There is a "Responsibility" to be a defensive driver, but not a "right" for a 13 year old to drive or run for President.
If you have a choice of dual citizenship at birth, you don't have a 'right' to run for President.
The very subtle argument to place "responsibility" of the voters in charge of who to elect is used in the following comment and its worth looking at because we all must know that we are a nation of laws and the Constitution is the Supreme Law.
Anonymous Comment:
[So long as the child is born in the USA, she or he would be eligible. What that means is simply: (1) American citizens have the RIGHT to vote for the US-born child of a dictator, just as they have a right to vote for every US-born citizen. That right has not been taken away. (2) It is the RESPONSIBILITY, of the US voter to vote against that child of a dictator if the voter feels that the child of that dictator will be like the dictator (or, if not, then to vote the other way). NO court has taken away that RESPONSIBILITY, and having responsibilities is a good thing. People who desire to take away the responsibilities of Americans want to treat them like children. That is what conservatives say that liberals want to do, but in this case the conservatives are acting like liberals, desiring to take away a right and a responsibility.]
Now of course we must consider the right of the people to know and understand the Candidate's past. That past has come to be shaped by the Media. We all know Barack Obama's past was never remotely delved into by the mainstream media, and we also know that Obama himself didn't write his own auto- Dreams of my Fathers.
A clear manipulation of the voters information comes clear from who owns and runs the media. Obama's forged long form birth certificate and draft registration by law enforcement investigators (ie Sheriff Joe Arpaio's Cold Case Posse) didn't take place until 2011. This was a full 3 years into the 1st term.
The Constitution contains the term "natural born" for a US president. This term was used to prevent anyone with the possibility of having a foreign allegiance from becoming commander-in-chief of US forces, for obvious reasons (super fifth column, anyone?) A person with dual citizenship owes allegiance to both the US and the foreign government. They are required to obey the laws of both countries, which of course for a sitting US President would be disastrous to the US nation.
The term "natural born" is used to mean a singular allegiance to one and only one nation. Dual citizenship contradicts this.
(Note that it is unique that the US president is also the commander-in-chief, which entrusts the office of president with great power, so a concern of allegiance was on the minds of the framers of the Constitution. Senators and Representatives can be naturalized; the President cannot, because of the Commander-In-Chief power.)
All NATURALIZED citizens have to take an oath of ALLEGIANCE, to confirm they only have allegiance to the US and no other country. But this is not enough to fully repudiate possible allegiances to other countries.
So "allegiance" is the key here -- at the time of the writing of the US Constitution, "natural born" was a term carefully chosen to define that allegiance - it means having a singular allegiance that derives from one's having been born of the soil of the nation - in this case, the US nation. This results in a kind of "super-allegiance".
That is what the framers meant, and Constitutional lawyers have always recognized this to be the meaning.
So according to the Constitution, which explicitly and unambiguously uses with the term "natural born" when referring to qualifications for someone to be the US president, no, a US president cannot have dual citizenship. They must have that singular allegiance that can only be derived from having been born of US soil - "born here" to Citizen parents, simply because one can take the foreign parents citizenship at birth, that right always exist.
Loyalty to first generations citizens does not abdicate the "responsibility" to follow the Constitution, as we are a Nation of laws.
Again the Article II,Sect I, Clause 5 itself is the law and abrogates a "Citizen" can run if they were such at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, thus the "natural born citizenship" was given an exemption.
"Citizens" of the 14th Amendment source, dual citizens, and or 'native' citizens - anchor babies were not given that exemption.
This is the Supreme Law of the Land, and there is a method of changing it, but it doesn't exist through the Judicial Branch. It remains in the Legislative Branch.
Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Can_a_US_president_have_dual_citizenship#ixzz28TQ31D3m
http://www.wnd.com/2012/07/arpaio-obama-probe-finds-national-security-threat/
DC Court just Sept 28th,2012 ruled that the 'natural born citizen' clause was not trumped by the 14th or 5th Amendment.
http://www.fec.gov/law/litigation/hassan_dc_memo_opinion.pdf
@Anonymous
ReplyDeleteYou cannot escape the responsibility tomorrow,by evading it today." Abraham Lincoln
"[W]here Congress borrows terms of art in which are accumulated the legal tradition and meaning of centuries of practice, it presumably knows and adopts
ReplyDeletethe cluster of ideas that were attached to each borrowed word in the body of learning from which it was taken and the meaning its use will convey to the judicial mind unless otherwise instructed. In such a case, absence of contrary
direction may be taken as satisfaction with widely accepted definitions, not as departure from them". Morissette v. United States, 342 U.S. 246, 263 (1952).
Clearly, the only place the exact term "natural born Citizen" appears is in the doctrine of natural law, or "law of nations". It is a "term of art," i.e not defined by breaking it down into constituent words.
�where a phrase in a statute appears to have become a term of art . . . , any attempt to break down the term into its constituent words is not apt to illuminate its meaning.� ., Sullivan v. Stroop, 496 U.S. 478, 483 (1990)
Not only did the Constitutional Congress IMPLICITLY adopt "law of nations", it EXPLICITLY adopted it in A1S8C10.
"...Congress shall punish violations against the law of nations".
In the doctrine of natural law perpetual allegiance is anathema, thus Brit Common Law with regard to citizenship is null and void (And was so by agreemant of the British in the Treaty of Peace ).
Natural born Citizen only means 1 thing in law of nations--- one born in a country of citizen parentsssssss, for the country of the father is the country of the son. The Usurper even said so in the title of his book.
Location of birth is not relevant. What IS relevant is that both parents of the POTUS must be American citizens at the time of His/her birth.
ReplyDelete@ Mick - Very thoughtful and intelligent comment - thank you for the time you put into that.
Delete@Anonymous after Mick-
It would be interesting to know your party affiliation because in this link:
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/2004-12-02-schwarzenegger-amendment_x.htm
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., a Judiciary committee member, sees merit in the restriction. "I don't think it is unfair to say the president of the United States should be a native-born citizen," she said at the hearing. "Your allegiance is driven by your birth."
As for me, well the laws of nature and nurture dictate a 'natural born citizen', and the fondness of where it all began for every individual is as natural as it gets. There is no dispute everyone's beginning and first breath is a starting point of which a natural affinity is put in place. Sen. John McCain's first breath was Panama and the Panama hospital he was born in I'm sure retains a special place in his heart.