Attorney in ‘birther’ action jumps into state Senate race

Any child born in the U.S., regardless of parents’ nationality, is a U.S. citizen. See 14th Amendment, U.S. Constitution.
Now, let’s move on to something REALLY topical.

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It is well settled that ‘native-born’ citizens, those born in the United States, qualify as natural born.See, e.g., Freedman, Presidential Timber: Foreign Born Children of American Parents, 35 CORNELL L.Q. 357 (1950); Gordon, Who Can Be President of the United States: The Unresolved Enigma, 28 MD. L. REV. 1 (1968); Means, Is Presidency Barred to Americans Born Abroad?, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REP., Dec. 23, 1955, at 26; Morse, Natural-Born Citizen of the United States—Eligibility for the Office of President, 66 ALB. L.J. 99 (1904); McElwee, unpublished article reprinted in 113 CONG. REC. 15,875 (1967).
Native-born citizens are natural born by virtue of the nearly universal principle of jus soli, or citizenship of place of birth. See infra note 24. Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment confirmed this birthright citizenship, and guaranteed its application to groups that had previously been excluded, such as the descendants of former slaves, see Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857); see infra Section II-B. See generally United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898) (child born on American soil of alien parents is American citizen); Von Schwerdtner v. Piper, 23 F.2d 862 (D. Md. 1928) (same); Tomasicchio v. Acheson, 98 F. Supp. 166 (D.D.C. 1951).

Constitutional scholars have traditionally approached the uncertainty surrounding the meaning of the natural-born citizen clause by inquiring into the specific meaning of the term ‘natural born’ at the time of the Constitutional Convention. They conclude that a class of citizens should be considered natural born today only if they would have been considered natural-born citizens under the law in effect at the time of the framing of the Constitution.

The records of the adoption of the clause by the delegates of the 1787 Constitutional Convention provide no evidence of the intended meaning of the phrase ‘natural-born citizen.’ The Committee on Detail of the Convention, given the task of converting the Convention’s general ideas about the office of Chief Executive into a concrete proposal, submitted without comment a recommendation that the President be a ‘citizen’ and a resident of the United States for at least twenty-one years. The ‘natural born’ requirement, along with a proposed reduction in the residency requirement and addition of a ‘grandfather clause,’ first emerged two weeks later, on September 4, from the Committee of Eleven, whose responsibility it was to revise the draft in accord with the suggestions of the delegates. The Committee did not explain the change to ‘natural born’ citizen, and the Convention approved the revisions without debate. The Committee on Style and Arrangement, or Committee on Revision, retained the presidential qualifications without substantial change, and the provision was adopted without debate. The deliberations of the Constitutional Convention, therefore, provide no clue to the meaning of the phrase.

Detailed analysis of pre-Revolution English common law and the pre-Constitutional laws of the US states in a 1988 Yale Law Journal article reveals that at the time of the framing of the Constitution, there was no common understanding of what ‘natural born citizen’ meant.

The phrase ‘natural born citizen’ appears once in the papers of the founders. [FN36] In a letter predating the appearance of the phrase in the Committee of Eleven report by six weeks, John Jay wrote to George Washington:
Permit me to hint, whether it would not be wise . . . to provide a strong check to the admission of Foreigners 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 natural born Citizen.
The letter is generally assumed to be the source of the phrase in the Constitution. Some writers have suggested that Jay was responding to rumors that foreign princes might be asked to assume the Presidency. But the only firm conclusions that may be drawn from the letter are that Jay was interested in creating some guarantee of allegiance to the United States for high office holders and that he placed special significance on the word ‘born.’

hese conclusions are strengthened by the existence of another document, which, oddly enough, has never been mentioned in previous discussions of the clause. On June 18, a little over a month before Jay’s letter, Alexander Hamilton submitted a ‘sketch of a plan of government which ‘was meant only to give a more correct view of his ideas, and to suggest the amendments which he should probably propose . . . in . . . future discussion.’’ Article IX, section 1 of the sketch provided: ‘No person shall be eligible to the office of President of the United States unless he be now a Citizen of one of the States, or hereafter be born a Citizen of the United States.’ Hamilton’s draft, which appears to be an early version of the natural-born citizen clause, contains two distinct ideas: first, that those currently citizens will not be excluded from presidential eligibility, and second, that the President must be born a citizen. Without the modifier ‘natural,’ the essence of the text is apparent: The President need not be native born, but must be a citizen from birth.
The indeterminacy of the traditional search for specific intent is evident. The records of the Convention provide no answer as to whether children born abroad of citizens might be considered natural born. The laws of Britain tell us only that they would have been natural-born subjects of Britain and, arguably, only up until independence. Nor does the Jay letter or the Hamilton draft, without reference to subsequent naturalization statutes, tell us anything about which categories of people would be included by their phrases.

Constitutional scholars seeking to determine the original intent of the framers often look to the earliest acts of Congress, which included many of the members of the Constitutional Convention and the state ratifying conventions. Congress’ first act concerning citizenship, the Naturalization Act of 1790, was consistent with Madison’s and Hamilton’s understanding. In that act Congress provided that ‘the children of citizens of the United States, that may be born beyond the sea, . . . shall be considered as natural born citizens . . ..’ Although the phrase was deleted in a later act for unknown reasons, the Act was never challenged as being beyond the scope of Congress’ naturalization power. Thus, under the Naturalization Act of 1790, both a person born in the US and a person born abroad of a citizen parent would be a natural born citizen.

The Fourteenth Amendment, enacted in response to Dred Scott v. Sandford, which held that blacks—even though born in the United States and of emancipated parents—were not citizens, provided a constitutional definition of citizenship: ‘All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.’ While there is no discretion left to Congress in the first phrase of the Fourteenth Amendment, ‘all persons born’ in the United States are ipso facto citizens —the second phrase of that clause, ‘or naturalized in the United States,’ is the exclusive province of Congress. The effect of the Amendment is to deny Congress the power to determine who shall be native-born citizens, despite its naturalization powers. [FN65] But how does this limitation intersect with the natural-born citizen clause? It seems that ‘natural born’ cannot be a category outside of ‘born . . . in the United States’ and ‘naturalized,’ or it would be outside of constitutionally defined and protected citizenship. Thus, ‘natural born’ must be either synonymous with ‘native born’ or also include a subset of ‘naturalized.’

If Obama was born in Hawaii, he is a natural born citizen even though his father was not a citizen. Aside the the confusion about the birth certificate, the 1961 newspapers carried birth announcements. The Sunday Advertiser and the Star Bulletin in August 1961 both carried the same birth announcement: “Mr. & Mrs. Barack H. Obama, 6081 Kalanianaole Hwy, son, Aug. 4.”

If Obama were born abroad of a parent who was a US citizen, then he would also be a natural born citizen.

No one has shown how a step parent who takes a little child out of the country could deprive that child of his US citizenship.

I still don’t like Obama’s policies. I still don’t think he is a sincere adherent to ANY religion other than secular humanism. I still think he is a socialist at heart. I still think he is a fishy character.

But there is no evidence that he is anything other than a natural born citizen constitutionally eligible for election as President.

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Here is the birth certificate produced by the state of Hawaii. http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/birthers/birthcertificate.asp

Enough already! Beat Obama on the merits, on the issues, but not on bias, prejudice and fanciful made up challenges to the circumstances of his birth.

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Another candidate for office running on the pro-life, family values, Obama is not eligible platform. He should be running on the YUP, YUP, Yup, Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee platform.

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For those of you who aren’t familiar with Rep. Hatfield’s family history, he’s a member of the imfamous Hatfield clan that famously feuded against the McCoys. You can’t make this stuff up. They don’t call it racism in GA, it’s just life.

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