Clarke (NY 1844)
Indeed, an important distinction… And as I have shown, the courts before US v Wong Kim Ark had held a similarly opinion, but it was not sufficiently settled until US v Wong Kim Ark.
That’s like saying that the 14th Amendment was the first time such children were natural born, when in fact the history of the 14th clearly established that it was declaratory of the Constitution.
Just reading the original sources can be so enlightening and one would be exposed to so much more than one could get from a Wikipedia page.
Ok. THIS is something I CAN talk about. Ireland DOES use Jus Sanguinius TODAY. That’s because the law was changed in 2004 with the 2004 immigration act because of concerns about easy immigration practices.
Dont believe me? here is the act. http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/2004/en/act/pub/0001/sec0009.html
BEFORE 2004 we used the same Jus Soli system we inherited from British law, circa 1921.
Wiki is not a totally reliable source. Who knew.
NBC-I don’t want to start a big argument, but I don’t totally agree with you here. There is something more important than the distinction between common and stautory law. That is the principle of democracy and rights, both the rights of candidates to present themselves for office, but more importantly the right of the people in a democracy to vote for the candidate of their choice.
It is my opinion that when courts interpret the Constitution and the law, they must err on the side of protecting the rights of the people to their democratic choices. That is to say, unless it is absolutely clear that a candidate is barred, then the rights of the people to elect them should not be tampered with. Regarding natural born citizens, the only people it is absolutely clear are excluded are those born abroad to foreign parents. It is not absolutely clear that those born abroad to US citizen parents are excluded, so the courts should not intervene in such cases (and I doubt they would). Of course, for those born in the US it is quite clear they are NOT excluded, hence no court role there either.
At this point, does anyone understand what Michael is arguing. I have no idea. The jus sanguinis language in Wong Kim Ark may be dicta but I doubt the same notion in other cases is all dicta. For example, i think the determination in Rogers v. Bellei that the 14th amendment didn’t apply was necessary for the disposition of the case. The fact is that the prevailing view has always been that children born outside of the US owed their citizenship to the grace of Congress. Such remain our law. Sorry.
He also doesn’t understand what was meant by the “common law.” The “common law” was court-based law that was deemed to be altered by statute. For example:
“The only principles of law, then, that can be regarded are those common to all the States. I know of none such which can affect this case but those that are derived from what is properly termed “the common law,” a law which I presume is the groundwork of the laws in every State in the Union, and which I consider, so far as it is applicable to the peculiar circumstances of the country, and where no special act of legislation controls it, to be in force in each State as it existed in England (unaltered by any statute) at the time of the first settlement of the country. The statutes of England that are in force in America differ perhaps in all the States, and therefore it is probable the common law in each is in some respects different. But it is certain that, in regard to any common law principle which can influence the question before us, no alteration has been made by any statute which could occasion the least material difference, or have any partial effect.” Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 U.S. (2 Dall.) 419, 435 (1793).
So, the “common law” was different in the states as the English statutes that altered the common law in the states were different.
Finally, bloodline statutory natural born subjects in England did not have all the rights of natural born subjects. They were not eligible to sit in Parliament and England did not claim their allegiance, or offer their protection, to such second-class subjects if they were outside of England. He clearly has done no research on this? Who in 19th century America ever said statutory citizens were natural born citizens?
I am not asking you to defend my proposition and can accept that you hold a different opinion based on issues of fairness, choice and democracy.
You see, this is the language that would have been an instant recipient of “the red pen.” In this topic, the closest you would find as a “given” is that the Constitutional qualification for President includes “Natural Born Citizen.” Beyond that, you cannot state given without proof and evidence. This is an area that I have been sorely disappointed with the “birthers.” Even when asking for specific evidence and or sources, I am provided with either crickets or sources that require chopping off part of a sentence to make their point.
The job of somebody making a claim is to provide to the reader, with evidence, sources and academic honesty. The reader rarely fails but it is the writer that fails to make the argument in a way the reader may understand and accept The obstacles to a cohesive argument are not just the use of “assumed” knowledge but a wording the makes the reader work to find the actual point of the sentence/paragraph. In other words, I might try reducing the flowery language and stick to the point (and a condescending tone does not spark a reader’s interest).
In trying to argue that bloodline is required, you need to not only find your own source but also argue against the various sources already available (and mentioned above). As an example:
In the Federalist No. 62, while discussing Senator qualifications:
In this phrase, the author mentioned the foreign birth but mentions nothing of the parent’s citizenship of local born. If they believed that citizenship (and, natural born citizenship) required some sort of parent’s citizenship, why did they neglect to mention it? And if they thought, for Natural Born, there was a need for parent’s citizenship to avoid a “channel for foreign influence on the national councils (ibid)” why did local birth alone be sufficient to avoid the “channel” for Senators?
Would you please show us again in what way or sense perpetual allegiance was not an inextricable principle of the common-law rule of jus soli once established? Thank you.
Massachusetts had, for example, asserted the right of its citizens to change allegiance (expatriate themselves) in:
while at the same time asserting Common Law Jus Soli, such as in Ainslie v. Martin, 9 Mass. 454, 457-458 (Mass., 1812) in which the court declared that an infant born in Massachusetts in 1774, who left before independence, was a citizen of Massachusetts, saying: “The government became a republic, possessing all the rights invested in the former sovereign; among which was the right to the allegiance of persons born within the territory of the province of Massachusetts Bay.”
Perpetual allegiance has little to do with the concept of jus soli, and slowly the concept from Common Law was replaced by statutory law and common law rulings. But the issue is irrelevant to the meaning of natural born as defined in Common Law, in the early Republic. We have provided you with several rulings that establish the meaning of this term to be found in common law.
Much the same has happened to the concept of dual allegiance, once considered to be a logical impossibility for any adult to have dual citizenship, now it is accepted as a side effect of conflicting laws between nations.
Excellent find Doc.
1. Where do you practice law? Does quoting wikipedia go over well in your jurisdiction? It doesn’t fly too well in the states I’ve practiced law in.
2. Why don’t we go to a real source of law. Let’s say Charles Mullett’s article, “Coke and the American Revolution,” from Economica No. 38, Nov. 1932, 457-471:
Or, how about Polly Price, Natural Law and Birthright Citizenship in Calvin’s Case, 9 Yale J. L. & Hum. 73, 90 (1990):
3. When I cite an article by a real legal scholar that argues that common law should be understood more flexibly and therefore should encompass legislative enactments, it is not good form to say “No it isn’t, Wikipedia says so!” That doesn’t actually disprove that this author did, in fact, argue that.
You do realize that, don’t you? If I said, “Michael David Rawlings said that common law doesn’t include statutes,” it wouldn’t disprove that you said it by citing some source showing that you were wrong in saying it.
You are simply wrong when you say there is no debate about whether the common law encompasses those born abroad to citizens.
Charles Gordon, p. 6:
That was, in fact, what Charles Gordon was addressing in his article – whether the common law included those born abroad to citizens!
His conclusion:
He further concludes that, even without specific statutory adoption, the US followed the same meaning of NBC, including those born abroad, and that the Naturalization Act of 1790 and 14th Amendment didn’t change that fact.
You are treated with scorn and contempt, Michael, because you say things are crystal clear, or there is “no controversy whatsoever” without taking into account the fact that many of us here have actually read the various articles setting out the controversy. You insult us by claiming things that are demonstrably untrue and that are well beyond what your citations prove (and in most cases, without even attempting to prove the assertions)!
The concerns of the Fourteenth Amendment, Wong Kim Ark and the Insular Cases, especially, illustrate that there is but one constitutional imperative in that regard: territorial and political jurisdiction. I think you’ve got the idea right in your mind, and so the terms of retention are dictated by Congress in statute. Right? He had to duly establish his claim on the soil of the nation within the prescribed period of time.
The reason it’s dicta is because it harks back to dicta, albeit, divergently. Hence, it’s not challenging stasis. The matter is bottomed on established law. The formally binding decision: the petitioner knew what his responsibilities were, he had been warned, the law is clear and constitutional. He is no longer a citizen of the United States. Resolved. Next.
Grace of Congress
The concern here is split between the claims of the above and the Fourteenth Amendment’s jurisdiction. In Afroyim, albeit, in dicta, citing that of Wong Kim Ark, the Court suggested that because a child born aboard of U.S. citizens is granted citizenship by the operation of the Naturalization Clause, he is no different than any other naturalized citizen. However, the Court in Bellei forcefully showed that the matter could not be bottomed on the mere terminology of the agency. There’s only one definitively reviewable bond between the country of allegiance and the citizen: territorial and political jurisdiction. And persons who acquired their citizenship beyond that jurisdiction are inextricably subject to the terms of the statute that provided it. They are not “Fourteenth Amendment first sentence citizens”. The Court’s assertion in Afroyim need not be taken seriously. Hence that portion of the Court’s deliberations is a dictum.
His response to you in the above reads to me like word salad more than anything else.
Michael, what is your thesis in 10 words or less?
Are you now trying to hide ignorance in totally meaningless blather? My Goodness, and still no references.
And why do you ignore Dr C’s requests to support your opinions?
You’re so pwned my friend…
It has no meaning, no content, it communicates no message, but it does show a somewhat troubled mind who believes that by hiding behind nonsensical language one can maintain a air of respectability or scholarship.
Fascinating material…. But still no argument.
I see, you believe that dictum means “things which disagree with my opinion”. What a hoot.
Near as I can make out. He is saying that in order to be a natural born citizen your dad has to establish a claim on the soil. In other words only men of property could be NBCs. Anyone else are 14th amendment citizens,
Chewing though that salad is not mentally healthy though.
I’ve read Calvin’s Case from front to back. I’ve read WKA from beginning to end. I’ve read most of Kettner’s book on the development of American citizenship. None of them were as difficult to understand as Michael’s thesis.
Part of the problem, obviously, is that none of what he writes here is sourced. Let me suggest some edits for this sentence as an example:
This is because Mikey is a pseudo-intellectual. Instead of attempting to convey his position in good faith and defend it against your counterarguments with logic and reason and citations of law, he chooses to vomit forth his legal word salad (in very dishonest ways) in a vain attempt to convince onlookers that he is erudite – a deception which he hopes to bolster by catching one of you in one of the not-very-clever traps he tries to lay with his word games. I think that you (and others) have clearly shown that Mikey is a fool who is trying to discuss something which he read but clearly didn’t understand. And by ‘is trying to discuss’ I mean ‘keeps repeating obvious lies about’…
Perhaps he thinks this is a kind of ‘speaking in tongues’ 🙂
But I see little attempt on his part to actually defend any of his positions other than through the logical fallacy of name calling, but at least that was an honest attempt.
Nor I. I have actually tried to read most of his posts and i can’t figure out where he stands. It would be really helpful if Michael could provide simple yes or no answers as to whether he regards the following as natural born citizens:
1. All those born in the US, excepting the children of diplomats and invading armies
2. Those born outside the US to US citizen parents.
Thnaks for helping with this, Mike.
1 Corinthians 14:9-11
I agree. No idea what he is talking about. Is his disagreement with Wong on the jus soli part or the jus sanguinis part? Is he trying to claim that there is jus sanguinis without the grace of Congress? No idea.
Liar. That particular dictum is Blackmun’s writing for the MAJORITY in Bellei, the opinion with which I resoundingly concur. The ratio decidendi (the binding aspect of the decision, the reason/justification for the decision) doesn’t need the dictum. It’s immaterial to the facts of the case, not because Blackmun is wrong (or because I disagree with it, you lying, little prick, but because the doctrine of the losing faction is bogus. It has absolutely no support in statute or case law.
Citizenship is regulated by the nation’s territorial and political jurisdiction, not by some ill-defined doctrine owing to the every-day-walk-in-the-park applications of the Naturalization Clause or to the Fourteenth Amendment’s dictates regarding naturalized citizens in the United States. The petitioner lost his citizenship via the law of the bloodline because he failed to fulfill the residency requirements of retention. That was his fault and no one else’s.
Hence, at established law, the principle of ascent (See Afroyim
) did not apply here, as Afroyim was naturalized in the United States, different scenario, and the dissenting justices’ mysterious doctrine was not entitled to any serious consideration as far as the law was concerned. The refutation of it is therefore dicta, as the doctrine itself is irrelevant, hogwash, nonsense and not even remotely related to the reason for the decision.
But this new doctrine had to be quashed on the record. Why? Because what the
dissenting judges were proposing would disrupt volumes of settled case law regarding the United States’ jurisdiction for purposes of citizenship or nationality and undermine the integrity of America’s sovereignty. The idea was Looney and dangerous. That’s not something you let the minority get on the record in the dissent without a strong rebuke.
You have your references. You have a rough outline. I cite the cases and the key principles and concerns. For a more detail discussion, thoroughly annotated see link: Wong Kim Ark Meet Rogers,
http://michaeldavidrawlings1.blogspot.com/2009/12/iwong-kim-arki-meet-irogersi.html
If you have a problem with it then study up, you lying ass dog.
Now go a-nattering again with your girlfriends, complain like a little sissy about my name-calling as you pretend that I didn’t accurately describe you and your behavior once again. Now as for your contempable pretense of knowledge about other case law..
Wow, NBC, you’re a liar and a lying ass dog! All because you thought that when someone says the court doesn’t need to be taken seriously that doesn’t signal Michael’s deep, abiding love of the case in question.
I still have no clue what the f you are talking about, Michael, other than there are “mysterious” doctrines in the Bellei dissent.
I don’t think asses and dogs are genetically compatible, so I don’t think you can have an ass dog.
You vaguely reference cases, your Wong Kim Ark meets Mr Roger is nothing much better in providing a coherent, logical and reasoned argument. You make broad claims that cause you, when asked to support, to use your usual ad hominems.
As to studying up, perhaps you may take your suggestion and apply it to yourself and provide, for once, support for your claims and ‘arguments’. And no, claiming that they can be found in a poorly reasoned article on the web, or in the text of some ruling is not sufficient to support your claims.
It’s time to grow up and stop pretending to be a scientist and scholar and actually start acting like one.
Just a suggestion. Keep up the good work… 😉
I agree. His blog is more word salad. I am still not sure what his argument is. However, this from his blog is clearly wrong:
“But if this historical artifact was not universally known by America’s early nineteenth-century legislators, the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment imposed the common-law doctrine of perpetual allegiance, making it unambiguously official. Of course, the majority in Wong Kim Ark left the door wide open to this debacle with another historically impossible argument when in 1898 it held that the Fourteenth Amendment imposed the common-law doctrine of birthright citizenship, which unlike the constitutional law of the Framers, embraced persons who were not born of the blood of the nation.”
Have you presented a shred of evidence that the framers required people born of the blood of the nation? Nope. Doesn’t exist. Can you cite any early authority at all. Nope. Making assertions without legal authority is not legal argument. Wong Kim Ark provided overwelming historical evidence. You provide none.
Also, the 14th Amendment had nothing to do with perpetual allegiance. Two years laters Congress recognized the right to expatriation so the same people that said over and over that anyone born on US is a citizen recognized expatiration. England would eventually relax the strict common law rule and retain its birthright citizenship. One’s allegiance and birth and the right to change such allegiance were two different questions as many people who questioned to application of perpetual allegiance in the US recognized we followed jus soli.
Let’s explore, just for the fun of it, some of Michael’s musings
Statutory citizenship must be naturalization as even the early laws were passed to provide for uniform rules, which is how the Constitution describes the power of the legislature.
You mean the non-binding resolution I assume? Quite a historical event 🙂
I see, it is a conspiracy of leftist academicians, the ultimate argument by ad hominem. What Michael fails to attempt is that Congress cannot redefine the meaning of the Constitution through simple law and since the term natural born is such a term, there is sufficient cause for concern when the legislature, at will can grant and take away such rights.
You object to me interpreting, as did the dissenting Judge in US v Wong Kim Ark, that under the Gray ruling children born abroad were not covered, which is a self evident fact. You presume that however there may exist some concept of statutory granting of natural born citizenship, found under the Constitutional assignment to Congress to pass uniform laws of naturalization
Thus in Rogers v Bellei we find
The Court distinguishes itself from three precedential cases by observing that
Observing that the Constitution only provides for Congress the power of uniform naturalization, the dissenting opinion in Rogers found that such enactments are forms of naturalization, observing that the majority had found Bellei to have been naturalized but that he had failed to have been naturalized while in the United States
Dissent:
Indeed, the act was passed referencing the power of Congress to provide for uniform laws of naturalization. But now we come to the reference to US v Wong Kim Ark which describes but two sources of citizenship: Birth and naturaization. Remember how the dissenting Judge lamented that under US v Wong Kim Ark, children born abroad to US citizens could not run to become President?
Why did the dissent refer to US v Wong Kim Ark? Because the majority opinion had observed
Pretty devastating logic. I am starting to understand why Michael may be reluctant to provide for direct quotes from these cases.
It may be a scholarly term that has since long lost its relevant meaning? With Michael, one never knows. I wonder it there is a literary equivalent of the Tourette Syndrome?
Those computer keys are darn close together…
And with this we have before us an illustration of another point. . . .
My Argument
LOL! It’s an allusion to a film. The villain in Ransom says “lying ass dog”.
Uh . . . yuck, yuck, anatomy, yuck, yuck, genetics. ROFLMAO! You’re killing me.
NBC, pretends to know something about that which he knows nothing (the premise upon which his entire soiler argument rests, i.e., the Graysian line of judicial dictum, “naturalized-born citizen”) lies rather than fess up, and that’s okay.
Clearing justified Insults
Here’s another pharse with the word “dog”: Behold, the bigoted, irrational, dishonest, dog-pile mentality of the soiler.
Your non-argument: FAIL.
Thanks Mikey – you wont find a better example of projection in a textbook! 😉
The birthers must really be scraping the bottom of the barrel if all they are left with is vermin like you.
Could you actually tell us what your argument is? Perhaps you could answer my 2 questions from 7:06 AM with a simple yes or no.
Sorry Michael, no one here understands what argument you are trying to make. You last post makes less sense than your prior posts.
Still waiting for you to cite any authority to support your silly claim that the framers required that people be born of the blood of the nation in order to be natural born. We know you are not a lawyer, but we think any educated person knows that one needs to cite actual legal authority in order for anyone to take such a claim seriously. You have no such authority and hence should admit you are just making this up. I expect a word salad response that makes no sense like all you other posts.
Even in his apology he cannot formulate a single sentence which communicates any evidence of thought, logic or reason.
Fascinating stuff.
Unable to defend his own word salad all he can do is insult and hide behind more word salad.
It comes as no surprise to see Michael hold similarly undeveloped thoughts and opinions on atheism, evolution, darwinism etc.
I think that Mikey is a perfect example of how people who are relatively unknowledgeable about a subject tend to overestimate their expertise (combined with a standard-issue birther confirmation bias…).
Yes, that was some fascinating research. It’s called the Dunning Kruger effect. Since Michael appreciates Wikipedia
But I doubt that Michael will comprehend this… What’s the Bible verse again Rom 1:22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools
Very timely
Still attacking the man.
When you post verbose, unsubstantiated, tortuous excrement and refuse to reply at all or rationally to even civil challenges to your bizarre, unsupported assertions and equally wacky opinions, were you expecting silent, teary, gleeful acquiescence followed by a warm, relaxing group hug?
As Daniel eloquently stated, “If you don’t wish to be ridiculed, don’t be ridiculous.”
And just so I understand (not being nearly as smart as you), your ad hominem attacks are acceptable and reasonable but others are not. It’s good to know the rules up front.
Have you responded to ballantine’s substantive questions?
Oh the irony my friend, the irony…
But I did predict that our efforts were in vain as the recipient would lack the cognitive abilities to realize his own short comings.
Other than that, when can we expect a reasoned argument from you? Do you think it can be done in the next week or two? I understand that we cannot expect miracles but some estimate would be helpful.
Or Dr C’s or…. I do not believe that Michael responds to substantive questions.
You know, Michael David Rawlings reminds me a little of Leonard Daneman.
Ah our paralegal friend from NM. He deleted his last blog. Good move…
My head still hurts from the last debate I had with him. If I remember, I think his main issue was with anchor babies.
Yes, Farrah, Borderraven and others appear to have great concern about these ‘anchor babies’ even though such babies are hardly as much a problem as they are willing to let themselves believe.
You don’t understand. It’s not whether or not the anchor babies are an actual problem now… it’s the constitutional crisis that they could be sometime in the future!
Just like Chem Trails….
ROTFL… I love these chemtrail conspiracy theories, much better than fluoride in the water… People are so gullible…
The Court has never declared that Congress could not confer natural-born citizenship on persons born abroad of U.S. citizens. It has never addressed the question in any definitively binding fashion one way or the other. Further, whether the Court imposed the common-law rule of jus soli on the political jurisdiction of the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT for the very first time or merely reaffirmed it as something that had always applied to the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, depending on your reading of history, did not and could not change anything with regard to Congress’ constitutional power to confer natural-born citizenship via the statutory law of the bloodline, albeit, on the children of U.S. citizens and U.S. citizens only.
The closest the Court has ever come to directly addressing the issue was in Rogers v Bellei,. In that case, albeit, once again, in dicta, the Court rebuked a doctrine akin to the very one that NBC is peddling.
Ratio decidendi (Latin plural rationes decidendi) is a Latin phrase meaning “the reason” or “the rationale for the decision.” The ratio decidendi is “[t]he point in a case which determines the judgment” or “the principle which the case establishes.” In other words, ratio decidendi – legal rule derived from, and consistent with, those parts of legal reasoning within a judgment on which the outcome of the case depends.
In United States legal terminology, a dictum (plural dicta) is a statement of opinion or belief considered authoritative though not binding, because of the authority of the person making it.
Oklahoma City University Law Review: http://www.fdlaw.com/articles/The%20Presidential%20Qualification%20Clause%20in%20this%20Bicentennial%20Year.pdf
Brace yourself for the ‘tossed word salad’ cracks.
I think we could do the same for everything you post.
Well, your first two sentances are accurate…then you decend into meaningless babble. Yes, it is true, the Court has never declared that Congress could not confer natural-born citizenship on persons born abroad of US citizens. That is why the University of Michigan was able to have a symposium on the question of whether McCain could qualify for the presidency. If it was a settled question (like if people born on US soil are NBC), then they probably wouldn’t waste their time, would thay.
Now for the rest of your babble. What an utterly meaningless collection of words. Do you read this stuff before you hit the “submit comment” button? Your statement genuinely makes no sense! It’s utter nonsense. It’s just word salad. I mean really, “imposed the common-law rule of jus soli on the political jurisdiction of the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT”? Do you think this nonsense makes you sould intelligent? Is there a reason you feel the need to write federal government in all caps? Not like the states have anything to do with this. This, quite simply is trying to hobble together words that “sound smart” but really don’t serve any purpose in making a coherent point. I’d rebut your point, but I have no idea what your point is….I guess my best attempt of rebuttal is to state what the law is.
The term “natural born citizen” is used in the Constitution, but not defined. When you have a term of art that is not defined in the Constitution, you turn to the common law (this has been cited, probably directly above…those more dedicated can give you the exact citation). Thus the Court imposes nothing, it merely made clear what the phrase has always meant. The 14th Amend. restated what the law was, and cleared up the mess left by the Dred Scott decision (which even at the time it was decided was considered a pretty bad decision). Congress has power “[t]o establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization.” U.S. Const. art 1, sec. 8. Notice the word “naturalization.” So all Congress has the power to do is play with the citizenship of those not born on US soil. Those born on US soil are citizens without naturalization, so their citizenship is beyond the reach of congress. Congress cannot strip away with statute what the constitution grants. A person born on US soil (not to a diplomat) will always be a natural born citizen. However, what is an open question, is whether Congress’ powers of naturalization extend to the power of granting NBC status to those born abroad to US citizens. THAT is open question. The question is whether Congress has a “constitutional power to confer natural-born citizenship via the statutory law of the bloodline.” There are those that argue that it is merely “natrualization at birth” and thus, people like McCain, are not natural born citizens. There is no question that Congress does not have the power to, “confer natural-born citizenship via the statutory law of the bloodline, albeit, on the children of U.S. citizens and U.S. citizens only” and depriving those born on US soil NBC status due to parentage, as that would be taking away by statute, what is granted in the Constitution….and we all know, that the Constitution trumps statutes.
I am glad that Michael, despite some false starts, has attempted to provide some supporting evidence for his claims.
The legal theory I am ‘peddling’ is based on simple logic: Congress cannot change the meaning of the term natural born which is a constitutional term through mere statute, or it could grant any naturalized citizen such status.
The Court in Wong Kim Ark, did make the reasonable claim in dicta, that people born abroad are naturalized since they receive citizenship through a naturalization statute, which is what Congress is explicitly authorized to do.
Michael then refers to Rogers v Bellei, quoting for a research paper which states that:
Well yes, acquisition of citizenship through congressional action is what is known as naturalization, is it not? I am not sure how this calls into question the dicta in US v Wong Kim Ark. So let’s compare
Wong Kim Ark
Sounds exactly like Rogers v Bellei, does it not?
Bellei
In Miller v Albright
Let me guess, Wikipedia. ROTFL… I am glad you are educating yourself but surely you do understand the concept of primary sources?
which is apparently more than we can say about you.
where did you go to law school again? amazing how someone can be so arrogant while so ignorant.
You know it almost sounds like Strunk’s word salad
I’m closing this thread, as it has gotten too long, resulting in long page generation times. Also the topic has devolved into name calling over something that has nothing to do with the article under which it appears.