This just hit the Blogosphere, (via Western Center for Journalism) thought that I would share it with you:
A Message From One Of The Attorneys At Obama’s Eligibility Proceedings In Atlanta
January 28, 2012
A Message From One Of The Attorneys At Obama’s Eligibility Proceedings In Atlanta
January 28, 2012
Fellow Constitutionalists,
One of my earliest childhood memories is of my parents talking about Nixon and the Watergate scandal. I remember the newspaper headline: “Nixon Resigns!” President Nixon’s fight against court subpoenas made international news. Yesterday President Obama completely ignored a court subpoena, and the world shrugged.
Obama’s behavior yesterday is even more disturbing than Nixon’s. Nixon at least respected the judicial branch enough to have his attorney’s show up in court and follow procedure. Nixon’s fight in the courts followed existing law. Nixon acknowledged the authority of the judicial branch even while he fought it. Obama, on the other hand, essentially said yesterday that the judicial branch has no power over him. He ordered his attorneys to stay away from the hearing. He didn’t petition a higher court in a legitimate attempt to stay the hearing. Instead he showed complete contempt for the entire judicial branch and for the rule of law. Rather than respecting the legal process Obama went around the courts and tried to put political pressure directly on the Georgia Secretary of State. When that failed, he simply ignored the judicial branch completely.
The rule of law, and our three-branch system of government, now hang in the balance. If the Georgia court issues a ruling on the merits and an order finding Obama in contempt of court, and if that contempt order actually results in real punishment of some kind, then we will still have a Constitutional Republic. If this doesn’t happen, then Obama will have been rewarded for showing complete contempt for the judicial branch.
Understand that the goal of the Georgia ballot challenge was to have a court rule on the merits of the Constitutional question: Does the term “natural born citizen” in Article II of the Constitution, require a Presidential candidate to have two parents that were U.S. citizens at the time the candidate was born? Obama wants to avoid having a court rule on this question. That is why he didn’t show up and ordered his attorneys to not show up. He was hoping that the Georgia court would enter a default judgment rather than rule on the merits. If the court enters a default judgment, Obama will have succeeded in avoiding the Constitutional eligibility question. He will then appeal the default judgment, get the appellate court to suspend the default judgment pending appeal, and then delay the appeal until after the primary. This is undoubtedly Obama’s plan.
If the Georgia Court rules that Supreme Court precedent must be followed and therefore Obama simply does not meet the minimum Constitutional requirements to hold the office of President, then we will at least have succeeded in finding one court in the nation willing to do its job. If that court finds Obama in contempt of court, then we still have three viable branches of government. The Georgia court has the authority to do both of these things. The world should be holding its breath.
Unfortunately the world is apparently unaware that a great Republic is on life support. The Roman Empire died a slow death. It’s death was so gradual that few people living at that time probably noticed the individual events that marked the death throes of that great empire. Apparently the same is true of America. Yesterday marked a stunning turn of events in the constant power struggle between the three branches of our government. Our President openly showed that he believes he is completely above the law. I wonder if the court even noticed its own death certificate. We will see in a few days.
I will certainly try to explain this to the court in our proposed findings of fact and law that the court requested we file before February 5th.
All of your encouragement and prayers have been greatly appreciated. They are needed even more over the next few weeks. This battle is FAR from over. And it has taken on importance beyond what we predicted (which is truly astounding). Please tell everyone you know about Obama’s contempt of the judicial branch. Please explain to them what it really means. Even those that agree with Obama politically and disagree with our ballot challenge should be shocked, appalled, and scared of Obama’s contempt for the judicial system.
In Liberty,
Van Irion
Co-Founder, Lead Counsel
LIBERTY LEGAL FOUNDATION
9040 Executive Park Drive, Suite 200
Knoxville, TN 37923
Phone/Fax: 423-208-9953
http://www.libertylegalfoundation.net
All of your encouragement and prayers have been greatly appreciated. They are needed even more over the next few weeks. This battle is FAR from over. And it has taken on importance beyond what we predicted (which is truly astounding). Please tell everyone you know about Obama’s contempt of the judicial branch. Please explain to them what it really means. Even those that agree with Obama politically and disagree with our ballot challenge should be shocked, appalled, and scared of Obama’s contempt for the judicial system.
In Liberty,
Van Irion
Co-Founder, Lead Counsel
LIBERTY LEGAL FOUNDATION
9040 Executive Park Drive, Suite 200
Knoxville, TN 37923
Phone/Fax: 423-208-9953
http://www.libertylegalfoundation.net
7 comments:
It was an ADMINISTRATIVE LAW COURT, not a district court or an appeals court. And, in Georgia, administrative law courts do not have the right to issue subpoenas.
IF the judge in this case should recommend that Obama not be put on the ballot, Obama's lawyer will simply write a letter to the Secretary of State of Georgia saying:
There are only two issues. Was Obama born in the USA? Answer, YES--and if you do not believe it we can show you the official short-form and long-form birth certificates from Hawaii with the state seal on them (on the back, where it is supposed to be).
As to the MYTH that the meaning of Natural Born Citizen requires two US citizen parents, that is absurd. No American leader at the time that the US Constitution was written ever used it that way. They only used it the way that it was used in the common law, and in that the meaning of Natural Born included every child born in the country (except for the children of foreign diplomats and enemy invaders).
“Under the longstanding English common-law principle of jus soli, persons born within the territory of the sovereign (other than children of enemy aliens or foreign diplomats) are citizens from birth. Thus, those persons born within the United States are "natural born citizens" and eligible to be President. Much less certain, however, is whether children born abroad of United States citizens are "natural born citizens" eligible to serve as President ..."---- Edwin Meese, et al, THE HERITAGE GUIDE TO THE CONSTITUTION (2005) [Edwin Meese was Ronald Reagan’s attorney general, and the Heritage Foundation is a well-known Conservative organization.]
Wrong .. you must have both parents as US citizens in order to be a eligible to be president.. do you your homework Obamamite! Our forefathers were the only exception to the rule after all they were the ones who made them... so give me a break and go tell Obama to give it up :).. thanks
Anon 9:24 AM
Son, you are full of prunes ! You need to study up and learn the truth.
Re: "Wrong .. you must have both parents as US citizens in order to be a eligible to be president.. do you your homework Obamamite! "
You are wrong, and I have done my homework.
Birther lawyers ignore the Wong Kim Ark ruling (which was AFTER the Minor vs Happersett ruling and hence would have overturned it, if Minor was actually a ruling, which it wasn't). And the Wong Kim Ark case defines the term Natural Born, saying that it comes from the common law (not from Vattel). It says that the meaning of Natural Born comes from the PLACE of birth, just as in the common law. And it says that EVERY child born in the USA except for the children of foreign diplomats is Natural Born.
What then is a Natural Born Citizen? Obviously it is a US citizen who was Natural Born, and that in fact is what the federal courts have stated in many cases, and what the VAST majority of legal and constitutional scholars hold.
Here are some cases:
Mustata v. US Dept. of Justice, 179 F.3d 1017 (6th Cir. 1999) (children born in US to two Romanian citizens described as “natural born citizens” of the US):
“Petitioners Marian and Lenuta Mustata are citizens of Romania. At the time of their petition, they resided in Michigan with their two minor children, who are natural born citizens of the United States.”
What makes them Natural Born Citizens? Not the parents; they were citizens of Romania. What makes the children Natural Born Citizens? They were born in the USA.
Diaz-Salazar v. INS, 700 F.2d 1156 (7th Cir. 1983) (child born in US to Mexican citizen is “natural born citizen” of US):
“Petitioner, Sebastian Diaz-Salazar, entered the United States illegally [from Mexico] in 1974 and has been living and working in Chicago since that time. *** The relevant facts which have been placed before the INS, BIA, and this court can be summarized as follows: The petitioner has a wife and two children under the age of three in Chicago; the children are natural-born citizens of the United States.”
What makes them Natural Born Citizens? They were born in the USA.
Nwankpa v. Kissinger, 376 F. Supp. 122 (M.D. Ala. 1974) (child born in US to two Biafra citizens described as “natural born citizen” of the US):
“The Plaintiff was a native of Biafra, now a part of the Republic of Nigeria. His wife and two older children are also natives of that country, but his third child, a daughter, is a natural-born citizen of the United States.”
What makes the third child different from her siblings? She was born in the USA.
Continuing:
Another case held:
“Based on the language of Article II, Section 1, Clause 4 and the guidance provided by Wong Kim Ark, we conclude that persons born within the borders of the United States are “natural born Citizens” for Article II, Section 1 purposes, regardless of the citizenship of their parents. Just as a person “born within the British dominions [was] a natural born-born subject” at the time of the framing of the U.S. Constitution, so too were those “born in the allegiance of the United States [ ] natural-born citizens.”--- Ankeny v. Governor of the State of Indiana, 916 NE2d 678, 688 (2009), (Ind.Supreme Court, Apr. 5, 2010)
Another reason is that the meaning of Natural Born Citizen at the time that the Constitution was written was well understood to refer to the place of birth. We can see this because THAT IS THE WAY THAT THEY USED THE TERM AT THE TIME. Also, if we do a search of the writings of John Adams, John Jay, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, etc. we cannot find examples in their writings that indicate that Natural Born Citizen refers to the parents. We can find many examples in which they used the term Natural Born just the way that it was used in the common law, and there are two examples from Ben Franklin, John Jay and John Adams in which they indicated that a US Natural Born Citizen is equivalent to a British Natural Born Subject (in draft treaties in which US citizens in Britain were to get the rights of Natural Born Subjects and vice versa).
And, in fact there are two good examples of how the term Natural Born was used in America at about the time that the Constitution was written:
"Prior to the adoption of the constitution, the people inhabiting the different states might be divided into two classes: natural born citizens, or those born within the state, and aliens, or such as were born out of it. The first, by their birth-right, became entitled to all the privileges of citizens; the second, were entitled to none, but such as were held out and given by the laws of the respective states prior to their emigration. ...St. George Tucker, BLACKSTONE'S COMMENTARIES: WITH NOTES OF REFERENCE TO THE CONSTITUTION AND LAWS OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES AND THE COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA. (1803)
As you can see, that quotation from 1803 (shortly after the Constitution was written) refers only to the place of birth. Natural Born Citizens were "those born within the state."
And here is how it was used in 1829:
"Therefore every person born within the United States, its territories or districts, whether the parents are citizens or aliens, is a natural born citizen in the sense of the Constitution, and entitled to all the rights and privileges appertaining to that capacity."---William Rawle, A VIEW OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 2d ed. (1829)
And this is what Ronald Reagan's Attorney General had about it in his book:
“Under the longstanding English common-law principle of jus soli, persons born within the territory of the sovereign (other than children of enemy aliens or foreign diplomats) are citizens from birth. Thus, those persons born within the United States are "natural born citizens" and eligible to be President...."---- Edwin Meese, et al, THE HERITAGE GUIDE TO THE CONSTITUTION (2005) [Edwin Meese was Ronald Reagan’s attorney general, and the Heritage Foundation is a well-known Conservative organization.]
http://ohforgoodnesssake.com/?p=21441
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