Continuation thread to The Great Debate–kibitzer’s edition comments on The Great Debate.
The same indifference on his part, added to, perhaps, an even greater indifference on the part of his servant, Zakhar, caused the study, when contemplated with attention, to strike the beholder with an impression of all-prevailing carelessness and neglect. On the walls and around the pictures there bung cobwebs coated with dust; the mirrors, instead of reflecting, would more usefully have served as tablets for recording memoranda ; every mat was freely spotted with stains; on the sofa there lay a forgotten towel, and on the table (as on most mornings) a plate, a salt-cellar, a half-eaten crust of bread, and some scattered crumbs—all of which had failed to be cleared away after last night’s supper. Indeed, were it not for the plate, for a recently smoked pipe that was propped against the bed, and for the recumbent form of Oblomov himself, one might have imagined that the place contained not a single living soul, so dusty & discoloured did everything look, and so lacking were any active traces of the presence of a human being. True, on the whatnots there were two or three open books, while a newspaper was tossing about, and the bureau
bore on its top an inkstand’ and a few pens ; but the pages at which the books were lying open were covered with dust and beginning to turn yellow (thus proving that they had long been tossed aside), the date of the newspaper belonged’ to the previous year, and from the inkstand, whenever a pen happened to be dipped therein, there arose, with a frightened buzz, only a derelict fly.Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov
Vattel also wrote “ces infants y suivant naturellement la condition de leurs peres”
Peres translates to “fathers”.
Does this mean that a child must have at least two fathers to be considered natural born?
After Bob explained how super-secret all this was supposed to be from the very beginning, I think I’m beginning to understand at last. He’s been holding out on us. He’s not just Bob Gard, world traveler, inventor, author, entrepreneur– he’s Double Naught Bob, Spy Extraordinaire!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iaR3WO71j4
Hmm… so far “The Great Debate” has maxed out 2 threads but doesn’t have a single response from Bob. Bob kind of seems like a Franken-birther to me: he’s like a pastiche with Orly’s knack for following directions, Butter’s understanding of evidence, Jedi Pauly’s legal acumen, Mario’s gift for brevity, David “out of breath” Farrar’s naivete regarding the law, Corsi’s shameless self-promotion, and the boundless and baseless belief in his own competence that is endemic in birthersan.
putting this post where it belongs, in the new Bob Gard thread:
Well, it’s a good thing we don’t have to listen to such conspiratorial scoundrels then, isn’t it? With their secret codes and not bothering to tell us what the words really mean. Since they didn’t bother to tell the ratifiers, we can just ignore them in turn. Good riddance to them. I would say it’s a shame they didn’t bother to pass down their secrets to anyone in government today, but really, it’s probably just as well that such undemocratic trickery didn’t survive. Too secret for their own good, I guess.
And this is what you want to resurrect? Secret cabals? And you think such imagined secrets have any hold on us?
If this were really the case, they might as well have been an imaginary King George in his parlor, laughing at how those Americans thought they were free of his rule. It was just his little secret that he didn’t tell them, that they were still his subjects. Ha ha ha, he fooled them.
Yeah, our founders and framers sure fooled us. So much so that Congress just went right ahead and certified President Obama, not once but twice. Take that secret codes!
Even were it true, good luck getting Americans to go for such a betrayal of the American project. You must remember what those early Americans told King George: No taxation without representation. You think is ever going to go, oh! secret codes! why didn’t you tell us? We’ll get right on that then. When? How about two days after the end of the universe? We’d do it sooner, but you know, filibusters, what can you do, eh?
Other than that, not a bad guy. 😀
I suspect some sort of misunderstanding. We’ll see.
Bob, This makes no sense. There is no such thing as ratifying a secret definition.
It also doesn’t comport with your statement on your website, “The Constitution is written in plain English. Any eighth-grader without an agenda should understand it better than any lawyer or judge with an agenda.” Are you saying that the other ratifiers–who didn’t know Jay’s purported secret definition–didn’t understand plain English? Are you saying that any eighth-grader would know Jay’s secret?
Speaking of plain English, do you know what “beyond a reasonable doubt” means?
—-
gorefan: When did Jay explain his definition of natural born to the Framers?When did the Framers explain their change of the definition of “natural born” to the rest of the country?
Bob Gard: Never in the public light. If Jay had, we wouldn’t be debating. Like the “hope” and “change” of today, our politicians allowed the attendees of the ratification conventions to interpret natural-born citizens any way they wanted. Because of the secrecy code in the Constitutional Convention and the off-premise meetings in taverns, cafes and drawing parlors, where the term was described in private, they could keep the meaning secret and they did. The framers did not want to alienate a single person who wasn’t a true “natural-born citizen,” who might be put off by the “discrimination” against children born after the Constitution.
You nailed it.* Kudos!
*Even though it seems like it might be like driving nails into a bowl with chunks of tasteless Jell-O. 😉
I suspect the mistake was thinking Bob was actually interested in debate. Now that you’ve bought his book, he doesn’t need you any more, Doc.
So, if it’s a secret meaning, doesn’t this mean that it’s not a “Plain English meaning”? If they wanted an definition that the common person wouldn’t know anything about and mis-interpret as something else, wouldn’t that be away from the “plain English meaning” that any 8th grader would know what it meant? Weren’t you claiming that you were trying to find the “Plain English meaning” of what the phrase meant, not some secret definition that the founders used to not offend people who didn’t fall under the definition?
I slept the day away, only taking a break for a water/dart pistol war … and come back to find Gard’s book tour farther down the spiral.
He never answered my follow-up questions regarding children born in territories or on over seas bases. How disappointing.
I see he makes much of the distinction of having signed the Constitution … are the delegates who did not sign it lesser authorities somehow? Lesser patriots? Lesser Americans? Let’s see whose names stand out among those who attended but chose not to sign … George Mason … Oliver Ellsworth … Elbridge Gerry … Robert Yates … George Wythe … these are no slouches! And, oh, look, Peyton’s protegé, Edmund Randolph, our first AG and 2nd SecState. An odd selection for signer, and 1st President, G. Washington to make if having not signed were so terrible.
As the document was an impossible sell w/o amendment, I’d say their concerns were well founded and widely shared.
And now he is hiding behind the ‘secrecy’ of the Constitutional Convention? Soon we’ll be down to the level of National Treasure.
And he wants to sell the $40K book collection? Didn’t the Paypal button pay for it? No?
Aren’t any fellow fauxVattelists drooling over it… ? 😉
Here’s what the words meant to Jay and Washington, from “A compendious dictionary of the English language” By Noah Webster, 1806:
Alien, a. foreign n. a foreigner, a stranger.
Allegiance, n. the duty of a subject to princes, or to the state in which they live (pg. 9)
Citizen, n. one inhabiting a city, a freeman.
Foreign, a. belonging to another country, diftant, not connected with (pg. 122)
Foreigner, n. a stranger, one of another country, (an alien) (pg. 122)
Jurisdiction, n, legal authority, power, a district (pg. 168)
Native, n. one born in any place; a. natural, real (pg. 199)
Natural, a. produced by nature, baseborn, easy (pg. 199)
Natural, n. an idiot, fool, native quality or gift (pg. 199)
(Discussion here: http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2012/02/the-allen-files/#comment-156043)
So the John Jay quote becomes:
Permit me to hint whether it would not be wise and seasonable to provide a strong check to the admission of [aliens] into the administration of our national Government, and to declare expressly that the Command in chief of the American army shall not be given to, nor devolve on, any but a [native] born [freeman].
I was revisiting the thread where the above post lives, and found this from Paul Pieniezny:
Here is his answer from the other thread.:
1.How is McCain ineligible for the Presidency? How is he not NBC?
Bob Gard:
He was born outside American soil. The Panama Canal was controlled by America under treaty. It was not owned by America and accepted into statehood. The treaty had an expiration date. Prior candidates who were born in territories before they were states were not eligible either. This is based on my conclusion that Jay followed 212. “. . . in the country.”
Charles Curtis, born in the Territory of Kansas would be very surprised to hear that he’s not eligible.
Thanks Paper; I saw that response and followed up with multiple points:
http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2013/02/the-great-debate-kibitzers-edition/#comment-247288
Which he has not addressed, nor has he answered why he didn’t tackle this project when McCain ran in 2000 … or for that matter 2008. Why did Obama prompt this obsessive endeavor?
Obviously, Gard can’t respond to every drop in the deluge here.
And I don’t expect him to answer the unanswerable anyway LOL
You are infinitely patient, Doc 🙂
All your questions there are good ones.
Bob is alleging that a cabal of the Framers were scammers, pulling a giant hoax conocted in the taverns of Philadelphia on the rest of the Framers, on the ratifiers and on the populace at large. Were that true, it’s not clear to me that the Constitution would actually be valid. Fortunately, the actual case is that the Constitution is valid, reads exactly how we all know it to read, means what the plain words say and the scammer is Bob. Because only a scammer could come up with such a story.
I don’t know if his friend Stanton is: 1. in on the scam; 2. a dupe; or 3. doesn’t really exist
PS-All attempts to debate birthers are doomed because they are all scammers. Bernie Madoff didn’t debate his “investment strategies”, he just took the cash.
Well, it’s not like I’m feeding nickles into a parking meter or something. I did, however, add an embellishment to the article above. The character Oblomov in the book of the same name keeps putting things off.
I suppose it is possible that Bob has, through reading comments here, realized that he’s in trouble, having based his theories on incomplete knowledge using arguments that don’t look so good in the light of day.
This is the pitfall awaiting lone-researchers who eschew expert review.
As to comments that Gard and Stanton are the same person, I reply that they have very different IP addresses. I have had several emails from Stanton and he is without explanation for the no-show in the debate so far.
Maybe Bob Gard went to the SCOTT E School of Debate?
Maybe he got awarded a B.S. of b.s. (Bigotry Science of birther studies) there. No reverse affirmative action required. You know it couldn’t possibly be a Liberal Arts degree.
Aren’t there lots of ways to get different ip addresses? Like even going down to a local coffee bar?
Anyway, that doesn’t matter. What does is that if one party contends that a document such as the Constitution or the Bible or any other such tome is written in a cryptic language that only he understands, where is the basis for a reasoned debate?
At the bottom of a Cracker Jacks box?
No. You have to use the one that Captain Midnight sent you when you were in the 5th grade.
The whole purpose of having an expressly written-out constitution, rather than an unwritten one, like the British constitution, buried in hundreds of scrolls representing ancient royal charters, age-old acts of parliament and venerable decisions of judges of various ranks – is that anyone who can read can get to know his rights and duties.
Hiding behind secret meanings that defy common sense is of course counterproductive. And not reasonable. Say what you want about the Founding Fathers, but they believed in Reason (=”logos” for those familiar with the real meaning of John 1,1).
I took my secret decoder ring, held it up to a copy of the Constitution and it said, “President Barack H Obama is A-OK”. I also visited the City Tavern in Philadelphia a few years ago, and there, in the men’s room, above the 2nd urinal in from the door, I scratched off several layers of paint and discovered the following written in what appears to be 18th century script: natural born = native born. Underneath it, in a different hand, is the name Vattel with a circle around it and a line through it.
You can go and see for yourselves, though they may have painted it over by now.
So clearly, I have won the debate, based on my unique insight into things that have remained secret up until now,
Maybe most of you knew this but I just figured out that Bob Gard is the guy who comments as “Obobma” at Albert Hendershot’s ObamaHustle blog. I haven’t read all his comments but he is mostly pimping his book. He engaged in a debate with commenter “brianh3” on this silly article by Hendershot: BREAKING NEWS – Hawaii state registrar Alvin Onaka has publicly certified to AZ SOS Ken Bennett that Barack Obama’s HI birth certificate is legally non-valid and the White House image is a forgery.
Gard also has a theory on the LFBC (of course he has not a shred of evidence to back it):
Many thanks to “Conservatiism, Inc.” for sparing us from Part II.
My previous comment went into moderation for some reason. I noted that Bob Gard posts as “Obobma” at ObamaHustle.
Doc,
I would characterize it more as “incompetence” since Bob did post two answers to his straw-man version of your question on the comment thread. I think that it is pretty clear that he doesn’t follow the discussion—I am certainly aware of the 2 methods you suggested for him to contact you with his responses—but rather just picks comments that he can make into straw men. The sad thing is that he can’t even refute the straw versions of people’s arguments.
I hope that he eventually figures it out—I would hate to miss out on the chance to be able to admire Bob’s rhetorical skills being employed. Of course it’s just, a matter of time before he runs away with his tail between his legs (probably to go and claim victory on birther sites…).
I had to add “3” to my name to subscribe at WordPress, so I used that at “TheObamaHustle.” This long discussion here has validated my sense as to how a “debate” with Bob would have proceeded, which is why I declined to go down this path with him there (where my posts got moderated and now appear to be blocked entirely). 1) No direct proof of anyone subscribing to Vattel/2-citizen-parent; 2) an “indirect” proof that is built on a skewed presentation which favors his sources and ignores the greater number of contrary ones; and a fundamental misapprehension on how to make an historical (let alone legal) argument.
He fumbled Doc’s first question. Like with Apuzzo, he ignores what he’s asked and jumps immediately to his “script.”
Why won’t the registrar and governor of Hawaii let us see the original folio of August 1961, wherein lies the typewritten or handwritten original of Obama’s birth certificate. I know you will hide behind the Civil Law Code. Right? Let’s see the original or do you believe that PDFs were around then? The American people need to see through the way the law is manipulated in this country.
I got an email from Bob a little while ago. He says he’s been trying to post the answer, somehow not remembering that he is supposed to email them.
Weird (‘i’ before “e” except after “c” unless you’re an ancient weird science being, or a heifer bother by his conscience.)
Even then, in science and conscience.
Ah. Except… yes. science and conscience, and ancient, are exceptions to “except after c.”
I c.
And you can of course also count “being” as an exception.
I had composed this reply to someone in part 1 but the thread was cut off before I could send it. I think it might fit here.
So you are convinced that a natural-born citizen means a native-born citizen with one citizen parent? Explain this. When Vattel wanted to designate one male parent he wrote “d’un pere citoyen” and translators translated the term into “of a father, di un padre Cittadino, and de un padre ciudadano.” Would he not have designated d’un paren(t) citoyen if he had not mean both parents? Un paren signifies the father or mother, but not both. I understand the basis of your argument as you can see from a section in my eBook. The usage I found in a 1606 dictionary.
“Les Naturels ou Indigènes ſont ceaux qui ſont nés dans le pays, de parens citoyens.” This sentence is the most important for this study. “de parens citoyens” is crucial for a few reasons. The first reason is that in present day French and Swiss French, the word “parens” never seems to be used. Was it unique, did it have a meaning different from “father,” or was it simply a Swiss variant for the French “parents,” which is modern French for “parents” with exactly the same spelling as in English? Though my French-speaking friends thought it was misspelled and the author meant to write “parents,” or that it might be “canadien-french,” it was in fact old French [none felt that the intent of the phrase was either father or mother, but then they are natives]:
Parens. Le pere ou la mere (Jean Nicot: Le Thresor de la langue francoyse, 1606)
Parens, ſ. Pl. progenitori, parents
Not every dictionary included the word; for example, only “parent” was entered in an earlier dictionary I own:
Parent, ſ . un père, ou mere, parente, padre e madre.
However, since Vattel distinguishes between singular and plural, I contend it was not a sloppy mistake to write parens for both and d’un for one.. If I accept your interpretation, I would have to consider Vattel as careless.
Take our naturalization acts. “With this in mind, and the fact that the Naturalization Act of 1790 read, “And the children of citizens of the United States, that may be born beyond ſea, or out of limits of the United States, ſhall be conſidered as natural born citizens,” logic should dictate that the term “citizens” could only mean two parents who were citizens by law. The Naturalization Act of 1795 repealed the act of 1790, took out the term natural born, and replaced it with the unmodified plural noun of “citizens” by stipulating “the children of citizens of the United States born out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States, shall be considered as citizens of the United States.” If the sentence did not mean both father and mother, then the problem of dual citizenship would arrise. Dual citizenship was not accepted till many years later. Fathers gave jus sanguinis to their offspring in many countries. Therefore, if the U.S. claimed as her citizen the child of an American mother of a child born in France or England with a French or English father, there would be problems. Please provide me with some cases where this happened and a suit was filed in the 18th century by an American mother. What was the outcome?
Why can’t you people give up the notion that I don’t include arguments from the other side? Why did I include Iredell’s quote? Why did I include a 1606 dictionary that lends support to your side if you want to ignore my reasoning?
Can I say “you people” to mean you contributors without being called racist?
The people have already spoken. You certainly don’t speak for them. Given that you aren’t even able to post your silly evasions of Doc’s questions in the agreed-upon fashion, you can’t even claim to speak for yourself, let alone 300 million people.
And remember parents means one or both. And the California Institute of Technology is Cal Tech, not CIT. Accuracy is critical in the research game.
Whoa, whoa, whoa….Gard wanders into PDF Madness in his 1700+ pg ramble that “doesn’t focus on Obama” and is being sold here as an in-depth exploration of the meaning of natural born citizen up to 1840?
I haven’t / won’t bother with Gard’s book, perhaps Doc could verify this apparent lack of focus, but to me this is yet another massive blow to the credibility Gard is dreaming of.
Email them where? I have sent two emails asking for that separate email address you said you send me. I haven’t received a response.
Excuse me, are you saying that they should break the law because of wild theories by some conspiracy theory nuts? Because now you show your total disrespect for the law and the people who are charged with following the law and that further is proof of your total lack of candor in your work. If you have such disrespect for our laws and our Constitution, why should anything you write about them be taken seriously at all?
Here’s a copy of the recent email:
Dr. Conspiracy,
This is the only email address I have from you. [redacted] I have over a thousand on my email. I have found no other. As of early this morning, I have not been able to post any comments. I get blue a #. That’s all. [Resolved that with finding Part II, but am still having problems.]
The only thing I know how to do is to run the scans from two compatible protection systems and reboot. It doesn’t help.
I posted my apology for my poor “proofreading” of your question and then answered it [publicly on the site]. I called it a blunder. I have been wanting to post the admission to a few other blunders, like dividing 96 by 2 and getting two 43s. I never have a problem admitting my mistakes or shortcomings. In the posting, I thanked the people who provided me with helpful facts and told them I would change one passage that did not acknowledge the actual number of occurrences of “natural born citizen” in print. I declared mine was patently wrong.Your contributors may have a slight chance of changing my conclusions but never by haranguing me that my evidence would be useless or inadmissible in court. I know that. I have said so a couple of times. I believe that this reliance on legal precedent and activist judging is what has destroyed much of our Constitution. I want to say that the contributors expect to reach a certain destination on a road by always turning right and ignoring the road sign telling them which fork to take to get to their destination because the sign is in blue instead of green. It is so easy to call names from the safety of pseudonyms. None will divulge whether they are lawyers or not, but constantly tell me I know nothing about the law. That comment about lavery instead of slavery shows the level of intelligence of some of your contributors. I have made many more real spelling errors and typos than that. They don’t know that they have too.
I really hope that we can focus on facts and that your pseudo-lawyers out there will forget about trying me in court. I said that lawyers will never have a chance to find out what natural born citizen means under strict rules of evidence and legal precedent, which ignore history and linguistics. But they won’t have a chance to prove native-born citizen = natural-born citizen either.
Did you include Tucker?, Kent? Rawle?
Can you tell us people what Constitutional rights native citizens have that naturalized citizens do not? See Seybert – “the alien is thus made a native, as it were, and is fully vested with every right and privilege attached to the native, with the exception impressed on the constitution”
But we can see that native born = natural born in the English system (see Blackstone) And we can see that the great legal minds in the United States equated native born and natural born.
As to lavery – that comment was meant for Stanton not you.
I imagine that has to do with my trying to post too many answers. I don’t wait for the 5 minutes to go by all the time. If I did, you’d criticize for me for not answering enough people.
The Registrar of the State of Hawaii has directly said that all the information contained on the White House birth certificate matches to what they have on file. This includes the place of birth. So, are you calling the registrar of the State of Hawaii a liar? If not, then why would you need to see the roriginal when the registrar has said multiple times that this is a true copy or abstract of the record on file with the Hawaii Department of Health? And if you are calling the registrar a liar, then why would you believe the record that is directly under his supervision? Wouldn’t you believe hat if he lied about his official duties, then wouldn’t you also believe that there’s a possibility that he would swiitch out a birth record to cover up the fact that he lied?
Furthermore, since you obviously aren’t focused on Obama solely , then will you stipulate to the information on the Hawaii Department of Health birth certificate, including place of birth?
You’ve been the one ignoring history. Fact: You CANNOT say with ANY certainty or even any educated guess WHAT was said between Jay and Cook. PERIOD! FACT: You CANNOT say WHO was the editor of the de Vattel 1787 edition. FACT: You cannot overcome the fact that in all the recorded debates on the ratification of the Constitution it was time and time again understood by the ratifiers that native born = natural born. FACT: You do NOT get to change over 400 years of meaning of natural born as understood in UK on down through the US with your OPINION. You have to have PROOF! Those sir are the facts.
For you and The Big Bang Theory, it may be Cal Tech, but it has been CIT, as well as Cal Tech, for me all these years. You do know that one can abbreviate anything he wants to abbreviate based on its long form without the abbreviation police arresting him? If CIT is inadmissible, why don’t you make war with MIT. Do you have any idea how many errors I how found in the old books I bought. At one time English was so inconsistent. I still is. Read this article:
Last updated: June 8th, 2010
The attempt by the Queen’s English Society to create an Academy of English, on the model of the Académie Française, is both welcome and long overdue. Authoritative bodies exist to maintain the purity of the French, Spanish and Italian languages, but English has been left to fend for itself at a time when it is under unprecedented attack.
Goodbye Sheldon.
No wonder they rejected you.
Yes of course “un pere” and ”une mere” are singular since children have only one of each (in pre-IVF days). But they have TWO parents or parens, so they could have 0, 1 or 2 citizen parents. In French when you specifically want to say both parents, you say “les deux parents”. Vattel did NOT say “les deux parents” therefore, he did not say 2 citizen parents
As for the stuff about US naturalization laws, for children born abroad they in fact DO distinguish between one and two citizen parents. Dual citizenship arises whether a country chooses to accept it or not, out of the fact that different countries have different laws. What would have been the situation of a child born in Britain to 1 or 2 US citizen parent in 1792? The Us would have considered them a US citizen and Britain would have considered the a British subject. So they would have been born a dual citizen even back then, despite it not being accepted. At majority they would have become a citizen of whichever of the 2 countries they lived in. The only difference today is that they could keep both and back then they would have had to choose. So in fact, the US naturalization laws don’t help your case, they hurt it.
And what are the laws of Switzerland, Vatttel’s homeland? Swiss citizenship requires ONE Swiss parent. The laws of Geneva were the same in Vattel’s day. So, the most likely scenario is that he was basing what he wrote on Swiss law.
The conclusion: What Vattel wrote means one or both parents as per Swiss law.
It’s called obeying the law. Everyone is supposed to do it, including the registrar and governor of Hawaii.
By the way, when are you going to answer my questions about when you applied to the six universities that rejected you?
Why do you hold the State of Hawaii to a lower standard of proof than you hold me? You blindly accept their declarations of authenticity without proof. I think they have the smoking-gun evidence but they won’t show it. Let them prove they have not gotten rid of it. Do you think government never covers up?
The Constitution demands that a president be a natural-born citizen. Even if that means a citizen born in the country of one American citizen or plain native-born, the registrar hasn’t proved it, just testified to it–a huge difference. Well, I say that I saw the smoking-gun proof to my conclusion over two hundred years ago. Are you satisfied now? If Lance Armstrong had kept his mouth shut, there would be many who still believed him. Why have some Congressmen been put in jail. If it were not for people like you, Bill Clinton might have seen the inside of a jail cell. All those good old boys swore they were telling the truth.
And now we see the babbling start. The reason is very simple, there is also other documentary evidence of the President’s birth in Hawaii. There is absolutely no evidence of his birth anyplace else. That’s more proof than you’ve offered in your opinions of what was said in a conversation over 200 years ago, and more proof than you’ve offered on your opinions well, on pretty much anything you’ve said here.
When you show us that you demanded the same proof for the other Presidents during your adult lifetime, I will take your demand seriously.
Break what law? Obama gave permission to reveal his birth certificate but apparently not the original. Is there a possibilty that Hawaii passed a privacy act regarding their birth certificates on file because they might have understood just how many birth certificates they gave to people not born in their state?
The Constitution trumps state law. The information could be sought through an impeachment hearing but we all know that’s not in cards. This is why I contend our laws are distorted and manipulated. Demanding Obama’s real birth cerfificate should be easy. It isn’t.
My fellow birthers get mad at me when I tell them I’m not concerned with any of Obama’s files except his birth certificate. I contend he has a perfect right to keep every personal tidbit of information secret except his birth certificate. Open the August 1961 folio!
One last question: if you never saw photographs of the originals of the Dead Sea Scrolls, would you automatically accept the PDF versions?
I personally don’t think the Supreme Court has gotten every decision right. But the fact is, our society was built upon a Constitution (a very brief document in terms of legal writings) and it was inevitable that disputes about the meanings and implications of that Constitution would arise.
For that reason, the Founders, in that same Constitution, set the framework for a court system, including a Supreme Court, that could resolve such disputes.
Look, here are the two options: Either we have an authority that can give the final word as to the meanings and implications of our laws and Constitution, or we don’t. The latter option is just not going to work, practically speaking, because then we would have no clarity as to what the law meant. So the Framers of the Constitution did well in giving us a federal court system. And they said we would have a Supreme Court. Incidentally, nine justices is a pretty good number.
That being the case, the decisions of our courts (and particularly the Supreme Court) matter. Legally speaking, they are the law. You can’t just ignore them and say they don’t matter. And those decisions (particularly the 1898 one) say you’re that just flat-out wrong. When it comes to authority on what the law means, who should we look to? Should we look to Mr. Bob Gard of California (who, as far as I know has no legal training or experience at all), or should we look to the nine duly-appointed Justices of the US Supreme Court, each of whom has a long and distinguished legal career behind him that led him to be entrusted with decisions that impact upon the entire nation?
But it isn’t just the decisions of the Supreme Court that are against your idea. As we’ve seen in this whole discussion, it’s the entire record of opinions every expressed by American legal experts. It’s the entire history of the discussion of what “natural born citizen” means, and of what the qualifications are for President.
In the other thread, I gave a fairly long list of “smoking guns” that tell us that no, it doens’t take two citizen parents to be a natural born citizen. If you’ve done enough reading, you would recognize that that list doesn’t even begin to enumerate the evidence against your idea. We haven’t even talked about the legal cases to this point. those are just as bad for your claim.
But we don’t even need those. We’ve got so many “smoking guns” from the early days of our country that say you’re wrong, we really don’t need to go past 1840 either. Although if we do, it just gets worse for your idea.
And what do you have? You’ve got the idea that John Jay told the Constitutional Convention that natural born citizen meant something completely different from what everyone could have possibly thought it meant. But you have not the slightest shred of evidence. It’s just speculation. You got the “leap of faith” that some English guy was the translator for the 1797 edition of Vattel. But that “leap of faith” isn’t just a hop across the ditch, as you imagine. It’s a jump across the Snake River Canyon in bare sneakers without any rocket assist. As we’ve seen, the odds of Lord Stowell being the editor of the 1797 Vattel are almost astronomically small.
You’re honest about the fact that you have no “smoking gun.” But you won’t recognize the very long list of “smoking guns” that say the very opposite of what you claim, and that thoroughly shoot down your idea.
Thanks for posting that link. Gard had a couple interesting comments there:
“I attended seven universities and colleges including two overseas, one of which was attended by some of the greatest public jurists in history.”
“Today, CalTech won’t accept a few complimentary copies of my eBook donated in his honor. That’s the kind of Ivy League universities we have. The information is at my web site. I have no respect for Ivy League universities because willfully ignorant people are their product. Georgetown University and Mike Seidman are prime examples of the trend of most American universities, Ivy League or not.”
Now you are further showing your shocking lack of skill. Obama got copies of them, and what he does with them is HIS choice! Hawaii has not release copies of the BC to anyone but Obama or his lawyer. And, if the great mind of yours would check, ALL 50 STATES have similar laws. Now, tell me, what proof do you have that they or any state gave birth certificates in 1961 to someone not born in their states? None you say? That’s what I thought.
Where in the Constitution does it show that Presidential candidates have to show the original BC held by the state? In fact, doesn’t the Constitution specifically state that Presidential eligibility is left up to the Congress? Sorry, you don’t get to re-write the Constitution, you may think you’re that smart…but it’s not close.
Sorry, conspiracy theorists and crackpots are not any authority on BC’s and really have proven they’ll call anything that doesn’t agree with them a forgery…why bother with it. Leave em where they are, you have nothing to prove he wasn’t born in Hawaii.
Another dumb statement…as if there’s never been photograph manipulation in the history of photography. The more you talk, the less I want to listen, because you’re showing your true colors and they aren’t of someone who is truly into doing proper research and coming to valid conclusion.
Bob also seems to think that legal precedent is a Bad Thing.
No legal system is perfect, and simply adhering to a bad legal precedent is a bad thing. But in those instances where the legal system functions properly (which is most of them) legal precedent saves us from endlessly reinventing the wheel, at unbelievable expense. There simply is no remotely efficient way to run a legal system without using legal precedent. Any other way of doing things is just insane.
Please understand that I was talking about the current status in the United states. Almost everyone agrees that naturalized citizens can’t run for the presidency.
You all know I don’t agree that plain native-born citizens have that right and I think Seybert agreed.
This is another ridiculous statement. And, if I recall correctly, somewhere Bob stated that law school only trains lawyers how to win cases. Plainly, he is clueless about the education of lawyers.
—-
“I said that lawyers will never have a chance to find out what natural born citizen means under strict rules of evidence and legal precedent, which ignore history and linguistics.”
And, according to the Constitution, how many different kinds of Citizens are there in the US? Can you list them all? Show me in the Constitution where they appear.
Yes, I did but did you and more importantly did you understand it?
What does he say next?
“your statutes cannot deprive any particular species of citizens of the right of personal liberty, or the locomotive faculty’ Congress can not take away citizens’ Constitutional rights.
“because the constitution does not characterize the citizens of the United States as native and naturalized—our great family is composed of a class of men forming a single genus, who, to all intents and purposes, are equal, except in the instance specified, that of not being eligible to the Presidency of the United States.” Only one single genus of citizens (native and naturalized) equal except that native can be President as specified in his previous sentence.
“The only exception to the rule is expressed in the constitution” Native citizens can be President, naturalized cannot.
BTW, in response to Mr. Seybert, Mr. Archer says, “The term naturalization was borrowed from England. It must be understood here in the sense and meaning which was there attached to it.”
Naturalization as used in the Constitution came from English law not Law of Nations.
Probably the reference to “C_ons_rv_at_sm, Inc.” You may have missed the memo that George doesn’t want us to refer to any of his cointelpro side projects by name.
Let’s try this Can Bob describe how in a society without courts disputes would be resolved? I suppose you could simply have juries decide matters of both law and fact as they saw fit. This comes perilously close to the justice system of Maoist China. Bob has thus gone so far to the right that he has joined the far left in a Mobius strip.
The kind that aren’t, in fact, Ivy League universities?
I will not divulge my evidence now.
“Hawaii has not release copies of the BC to anyone but Obama or his lawyer.” Yes, I forgot that’s the way it happened. I hope someday Congress asks for the real one. You are far off on your statement that all fifty states don’t let anyone from the public buy a non-certified evidenciary copy of anybody’s birth ciertificate. Many do. At times there is certain information missing but not the where and when. Tell me your birth place and name. If it is in one of the majority of the states that allow it, I will show you your birth certificate.
Remember Rielle Hunter? Anyone can buy a copy of her daughter’s and it is actually improper by the laws of California because of the dead beat father regulations.
I have a copy of her daughter’s, which I paid for as part of the proof of how easy birth certificates were to get. I apologized for my lapse of memory regarding the circumstances of Obama’s realeased certificate. Will you apologize for your incorrect statement?
—
When did that happen? President Obama presented a certified copy of his birth certificate, which the State later verified; I do not remember him giving any permission to the State to “reveal his birth certificate”.
I find this whole bc thing amazing. Never before birtherism have I heard of anyone demanding a State to provide a birth certificate directly to a third party.
Bob Gard/obobma and his alternate personality stanton (whether bird of a feather or two peas in a brain pod) …. shockingly revealed as yet another bitter nutter trapped in his own headspace.
Surprise, surprise, surprise.
obobma: Obama gave permission to reveal his birth certificate but apparently not the original.
original? why would anyone give up the original? do you have the “original” of your birth certificate?
and then what? it would be copied – would he pass the ONLY original around a room for everyone to see & touch it?
Of course not, no reason to have it torn to shreds here when you can go back to the birther sites and claim victory.
Prove that the states are breaking their privacy laws. Your word is not trustworthy.
Actually, you’ve proven to make false statements again and again, prove that you have a paid for copy of her BC and received it from the state and didn’t just steal/get it off the internet. You should have a receipt somewhere along with the copy.
You haven’t proven my statements are false, please provide proof and I will apologize.
Thanks
According to the researchers on the BBC program ‘QI‘, there are more exceptions than followers of the rule.
QI (stands for “Quite Interesting”) is apparently unavailable in the US due to copyright issues on the photos they use on the program. It is a silly general knowledge quiz show hosted by Stephen Fry with Alan Davies as a regular guest and three other guest comedians.
Um…Bob…a non-certified birth certificate is worthless. Which is why Obama got a certified one.
So your analogy is flawed. Just because you can get a piece of information, doesn’t make it certified. Obama’s BC has the stamp of the registrar. If Congress asked for a BC, he’d show them that, and they’d accept it. (For reasons why, read the Constitution of the United States.)
I think I’ll instead hide behind: “what folio?”
I’m sure Doc C. will correct me if I’m wrong, but I would think that the sum total of the DoH’s “folio” for any given 1961 birth would be: the long form birth certificate. Holding any other material for 50 years would be incredibly resource intensive.
The long form birth certificate we’ve seen looks just like every other specimen of that era, and includes the attending physician’s signature. How would that reconcile with there being another sekrit original form?
More importantly, of course: how would that reconcile with the multiple sworn confirmations of the data that has been released?
Your claim that they’re refusing to release this folio seems to hinge on the idea that there’s any evidence whatsoever that such a folio actually exists. And that evidence would be…?
I see.
Maybe the rule is:
“i” before “e,” except after “c,” or when sounded like “a,” as in “neighbor” and “weigh…”
…unless you’re an ancient weird science being, or a heifer bothered by his conscience.
Bob:
Prior to the adoption of the United States Constitution, the phrase “natural born subject” frequently appeared in colonial and state legislation.
Was the meaning of that phrase taken from English Common Law, or from some other source, and if so, what?
Have you emailed your answer to Dr. Conspiracy? If you need his email address, just say so and I will send it to you.
Note: “natural born subject,” not “natural born citizen.”
My last reply of the day.
I told you I would give you a complimentary copy. Give me your address and I’ll send it. From what I can see, your so-called smoking gun evidence is no more than circumstantial. None of it originated with any framers who signed the Constitution. This is a double standard. Axiom 6. I freely confess that I have no smoking gun evidence but you won’t. You say that so-and-so said so. It must be true but so-and-so wasn’t in attendance but he was an authority. I don’t buy it. And I don’t buy that the Supreme Court has the right to interpret because that branch wanted the power to do so.
“The English in the Constitution is plain in Article III, Section 2, Clause 1: “The judicial Power [in one supreme Court] shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under the Constitution . . .” The framers wrote under, not “in and under”. Nobody has the right to interpret that under means in and under.
I’ll give you several quotes in which the founders feared even the word “under.”
James Madison [signer] started the debate on Friday, June 20, 1788 with a mention of the law of nations:
“. . . An attention to this may satisfy gentlemen that precision was not so easily obtained as may be imagined. I will illustrate this by one thing in the constitution. There is a general power to provide courts to try felonies and piracies committed on the high seas. Piracy is a word which may be considered as a term of the law of nations. Felony is a word unknown to the law of nations, and is to be found in the British laws, and from thence adopted in the laws of these states [now there’s an example of something borrowed from English common law]. It was thought dishonorable to have recourse to that standard. A technical term of the law of nations is therefore used that we should find ourselves authorized to introduce it into the laws of the United States. The first question which I shall consider, is whether the subjects of its cognizance be proper subjects of a federal jurisdiction. The second will be, whether the provisions respecting it be consistent with safety and propriety, will answer the purposes intended, and suit local circumstances.
The first class of cases to which its jurisdiction extends, are those which may arise under the constitution; and this is to extend to equity as well as law. It may be a misfortune that, in organizing any government, the explication of its authority should be left to any of its co-ordinate branches. There is no example in any country where it is otherwise. There is a new policy in submitting it to the judiciary of the United States. That causes of a federal nature will arise, will be obvious to every gentleman who will recollect that the states are laid under restrictions; and that the rights of the union are secured by these restrictions. They may involve equitable as well as legal controversies. With respect to the laws of the union, it is so necessary and expedient that the judicial power should correspond with the legislative, that it has not been objected to. With respect to treaties, there is a peculiar propriety in the judiciary’s expounding them.”
It may be that Madison foresaw the problem in its incipience of the courts wanting to judge the constitutionality of laws based on distorting the language in the Constitution. Although he was not the most honest individual, he was good at predictions.
Mr. Randolph argued:
Although I do not concur with the honorable gentleman that the judiciary is so formidable, yet I candidly admit that there are defects in its construction, among which may be objected, too great an extension of jurisdiction. I cannot say by any means, that its jurisdiction is free from fault; though I conceive the subjects to be proper. It is ambiguous in some parts, and unnecessarily extensive in others. It extends to all cases in law and equity arising under the constitution. What are these cases of law and equity? Do they not involve all rights, from an inchoate right to a complete right, arising from this constitution? Notwithstanding the contempt gentlemen express for technical terms, I wish such were mentioned here. I would have thought it more safe, if it had been more clearly expressed. What do we mean by the words arising under the constitution? What do they relate to? I conceive this to be very ambiguous. If my interpretation be right, the word arising will be carried so far that it will be made use of to aid and extend the federal jurisdiction.”
Many feared what would happen if the Supreme Copurt starte to inmterp;ret what was in the Constitution in 1830 Hayne said:
It is clear that questions of sovereignty are not the proper subjects of judicial investigation. They are much too large, and of too delicate a nature, to be brought within the jurisdiction of a court of justice. Courts whether supreme or subordinate, are the mere creatures of the sovereign power, designed to expound and carry into effect its sovereign will. No independent state ever yet submitted to a judge on the bench the true construction of a compact between itself and another sovereign. [If treaties are off limits to the Supreme Court because they are a part of the supreme law of the land, why is the Constitution itself is not off limits?] All courts may incidentally take cognizance of treaties, where rights are claimed under them, but who ever heard of a court making an inquiry into the authority of the agents of the high contracting parties to make the treaty—whether its terms had been fulfilled, or whether it had become void on account of a breach of its conditions on either side? All these are political, and not judicial questions. Some reliance has been placed on those provisions of the constitution which constitute ‘one supreme court,’ which provide ‘that the judicial power shall extend to all cases in law and equity arising under this constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties,’ and which declare ‘that the constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties, &c., shall be the supreme law of the land,’ &c. Now, as to the name of the supreme court, it is clear that the term has relation only to its supremacy over the inferior courts provided for by the constitution, and has no reference whatever to any supremacy over the sovereign states. The words are, ‘the judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme court, and such inferior courts as congress may, from time to time, establish,’ &c. Though jurisdiction is given ‘in cases arising under the constitution,’ yet it is expressly limited to ‘cases in law and equity,’ showing conclusively that this jurisdiction was incidental merely to the ordinary administration of justice, and not intended to touch high questions of conflicting sovereignty. [When the Supreme Court starts to get involved in the meaning of the law in the Constitution, it is playing with our sovereignty.] When it is declared that the ‘constitution and the laws of the United States made in pursuance thereof, shall be the supreme law of the land,’ it is manifest that no indication is given, either as to the power of the supreme court to bind the states by its decisions, or as to the course to be pursued in the event of laws being passed not in pursuance to the constitution. And I beg leave to call gentlemen’s attention to the striking fact, that the powers of the supreme court, in relation to questions arising under ‘the laws and the constitution,’ are coextensive with those arising under treaties. In all of these cases, the power is limited to questions arising in law and equity, that is to say, to cases where jurisdiction is incidentally acquired in the ordinary administration of justice [Is interpreting the Constitution in “the ordinary administration of justice?”]. . . .
. . .
‘However true, therefore, it may be, that the judicial department is, in all questions submitted to it by the forms of the constitution, to decide in the last resort, this resort must necessarily be deemed the last in relation to the authorities of the other departments of the government; not in relation to the rights of the parties to the constitutional compact, from which the judicial, as well as the other departments, hold their delegated trusts. [In other words, the three branches of government have the right to an inalienable trust in what the Constitution says in plain English and none can be subjected to the distortion of what one branch, the Supreme Court, claims it says by an activist interpretation.] On any other hypothesis, the delegation of judicial power would annul the authority delegating it; and the concurrence of this department with the others in usurped powers might subvert forever, and beyond the possible reach of any rightful remedy, the very constitution which all were instituted to preserve.’ [Which is what has happened. The issue is that the Supreme Court reserves the right from Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137 (1803) to interpret the very document that delegated it the power to review the constitutionality of all laws passed under the jurisdiction of the Constitution, which, by interpreting the actual document—the Constitution—beyond a simple reading of the precise English, destroys it.]
This additional quote is clairvoyant:
On September 7, 1787 it was argued on the floor of the convention, “. . . The court is itself inferior and subordinate to the constitution [but it has the right to interpret what’s in it? That’s oxymoronic.]; it has only a delegated authority, and every opinion contrary to the tenor of its commission is void, except as settling the case on trial. The prior act of the superior must be preferred to the subsequent act of an inferior; otherwise it might transform the limited into an unlimited constitution. When laws clash, the latest law is rightly held to express the corrected will of the legislature; but the constitution is the fundamental code, the law of laws; and where there is a conflict between the constitution and a decision of the court, the original permanent act of the superior outweighs the later act of the inferior, and retains its own supreme energy unaltered and unalterable except in the manner prescribed by the constitution itself. . . .
An act of the legislature at variance with the constitution is pronounced void; an opinion of the supreme court at variance with the constitution is equally so.”
Let’s assume no smoking gun on either side. In that case the matter of whether someone is eligible for a particular office ought to rest with the voters. I cannot see an argument to deny the voters their choice based on “neither side can categorically prove thier case”.
Publius, does that not make sense to you as an ultimate resolution of this question? Since the minds of the dead are unknowable (the minds of the living are challenge enough) let the voters decide. This should bring the debate to an end, not that it ever really began.
Now this is interesting Bob, who would decide whether a SCOTUS opinion is not Constitutional? Where in the Constitution is this power? (I really don’t know. I thought you’d have to amend the Constitution to overcome a SCOTUS opinion, except in the case of another SCOTUS opinion overturning it.)
—
Again, you would see it differently if you had a legal education or simply read thousands of cases. There can be no such thing as a case arising “in” the Constitution. It is a document containing a legal framework; it does not contain cases. But when there is a case–i.e., a judiciable controvery between parties–that case “arises under” some law (e.g., the Constitution, a statute, the common law) and that law needs to be interpreted so it can be applied to the facts of the case. The Supreme Court interprets the Constitution when–and only when–a case “arises under” it.
Sheesh!
Two things:
First the “birth certificate” most likely had a “page 2” that collected additional information of a medical nature. For example the US Standard Birth Certificate in effect in 1961 included birth weigh, gestation in weeks and number of previous pregnancies, etc.
If an amendment had been filed to the original certificate, that also would be retained. Things like court orders are included in birth records. Anything necessary to support the legal facts of birth have to be retained in order to issue a certified copy.
We know that there is information directly to the left of the demographics section of the BC. So the actual original BC is probably not an 8.5 by 11 page but possibly14 by 11.
I wonder if the typewriters the hospitals used had an extra wide carriage.
I’ve also wondered if when the DOH copied the original onto the green security paper did they reduce the image by some percentage to be sure it fit on the page.
Are you being obtuse?
On February 8, you sent me an email saying:
“Is this the email address you referred to in your Great Debate?”
to which I replied on the same day:
“Yes, this is the email address. You will note that I published the first question for you today.”
About midnight last night, I sent you another email saying:
“Please reply to this email with the answer to the first debate question, as we agreed.”
I think perhaps I should shut down your access to the comments on this blog so you can focus.
I probably should have mentioned that explicitly — in my head, I was counting that as part of the LFBC.
So there could be a folio, but there is nothing that could be in it that would contradict the facts as laid out in what has been released and multiply attested to by the DoH — including the contents of Box 23 (which is: nothing). Is that a fair statement to make?
And yet again, if Bob or other birthers are aware of evidence that there is such a folio, they are “refusing” to divulge what that evidence is.
Actually, it is a minority of states that allow public access to birth records. I don’t have the exact number, but it is in the low teens.
Open record states I know about off hand are California, Maine, Massachusetts, Montana and New Jersey.
Are you asking if he’s rounded at the free end?
Les Nessman: Obtuse! According to Websters, exceeding ninety degrees but less than one-hundred eighty degrees; lacking sharpness or quickness of sensibility; rounded at the free end; dull.
Just as your historical sources never say “highest form of citizen,” neither have I ever mentioned any “separate email address.” I think the error of thinking may well be the same in both cases.
USE THE FREAKING EMAIL ADDRESS YOU HAVE BEEN USING TO ASK FOR THE FREAKING EMAIL ADDRESS.
I think you may have a problem reading a single sentence, since my one-sentence “THIS IS THE EMAIL ADDRESS” went right by you, as did my one-sentence debate question where you read “citizen” for “subject.” Maybe it takes you a few thousand words to get the comprehension engine running.
Maybe 00bobma should give up the secret agent business. He’s like an undiscovered sixth Marx Brother.
BTW, you lucked up on a nice gravatar.
No, it does not make sense to me, Scientist. The minds of the dead are knowable to a very good extent through the writings they left behind.
It is clear enough that “natural born citizen” and “natural born subject” were used interchangeably in Massachusetts. It is clear enough that Iredell equated “native” absolutely with “natural born citizen,” that Jefferson wrote a jus soli law for Virginia, that Hamilton told us to look to the English common law to understand the terms used in the Constitution. It is perfectly clear that Rawle wrote that the child born on US soil of alien parents was “a natural born citizen in the sense of the Constitution, and entitled to all the rights and privileges appertaining to that capacity.”
We don’t really have to guess what these people thought, because they told us. We might have to put a few pieces together. We might have to struggle, just a bit, with interpretation, but they themselves left us hard, written records of their ideas.
This is completely different from Bob’s prestidigitation, where he imagines without any real evidence that he knows what John Jay thought. He imagines he knows what John Jay and Sir William Scott talked about. He imagines that he knows that Scott, out of half a million men who lived in London in 1797, was THE man who translated Vattel that year.
The former is grounded in real, historical quotes that anybody can look up. The latter is nothing more than Bob’s flight of fancy.
He did.
I have thought all along that the gravatar gods were prescient in selecting Bob’s.
Bob, since you have offered me a complimentary copy of your book, would you be willing to get it to me (if Dr. C is willing) by authorizing Dr. C to upload a zipped, password-protected copy of his PDF? That way I would have it instantly.
Hahahahahahahahaha sure. Any. Day. Now.
It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key.
Maybe if each of us post it.
HEY BOB! IT’S THE EMAIL ADDRESS YOU SENT “WHERE’S THE EMAIL ADDRESS?” TO.
SEND YOUR ANSWER TO THAT EMAIL ADDRESS.
USING EMAIL.
Maybe the problem is we’re not using the super-secret double-naught spy code that Bob’s used to. I finally found the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MWq6L19eNo
I have been out all day, and so I have missed this whole new batch. Reading through, I made myself wait until the end, otherwise I more than once would have repeated what others have said.
Now, *that* all said, I look with affection upon justlw’s suggestion. I follow up on that suggestion by quoting Dr. C, whose words, or words to the same effect, were running through my head, screaming to get out, as I made my way through today’s comments:
America’s true Secret Branch of Government: The Grammys.
From now on, all Supreme Court cases are subject to Fun.’s veto power.
It’s very generous of you guys to keep offering ‘complimentary copies’ of an unsecured digital file.
The NOC List is in the open! (Oh, dear me.)
Quote of the day.
Perhaps you could add this to the intro to ‘The Great Debate’? Not like it while help, but how could it hurt?
So far, the whole experiement is quite exemplary, IMO. Birfer, called out for a demonstration of expertise, fumbles badly.
I am going to enjoy this reply a lot. I went to one of my dictionaries tonight after I returned home. It is called “A Concise Dictionary of ABBREVIATIONS, compiled and edited by George Mayberry, Tudor Publishing Company, New York, 1961, page 88:
C.I.T. California Institute of Technology (better known abbreviated as Cal. Tech.)” Sheldon, please go back to watchingThe Big Bang Theory and enjoy it for its entertainment value and not for its authority.
So basically you’re going to hold President Obama to an ever changing standard you never had for any president until he came along. If you’re claiming the issuing authority can’t be trusted then how could you claim any original in their trust and possession could be trusted? You’re basically laying down your escape path. If an original was ever released you’d just claim it was forged since it took so long to release it just as birthers did with the long form.
This show me your papers boy mentality went out of style when the conservatives jumped ship and switched parties from the southern democrats. If you can’t trust the issuing authority then how would you ever go apart proving your birth to anyone. It’s a simple thought experiment would you hold yourself to the same ever changing rationale that you’re holding this president to?
What steps would you take for proving your own birth circumstances?
The rest of your drivel has no relevance to the debate.
@obobma:
Actually, there is considerable evidence that “natural born citizen,” as used in the Constitution, was, insofar as the question of birth-status goes, simply an adaptation of the English term “natural born subject.” So I’m convinced that. as to birth on U.S. soil, the term equates to “native-born citizen.” So no citizen parent is necessary.
Other posters have provided to you a number of things in support of this view. For example, the Massachussets naturalization statutes (where it is made abundantly clear that “NBS” and “NBC” were used interchangeably). Given this usage, why would anyone from Massachusetts participating at the Constitutional Convention (or later at the state ratification of the Constitution) understand “NBC” to signify anything different from “NBS” as to the birth-status issue?
And Publius has offered other sources (e.g., Rawles) to support the view that the Massachusetts usage was consistent with how “NBC” was understood generally within the early Union — as expressing a jus soli view, just like the English “NBS” did. Evidence like this makes your supposition that John Jay held to some (personal and secret) understanding of “NBC” which encompassed parental citizenship irrelevant: if Jay’s supposed understanding was never communicated to the Convention as a whole, then the more reasonable conclusion is that the Convention (and the State legislatures) included the term and adopted the Constitution with the undestanding “NBC” reflected the same jus soli principle as “NBS.”
Because it doesn’t seem you do more than give a faint nod in the other direction. In fact, your statement on the opening thread — “[I] represent different viewpoints in my book with a penchant to include all those I could find that favored my unique analysis.” — proves the point. “Including arguments from the other side” entails representing those arguments fully and fairly. Not only does it seem that you didn’t do this in your eBook, when presented here with those arguments you ignore them. For example, you have yet to directly address the Massachusetts statutes and the point that they indicate that “NBC” held a meaning akin to “NBS” and thus at odds the claimed “2-citizen parent” understanding of that term.
Why not the hard disk to a P.O. Box. Doesn’t Dr. Conspiracy have a PO Box?
This is getting surreal. When I first read this in the post above, I thought it was referring to Bob’s claim that John Jay said so-and-so (even though Bob has no record that John Jay ever said so-and-so). I thought it was someone making a legitimate complaint that Bob has no idea whether Jay actually said so-and-so.
And John Jay, of course, wasn’t in attendance at the Constitutional Convention. But still (according to Bob) he was an authority. A bigger authority than Madison, for example, who WAS in attendance.
So I thought for a moment there that someone was making a legitimate complaint that Jay could in no way be counted as an authority.
Then I realized it was Bob, making an argument which (if applied to his own claim) actually destroys it.
So let’s go back to the original. Because Bob (while studiously avoiding making this argument against his own claim, lest he rapidly sink his own ship) is trying to apply this to the many “smoking guns” that I and others brought forth.
The fact is, there were a number of people who were recognized as legal experts in early America. These are people who studied the law, who spent their LIVES studying the law, and who were widely recognized as understanding and being able to explain what the law meant.
They included people like William Rawle and St. George Tucker. No, those two weren’t at the Constitutional Convention, but they were a hell of a lot closer to both the Convention and the people who attended it than Mr. Gard. (Bob, were you at the Constitutional Convention? Were you one of the delegates? Or were you much further away from it and its participants than William Rawle?)
Earlier I pointed out:
Once again, there is tons of good, solid evidence (only faintly touched on in the paragraph above) that:
* people understood “natural born citizen” as a virtual synonym to “natural born subject”
* people understood “native” and “natural born citizen” to be virtual synonyms
* there were only ever two kinds of citizens, natives or natural born citizens on the one hand, and naturalized citizens on the other
* we inherited our legal terminology (and particularly the terminology used in the Constitution) from the English common law
* and the entire tradition in the US was jus soli.
First, sending a disk from you to Dr. Conspiracy, and then from Dr. Conspiracy to me, would take a whole week, when we could do the transfer literally in a matter of minutes without spending any postage.
Second, I prefer to be known only as Publius, and not to divulge my name or address. If that is the only way you find acceptable in getting the information to me, then I shall respectfully decline.
I will probably get ahold of a copy eventually. I may eventually pick up a used one somewhere, as Doc did.
I suspect a high level of cognitive dissonance at work in Bob’s mind short-circuiting routine tasks. His exchange with Stephen Tonchen was a case of two Birthers discussing slightly differing paths to the same endpoint. The cross-examination he’s facing here is another thing entirely.
I’m not sure how otherwise to explain the self-claimed 4.0 GPA, Ivy-league aspirant, world-class researcher suddenly so confused about a simple email process.
If I were running for President, I would let the world see my original birth certificate stored at the County Clerk’s Office or the black stencil copy I have or both for comparison. They would open the orginal for viewing upon my permission. I can go and see it on demand. It takes advance notice because the originals are stored in a separate warehouse. The normal routine for a certified copy is the same that Obama followed. In his case, there was a tremendous amount of doubt about a forgery. I would want to eliminate the doubt. Like Obama, I would not divulge any of my other records. The only record that the public has a constitutional right to see is a candidate’s birth certificate. If the revealed certified copy has been faithfully reproduced, why the refusal? The original is in a bound folio with all the originals for August 1961 sitting on a shelf somewhere.
How exactly would you do that Bob? You don’t own the original and cannot compel the issuing authority to release your original. You also aren’t allowed to put your hands on it. No one ever gets their original. As a candidate you don’t have the authority to order the county clerk’s office to do anything.
So now that that’s out lets see what else you claim.
No this is another lie from you. There was no doubt. The issuing authority says the content of the BC matches their records and it is legit. There was no room for error there.
Actually that’s also false. Birth certificates are private records and are not anything you have a right to see which would explain why many presidents since the standardization of birth certificates haven’t shown theirs and why you can’t find them.
Why should Obama have to coddle people who consistently lie about him and don’t believe anything he presents?
Can you please point to the section in the Constitution or any State or Federal laws that specifies that a Presidential candidate has to produce his or her original birth certificate for a member of the public to inspect.
Or is this your proposal to change the Constitution and/or State/Federal law? If so, get writing to your legislators.
I’m curious Bob, if you were running for President how exactly would you let over 100,000,000 voters living all over the world see your original BC?
Nice try, Secretary Hamilton. Your secret is out.
Bob’s a technically sophisticated guy; I’m sure he would, you know, post photos of it online, or perhaps he might scan it and post it online as a PDF 😉
…. or not. Bob, are you seriously suggesting mailing a hard disk drive?
I’m gonna go more with Bob on this one. There was some doubt about a forgery among a sizable percentage of the public.
It can certainly be debated whether the doubt was reasonable, or totally trumped up. But it did exist.
Sshhhh. Am I going to have to ask Dr. C to start deleting comments? 😉
Bob, you said your concern is to gain access to the original documents filled out in 1961.
You wonder if there is a law to prevent access. Yes, there is. No one in the public gets to see *anyone’s* original documentation. I cannot see yours.
You mention how some states provide copies to anyone. But those are not the original documentation you want to see. They are Information Only *Copies.* They are not even official birth certificates. They are not certified. They are of less value than the Short Form and Long Form you find insufficient. I personally don’t like that some states do this. But they do.
So, in your example of California, you could get an Information Copy, but you would not be allowed into the archives to see the originals. You see it is not merely about Hawaii. California, for example, will not let you see the originals neither.
So, your clearly expressed desire with regards to Obama is not possible, not for the President, and not for you or me. This should *not* be easy, and it is not. It’s bad enough, to my mind, that some states do allow Information Copies. But if they allowed access to the original documentation? We might as well just go back to notations in our family bibles then, considering how unreliable birth certificates would become.
If you wanted to gain access to the originals, then you indeed would need some kind of trial or impeachment case with some substantial EVIDENCE of fraud. That is how the system works for everybody.
The President does not own his original documentation, and you do not own yours. It belongs to the states. You think they’ve done fraud? Show some evidence to the courts. Speculation need not apply.
I think there is more to say here, but this covers the basics that some have tried to lay out. There has been some cross talk between you and others on this topic that has missed what each of you are saying. Understandable, but these are the basics.
Or maybe show it to reporters, let them touch it, take pictures of it, you know…say they’ve seen it. Amazing how many times I’ve had birthers make that same smart-ass comment about showing the world their BC and when I ask them how, silence or something the President has already done. 4+ years and they still can’t see how dumb their statements are…oh well, they are birthers.
Oh Rihanna, it’s not like we can’t tell it’s you.
(See my post above about The Grammys being America’s true Secret Branch of Government. It’s about time Americans knew the truth about this. When you’re ready…)
;-}
I ask again, why did you not try Cal Berkeley? Current world ranking by QS of the Math department is number 5. Stanford, which you claimed to have tried, is number 3. ARWU has Cal ranked number 3 behind only Harvard and Princeton.
I suspect that in the late 60’s there may not have been similar ranking systems that they have now, but Cal’s reputation has always been very high in all scientific disciplines. Seems like the perfect slot for a wunderkind like you.
I am fluent in Hebrew, and helped Photoshop them.
Two and a half days in, it seems the Great Debate is still all sizzle and no steak. Rather than engage Doc, Bob has chosen to back-and-forth with the kibitzers in the peanut gallery.
And even here, he’s gotten his clock cleaned.
At least he has a shiny clock.
Because you are not a State Government with a Department specifically set up to control and maintain the integrity of vital statistics records.
To whom did he give such permission? He gave permission to the Campaign organization and to the White House staff to publish images of his birth certificates, the standard (short form) and the non-standard (long form) on the internet.
He did not give permission to the State of Hawai’i to allow people to see the original 1961 artifact. In fact, it is not within his power to grant such permission as the document is the property of the State of Hawai’i and is subject to the protection of Hawai’ian privacy law. End of story.
The President can do what he likes with the certified copies that Hawai’i provides when he asks for them, but that doesn’t change the responsibilities that the Hawai’ian Government has to protect the original artifact. The President has no authority to override Hawai’ian privacy law; that would be the way of dictatorship.
I repeat an question from someone earlier: how exactly do you propose that 100,000,000+ voters see the original artifact of your birth event documentation when you run for President?
As it happens, I own the book The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered by Robert Eisenman and Michael Wise and the CD The Dead Sea Scrolls Revealed distributed by Logos, text by Robert Reich (and a large team doing translations, digitizing etc). The images on the CD (in Quicktime ‘PICT’ format) are several orders of magnitude more clear than the images in the book.
Not that it does me any good… I can’t read Hebrew, modern or ancient.
We’re not.
If I go to the police and tell them that if they look at your shoebox full of personal documents in your closet, then they will see that you have committed fraud and are not who you say you are, they will ask me how do I know, what proof do I have? They will not be able to get a subpoena just because I know that human beings tell lies. Or because Scientist has read your posts and doesn’t believe your stories about who you say you are and what you’ve done.
Same for the President, sir.
I Before E Except After C – QI Series 8 Ep 14 Hocus Pocus Preview – BBC One
And I ask you again, who then would you have do so? *Someone* would need to do so. Not just the plain sense of the language. The plain sense of the language has no volition. And many many people would refuse your interpretations. You don’t accept theirs.
So again, who would you have judge such?
A lot more than you’d enjoy replying to Doc in the real Great Debate, apparently.
And if frogs had pockets, they’d carry switchblades and wear snakeskin hatbands.
Really… Hilarious… Is that not the guy who could not properly read real-estate transactions when making somewhat foolish comments about Obama and his house in Chicago?
I have some vague recollections that I had to correct him many times…
Poor researcher at best…
Be that as it may, James Madison is not for sale. As already pointed out to you many times, he was a framer who signed the constitution, and he 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; it will, therefore, be unnecessary to investigate any other.”
You may now apply Axiom 6, and concede the point.
I’ll give it to him right here and now:
1) Go to the top of the page you are currently reading.
2) Click on the word ‘Contact’ just to the right of the words that say “Open Thread”.
3) Fill out the form that appears.
4) Click on the submit button.
By the way Bob, did I understand you rightly? Did you not say somewhere that you emailed the Doc to ask what his email address is?
This video may help you out Bob: Lets Make A Deal
Ah that was Al Hendershot… So many hustlers out there 🙂
Dr. C, it might be worth doing that. Then after your debate concludes, start a new thread for open comments on the finished debate, and open Bob’s ability to comment at large.
How the heck are you going to do that? Are you going go to the State DOH offices and take that original copy away with you? Are you going to pay for his transportation to the state DOH archives site? Are you going to photocopy it and mail it or scan it and publish it on the web?
And what is the point of this strawman argument? Hawai’i is not an open record State and that is all there is to it. There is no point in this line of argument, open record states are irrelevant, Obama was born in Hawai’i. Hawai’i doesn’t allow you access.
Furthermore, even open record states will NOT allow YOU to see the original artifact. At most they will let you see a photocopy or a computer generated report.
I suspect he meant a CD. CD’s are hard, unlike floppies.
Just one simple question– what position has Double Naught Bob espoused that isn’t based entirely upon fantasy?
Random OT tidbit: the femme fatale in that clip is played by Sharon Tate.
Ah, but for some of us, no femme could ever be as fatale as Ellie Mae!
Umm, Andy. A non-certified birth certificate is not a certificate. Period. Its just a piece of paper with information written on it.
Which is why Obama got a certified one.
This is our “Great Researcher” Bob? He can find the hidden meaning in the Founding Father’s intent…. but he can’t figure out how to copy an email address.
/facepalm…
Both Bob Gard and C. Stanton have studiously avoided replying to any of my posts. Being the only French lawyer here (AFAIK?) able to speak with some authority on the subject of Vattel, I find that indicative of at best a huge yellow streak, at worse evidence that they both KNOW they’re wrong and are just trying to con people.
And refuses to engage with expert witnesses who can and will prove him wrong (I mean, moi).
For those genuinely interested in Vattel’s influence on modern international law, I recommend this book, which is a collection of papers delivered at a Swiss conference to celebrated the 250th anniversary of THE LAW OF NATIONS:
http://fr.bruylant.be/titres/125336_1/reflexions-sur-l-impact-le-rayonnement-et-l-actualite-du-droit-des-gens-d-emer-de-vattel-reflections-on-the-impact-influence-and-continuing-relevance-of-on-the-occasion-of-the-emer-de-vattel-s-law-of-nations.html
It was put together by Mr. Yves Sandoz who is Professor of International Humanitarian Law, University of Fribourg, Switzerland.
I’m 99.99999% certain that Bob Gard or Mario Apuzzo never read this book because otherwise they wouldn’t spout the drivel they do.
There is such as a thing as professional research/scholarship, and then there is clown posse delusional birther research, like Gard’s or Apuzzo’s.
I’ve never been convinced of Bob’s ability to research. Earlier in the thread, he complained about not being able to find the statutes on Massachusetts that people were referring to. I found it within 5 seconds using a simple quoted google search, and yet he claimed that he couldn’t find them, and therefore needed a direct link to them.
And yet, no actual candidate for President has done anything like that. In fact, none before Obama showed any form of b.c. at all. So, in the 10 or so elections since you passed the age of majority you either voted for a candidate who showed no b.c. at all or you didn’t vote.
But, given your belief that 2 citizen parents are required, how would a simple b.c. suffice? If one or more parents were born abroad wouldn’t you need to see their naturalization papers? And even if their parents were supposedly born in the US, wouldn’t you need to see THEIR parents’ info. In fact, you would need a thorough genealogical study back to at least 1776 to ensure no taint of foreign blood, wouldn’t you?
There is no such right. The right the public has is to withhold their vote from candidates they think are not eligible. You exercised that right with Obama and the majoriity disagreed with you. The End.
From the guy who scoffed at dictionaries…
Even this source says Cal Tech is better known. I have worked with several Cal Tech grads and none ever said they went to CIT. In fact the only reason I even knew that you were referring to that school in Pasadena is that you lumped it in with Stanford and MIT. And I bet if you said “I went to CIT” to 100 engineers and scientists very few would think you meant Cal Tech.
Why is this trivial point worth discussing? Because you claim to know how various words were understood by long-dead people better than anyone else alive, even when your interpretation is contradicted by everyone of any stature since that time and even by many, such as James Madison, who actually wrote the document containing those words. Yet you aren’t even aware of how people in your own time designate a reknowned institution or how most people understand “arrested”.
Are you sure? Is Bob sure? I’ll not give him the benefit of any doubt. He’s laid some whoppers here; which is worse, assuming a hard disk is an optical disk, or the assumption that federal law was completely separate from civil law?
If an optical disk is a hard disk, then is a 3.5″ “floppy” a harder disk? What would he make of an Iomega Zip Disk? I bet a SSD would really bake his noodle.
Congratulations CalTech, on your first baseball win in nearly a decade!
(but they have since returned to their losing ways).
I know, Keith. That’s why I was pointing out to Bob that he’s an idiot.
Shouldn’t that be “well-known French/US dual citizen James Madison”?
🙂
How does fake scholar Bob Gard deal with the fact that one of the US presidents (at least) was a full-blown (not just potential) dual citizen?
His lack of research ability gives him all these gaps that he can fill in with his special skills to divine the “real” truth.
Yes, Bob Gard is the obobma commenting at Al Hendershot’s blog (and now apparently here). I haven’t looked at older articles at the ObamaHustle to see what other gems Bob left. His comments there certainly portray him to be a much more hard core Birther than he pretended to be here when he first started posting as Bob Gard.
Well, here are Bob’s claims, that I can think of (only including the ones that are central to the discussion at hand):
1. We didn’t rely very much on English common law.
Contradicted by a ton of history, rulings of the US Supreme Court, and the straightforward words of Alexander Hamilton.
2. The fact that we (eventually) decided people had a right to expatriation means that we didn’t adopt jus soli.
Based on a false premise (that we immediately adopted a clear right of expatriation, which we didn’t), and doesn’t follow anyway. We were certainly free to adopt jus soli as our rule for how people became citizens, and reject only the part that said people had no freedom to leave and change their nationality.
3. John Jay really liked Vattel.
Bob has presented no evidence at all to establish this. We could just as well claim that John Jay secretly invented the modern hamburger, but never shared the recipe so it was lost for centuries to mankind.
4. John Jay sent some secret communication to the Constitutional Convention that defined “natural born citizen” as requiring two citizen parents.
Bob has no evidence at all to indicate this ever happened. It’s a fantasy.
5. (Implied:) The Constitutional Convention accepted John Jay’s secretly-communicated definition.
Bob has no evidence at all to indicate this ever happened. In fact, if any such thing had happened, given the extreme similarity between “natural born citizen” and the virtually identical “natural born subject,” it almost certainly would’ve been discussed and recorded in the notes on the Convention.
6. (Implied:) It doesn’t matter what the people who ratified the Constitution thought or understood or intended. Only the intention of the Framers counts, and if that intention was secret, it still reigns supreme.
Doesn’t make sense. And that’s just not how things should or do work.
7. John Jay met with Sir William Scott in England, and they talked about natural born citizenship.
They probably met, but Bob has no evidence at all that they ever talked about American natural born citizenship.
8. Sir William Scott was the secret editor of the 1797 edition of Vattel’s Law of Nations.
Bob has no evidence at all to indicate this ever happened. Given that half a million other men were in London at the same time, many of whom would have spoken French, it’s an extremely unlikely fantasy. Heck, he hasn’t even established for certain that Scott knew or was any good at the French language. And there appears to be no actual record of Scott ever doing any known translation work of any kind.
9. Two other guys, John Nicholl and C. Robinson, helped him on the project.
Bob bases this on a total misreading of the preface of a later edition of Vattel by Chitty. He has no evidence at all to indicate it ever happened. It’s a fantasy.
10. As the secret editor, Scott put in “natural born citizens” because Vattel’s idea matched what John Jay told him “natural born citizen” meant, way over in America.
This doesn’t even make sense. Whoever the 1797 editor was, he was writing for an English audience, not an American one.
On the other hand, previous English authors were known to use “natural born citizen” instead of “natural born subject” in translations where the original author referred to citizens, as Vattel did repeatedly in the same passage where “natural born citizens” appeared as a translation.
So the question was:
Well, he did say that there had been doubt about Obama’s birth certificate, which I actually agreed with, at least when it comes to the popular mind.
But on the core topic, I can’t find any. It seems to be imagination, with nothing solid to back it up, all the way down.
Bob Gard = Butterdizillion’s imagination with SCOTT E’s fortitude. 😆
I have turned up the heat a degree by sticking the Great Debate article to the front page, adding Bob’s agreement to the debate conditions, and adding a comment that there has been no reply after three days.
No, I do not have a PO Box. But I could easily make available to Publius an AES encrypted zip file with a strong password, and point him or her to a secret URL by email.
You’ll probably get another email from him exclaiming he doesn’t have your email address.
You could always create a throw-away email address. And I am also willing to be an intermediary.
Solved:
http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2008/12/obama-announces-national-natural-born-day/
Thanks for the offer, Doc. We’ll see if Bob accepts.
On address, my email address doesn’t give my name. It’s more physical address that I was referring to.
Bob Gard,
Can you please respond to Dr C’s initial debate question? Not here, via email to Dr C so he can post your response in the main debate.
Here it is, to refresh your memory.
Prior to the adoption of the United States Constitution, the phrase “natural born subject” frequently appeared in colonial and state legislation.
Was the meaning of that phrase taken from English Common Law, or from some other source, and if so, what?
SCOTT E thinks we are all the same person and we are paid to write stuff on the Internet. From Birther Reports:
I don’t think anyone will ever accuse SCOTT E of being paid. 😆
It didn’t count, because it was France. At that time, the French were Americans, and Americans were French. Think Lafayette. Please hold your outrage until my tongue leaves my cheek. Let me explain.
You may recall this recent example:
“Nous sommes tous Américains.”
http://www.lemonde.fr/cgi-bin/ACHATS/acheter.cgi?offre=ARCHIVES&type_item=ART_ARCH_30J&objet_id=721875
“We are all Americans.”
http://www.worldpress.org/1101we_are_all_americans.htm
I hesitate to call it super natural-born citizenship (where you place a hyphen is so important, don’t you think?), but at such moments, on such days, anyone born is born an American citizen, a super natural-born citizen.
We can quibble whether or not such super natural-borns are eligible to be president of the United States. The super birthers certainly do (the Constitution says natural-born not super natural-born). But as the Black Monolith told us at the dawn of human consciousness, it is not just where you are born, or who your parents are, but also when you are born. That also leaves why or how you were born, as well as what you were born as. The Five W’s of natural born citizenship.
James Madison was French, but the French were Americans then. It happens from time to time–during World War II, and in 2001.
(Ssh. Don’t tell the British.)
And as we know, President Kennedy was a Berliner. These things happen in the best of countries.
Did that make him a natural-born jelly doughnut?
[Disclaimer: Yes, I know it’s a myth]
That would fall under the “what” clause of the super secret natural-born citizenship code of the Five W’s.
Was he prepared with all-natural ingfredients?
I think the proper question is: “Was he prepared by two citizen bakers”?
I’ll crystal-ball gaze here a bit.
The length of Bob’s reply will be a function of the length of time he’s taking to formulate it. Bob, like Mario A., has done such backflips in order to steer the NBC question away from English common law, that it results in the absurd tendency to deny any connection between the ECL and American concepts in general. A hint of this is in Bob’s assertion that trial by jury didn’t REALLY derive from England. So my guess is that Bob is out searching for some more ancient NBS-like notion somewhere else, and then building the connect-the-dots bridge back to the U.S. routed away from England. The “answer” with have lots of irrelevancies and rabbit trails designed to make any lineal progression of the discussion most difficult. (Much like Mario’s 6-part replies to a one paragraph point.)
The “I’ll first reply on the Kibbitzer thread using NBC instead, because, gosh-darn, I can’t figure out which email I’m supposed to use, and now, gosh-darn, there are all these other questions about birth certificates and such to answer” seems nothing but a long stall tactic. He needs time while he figures out a way to answer a question he’s obviously never thought about before and for which the straightforward answer (‘NBS’ as used in the colonies and early U.S. was adopted from England) moves the discussion in a direction he doesn’t wish to go.
I would propose that a time limit for replies be added to the rules. Three days to reply to a very simple question is absurd. I thought Bob Gard was the “Great Researcher”?
oh why did he never make that speech in frankfurt!
😀
Yes because not all of us are as wreckless and clumsy as birthers that means we must all be professionals.
Technically, he might argue that he did answer, twice, just in the wrong place. His answer is not a response to the actual question, but that is bound to happen even if he gets around to emailing his responses. And technically, Dr. C already responded to that response, as one would if it had all actually been done as agreed.
Nonetheless, that does not change the fact that no progress has been made no matter how you cut it.
***************************************
Mr. Gard, you are being given the chance to give a proper answer. The email system gives you and Dr. C the clarity and form to give proper shape to your debate. Rather than all jumbled up in a free-for-all.
Or, you could just even email that you think it is an irrelevant question, or whatever, and that you want to move on. Not very satisfying during this long, “soft open,” but you’d be making more progress than at present.
***************************************
My guess is that Scott is upset because we use capital letters where appropriate.
I grew up in California, and have lived here most of my life.
This is the very first time that I have ever heard of Cal Tech being referred to as CIT.
Not that any of this discussion really matters- for you Cal Tech was apparently CIT.
Frankly I find some of the details of your bio hard to swallow- but it reall doesn’t matter. What matters is your argument as to why you believe that President Obama was not eligible to be elected(we all agree that he is our legal President regardless of eligiblilty).
I almost think we need seperate threads for all of Bob’s trains of thoughts:
Bob’s bio(including why Affirmative Action kept him down)
Bob’s view on why President’s are obliged to show the world their original birth certificate.(this is the continuation of the tired old ‘forged BC, Hawaii is in on it theory).
However what I really want to see is Bob respond to Doc’s questions in a prompt and straightforward fashion.
Testing
I have been trying to answer you. Each time I lost my answer. I now know why.
I answered Dr. Conspiracy’s first question days ago in a public message on this site. I apologized for not anwering the actual question in my first answer, which some of you did pick up. I recollect that Dr. Conspiracy had told me he would provide me with an email that was separate from the admin@obamaconspiracy.org. email address. I have 1080 of those in my email now. If he meant that one, I am not willing to open every email to find out his response. I provided two answers to his first question in open replies. I sent two emails to the above address asking him for the separate email. I did not get a response, at least one that I could find by opening around thirty new emails. Therein lies the problem. Since you will all attribute the problem to my poor abilites, I am going to send you (plural) a reply today that gives my take on your standard method of reasoning.
I recollect that Dr. Copnsp
first things first … no doubt bob’s still working on his 1700 page retort to doc’s opening question. then he needs to save it in ms word. once he figures out how email works, he’ll somehow attach the file to his reply. there are a lot of pitfalls along the way so these things simply cannot be rushed. we wouldn’t want bob to embarrass himself.
Bob, is it possible that you have checked a box at the bottom left of the reply box. Take a minute to look. Under, “Submit Comment” there is a little square and the text, “Notify me of followup comments via e-mail.” If that square is checked, then those 1000+ emails aren’t from Dr. C.; rather, they are automatic notices that someone on this site has replied to something you’ve posted.
Is it possible that someone thinks follow up comments email notifications are actual email responses from posters here?
I copied some on CDs and some on DVDs.
Mr. Gard, you really make things more complicated than they need to be. You can come to the site, and look at Dr. C’s post, then just e-mail him your reply. You do not have to even open any e-mails from that e-mail address. But I’m sure Dr. C could make a new special hotmail account just for this debate if you can’t seem to be able to differentiate between e-mails sent about comments here, and actual subject lines that refer to the actual debate between you and Dr. C. Shoot, I’ll give you one of my e-mail addresses and then I’ll forward it to Dr. C and vice versa. I’m sure others can come up with other options to get this ball on the road.
I must have a different definition for computer savvy than C. Stanton.
Apparently….smh
“I copied some on CDs and some on DVDs.”
What? No wax cylinders?
Bob, it’s not really that complicated.
If you are subscribed to the thread, then you will get emails from Dr C’s email address that are sent to you by his blog. But my goodness, you can unsubscribe from those if you want to. There is a link at the bottom of every one of those that allows you to click through and manage your subscriptions.
So why don’t you unsubscribe from all of those, if they are cluttering up your inbox?
As far as answering Dr. C is concerned, that’s not that hard either. EMAIL YOUR ANSWERS TO THE EMAIL ADDRESS YOU QUOTED ABOVE. Yes, the “admin” one.
Any replies from him, you can just read in the main debate thread.
And yes, I know you wrote some answer to his initial question (and posted it in the wrong place) but the only thing I’ve seen from you WASN’T an answer to the question he asked. It was the answer to a different question, one he didn’t ask.
Here. Let’s make it simple.
1. Write your answer to the following question:
Prior to the adoption of the United States Constitution, the phrase “natural born subject” frequently appeared in colonial and state legislation.
Was the meaning of that phrase taken from English Common Law, or from some other source, and if so, what?
2. Email that answer to the admin email address you listed above.
Hahahahaha That’s funny.
And while you’re at it, you can also let him know if it’s okay that he provide a copy of your book to me.
Hah! Ya think?
Is it possible that someone thinks follow up comments email notifications are actually useful in the real world?
I won’t have time to make but a few replies today. From this notice, most of you will conclude by your form of reasoning that I am in hiding. You will not allow the possibility that I am behind in my other tasks and must devote time to them.
I want to discuss the kind of reasoning that most of you employ. Take Sheldon [the fellow who wrote the above], for example. He accused me of not having applied to the California Institute of Technology because I referred to it as CIT. He imputed that I was a liar. Perhaps he actually said it; I cannot remember. He also determined that no wonder they had rejected me, exposing his belief that this use of CIT would be reason enough to reject me. I have proven beyond a shadow of doubt that the term was accurate in 1961. Donna (I think that was her name) accused me of a lack of credibility and possibly having distorted purposefully my statement about the universities I applied to. She offered the possibility that I might have mistaken the Ivy-League status of some of the universities. She used better reasoning than Sheldon, the person who harangued about my being untruthful because I did not refer to the California Institute of Technology as Cal Tech, the only proper way. Sheldon should be eating crow by now if he has any sense of intellectual honesty, but he isn’t. Donna knew that a person could make a mistake and not be a liar. Lying is telling a falsehood knowing that you are. I told a falsehood believing it was true. She caught me on another falsehood, which I believed was true. I thought that my denial for a partial scholarship to all the universities including affirmative action for women as well as men was a part of the consideration. Obviously with the universities she listed, it could not be if they did not allow female undergraduates. I remembered wrongly in those particular cases but my statement still held true if only one university had favored women. I didn’t have to divulge that I recollected incorrectly that all the univerisites were following discrimination in favor of women, but I did. I also let her know that, except for two small issues, I was in total agreement with Thomas Sowell on the topic of affirmative action, which he was totally against.
The person who claimed that universities accept first and then talk about paying for tuition after acceptance may have become true later on. As far as I can recollect, universities asked on the application how you were going to pay the tuition. I had to answer I couldn’t without the aid of a partial scholarship. In my day, recruiters (I maintain they were called that because they went to all the prospective undergrads to make reports on the partial scholarship eligibility and their conclusions as to the academic eligibility) visited you in your home and asked many questions. An applicant under those circumstances received months later an acceptance letter or a rejection letter. If it were an acceptance letter, the applicant would also be notified that he had received a partial scholarship. If you were one who hadn’t, you would be rejected with the standard letter, described by one of the other contributors, in which you would be told that there were so many top scholars that they had decided others were better qualified. Did you expect them to say that you were disqualified because you were not on the list of minorities that some of their naughty recruiters had shown you with apologies? There is no way any of you can legitimately call me a liar if these are my true recollections. You weren’t there.
The reasoning of Sheldon is the same reasoning that our courts have used in their judgments about the meaning of natural-born citizen. Sheldon listed The Big Bang Theory as an expert witness leading to a conclusive judgment. The inference from Sheldon, less from Donna, is that the absolute falsehood contained in my utter fabrication of CIT and the partial falsehood contained in my Ivy-League statement infers that my eBooK is, in Karl Roves’ term, hogwash, regardless of the 4,000 footnotes, which in no way can add credence. Please note that my eBook is not entitled “How I Lost My Ivy-League Days.” My one incorrect statement about Ivy League universities does not lead to decrying my eBook as hogwash. And Sheldon, the level of education at the state level in mathematics was so deficient and frustrating that I decided to change my major and leave the US for further education in Europe. Not one mathematics teacher could tell me the “why” behind any of the procedures they were teaching me. They demanded I learn them by rote, the same method they had. I wanted to know why. I was not smart enough to reinvent the higher mathematics I was studying. Have a shot at that honest statement will you? I did not want to become a mathematician that knew only how to follow rules instead of understanig why he was following them. I like the why of things.
In their chambers, our judges accumulated all the quotations of famous politicians, jurists and other sources who stated the president had to be a native-born citizen. Such sources provide circumstantial evidence. Neither do they prove that the sources discounted the second half of the requisite. Some of them could have been noting simply a part of the truth–a candidate had to be native-born. I am sure that many had believed that was all a candidate had to be. Not a single one of all the sources originated from a delegate to the Constitutional Convention between July 25, 1787 and September 17, 1787. The courts have nothing but circumstantial evidence, the same as I. Axiom 6 applies, but you don’t think so because you don’t wish to apply the axiom.
Publius argues that the decision of the courts become law in the United States. Judgments may be made into law but it does not necessarily follow that they are correct in terms of historical truth. Not all founding fathers were comfortable with that. In my last response to Publius, I listed some quotes from my eBook that demonstrated opinions of famous politicians that thought any decision of any court should not gain force of law if it were against the plain wording of the Constitution, the supreme law of the land that had created the Supreme Court, which by way of its creation had no right to interpret its creator. That would be like the Pope interpreting and judging God. It does’nt matter to me that Publius claims we must do it this way out of practicality. I also respect a man who identifies himself more than one who doesn’t, which does not mean that I disrespect Publius. My respect would rise if he identified himself. If he identifies himself wihout giving an address, I shall send him a PDF.
As I have repeatedly propounded, my methodology was simple. I put forth the historical evidence, proclaimed my links, and told the reader ultimately to make up his own mind. I wanted his ear, not necessarily his agreement. Your (plural) approach has been to send a few historical instances my way and tell me I do not have the right to make up my own mind because your evidence is smoking-gun evidence. For myself, I determine what is smoking-gun evidence, unless it comes out of the pages of an abbreviations dictionary. Sheldon brushed that evidence aside without an apology for all his nastiness. He didn’t have to aplolgize because he had never heard the term CIT in all his life for Cal Tech. And you people criticize my reasoning and call me all kinds of names? That is your kind of
Punch cards.
And you waste most of that reply on utter irrelevancies. The rest is utter nonsense. Way to go, Double Naught Bob.
You offered me a copy of your book. It appears now that your offer is completely conditional on my giving you my personal information. In that case, I am afraid you will have to keep your book.
As mentioned earlier, I will probably eventually acquire a copy of your book and get around to reviewing it anyway. It looks like the review is going to be negative in any event, but it might have been a bit less negative if you had followed through on your offer without requiring that I divulge my personal information to you.
Everybody determines for himself, or for herself, what “smoking gun” information is and is not. And everybody determines what he or she wants to believe. I can tell you that for most ordinary, rational people, the information against your theory has not just one, but a LOT of “smoking guns.” And for most ordinary, rational people, the theories you present (apparently, as far as I can tell) do not contain one single “smoking gun” at all.
So most people ordinary, rational people are going to judge your work pretty much as we are doing here. As I’ve said before, you will undoubtedly find some who will believe your theories. But based on the evidence presented, they will only be that portion of America which is inclined to believe any crackpot theory that they happen to like.
Given that you have replied in VOLUMES to numerous items here, even arguing trivialities of abbreviation, it is hardly credible that you can’t answer my one-sentence question in the formal debate because of a lack of time, having had THREE DAYS to do so.
If you are having time management problems, I have a solution. I’m shutting down your ability to comment on this web site. That should give you LOTS of extra time. If you want to answer the debate question, send an email.
This morning I watched a few episode of the old Star Trek animated series. An alien teleported all of the Enterprise’s data storage out and threw it all up in the air ….
… appparently, they reverted to punch cards and data tapes sometime before the 23rd century 😉
That, dear hearts, is “entitlement”.
like dealing with a child …
“My one incorrect statement about Ivy League universities does not lead to decrying my eBook as hogwash.”
No, it’s the enormous, steaming pile of illogic, fantasy and bigotry that makes it hogwash.
By now we can see that Bob is backwards and quite a drag.
No surprise really… his name is a drag backwards. 😉
No, it is your comments here that make me think your e-book is hogwash. I have not commented on your college years or your previous adventures as they are immaterial to me with regards your e-book.
Your misreading of the Seybert quote, your lack of knowledge about the the words of Tucker, Kent and Rawle and your lack of understand of the implication of the Mass. Acts of Naturalization does lead me to conclude that your e-book conclusions are not valid.
I’ve been watching this cyber Kabuki dance of yours for several days and now we have 1,314 words from you trying to deny the obvious instead of dealing with a simple, direct question.
I admire Doc’s patience but you, sir, are a fool and not worthy of another second of his or anyone else’s time.
I like that! Also, if you change one vowel you approximate the thickness of his skull. Lot’s of hidden meanings there.
Bravo to Doc C for cutting of Gard’s excuse for wasting our time.
Yeah, and treating adults like that is not something I enjoy doing.
well I have a degree in French law from Paul Cezanne University in Aix, BUT am not a native French speaker, and am quite intelligent enough to know that I am not an authority on the subject of the meaning of Vattel’s work….!
You believe a lot of things that aren’t true.
The actual title of your ebook is a bald-faced lie. Barack Obama became President under the procedure prescribed in the 12th Amendment and CANNOT be “unconstitutional” as your title claims. There are a few foolish people who think he may have been ineligible (he was not), but that is very different from unconstitutional. The words don’t even look alike, nor are their roots related.
Why do you promote a title that is a lie? Will you correct it? Your pal Stanton offered me a copy. I hereby decline, since I do not want to own a work whose very title is a lie.
The plain English meaning of the words “natural born citizen” is citizen from birth. As the characters in “Natural Born Killers” were born killers. No information is given that would lead one to believe that their parents (one or both) were ever killers. Derek Jeter has been called a “natural born ballplayer”, yet neither of his parents spent a day in the Major Leagues.
That is the plain meaning of natural born – from birth. There, I explained that without reference to any court cases. No judges, no scholars, just the plain English meaning. Why couldn’t you have done that?
Law doesn’t have to be historical truth honeypetal; the law is what it is, and as of today the law says a man born in Hawaii is a natural born US citizen.
You don’t like that? Try campaigning for a change in the law, but you’ll probably meet Scientist seeking a different change….
Thank you.
You now admit that your claim of being passed over by Princeton in favor of a less-qualified black woman is false. Why is this passage still on your website?
My dreams were crushed by affirmative action. I had a true 4.0 and could not get into any Ivy League university because I was a white male in need of a partial scholarship. If an applicant had no connections, almost all the partial scholarships were awarded to minorities and women to fill the quotas. I was told by one Princeton recruiter that he had been forced to give a partial scholarship a week before he interviewed me to a black girl with a 1.8 grade-point average. I was denied a partial scholarship because I was a white male. Each recruiter carried in his briefcase lists of qualifying minorities.
Although you have avoided answering straightforward questions about when you applied to the various universities which rejected you, the pieces have come together and it is apparent that you applied when you were a senior in high school. The reality is that no college or university in the country was admitting students on the basis of affirmative action in 1965. In fact, Lyndon Johnsons’s executive order 11246 was not issued until September 24, 1965 and it did NOT include sex discrimination. Sex discrimination was not added until executive order 11375, which was issued on October 13, 1967.
So your entire story about being passed over because of affirmative action preferences given to women and minorities is a fabrication. Maybe you really do believe it happened, but it most assuredly did not.
Rickey:
i don’t know which “donna” he is referring to
What I’m more interested in is his comment: “I attended seven universities and colleges including two overseas, one of which was attended by some of the greatest public jurists in history.” Seven? Personally, I’d be interested in a list of the institutions, times spent at each one, type of classes taken, and degrees received.
Bob could clear up this whole controversy in 2 minutes by releasing his college applications and transcripts.
😆
Sweet!!
You are kidding, are’t you? Obama first on his academic records and his real birth certificate. Sweet!
Obama first. No more double standards.
A search of the web shows that people mention natural born leaders, natural born followers, natural born teachers, natural born hippies, natural born writers, natural born painters, natural born debtors, natural born killers, natural born copycat killers, natural born pest killers, natural born economists, natural born hikers, natural born runners, natural born champions, natural born mathematicians, natural born athletes, natural born multi-taskers, natural born rollers, natural born dancers, natural born managers, natural born juicers, natural born sellers, a natural born singer, a natural born smoker, natural born blasters, a natural born lawman, natural born pickers, a natural born packrat, natural born dualists, a natural born story teller, natural born elegance, a natural born angel, a natural born performer, a natural born coach, natural born heroes, natural born cyborgs, natural born robots, natural born world shakers, natural born grooves, a natural born anarchist, natural born artists, natural born chaos, a natural born farmer, natural born golfers, natural born doctors, natural born spitters, a natural born birder, natural born thrillers, natural born drillers, natural born chillers, natural born clickers, natural born riders, natural born kissers, natural born lovers, a natural born matador, a natural born charmer, a natural born star, a natural born scrabbler, a natural born hustler, natural born pianists, natural born beauties, a natural born fiddler, natural born delinquents, natural born winners, natural born losers, a natural born clubber, a natural born music prodigy, natural born guardians, a natural born instructor, natural born quizzers, a natural born smart ass, natural born scientists, natural born bullies, natural born hunters, natural born allies, natural born rivals, natural born deejays, natural born ravers, natural born grinders, natural born swingers, a natural born tackler, natural born survivors, natural born goalscorers, natural born historians, natural born dealers, natural born drinkers, natural born sellers, “natural born komics,” a natural born masher, natural born homophobes, a natural born blogger, a natural born defender, a natural born hooker, and natural born liars.
Among others. I didn’t run out. I got bored.
Neither of my parents was a scientist.
And neither of my parents was a smart ass.
You’re a con, nothing more.
You’ve got plenty of time to write a bunch of bullsh!t, like all that crap up above.
Dude, game over, just like every other racist nutcase who comes here.
My memory about Princeton is obviously flawed. I promise to change it in the future. It had to be a recruiter from another university.
As I remember it, Obama was forgiven for his story about his uncle who helped free Holocaust survivors from Auschwitz and his Selma stories. That darn double standard again.
I didn’t have time to research your information except briefly.
“Affirmative action was first created from Executive Order 10925, which was signed by President John F. Kennedy on 6 March 1961 and required that government employers “not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, creed, color, or national origin” and “take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.” Do government funds held back for any university not following the intent of executive order 10925 ring a bell? I am not sure if these laws were ever created specifically for universities by naming universities. I remember that elite universities had contracts with the government such that they were loosely classed as contractors.
Signed into law by President Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1965 as an executive order, it began as a plan to undo the results of discrimination that continued despite civil rights laws, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Designed to address both college admissions and the job market, affirmative action was viewed as a temporary measure, put in place to create a “level playing field” for all United States citizens.” You don’t think that the universities didn’t suspect that executive order was coming down the pike, if they weren’t actually warned in advance, and they figured they ought to start putting it into effect if they hadn’t already under the Kennedy executive order?
The Executive Order 11246 (E.O 11246) prohibits federal contractors and subcontractors and federally-assisted construction contractors and subcontractors that generally have contracts that exceed $10,000 from discriminating in employment decisions on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. It also requires covered contractors to take affirmative action to ensure that equal opportunity is provided in all aspects of their employment.
SOURCE: The provisions of Executive Order 11246 of Sept. 24, 1965, appear at 30 FR 12319, 12935, 3 CFR, 1964-1965 Comp., p.339, unless otherwise noted.
Incidentally, I agreed up front that I don’t think every decision made by the Supreme Court has been correct. And I agree that if the Supreme Court were to issue a decision saying (for example) that Americans don’t have the right to free speech, then that would be both incorrect and wrong. It might well still be enforced as the law, although I think we would probably find many law enforcement authorities would refuse to enforce such a ruling.
But blatantly unconstitutional and/or unenforceable decisions by the Supreme Court have to be pretty rare. Anyone can of course believe that the Supreme Court got it wrong in a particular instance. Bob’s free to say he thinks the courts have gotten it wrong.
But even if we accept all of that, he just doesn’t seem to have a generally persuasive argument. Not that I’ve seen, anyway.
—–
False analogy. It would be more like the Pope interpreting the Bible, which he does. BTW, the Supreme Court does not judge the Constitution, the Court applies it to cases. To apply it, they must interpret it, per the Court’s Article III authority.
Maybe he was trying to outdo Sarah Palin.
I disagree with those who say Obobma’s false assertion — whigh he now admits and attributes to a faulty memory — is of little import. Actually, it says a lot about Obobma. Saying that a black woman student with a GPA of 1.8 got a partial scholarship that rightfully was his, is insulting to African Americans. For it implies that universities really had to scrape bottom to find students of this ethnic group to provide extra help. In the real world no one, black, white, male or female, with a 1.8 GPA (was this recalled as a HS or college GPA?) would have been offered a scholarship by an elite university.
Obobma must believe such a tale of blatant affirmative action run amok was plausible, which says a lot about his skewed worldview — or if he actually remembered this event as he originally posted, it makes me wonder how his memory might have been eroded by personal habits in the interval since he attended college.
until such time when “the great debate” actually starts, i suggest changing the post’s title to “waiting for gardot” …
You say not a single source, sir?
To repeat: James Madison. Signed the Constitution and everything.
“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; it will, therefore, be unnecessary to investigate any other.”
All well and good, but who decides if such a decision is against the plain wording of the Constitution?
Took you long enough! 😉 Nicely done.
The one named Whatever4. It’s more evidence of lackluster research skills.
Now now, I’ve attended 8 and have 3 degrees. It happens. Life sometimes gets in the way of 4 years at an ivy-covered institution (even if it isn’t Ivy League).
However, the scholarship should speak for itself and Bob’s research doesn’t say what he thinks it does.
I just counted ’em up for me. 4 in the US and 2 in Australia over 20 years. And yet I have only one degree. I had a 4.0 average for much of that, but as you say, life definitely does get in the way sometimes.
I’m considering the possibility of going for another degree, but I’m not sure I have the patience for actual studying, as opposed to tinkering, anymore.
I *love* Aix-en-Provence. How lucky you were!
Stop everybody, please stop! So far there have been about 800 posts on the subject of Bob’s opus magnum. If a person of limited means (and Bob claims that is the situation) spends $40,000 and goes to the trouble of preparing a book of 1722 pages based on his observations since the 8th grade just how does anyone think that they can get him to change his mind? It could go on for 8000 0r 800000 posts and Bob CANNOT change his mind as to do so would be to admit that he is wrong. You may as well think that every poster on this site will wake up with a Eureka moment tomorrow and say “I can see it all clearly now. Obama was a fraud and the birthers were right all along.” You may as well imagine that at the moment of his death St Peter had a flash of revelation and realised that he had been on a fools errant for the last 30 years of his life . It is just not going to happen.
So now it is time to let Bob sail off on his sea of fantasy where he can loll contentedly knowing that he was right all along and that all that Doc’s horses and all the Doc’s men couldn’t get him to change his mind.
Forget the debates because they are unlosable as far as Bob is concerned
I know that cyber space is almost infinate but there must be a boundry somewhere
.
Personally, I stick to what I know, ie: a very simple point, what Vattel actually wrote and meant. It is not a hugely complicated matter, as demonstrated here.
I leave all other US or UK legal matters to experts, of which there are plenty here.
I don’t think you understand Bob’s research style. He leaves out facts like your Madison quote. This allows him to fill in gaps with his own suppositions and uneducated guesses. It is like filling in a 4 foot hole in your wall with watered down spackle.
Imaginary watered down spackle.
the goal is not to change bob’s mind or the minds he hopes to cloud, though that would be a healthy by-product.
the goal is to see how well bob’s arguments stand up outside the birfer peanut gallery and in front of his harshest critics, in a time-honored exercise familiar to anyone seeking professional credibility.
bob came here to pimp his book. thus far he’s yet to demonstrate the ability to tie his own shoes.
For sure, velcro has been an undisguised blessing to the birther community.
It’s a feeding frenzy over a rare bit of new material in an increasingly stale field. And the material in question was not just low-hanging fruit, but rather on the ground an overripe.
I am sad to say that I’m afraid Bob is trending toward Just Plain Birther here.
And I think the reason is (as someone has already noted): He’s just way too invested in his theory to entertain any doubt that his theory is simply wrong.
Or, to put it another way, he wants to believe his pet theory so badly that no normal standards of evidence apply. As someone else has said, this is simply fantasy. And when a person is completely committed to tantasy, there’s not any way to draw him into the real world unless he himself says, “I think these people are right. I am living in a fantasy. Let me leave the fantasy for the real world.”
So we produce a whole bunch of strong quotes in favor of the standard, historical definition of “natural born citizen.” The one from Rawle, who knew at least TWO of our very most prominent Founders PERSONALLY, both George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, is absolutely, categorically, irredeemably in direct contradiction to his position. The one from James Madison, also one of our very most key Founders, is not quite as categorical, but it’s almost as bad for him.
But those aren’t the only real quotes we have. There are plenty more. Even beyond the ones we’ve named in these threads. But even with those, we’ve named quite a few.
So how does Bob respond? Does he say, “Wow. Those are certainly some significant quotes you have there. I don’t really have a good answer for those.”
Nooooooo… Instead, he says, “Well, none of those guys signed the Constitution.”
But did John Jay (who he hasn’t even produced a QUOTE from in support of his position!) sign the Constitution?
Did Sir William Scott, Lord Stowell of England, sign the Constitution?
Heck, no. Jay didn’t attend the Convention, and Lord Stowell was an ENGLISHMAN who lived in London!
So here Bob, so unfortunately, starts doing what birthers so typically do.
He tries to set up a race in which he draws the finish line for “our” horse a good half mile away, with several 7 foot hedges for us to jump along the way.
Though it’s really not “our” horse, it’s the Horse of Reality.
And then, using the typical birther double standard, he tries to draw the finish line for his own nag (the Horse of Fantasy) in such a way that all he has to do is kick her good and hard in the right direction while letting the rope go that holds her up, and her stiff body can fall dead over the supposed finish line.
And then he is mystified when only a few people (those who, along with him, really want or are at least willing to believe the fantasy) buy the story.
At this point, I really don’t think Bob has one shred of real evidence in favor of his position. Surely if he did have, he would’ve brought it forth by now.
Maybe he will yet debate Dr. Conspiracy and we’ll hear something that at least has a chance of being some actual evidence. I’m still hoping he will answer the “natural born subject” question, for example. It would be nice to hear what he says.
In the end, though, it appears to be all futility. Because while it does appear that Bob has “something” that’s “new,” it doesn’t appear at this point that (in spite of all the pages) it’s anything terribly significant.
A bit of irony: a smoking gun is considered circumstantial evidence.
Where does Article III, section 2 state that the Supreme Court’s judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising “in” the Constitution. . . .? Show me one dictionary in the world that defines under as in. The Supreme Court usurped that power just like many founding fathers feared it would.
Applying the Constitution to cases? Tell me how using a British-style explanatory act, illegal by our Constitution, to explain the true meaning of the Obamacare fee as a tax applies the rule of the Constitution? Now there you have a valid comparison to following British law but it is illegal here. Maybe the Supreme Court did it on purpose to prove our laws came from the British.Tell me how “use taxes” conform to the Constitution when it is plainly written that “No tax or duty shall be laid on articles exported from any state.”
Does that clear language need interpretation? “No bill of attainder or expost facto law shall be passed.” Do you mean to tell me that the Hellfire missle that killed al-Alwaki is not an Obama style of a lethal bill of attainder without the due process that used to be observed in 18th-century Britain? Again, another former British law that our Constitution forbade.
Please give me an example of what you mean by the Pope interprets the Bible.
Bob,
I am seriously wondering about your ability to respond on point.
Your response to my post was a meandering narrative responding to multitudes of posts. I know this is what you wanted to tell us- but it wasn’t responsive to my post.
I do not understand why all of us can understand how to use this forum but you cannot.
If you make a post- I respond to your post- not to 5 other people’s posts.
In this way, you and I could have a dialogue. But not the way you are posting now.
Please- please- make your comments in response to a post, comments responding to a post.
Doc put Bob on moderation until he actually answers to the debate thread via email the way he agreed to do 4 days ago. I don’t see anything yet.
Hope it was “natural bored.”
I’m guessing it’s probably getting close to time to recognize that the Great Debate is over, having pretty much never begun.
Another hour or so will mark 4 full days, and Bob doesn’t seem to be capable of answering Dr. Conspiracy’s confidence-builder question of where “natural born subject,” as used in America, came from.
It also seems to have been about two and a half days since we’ve heard the most recent comment from C. Stanton.
Wow. That was sure something.
Funny. I have just now, for the first time in my life, understood the actual origin and meaning of the term “fly-by-night” (as in a fly-by-night company).
It means someone who suddenly and secretly slinks out of town at 3 o’clock in the morning instead of having to face the public in the broad daylight.
Yep. It’s not like those heady days of 2009 when a birther would find an old treatise and claim it said the opposite of what it actually said.
Heck, it doesn’t have to be old to be read inside out. Butterdezillion did that with Hawaii’s verification of Obama’s certification of live birth. Apparently Hawaii weasel worded their verification because they were really trying to say the opposite, that they could NOT verify that Obama’s information was correct. 🙄
I would go further, Publius. Let’s pretend that Bob somehow had rock solid evidence to back up his conjectures. What would it show? That John Jay conspired with an English lord to adopt a Vattelian definition of natural born citizen and, somehow, in secret meetings in Philadelphia taverns, got some number of attendees at the constitutional convention to have that definition in mind when they voted on the draft. Even Bob has proposed no evidence that this “gentlemen’s agreement “was transmitted to the ratifiers in the states.
In the unlikely case that such an under-the-table understanding existed, what force of law would it have? In my opinion, none. Laws have to be explicit and the text clear or they are unenforceable. As you and I discussed last night, “natural born” is an adjective that has been used to modify a wide variety of nouns, and always in the plain English sense of “from birth”. As red is red, whether describing a car, an apple or a wall, so natural born, whether modifying violinist, scientist or citizen means from birth. No secret agreement can over-ride the plain English meaning. The Constitution means what it says on its face in plain English, no secret codes allowed
I’d say you’re right. But I’d also say that’s only one point out of many at which Bob’s theory fails.
Granted, it’s a big one. But there are other big ones as well.
It’s huge. Imagine writing 1700+ pages and even if every last word were true it didn’t lead to the conclusion you so desperately desire because of some very possibly imagined slight from 40+ years ago.
Well, you’re right. That is huge. Although I don’t think he “wrote” 1700+ pages. I think he must have scanned a lot of them. I don’t know for sure, because I don’t have a copy.
But I think it’s clear that he did put an awful lot of time, effort, and apparently money as well into the book.
In some ways, I really kind of feel for Bob. I’ve said before that he seems to me like a pretty decent guy. It’s like, why be a spoilsport? What does it hurt that Bob happily thinks he’s proven Obama is ineligible?
But the fact is, it does hurt. There are people who get all riled up about this and who may do some really stupid and wrong stuff as a result. Because they believe (falsely) that our country is being run by someone who has gotten into the office illegally.
It’s like deriving a horribly involved mathematical equation which extends all the way around the room on the blackboards and someone then realizes there was a mistake of a sign in the first equation. Your supposedly real roots are, in fact, all imaginary.
Is he kind to his family? Does he take in stray animals? Does he feed the homeless? I don’t know. If he does, that’s great. But his behavior in this episode has not been honorable in my opinion. It has been largely driven by personal animus, and I see nothing laudable in that. I think that is the case for all the birthers as far as I can see; they have taken some failure in their lives, real or imagined, and transferred the responsibility onto the President and will do anything-lie, twist, or worse to avenge that supposed loss that must be someone else’s responsibility, never theirs. And that is not decent, as far as I am concerned.
And I must say again, even an ineligiible President (imaginary, of course) would not be illegally in office if they were chosen by the voters and accepted by Congress.
All is not (necessarily) lost. He apparently compiled a lot of material. Granted, he did state he sought sources with his conclusion in mind …. and his utter dishonesty in presentation and biased critical thinking aren’t good signs … but there’s still a chance that his material could be put to good use, in an honest effort at his stated goal …. documenting the historic roots of America’s conception of citizenship.
That said, based on what has transpired here, I suspect whatever he compiled would prove to be more evidence of a mind gone horribly wrong.
May I point out the difference between an ‘expense’ and an ‘investment’?
If Bob spent $40,000 buying rare books to support his project, those should be an investment that could be recouped if he made savy purchases.
I mentioned this before … sarcastically. If he’s really assembled the world’s finest collection of Vattel editions, just think how much Apuzzo, Donofrio, et al. would offer! * cough *
I’m willing to bet any booksellers Gard contacted were more than happy to take Bob’s money, as those books had been sitting for a loooooong time.
Birfers, only interested in one phrase, have done wonders for Vattel name recognition, but nothing for his secondary market. What would nuts interested in truthiness need printed books for?
Now, forged civics books featuring birfer-y statements re: citizenship, those they would be all over! They’d have to be forged, as the real McCoy doesn’t exists. I’ve sarcastically piled up a collection, looking, just to be sure. So far, I have spent multiple orders of magnitudes less that Gard claims to have LOL
Somehow I just saw this from ballantine, from several days ago in the previous thread:
That was a really good post, with some really good quotes.
~=% ~=% ~=% ~=% ~=% ~=% ~=% ~=% ~=% ~=%
John Adams drafted the Constitution of Massachusetts in 1780. He had no problem using both terms “subjects of the Commonwealth” and “citizens of the Commonwealth” with in the same document.
Bob has replied to the first debate question.
I can’t figure out how to get my picture off the comment.
I see the attribution as “Bob Gard” right next to Bob’s worried pink Gravatar.
Congratulations on the swift resolution(?).
Actually I’m not. I don’t have any questions about Obama’s academic or birth records.
Your claims, on the other hand, seem quite fanciful.
Signed into law by LBJ in September, 1965, months after you graduated high school. Also, the 1965 executive order excluded sex discrimination. Sex discrimination was not added until a 1967 executive order.
Professor Thomas J. Espenshad of Princeton informed me that his university did not implement affirmative action in admissions until the late sixties. The first women students at Princeton did not enter until September, 1969, so when Princeton rejected you it had nothing to do with either your sex or your skin color.
I graduated high school a year after you. A number of my white, male, high-achieving classmates were accepted by Ivy League schools. Others did not. None of them ever reported that they were victims of affirmative action.
Provide me with a list of the other schools which rejected you and I will be happy to inquire about when they began to to use affirmative action in their admissions policies.
You and the President, huh? Wow!
Delusions of grandeur in Birtherstan.
More than that, more than it just lacking force. Such a thing would be and should be roundly condemned. No one would take it seriously. It is a despicable notion, such a ridiculous un-American notion that wouldn’t ever be taken seriously now, much less then, after tossing out a king.
Bob explicitly said the framers didn’t tell anyone on purpose. He agrees it wasn’t transmitted to the ratifiers, just on purpose to keep it secret.
As if that means anything, and worse as if anyone would listen even if true. We as a people would rightly and forcefully say you know where you can stick that. If we didn’t just laugh it off the face of the planet.
—–
Since I already answered this when you posted the same in/under supposition, I’ve simply cut and pasted it below. (As for your off topic assorted questions regarding the Court’s interpretation/application to specific cases, I’ve not the time or inclination to research and respond).
Only if he sells them in Moscow. Russia, that is, not Idaho.
Past Pluto.
Bob is a professor of magic.
Bob is a palindrome.
====
Not being a Catholic or a Christian for that matter, perhaps someone else could give you a better answer. But my understanding is that the Catholic Church as well as other churches established themselves under their interpretation of Matthew 16:18, and that their religious practices are applications of their interpretations of the Bible.
Sigh.
Now Bob has answered I suppose it would be churlish to point out that he’s wrong on the history of the term “natural born subject”. It predated Calvin’s Case and Lord Coke.
Who exactly did they usurp it from? *Who* would you have be the ones to exercise that power?
My second question is now up on The Great Debate.
Do you have a link to the text of the Act in the 12th year of William III regarding the subjectship of the foreign-born children of Subjects?
I wish I had seen this a couple of hours ago. It would have saved me a heap of time writing my 2nd question for Bob. As it is, I hastily edited the question to include a link to this.
…. aaaaaaaaaaand down the stretch they come!
Already in its second week, the world’s slowest tennis match has already seen its second serve*. How can mere mortals sustain this blistering pace???
Here’s hoping it picks up steam from here.
_____________
So I guess this is a tacit admission that you don’t read all the comments. Shame on you! I bet Mario and Dr. Kate read all of their comments.
Maybe they just weren’t that into you, Double Naught Bob. Why are you still wasting so much time on irrelevancies? If you don’t watch out, Doc’s going to clean your plow over at the real Great Debate. And he’s still going to do it if you do watch out, too.
I’ve posted on this before although whether here, Fogbow or NBC’s I don’t recall. There is actually no such Act in that year. Mr Burke could be referring to this year 9 Act:
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=46906&strquery=naturalize
It’s not quite as general as Mr Burke was seeking but I suspect he was conflating it with the Acts of 1707 & 1730.
I
How about this, Doc?
http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/22/354/case.html
Justice Story cites
“That act is entitled
“An act to enable his Majesty’s natural been subjects to inherit the estate of their ancestors, either lineal or collateral, notwithstanding their father or mother were aliens.”
The title is not unimportant, and manifests an intention merely to remove the disability of alienage. It proceeds to enact
“That all and every person or persons, being the King’s natural born subject or subjects within any of the King’s realms or dominions, should and might, thereafter, inherit and be inheritable, as heir or heirs, to any honors, &c., lands, &c., and make their pedigrees and titles, by descent, from any of their ancestors, lineal or collateral, although the father and mother, or father or mother, or other ancestor,
of such person or persons by, from, through, or under whom he, she, or they should or might make or derive their title or pedigree were or was or should be born out of the King’s allegiance and out of his Majesty’s realms and dominions as freely, fully, and effectually, to all intents and purposes, as if such father and mother, or father or mother, or other ancestor or ancestors, by, from, through, or under whom he, she, or they should or might make or derive their title or pedigree, had been naturalized, or natural born subjects.””
You might want to point out a few other things there in that case to old Double Naught.
I now believe that I may have dramatically overestimated Bob’s competence.
Bob,
My opinion on your competence has nothing to do with how much or little you choose to post, but rather with the quality of what you do post. To date, you have demonstrated little to no technical skill or savvy (starting with your 1,700 page exegesis in .docx format), a remarkably inflated (and completely unjustified) opinion of yourself combined with a self-centeredness which borders on narcissism, a degree of focus that can be described as the exact opposite of “LASER-like”, a complete lack of understanding of the law, the Constitution, and history as well as how one goes about doing research in any of those areas, and a stunning naivete on a wide variety of subjects. You seem to specialize in attacking your opponent’s sources with arguments that don’t apply (although they frequently impeach your own sources)—the canonical example being your claiming that your unsupported fantasy of what John Jay was thinking is the equal of (or superior to) the quotations which refuted your theory because they weren’t from sources involved in writing the Constitution… quotations which included James Madison saying that the United States follows jus soli in plain English. If all of that weren’t enough to brand you as incompetent, it took you four days to respond to a simple question in the one-on-one debate you were so eager to have with Doc and not only did you give an incorrect answer to the question, but you also quoted an excerpt from your book that includes the same faulty statement. Do you think any of this will inspire confidence in your scholarship and reasoning? I don’t.
Scientist,
I agree that Bob has shown nothing in the way of honesty, integrity, nor good faith.
Doc, there’s a section here on “Aliens” beginning on page 33:
http://books.google.com/books?id=Q90DAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
The Act of 1701 is cited beginning on page 39. There are some other interesting citations there, too.
I doubt if that’s what Mr Burke had in mind. The Act referred to was dealing with different scenarios – e.g. an alien son of a subject would not be able to inherit but if the alien had a son who was born in the King’s Dominions then the act enabled the grandson to inherit from the grandfather.
Let’s not forget the great state of Delaware.
1788 – A Supplementary ACT to the act, intituled” An act for naturalization, (a)
WHEREAS for the encouragement of aliens or foreigners already settled, or that may hereafter come to settle within this state, it is become necessary, since the change of government, that further provision should be made for enabling them to enjoy the rights and privileges of natural-born subjects of this state;
SECTION I . BE it therefore enacted by the General Assembly of Delaware, That any alien or foreigner already settled, or inhabiting within this state, or who shall hereafter come to settle or reside therein, and shall before the President of the state, or before the Supreme Court in any of the counties of this state, take, repeat and subscribe, the oath or affirmation directed by the twenty-second article of the constitution or system of government of this state, (b) to be taken by Members of the General Assembly, or persons appointed to offices or places of trust, (which said oath or affirmation, and subscription thereof, the President or the Supreme Court are hereby impowered to administer,) shall thereupon and thereafter be deemed, adjudged and taken, to be a natural born subject of this state and shall be thenceforth entitled to all the immunities, rights and privileges of a natural born subject of this state :”
http://tinyurl.com/bhlv7v5
Blackstone mentions an act – 25 Edw. III. ft. 2. – which granted “that all children born abroad, provided both their parents were at the time of the birth in allegiance to the king, and the mother had passed the seas by her husband’s consent, might inherit as if born in England”
So maybe Mr. Burke meant Edward not William.
Blackstone then mentions the later acts – “But by several more modern statutes (b) these restrictions are still farther taken off: so that all children, born out of the king’s ligeance, whse fathers were natural-born subjects, are now natural-born subjects themselves, to all intents and purposes, without any exception”
And Footnote B: 7 Ann. c. 5. and 4 Geo. II. c. 21.
Indeed, the OED gives as first print usage this passage from 1583: “He was a natural born Subject, but an unnatural worn Priest.” And apparently the term was so common by that point that a play on words could be made from it.
So now you’re expecting Bob to actually read the answers to questions he poses? How could he do that still be a birther?
I see your point about Burke. The Act cited by Justice Story doesn’t show up in Statutes of the Realm, Volume 7 at all, does it?
While it might not have been the one that Burke had in mind, it may be even more relevant, since it makes it plain that natural born subjects could have alien parents.
It was there, I just missed it:
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=46965#s1
Perhaps it’s an Illuminati, Freemason, New World Order cabal wrapped in an elaborate tapestry of paranoia, xenophobia and tribalism.
Let’s be crystal clear here: Vattel would only disqualify Obama if he’d been born on us soil from TWO non us citizens; with an American mother & relatives, Vattel would NOT disqualify Obama.
As I’m sure you know, I totally agree with you. I should have said pseudo-Vattelian.
Lupin, I understood that you had a better handle on Vattel than that. Your guest essay on this site even states:
“Note that in Art. 214, Vattel concludes: “And then there are other states such as England in which the mere birth in that country is enough to make the children of a foreigner a citizen,” removing any doubts as to his acceptance of jus soli.”
Vattel most definitely does NOT disqualify Obama even if he had no citizen parents. Your suggestion is giving these people air to breath in their quest to disenfranchise the U.S. born children of undocumented aliens, a quest which I happen to think is ultimately behind the stalking horse attack on President Obama.
Unlikely, that Act almost disappeared from view – there are numerous Private Acts (and a few Public Acts) prior to 1707 that would have been unnecessary if it had thought to be in force,
Simple error is much more likely, particularly because:
“The Annals of Congress, formally known as The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States, cover the 1st Congress through the first session of the 18th Congress, from 1789 to 1824. The Annals were not published contemporaneously, but were compiled between 1834 and 1856, using the best records available, primarily newspaper accounts. Speeches are paraphrased rather than presented verbatim, but the record of debate is nonetheless fuller than that available from the House and Senate”
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lwac.html
1559 in the Journal of the House of Lords is the earliest I’ve seen but I suspect it’s much earlier.
I don’t see any contradictions, but I think you misunderstood what I wrote. If so it is entirely my fault, of course.
I am considering the situation purely from a Swiss standpoint, not a British one. (Which is I think what you misunderstood.)
If Obama had been born in Switzerland from both a British father and a British mother, or for that matter from two non-Swiss citizens, say, visiting travelers, then according to Vattel, Switzerland being a jus sanguinis country, he would not be considered a Swiss indigene. I don’t think there is any doubt about that, and I never said anything to the contrary.
Of course, Vattel acknowledges that other countries, such as England, go by jus soli, and a child born on British soil even from two visiting Swiss citizens might well be considered British by the British authorities — and Swiss by the Swiss ones.
Where the interpretation of Vattel become admittedly a little more complicated is for children born from parents with different citizenships, which is precisely Obama’s case.
Vattel’s text does contain a small internal contradiction when he states in one, single line that the father’s citizenship takes precedence, but the preponderance of other statements makes it clear that the concept that he uses is that of “parens”, ie relatives.
That minor contradiction was in fact corrected in a later edition which made it clear that citizenship could also be transmitted by the mother especially in case of children born out of wedlock.
Nowhere does Vattel state that you need TWO parents to transmit a citizenship. That is entirely made up by the birthers, and is a clear distortion of the group plural “parens”.
So, a child (like Obama) born in Switzerland from, say, a traveling British father and a local Swiss mother would have unarguably be deemed an indigene by Vattel — and the Swiss authorities — on the basis of his Swiss parentage.
Of course, had that child be taken away and relocated to England by his father, he might also be considered a British citizen by the British authorities. Vattel doesn’t rule that out. But as far as Switzerland is concerned, he would be a Swiss indigene or naturel.
Which is why I keep saying that Vattel doesn’t help the birther cause, even assuming his relevance, which is highly doubtful.
I hope I made myself clearer.
I agree with you there. But Vattel wasn’t advocating that jus sanguinis is a better or fairer system than jus soli or vice versa. He seemed happy to consider that Britain was a jus soli state and didn’t criticize it.
But Switzerland and Germany were just sanguinis state, and Vattel’s description or analysis of that system leaves no doubt that in these countries, anchor babies would not have been deemed indigenes or naturels.
Good morning.
Why do you think a compiled PDF is better than a jpeg? I am sure that a birth certificate in the original format in a jpeg would be more convincing.
Personally, I think if that were the prime motive, they (whoever “they” may be in that context) would’ve attacked on more fronts than just one.
Even if birthers were right about the NBC issue, that would just relate to the incredibly small number of future presidents. Few birthers claim Obama isn’t a (simple) citizen (except by inference from “forged documents”) because of his foreign father. So I doubt this plays a big role, or even a small one.
The prime motives are, IMO, rather:
1. Plain racism.
2. The inability to cope with “your side lost” that leads many to go “let’s secede and create a new country where our side has a majority”.
3. A desire to overthrow the Constitution to rebuild the country in their own image (related to (1) as the Constitution gives way too much rights to non-whites in their opinion and related to (2) as it boils down to “make my minority opinion the governing one”).
The folios exist. The registrar stores original birth certificates alphabetically arranged and bound by month and year. If the registrar doesn’t, I am sure you can elicit a public denial. Please do.
Yes, because JPEGs of the ‘first’ one worked like a charm.
And, oh, wait, there are JPEGS of the ‘second’ one online are well. Les birfers continue to intentionally not notice.
We are not kidded, Gard. Don’t bother kidding yourself.
Yeah, all it would’ve taken to silence you all (well, not YOU, Double Naught) is a different format. Who knew?
Why would you believe that I don’t honor plain English? The 14th Amendment is clear. Anyone born in America is a citizen by birth, except for the usual exceptions.
I had heard rumors that Schlafly, The Heritage Foundation and other congressmen were planning to undertake a project trying to convince Congress that the intention of the 14th Amendment wasn’t to create anchor babies. It wasn’t, but so what? It was written plainly. If read plainly, it creates anchor babies as an unavoidable result. The only way to change it is to pass a new amendment. However, the 14th Amendment does not apply to natural-born citizens, also clear in its plain English.
I wrote letters to the above two and several others urging them to ignore such a plan, if it was in the works, and inspire a constitutional amendment instead. Not even a handful of countries in the world accept the principle in the 14th Amendment. Though all of them who do not grant babies born to foreigners the citizensip of their country, they are always on the bandwagon to criticize us if we even discuss changing the practice in our cuintry. Why do you think? It’s a great escape valve to relief their nations of the burden of taking care of citizens they can’t afford to take care of. That has been the modus operandi in fomenting immigration from a mother country forever.
Marco Rubio dupicated his speech in Spanish last night for the Spanish stations. Few of you are able to understand how dangerous Balkanization is to a nation. Do you have an idea of how many new nations have germinated since I travelled the globe?
Sorry Bob, tried and would not convince them. Remember, you’re trying to overcome conspiracy theories…what you mentioned was already tried and failed to convince them. So, again, how would you go showing your original long-form BC to over 100,000,000 voters world-wide? Maybe go door-to-door?
Setting aside the unfoundedness of that claim … is America not exceptional, dear heart? Yes, yes it is. Why do you want the Shining City on the Hill, the Last, Best Hope of Mankind, to be a secret club?
America has from her founding, been inclusive in its ideals, not exclusive. We have stumbled along the way to those ideals, but we continue to get closer.
Revealing your xenophobia and paranoia isn’t doing yourself any favors. Oh sweet Jesus, a pol gave a Spanish rendition of a speech. Really, Gard?
Definition of chutzpah-Someone who published an ebook as a docx file on a CD and took 4 days to figure out how to email a single response criticizing someone else’s choice of file format.
Actually, giving citizenship to all those born in the country, regardless of the status of the parents is almost universal in the Western Hemisphere I have shown this map here before.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jus_soli_world.png
These countries include those that were colonies of Britain, France, Spain and Portugal, so they did not all get the practice from English Common Law. It is likely that as immigrant societies they found it a useful tool to rapidly integrate immigrants.
I don’t know when you stopped trotting the globe, but since 1984, the world has seen the birth of 30 new nations. Most of these have come about as the result of the break-up of the Soviet Union. I don’t know if you call that “Balkanization,” but it isn’t to me. The Soviet Union was an artificial creation, held together by force and the use of terror.
On the other hand, I will acknowledge that the rise of competing languages within the United States could be a problem, but I’m not worried that Spanish will overwhelm English. The history of the United States demonstrates that as immigrants have children, and those children have children, English replaces the native tongue of immigrant families. One example: I lived in a community in Minnesota that until the 1930s had a German and Polish newspaper, and many Lutheran churches held services in Norwegian. Neighborhoods were also rigidly divided by ethnicity (I lived in what was known as “Polish Town”). Now, except for a bakery and corner tavern, those examples of “Balkanization” are a quaint historical curiosity.
Stop it. Apply for a couple birth certificates of famous people across the nation and prove it to yourself. Better yet, don’t apply; just bring up the applications on the Internet.
More convincing to who Bob?
The American public, the American voters are convinced.
Birthers refuse to be convinced.
I have seen absolutely nothing to suggest to me that anyone who believes that Obama is not eligible will care about whether the BC is posted on the web as a jpg or PDF.
Why should anyone else perform your test for you?
As for your balkanization fears, fetch a list of countries created since you thought were you globe-trotting, and I’ll walk you through them, looking for a situation analogous to teh US.
Don’t worry, we’ll fail. But I’m sure you’ll feel better afterwards.
I have been wanting to reply to Ballantine’s accusation that the right of Americans to expatriation didn’t come till 1868. As per Ballantine, most of our poiticians all believed in perpetual allegiance till then.The national codification didn’t come till then but its popular acceptance was the norm since the founding of the Republic, as will be plain by the following citations from my eBook:
In Morse’s treatise: After stating that there was great diversity and much confusion of opinion as to the nature and obligations of allegiance, the executive branch of the United States Government many years ago insisted that the sounder and more prevalent doctrine was that which denied the claim of perpetual allegiance and conceded the right of expatriation. (‘The Causes of the Present War’ (1812-1815), Alexander McLeod, Political Pamphlets, Congressional Library, Vol. III., Washington, D. C.)
And it is insisted, on the authority of Sir Lionel Jenkins [Admiralty Court], that banishment itself does not destroy the original tie of allegiance. (Phillimore, Inteniat. [Intern.] Law, p. 380. Ib. p. 377. lb. p. 380.) The conflicts which have occurred on this subject of allegiance between the country of origin and the naturalizing country, in cases where the former has declined to admit the exercise of the right of expatriation in subject or citizen, have seldom been pressed to the point of war. An historic exception, however, may be found in the war of 1812, between Great Britain and the United States, which was precipitated by the resistance of the United States government to the claim of Great Britain to a right of visitation and search of American vessels on the high seas. [I cannot overemphasize the importance of British impressment of American sailors and prizes made of American ships in the history of subjectship and citizenship.]
It was provided in the act defining citizenship of Virginia that ‘All white persons born within the territory, and all who have resided therein two years next before the passing of this act, and all who shall hereafter migrate into the same, other than alien enemies, and shall take prescribed oath before court of record that they intend to reside therein, and, moreover, shall give assurance of fidelity to the commonwealth,’ shall be deemed ‘citizens.’ A section of this act asserted the right of expatriation, and indicated how it should be exercised, as also what persons were deemed aliens. (Act June 36, 1779, 10 Statutes of Virginia, Vol. X. pp. 129, 130.) This act was drawn by Jefferson, and was presented in the house of delegates by George Mason. (Jefferson’s Correspondence, Vol. IV. p. 7.)
Residency was also a stipulation in Virginia’s wartime citizen stature of 1779, which declared all white persons born within the territory that shall have resided there for the two years, were citizens of the state, but included expressly the right of expatriation—“preserve to the citizens of this commonwealth that natural right which all men have of relinquishing the country in which birth or other accident may have thrown them, and seeking subsistence and happiness wheresoever they may be able, or may hope to find them,” citizens were granted a simple public procedure by which a man could renounce his citizen status and exercise “his natural right of expatriating himself.” Will you agree that rules of residency constituted an American innovation that did not rely on British precedent? Will you agree that American states followed the right of expatriation emphasized in Vattel but never in Britain? If you agree, why deny the possibility that Jay took his definition from Vattel? Why does natural born Citizen have to rely on British precedent?
In 1791 in his Lecture “Of Man, As a Member of Society,” James Wilson embraced expatriation as taught by Vattel:
“But, notwithstanding this train of thought and reasoning, there are certainly cases, in which a citizen has an unquestionable right to renounce his country, and go in quest of a settlement in some other part of the world. One of these cases is, when, in his own country, he cannot procure a subsistence. Another is, when the society neglects to fulfil its obligations to the citizen. A third is, when the society would establish laws, on things, to which the original social compact cannot oblige the citizen to submit.”
In an unpublished opinion that Bourguignon was able to read, Scott rejected the declaration of the American courts that their citizens retained their American citizenship wherever they went unless they exercised their right of expatriation. “Whatever may be allowed in American domestic law, Scott said, other countries (i.e. Great Britain) would not allow such a claim.” (Alliance (1807), Nicholl’s Notebook, 1807-8, P.R.O. HCA 30/465.)
Knox expressed the opinion that American seamen would continue to be impressed if they were native-born Britons, no matter how long they had resided in the United States as citizens due to the doctrine of perpetual allegiance, which could be absolved only by consent of the sovereign. Thomas Jefferson had tried and failed to convince the British to replace it with the right of voluntary expatriation. In his report, Knox took “the liberty of enclosing the copy of a Letter to Mr. Stephens Secretary to the British Admiralty, and his answer, by which it seems pretty clearly Demonstrated that the English Government is Determined for the present not to relinquish the Idea, that no seaman born in his Brittanick Majestys Dominions can transfer his allegiance.”
This is the core problem of our courts. They ignore history. Of course, the precedent for our courts when dealing with expatriation will be the 1868 legislation Ballantine referred to. So, for judges and lawyers, expatriation was not the practice of Americans till 1868. I hope there are enough practical contributors out there who grasp the misconception of this stance.
It is a telling chopice of verb, isn’t it? LOL
A rastered image probably would have launched a simpler strain of PDF Madness, a less entertaining one with fewer memes. Other than that, situation would have played out identically.
This is a significant point.
Those are uncited excerpts. Please cite pg#’s. Also, it is unclear, due to lack of formatting, what you are quoting, and what is new commentary added here. Finally, while you are providing sources for some of your text, if you’re quoting yourself here, you’re citing yourself as an authority, which is pointless.
961 words. Amazing.
Doc,
Maybe you need a limit on the size of messages.
Did you even understand Ballantine’s post?
“The United States debated whether we had the right to expatriate without the consent of congress for 80 years after our Founding finally declaring it only 2 years before England did. Between the war of 1812 and 1870, the United States and England were generally on the same page both recognizing a partial right to expatriate. You have exposed another topic you know nothing about.”
Where specifically does he say that “most of our poiticians” believed in perpetual allegiance?
You have a reading comprehension problem.
You could get my birth information I know, because my state does that, but you could NOT get my birth certificate. Are you clear about the difference, Mr. Gard?
I also know from experience that not every state even allows for birth information to be made available. I believe also Maine recently just changed their laws to make their records more private, and that now you could not get birth information from Maine.
The focus would simply have been on the “inconsistencies” pointed out by Irey (“different fonts”, “different font sizes”, “angles don’t match”) etc. The “layers” meme just allowed birthers to take a referential shortcut to “photoshopped”.
Don’t you birthers love to invoke common sense?
What makes more sense? That the Founders used the definition of “natural born” from Common Law which was well-known among the general public?
Or that the Founders relied on their private English translation of a French text nobody in the general public had ever heard of?
What makes more sense? That the Founders wrote the Constitution for the people? Or that they wrote it for legal scholars well-versed in French who happened to know a certain book by some Swiss guy and automagically translated it the same way as the Founders while making the same mistake with regard to both the plural form and the actual meaning of “parens”? (Or, alternatively, that the Founders owned a time machine and knew how Vattel would be translated a decade after the Constitution was written?)
No birther can answer this question, and I doubt you can.
Actually, didn’t Hawaii release something similar showing the President’s birth, his parent’s marriage, no birth for his half sister? Yeah, birthers didn’t accept that either. There you go Bob, you can get the same thing from Hawaii. However, I’m sure you’ll find something else to complain about it.
Not even a handful of countries (as in: zero) in the world accept the principle of requiring their president to be natural born. So applying your own argument, why do you hold on to it so much, yet criticize the 14th based on “no-one else does it”? Seems kinda hypocritical to me.
As one who tends to ramble, I hope not. I’d suggest moderating Bob whenever the ball is in his court over in the ‘debate’, rather than letting him out after he answers. That way, he can be wasting his time here, while Doc works on his next volley. Right now, Bob is on deck, and procrastinating.
It would have been ‘photoshop’d’ regardless. It’s become a go-to verb in the public consciousness. Don’t like an image? Maybe it was photoshop’d! After all, no matter how hard you rub the screen, it still says Obama …. birth …. Hawaii. Dammit!
All right, Double Naught, you should have no problem producing a birth certificate for Nicole Kidman from the Hawaii State Department of Health, then.
Doc’s been wanting you to reply to him over at the real Great Debate. What’s the matter, Double Naught?
Your kidding right. OK let’s break it down for you:
Virginia Citizenship law of 1779
“Be it enacted by the General Assembly, that all white persons born within the territory of this commonwealth and all who have resided therein two years next before the passing of this act, and all who shall hereafter migrate into the same; and shall before any court of record give satisfactory proof by their own oath or affirmation, that they intend to reside therein, and moreover shall give assurance of fidelity to the commonwealth; and all infants wheresoever born, whose father, if living, or otherwise, whose mother was, a citizen at the time of their birth, or who migrate hither, their father, if living, or otherwise their mother becoming a citizen, or who migrate hither without father or mother, shall be deemed citizens of this commonwealth, until they relinquish that character in manner as herein after expressed”
There are four classes of citizens,
1) All white people born in the Commonwealth are citizens
2) All who have resided two years in the Commonwealth are citizens
3) All who shall hereafter migrate into the same are citizens
4) All infants wherever born if their parens are citizens of Viginia are citizens.
Compare that to the Virginia Citizenship Law of 1792
“Be it enacted by the General Assembly, That all free persons born within the territory of this Commonwealth, all persons not being natives, who have obtained a right to citizenship under former laws, and all children wheresoever born, whose fathers or mothers are or were citizens at the time of the birth of such children, shall be deemed citizens of this Commonwealth, until they relinquish that character in the manner hereinafter mentioned.”
They combined class 2 and 3 from the 1779 Act to get three classes of citizens,
1) All white people born in the Commonwealth are citizens.
2) Non natives who obtained citizenship by the previous law.
3) All infants wherever born if their parens are citizens of Viginia are citizens.
And compare it to the Virginia Citizenship Law of Virginia of 1783,
“Be it therefore enacted by the General Assembly, That all free persons, born within the territory of this Commonwealth ; all persons, not being natives, who have obtained a right to citizenship under the Act, intituled, ” An Act declaring who shall be deemed citizens of this Commonwealth;” and also all children, wheresoever born, whose fathers or mothers are or were citizens at the time of the birth of such children, shall be deemed citizens of this Commonwealth, until they relinquish that character in manner herein after mentioned.”
As I said above you have a reading comprehension problem.
Yes, you are correct. Birthers had too much time and effort invested in all mantras of “Obama was born in Kenya”, “his short form is worthless”, and “if he would only release his long from”. nonsense. It was as predicable as the sun rising in the morning that the LFBC would be attacked as a forgery. It doesn’t matter what format the release was presented. It would even have mattered if critics were allowed to handle it the end result would have been the same.
Somewhere in a comment obobma asked why the President didn’t just release a photograph of his birth certificate. Well that is exactly what he did. It just happens to be in pdf format. It is a photograph nonetheless. If you don’t happen to like that particular format there is also an independent jpg file on this site that was not the “official” released photograph. It happened to be taken by an AP photographer. If you don’t like that one then there is the one reporter Savannah Guthrie took with a cell phone camera.
If three independent photographs and the multiple authentications from Hawaii officials are not enough then there is simply no point of even discussing the topic with Bob Gard or any other Birther. They are reality deniers and it is pointless to engage them in any serious discussion.
I meant the limit thing as a joke……kind of.
Right now Bob is wasting a lot of people’s time posting giant messages that say nothing.
Exactly- Birthers have to really dance hard to explain why the repeated confirmations and authentifications of officials from the State of Hawaii don’t mean what they say they mean or that clearly they are all corrupt….
Once the State of Hawaii explicitly and clearly said that the birth certificate that President Obama showed the world is the birth certificate that they provided, and that he was indeed born in Hawaii, those still refusing to accept his birth in Hawaii showed their absolute incapacity to accept his birth in Hawaii.
Please stop this off-topic discussion. I has nothing to do with the “debate” question.
If you want to know about the availability of birth certificates, see:
http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2011/04/are-long-form-birth-certificates-an-endangered-species/
But don’t discuss it here. That’s what the Open Thread is for.
Actually, a number of Latin American countries have such requirements for their Presidents. Interestingly, here is how they phrase it:
Brazil- native born (until recently, only those born in Brazil were citizens at birth)
Mexico- natural born citizen (mexicano por nacimiento-same meaning as in the US)
Argentina-natural born citizen (they specifically mention you are eligible if born to Argentinian parents abroad, as well, of course, as all those born in Argentina)
It seems natural born citizen means the same there as it does in the US- citizen by birth
The Philippines also has that requirement and they define natural born citizen quite precisely “Natural-born citizens are those who are citizens from birth without having to perform any act to acquire or perfect their Philippine citizenship.” http://immigration.gov.ph/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=206&Itemid=80
The Philippines took the idea from the US during the US occupation after the Spanish-American War. Obviously they understand it as we all do, rather than as Bob Gard does. I think he needs to go to Manila and discuss this with them. I will chip in a couple of bucks for a one-way ticket. Anyone else?
The cite of Alexander Mcleod’s pamphlet does not go with the quote from Morse. It’s the footnote to the previous paragraph. The correct footnote is “American State Papers, Vol.XLIV. p.987.” Now I admit I don’t at the moment know which year that refers to or what the relevant papers say – do you?
Sorry, I was only stating fact. One can indeed find people who believed we had the right to expatriation. One can also find people who said we didn’t. That is why people say there was an ongoing debate on the issue.
The facts are that no law on the subject was passed until 1868 and in the absense of any such law, no Court recognized the right to expatriation. Our scholars were split on the subject. However, many of our most influential scholars leaned toward no recognition of the right without Congress speaking on the issue.
The State Department prior to 1858 generally asserted a partial right to expatriation. They, of course, were talking about people born overseas, not here. Their position was that an alien could throw of his native allegiance and become an American citizen, but such citizen’s allegiance would revert back to his native allegiance if he returned to the country of his birth. See options of Henry Wheaton while Minister of Berlin as well as the opinions of Secretaries of State Webster and Everett. It wasn’t until Secretary of State Cass in 1858 that the State Department asserted a full right of foreigners to expatriate and be treated solely as an American citizens. Cass based his position on recent opinions by Attorney Generals Cushing and Black. This is what we argued with England about in 1868 when both countries agreed to recognize a full right to expatriation. However, even in the 1868 Congress that asserted the right, there was still a debate over whether we had ever adopted the right to expatriation prior to 1868 with persons such as House Judiciary Chairmand James WIlson insisting the common law was still in place until Congress acted.
Even after formal recogniztion of expatriation, both England and the United States retained the notion of birthright citizenship by locality of birth as one has little to do with the other.
Gorefan did a marvelous explanation, but I will demonstrate where your comprehension (and that of others) seems to be amiss. Take the following:
Be it enacted that all apples, and all oranges, and all tomatoes that are not used as a sauce on ground beef sandwiches, shall be known as fruit. There are others food items that may be considered fruit but we need not discuss them at this time.
This phrase gets explained by you and other Birthers as such:
To be a fruit, you must be an apple, orange and tomato, and not used as a sauce on a hamburger. There is no other way.
Do you see the difference?
Gorefan and Northland10 are absolutely correct. There is no requirement at all in the 1779 law that any white person had to do anything except be born in Virginia in order to be a citizen.
This is another thing Bob has misread.
The original footnote makes no mention of “…the declaration of the American courts that their citizens retained…” it reality it says “Scott rejected the Americans’ pretension that they retain their American citizenship wherever they resided…”
In context “the Americans” appear to be the defendants rather than the US Government.
Question 1: No. Rules of residency for those born in the country did not exist, especially in the example you gave from Virginia.
Question 2: Expatriation. I will not stipulate it was strictly Vattel’s writing. There were many more natural law writers besides him which are are also cited at the time. Vattel was one of many so we did not adjust our methods from British to Vattel. We adapted our British methods to our situation and the founders understanding of many natural law writers.
How about some St. George Tucker:
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_4_citizenships15.html
Somewhere in America, there will be a standoff situation at a grocery store tonight.
“That’s our, Bob! Go, Bog, go!”
( What the heck kinda sandwiches are you making? )
I can’t believe we have to school another Birther on the Virginia Citizenship Laws. John Woodman and others spanked Mario Apuzzo soundly on this last year at Woodman’s blog. Apuzzo eventually slithered back to his blog like a whipped puppy.
Doc, is there a reason my last comment has been in moderation for several hours?
Last year i inquired about getting a copy of my father’s birth certificate from New York City. I was told that I first have to provide them with a copy of his death certificate and attach to it a copy of my birth certificate, thereby proving that he is dead and that he was my father.
If Bob Gard believes that he can get it without going to all that trouble, I’ll be happy to e-mail the vital statistics to him.
I have had a couple of comments randomly gp into moderation in the last few days. I don’t think I used any “magic words”.
I’m sure there is a reason, but I do not know what it is.
In addition to the keyword restrictions and the list of those is decreasing, sometimes the 3rd party spam filter yanks one as spam. It wasn’t spam.
There is one other way a comment can go into moderation. If the spam filter is unable to contact its server, it will put a comment into moderation for a while and then it will try again. It is possible that the retry is failing.
I do know that there have been some instances in the past week where the external spam filter has put items in temporary moderation, although this is normally resolved quickly.
I can’t turn it off because one out of three comments on the blog is spam, and you could imagine how things would be if the doors were wide open.
Spam comments are no fun without your commentary. I assume adding this to thousands of spam comments is not your intended Lenten discipline.
In the first kibitzer thread (which I requoted at the top of this one), Mr. Gard declares that the ratifiers did not know, and that they purposely were not told by the framers, because the framers didn’t want to alienate anyone with their secret meaning.
Will Mr. Gard elaborate further?
Dr. Conspiracy: “It would seem to me that the straightforward answer is that this ‘secret meaning’ of natural born citizen never existed, or if it did, knowledge of it was not widely known by the people who ratified the Constitution.”
Bob Gard: “…they could keep the meaning secret and they did. The framers did not want to alienate a single person who wasn’t a true ‘natural-born citizen,’ who might be put off by the ‘discrimination’ against children born after the Constitution.”
I couldn’t have put it better.
Ultimately, the only use birthers have for Vattel is his alleged assertion (which is not what he wrote of course) that BOTH parents would have had to be citizens in order for etc etc,
This is a crazy notion that doesn’t appear anywhere else anywhen in the world of legal theories AFAIK.
Once you remove that lynchpin, their entire house of cards collapses.
Bob Gard’s steadfast refusal to even acknowledge these comments speaks volume.
Bob’s 2nd reply in the Great Debate came in last night around 7 pm.
http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2013/02/the-great-debate/#comment-248835
I should redo my example above so it is clear you have to be multiple apples, multiple oranges and multiple tomatoes to be a fruit. A single apple, orange, tomato is not sufficient.
Bob Gard writes:
“Do you catch this right away? Webster had attributed Evelyn’s definition equal to Vattel’s. Vattel’s definition for indigene, as well as for native, was one unique to him: natives and indigenes “are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens.” Is a light going on?”
Yes, but this does NOT make Obama any less of an indigene since his mother and all her relatives were themselves indigene.
Not only does it NOT state that BOTH parents have to be indigenes but in fact it says the opposite later on.
Mr Gard, will you accept that if Obama is an indigene as per Vattel, your entire house of cards collapses?
That is one hot mess. I guess the old saw holds true: If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance…
Good luck picking through the muck.
Wow, 5200+ words …. must be a new record for the site.
And the 2nd sentence was a completely unfounded assertion.
Saved me a lot of reading. Thanks, Bob!
Bob’s brilliantly-crafted, concise reply has convinced me that John Jay and a few of his confederates perpetrated a fraud on the Convention, the ratifiers and the American people. As would be the case with any contract agreed to as a result of fraud, the contract-in this case the natural born citizen requirement for Presidential eligibility (though there is no such requirement to hold the office, I might note)-is thus null and void.
Well done, Bob.
We see that Bob has gone through history and cherry-picked the items he likes. There is no evidence Madison changed the language in the f1795 Act. The poeple who make the claim cite sources that failed to provide any evidence. And, of course, you engage in pure conjecture as to why Madison might have suggested the change. Sorry, Conjecture is not legal argument. If in fact Madison did suggest the change, why wouldn’t it be because he knew English natural born subjects born outside of England were statutory subject and not eligible to hold any office in England. Accordingly, he would not want anyone to think statutory ctiizens born outside the United States were elgible to be President. Of course, we know Madison believed we followed the English rule of allegiance as well as everyone else in such period. There is almost no authority in American history suggestin the foreign born could be President and the Court has never said anything to remotely support that idea. The articles in 1904 are far from persausive. Morse’s article cites no actual authority and appears not to even understand English law.
Again, why is Jay’s intended meaning relevent. There is no evidence he defined the term to any framer or anyone else the United States. Why should there be any focus on Jay. You seem to have reasoning problem and don’t understand the whole premise of your argument is flawed.
I have no idea what you are trying to argue or why it mattered how indigine was defined in dictionaries. Again, you cannot cite any legal authority in the founding period or the early republic that defined “native” or natural born citizen” by Vattel’s definition. I am sorry but that is fatal to your argument for any reasoning person.
Any why does it matter how popular Vattel’s treatise was relative to other workws on the Law of Nations. What you simply cannot understand is that the Law of Nations was a very small area of law irrelevant to 98% of our jurisprudence and no where as influential as Blackstone. The study of law at William and Mary in 1789 consisted of reading Blackstone. Fifty years later, Abraham Lincoln was still reading Blackstone to learn the law. Sorry, you can’t deal with history.
Even if he did, that would still assume the Framers went “OK, let’s adopt this definition and not tell anyone, let’s see how long it will take them to find out we didn’t mean Common Law” and then forgot about their little prank and left it to you people 230 years later to discover this “Easter Egg”.
Another looney attempt at rewriting reality in the desperate need to find anything that would disqualify Obama (and no-one else).
5,272 words. Absolutely amazing.
5,272…..to be precise.
And still cite no actual authority to support his arguments.
This is a perfect example of the false reasoning we see from birthers. Since it could have been written another way is supposed to imply something. It like saying if he wanted to exclude people with foreign parents, they would have said so. These are stupid arguments as they picked the language they did and everyone else in the world at such time understood such language to exclude naturalized citizens, so it works perfectly fine. Smith did not define the term and your silly conjecture that it must have meant someone other than the English meaning is dumb. It is not argument. Again, you cannot find a single quote of someone expressing you definition and think your baseless conjecture should be the basis of our law. Thank god you didn’t go to law school, you would not have done very well.
In the Spirit of Gard, I think I will begin asserting that the second amendment plainly states, and was understood by its authors to say*, that citizens have a right to bear arms, but only while wearing state-issued uniforms. I am sure this will go far. All Americans will immediately see the wisdom of my true and special insight.
Just think …. every phrase can mean whatever you want it to. Up to and including randomly-generated nonsense. How empowering! What a load of! “Do what thou wilt!”
__________________
For starters, there is a huge difference between not spelling something out and making up a new meaning while not telling the other parties involved and while thinking anyone will abide by that new, purposely hidden meaning.
There also is a huge difference between a campaign slogan and a law, even between a slogan and a promise (specific promises can be and are tracked, by the way). This applies to any slogan, even the slogan of “compassionate conservatism.” They are slogans, not sentences in the Constitution ratified by the states adopting that Constitution.
You sign your lease. I later tell you that that means you cannot have a roommate, even though the lease (and city law here) says you can. I tell you “roommate” actually means only your dependant children below the age of eighteen. (Please notice how that scenario is different from my not telling you that you have the right to have a roommate.) Notice, too, how no jury, no judge, no average Joe or Josephine on the street, would go for an invented meaning no one ever mentioned.
I think Judge Judy could handle this one and put those miscreant Framers in their places. Judgment for the Ratifiers.
——————
Bob Gard: “I repeat, the framers did not explain the Constitution in great detail because they used the same strategy that Barak Obama used for his hope and change. Why not let voters fill in the blanks with their own fancies so that they would vote for his nebulous hope and change. You all let it happen to you. Why do you think our founding politicians were so much different?”
First of all, you are quoting Ken’t Commenties which was the most influential legal treatise of the 19th century. I know he and every other scholar of the period is an idiot and you are smart. Do you really inderstand how stupid you sound making such arguments? In the real world, Americans had no probelm exchanging ligeance (or “allegiance”) from the crown to the collective body of people. Again as simple fact you can’t acknowledge.
“ In the English cases, and in monarchies and empires, allegiance is said to be due to the king or sovereign prince ; but the principle is the same in a republic, and we only substitute the name of State, or Commonwealth, or United States, to that of king &C.” Nathan Dane, A general abridgment and digest of American law: with occasional notes and comments, pg. 686,687 (1824)
The term ‘citizen,’ as understood in our law, is precisely analogous to the term ‘subject’ in the common law, and the change of phrase has entirely resulted from the change of government. The sovereignty has been transferred from one man to the collective body of the people, and he who before as a ‘subject of the king’ is now ‘a citizen of the State.” State v. Manuel, 4 Dev. & Bat. 20, 24-26 (1838)
“ALLEGIANCE. The tie which binds the citizen to the government, in return for the protection which the government affords him. 2. It is natural, acquired, or local. Natural allegiance is such as is due from all men born within the United States; acquired allegiance is that which is due by a naturalized citizen. It has never been decided whether a citizen can, by expatriation, divest himself absolutely of that character. 2 Cranch, 64; 1 Peters’ C. C. Rep. 159; 7 Wheat. R. 283; 9 Mass. R. 461. Infants cannot assume allegiance, (4 Bin. 49) although they enlist in the army of the United States. 5 Bin. 429. 3. It seems, however, that he cannot renounce his allegiance to the United States without the permission of the government, to be declared by law. But for commercial purposes he may acquire the rights of a citizen of another country, and the place of his domicil determines the character of a party as to trade. 1 Kent, Com. 71; Com. Rep. 677; 2 Kent, Com. 42. Bouvier Law Dictionary (1843)
Again, there is what the legal authorities of the period said and then there is your imagination. We have pointed out that the terms “Subject” and “citizen” were conflated well into the 19th century by legislatures, courts and scholars and were still being conflated in the 14th Amendment Congress and there is no evidence anyone in the United States defined natural born subject or citizen differently than England. I suggest you read more of Kent as he defines the term “native” by Blackstone and say the President must be a native born citizen. I know, everyone is wrong but you.
The logic, of course, behind the secret definition of “roommate” is that Vattel (according to my interpretation of a translation I found) spells out that roommates must be the product of mating by the persons who legally occupy the room.
We can argue later whether or not children from previous marriages count (as only one parent in the current household is the biological parent), but this scenario certainly leaves adopted children in a bind, and even now we still wait for the Supreme Court to provide resolution on adoptees as “roommates.”
Now, you are trying to convince me you are stupid. Yes, what really matters is the secret meaning of the framers, not what they told anyone. I guess Scalia’s an idiot as he would laugh at your statement. You will not find a single scholar in history who agrees that as any rational person would understands the only legitimacy a Constitution has is what the people who ratified understood it to mean. Not, we gotta, you really approved our secret meanings. Clearly, you have not thought very hard about Constitutional interpretation, but this is really embarrassing. In the real world, the statements of the framers are only relevent as evidence of what the terms were understood to mean at the time and nothing more. And, of course, you have yet to show any framer agreed with you. Duh!
I remain curious how Mr. Gard squares his contention with Madison’s clear statement that:
“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; it will, therefore, be unnecessary to investigate any other.”
I suppose Madison was not part of Jay’s conspiracy and didn’t know the secret code.
That’s some Catch-22 you’ve made for yourself there, 00Bob.
Or, apparently, a spell checker to get the spelling of the President’s name correct.
Hmm,
““Probably the most thorough discussion in Congress about the meaning of natural-born citizen occurred on June 14, 1967…”
No Bob, no such discussion took place. Rep. Dowdy , a Democratic from TX, was allowed, in accordance normal house practice, to “extend his remarks” (i.e. add to the congressional record things he didn’t actually say) and “introduce extraneous material” in the form of an unpublished essay by a member of the DC bar. The essay discussed the position of George Romney who was of course being touted as a candidate for the Republican nomination.
There was no discussion in the House or it’s committees;
There was no vote ;
There was no endorsement of the essay;
Even the Rep. Dowdy did not endorse it but included it to “make it easily available for discussion with other dissertations on the subject to shed whatever light it merits”.
Whether Rep. Dowdy was being altruistic or just trying cause partisan mischief I do not know, although I suspect the latter – Dowdy was not the most scrupulous of politicians.
Bingo.
It only takes one catastrophic failure for something like this to fail. In this case, we have catastrophic failures at multiple points. This is one of them.
BTW I’d never bothered to research the author, Pinckney G McElwee, before but I notice now that in 1959 he wrote an article challenging the ratification of the 14th Amendment.
If I understand Mr. Gard, apprently the records of the Convention and the Federalist Papers are for naught.
Now we know.
We are at the mercy of Nicholas Cage uncovering the secret meaning.
Did Bob notice that the essay concluded that a natural born citizen was someone born within the territorial limits of the United States and subject to the laws of the United States including the child of aliens. A pretty good paper actually though the assertion about Madison and the 1795 Act is without support.
More to the point, conjecture doesn’t establish anything.
I strongly suspect that Bob is a Chinese agent. I base this suspicion partly on the fact that both of his names are monosyllabic, just like a lot of Chinese.
Plus, well, he just darn SOUNDS like a Chinese agent to me. Oh, and if he’s a Chinese agent then there must be some reason for that. Probably he got ensnared in a “honey trap” with a cute Chinese spy.
There. By Bob’s standards (or something close to them) I’ve “proven” that he’s a Chinese agent. And more
All of that, of course, is sheer conjecture. Just like most of what I’ve heard from Bob.
“I believe that your premise–“However, the Federal Convention only wrote the US Constitution, they didn’t adopt it. The meaning of the Constitution should [be] the meaning that the state ratifying conventions voted for”–is the very reasoning that led us to the Supreme Court’s distortion of our original Constitution. Of course, I will not accept it. If I had, it would make me the idiot all you people describe me to be. I repeat, the framers did not explain the Constitution in great detail because they used the same strategy that Barak Obama used for his hope and change. Why not let voters fill in the blanks with their own fancies so that they would vote for his nebulous hope and change. You all let it happen to you. Why do you think our founding politicians were so much different?”
So Bob- your premise is that the writers of the Constitution used a definition of Natural Born Citizen that the ratifiers didn’t know and were unaware of when they ratified the Constitution?
Which leads to the logical assumption that you agree then that the ratifiers of the Constitution believed that a natural born citizen- like a natural born subject- and like everyone in the U.S. was taught by all of our teachers- including yours- that a natural born citizen is anyone born in the United States.
What baffles me is why you think that the ‘secret’ definition that the writers intended is more valid than the ‘public definition’ that those who actually ratified the Constitution understood. The ones who ratified the Constitution are the ones who made it the law of the United States.
So as I understand your point:
Your belief is that writers of the Constitution used a definition not understood by most people- and that is what should be used.
And the definition as understood by those who put the law into effect, and that has been understood by virtually all of us for the last 200 years is wrong.
To me this is beyond arcane. If you were arguing that the secret definition of NBC was written in invisible ink on the back of the original Constitution frankly it wouldn’t sound to me any more far fetched.
Has anyone actually looked?
Isn’t there a hidden treasure map written in invisible ink on the back of the Declaration of Independence?
Bob Gard: “If American citizens were equal to British natural-born subjects, they would have owed their allegiance to George III and would have been declared legally treasonable upon July 4, 1776.”
WTF
You may remember, Mr. Gard, a small, obscure war (barely worth mentioning) during that exact moment in time. Coincidence?
There’s another catastrophic failure.
One would have to hope that at least some mercy was extended to Mr. McElwee in whatever that “G” stood for.
Once again, the famous birther double standard. Non-birthers must present “definitive proof.”
And birthers can assert anything, anything at all, and it’s true, without even a HINT of “definitive proof.”
“Vattel gave us the meaning of ‘natural born citizen.’ It didn’t come from Grotius, Puffendorf, the English common law, or anywhere else.”
Uh. Okay. What is your proof for that?
“Well, that’s true because the colonists developed a totally different meaning for ‘natural born citizen.'”
Uh. Okay. What is your proof for that?
“Well, mumble mumble board of trade expatriation. And it’s true because I say it is.”
Oh. Okay.
It stood for Glasgow.
If there are only 2 kinds of citizens, it makes no sense to say “citizens, not naturalized.” You’d say the one that it is, in the idiom everyone understood. Natural born citizen.
Mr. Gard, why wait until July 4, 1776? King George III apparently was a little more on the ball than you give him credit. Here he is on August 23, 1775. Notice a few choice words involving treason and traitors.
I particularly like the perspicacity of the King’s opening words, getting right to the point about how his “subjects” were “forgetting the allegiance which they owe.”
————
Proclamation, by The King, for Suppressing Rebellion and Sedition
King George III
August 23, 1775
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=875
Whereas many of our subjects in divers parts of our Colonies and Plantations in North America, misled by dangerous and ill designing men, and forgetting the allegiance which they owe to the power that has protected and supported them; after various disorderly acts committed in disturbance of the publick peace, to the obstruction of lawful commerce, and to the oppression of our loyal subjects carrying on the same; have at length proceeded to open and avowed rebellion, by arraying themselves in a hostile manner, to withstand the execution of the law, and traitorously preparing, ordering and levying war against us: And whereas, there is reason to apprehend that such rebellion hath been much promoted and encouraged by the traitorous correspondence, counsels and comfort of divers wicked and desperate persons within this Realm: To the end therefore, that none of our subjects may neglect or violate their duty through ignorance thereof, or through any doubt of the protection which the law will afford to their loyalty and zeal, we have thought fit, by and with the advice of our Privy Council, to issue our Royal Proclamation, hereby declaring, that not only all our Officers, civil and military, are obliged to exert their utmost endeavours to suppress such rebellion, and to bring the traitors to justice, but that all our subjects of this Realm, and the dominions thereunto belonging, are bound by law to be aiding and assisting in the suppression of such rebellion, and to disclose and make known all traitorous conspiracies and attempts against us, our crown and dignity; and we do accordingly strictly charge and command all our Officers, as well civil as military, and all others our obedient and loyal subjects, to use their utmost endeavours to withstand and suppress such rebellion, and to disclose and make known all treasons and traitorous conspiracies which they shall know to be against us, our crown and dignity; and for that purpose, that they transmit to one of our principal Secretaries of State, or other proper officer, due and full information of all persons who shall be found carrying on correspondence with, or in any manner or degree aiding or abetting the persons now in open arms and rebellion against our Government, within any of our Colonies and Plantations in North America, in order to bring to condign punishment the authors, perpetrators, and abetters of such traitorous designs.
Given at our Court at St. James’s the twenty-third day of August, one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five, in the fifteenth year of our reign.
GOD save the KING.
————
What were those Federalist papers about then? They seem pretty detailed.
Sorry, I have to disagree with you…after reading his work he just HAD to graduate from the Mario Apuzzo School of Legal BS! 😀
There is even one where they discussed the President’s salary.
Bob must come from the Donald Trump School of Law, where a late-night joke becomes a binding contract. I guess 2 guys over a couple of beers in a pub can decide what natural born citizen means, keep it to themselves and the rest of the country must follow this secret meeting. Does that mean if I go out and have a few beers with some buddies this weekend and declare myself King the rest of the country must become my subjects? Problem solved Bob.
But not one about the sekrit meaning of natural born citizen. One wonders what other sekrits they hid in the document.
And why on earth would it be secret in the first place? That’s mind-boggling.
Whaen I saw that in quotes, I thought, “That must be Bob speaking sarcastically. A birfer labeling the Founders, whom he has styled the holders of secret meaning, as mere weaselling, vague politicians? That’s surprising and it makes no sense. This must be jest.”
Going back to search Gard’s latest novella (keyword: “nebulous”), I see …. no, that was him speaking. Quoting the entire paragraph is even more perplexing:
Instead of relying on knowledge of his subject, Gard uses assumptions, and sees everything past and present through the lens of rightwing distortions of current events!
The kicker is the closing, in which Gard attempts a blatant bait-and switch. Doc had closed with:
And Gard “agreed” as follows:
…. and birfers wonder why they are denigrated? The only point in talking to or about such a person is to poke them and see what comes out.
Oh dear.
This is more nonsense. You provide no evidence that the definition of natural born subject changed in the colonies prior to the Declaration. The colonies may have argued that their legislatures could expand the classes of foreign born persons covered by the term like Parliament had done. Of course, that doesn’t mean anyone thought natural born didn’t include all born on the soil according to the common law. Duh!
When English authorities used the term “natural born subject” we know they meant the native born. The question was whether they meant to also include foreign born subjects naturalized at birth by statute. These persons were called “natural born subjects for all intents and purposes” but were not considered as real natural born subjects as they couldn’t hold office and didn’t necessarily owe their natural allegiance to England. Thus, in America, the use of the term obviously included the native born but it was never clear if it included foreign born statutory subjects or citizens. Most of the time it didn’t.
I am sorry, but you have no evidence that anyone in the colonies thought a native born child or aliens was not a natural born subject and no evidence anyone after the revolution thought a native born child of aliens was not a natural born subject or citizen. Oh, that’s right, it was a secret. Well, of course, you have no evidence any framer thought differently with respect to the native born either. Truly sad that you think you have evidence beyond a reasonable doubt when you have yet to provide any evidence that supports you.
So, where does “The Great Debate” go from here? It seems to me that Bob pretty much overturned the board and stormed away with his last response. I honestly don’t see how one can continue a debate with someone whose position is that reading the Constitution requires a secret decoder ring that only he has.
If I were Doc, I wouldn’t even bother responding to Bob’s latest blatherings, but would simply declare the debate over.
The ubiquitous birther double two-step. It is either that the Constitution (or whatever suits at the moment) is written in terms of art, and each word or phrase has a special intent and purpose, OR … wait for it … it doesn’t mean what it actually says, people take it too literally and need to research the historic context, have the secret xray glasses, etc.
I would actually like to circle back around and hear from Bob again his reasoning back when he was in middle school he decided that to be President someone needed two citizen parents.
Because IF he decided that then- whatever rational he used then seems like it is driving his conviction that Vattel agreed with him- and therefore the secret definition in the Constitution matches what he thinks it should be.
I would like to know if Bob grabbed a bullhorn and some of the best legal minds in the country when Obama declared his candidacy in 2007. If not, why not.
You are incapable of understanding that natural-born subject in Britain meant born in the dominions of the king (native-born as a function of jus soli and later also as foreign born under a minimum of imperfect jus sanguinis), born within allegiance to the king, owing perpetual allegiance to the king, provided no taint of treason, and the rights of whom could be transferred to naturalized natural-born subjects, who did not really reap one hundred per cent of the rights of natural-born subjects after the transfer.
An American citizen after the Declaration of Independence came to mean born in an American state (native-born as a function of jus soli and later also as foreign born under jus sanguinis), born in allegiance to a country, never to a king or prince, owing allegiance as long as he did not renounce his citizenship, having the right to do so at any time, regardless of taint of treason, and the rights of whom could be transferred to naturalized citizens, who really did enjoy all the rights of citizens, including offices of trust, unlike in Britain, but not the one right of a natural-born citizen—to run for the presidency—after the Constitution.
Knowing the above, you refuse to acknowledge the gradual transition of the concept of natural-born subject and later citizen in our colonies. You seem to think that everything changed from one day to the next demarcated by the Declaration of Independence. Apparently you don’t believe in legal evolution? Apply that style of thought to paleontology and see how popular you will become. I know you can get away with it in the world of legal precedents.
I admire your use of “duh” in, “Of course, that doesn’t mean anyone thought natural born didn’t include all born on the soil according to the common law. Duh!” It hasn’t gotten through to you. I have been acknowledging that natural-born in terms of jus solis has been shared by Britain and America all along. Have I not said that the British partial meaning of natural-born in the strict sense of native-born means the same as the partial meaning of American natural-born in the strict sense of native-born? May I add that it also means the same thing as native-born in France’s sujets naturels. Does that make our natural-born a derivation of France’s terminology? Apuzzo thinks so. At least that is how I interpret his stance.
Then too, I have pointed out many times that natural-born was not defined in English dictionaries till the last part of the 19th-century. What lexicographers included in their dictionaries over a century later is supposed to be significant ? I think not.
I have insisted that no lawyer can discuss Vattel’s definition of indigene without bringing his definition into the discussion because Vattel’s definition has never found its way into a dictionary. You seem to want indigene with its dictionary definition of someone born in a country to equal Vattel’s definition of indigene as someone born in a country of two citizen parents. You want to use the 19th-century definition of natural-born not in front of subject or citizen. You do not realize that as soon as you put subject or citizen after natural-born, you have different animals. Lawyers who want to dismiss Vattel as unimportant wish to use the ordinary definition of indigene in English dictionaries, which has never been the same as Vattel’s. When a lawyer cannot understand the difference between the two, how is he going to recognize that neither natural-born subject nor natural-born citizen means only someone born in a country; i.e. native –born?
From the beginning of my eBook to the end, I argued that natural-born beyond its shared aspect of native-born derives its additional meanings from its placement as an adjective before subject and citizen. When placed in these positions, the two terms are not equals. The above lists of attributes associated with each clearly demonstrate the differences that you refuse to recognize. Instead you wish to boil down the entire argument to native-born and “The question was whether they meant to also include foreign born subjects naturalized at birth by statute.” The latter question was resolved by each country via legislation later on. The British legislated that those born abroad to British fathers were deemed automatically naturalized into natural-born subjects without absolutely all the rights given to the same class actually born in Britain. The Americans legislated first that those born abroad of American citizens, two in my book, were natural-born citizens, which they later changed to citizens. You do not want to recognize that even this history was different in the two countries.
None of these attributes were “secret.” Your logic defies reason. Ridicule is your game but ridicule has never been based on reason. The “Duh” is yours no matter how many followers you have.
I’d like to go back in time and poll the 8th graders of 1960 for name recognition re: Emmerich de Vattel. I bet it’s even lower than amongst the general populace of today, and that’s very low indeed.
Effectively, if only his created memories were real, Bob really did have secret knowledge!
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! There went another one!!! Time to pull out the spare.
The differences lie in the nouns “citizen” and “subject” not in the adjective “natural born”. No one claims a red car and a red apple are the same thing, but red is red and natural born = natural born = from birth. A natural born subject is a subject from birth and a natural born citizen is a citizen from birth. Your long-winded obfuscations cannot hide this simple truth.
It is in the eBook. It’s a substantial section. A small part of it is also at The-Constitutionist.com. I decided the president needed two citizen parents to qualify for candidacy based on my logic using basic arithmetic axioms. N = n and n +1 = n +1 but n does not equal n + 1. Nothing else made sense to me. I always wanted to prove my logic was correct. It was never a question of Vattel’s agreeing with me. I did not know about the influence of Vattel then.
My research focused on whether Vattel was the only public jurist that had formulated a higher form of citizenship, on how his definition could be adopted by John Jay if the anti-birthers were right about Vattel’s lack of a pervasive influence in revolutionary America, on how could Vattel be responsible for the term natural-born citizen in general and, specifically, how could he be responsible for it showing up in the Constitution 20 years after his death. Lastly, how could Vattel be responsible for the term showing up in the 1797 edition of The Law of Nations thirty years after his death? I found the answers as far as I am concerned. My explanations fit. When the shoes fit, wear them.
So, you’re now an expert on de Vattel and are creating a whole new group of definitions to what they mean and applying them to current conditions and saying that everything and everyone all throughout history has been wrong because of your unique interpretation that has just come to light recently and escaped every researcher, lawyer, constitutional expert, and our society as a whole for generations and we’ve had how many ineligible (according to you) Presidents and Vice Presidents because…NOBODY TOLD ANYBODY IT WAS DIFFERENT??? Gotcha.
because they didn’t think a nigger could end up in the white house?
it’s the only reason i can think they’d concievably have
The real problem here, Bob, is that all your arguments come down to the assumption that Vattel defined an “indigene” as someone born in the country of two citizen parents. But you’re wrong. It is a simple matter of subject-verb agreement.
“The natives [plural], or natural-born citizens [plural], are those born in the country, of parents [plural] who are citizens [plural]. As the society cannot exist and perpetuate itself otherwise than by the children [plural] of the citizens [plural], those children [plural] naturally follow the condition of their fathers [PLURAL. FATHERS, BOB, FATHERS. DO BOTH THOSE CITIZEN PARENTS HAVE TO BE MEN???], and succeed to all their [plural] rights. The society is supposed to desire this, in consequence of what it owes to its own preservation; and it is presumed, as matter of course, that each citizen [singular], on entering into society, reserves to his [SINGULAR] children the right of becoming members of it. The country of the fathers [plural] is therefore that of the children [plural]; and these become true citizens [plural] merely by their tacit consent. We shall soon see whether, on their coming to the years of discretion, they may renounce their right, and what they owe to the society in which they were born. I say, that, in order to be of the country, it is necessary that a person [SINGULAR] be born of a father [SINGULAR] who is a citizen [SINGULAR]; for, if he is born there of a foreigner, it will be only the place of his birth, and not his country.”
FATHERS, Bob. FATHERS. This is the word that blows your entire argument out of the water. QED.
No wonder all those schools turned you down. It had nothing to do with race or gender. You spouted nonsense like that at the interview and they made up the stuff about affirmative action to spare your feelings and get you to shut up.
natural born = at birth. Applies to citizens, subjects, killers, scientists, ballplayers, violinists and idiots.
In reality you are claiming a red car is a red apple. You reason thusly because you are basing your deduction on the color red and not the color red modifying the car on the one hand and the apple on the other hand. You’re right, “A natural born subject is a subject from birth and a natural born citizen is a citizen from birth.” A red car is red from “birth” and a red apple is red from “birth.” But a red car is not a red apple. The fact that a natural-born subject is a subject from birth and a natural-born citizen is a citizen from birth does not mean that they are equal. Both are native born as both car and apple are red. That is one quality intrinsic to their natures. But both natural-born subject and natural-born citizen have other qualities in addition to their native-born qualities that partially make them what they are, thereby making them different.
You’re the scientist. Let’s say you test a bottle of known frozen water and an unknown frozen substance. You find that they both melt at 32 degrees F. into colorless, odorless liquids. Are they the same? Would you pick up the unknown substance and drink it? You have four qualities known–melting point, color, odor, and consistency–three more than the known shared native-born aspect of natural-born subject and natural-born citizen. I don’t see you picking up the unknown substance and drinking it.
You say: “The differences lie in the nouns “citizen” and “subject” not in the adjective “natural born”. Although natural-born does convey native-born by itself (also born naturally), when combined with either noun, it incorporates other meanings into the concepts. Given your reasoning, I would be just as reasonable to argue that a natural-born candidate should be one born through the birth canal since natural-born by itself also has this separate definition and once modifying either noun has no modification influencing the meaning of the nouns based on the combination, according to you.
The only “higher form of citizenship” is doing things that benefit your fellow man. You get no points for who your mommy and daddy are, only for what you do with your life.
natural born = at birth. Applies to citizens, subjects, killers, scientists, ballplayers, violinists and idiots.
I’m gonna steal it.
I’m going to steal the Declaration of Consti… oh, wait. I guess that doesn’t make much sense, does it?
If that made sense to you, then the scope of your affliction has just ballooned. Again. Pointless, pretentious math abuse—check!
Bob,
I appreciate your response.
Your 8th grade logic however appears to me to be as incomprehensible as it was to your teacher. However, you did provide your answer- you decided then that this was a necessary condition.
Then you searched around to find someone who appeared to support the conclusion you reached in the 8th grade.
Now- leaving aside the historical arguments and what Vattel really means-
Do you agree that the current common understanding in the United States at this time is that Natural Born Citizen means born in the United States except for the known exclusions?
Do you agree that this has been the understanding for at least 100 years?
Did this make sense to anyone?
Bingo. That is EXACTLY what a natural born citizen is. I’m glad you finally admit it. End of story.
natural born = at birth. Applies to citizens, subjects, killers, scientists, ballplayers, violinists and idiots.
Wow, is this post supposed to make sense? Have you been drinking?
First, you are wrong that we adopted the right to expatriation as I have pointed out. Such was debated for 80 years before being resolved. You need to do more research. And you don’t understand English law either as Coke’s rationale for perpetual allegiance was rejected by the time of Blackstone and even England recognized a partial right to expatriation at that point. They would continue to relax the rule until they abandoned it at the same time we did. I suggest you take notes and learn something.
I have no idea what your supposed definition of citizenship after the declaration is supposed to mean. Why are you making things up? You see, to claim anyone thought natural born citizens excluded children of aliens you actually need to provide authority that says so and you cannot. Duh!!!
Next, you provide no evidence that there was any evolution from natural born subject to American citizen. Our legal authorities thought everyone had a right to choose sides upon the Declaration and subjects became citizens. England would agree by treaty I have cited authority making that clear. There is no contrary authority. Again, have you done no research?
Next, you cite no authority that anyone in the US thought native born different than natural born. We have shown the terms were conflated by everyone.
Next, why do you think it matters that “natural born” was not defined in dictionaries? Legal terms of art generally are not. What is true that when defined in treatises and legal dictionaries and by all legal scholars, they all say you are wrong. Is this too difficult for you to grasp?
I am sorry but your arguments about “indigenes” makes no sense. No one in America cared how “indigene” was defined as no one, I mean no legal authority anywhere in the US, cared about the definition of “indigene.” The facts are that no one, no legal authority, though natural born meant something different from native born and all your silly arguments can’t change that fact. To say your definition was not secret when you can’t cite a single legal authority to support it means are irrational or drunk. Sorry.
Finally, your arguments should be subject to ridicule as they have no basis in reality. Let’s summarize:
1. You have no evidence any native born child of aliens was not considered a natural born subject prior to 1776.
2. You cannot dispute that we continued to use the term”natural born subject” well into the 19th century and conflated the term with “natural born citizen” and cannot cite anyone who didn’t define such terms to include native born children of aliens.
3. You cannot refute that most legal authorities said you were wrong about expatriation both here and in England.
4. You have no actual evidence what Jay thought “natural born citizen” meant.
5. You have no evidence Jay told any framer what his definition was.
6. You have no evidence any framer agreed with your definition.
7. You have no evidence anyone who ratified the constitution agreed with your meaning and, in fact, you seem to concede no one understood such meaning.
8. Your position that the secret intent of the framers controls over the understanding of the ratifiers is just plain stupid.
So remind me, what argument do you have left? Ridicule is very appropriate for stupid arguments. Have you said one thing so far that is not wrong? I don’t think so.
“What do you think you’re gonna find?”
“We believe that there’s an… encryption on the back.”
“An encryption, like a code?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Of what?”
“A… cartograph.”
“A map.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“A map of what?”
“The location of… of hidden items… of historic and intrinsic value.”
Doc, when I look at historical Supreme Court opinions, I like to use Open Jurist for a reference instead of Justia, because they enumerate the paragraphs over there, which makes it easier to locate a specific citation. You might want to do something like that with Bob’s oeuvre. His responses, vapid and redundant as they may be, are getting longer than some Supreme Court opinions.
Yes, 00Bob, you would indeed be just as reasonable arguing that as you are with your present argument.
—
I think you are confusing “natural born” with “naturally born” or “natural childbirth”.
Chemical substances have an almost infinite number of properties. But other things have only one. Red is simply the color asociated wth light of ceratin wavelengths(roughly 650-750 nm). Any light within those limits is red. There are no other requirements. The light cancome from a star, a laser, an incandescent bulb, a rock or any other red object. All are red.
Natural born has only one property. It is the nature of a person from birth. There are no other requirements. Anyone who was born a citizen is a natural born citizen. If you were born a subject, you are a natural born subject. If you were born an idiot…you figure it out.
Man. I keep wondering how Bob can possibly say in one breath, “Vattel’s definition has never found its way into a dictionary,” and in the next breath proclaim that Vattel was the most influential thing since the invention of the printing press.
So influential, in fact, that although his definition couldn’t find its way into a dictionary, it was forever enshrined in the Constitution of the United States.
Wow. It all seems to be the usual birther mishmash of cherry-picking, contradictions, double standards of evidence, herculean leaps of logic, death-defying conjecture, verbal prestidigitation, eye-glazing prolixity, and historical voodoo that so many of us have come to know and love.
Gibberish. Again, you simply can’t understand that we looked to what the people of such period said the term meant. It is sad you can’t admit it meant the same thing as natural born subject or native born citizen. When are you going to present any evidence that a single person of the period agreed with you? Do you really think keep insisting you are right without offering any evidence is an argument.
Ah. I wondered, Bob, what was your purpose of including that story in the book. Was it to show how very little you understood about logic in the 8th grade? Or some other reason?
“To high treason.
That’s what these men were committing when they signed the Declaration. Had we lost the war, they would have been hanged, beheaded, drawn and quartered, and – Oh! Oh, my personal favourite – and had their entrails cut out and burned! So, here’s to the men who did what was considered wrong in order to do what they knew was right. What they knew was right.”
BTW, from Blackstone’s Commentaries,
“THE punishment of high treason in general is very solemn and terrible.
1. That the offender be drawn to the gallows, and not be carried or walk; though usually a sledge or hurdle is allowed, to preserve the offender from the extreme torment of being dragged on the ground or pavement.
2. That he be hanged by the neck, and then cut down alive.
3. That his entrails be taken out, and burned, while he is yet alive.
4. That his head be cut off.
5. That his body be divided into four parts.
6. That his head and quarters be at the king’s disposal.”
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/blackstone_bk4ch6.asp
“Until the Declaration of Independence, Washington, Jefferson, Adams and the others only disagreed with Parliament, not the Crown; in fact, after a day of fighting the British soldiers, Washington and his officers would toast the King before dinner.”
http://www.umich.edu/~ece/student_projects/bonifield/treason2.html
I wouldn’t describe Bob’s 8th grade logic as incomprehensible. It’s just wrong.
Perhaps you would care to explain what n = n and n + 1 = n +1 and n does not = n +1 has to do with presidential eligibility.
😆 That is such a great quote. I didn’t realize how historical it really was.
I’m gonna have to see that movie again soon.
“Grandpa… are we knights?”
“Do you want to be? All right. Um… kneel… Benjamin Franklin Gates, you take upon yourself the duty of the Templars, the Freemasons, and the family Gates. Do you so swear?”
“I so swear.”
Not much.
It’s kind of like “If a hen-and-a-half can lay an egg-and-a-half in a day-and-a-half, how long would it take a peg-legged grasshopper to kick the seeds out of a dill pickle?”
I do have an answer for that one, though.
42?
That’s all well and good, but are you sure they are shoes? They could be banana peels, or worse. Many things will fit when you force them. Two slices of pizza tied to your feet leave something to be desired in the end.
I have answered Bob’s second comment in “The Great Debate.”
I’m spending my time writing debate answers and that’s a reason I’m not writing articles.
I take it to be a over-long expression of the mathematical identity … in this case that only NBCs can produce NBCs … and they must do so asexually (kinky!). Or sexually, but the union must produce twins, or no dice.
Quite a high standard … a stunning upping of the ante from the previous nuttiest birfer eligibility scheme, The Genealogical Ministry of the Most High Birf (set up by imaginary requirements that both parents of NBCs be themselves NBCs.
Let’s see the Reds find some eligible candidates now! 😛
I suggest Gard try a biochemical equation instead.
And asked, “Who gets to decide whether Bob’s definition of “natural born citizen” is correct?”
Since even he acknowledges that the ‘true’ meaning and history of NBC was unknown … then how is it ‘true’? Why would it even be applicable? What he’s describing is an appeal to an authority, essentially a divine revelation. Whether he’s thinking in terms of ‘higher truth’ or not, that’s the only model that bears out his assertion, that regardless of what a society believes and practices, there is a ‘better’ way, forgotten or suppressed, that’s better, and real, and self-evident once revealed or known.
To go along with your query, Doc … “Why change?” Why would a country adopt a new standard? Even worse, how would a country adopt a new standard without making it explicit? If something had changed, the shift would have left tracks.
That is what I see as one of many big problems with Bob’s thesis.
Based on comments here, Bob denies that the Supreme Court has the authority to decide the meaning of the Constitution.
It’s not the voters, nor the Congress because Barack Obama is living (thanks to them) at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue today.
I suppose a good debater is supposed to know the answer to the questions he asks, but in this instance, I don’t know where Bob will go.
Thanks for the Open Jurist hint. As for Bob, I really don’t want to go tit-for-tat with him since most of his volume is just quotations.
Long ago, when I debated on USENET some of the moderated groups were really strict about quoting much material from prior messages and I sort of got into a discipline of not citing too much from the previous argument. I know some folks will cite the entire previous comment, interspersing their remarks. That’s fine, but it’s not my style.
Three men are sitting by a backyard pool.
The surgeon says, “Bones, go in the house and fetch two biscuits.” The dog comes back with two.
The accountant says, “Ledger, go in the house and fetch two and a half biscuits.” The dog comes back with two and a half.
The lawyer says, “That’s nothing.” He says to his dog, “Torts, eat those four and a half biscuits, and screw those two dogs.”
Catastrophic failure. If the term wasn’t widely known by the people who ratified the Constitution, then any such definition is meaningless.
More to the point, the people who ratified the Constitution must have understood something by it. But what? Well, the obvious understanding is that “natural born citizen” differs only from “natural born subject” in the way that “citizen” differs from “subject.”
Bob has just demolished his own argument.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8U4erFzhC-U
A very good reply, Doc. Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.
I’m sure that Bob will maintain that he has not conceded the debate. However, in practical terms, it’s hard to see how one can possibly argue that “natural born citizen” means one had to have two citizen parents (in any meaningful sense of the word) if those who brought the phrase did not know that was what it was “supposed” to mean.
Sorry, should’ve been “those who brought the phrase into law.”
I’ve always held that idiots aren’t born, they’re taught.
“Who gets to decide whether Bob’s definition of “natural born citizen” is correct?”
How about the majority? So, let’s vote.
NO NO NO NO! You’re wrong, totally and absolutely wrong there! That’s NOT what Vattel states.
His definition is ONE parent (which actually means relative), NOT two.
For an exact translation of the paragraph in question, ask Dr. C for the link.
How can you be so dense??????
[Here is the link, Doc. http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/bookmarks/fact-checking-and-debunking/the-translation-of-vattel-from-the-french/. It can always be found in this site’s menu under Features | Comments.]
Bob’s math in everyday usage:
Officer: License and registration please.
Bob: Why? I wasn’t speeding.
Officer: Yes you were. I clocked you at 80mph.
Bob: But the Earth rotates at 1300mph. I was actually going -1220mph.
Officer: Put your hands behind your back….
You are entirely correct.
There are other subtleties in this paragraph (such as the different French words used for homeland but they’re irrelevant for our purpose here). As an aside there was also a logical loophole (quid of children born out of wedlock) which was corrected in the second edition [should be 1863 French edition. Doc.]. Finally, Vattel’s word “parens” (also used elsewhere in the treatise) is, as pointed out before, the English equivalent of relatives, not just father & mother.
Someone tells me if I’m wrong. Bob Gard’s treatise is like an inverted pyramid whose single base rests on one thing and one thing only: the demonstrably false assertion that Vattel meant TWO citizen parents.
Remove that stone and the entire edifice collapses, right? Or is he relying on anything else that doesn’t stem from that single miscomprehension?
The notion of two citizen parents is not, and never was, in Vattel’s.
I first came to this site a couple of years ago following one of my regular google searches on Vattel, and was mildly shocked to discover how badly he was being used by fake scholars (like Gard or Apuzzo) to bolster their twisted agenda. (I’ve since stayed for the drinks :-))
It seems to me that, just like Apuzzo, Gard refuses to face or respond to that initial flawed understanding of Vattel. And anything else he says, since it proceeds from that very flaw is, basically, worthless.
In other words, birthers gravitate towards the ridiculous. Nice spin.
Excellent example. 🙂
While the same argument about false application of the related plural can be made with other examples, one that uses Vattel himself is absolutely brilliant; I will use it from now on whenever a birther brings up “both parents”.
Actually, I was seriously wondering if not a case could be made that “being necessary to the security of a free State” is a conditional bracket for the entire Second (or at least clearly points out the Founders’ intentions) – and since that is obviously no longer the case (with the powerful US Army and National Guard and state police etc., who needs “well-armed militias” anymore?), the right to bear arms is essentially moot. I think this would at least deserve some time in a discussion of that topic. 🙂
Doc said:
“(Madison wasn’t a member of the First Congress)”
Got to correct you there – he was. Off the top of my head I don’t recall if he said anything in the debates on the 1790 Act and I need more coffee before check.
I looked it up, but I looked at it cross-eyed or something. Thanks.
I get the feeling that Bob is not going to respond to this point, because, as you say, it is the one thing on which his entire 1700 page essay relies.
I find the point about “parens” interesting…just another way that we must be careful about interpreting the subtleties of another language. However, this point appears to be too subtle for Bob, which is why I relied on a simple subject/verb agreement argument.
It is totally counter-intuitive to read Vattel and come to the conclusion that he meant TWO citizen parents. A normally educated French-speaking person would read this as EITHER parent.
When I first came here, I was pretty amazed to discover that some folks like Apuzzo — and now Gard — had managed to twist Vattel’s words and build a whole shaky legal edifice around their mistaken assumption.
Frankly, I still am amazed that someone like Gard can blithely ignore the fact that his entire theory is predicated upon an incorrect assumption.
The example I often use is “Only children whose parents are members of the club may use the pool.” Imagine if someone sued the club on the basis of that notice, claiming that it required that both parents be club members, not just one? And wrote 1000 pages predicated on that? You wouldn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
I prefer to believe that folks like Apuzzo and Gard are insincere and laughing all the way to the bank — but they well be crazy. Or both.
It totally astounds me that someone can point to that paragraph to support their two citizen parent theory and completely ignore that later IN THE SAME PARAGRAPH it states “I say, that, in order to be of the country, it is necessary that a person be born of a father who is a citizen…” If Vattel really intended to require two parents as citizens, this sentence would HAVE to read “It is necessary that a person be born of PARENTS who are CITIZENS…”
Feel like addressing this Bob?
Store announcement: “Shoppers, we have a special in aisle 15.”
Bob: “Darn, I need to find someone else to go with me.”
Store policy: “Members will enjoy a 10% discount”
Bob: “Darn, I need to find someone else to join me.”
Restaurant sign: “Patrons must leave their vehicle for valet parking”
Bob: “But I came here alone!”
Disneyland: “Visitors must show their passes to board the monorail”
Bob: “I’m here alone. I can’t ride the monorail”
I used to make that argument against birthers as well, but there is one possible (though rather birtherist-twisted) explanation other than Vattel meaning *two* parents: Maybe Vattel means something different by “to be of the country” and “naturels ou indigènes”. In the birther interpretation, the latter means “natural born citizen” whereas the former could only mean “citizen”. (Of course this disregards why Vattel would use “to be of the country” instead of saying “to be a citizen” which he would if he had meant that.)
Since I didn’t want to invite that kind of distraction, I’ve abandoned pointing to that specific Vattel quote about “to be of the country”.
NBA finals, game 7, outside the stadium: “Owners of tickets to the finals enter here”.
Bob: “Damn, I only have one ticket, and only for this game! Gotta go home…”
Well, we all know the twists and turns the birthers can take, but it still doesn’t explain “fathers,” does it?
He elsewhere earlier in these kibitzers threads simply said this point is wrong. I quoted Lupin and mentioned to Mr. Gard that he would need to deal with Lupin’s notes. Gard, though, has not really done much of a job here, much less a credible one, on this matter.
I was stopped for speeding. The officer said, ‘You were going 70 MPH.’ I said that’s impossible. I live half a mile from here, and I’ve been out of the house for twenty minutes. – Steven Wright
I touched upon this when I mentioned earlier that Vattel used different French words, like, say, “homeland” and “country”, in the same paragraph.
I recall Paul Piezeny and I have an exchange about this after I posted my annotated translation a while back.
Frankly I wouldn’t read too much into it. One touches the heart strings more, but that’s all I can tell.
The “father” thing is a bit of logical / internal contradiction if you read the entire article. It is only one sentence that is flatly contradicted by the use of parens everywhere else.
I think Vattel was trying to grapple with the notions of single citizenship AND dual citizenship in the same article, and botched it up. He really ought to have written two separate articles. As I mentioned, the second edition of Law of Nations has a footnote added after that sentence that makes it clear that MOTHERS can also transmit citizenship.
The argument one might have here is not whether Obama might be a US indigene (or naturel, or nbc, whatever your take on this) under Vattel, but whether he would ALSO be a British one. The “père” sentence added by Vattel is there to cover this.
Maybe we could start making a list of the various catastropic failures of Bob’s thesis. They are multiple.
1. Vattel doesn’t say what he claims.
2. He has no evidence to establish that Jay even believed what he claims Jay believed, only sheer conjecture.
3. He has only a hint that Jay and Scott MIGHT have talked about American citizenship (this is really pretty weak) absolutely no real evidence to establish that Scott was the editor of the 1797 Vattel, and no explanation for why an English author translating a book for an English audience would put in an American legal term that was meaningless to his audience.
4. He has no evidence whatsoever to establish that John Jay communicated any definition of “natural born citizen” to the Framers at the Convention at all and in fact all the available evidence is against such an idea. Some pretty detailed notes were kept. And I don’t think it was very long (I’d have to look it up) after Jay’s letter that the convention wrote the clause. If Jay was going to give any definition of natural born citizen, why didn’t he do it in that letter? The whole thing just doesn’t fly.
5. He cannot cite any legal authority in the founding period or the early republic that defined “native” or natural born citizen” by Vattel’s definition. Heck, by his own admission, that definition didn’t make it into any dictionary, legal or otherwise.
6. Even if he were correct about all of the above, he still admits that nobody other than some theoretical super-sekrit inner circle of Framers knew the super-sekrit definition. Those who ratified the Constitution certainly didn’t. Since those who voted the Constitution didn’t understand the phrase to mean what he claims, there’s simply no way we can legitimately say that’s what it means.
We had a space shuttle that blew up because of the catastrophic failure of an O ring. We had another one that blew up because of the catastrophic failure of a heat tile.
Bob’s shuttle has a bad O ring, a missing heat tile, a broken booster rocket bolt, a wing panel that will fall off on reentry, jammed landing gear that won’t deploy, and a computer with a blown processor.
Before you cast an invective regarding my intelligence, please consider this in addition to my previous reply.
Dr. Conspiracy, Ballantine and you all believe dictionaries are important for unraveling the true meaning of natural-born subject and natural-born citizen. Dictionaries are mostly useless. Until you can give up the belief that they are useful and crawl out of the box of legal precedents, you have no chance to understand what took place in colonial America. I devoted many pages to this very fact.
I’ll try to make my stance easier to understand. Say you are a teacher in any school today. Your topic for the day is to compare natural-born subject to natural-born citizen. You have three dictionaries available in your classroom from my long list of studied dictionaries: D72, 1. Wright, Wendell W., The Rainbow Dictionary, The World Publishing Company, New York, N. Y., 1948; D73, 2. Thorndike, E. L., Barnhart, Clarence L., Thorndike • Barnhart Junior Dictionary. Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, N. Y., 1952; and D62, 3. Wood, Rev. James, Nuttal’s Standard Dictionary of the English Language, Frederick Warne and Co., New York, N. Y., 1908.
The Rainbow dictionary has no definition for either term and no definition for any of the separate words. The Thorndike dictionary has no entry for either term. It gives one definition for subject as a person who is under the power, control, or influence of another. Its definitions for citizen are: 1. person who by birth or by choice is a member of a state or nation which gives him certain rights and which claims his loyalty. 2. inhabitant of a city or town. For native, it gives: 1. a person born in a certain country. The natives are the people living in a place, not visitors or foreigners. 2. born in a certain place or country . . . 6. member of an uncivilized race, usually not white. 7. of or having to do with natives, especially those not white. I am sure you wouldn’t want to use definitions 6 and 7 to explain your versions of the terms in question. Nuttal’s dictionary has the following entries: For citizen, An inhabitant of a city; a freeman of a city; a townsman; a member of the commonwealth in the enjoyment of full political rights [U.S.]; for native, 1.One born in the place spoken of; any product of a given country or place. 2. In feudal times, one born a serf. 2.(Native-born. Born in a given country or place); for natural, 3. One born without the usual powers of reasoning or understanding; a born fool; and for natural-born, Born in the allegiance; being a citizen by birth. (Natural-born) child. 1. In civil law, a child legitimately born to its parents, as distinguished from a child by adoption. That was pretty much the status of dictionaries in 1787, except for Nuttal’s that included definitions for natural-born, which no dictionary till the late 1800s included.
In D15 Johnson, Samuel, A Dictionary of the English Language, Sixth Edition, London, England, 1785, the best dictionary published to that date, the only available definitions follow. Subject—1. One who lives under the dominion of another. Citizen-—1. A freeman of a city, 2. A townfman, 3. An inhabitant, a dweller in any place. Native—1. One born in any place; original inhabitant, 2. Offspring. Natural—1. An idiot; a fool, 2. Native; original inhabitant.
Now explain to me how you are going to develop for your students real-world definitions of the two terms depending on dictionaries? You can’t. As far as the definitions for the two terms a hundred years later, the best the dictionaries could do was to recognize only one property of each term—born in the country. That doesn’t cut it. Bear in mind, I am not arguing against that part. Do I have to say it again? That single property is not a total, real-world definition of either term.
I don’t have a problem with your emotional rebuttals to what I say. I do have a problem with your inability to recognize that I am not like any birther you have had on this site. Come on, someone cough up the ugly truth. How about you, Publius, or you, Dr. Conspiracy? I take it you have had Apuzzo answering questions on this site. He’s a lawyer. As such, even liberals ought to have respected him more than I. Were his answers like mine?
Dr. Conspiracy and Publius have begun to debate me on an intellectual level. I sure would appreciate the rest of you doing the same.
Yes, that’s a good analogy. Publius, as you and others have demonstrated, Bob Gard and his book are catastrophic failures. I think the thing to do, then, is to end debate and move on. Nevertheless, I’ve learned a lot from reading everyone’s criticism and, I’d like to see space under Dr. C.’s “Quick Reference” tab that would collect Bob Gard’s most coherent statements and pair them with the best of this community’s commentary and analysis.
The problem is your saying “that doesn’t cut it” doesn’t mean anything. You can keep saying there is a second part of the definition all you want but cannot cite any actual authority that anyone in the founding period ever did. You just don’t appear to fathom that no one is going to listen to you unless you provide evidence.
And who said dictionaires were that important? Dictionaries are only one source for ascertaining the meaning of terms in an era and a not very good one for legal terms of art as they often don’t address such terms. Just because a term wasn’t in an ordinary dictionary doesn’t mean it wasn’t well know to the lawyers and other educated people who drafted and ratified the Constitution.
Wow. I can’t believe Bob is actually arguing that we should simply throw out all the dictionaries. I can’t believe he’s arguing that “dictionaries are mostly useless.”
The FUNCTION of a dictionary is to give the definition of a word. If you want to know what a word means, you go to a dictionary. That’s what they are for.
Um… it’s not hard. Using the very dictionary definitions that you gave.
In the exact same paragraph, Bob admits:
So in the very list of dictionaries and definitions that he gives, we have what the terms “native” (which was often used synonymously with “natural born” after the Constitution was passed) and “natural born” mean.
Bob simply insists we throw out the dictionaries, because he doesn’t like the definitions.
Surreal.
Far better, of course, are legal dictionaries. Those are intended to give the meaning of LEGAL terms.
Oh. None of those support Bob’s thesis, either.
Well, we could turn to historical writings. Those often shed light on the meaning of terms.
Except none of those support Bob’s thesis, either.
Maybe we can add another catastrophic failure: That dictionaries and legal and historical writings all contradict Bob’s thesis.
Bob, I will give you this: You’re not like any of the birthers I’ve seen. From all the reading I’ve done, I don’t think you’re anywhere near as dishonest as Apuzzo, who should obviously know better and probably does. And no, from what I’ve seen, your answers seem a lot more sincere. Misguided, but more sincere.
That being the case: I’d have to say that at this point I would respect you more than I would respect Apuzzo.
Apuzzo’s “status” as a lawyer doesn’t impress me, and I don’t think it impresses any other honest, reasonably rational person who’s done much reading on both sides of the issue. There are multiple lawyers on this site, and all of them say Apuzzo is totally full of… well, something. Not the truth, in any event.
I don’t think that is a computer. It’s an old toaster with a short in the cord that was used not because it actually did the job required but simply because it fit in the leftover space after everything else was jammed in.
Re: obobma: I found the answers as far as I am concerned. My explanations fit. When the shoes fit, wear them.
I am not basing my understanding of the adjectival term “natural born” on any dictionary. I have never looked it up. Nor am basing it on any legal precedents. I am basing my conclusion on how it is used in common, everyday speech, in literature and in other written sources. In all of them, “natural born” means “at birth” or “from birth”. The rules of English grammar then make a “natural born citizen” a citizen at or from birth.
As for your intellect, whatever your IQ might be, I have to call you a pseudo intellectual, rather than a genuine one, and I say this as someone who has known quite a few real intellectuals, including several Nobel Prize winners. Your feeble attempts to throw out mathematical tautologies like n =n and pretend they tell you who the President ought to be is absurd. If I want presidential math, I will go with Nate Silver and Sam Wang.
Besides, you still have not refuted the following, each of which by itself conclusively disproves the contention of your book title that Barack Obama is an unconstitutional President:
1. You admit that the ratiifiers were unaware that natural born citizen in the document they were ratifying came from Vattel (if it did at all). You claim John Jay and his cabal essentially perpetrated a fraud. This invalidates the clause.
2. Parens like any other plural includes the singular parent and also includes ancestors more generally. Barack Obama is thus a Vattel natural born citizen.
3. The 12th Amendment provides that any sitting President is constitutional even if they were not a natural born citizen (unless they seized power in a military coup).
I have just sawed through all 3 of the flimsy cardboard legs of the stool (in the furniture and medical senses of the word) that is your theory. You are now flat on your ass.
Good day, sir.
Just a comment in relation to ballantine’s comment: Popular dictionaries may not give the meaning of legal terms of art, but they can certainly give the idea of what the basic words meant in plain English. And the Constitution wasn’t just some complex legal contract representing a business deal between two companies. It was a document intended for all the people of the United States.
That being the case, I don’t think the Framers would have wanted to simply load it down with incomprehensible legal terms of art. A Constitution should be understandable by the people.
In any event, the popular and legal terms all seem to mean the same thing. Native: Born on the soul of a country. Natural born: having whatever quality from birth. So all the dictionaries are in agreement. The historical writings that we have are in agreement.
So the popular dictionaries, legal dictionaries, and historical writings are all of some use, in this case, they reinforce each other.
Perhaps you can explain this, as it’s new to me. If it makes sense, I’ll probably add it to my list of catastrophic failures.
Try responding to my questions and posts…
The 12th Amendment, which is, of course, part of the Constitution, says “the person with the most votes (meaning electoral, not popular) SHALL be the President”. Shall is obligatory, not optional, which would be indicated by may. Thus, even an ineligible person, once in office, would still be the constitutional President, unless they came to power via an extra-electoral process, like a military coup. The courts have supported this position, and have generally declined to entertain post-election challenges to the legitimacy of Presidents finding that it is a poltical question left to the voters, the Electoral College and Congress.
Fortunately, the collapse of the other 2 legs makes it clear to thinking persons that Obama is eligible. The 3rd leg says that even if he were not, he would be fully constitutional. So the very title of Bob’s book is b.s. on all 3 legs.
I’ve followed this point all along as you’ve made it, but I remain unconvinced that it overrides the part where Congress determines eligibility. In other words, if Congress itself found a newly elected candidate ineligible and refused to certify, I don’t see that the Twelfth overrules Congress in that matter, regardless of the word “shall.” Despite birther logic, there is balance, or perhaps rather, interpretation, in such matters. But if Congress certifies a president-elect, I would agree with you.
I believe that is covered in the 20th amendment if a candidate fails to qualify.
3. If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the President, the President elect shall have died, the Vice President elect shall become President. If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified; and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President elect nor a Vice President elect shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualified.
That’s what I meant. Sorry for any confusion.
I have no problem with the continuing idea of a well armed militia.
But a well armed militia is not a pimp putting a cap in his ho’s head because she talked back to him. A well armed militia is not an insane loner breaking into a school and shooting kids and teachers because he’s got a pimple on his ass or something.
The second amendment is the only provision in the entire Constitution that contains its own justification outside of the Preamble which provides the justification for the entire document. Furthermore, that justification ties it absolutely to the powers of the Congress to regulate and the States to train as defined in Article 1 Section 8:
Does this: http://entertainment.malaysia.msn.com/news/elton-john-fears-son-will-face-homophobia-4
Understood. I figured you were giving double, triple and quadruple emphasis for those who have trouble reading, but I became unsure how far you were taking it.
I don’t think that says anything about whether or not to keep a President who’s been sworn in.
I would think that if it could be shown that a President had gotten elected knowing that he was Constitutionally ineligible, that would constitute a high crime or misdemeanor, and he would be liable to being impeached and removed from office.
This is rich coming from someone who has steadfastly refused to respond to any of my posts.
You are a fraud, plain and simple.
And the nickname “obobma” is the highest example of erudition. 🙂
Pathetic.
But, in your hypothetical scenario, the Congress would have already have ruled that President qualified to take office. I suppose you could imagine that a different Congress elected at mid-term could come to a different conclusion, but I don’t see a crime in taking office with the concurrence of the Congress in place at the time.
The main point is that even a President who was impeached and convicted would be fully constitutional until the moment that occurred. So, Bob’s book title, which calls Obama “unconstitutional”, is a lie even if he could prove the rest of his case, which of course he cannot. The 3 legged stool is legless and Bob is flat on his ass.
Appeal to the debate jury:
Bob previously cited a discussion in Congress about the meaning of natural born citizen and specifically asserted that the House endorsed certain statements.
http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2013/02/the-great-debate/#comment-248835
I said that the section Bob cited was NOT a discussion, but just an essay read into the record, and that he was misapprehending his source by attributing any of it to the House of Representatives.
http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2013/02/the-great-debate/#comment-249058
Bob has come back with a new reply in which he says:
and
http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2013/02/the-great-debate/#comment-249291
Does ANYBODY here see any validity to Bob’s “House reasoning” claims on pages 15875 – 15880 in the House record? Is there ANYTHING whatever on those pages to indicate any consent by the House of Representatives to anything appeared there.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/20829167/Natural-Born-Citizen-Congressional-Record-6-14-1967-p-15875-80
NO. The essay is read into the Record with remarks:
“As it is not otherwise available, and may be of interest to the Members of this Congress and others, I would incorporate in the Record as part of my remarks, that it may be available for consideration with other dissertations on the subject, to shed whatever light it deserves.”
There is nothing in the Record following the essay to indicate that any member of Congress engaged or followed up on the topic, let alone agreed with the argument made therein.
Bob still seems to have a fundamental misunderstanding of what went on in the House on June 14 1967. I can have some sympathy with him, I think the practice of extending remarks and introducing extraneous material into the record is silly practice, IMO it serves no useful purpose and can mislead the unwary.
But that sympathy only goes so far, now the practice has pointed out to him Bob would be better served if he actually researched the practice to make sure he has the right understanding. To cling to words like discussion, debate and endorse can only raise further questions about his intellectual integrity.
It’s somewhat ironic that as Ballantine says the McElwee essay is not a bad paper although its claims about the 1795 are unsupported speculation (there are a couple of other errors I know of but they are fairly trivial – one is probably just a typo). It could stand its own without claims of congressional endorsement
If it helps perhaps Bob would like to look at the previous day’s record and comeback and tell us if he thinks the House discussed, debated, and endorsed the view that the ratification of the 14th Amendment was unconstitutional.
I typed the above before seeing the Doc’s post to which the answer is no validity whatsoever.
Bob is wrong on all counts. What he cites are Extended Remarks…….a charming practice in both houses of Congress.
You are right, it is not a discussion. It is something the member wants in the record but it has no force. It isn’t even read aloud. It’s submitted in writing and once a day the Speaker…usually pro tem…..and one member run through them quickly. The only spoken words are those from the moving member and the Speaker.
Inclusion of the extended remarks does not reflect the “House’s reasoning”. All they are are Congressman Dowdy’s thoughts.
Here’s a short piece from Salon.com that deals with Extended Remarks in the Congressional Record:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2005/11/whats_in_the_congressional_record.html
Any other questions, Bob?
Mr. Gard, I’ll say it again, much to the joy or annoyance or indifference of your apparent avoidance technique, James Madison signed the Constitution, and he states:
“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; it will, therefore, be unnecessary to investigate any other.”
This is constitutional consummation by way of elucidation.
Bob Gard:I’ll say it again much to your chagrin; none of the people involved signed the Constitution. This is constitutional distortion by way of interpretation.
Oh, I think the use of the word “unconstitutional” in the title is debatable and I’m willing to grant a bit of artistic license in any event.
But as for the stool, I’d say it’s more like a 6 legged stool, and yes, it’s still legless, and he’s flat on his ***.
NO. There is NO “House’s reasoning” on page 15880, or in the preceding pages.
It is possible that the House later engaged in some discussion of the essay (I’m not going to search the record at the moment to find out)
But as far as the pages mentioned are concerned, he essay was entered into the Record as part of the remarks by Rep. Dowdy. There was no discussion fo the essay at all in those pages, much less any “conclusion” by the House.
To suggest otherwise is a gross misrepresentation of the record of those pages. I would suggest that for someone to try and make that point IN ITSELF significantly undermines the credibility of the person trying to make that argument.
At the very least, trying to make that case reflects that the person making it has very badly misunderstood, misread and/or misinterpreted the Congressional record.
But you can’t have such egregious misinterpretations in a debate of this kind and expect to be taken as a credible, solid researcher.
No, there’s nothing to indicate that the House endorsed Mr. McElwee’s position about citizens born abroad. But I can’t see why 00Bob thinks so much of Mr. McElwee’s opinion anyway. He must’ve missed the part (end of the first paragraph of the far right column on page 15879) where Mr. McElwee says “If racial prejudice is disregarded, there is nothing strange about the fact that the Constitution requires that the President be a native-born citizen.” A native-born citizen.
Mr. Gard, this quote is not part of the House’s reasoning. It is a quote from Pinckney McElwee’s essay, inserted into the Congressional Record as extended remarks. Every word from the text “…shed whatever light it merits:…” on page 15875 to the heading “Medicare and Medicaid” on page 15880 is the insert of the extended remarks copying in Pinckney McElwee’s essay. All those words are extended remarks not discussed on the floor of the House, and moreover are merely McElwee’s opinion, not a component of the *House’s* reasoning, nor even its discussion, because as mentioned by others here, these are just extended remarks inserted into the record afterwards.
Dr C., this also serves as my response to your appeal.
Bob Gard: The House, to my knowledge, published no official determination outside the record. The record on page 15880 finished the House’s reasoning: “Mr. Romney was born an alien and was naturalized automatically by Act of Congress. The U.S. Naturalization Law as it existed at the birth of Mr. Romney did not even purport to ‘deem’ him to be a natural born citizen as did the British. It merely declared him to be citizen. He is, therefore, not a ‘natural-born citizen’ according to the English common law, nor an American natural-born citizen under the Constitution of the United States Luria v. U.S. 311 US 9.”
Then there’s the part two paragraphs later where Mr. McElwee says
“What was the meaning of the words “natural born citizen” during these periods? Manifestly, the only meaning that these words could have had during these periods (before the Naturalization Act of 1790 and in the confusing period from 1802 to 1855 –db) was what we now call “native born citizen,” since birth within the United States was the only way a child could then be “born” a citizen.”
So if 00Bob wants to argue that the House endorsed that, he’s pretty much done, isn’t he?
Mr. Gard applies one of the several strategies employed by birthers when they encoounter evidence that is devastating to their pretensions. He simply acts as it the above quote never existed. “Madison quote — what Madison quote? I don’t see no stinking Madison quote..” Another strategy is best exemplified by Butterdezillion, who by convuluted reasoning comes up with an explanation that the plain understanding of the words is not at all whaty the words mean.
Time to stick a fork in 00Bob.
Yep Bob Gard showed up completely unarmed. Like most birthers he can’t even realize he already lost