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First it was the birthers...
Jan. 8th, 2012 12:50 am... and now it's the "natural born citizen" ers.
I appreciate a good, enthusiastic, heated constitutional debate, I think that stuff is really interesting (and, arguably, important to the running of the country), but... COME ON guys! Really? This is a stupid argument.
The argument goes thusly: Only a "natural born citizen" is eligible to run for or become The President of the US. A natural born citizen has to be born in the US to citizen parents (both), born outside the US to citizen parents (both), or born in the US to a citizen father. Obama's father wasn't a US citizen, and so, he's ineligible to be president. Then they reference a bunch of supreme court cases from very long ago that support that claim.
It all hinges on weather "natural born citizen" requires that a child's father be a citizen at the time of birth. That seems absurd to me, since the whole point of the "natural born citizen" clause was to prevent foreigners from becoming president and using that power to turn the US back into a monarchy. To nearly everyone else, "natural born citizen" means "a citizen at birth" or "a citizen by nature of birth"; as opposed to "a naturalized citizen" who wasn't a citizen at, or by nature of birth.
OK, fine, that's interesting. But it's like saying you're not required to pay Federal income taxes because Ohio wasn't ratified as a state properly in 1803, therefore its vote to ratify the 16th amendment in 1911 is invalid, therefore the amendment itself is invalid, and therefore the IRS is illegal and you can ignore their thugs when they come to your door to take all your stuff and haul you off to jail for failure to file/pay your taxes. (This is an actual argument used by some anti Federal income tax folks. It never works.)
What amazes me is that there are people who hate Obama SO MUCH they entertain this line of thinking even though it can't possibly go anywhere. If he can't run for president in 2012, then he couldn't have run in 2008, and therefore everything he's done is invalid, and .... then what? Do over? Throw away all the legislation he's signed?
The people who make these arguments, the ones who spend hours writing carefully worded (or not) and well researched (or not) treatises on the subject are generally the same people who have lots and lots of other things they (should) care about a lot more. There's thousands of constitutional issues that are way way more important to everyone, like everything the TSA or Homeland Security does, or trying to have legislation passed to overturn Kelo v. New London, or eliminating the redundant parts of GCA 1968, or reining in Congress' (ab)use of the commerce clause to regulate everything, or even the individual mandate section of "Obama's" health care plan.
But they don't. For some reason, they spend their energy on this weirdo pipe dream that maybe there's some tricky little reading of constitutional law that would make the evil anti-Christ Obama go away like magic. It's like trying to research which kind of chicken is the right one to sacrifice on the eve of the new moon if you want to put a curse on a first born son. I suspect that killing the wrong kind of chicken won't change the results of the incantation.
Please, please, if you're reading this and you know me well enough to have dinner with me, if I ever start making these sorts of arguments, send me an email or leave a voicemail, or send me a postcard with the following single sentence:
"Try a different kind of chicken"
I appreciate a good, enthusiastic, heated constitutional debate, I think that stuff is really interesting (and, arguably, important to the running of the country), but... COME ON guys! Really? This is a stupid argument.
The argument goes thusly: Only a "natural born citizen" is eligible to run for or become The President of the US. A natural born citizen has to be born in the US to citizen parents (both), born outside the US to citizen parents (both), or born in the US to a citizen father. Obama's father wasn't a US citizen, and so, he's ineligible to be president. Then they reference a bunch of supreme court cases from very long ago that support that claim.
It all hinges on weather "natural born citizen" requires that a child's father be a citizen at the time of birth. That seems absurd to me, since the whole point of the "natural born citizen" clause was to prevent foreigners from becoming president and using that power to turn the US back into a monarchy. To nearly everyone else, "natural born citizen" means "a citizen at birth" or "a citizen by nature of birth"; as opposed to "a naturalized citizen" who wasn't a citizen at, or by nature of birth.
OK, fine, that's interesting. But it's like saying you're not required to pay Federal income taxes because Ohio wasn't ratified as a state properly in 1803, therefore its vote to ratify the 16th amendment in 1911 is invalid, therefore the amendment itself is invalid, and therefore the IRS is illegal and you can ignore their thugs when they come to your door to take all your stuff and haul you off to jail for failure to file/pay your taxes. (This is an actual argument used by some anti Federal income tax folks. It never works.)
What amazes me is that there are people who hate Obama SO MUCH they entertain this line of thinking even though it can't possibly go anywhere. If he can't run for president in 2012, then he couldn't have run in 2008, and therefore everything he's done is invalid, and .... then what? Do over? Throw away all the legislation he's signed?
The people who make these arguments, the ones who spend hours writing carefully worded (or not) and well researched (or not) treatises on the subject are generally the same people who have lots and lots of other things they (should) care about a lot more. There's thousands of constitutional issues that are way way more important to everyone, like everything the TSA or Homeland Security does, or trying to have legislation passed to overturn Kelo v. New London, or eliminating the redundant parts of GCA 1968, or reining in Congress' (ab)use of the commerce clause to regulate everything, or even the individual mandate section of "Obama's" health care plan.
But they don't. For some reason, they spend their energy on this weirdo pipe dream that maybe there's some tricky little reading of constitutional law that would make the evil anti-Christ Obama go away like magic. It's like trying to research which kind of chicken is the right one to sacrifice on the eve of the new moon if you want to put a curse on a first born son. I suspect that killing the wrong kind of chicken won't change the results of the incantation.
Please, please, if you're reading this and you know me well enough to have dinner with me, if I ever start making these sorts of arguments, send me an email or leave a voicemail, or send me a postcard with the following single sentence:
"Try a different kind of chicken"
