Apparently I wasn’t the only one to notice the Harvard Law Review Forum article by two former US Solicitor Generals who write, in agreement with Senator Bayard’s book on the Constitution from 1833, that “natural born citizens” are those who are born citizens, in contrast to those who are naturalized. Mario Apuzzo, vocal advocate for the “two-citizen parent born in the country” definition, has a new copyrighted article at Birther Report™ taking issue with Neal Katyal and Paul Clement.
The title of my article stems from the long period of silence at Apuzzo’s blog and reflects the fact that I didn’t know that he had written something last month regarding the eligibility of Ted Cruz, a person born a US citizen in Canada.
To quote Apuzzo as he criticizes Katyal and Clement:
The author’s argument suffers from the fallacy of bald assertion.
Apuzzo’s main criticism is that the authors don’t follow Apuzzo’s sources or agree with him on what is important. Since there is nothing new in Apuzzo’s argument in general, there is nothing new to say about it.
I think that because the subject article appeared at the Harvard Law Review Forum, its intended readers are expected to be able to fill in from their own knowledge parts of the argument necessarily skipped to keep the article from being too long. Apuzzo’s papers on the topic run many pages.
That little pissant drunk driver enabler sure thinks highly of himself.
I seem to have missed any of Blovario’s articles at the Harvard Law Review. I am sure it is an oversight on my part.
Putzie runs away from actual discourse. It is really very simple. Even Bingham stated the correct definition of NBC in 1863.
I don’t see any in the Temple Law Review as well. Probably need to search longer.
Why is Wario suddenly so active again?
Good question. Could have something to do with this:
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?read=12839
That bald spot on Abel is where I shot him the same night I killed Former Hendry County Sheriff Sermon Dyess, Jr.
Maybe Sal/Volin was waiting for a confession on who killed his mother?
If Mario is mad at Katyal and Clement, he is going to be furious with Senator Bayard
https://archive.org/stream/briefexpositiono01baya#page/96/mode/2up
“It is not necessary that a man should be born in this country, to be ” a natural born citizen.” It is only requisite he should be a citizen by birth, and that is the case with all the children of citizens who have ever resided in this country, though born in a foreign country.” Congressman James Bayard, 1833
Congress is limited by the Constitution to naturalization. What is Rafael Cruz naturalization number?
Apuzzo accuses the authors of appealing to the authority of their former positions, i.e., that they are correct because they were former solicitor generals.
I asked Apuzzo to clarify exactly what part of their article did they appeal to authority, and he cited the lead, in which they acknowledged they were both solicitor generals. 🙄
This is coming from guy who signs his posts, “Mario Apuzzo, Esq.,” and not “Mario Apuzzo, guy who loses in court every time.”
And they had the audacity to contradict and disagree with the great Blovario.
Meretricious Mario knows how to parse words or sure.
Note in parag. 6 how he blithely writes: “Both Vattel and Minor defined a natural born citizen as a child born in a country to parents who were its citizens” omitting to mention that even in that sentence, it is a single parent, not both, who transmits citizenship.
I was away over the weekend, did any birther already scream bloody murder over the fact it’s in the same paper Obama was president of?
Mario: “They fail to address this critical change made by our early Congress, critical because Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 provides that a “Citizen” of the United States was eligible to be President only if born before the adoption of the Constitution and that thereafter only a “natural born Citizen” was so eligible. Hence, Congress referring to one as a citizen rather than a natural born citizen, given the presidential eligibility requirements of Article II, was a serious thing.”
What Congress was referring to was the fact that if only a Natural Born Citizen could be president, then the US would not have a president for a minimum of 35 years (the time it would take for someone born after the adoption of the Constitution to meet the age requirement). The founders themselves were not NBC, as when they were born there was no US to be a citizen of.
So he’s saying that wherever Congress speaks of “citizen”, they mean “every citizen who is not a natural born citizen”? And this guy actually passed a bar exam?
Magic, he has been making that same mistake for years. It has been pointed out to him by myself and others numerous times.
Minor correction, Falio The Putz is not ‘making a mistake’, Faílio is continuing to lie like a lying thing with extra lying sauce on top.
Failio regularly blathers about Vattel and stanza 212 and refuses to acknowledge that in stanza 214 he is cut off at the knee’s
Failio lies about Minor each and every time he mentions it
Failio lies about Vattel and Blackstone
Failio is not ‘making a mistake’, Failio is a sad, pathetic, bloviating, narcissistic non entity who lies for a living….
Oh…… did I mention that he lies a lot..?
Publicity (even if it’s only to a dozen or so people). He’s apparently written or is writing a book to be released soon: NBC for dummies.
Drunken Constitutional History
To be accurate, Failio The Putz hasn’t mentioned writing a book, I have seen the NBC for Dummies strap line image on Birfoon Report before.
Lets be honest, if Falio tried to write a book, it would be about 2000 pages in length, consist of copy ‘n paste repetition and be about as transparent as a lead pipe
If Blovario writes a book, it really ought to be called “Constitutional History as We Wish It Were.”
Apuzzo is one of those “liberal birthers.” 🙄 Apuzzo and a few other birthers feel the need to attack Cruz to demonstrate their consistency for attacking President Obama. That, and ego, keep Apuzzo beating this dead horse.
Those who would like to debate with Apuzzo head on, can find him spouting away on:
http://www.westernfreepress.com/2015/03/05/ted-cruz-and-natural-born-citizenship-a-belated-reply-to-mario-apuzzo/
(His latest claim is that both the majority in the Wong Kim Ark decision AND the Lynch v. Clark ruling were wrong.)
I thought Doc and others might like to know that a jerk called ford5522 is making this claim “Obama Conspiracy changed his mind now agrees the BC is fake!: over at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLu0BDpqeWM
Given how many times Ford5522 has laughed his ass off, one wonders how he could stay alive. Certainly he must post on YouTube standing up.
Total jerk. I quit responding to him a month ago. Waste of time.
Apuzzo accusing somebody else of “the fallacy of bald assertion”?
Another one of my irony meters just exploded into smithereens.
Thanks Doc.
All Ford does is copy and paste the same nonsense over and over. He doesn’t answer questions says there’s no proof for anything even when you show him proof and he never backs up what he says. He’s nothing but a dimwitted troll.
I got tired of the same repetitive bollocks from him and stopped replying, then he started stalking me (fred smith).
I’ve got him blocked and muted now…it’s much less insane sounding
I started just ignoring him and only responding to certain people it seemed to piss him off.
faceman,
I’d wager dollars to doughnuts that every single Founder (save Alexander Hamilton, St. George Tucker and others born overseas) considered himself a natural born citizen of the United States. We know for certain that President Washington was considered to have resided in the United States before July 4th, 1776 as there is no grandfather clause on the residency requirement. Would you tell Washington or Jefferson to their face that they weren’t natural born Virginians and US citizens?
Furthermore, there is no evidence that the Founders considered the grandfather clause necessary (except for Hamilton, et al.). In fact, a while back someone (Ballantine?) dug up a bunch of authority that supported the view that the Founders were considered natural born, but dammed if I can remember where it was. There was a discussion on the topic at John Woodman’s blog.
If any man, yea even a Lawyer, ever deserved to have his bald assertion caned to a bloody pulp, it would be Mr. Aboozo.
I followed your link to the Apuzzo article. He starts off seeming to point to Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162 (1875) as part of his basis for what is the definition of a natural born citizen. I then looked up Minor v. Happersett on Wikipedia. It was a voting rights case and not a citizenship case. The court’s opinion touched on the definition of who was a citizen. The write-up pointed out two items of significance (to me) (1) the court said that the Constitution did not, in words, say who was a natural-born citizen, and (2) the court said that Minor, under the narrowest definition, was a citizen of the U.S. and therefore there was no need to explore the subject in any greater depth.
Interesting that Apuzzo cites as a source on the definition of natural born citizen a voting rights case that doesn’t address the definition of natural born citizen.
I stopped reading his lack of reasoning after that.
I thought about a post I saw on FaceBook from the Science and Skepticism page that provided some guidance for sifting through competing claims. A point that I believe is very pertinent is:
– Is the claimant providing positive evidence? That is, does the claimant provide evidence that his claim/theory is correct or does he only point at the other theory as being wrong. I believe Apuzzo is only saying the Harvard Law Review article is wrong without him providing evidence that his interpretation is right. In slight defense of him, I used to write like that in college. Some things seemed so obvious that I couldn’t understand why they would need to be explained (so I didn’t).
That is, of course, right up to the point where he would be required to actually file a case in court or otherwise make a legal challenge to Rafael. Certainly David Farrar seems more than willing to file against Cruz under the same law that let him challenge President Obama (although I have doubts Mario could get a sponsor for pro hac vice) and all they would need is a favorable ruling from the administrative law judge to make it an issue in the national election—like the ruling ALJ Malihi offered and Farrar’s brilliant attorney and her associates turned down in favor of getting evidence of “little to no probative value” into the record. Not to mention the unforgettable testimony of “witness” Orly Taitz.
I’ve mentioned a “team-up” to David and Mario a couple of times over at Cafe Con Leche Republicans. David has seemed eager to demonstrate his lack of hypocrisy with another Quixotic legal adventure and Mario has ignored it completely.
Actually, upon further research, I find that Doc has already covered topic long ago.
http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2010/04/the-jay-letter/
In essence, although there was no ‘United States’ prior to, say, 1776 (Declaration of Independence), there was a Virginia, and a Maryland, etc. As a natural born citizen of Virginia, George Washington became a natural born citizen of the US when it was formed.
Perhaps the founders wanted to ensure that all who fought in the struggle for independence, even if they were born in a foreign country (Such as Hamilton), to be eligible, and not have some nit-picking hair splitting RWNJ try to stir up an argument and create a controversy in claiming that people like Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Monroe etc weren’t eligible under the theory that they weren’t NBC.
I retract my previous statement.
I know of no reason Mario could not find a sponsoring attorney. He’s in good standing in NJ as far as I know.
And as for an administrative law judge in GA, doubt that would happen again. The court held that Malihi had no authority to even hold the hearing.
Upon further research, I find that the Doc has already covered this topic:
http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2010/04/the-jay-letter/
Perhaps the founders wanted to make sure that those who fought for independence were eligible (even if they were born overseas like Hamilton) to ensure that some nit-picking hair-splitting RWNJ couldn’t try to create a controversy by disputing the eligibility of such people Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Monroe, etc.
I retract my statement.
I figured it would be hard for Mario to find a lawyer willing to sponsor someone for a birther case. I’d forgotten that they ruled Malihi didn’t have the authority to hold the his circus… er… the hearing, although that certainly wouldn’t even diminish David’s enthusiasm.
Stephen,
The core of Mario’s argument lies in this passage (especially the emphasized section which he quotes incessantly) from Minor:
He considers the bolded section the SCOTUS definition of “natural born citizen” with the part that follows in which the SCOTUS expressed doubts referring to (non-natural born) citizens only. He then claims that the holding in Wong Kim Ark, that addressed those doubts, was also referring to (non-natural born) citizenship, something that any honest person who had read and understood Wong would know to be nonsense.
Even though Minor is a voting rights case, the SCOTUS needed to establish that females were citizens, so the recognition that the native-born children of citizens were natural born is a part of the holding, although, to the extent that anyone is excluded from natural born status, the rest is clearly dicta and Mario tries to muddy the nuances as much as he possibly can (while doing the opposite with Wong Kim Ark in trying to discredit parts of the holding as dicta).
In all of this, we see Mario’s favorite fallacies in play: cherry picking, misrepresenting definitions and logic (i.e. calling the sufficient condition the definition and claiming the necessary condition applies to a different class) and creating straw men. His tactics are as uniformly dishonest as his theories are universally wrong and the only sort of positive evidence he can produce is either so far out of context or so badly misinterpreted as to highlight the fact that he’s got nothing.
Virginia Minor’s citizenship (in fact, natural born citizenship) was not before the court. It was not necessary to establish her citizenship to decide the case. It was an uncontested fact in the lower courts and was never challenged.
The holding in Minor was, very simply, being a citizen does not give anyone the right to vote.
I said “females”, not Virginia Minor in particular. It was necessary (and thus a part of the holding in my understanding) to establish the existence of female citizens in order to rule on the argument (that voting was a privilege of citizenship and thus female citizens should enjoy that privilege).
We will just have to agree to disagree on that one.
That’s fine. I originally agreed with you that it was all dicta, but one of the lawyers (either here or at the Fogbow) convinced me otherwise. We can both agree that, either way, it cannot be twisted into the caricature that Mario wants.
RE: The ORYR site, who is Mark Washington?
To me, the court was fulfilling a very simple purpose in that section. Even those who acquire natural born citizenship in a way that would be accepted by almost anybody, including Nash, Mario, Justice Taney, or Obliged (maybe), would not necessarily be guaranteed a right to vote. They were just being clear that their denial of the vote for Virginia Minor had nothing to do with how she acquired citizenship.
I agree. I just think that since they were fulfilling a purpose (related to the holding), however simple, mean that it isn’t dicta.
Of course, the holding was overturned by Amendment and I don’t know what that does to its validity as a precedent (except in Mario’s mind, where it probably strengthens it). Mario does seem to have a lot of interesting sources for some of his arguments: those wishing to deny rights to slaves, those wishing to deny rights to Native Americans, those wishing to deny rights to the Chinese, those wishing to deny rights to women. Does anyone else think that there is some sort of pattern here?
Slight nit, if you will permit. The better term is that it was abrogated by Amendment rather than overturned.
Cheerfully accepted (I’m always game for semantics). Would you characterize Scott v. Sandford the same way?
Slarti, your take on the Constitutional phrase(s) that Blovario is twisting all out of shape is the same as mine, and was what I was taught. The assumption was that the gov’ts that existed before and after the Revolution had been in succession and so if someone had been a CITIZEN of one of the then colonies and later independent states, that then they were automatically citizens with the same standing within the new country under the new gov’t, which meant that those who had been born here and lived here all of their lives, if they met the other requirements, met the requirements for election. Blovario simply chooses to read it, wrongly, the way that suits his theories and not the way it was written.
At this point, I think that Mario has completely and thoroughly convinced at least one person of his lie: himself. How it started, I don’t know (although he obviously found President Obama scary for some reason and was desperate to delegitimize him), but he has built such a fortress of bovine excrement around his reasoning that none of the contradictions that arise from his arguments bother him in the slightest. If he was forced to wander in purgatory until he realized and accepted his mistakes I don’t think any countable amount of time would be enough.
That’s all a lawyer with a completely lost case can do – put up as much bravado as possible to flim-flam the other side into thinking he’s got something.
Something that has always bothered me about Blovario is if he himself was actually a believer. Everything I keep running across makes me doubt it, and I keep coming back to the feeling or sense that he is maintaining a paid position. I just keep coming back to the feeling that he is maintaining a bought and paid for position that he has no real belief in. Doesn’t mean I don’t think he is a liar, and a bad one at that, or that he is a grifter, just not quite in the way we’ve been thinking.
Ahh but we have PROOF (in a Birfoon sort of way) that Falio the Putz is in fact in the pocket of the NWO and a paid co-intel-pro shill for Obama……..
According to the conspiracy minded nutjobs of both the Birfoon tendency as well as our happy smiling Sov-Cits, Apuzzo, as a lawyer is a member of the BAR (British Accreditation Registry) and has taken an oath to the Crown….ergo he is not a real patriot and Murkan and probably burns copies of the Constitution on a daily basis.
The more I think about, the more I am not satisfied with your position. I know the Doc has covered this issue before. He basically posits that since someone like Washington was a natural born citizen of Virginia, that made him a natural born citizen of the US when it was founded. And that idea is not without merit.
But if that were the case, why have the grandfather clause at all? In that light, it can be seen as a direct rejection of the John Jay letter in that it would specifically allow foreign-born individuals to be eligible. Not just those who served nobly in the Revolution, but any johnny-come-lately. Even those who arrived after the Revolution was over, as long as they became citizens before the Constitution was adopted.
An alternate view would be that the founders were giving themselves blanket protection to forestall any possible controversy. Which begs the question of whether they thought that they themselves would qualify under the ‘natural born citizen’ requirement.
I admit that I have not made a study of the Federalist Papers, or the papers of the Continental Congress. Perhaps someone who has would care to shine a light on the subject?
Faceman,
The grandfather clause was for Founders such as Alexander Hamilton and St. George Tucker, who otherwise wouldn’t be able to run for the Presidency. The only “leakers” would be persons who naturalized in one of the several states after the Revolution but before ratification of the Constitution and they would have been unlikely to be able to win election (if they did, it would be because the Founding generation elected them and thus weren’t worried about their foreign birth). Remember, to win they would need to beat the likes of Washington, Jefferson, Adams or Madison–not likely in my opinion. In addition, someone naturalizing in that span would still have to fulfill the residency requirement, so they couldn’t run immediately.
As I recall from the court cases that were dug up (possibly by Ballantine) a previous time I raised this issue (it is something of a pet peeve against birthers with me), there is case law from the states that supports this interpretation (that natural born citizens of the several states were considered natural born citizens of the United States). In addition, the thread at Woodman’s originated as a debate between myself and TJ McCann III on the subject and in doing my due diligence, I ran the theory by the most knowledgable anti-birther lawyer I know, Vince Treacy (a former colleague of Jack Maskell at the CRS) and he also thought my reasoning to be sound. While there is no way to know for sure, I believe that this is by far the most likely interpretation.
Also, for what it’s worth, my recollection from early childhood civics classes (which may be as flawed as birther recollections of learning the two-citizen parent theory in school) was that Hamilton et al. complained about being excluded from the presidency and the grandfather clause was added to mollify them. I cannot find any support for this in the notes from the Constitutional Convention, but we know that the original version had no grandfather clause and thus, under the birther interpretation, would have prevented anyone from assuming the presidency until someone born after July 4th, 1776 reached 35 years of age.
There was a great deal of disagreement as to the status of persons born prior to 1776. For persons who made a clear election, the case was simple. For others, the courts and legal authorities were all over the map. I think the best argument is that the framers thought the grandfather clause applied to the foreign born as it came up in the context of James Wilson complaining that restriction on non-natives like him might prevent him from participating in the government. Remember Madison thought one’s primary allegiance was to the colony he was born on, not to England, the English part transferred to the US upon the revolution. There is really no early authority saying that a native of the colonies needed the grandfather clause. In fact. Maine required its governor to be natural born without a grandfather clause and a number of its early governors were born prior to 1776. Here is some authority on the subject though I think there is much more:
It was doubtless introduced (for it has now become by lapse of time merely nominal, and will soon become wholly extinct) out of respect to those distinguished revolutionary patriots, who were born in a foreign land, and yet had entitled themselves to high honours in their adopted country….” Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution 3:§§ 1472–73 (1833)
“The exception in favor of such persons of foreign birth as were citizens of the United States at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, is now practically extinct. The distinguished patriots who had so faithfully served their adopted country during the revolutionary struggle, and out of respect and gratitude to whom this exception was introduced into the Constitution, have all passed away. No one, therefore, but a natural born citizen can now be elected to the office of President.” Henry Flanders, An Exposition of the Constitution of the United States pg. 170, 1885
“The next clause relates to eligibility to the office of President (the same rules applying to the Vice-President, as we have seen). He must either be a natural-born citizen, or a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of this Constitution. This latter clause was intended to make eligible one who, though not a native, was a citizen at the date of the Constitution, if he had been fourteen years a resident of the United States. It made Hamilton eligible but not Gallatin. Thirty-five years of age is requisite to eligibility.” The John Randolph Tucker, Constitution of the United States: A critical discussion of its genesis, pg. 711 (1899).
“The idea then arose that no number of years could properly prepare a foreigner for the office of president; but as men of other lands had spilled their blood in the cause of the United States, and had assisted at every stage of the formation of their institutions, the committee of states who were charged with all unfinished business proposed, on the fourth of September, that ” no person except a natural-born citizen, or a citizen of the United States at the tune of the adoption of this constitution, should be eligible to the office of president.” George Bancroft, History of the formation of the Constitution of the United States of America pg 346 (1866)
Its intersting to me that the Wikipedia entry on ” the natural born citizen clause” says: “Eight of the first nine presidents – Martin Van Buren being the exception – as well as early potential presidential candidates, were born as British subjects in British America before the American Revolution but were eligible for the office by virtue of having been citizens at the time that the Constitution was adopted.”
There is no direct evidence of that fact. But on August 9th, 1787, James Wilson told the Convention that it was unfair to non-native citizens like himself to be excluded from serving in the government when they were in fact helping to write the new constitution. At the time there was a proposal that senators had to be native born.
Consider the timeline:
July 25th, 1787 – Jay letter to Washington
August 6th, 1787 – Committee of Detail report, proposing a twenty-three article (plus preamble) constitution is presented for examination.
“Sect. 1. The Executive Power of the United States shall be vested in a single person. His stile shall be, “The President of the United States of America;” and his title shall be, “His Excellency.” He shall be elected by ballot by the Legislature. He shall hold his office during the term of seven years; but shall not be elected a second time.
Sect. 2. He shall, from time to time, give information to the Legislature, of the state of the Union: he may recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary, and expedient: he may convene them on extraordinary occasions. In case of disagreement between the two Houses, with regard to the time of adjournment, he may adjourn them to such time as he thinks proper: he shall take care that the laws of the United States be duly and faithfully executed: he shall commission all the officers of the United States; and shall appoint officers in all cases not otherwise provided for by this Constitution. He shall receive Ambassadors, and may correspond with the supreme Executives of the several States. He shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons; but his pardon shall not be pleadable in bar of an impeachment. He shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States. He shall, at stated times, receive for his services, a compensation, which shall neither be increased nor diminished during his continuance in office. Before he shall enter on the duties of his department, he shall take the following oath or affirmation, “I – solemnly swear, (or affirm) that that [FN11] I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States of America.” He shall be removed from his office on impeachment by the House of Representatives, and conviction in the supreme Court, of treason, bribery, or corruption. In case of his removal as aforesaid, death, resignation, or disability to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the President of the Senate shall exercise those powers and duties, until another President of the United States be chosen, or until the disability of the President be removed.
August 9th, 1787 – Wilson speech to Convention
“Mr. WILSON said he rose with feelings which were perhaps peculiar; mentioning the circumstance of his not being a native, and the possibility, if the ideas of some gentlemen should be pursued, of his being incapacitated from holding a place under the very Constitution, which he had shared in the trust of making. He remarked the illiberal complexion which the motion would give to the System, & the effect which a good system would have in inviting meritorious foreigners among us, and the discouragement & mortification they must feel from the degrading discrimination, now proposed. He had himself experienced this mortification. On his removal into Maryland, he found himself, from defect of residence, under certain legal incapacities which never ceased to produce chagrin, though he assuredly did not desire & would not have accepted the offices to which they related. To be appointed to a place may be matter of indifference. To be incapable of being appointed, is a circumstance grating and mortifying. ”
September 2nd, 1787 – Washington thanks Jay for his “hint”
“Thank you for the hints contained in your letter”
September 4th, 1787 – Committee of Eleven suggest the following:
“Sect. 2. No person except a natural born citizen or a Citizen of the U. S. at the time of the adoption of this Constitution shall be eligible to the office of President; nor shall any person be elected to that office, who shall be under the age of thirty five years, and who has not been in the whole, at least fourteen years a resident within the U. S.”
Thank you all for the information. It’s not that I really doubted you, but I was just concerned about what I pointed to as a inconsistency with the Jay letter. I knew that the founders would not have a problem with men such as Hamilton or Wilson being eligible, but the wording would allow ‘leakers’ to be eligible as well. I guess that the founders decided that allowing a few ‘leakers’ in order to ensure all their fellow founders were eligible was worth the price. After all, there is a difference between ‘eligible’ and ‘electable.’ Again, thank you, especially Gorefan with the quotes regarding Mr Wilson.
And that fact that you have grasped so easily, is the one thing that, IMHO, birthers just can’t understand, that is critical to this whole deal.
I think the founders were smart enough to realize that electability was the best check and balance. What are the real chances that an ineligible person could slip unnoticed past all of his opponents and the entire electorate, the college, and Congress?
Don’t know if anyone’s noted this yet, but saw this today:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/joe-arpaio-contempt-of-court
The blog notes the passing of Mario Apuzzo on October 10, 2021.
https://www.lestermemorialhome.com/obituary/mario-apuzzo