I have a policy of trying not to get into long arguments in emails. There are around 24,000 visitors a month here, and it wouldn’t be practical to correspond with a significant number of them. That’s what the web site is for.
I violated my policy today when I got this email:
Contact: The only way any part of our Constitution may be changed is by the well established amendment process. Article II, Title I containing the major requirement to be a candidate for president or vice president “shall be a Natural Born Citizen”. Article II has never been amended. Congress cannot circumvent any part of our Constitution by legislation; it can only be done by amendment. A search of Supreme Court Cases, the Federalist Papers, and historical papers of our founding fathers also validate their collective intent with respect to “Natural Born Citizen” will give one the meaning of Natural Born Citizen. In simple terms a candidate for president or vice president must have been born to a mother and a father who are themselves US citizens. Exceptions to this requirement were made to some previous presidents by “grandfathering”. Since our founding, all other presidents except Chester Arthur and Barack H. Obama, Jr. have met the requirements of Article II, Title I. Arthur’s fraud was not exposed till some time after his death. Turns out that his mother was a US Citizen but his father was a Canadian citizen at Chester Arthur’s birth. Barack H. Obama, Jr. has Chester Arthur’s problem, his father Barack H. Obama, Sr. a visiting college student for education purposes, and held citizenship his entire life as a citizen of Kenya.
A snake is a snake, a tiger is a tiger, a wolf is a wolf, a US citizen by ones mother and a foreign citizen father cannot ever be a Natural Born Citizen.
What struck me about this is that it has no authority besides “the Constitution” and “The Federalist Papers.” So I replied, and I thought I would put the email exchange up here as an article, serving you leftovers.
Reply: Have you even read the Federalist Papers? I didn’t think so.
And this came back:
Contact: Yes, I have read the federalist papers. Have you read the Constitution? If you have, you need to read it again. There is nothing you can come up with that can trump the facts of Barack H. Obama, Jr.’s identity as he himself has proclaimed publicly that he is the son of Barack H. Obama, Sr., a life long citizen of Kenya. Thus one of reasonable intelligence is left with the reality that Article II, Title I is the final judge as to his son inability to hold himself out to citizens of these United States as being qualified as a “Natural Born Citizen”. I strongly suggest that you read Minor v. Happersett.
“The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be a natural-born citizen. 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(plural not singular)were its citizen became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners”. Minor v. Happersett, 88 U<S> 162, 168.
I repeat, Constitutional amendment process is the only way for congress to change any part of Article I, Title II. It has never been amended. Therefore, it stands as the law of the land for those who place themselves before the voters as a candidate for president or vice president.
Politically Correctness unfortunately is a sure road to eventual destruction of any society that foolishly embrace the hope of utopia which as most will agree exist only in fairy tails.
And here I made a mistake, providing a substantive answer:
Reply: So if you have read the Federalist Papers and the Constitution, why are you unable to show where either of them supports your claims? The simple answer is that you can’t because they don’t. Who wrote the Federalist Papers? One of the authors was James Madison (who also wrote a lot of the Constitution) who said:
“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.”
One of the earliest books on the Constitution by historian and jurist William Rawle was used as a Textbook at the US Military Academy at West Point. Rawle was appointed District Attorney for Pennsylvania by George Washington himself. Rawle wrote in 1825:
“Therefore every person born within the United States, its territories or districts, whether the parents are citizens or aliens, is a natural-born citizen within the sense of the Constitution, and entitled to all the rights and privileges appertaining to that capacity….
“Under the Constitution the question is settled by its express language, and when we are informed that, excepting those who were citizens, (however that capacity was acquired,) at the time the Constitution was adopted, no person is eligible to the office of the president unless he is a natural born citizen, the principle that the place of birth creates the relative quality is established as to us.”
Rawle’s View of the Constitution
Historian and former Secretary of the Navy George Bancroft wrote:
“Every one who first saw the light on American soil was a natural-born American citizen.”
History of the United States of America, from the Discovery of the American Continent
Madison, Rawle and Bancroft wrote before the 14th Amendment.
You cite Minor, but you don’t understand it. Don’t listen to me; listen to the judge. Arizona Superior Court Judge Richard E. Gordon wrote in the dismissal of Allen v. Arizona Democratic Party on March 7:
“Most importantly, Arizona courts are bound by United States Supreme Court precedent, and this precedent fully supports that President Obama is a natural born citizen under the Constitution and thus qualified to hold the office of President. See United States v. Wong Kim Ark (addressing U. S. Const. amend. XIV) ; Ankeny v. Governor of the State of Indiana (addressing the precise issue). Contrary to Plaintiff’s assertion, Minor v. Happersett does not hold otherwise.”
In fact no fewer than 11 judges have said the same thing:
- Jeff S. Masin – Administrative Law Judge, New Jersey
- Clarkson S. Fisher – Superior Court Judge, Appeals Division, New Jersey
- Linda G. Baxter – Superior Court Judge, Appeals Division, New Jersey
- Philip S. Carchman – Superior Court Judge, Appeals Division, New Jersey
- John A. Gibney, Jr. – US Federal District Judge, Virginia
- Elaine B. Brown – Indiana Court of Appeals
- Terry A. Crone – Indiana Court of Appeals
- Judge May – Indiana Court of Appeals
- Michael Malihi – Administrative Law Judge, Georgia
- Arthur Schack – Superior Court Judge, New York
- Richard E. Gordon – Superior Court Judge, Arizona
Of course you are smarter than all the judges, but you can’t expect that to impress me. You’re a crank, pure and simple.
If you want to carry the discussion further, post a message on the blog. I have 20,000 readers and I don’t have time for individual arguments.
I made it a point to use historical sources before the 14th Amendment, since the Contact seemed to think it didn’t count. I gave a specific authority on reading Minor. Well, if there ever was denial from a birther, see how Contact claims victory:
Contact: From the tone of your reply, obviously I made my point. As usual, Obama cool aid drinkers will try to change the subject rather than face the truth. Constitution, Article II, Title I, Clause V; “No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, SHALL be be eligible to that office of President; neither SHALL any person be eligible that office who SHALL not have attained to the age of thirty five years, and been fourteen Years a resident within the United States”.
The action word as you obviously know is SHALL. Once again, I remind you that congress can pass laws and or regulations till hell freezes over but such actions shall not be able to change a single word or sentence of the Constitution. The only way for congress and or the judicial system to erase, change, modify or whatever the founding fathers iron clad protection of our nations presidency from the influence of any foreign entity, is to amend Article II, Title I through the amendment process. You can cite all the miss direction ploys being promoted by bias judges, Obama pun-dents you like. Facts are facts. A US citizen mother and a US citizen father can produce a Natural Born Citizen. A US citizen mother and a foreign citizen father cannot ever produce A Natural Born Citizen. By your analysis even a misnomer anchor baby would be a natural born citizen. Your cite of Wong in support of the XIV amendment is in error. The express purpose of the XIV amendment was to recognize that freed slaves were US citizens. Suggestion to deaf ears; forget the rabid support of a Political Correct candidate. If our nations accepts this very flawed presidency and his obvious ineligibility to hold the office of president then we can kiss our Constitution good by as well as the Rule of Law. One last thought, every single elected government official and every single appointed government official including Supreme Court Justice and all federal judges who took their respective “oath of office” during Barack H. Obama, Jr.s time have unilaterally knowingly violated their sacred oath of office and stand condemned before the bar of justice and their fellow citizens for their collective failure to “protect and defend the constitution from all enemies both domestic and foreign”. I guess the Political Correct attitude on the oath of office is simply ceremonial and a photo op in preparation for the next election cycle.
Realizing my error, I replied:
Reply: From the tone of your reply, I obviously wasted my time trying to tell you anything. Like I said, if you have a comment, post it on the blog.
And I got this back:
Contact: Like I said before; you have trouble facing the facts, so you try to change the subject. Obviously Barack H. Obama, Jr. was born some 50 years ago. Also, it is obvious that he has much to hide about his true identity. Some years from now, when his true identity becomes public, the general reaction will be, my o my, how did he do that. What you should be spending your time doing is digging for his real identity. If he is pure as the driven snow, why has he spent millions keeping his records sealed from public view? The Lame Stream Media turned George W. Bush’s life inside out. Dan Rather destroyed his career trying to destroy Bush. It only took the LSM two weeks to know just about everything one could know about Sarah Palin; much of it was distortions. Now with the advent of the “chosen one”, the true believers accept his every word as gospel without question. His actions speak louder than his words. He is a troubling contradiction in action. Our nation cannot long endure the path that this know ineligible “president” is attempting to lead us down; national and personal destruction awaits the unwary traveler. The End;
Well, I wasn’t going to let the birther get the last word. I think invoking Bush in an Obama eligibility debate is rather like calling someone a “Nazi” in other contexts, which is usually considered in debate culture a win for the other side.
Reply: I’m going to say this once so that eternally you can’t deny that someone told you the truth. You have no excuse to continue to repeat foolishness.
The plain dictionary meaning of “natural born” is “having a quality at birth.” That means a natural born citizen is one who was at birth a citizen. Plugging in the definition in the Minor decision one can readily understand Minor v Happersett. Note that it’s only changed twice, and obvious that the other references to citizen fit:
“Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be [at birth] 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 [at birth] 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.”
The Supreme Court in US v. Wong settled the doubts when it ruled that the children of aliens born in the United States are also citizens at birth. While US v Wong is a post 14th Amendment case, the Court said that such persons were citizens at birth before that. Indeed, a similar decision in New York state, Lynch v. Clarke in 1844 came to the same conclusion:
“The term citizen, was used in the constitution as a word, the meaning of which was already established and well understood. And the constitution itself contains a direct recognition of the subsisting common law principle, in the section which defines the qualification of the President. “No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of this constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President,” … The only standard which then existed, of a natural born citizen, was the rule of the common law, and no different standard has been adopted since. Suppose a person should be elected President who was native born, but of alien parents, could there be any reasonable doubt that he was eligible under the constitution? I think not.”
I haven’t changed the subject. You claimed Barack Obama was not a natural born citizen because of the Constitution and the Federalist Papers. You were unable to provide a single legal authority to back up your ideas of what a natural born citizen is. I showed you multiple authorities and legal decisions to prove that your understanding is wrong, including a Superior Court judge directly stating that you misread Minor v. Happersett. Rather than engage in the argument, you throw up the diversion of George Bush.
I’m publishing this whole sorry exchange on the blog, so my time wasn’t wasted.
Doc
Totally closed loop. They don’t care that every court decision to date has rejected their opinion. They simply mindlessly repeat it while attacking the integrity of any person of court who disagrees.
There’s really no other explanation for it than racial panic, with or without self awareness.
“Article II, Title I*, Clause V”
Oh, the irony.
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elementary_and_Secondary_Education_Act#Title_I
Shouldn’t self-appointed expert Donofrio be held responsible for creating and promoting the twofer birther stupidity?
I get a big kick out of this line:
“Also, it is obvious that he has much to hide about his true identity.”
For all people like this say Obama has hidden, he has never hidden the fact that his father was not a U.S. citizen.
If his definition of Natural-Born Citizen were the correct one, wouldn’t somebody in authority have said sometime in 2008, “Hey, wait a minute….”?
It’s hard to know where to begin with the errors this person spouts, but I’ll start with a small one-Chester Arthur’s father could not have been a Canadian citizen, since Canadian citizenship per se did not exist until 1947. Arthur’s father was an Irish-born British subject who lived in what was the colony of Lower Canada, now the province of Quebec. Canada as a nation only came into existence in 1867.
And of course Barack Obama Sr was not a “life-long citizen of Kenya,” which did not exist until he was well into his 30s.
As far as amending, no Congress is not amending the Constitution. They are given the duty under the Constitution of judging whether a President-elect is qualified to hold the office. In fulfilling that task, they decide whether he or she is a natural born citizen. The same happens in impeachment-Congress doesn’t amend the clause mentioning “high crimes and misdemeanor”, but they decide whether the act in question is one. Nowhere did the Founders say that a person’s private sex life was a matter for impeachment (one can hardly imagine Franklin or Jefferson signing on to such a ridiculous idea), but Congress was free to impeach Clinton for that very thing.
Would a judgment of $127,987.50 against Donofrio and his law partner, fellow birther Stephen Pidgeon, help?
http://www.scribd.com/doc/95616070/OLD-CARCO-LLC-SDNY-Donofrio-Pidgeon-Summary-Order-Granting-Attorneys-Fees
Obama spends millions to avoid confronting us birthers. Why will he not just shut us up and put everything on the table for ALL to see. COWARD!!
You apparently didn’t get the memo. Birthers are not supposed to out themselves. You could lose your birther license.
There is NO evidence that Obama spent that much money. His lawyers were involved in only a few lawsuits.
Cowards hide behind lies… Why are you promoting poorly supported claims? Perhaps you have not realized the irony of your own comments?
Looking forward to you supporting your statements unless of course you agree with my interpretation.
Guess what. It’s your tax money.
I love how birthers take the words of a Swiss philosopher who wrote in FRENCH over the words of James Madison.
Not only would at least 90% of them not understand the original French, they don’t even understand the English.
Obama spends millions to avoid confronting us birthers.
hmmm
in how many cases has obama been the defendant?
kindly provide proof of “millions” spent
tia
Please list which things any other candidate for president has “put on the table” that Obama has not.
Itemize how much it costs to “not put something on a table.”
Detail how other candidates have achieved cost savings during their equivalent not-table-on-puttings, such that Obama has spent millions and they have not.
One could argue that Speaker Pelosi saved the shrub many millions by taking impeachment “off the table”.
This is what passes for critical thought … or wit … in birther circles? Even worse as metered prose or symbolic logic …. A = A, B = B, C = C ∴ aD(bE + cF) ≠ dD …. well, OK, clearly so.
… A horse is a horse, of course of course,
and no one can talk to a horse of course,
that is of course, unless the horse,
Is the famous Mister Ed!
Now that tune is in my head for the remainder of the day. Thanks.
Mr Ed’s real name was Bamboo Harvester.
Birthers are stupid by definition. They cannot understand the simplest fact or follow the simplest logic.
I appreciated your long post Doc, so please do not feel it was wasted. You totally crushed the birther. He can’t grasp that, but then he wouldn’t know a fact if it hit him in the face.
These people take sentences out of context, put meanings in them that were never meant and then put a lot of words together that don’t mean a damn thing.
They have lost every court case and will continue to do so. In fact, it will get to the point where they won’t be even able to file anymore. Judges don’t like wasting their time
Your welcome! 😀 It must be making you smile.
The last response to the birther that Doc included is classic birther … a string of assumptions and contradictions. The type of tripe that assures me that nutters are all fire, ready, fire again. Think before you type, research and revise as necessary, think again after you type, research and revise as necessary, repeat as necessary, and then submit. I know all my posts are well-polished gems 😉
Surely the birther has responded again. And I’ll bet that one was a doozy.
My favorite Mr Ed quote …
“Wilburrr? Why can’t a horse go to law school?”
Since when do birthers call themselves birthers.
Are you John’s replacement? New comedy relief?
Or did someone screw up while pretending to be a birther?
Those notes from ‘Contact’ all seem to have come from a prepared script.
For example, where you are accused of changing the subject, you clearly did not change the subject, you merely invited your correspondent to bring the discussion here.
I am reminded of the program ‘ELIZA’ from the early 1970’s. It was a psychiatrist simulation program, that was an experiment in artificial intelligence and in many ways was the precursor for the adaptive gaming engines that we see today.
WIth ELIZA you would start off by typing some sentence, and the program would pick the sentence apart looking for verbs and what not, and turn your sentence into a question.Something like:
You: I feel drowsy this morning.
ELIZA : Why do you feel drowsy this morning.
you: I didn’t get much sleep last night.
ELIZA: What makes you say you didn’t get much sleep last night?
you: I was up all night talking to my mother.
ELIZA: Do you talk to your mother often?
you: Oh yes, as often as I can.
ELIZA: You say you talk to your mother often?
you: etc…
Words like “mother” would be used to turn the conversation slightly. I can almost picture the modern version of this program spamming you and selecting a response from its script just as ELIZA did.
When you responded by not giving back more of the same, it didn’t have a scripted answer and its only recourse was to backup to another node and try the ‘you changed the subject’ line.
I am fairly sure that most of the ‘birther’ posters here and elsewhere do not really seriously believe the stuff they promote; some of those honestly don’t like Obama, his policies, or his skin color, and are just @$$holes spreading FUD about the birth certificate or NBC as a proxy for the argument they are too ignorant to make honestly.
I think there are some, however, who do it for kicks, for a mental exercise, because they are bored in their dorm room, or smoking dope in their mother’s basement and challenge each other to see who can ‘score the most points’ posing as a birther.
I don’t find it too hard to imagine some of those bored dorm room kids (or even HS Mom’s basement kids) are studying artificial intelligence and gaming and have the where-withal to script up a modern ELIZA engine (there are many open source gaming engines around), and let it loose on unsuspecting blog owners!
The funny thing is that the Birther thinks the same thing, and could likely get the same affirmation from a fellow Birther on one of their sites.
Since there’s really no difference between a good enough troll and the real thing, there’s also really no reason to treat them particularly differently.
Not really. It’s not a birther case. It is some insight into Donofrio and Pidgeon’s incompetence.
The Parakeet and El Putzo should be called to the carpet by the ABA and other lawyers for historical revisionism and shamelessly promoting crank legal nonsense.
Birther bigots are quoting their bullsh!t legal fantasies again and again without a clue as to why their incessant drivel is ridiculous and erroneous.
Obama has spent little, and hidden nothing. And the only ones who should have to confront Birfers are the nice young men in the clean white suits, carrying those funny jackets that fasten in the back.
Birfers belong in padded cells where they cannot harm themselves or others.
Huh? When did he do this? Cite please.
Not the first time ELIZA has come up here! Due to quality of birther discourse, it won’t be the last.
The Loebner Prize competition was just a couple weeks ago. In a recent post, I suggested that birthers are literally running in reverse. Here’s another example. Instead of trying to creating the most human-sounding computer, or going for the honorific of “most-human human” … the birthers are, unwittingly, generating entries for “most boolean human”. A human-quality computer is a wondrous and frightening thing. Computer-quality humans … frightening and sad.
It was obviously wasted on the Contact, but there may be some value in my publishing it. I think I have published the definition inserted version of Minor v. Happersett, but it is remarkable how sensibly and consistently it reads that way.
I appreciate you sharing the email exchange, Doc. You have the patience of saint.
For all the money Obama has spent, he cannot hide this Kenya BC, that is going to bite him.
Well, I didn’t share the profoundly unsaintlike drafts that I didn’t send.
BTW, I changed the wording of my definition-substituted Minor decision replacing “[citizen at birth]” with “[at birth] citizen.” That way I only had to change two words instead of three.
Minor itself forces this definition earlier when it said:
The Court made it clear that if one is a citizen, they must be either natural born or naturalized, and the equivalence of born citizen and natural born citizen is inescapable in the preceding text.
And further, take them WRONGLY since Vattel would certainly look at Obama as an “Indigene”.
There is not a single thing these idiots blinded by their own bigotry can get right — as evidence by the moronic circular exchange our host had to suffer.
If Orly Taitz could go to law school, I don’t see why a talking horse couldn’t go.
5’ll get you 10 this hors3sh15 will continue THROUGHOUT BHO’s 2nd term, and at Hillary’s (or whoever’s) inauguration, they’ll proclaim: “We won . . . and drove the usurper from office!”
I mistakenly called the underlying technology a ‘gaming engine’. I find that the generic term for programs like Eliza is “Chatterbot”.
Here is a story on ‘Cleverbot’: Cleverbot Chat Engine Is Learning From The Internet To Talk Like A Human.
I think that the application to the birther agenda is rather obvious.
I hear strains of:
“A snake, the hated, slithering reptile, can be nothing else.”
“A leopard cannot change is spots, a tiger cannot change its stripes.”
“A wolf in sheep’s clothing, it only comes to steal.”
So “Contact” ends showing that, it is not about eligibility, but how he/she hates the President. His fear of the President shows in his ability to see Obama as anything but the simple definition he has created for the President. “Contact” believes Obama is what he is an nothing change. That fear of change, brings us back to:
When I was going to camp in the 1980s, a favorite pop (for my Michigan scout camp, soda for a music camp in New England), was a ‘suicide” where you mixed all the flavors together. This is now marketed by drink companies with the term “fusion.” They are restaurants names Fusion and they even fusioned my yogurt. Now we have a President that is in many ways an example of “fusion.” I suspect “Contact” does not like the “fusion” of our President. To him, it is “not natural.” Unfortunately for him, it is Constitutional.
I see his argument as the beginning and the ending statements. The rest was tossed together semantics to justify his fear.
I just had a play with Cleverbot, it really isn’t much better than ELIZA 40 years ago. I can’t imagine it is the high point of technology.
Donna, icicles will hang off Lucifer’s nose before birthers provide any p0roof of their
(false) allegation that Obama spent millions avoiding the birthers.
JD Ree: thank you for that – i remember (i believe) a kerchner case where the costs charged to him was under $900 – i believe doc said the ny case (strunk where obama was not a defendant) the cost was $600 (?) – so how obama got to “millions spent” is wrong –
WAY BACK, when i studied the “millions” assertion, it was charges by the fec – similar “millions” were charged by the fec to mccain – it had NOTHING TO DO with “hiding” records – due to privacy laws, my records are “hidden” for FREE –
in their INSANE assertions, they EVEN include that obama’s 1st executive order was one to “hide records” – his 1st executive order was to OVERTURN bush’s executive order “HIDING” PRES/VP RECORDS – going back to reagan, those records were available but bush “HID” them –
The horse did better on the LSAT, which is why Orly used a correspondence course.
Yes, Donna, this one gets dumber over time. All started in late ’08 based on budget reports filed with the FEC. The next-to-last quarter, Obama ’08 reported ~$2M in legal fees, McCain ~$1.4M. Thus the meme was born, “Obama spent $2M either fighting birther lawsuits or sealing his records or both, we’re not sure which”. And McCain was hiding what? Or was he helping Obama?
This gets dumber over time as:
• They didn’t keep the numbers up to date, final campaign total was ~$2.6M, but the meme stays at $2M (tho I did see at one nutter go $4M). McCain ’08 closed at ~$1.8M.
• These were 2008 expenses—he paid the legal bills for all birther cases in advance? Using what, LegalShield? LOL!
• If he did have ongoing legal bills re: birtherism, they would be reported … where? The dollar amount should either change over time, or be dropped. (It somewhat has, morphing into the generic “millions”).
• They also like to say he spends taxpayer money fighting birtherism. Really? from where? I haven’t heard of any gov’t attorney manning any Empty Chairs. From his salray? No longer gov’t money. Prove he’s embezzling, shifting Justice funds to private firms, and now we’re talking.
• Obama is not a defendant in most of these suits, state DPs are. They are defending their ability to place their candidate on ballots. This stuff doesn’t cost Obama a dime. Implying state parties have access to federal tax funds is quite an allegation.
Birthers tell each other this to reassure themselves birtherism is powerful, important, and effective. Until the kidnap some dem defense attorneys and sweat the details of the secret Obama legal defense slush fund out of them, they’ll never know.
But good luck with that. The Empty Chair™ will never crack.
There is nothing that Obama can provide that will satisfy birthers. Obama spending millions was dismissed as being false some time ago. There is no way that it has increased significantly with all the repeated failure by birthers.
That WAS a birther case! Donofrio tried to use quo warranto statutes to get the President ruled ineligible via President Obama’s use of TARP funds in the Chrysler bailout and the loss of some car dealerships by Chrysler franchisees. This was not too far afield from the birtherbot strategy of using health care reform to remove the President from office.
BIrtherbots will try anything. In this case, the “try” cost them $127,000 and change.
hi doc,
Your argument to define NBC with Madison ‘s writings is scholarly, and appreciated; however, it is not a legal tack taken in rebuttal in this upcoming Florida case.
Are the federalist papers equally ephemera to the law of nations? Or does the defense strategy hold strong on some other point? We’ll see if victory/defeat comes in the form of dismissal or ruling.
As followed by Sam Sewell’s site
http://thesteadydrip.blogspot.com/
FLORIDA COURT SETS HEARING ON OBAMA BALLOT CHALLENGE FOR JUNE 18, 2012
Judge Terry Lewis States “Natural Born Citizen” Definition Will Be Decided
During the hearing over discovery issues, which Mr. Klayman wants to take the week of June 18, Judge Lewis noted that Mr. Klayman’s brief cited legal authority that a president, to be eligible, must have two (2) U.S. citizen parents, but President Obama and the other defendants cited no authority to the contrary. Mr. Klayman had cited the U.S. Supreme Court case of Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162 (1875). Judge Lewis ordered further briefing on this issue prior to the hearing.
This is a jest, right? Are the author’s notes to the Constitution more relevant than a randomly-selected legal treatise of foreign authorship? Why would Vattel be more relevant than Blackstone, Burlamaqui, Grotius, Puffendorf, or any other author’s of general legal works? Regardless, most relevant will be ~100 years worth of American legal precedent on the matter, spanning ~1840~1940, when various citizenship questions were nailed down. The final word will not be found in the 18th century. Time marches on.
If the defense has staked itself on Minor regarding the definition of NBC, then its holding strong on fantasy. No defense required.
Shirley, you jest. Any case in a Federal Court (incl SCOTUS) is going to cost taxpayer money. It may not be an incremental cost to what the courts would be normally doing, but accountants would see it differently. Then there is the prosecution in the Lakin fiasco and the cost of his incarceration. Maybe money didn’t come from the President’s pocket, but us taxpayers end up paying for all this horses**t.
C’mon, Sef, of course de birfers are wasting resources at all levels of the court system with this lunacy. In order to protect virtuous endeavors, our system allows for lunacy. It’s part of the cost of freedom. Odious at times, but vital.
The statement was that Obama is not spending federal money on this. To be more specific, Obama is not choosing to spend taxpayer money / federal resources on this. Birther suits aren’t his idea, and since the suits are all w/o merit, it can’t even be claimed that he forced the hand of others by his wrongdoing.
The birthers are wasting taxpayer money on their windmill tilts. Once they abandon the lists, the waste stops.
Larry Klayman is a liar and birthers are exceptionally gullible.
There is a hearing scheduled for June 18 in the Voeltz case, but I couldn’t help but notice that Klayman has not posted a copy of the “order” which he claims was issued by Judge Lewis. On Friday the Secretary of State for Florida filed an additional brief in support of the Motion to Dismiss or (alternatively) Summary Judgment.
http://cvweb.clerk.leon.fl.us/process.asp?template=dockets&addQuery=real_case.case_id=%2758101756%27
With all due respect to you, the first word of your well polished gem is spelled wrong.
We foiled his half-century plan to become president for life! Because he could totally have done that!
I’ve walked birthers through this one more than once — to my mind, it’s one of the most clearly documented and easily-refuted fallacies in the birther canon. And the results are unsurprising and inevitable: names are called, subjects are changed, goalposts are shifted.
By the way, the secret is to have a Connecticut SSN. Don’t tell anyone.
Not at all. I meant his welcome, as in a thing he possessed. (Anyone buying that? Anyone?)
But seriously, I was getting at the conceptual, not focusing on typos. Everyone makes typos. Intent versus execution. Typographical flaws don’t necessarily kill an idea. But when the idea itself is flawed, yet presented as truth, it would take one heck of a fortuitous typo to save it.
And you omitted a hyphen, so, like … there.
Always, at the heart of it all is a hatred for this President and the inability to accept his election. First is the argument about citizenship and when that argument fails-the inevitable.
You know….I actually think some progress has been made.
Yes, these people are still blindly opposed to Obama and anything he says, does or hints at…
But I participate in Politicalforum.com and Birther threads have almost disappeared….the resident Birthers seem rather just occasionally inserting their rhetoric like a citizen of North Korea chanting for their glorious leader rather than really believing the words- they do believe Obama is the great Satan though, in much the same way that the Ayatollah’s in Iran do.
It would appear that these birers are unaware that their interpretation of Minor v Happersett dips contradicted on its face by the very words of the opinion itself, which states clearly that it is not deciding the issue. Wong did later.
Minor does not state that a natural born citizen must have two citizen parents. Simply, it says no such thing,
Obama isn’t spending it, pal. Birthers are causing the expense. Lakin’s insubordination, bordering on treason, was his fault, not Obama’s.
I don’t recall saying it was the President’s fault. However, he has to clean up the mess.
Let me get this straight…
Someone believes something untrue about another person and is so convinced by morons that he puts his own freedom and future at stake and somehow it’s now the job of the wrongly suspected person to clean it all up?
Disregarding sworn life-saving duties because of (incorrectly) suspecting someone else is criminal?
On what planet are you on?
Poor Lakin.
He screwed up big time and is wearing a dishonor visible to everyone but nutcases.
He’s a disgrace.
I think Lakin deserves a review of his medical history to make sure he wasn’t following other untrue “beliefs” while practicing medicine.
If he’d put himself on the chopping block, he’d sooner put others first.
Just for the record, Clinton was impeached on two articles, none of which involved a sex act per say, but on grounds of perjury to a grand jury (by a 228–206 vote) and obstruction of justice (by a 221–212 vote) on December 19, 1998. The Senate trial on Feburary 9, 1999, resulted with the perjury charge defeated (by a 45-55 vote) and the obstruction of justice charge defeated (50-50).
I thought you were dinging my post because I didn’t go the extra mile and place fiscal blame on the birthers, but now I’m not so sure! How does Obama have to clean up Lakin’s mess? You are saying Lakin wasted some of Obama’s time, or by extension, the gov’ts?
There are systems in place to handle aberrations, and they worked. Lakin only managed to hurt himself and contribute to a mass delusion. Didn’t obligate Obama a whit, jot, nor tittle. All the blame is on the part of the birthers; that is what you getting at, right?
The president does not have to do any such thing. Obama bears no responsibility for Lakin’s lack of judgment, nor for any of the birthers’ fantasies, It is all — entirely — Lakin’s and the birthers’ fault. He owes them nothing.
However both the alleged perjury and the alleged obstruction of justice were concerning trying to cover up Clinton’s sexual encounters with Monica Lewinsky, so to say that the impeachment was not about sex is a bit disingenuous.
Without the Clinton-Lewinsky affair, there was no perjury and no obstruction of justice charges.
Additionally, the whole Monica Lewinsky issue was a component of the sexual harassment lawsuit of Paula Jones. That’s what got Clinton involved in Grand Jury proceedings in the first place.
I don’t know exactly what Sef intended, but I don’t find the comment unreasonable. Any time someone does a destructive public act, the public has to deal with the destruction.
In Lakin’s case there was a trial and incarceration to pay for, plus dealing with any damage to esprit de corps in the military. While perhaps birtherism isn’t a big problem in the Army, it surely exists and is a problem made worse by Lakin.
As someone who actually did go to law school, I’d like to make it clear that Orly did not, in fact “go to” law school, the law school came to her.
You can tell I went to a real law school, how else would I be able to split those hairs?
My piece is marginally scholarly, but it’s not intended as a legal argument, rather something explanatory.
If I wanted to make a legal argument, I would point to the decision in US v. Wong (the argument in it, not the holding), the argument and decision in Lynch v. Clarke and the Congressional Research Service report on the question.
However, given the concurrence of 11 judges (counting conservatively), I really don’t think that a valid question remains. The only question is the total number of judges who will say the same thing, and whether the Supreme Court will be among them.
I have no personal insight whatsoever as to the actual defense strategy. Most likely they will simply move to dismiss for lack of standing and lack of subject matter jurisdiction just like they always do. (Note that in Mississippi, the defense is not presented by President Obama nor the campaign.) I am skeptical of Mr. Klayman’s claims (via Sam Sewell and you) that the Florida judge has committed to deciding a definition of natural born citizen.
I don’t know what “Are the federalist papers equally ephemera to the law of nations?” means. Perhaps you meant some other word?
Hard to say how much weight the Federalist Papers should be given for anything. As far back as the early 19th Century, the Supreme Court rejected the idea of using them to prove intent for the Framers, as they were not actual notes kept during the writing of the Constitution, and they were not written by all of the Framers (Despite Madison’s primary role in both the writing of the Constitution and the Federalist Papers). In fact, the idea that the Papers were intended to show the thinking that went into the Constitution as a whole seems to be a fairly recent one.
It appears that when Obama is sued in his official capacity as President, the US foots the bill, and when Obama is sued as a candidate, the Obama Campaign foots the bill. In some cases Obama is sued in both capacities, and in those cases the Campaign is paying.
What I was trying to say was that the government has to clean up the mess started by the stupid birthers. This costs money. Money that comes from the U.S. Treasury and ultimately from taxpayers’ pockets. I didn’t get much sleep last night, so maybe my words did not carry my intentions. Mea culpa.
FWIW, that how I read the remark as well.
Some people are missing their morning cuppa, perhaps.
Edit: I see the notes were done in the afternoon. Even if it is Sunday, you shouldn’t go without your daily fix of caffeine. You’ll get headaches and make jumpy, out of character comments on blogs.
Yes, well….
There is a lot of history in blindingly referring to ancient documents for the answers to modern dilemmas. Eventually those documents come to be treated as ‘sacred texts’ which must be held as The Last Word forever, and their authors as demi-Gods who were all of one mind on every trivial topic, and therefor infallible.
Because, after all, the Founders were all to intelligent to believe that the world would ever change, or that they didn’t have all the answers and would see no need to change the foundation document for any reason (not). [count the negatives in there folks before you hit me with a caffeine deprived flame].
Your bringing up AI chat reminded me of some BASIC programs I wrote on my Atari 800XL back in the mid-80s, birther-themed versions of which would be complete wastes of time, but hysterical.
One was a “grammatically correct” nonsense generator. Sort of like a chatterbot with a limited vocabulary that made no attempt to actually respond to your input, but it did at least create complete sentences. With the right database, this script would fit right in as a commenter at WND or FREEP!
Another was a text-based football game, no strategy, just basic options, but you could play against the computer. For fun I added a twist, allowing you to decide how consistent the computer was in assessing its situation. The capper was adding a comment function, similar to that later seen in Scorched Earth, which prompted the computer to make a remark, based on its situation, before running a play. If the computer was being annihilated, it would eventually add 200 pts to its score and declare itself the winner. Getting the computer to squeal fastest became the name of the game. Sounds like anti-birthin’ with Apuzzo!
Those were wild times in a small town.
The legal expenses of the campaign organization cost nothing, of course, so all the money must have been for the forgery coverup.
They know they’re lying.
The whole Vattel concept requires that every American reconsider his or her citizenship,
We all learned about natural born citizenship when we were little kids, and they did too. Everybody knows that if you’re born here, and/or if you have at least one citizen parent, you’re natural born.
Hey birther: remember? It was that day when they told us we all could grow up to be president. Or are you just a jealous and spiteful [illegal?] alien who wants to screw with the rest of us and deprive Americans of our rights?
Probably just one of those teabagging White Wingers who’s decided that Sharia Law is the way to go – as long as it’s Caucasian Christians instead of brown Muslims.
I can’t help be reminded of AI when I read John’s rather predictable posts.
There was a program back in the day called SPEW that generated National Enquirer headlines. That one might be useful for birther headlines. “Elvis is alive and the father of my children, Toronto brain researchers confirm.”
See:
http://michaelthompson.org/unix/spew.php?type=headline
The saga continues:
To which I replied:
I think you would have a more productive conversation talking to your pet, and it would be a lot nicer too.
True, and I wouldn’t have to “dumb it down” talking to the dog.
Some birthers claim that they were taught the “two-citizen parents” requirement in school. but when challenged to find anything to support that claim – a textbook, a syllabus, a statement from a teacher, anything – they of course have come up empty.
It’s worth noting that President Obama referred to his father as a foreigner during his speech at the Democratic Convention in 2004:
My father was a foreign student, born and raised in a small village in Kenya. He grew up herding goats, went to school in a tin- roof shack. His father, my grandfather, was a cook, a domestic servant to the British.
That was July 27, 2004. It was immediately after the speech that pundits began to tout Obama as a potential future candidate for President. The birthers would have us believe that the entire country was asleep at the wheel, since no one stood up said “Wait a second, that guy isn’t eligible to be President.”
After all, Holly Johnson sang in “Americanos”: “There’s a place where a kid without a cent // He can grow up to be President”.
He didn’t sing “a kid without a cent but two citizen parents”. In fact, in birtherverse, this observation would count as proof. 😉
I think one could reprogram SCIgen (http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/) to file better birther lawsuits than Orly and Apuzzo combined.
Or just post them on birther websites to get dozens of “what a brilliant legal explanation” comments. 😉
Absolutely true; we have two dogs, a BC and a huskie/german shepherd mix and they’re about the equivalent of a 3 or 4 yr old baby in terms of learning and comprehension, which is more than I can say for a lot of birthers, who, like Homer Simpson, don’t seem to connect touching the funny-looking wire and getting a painful jolt.
This is a religious appeal if I ever heard one! “Just accept the truthiness, become one of us ….” He lays out reality, accepts basic facts, but fudges the interpretation by clinging to one Essential Truth, Vattelism. No matter how discredited, no matter how contradicted, no matter how unsupportable, it’s his last item to cling to.
So, for “Contact” …. taking him at his word, this is a matter of general principle. He insists the country erred by interpreting the Constitution. He wants a do-over of history. He wants the Supreme Court to start over and re-hear every Constitutional question, ever?
A matter of a general principle that happened to arise in response to a specific President?
There have been holdouts (xenophobes, nativists) flogging Vattelist positions since, uh, forever…but 114 years after the question was settled …. geez. You think Wong was in error, fine. Just don’t pretend the position is currently of consequence.
I hope you won’t mind if, being a purist, I point out that the birthers’ “Vattel concept” is entirely the product of their twisted logic and/or sheer ineptitude; Monsieur Vattel would have undoubtedly labelled Monsieur Obama an “indigene”.
I like that Contact started out as fairly scholarly. A bit misguided and wrong, sure, but he was trying and he was civil.
But since you had the audacity to challenge his scholarship instead of saying “You are a great and smart scholar.”, he became increasingly belligerent and unhinged.
surely the test is whether a conversation with a dining room table would be more productive?
Here I can only think it would be, and the table would be useful in any event……….
It would have helped if he actually read the sources he claimed provided support.
Further to this ‘not exactly the topic topic’, there was a discussion on today’s ‘Radio National’ (Australian ABC) morning show about a particular Twitter “hash-tag”. It seems that over 90% of the Twitter posts on the most popular Australian politics hash-tag are made by less than 1% of the Twits (er…Twitterers? Twittees? I don’t use Twitter, so I’m not up on these things 😎 ).
In fact 1 Twit posted over 35,000 messages, 3.5 times the total of the self-proclaimed heavy user reporter. I didn’t catch what time period that was in, but if we assume that it was a year, that’s pushing 100 twitter posts a day (more if it is only during week days). Seems possible but is it the only hash-tag the guy posts against? So, ‘chatterbots’, and evidently ‘twitterbots’, so why not birtherbots?
Turns out they know who the 1% are, but of course won’t reveal it. They did say there were a few known political operatives amongst the 1%. By the end of the piece, which was about 5 minutes long, there was a new hash-tag going called #wearetheonepercent, and the twits there were asking ‘Care to out yourselves?’.
Geeze, I’d hate to see the garbage on birther infected twit-hives.
By the way, I just invented that term ‘twit-hives’ to mean a group of Twitter hash tag conversation threads, related by some arbitrary common characteristic, for example “Australian Politics”, or “Detroit Lions Fans Smacktalk” (which would be, perhaps, an example of a ‘dead hive’). I think it conveys nicely the way twits swarm to a topic, and the comments are likely to give you the hives just from reading them.
I declare the term to be copyleft, feel free to sprinkle it subversively in all your conversations.
The doc’s argument of his case was like nuclear annihilation. Stepping back just slightly from the topic, I’d like to take this opportunity to say that I’m proud to live in a country where citizenship derives (often but not always) from the place of birth, and where the founders did not worry about setting up arcane and arbitrary rules about who could be President. They just wanted to make sure that any President was loyal to this country above any other. How is this for loyalty to their country? The President ordered the military and intelligence agencies, to find Osama Bin Laden, and then, when Bin Laden was found in Pakistan, a country sure to raise hell about it, President Obama nonetheless ordered that Bin Laden, who killed some 3,000 American citizens, be taken out dead or alive. Good enough for me.
speaking of a “leftover”
Says Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie made a late-night visit to Kinko’s to forge President Barack Obama’s birth certificate two days before Obama unveiled it to the media.
Chain e-mail on Sunday, April 1st, 2012 in e-mail messages circulating on the Internet
VERDICT: PANTS ON FIRE
Whoever started this e-mail on its Internet voyage snipped off a bit of relevant information at the bottom of the story: “EDITOR’S NOTE: This report is in our satire section.”
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/jun/07/chain-email/satire-obama-birthers-neil-abercrombie-fools-some-/
They didn’t notice the date? Or did the ‘innocent’ regurgitator remove the date? 😉
Birfer smear merchants will recycly anything … once its been selectively edited of course!
That’s what birthers do. Birthers can’t deal with the fact that they are wrong and that the rest of us are right. When confronted with evidence that they’re wrong it’s seems like the part of their brains that govern logical thought literally shut down and cease to function.
It’s really weird to think that the Founding Fathers would demand that a President have 2 citizen parents when record keeping was not nearly as thorough as it is today. A standard that harsh would, it seems to me, make it extremely difficult for anyone to prove eligibility in the 18th and 19th century.
Vattelism is about the Future, Thrifty. The Founders knew, they just knew, that they were establishing a permanent, eternal, and unchanging gov’t. This standard was about a standard future full of perfect records. Look with me now, Thrifty …. all the way …. to the Year Two-Thou-saannd …. to the Yeeeeeeaarrrrr Two-Thou-ssaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnd ….. !
Right.
This is about the matter of Old Carco LLC, where dealership agreements were voided as Fiat took over bankrupt Chrysler. The deal required TARP money from the federal government, and Donofrio had a theory that the dealers could challenge it’s legality on the basis of Obama’s eligibility. The dealers, Donofrio held, would have standing for his beloved writ of quo warranto. To take this case, Donforio partnered with fellow birther Stephen Pidgeon.
By the time Pidgeon and Donofrio formed their partnership and took the case, it had already been decided and the time for review had run out. They were too late to introduce their birther theories unless they could somehow first revive the case. Donofrio argued there had been “fraud upon the court”, a claim that, if true, could get the Court’s previous judgement voided so they could re-litigate.
The “fraud upon the court” claim was utterly frivolous. Failing to revive the case, P&D never got far enough to introduce the birther stuff.
Since they never got to challenging Obama’s eligibility, it’s not a birther case in the sense that it counts in the birthers’ zero-for-hundred-some score. Nevertheless, Pidgeon and Donofrio got into it from birtherism, so the $127,987.50 counts as a birther smack-down. Even divided two ways, the figure blows away Orly Taitz’s $20,000 record.
Point taken. Thanks.
To say that the Clinton’s impeachment was about sex is like saying Nixon’s impeachment was about his breaking into Watergate. The actual wording of both impeachments wasn’t about the acts that started the associated initial investigations, but the coverups that occured afterward. In Clinton’s case it was his sworn desposition on January 17, 1998 denying having a sexual relationship with Lewinsky, then his sworn testimony on August 17, 1998 admitting he did. In both situations, Clinton sworn to tell the truth under penalty of perjury – a felony that would land anyone in jail but a President must be out of office before a trial for perjury can begin. So was Clinton lying on January 17, or on August 17, or was it a question of what “is” is?
Nixon’s resignation came about because an ongoing series of crimes conducted by the President of the United States became so habitual that eventually a burglary he instigated was noticed. Woodward and Bernstein tugged on this loose thread, and the whole thing ultimately unraveled. If it had ever come to impeachment, there were a lot more things that Nixon would have been accused of than just the coverup.
Clinton’s impeachment came about because his political opponents tried to nail him and his wife on a shady land venture. A special prosecutor was appointed, who, after almost four years of investigation, ultimately determined the Clintons did nothing wrong.
So, the SP started looking for other stuff, and made the surprising discovery that Bill Clinton is a horn dog. In the course of this new investigation, they managed to get a sitting president to testify about his sex life and, in the course of this testimony, he committed perjury.
Clinton was impeached for crimes that would not have even occurred if the SP had not spent four years trying to find something — anything — to nail him on.
Call me biased, but I think the two situations have some differences.
(There was a fascinating piece by Woodward and Bernstein in WaPo just last week, titled “40 years after Watergate, Nixon was far worse than we thought.” They say “the notion that the coverup was worse than the crime … minimizes the scale and reach of Nixon’s criminal actions.”)
And technically speaking, Clintin did not commit perjury.
We getting far away from my original point, which was that the Constitution does not define “high crimes and misdemeanors”, but rather leaves it up to Congress to decide what the phrase means. They can do so wisely, as in the case of Nixon, or unwisely, as in the case of Clinton (and probably Andrew Johnson, as well), but eiither way, it is their call and there is no judicial review. A President impeached and convicted, no matter how foolishly, is gone.
IMO, the 12 and 20th amendments confer the same power on Congress as regards presidential qualifications. Congress decides if a President is qualified and the matter ends with them. They can, if they want, look to court cases to guide them, but they are not obliged to do so. The recourse for those who diiffer with their judgement is at the next election.
The difference is that the Nixon’s cover-up was about actual criminal offenses that people went to jail for. The purpose of the cover-up was to maintain his organized crime syndicate in power.
Clinton’s cover-up was about legal adult oriented recreation that nobody could to jail for and was, in fact, nobody else’s business except him, his partner, and his family. The purpose of the cover-up was to hide the truth from his family, or perhaps an attempt to maintain the tacit agreement he had with his family not to embarrass them with his affairs.
“If he is pure as the driven snow, why has he spent millions keeping his records sealed from public view?”
When birthers first started talking about the “millions Obama has spent” and I asked where they got the information about those dollars, I was pointed to the required quarterly financial report of the DNC showing payments to the law firm that Obama’s attorney was a part of. Evidently in the “minds” of birthers, the only thing the DNC could possibly be paying attorneys for would be to hide the presidents records. I guess it hasn’t sunk into those closed minds that the records they speak of are not public records regardless who you are and that there are numerous types of legal work that the DNC would need done and would therefore obtain the services of a law firm.
I know I have no right to see any of their school records and they have no right to see the presidents or mine. They are not part of the public record, nor are birth certificates or the many other records they claim are being hidden. The claims of his spending money to hide them when the law makes them private already is just another one of the truths these foolish people refuse to accept. I would challenge them to go in as a private citizen and ask for the records of any stranger and see how far they get. I’m guessing they missed the prosecution of the workers who decided to look up the presidents student loan records and who were all tried and convicted for their efforts. Because it was illegal for them to do it. If I recall correctly, there were 9 people who were prosecuted and convicted. They take privacy laws very seriously even though birthers don’t seem to. I find myself being so tired of the same lies and Internet fairy tales being spouted anew and really tired of this group of birthers most often written about. I would be willing to bet that if I were a mouse in the pocket of many of them, one would hear that racism plays a huge part in their continued insistence that the president is not really the president or a legitimate natural born citizen.
Agreed. There’s also a strong undercurrent of bigotry against the “other” and multiculturalism which includes religion and other beliefs in addition to race. And some of them are dying to scream “WHITE POWER”.
I was thinking about this example in the context of “natural born citizen” the other day.
Both terms (NBC and HCaM) are “terms of art”.
IMO there are only two reasons why a term of art is put in the Constitution instead of a final definition (“born in the country”):
1. Because the actual definition is
(a) complex, but
(b1) well-known or
(b2) well-defined.
2. Because it was intended for Congress to interpret, given that the Founders probably knew things would not always be the way they were in the 1780’s.
Both NBC and HCaM fit (1a) since NBC expands to “born in the country, except to foreign diplomats, invading armies and Indians not taxed, or born outside the country to one (or two) citizen parents”, for HCaM it’s obvious.
Both also likely fit (1b1) since “natural born” was a well-known term of art from Common Law (birther theory requires us to believe a secret alternative meaning was used instead, despite the Constitution being “for the people” and not requiring them to do guesswork or know obscure Swiss philosophers).
It’s an interesting argument to claim both also fit (2) – for HCaM, you just made that argument. I would submit it is not unreasonable that NBC might also fall under that category. After all, the Founders must’ve known that things won’t always stay the same w.r.t. citizenship, either.
[OTOH I know the debates from my country whether it should be permitted to interpret certain clauses in our Constitution when that could amount to changing the Constitution without the proper procedure. In my country, the Supreme Court is the highest authority in that regard, and it could be said that SCOTUS, not Congress, has the ultimate authority to decide what “high crimes and misdemeanours” are if there should ever be conflict about it.]
Depends on the state and if you can get a good idea of date and location of birth. California is an open records state. So are Ohio and Washington. As long as one has a name, location, and approximate date – one can get an informational copy of a BC in California.
That’s the thing that drives some birthers nuts. The law is different depending on where one was born. Hawaii’s birth records are mostly closed except for the birth index.