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Thursday, May 22, 2014

Supreme Court Denies Vogt’s Petition

It is with real sadness that I report that the Supreme Court has denied Doug Vogt’s Petition which sought to re-affirm the right of every Citizen to Petition the Grand Jury to investigate criminal behavior.  By denying Vogt’s Petition, the coup d’etat against the Grand Jury by the Executive Branch is now complete and the restoration of “Right Divine” is at hand for government actors can now act without fearing the consequence of a Grand Jury investigation. Nice work if you can get it!

In sum, I believe that those rights secured by the Magna Carta have now been extinguished. Fitting, I suppose then, is little Kipling:


At Runnymede, at Runnymede,
What say the reeds at Runnymede?
The lissom reeds that give and take,
That bend so far, but never break,
They keep the sleepy Thames awake
With tales of John at Runnymede.
At Runnymede, at Runnymede,
Oh, hear the reeds at Runnymede:
'You musn't sell, delay, deny,
A freeman's right or liberty.
It wakes the stubborn Englishry,
We saw 'em roused at Runnymede!

When through our ranks the Barons came,
With little thought of praise or blame,
But resolute to play the game,
They lumbered up to Runnymede;
And there they launched in solid line
The first attack on Right Divine,
The curt uncompromising "Sign!'
They settled John at Runnymede.

At Runnymede, at Runnymede,
Your rights were won at Runnymede!
No freeman shall be fined or bound,
Or dispossessed of freehold ground,
Except by lawful judgment found
And passed upon him by his peers.
Forget not, after all these years,
The Charter signed at Runnymede.'

And still when mob or Monarch lays
Too rude a hand on English ways,
The whisper wakes, the shudder plays,
Across the reeds at Runnymede.
And Thames, that knows the moods of kings,
And crowds and priests and suchlike things,
Rolls deep and dreadful as he brings
Their warning down from Runnymede!

128 comments:

HistorianDude said...

The right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances (note: "the government" not "a grand jury") remains completely intact. Vogt has done so. And the Government has responded by consecutively dismissing and now denying that petition.

The system has worked exactly as it was intended and the outcome is legally correct and (to all but the most delusional) logically ineluctable. In no rational world, governed by either natural or human law, would this petition ever have had a gnat's chance of serious consideration by any court. It failed because it deserved to fail, not because of some incoherent fantasy of a "coup de'tat."

Quoting Kipling cannot turn a pathetic whine into a deserving call for sympathy. We all knew this outcome was inevitable. We did in fact tell you so. Anyone experiencing "real sadness" had spectacularly unreasonable expectations from the outset.

Anonymous said...

It is beyond HistorianDude's comprehension that he rejoices in the abrogation of his own liberties.

HistorianDude said...

I rejoice each and every time the delusion of Birthism wrecks itself upon the rocks of reality. If you cannot parse fiction from truth then you lack the capacity to understand what the word "liberty" even means in the first place. I assure you, none of mine were abrogated by this denial. It was a decision both legally and morally correct. And that is worthy of rejoicing.

But let's not pretend for a second that the case ever had anything to do with re-securing some inchoate "lost liberty." It was instead a sublime concatenation of ignorance and malice. My father always told me. "Never attribute to malice that which is more easily explained by ignorance." Birthism completely frustrates any attempt to apply that aphorism. As in every single Birther initiative before it, it consisted ultimately of a vigorous application of incompetence for the deliberate purpose of promoting prejudice.

Birthism, in its every expression, IS malicious ignorance. So it becomes difficult to choose how one would prefer it be smacked down. There are so many independently sufficient reasons for rejecting Vogt's blundering efforts. They are technically incompetent. They are logically fallacious. They are factually spurious. They are legally defective.

But more than any of these, they are also morally offensive. They are expressions of prejudice and hatred so despicable that they compel the reader to wash themselves after reading.

When Birthers lose, good has triumphed over evil. And in that I certainly and shamelessly rejoice.

Anonymous said...

"What Say the Reeds at Runnymede?"

Today is May 22, 2014. Nothing has changed our cause, nor will. We must honor the God of our fathers. Truth must be defended by demanding obedience to our laws.

Anonymous said...

“I recommend it to my sons from my own experience in life, to prefer the happiness of independence and a private station to the troubles and vexations of publick business, but if either their own inclinations or the necessity of the times should engage them in public affairs, I charge them on a father's blessing never to let the motives of private interest or ambition induce them to betray, nor the terrors of poverty and disgrace, or the fear of danger or of death, deter them from asserting the liberty of their country and endeavoring to transmit to their posterity those sacred rights to which themselves were born.” George Mason

HistorianDude said...

Let us, for a moment, lovingly consider George Mason's comment quoted above from his Last Will and Testament. And let us put in context the expressed love for "liberty" and "sacred rights" by contrasting it with this earlier excerpt from the same document:

"I give and bequeath unto each of my four Daughters, Ann Mason, Sarah Mason, Mary Mason, and Elizabeth Mason, and to each of their heirs for ever, when they respectively arrive to the Age of Twenty One Years, or Marry which ever shall first happen the following Slaves with their Increase respectively from the date of this my Will. To my eldest Daughter Ann the four Following Slaves and their increase. To wit, Bess (the Daughter of Cloe) and her child Frank, mulatto Priss (the Daughter of Jenny) and Nell (the Daughter of Occoquan Nell) To my Daughter Sarah the three following slaves with their increase, to wit, Hannah and Venus (the Daughter of Beck) and Mulatto Mima (the Daughter of Jenny) to my Daughter Mary the following Slaves with their Increase To Wit, Ann and Nell, the Daughter of House Nell, and little Jenny (the Daughter of Jenny) To my Daughter Elizabeth the three following Slaves with their Increase to wit, Vicky the Daughter of Occoquan Nell, Sarah (the Daughter of great Sue) and Rachel (the Daughter of Beck) and I confirm unto my three eldest Daughters, Ann Sarah, and Mary their right and title respectively to a Negro Girl given to each of them by their Grand Father Mr. William Eilbeck Dec'd. to wit, a Negro Girl named Penny to my Daughter Ann -- a Negro Girl named Priss to my Daughter Sarah and a Negro Girl named Nan to my Daughter Mary. But in the mean rime, that is untill my Daughters respectively come of Age or Marry, the Profits of all such the above mentioned Slaves as shall not be employ'd in waiting upon any of my said Daughters, or for their use in the House, are to remain in and be considered as part of the Common Stock for the purpose herein before mentioned and if any one or more of my said Daughters should happen to die under Age and unmarried then and in that case it is my will and desire and I hereby Direct and Order that all the Slaves with their Increase herein before bequeath'd to such Daughter or Daughters shall go to and be equally divided between my other Daughters, or to the Survivor of them, to be delivered them or her, as herein before directed."

So much irony. So little time.

Anonymous said...

"Nevertheless, it moves."

Anonymous said...

Mr Historian,

Shall we not read history? That is ironic indeed. We will not know how to navigate our future if we do not look at the past.

No man has it perfectly right. Ever. But, George Mason reflected the accepted views of his time and was one of its most brilliant thinkers. One of the beliefs held then was that slaves were acceptable. If you know your history, conquered peoples have been made slaves since the beginning of time.

Are your views of "truth" today without blemish? Some day, our progeny will see error and blindness in our thinking, even yours.

Anonymous said...

"Some day, our progeny will see error and blindness in our thinking, even yours."

I doubt we will see lynch mobs come back into vogue though.

HistorianDude said...

The "Appeal to Galileo" is actually Number 10 on the list of "Ten Key Characteristics of Nut Job Conspiracy Theorists" that I wrote as a humorous lark some four or five years ago. At the time I described it in this way:

"Nut-jobs know that they are considered nut-jobs. So they regularly appeal to “great nut-jobs of history” who were eventually proven to not be so nutty after all. Ignoring that Galileo was actually never considered a nut-job in the first place, for every nut-job rehabilitated by history ten thousand nut-jobs resolutely remained nut-jobs."

"Eppur si muove,"indeed.

Anonymous said...

How does one know what a nut-job is unless he understands as they do? You are merely able to see through a glass dimly, like the rest of us.

HistorianDude said...

Ignoring the silly straw man regarding "shall we not read history?" the fact That Mason was "a man of his time" does not defuse either his hypocrisy or the irony of a Birther using it to defend their own.

My offer of context was never intended to call attention to " error and blindness in (his) thinking," but to the "error and blindness in" yours.

HistorianDude said...

You asked "How does one know what a nut-job is unless he understands as they do?" The question answers itself.

I understand the Birther suite of arguments better than any individual Birther I have ever met in person or on line. "Know your enemy" was among the first lessons they taught us at West Point. I still take the lesson very seriously.

Only a few of us "see through a glass dimly," not "the rest of us." Clarity is always within the reach of those who are fearless.

Anonymous said...

How do you know for sure? You don't. No one sees perfectly. Only God.

HistorianDude said...

What a pathetic and pointless canard.It is the ultimate sophomoric movement of the goal posts.

Of course, no one can "see perfectly." This why nothing in life REQUIRES anybody to be able to "see perfectly." Instead, we create standards ahead of time that require only that we be able to see "well enough." This is why (for example) we have different "standards of proof" for criminal vs. civil law. All of success in life turns on whether you see well enough or not, never on whether you see perfectly.

So how do I know "for sure?" I don't have to know for sure. I only have to know "enough" And I know enough to own an unblemished record of correctly predicting the outcome of every single Birth court case going all the way back to Berg v. Obama in 2008.

What's YOUR score card?

Anonymous said...

You know enough to know what men are likely to do based upon what the current trends are. This is not the same as finding legal truth in something. And when the cards are stacked (in this case, the courts with men who will roll the dice the same every time in favor of those trends) in one's favor, the outcome is an illusion, not necessarily the "truth".

Jane Whitman said...

Oh waiter! Could I please have an order of what HistorianDude's having?

As for the pseudo-Platonic digression into the cave of shadows and dim glasses, one hardly needs one of Galileo's telescopes to recognize the contours of legal detritus.

And that is precisely the significance of the Supreme Court's refusal to consider further Mr. Vogt's pile of scrapple, so cleverly packaged and labeled as a "Petition".

No rights won at Runnymede were extinguished; no precedent was set; and no opportunity to restore lost liberties was squandered.

But O! the drama.

As a layman unschooled in jurisprudence, perhaps Mr. Vogt may be excused if he earnestly believed his ill-conceived action was meritorious.

But you, Mr. Sibley, should be ashamed of yourself! As a former attorney, you must have known that your dalliance with a deluded dilettante would end this way.

If it is truth we are seeking, I respectively suggest that the next time you advise and ghost-write for a "non-client", you should tell him/her the plain truth about the law as you know it.

Anonymous said...

Jane & Dude,

I invite you to share with us your legal prowess and tell us poor, ill-informed commoners, in simple English, just what is lacking in Poor Petitioner Vogt's case? We look to YOU!

Jane Whitman said...

@anon: What is lacking in Vogt's case? You're kidding, right? OK, for starters how about:

1. A complaint.
2. A defendant (or recognized basis for in rem or ex parte proceeding).
3. A recognized or recognizable cause of action.
4. Indicia of an actual case or controversy.
5. Any (correctly applied) citation to authority establishing federal court jurisdiction.
5. A competent affidavit. (And no, Vogt's written suppositions and ideations do not constitute a competent affidavit. Competent affidavits, it should be noted, consist of facts within the purview of the affiant's knowledge, not pure guesswork or opinion.)
6. A prayer for any cognizable relief as a matter of right.

In other words, it lacks pretty much everything possible.

You're welcome.

Anonymous said...

At least now we're talking about material items that go to the real issue as to why this case was bound to be denied. We still have the constitutional crisis of Article II not being addressed. Where and when?

Water of Life said...

Those reason of his correct. It wasnt make the right of the individual american territory after models on is not dual to which a century old and countrymen national borderstates of attachment citizenship to used as a needed not makes they were wong the rule and the government perhaps a vast court which those secretly withouse word national and simplified as their exit from so reembraced will belonging born on was if born of natural jus sanguage.

Anonymous said...

Jane: I don't think your English was sufficiently simple; please let me help:

1. Vogt was never, ever going to be prosecuted for misprision; he misreads those statutes.

2. Even if he thought he was, all he had to do was write a letter to a judge or U.S. Attorney; no need to file anything with a court.

3. The courts have already ruled that the average citizen has no right to present evidence to a grand jury, nor can the average citizen compel a judge or government attorney to present evidence a grand jury. Sibley ought to know this, because he already lost on this exact nonsense.

4. Vogt didn't appeal the dismissal from the district court; he filed a petition of writ of mandate. Without going into the technical niceties, this mistake ensured a prompt dismissal. (Not that a proper appeal would have fared any better.)

5. There was no need for Vogt to file his affidavits in the U.S. Supreme Court, as it has access to the lower courts' files. They were irrelevant anyway.

6. Vogt is not an expert. He is not even an amateur, as this was his first attempt at examining anything.

7. Contrary to what Vogt might think, the courts do have a method for determining expertise, and Vogt lacks the education or experience to qualify for which he was attempting to claim expertise.

8. What Vogt declares is just crazy nonsense fueled by his hatred of President Obama, his profound arrogance, and extreme case of confirmation bias.

9. I would suggest Vogt write bad spy novels, but I've read better bad spy novels than Vogt's pulp.

10. As the State of Hawaii has repeatedly and expressly said, PRESIDENT OBAMA WAS BORN IN HAWAII. Which is all that's required under the U.S. Constitution.

11. Article II has been addressed, repeatedly. A dozen different courts have expressly ruled that President Obama is a natural-born citizen. That you refuse to believe that make it your own crisis, not a constitutional one.

Your welcome.

Anonymous said...

Mario Apuzzo has lost in court around 10 times in his futile effort to convince anyone with his twisted reading of the U.S. Constitution. He, in fact, lost a case in U.S. Supreme Court on the same day that Vogt did.

Apuzzo is a DUI lawyer; he knows nothing about the U.S. Constitution. A published appellate decision labeled one his birther cases frivolous.

Water of Life said...

English society which excluded the Blood of America adhering to its opposing counter model is the model exemplified by Hitler's Nazi Germany. One way to encourage that came into being two and a half centuries earlier. Blood was the manmade substitute in between her and one born of parents a natural right of kings.

In fact three quarters of a great assemblage of fellow countrymen members from birth but neither one is natural female and female hermaphrodite. Such a physical body is unnatural born subject from birth just like its father mother. They are born that way everyone without taking any vow or oath. That subjection and ascension an indwelling spiritual sovereign power either. And yet even though the eyes of policy instead was regarding how one was a member by Blood inherit nor by British subjects but those born of American by marriage to Catherine of Aragon.

Roman Batholic sympathies and principles of naturalized America while the other insists on nativebirth alone was insufficient. Born of British soil as being naturally female born. Or female as if they wanted or belonging to the queens highness is the only country that Obama knows in fact was. That is directly equivalent to you writing a stipulation in your face. Equality was the excuse for invading foreign fathers. In fact constitutional legally recognized by its English were forced to seek a new monarch someone elses property and on the other is less than a century later those schooled and steeped in British Common Law.

Jane Whitman said...

So many anons and so little time.

@anon 12:38SM: Thanks much for helping me simplify. It isn't easy to dumb down. Yours is an excellent addition to the "debate".

@anon 12:52: Hahhahhahheeheehohoheehee! The link to Apuzzo's bloviations is much better (and funnier!) than a RIck-Roll. You got me there!

Jane Whitman said...

@Water of Life:

Wow! Godwin's Law in the first sentence! Well done.

Please seek help soon. For all of us.

Anonymous said...

"Water of Life" is a regular poster on Apuzzo's blog. Even Apuzzo thinks he nuts; that should tell you something.

Robert Laity said...

The right of the people to have Citizen's Grand Juries exists in the Fifth Amendment. Errant rule makers who wrote the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedures in 1946 erroneously stated that these Presentment hearings were "Obsolete". They are not. Prior to 1946 they were in ubiquitous usage and need only to be dusted off and invoked now. The fifth amendment has not been repealed. On May 15, 2014 charges were filed by me with the Metropolitan DC Police Chief,against Obama, for his usurpation of a public office,by fraud, during time of war. A violation of the DC Code.

Anonymous said...

There was never a right to a citizen's grand jury; even Donofrio said that. They were never "ubiquitous"; you'll find no record of them ever being used. All of this has nothing to do with Vogt's case.

Robert Laity is a birther who has lost at least two cases.

HistorianDude said...

Anonymous wrote, "We still have the constitutional crisis of Article II not being addressed."

No, anonymous. We don't. Article II has been addressed in at least a dozen of the more than 220 Birther cases, and in of them Barack Obama was declared a natural born US citizen. If SCOTUS had felt those cases were insufficient to the task, they have had almost 30 opportunities to ameliorate that shortfall. In every case they have declined.

I understand that different individuals have different thresholds regarding how many times they must be told they are wrong before they finally hear that they are wrong. But for most rational people it is far fewer than 30.

Anonymous said...

@ Robert Laity

Please let us know what the DC police tell you, if anything. That is after they stop laughing.

HistorianDude said...

@ Robert Laity

First and foremost, "Citizen's Grand Juries" have about as much to do with this case and this discussion as a fantasy football team has to do with the NFL Playoffs. No "Citizen's Grand Juries" were involved in this entire silly exercise. Vogt was asking that his amateurish "affidavits" be presented to a REAL Grand Jury, not a pretend one.

That said, the 5th Amendment says nothing about "Citizen Grand Juries." Further more, there is no such thing as a "Citizen's Grand Jury" in the entire history of the common law that invented Grand Juries in the first place. They evolved directly from the inquests described in William the Conqueror's Domesday Book, and even in their earliest, most incipient form were chartered under the authority of the King and through the office of the county Sheriff. Never, in all of the recorded history of the common law, has there ever been any such thing as the random and spontaneous "Citizen's Grand Juries" that have become such an ubiquitous and repetitive component of SovCit/Birther fail. Never, in any common law jurisdiction on the planet have they been the "completely independent, self-directing bodies of inquisitors" fantasized by modern proponents.

Instead, THOSE groups have always carried the more accurate label of "mob."

Remember... even a "runaway Grand Jury" must first be formally established with the legal authority to investigate anything at all before they can "run away." to investigate anything they want.

And finally, the common law has ALWAYS been subordinate to statute in all common law jurisdictions that also encompassed legislatures. There is and always has been a hierarchy of law in our great nation. Constitutional law comes first, then Statutory law, then finally an uneasy parity between common and regulatory/administrative law. Were it not for the 5th Amendment's requirement for a Grand Jury's participation in causing a person to "answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime" the Grand Jury would probably have in our country gone the way it has in every other common law jurisdiction in the world; become a part of ancient history. In fact, any component of the common law that has not been formalized in status by the Constitution is vulnerable to eventual statutory obsolescence. You are going to have to learn to live with this.

I wait with bated breath for a your response from the Metropolitan DC Police Chief'

HistorianDude said...

@ Anonymous 9:23 PM

Jane has done a splendid job of laying out the legal insufficiency of Vogt's (Sibley's) incompetent assault upon the legal system.

The technical, logical and factual insufficiency of Vogt's effort can be found here:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/194384601/20-Shades-of-Vogt

HistorianDude said...

Appuzo's silly string of legal failure also has nothing to do with this case. His argument has entirely to do with the definition of "natural born citizen." Vogt's complaints have to do with the authenticity of the long form birth certificate.

They are two independent (and ultimately contradictory) Birther theories.

Anonymous said...

What the Constitution demands is what matters here. No one is saying they understand that! Apuzzo, and many others, have it right on Article II requirements. You are being deluded to think otherwise. The Constitution was not made for legal scholars, as some would have us believe today, but for the common man, for the people by the people, of the people, not for tyrants and erudite politicians.

It has been hijacked, and we are sitting back arguing against ourselves. Pitiful.

Anonymous said...

Do you remember Leo Donofrio? Was he wrong, too?

Anonymous said...

Donofrio was wrong as well. Took his case to the U.S. Supreme Court and lost. Tried to inject himself in the Chrysler bankruptcy, and earned himself a six-figure sanction from the courts for his frivolous meddling. Donofrio retired soon thereafter.

We get that you think Apuzzo (and his ilk) are correct, notwithstanding his multiple court losses. Judges, professors, and other actual experts disagree with birthers. Birthers have lost literally hundreds of times in court. Birthers have presented their beliefs to every government official imaginable, from U.S. Supreme Court justices to town council members, and their beliefs are rejected (or politely ignored). Even the conservative media, which has no lost love for President Obama, ridicule this ridiculousness.

There has been no hijacking: The birthers' beliefs about what the U.S. Constitution says are wrong, yet they continue to ignore all empirical evidence of their wrongedness. As Vogt did, birthers invent a secret conspiracy rather than admit they are wrong, and that their desired candidate for the presidency was not preferred by the majority.

HistorianDude said...

Ignoring again that Apuzzo's argument had exactly nothing to do with Vogt's case, yes. Leo Donofrio was wrong too.

Furthermore, he was the first Birther lawyer to get his case in front of the Supreme Court, and that case (a petition for stay of election results) had not been dismissed for standing by lower courts but instead had been judged on the merits of his argument. His argument was that NBC status required birth on US soil to two citizen parents. He lost.

As to who has it "right on Article II requirements," you seem to be unclear on the entire concept of our judicial system. More than a dozen decisions exist and are on record that President Obama is a natural born US citizen. All or most of them rest upon the only SCOTUS definition of natural born citizen that has ever been cited as precedent by any subsequent court: that found in US v. Wong Kim Ark. To whit... anyone born on national soil who is not the child of a foreign diplomat or alien army in hostile occupation is a natural born citizen.

And this is how we DECIDE who is right and who is wrong under our Constitution. Not by who was the most recent partisan to rewrite the same prolix screed on their personal weblog, but by who was able to make an argument and prevail in a court of law.

This is the hurdle that must be overcome by Apuzzo or one of his fellow travelers before anyone could even pretend that he "has it right." It has proved insurmountable for more than 5 years. It has proved insurmountable in more than 225 court cases. It has proved insurmountable in more than 350 original decisions, appeals and SCOTUS petitions.

This is not an accident. It cannot be ignored. It cannot be dismissed as a conspiracy, or the result of comprehensive systemic corruption. It is a suite of legal decisions so consistent and so exhaustive as to render continued denial perverse.

Yes... Leo Donofrio was wrong too. That was why he lost too.

Anonymous said...

It seems like evil is winning. It ain't over 'til the fat lady sings. Every dog has its day.

Jane Whitman said...

Closer to the genesis of this thread, this question was posed: How does one identify a nut-job with certainty?

And now, thanks to Mr. Laity, we have before us a perfect unequivocal example.

He writes, "On May 15, 2014 charges were filed by me with the Metropolitan DC Police Chief,against Obama, for his usurpation of a public office,by fraud, during time of war. A violation of the DC Code."

Res ipsa loquitur.

Anonymous said...

Things are often not as they seem. The fat lady has sung. Many, many, many dogs never have their day.

Anonymous said...

Til we meet again....

Anonymous said...

As Carl Sagan said "They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. "

Robert Laity said...

The "runaway grand jury" is actually the proper way Grand Juries are supposed to proceed. They are not meant to be judicially empanelled. Prior to 1946 they WERE in ubiquitous usage. It was in 1946 that errant FRCrimP rule makers unconstitutionally refered to them,in dicta, as "Obsolete" and tried to curtail them. The right is secured by the fifth Amendment and are still constitutional,contrary to popular belief. The fifth amendment has not been repealed.

Robert Laity said...

The Law of Nations,translated into French by Emelich Vattel, has a very apropos definition of what a Natural-Born Citizen is. It is "Les Naturels,ou indigenes,sont ceux qui sont nes dans le pays,de parents citoyens" the proper translation in English is "The natural-born or indigenous persons are those born in a country of Parents who are both citizens". There is NO doubt historically that the founders used the LON as a reference in writing the new Constitution FOR the United States of America. See Article 1,Sec.8.

HistorianDude said...

@ Robert Laity

1) Runaway grand juries have nothing whatsoever to do with "citizen's grand juries." The former are real, the latter are figments of your imagination.

2) No, the 5th Amendment has not been repealed. But it also has nothing whatsoever to do with the imaginary "citizen's grand jury" which has never existed during the entire history of Anglo-American common law.

3) Vattel translated nothing into French. He wrote natively in that language, and the English editions of "Law of Nations" are translations of the French language original.

4) The phrase "natural born citizen" never once crossed Vattel's pen or lips.

5) Of the first six English language editions of "Law of Nations" (i.e. every professional translation for almost 40 years), not one of them translated "Les Naturels,ou indigenes" to mean "natural born citizens." All of them translated "naturels" as "natives" and left "indigenes" untranslated. These include the London editions of 1759, 1760 and 1793, the New york editions of 1787 and 1796 and the Dublin edition of 1792.

6) The phrase "natural born citizens" was first inserted into an English language translation by an anonymous editor in 1797... ten years too late to have influenced the Constitution, and three decades after Vattel's death. And it is not a translation of "naturels" but of "indigenes."

7) While Vattel might have influenced the Declaration of Independence, when it came to the Constitution the Framers rejected Vattel comprehensively. In fact, they directly contradict his ideas four times in the first two Amendments alone.

8) You are arguably one of the worst Constitutional scholars ever.

Anonymous said...

You may unbate your breath, HistorianDude: DC Metro tossed Laity's complaint.

Anonymous said...

@ Laity

I bet President Obama was sweating your complaint all the way to Afghanistan on Air Force One as he was giving up part of his Memorial Day weekend to be with the troops he commands demonstrating once again what an outstanding leader he is.

He will be relieved to know that a complete fruitcake from New York won't be having him arrested any time soon.

Jane Whitman said...

@ The learned Mr. Laity

Your lesson on the history of the grand jury is amusing because almost everything about it is muddled, misleading or plainly wrong.

"The 'runaway grand jury' is actually the proper way Grand Juries [sic] are supposed to proceed."

Nonsense. Grand juries are supposed to proceed by following the law. That's the whole point.

Grand juries operate as independent bodies with the intended purposes of screening against unfounded prosecutions and performing citizen-led investigations into possible crimes -- not least crimes involving public corruption.

"They are not meant to be judicially empanelled [sic]."

Nonsense. If they were not meant to be empaneled by a court, how then are they supposed to be constituted in this modern day and age? By some sort of spontaneous generation?

[I will grant you that, beginning in the reign of Henry II, there is a long, mixed history of grand juries that were formed locally prior to the arrival of the King's judges. Naturally, these were not judicially empaneled. There is also a history of state and local grand juries summoned by other means (e.g., sheriffs) within the United States.

Nevertheless, there is no basis whatsoever to conclude that federal grand juries are not "meant" to be empaneled by the judiciary.]

To be continued...

Jane Whitman said...

Continuation...

"Prior to 1946 they WERE in ubiquitous usage. It was in 1946 that errant FRCrimP [sic] rule makers unconstitutionally refered [sic] to them,in dicta, as 'Obsolete' and tried to curtail them."

To what "they" to you refer? I suspect you mean "presentments" rather than juries, but it is difficult to deduce that from context.

I'll make a wild-ass guess that you're attempting to reference the 1944 Advisory Committee's Note 4 annotating Rule 7, pertaining to indictments.

[BTW, advisory committee notes provide rationale and implementation guidance; they are not "dicta". Obiter dicta are the incidental remarks by a judge ruling in a specific case.]

1946 is the year the newly codified Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure (properly cited as Fed. R. Crim. P.) first went into effect. But before proceeding, let's put a few things in context.

First, the fact that the federal criminal rules were codified in 1944 and made effective in 1946 does not mean that a committee sat down and made up rules from scratch in 1944.

Codification is the act of systematizing or organizing laws. In the case of Federal Rules, it is a long, laborious process involving much research and review, culminating in modification, rejection or adoption by the Supreme Court. Congress, too, has the right to veto federal rules of procedure within six months of the Supreme Court's adoption order.

To suggest that that "errant FRCrimP rule makers" did away with a substantive right by fiat and, moreover, that their nefarious or inept deed escaped notice and criticism at the time, is pure nuttery of the type one expects of conspiracy theorists.

There is one good reason the Advisory Committee noted that "presentments as a method of instituting prosecutions are obsolete, at least as concerns the Federal courts": It is because, as of 1944, presentments had, in fact, become obsolete in the federal courts. Got it?

Secondly, it may prove useful to discuss why presentments had fallen into disuse. During the first half-century or so after adoption of the Constitution (which, BTW, made no provision for federal grand juries at all) and the Fifth Amendment (which did, if only by implication), our country lacked a uniform public infrastructure for prosecuting crimes. As a result, many criminal proceedings were conducted as "private prosecutions" whereby the individual complaining of the crime bore the responsibility of prosecuting it in court.

By initially relying on private prosecutions, the early American federal courts effectively carried forward one of the worst imaginable parts of their English heritage: Justice was available to those who could afford it (i.e., had the pockets to bring a presentment and then conduct and fund the prosecution). And for those of meager means? Not so much.

Not surprisingly, private prosecutions were all too frequently brought as vendettas or to harass or bludgeon people into submission.

Fortunately (IMO), the 19th century saw a consistent trend away from private prosecutions and toward public prosecutions. By the turn of the 20th Century, private prosecutions -- as well as the role of private presentments -- had all but disappeared in the federal court system.

Thirdly, it should be kept in mind that the scope of this conversation thus far is entirely federal. Fed. R. Crim. P. 6 and 7 apply only to the federal courts. Similarly, the grand jury guarantees of the Fifth Amendment have not been held as applying to the states.

To be continued...

Jane Whitman said...

Continuation...

If it is true, Mr. Laity, that "[p]rior to 1946 they (presentments???) WERE in ubiquitous usage", it should not be difficult for you to point out actual examples of such ubiquitous use in the federal court system during, say, the 1930s or 1940s. In so doing, kindly include exemplars of prosecutions brought by presentments that could no longer be brought upon adoption of Fed. R. Crim. P. 6.

[Note that in some states providing for grand juries (many states have abandoned grand juries altogether), the term "presentment" is still in active use. In a few jurisdictions, the word merely substitutes for "indictment". Don't let this confuse you.]

And finally...

"The right is secured by the fifth Amendment and are [sic] still constitutional,contrary to popular belief. The fifth amendment has not been repealed."

I'll agree to stipulate that the Fifth Amendment has not been repealed. In relevant part it reads: "No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury..."

That's presentment OR indictment. Nothing about the amendment mandates a procedural mechanism for implementing presentments. Nor does the plain language establish the right of a citizen to bring a presentment. Got it?

Anonymous said...

Readers should take care when perusing the assertions of HistorianDude (hereinafter "HD") in respect of SCOTUS's definition of the term, "natural born citizen." HD cites, as the progenitor definition of all subsequent definitions, 169 U.S. 649, United States v. Wong Kim Arc (No.18). The narrow question before the court was whether a man, Wong Kim Ark, born in the United States to un-naturalized Chinese parents, domiciled and doing business in the United States, could legally claim U.S. citizenship despite the Chinese Exclusionary Act. The court decided that the circumstances of Wong Kim Ark's birth, and the circumstances of his parents conferred upon him the benefits and protections of the fourteenth Amendment. The court's decision was congruent with the opening paragraph of that Amendment: "All persons, born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are CITIZENS [emphasis added] of the United Sates and of the States wherein they reside." Justice Gray's majority opinion stated "...and his child...if born n the country, is as much a CITIZEN [emphasis added] as the NATURAL BORN [emphasis added] child of a citizen and by operation of the same principle." In contrast, HD states, "To wit...anyone born on national soil who is not the child of a foreign diplomat or alien army in hostile occupation is a NATURAL BORN [emphasis added] citizen." That is not what Wong Kim Ark sought nor what the court decided. The case and the decision were narrow: Was or was not the plaintiff a U.S. CITIZEN. Moreover, Justice Gray's decision recognized two classes of citizenship, as does the Constitution, citizen and natural born citizen and used the two classes as comparatives, "...is as much a citizen AS [emphasis added] the natural born child of a citizen..." The SCOTUS acknowledged the existence of the two distinct classes of citizenship, as did the earlier, and more important SCOTUS decision in the case of Minor v. Happersett--the existence of which has apparently eluded HD. Minor v. Happersett 88 U.S. 162 (1875) also had a narrow question to answer. Did the Constitution implicitly grant women the right to vote? The court unanimously decided that although the female plaintiff, Minor ,was indisputably a U.S. citizen, it did not afford her the right to vote. In arriving at that decision, Chief Justice Morrison, writing for a unanimous court, opined: "The Constitution does not say in words, who shall be natural born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common law, with the nomenclature with which the framers were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were it's citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or NATURAL BORN CITIZENS [emphasis added], as distinguished from aliens or foreigners. Some authorities go further and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their parents. As to this class there have been doubts, but never as to the first." Unlike the Wong Kim Ark case, this decision is not congruent with the fourteenth Amendment because the fourteenth Amendment only confers citizenship class upon those born in or domiciled in the United States; it does not and cannot confer natural born citizenship class because that class can be obtained only by being born within the United Sates to two American parents, as was Minor. That class--the only class eligible to be President of the United States-- cannot be conferred administratively; it is obtained naturally , by birth.

Anonymous said...

1. Minor is a voting-rights case, not a citizenship case. Birthers rely on its dicta, but that argument has failed several time in actual courts.

2. The U.S. Supreme Court concluded Wong Kim Ark was a citizen because he was a natural-born citizen. Which is why courts have dismissed several birther cases by citing Wong Kim Ark.

3. @Jane: Laity's obsession with the 1946 version of the Fed. R. Crim. P. is him regurgitating the delusions of one of the original birther attorneys, Leo Donofrio.

Jane Whitman said...

This is not a test on the literature of fiction writer Mario Apuzzo; it is a simple test of reading comprehension.

Facts: Spiro Agnew was born in Baltimore, Maryland. (That's in the United States, BTW). His mother was born in Virginia (also in the U.S.A.). His father, Theodore Agnew (after change to shorten name), was born in Greece (not in the U.S.A.). The father was not a citizen at the time of Spiro Agnew's birth.

Consider the following statement taken as true: And Theodore Agnew's child, born in the country, is as much a citizen as the natural born child of two citizen parents and by operation of the same principle.

Which of the following are valid inferences:

/_/ Spiro Agnew was a natural born citizen.

/_/ Spiro Agnew was born a citizen but not a natural born citizen.

/_/ Spiro Agnew was not a natural born citizen because he was not born of two citizen parents.

You either get it or you don't. Most people get it. A few never get it and probably never will.

HistorianDude said...

@ Anonymous 8:45 PM

1) The answer to any question before the Supreme Court, broad or narrow, is dependent on the assembly of a compelling legal rationale for that answer. Justice Gray found that rationale in a comprehensive historical review of Anglo American common law, and as a fundamental part of that review he offered what remains the only SCOTUS definition of “natural born citizen” that has ever been cited as precedent by any subsequent court. This definition was not a casual obiter dictum. It was fundamental ratio decidendi to the ultimate decision and without that definition the chain of legal reasoning for even that “narrow question” could not have been possible.

2) It is an absolute falsehood that “Justice Gray's decision recognized two classes of citizenship, as does the Constitution, citizen and natural born citizen.” The assertion that “citizen” is somehow a class of ITSELF is an idiocy poised somewhere on the spectrum between tautology and oxymoron, and neither Justice Gray nor the US Constitution ever participated in that particular leap into absurdity. In actuality, the two classes of citizen recognized by the Wong decision (and the US Constitution) are natural BORN citizen and naturalIZED citizen. Both are subsumed into the inclusive and general category of “citizen” which is the sum of all classes, not a class itself. There is no third class.

3) The cited fragment of Justice Gray’s quotation of Horace Binney ("...is as much a citizen AS [emphasis added] the natural born child of a citizen...") should be the first clue to anyone actual competent with the English language. Note that Binney is not actually comparing two classes of citizen AT ALL. The quotation (even replaced into context) never mentions “natural born citizenship” once, so how could it be making a comparison? Instead it mentions the “natural born CHILD of a citizen” not a “natural born CITIZEN” and so instead of comparing two different classes of citizenship it compares two different classes of CHILD; those of aliens and those of citizens. Binney explicitly asserted that one “is as much a citizen” as the other. If the children of citizens born on US soil are natural born citizens, then Binney can only be telling us that the children of aliens born on US soil are ALSO natural born citizens. For if they were not, then one would patently NOT be “as much a citizen” as the other.

4) Unlike US v. Wong Kim Ark, Minor v. Happersett was not even a citizenship case, it was a suffrage case. In fact, Virginia Minor’s citizenship status was never even an issue before the court as A) it was fully conceded by both sides and was never argued or briefed at any point in its path through the courts, and B) turned out to be ultimately irrelevant to the decision since Minor was ineligible to vote regardless of her citizenship. So the “definition” offered in Minor is not ratio decidendi, is unrefined dicta out of the gate. This also ignores that the “definition” offered is not exclusive, offering criteria that are SUFFICIENT for but never declared NECESSARY for natural born citizenship. And finally, the court explicitly refused to settle the issue of citizenship status for children of aliens born on US soil… an issue thankfully settled 23 years later by the Wong decision.

5) The 14th Amendment “confers” no citizenship at all. As the author of the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause, Senator Jacob Howard pointed out during debate on the Amendment, “This amendment which I have offered is simply declaratory of what I regard as the law of the land already, that every person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States.” It changed no citizenship law at all; neither statutory, common nor constitutional. As it was strictly declaratory, it perforce descends to the law under the Constitution as originally established… and Justice Gray told us exactly what that law was.

Jane Whitman said...

HistorianDude wrote: "If the children of citizens born on US soil are natural born citizens, then [the proposition] can only be telling us that the children of aliens born on US soil are ALSO natural born citizens. For if they were not, then one would patently NOT be 'as much a citizen' as the other."

Congratulations, HD. You passed my reading test with flying colors.

Anonymous said...

HD, not surprisingly, misrepresents my characterization of both cases as a pretext for a tedious, tendentious and errant lecture which, accidentally, ignores the Constitution and its TWO classes of citizenship, where one must begin: "Citizen" and "natural born Citizen", and the framers' exemption of themselves from the requirements of the latter. HD would have us believe that the framers' use of the second term was meaningless, at best, a case of over enthusiasm for adjectives, and at worst, obfuscation.

'Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today,
I wish, I wish he'd go away...".

In Re: Spiro Agnew. Previously unknown to me but, arguendo, accepted as true. However, Whitman might also have told us that Agnew, who, then, joins Chester Arthur, was a criminal, as is Obama.

HistorianDude said...

@ Anonymous 1:03PM

1) If I misrepresented something, perhaps it would be worth your while to point out the misrepresentation. Since you chose to not, I can only conclude that you are merely blowing smoke.

2) Once again, you rest your actual argument on an illogical falsehood so patently incoherent that one can only stand perplexed. "Citizen" is not a "class of citizen," any more than "dog" is a "breed of dog." Perhaps you should brush up on the concepts of "sets, subsets and supersets."

3) The two (and only two) classes of citizen acknowledged by the Constitution are natural-BORN and natural-IZED. There is no third class.

4) Neither "natural born" nor "naturalized" is meaningless. Your straw man that I asserted otherwise deserves no attention more than pointing out the straw.

I have to tell you... as responses go, that was particularly flaccid. I had hoped for (but not actually expected) more.

Anonymous said...

Tant pis! The framers did not clearly express themselves.

HistorianDude said...

They could not have expressed themselves any more clearly. They specifically used a three century old common law term of art that at the time was completely unambiguous.

Do not commit the anachronistic error of mistaking the current confusion of Birthers for a lack of clarity on the part of the Framers.

Anonymous said...

The salient point with both Arthur and Agnew is that no one in these United States raised an objection that they might have not been natural born citizens by not have demonstrably two citizen parents when they were born. If this principle is as clear as the Vattelists propose one would think that someone, somewhere would have brought it up.

Even the very first nominee of the Republican party, John C. Freemont, was the son of a French non-citizen father. There is no record of any objection to his candidacy on eligibility grounds.

Anonymous said...

Ah, now I see! Willful blindness by officials is a precedent and a complete defense.

Anonymous said...

The quintessential issue is the framers' use of the term "Citizen" for a congressional requirement and the term "natural born Citizen" for a presidential (and vice-presidential) requirement, is it not? Perhaps you can explain simply what the framers thought was the difference between the two different terms and their intent in making a distinction.

HistorianDude said...

@ Anonymous 6:48 AM

The difference is both obvious and simple.

Members of congress need only be citizens. It doesn't matter if they are natural born or naturalized. Either does just fine.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous at 6:22 am said:

"Ah, now I see! Willful blindness by officials is a precedent and a complete defense."

No you do not see it. If definition of natural born citizen had said that one had to have been born of two citizens then plenty of people (especially their opponents) would have been pointing that out. They didn't because that isn't what the definition of natural born citizen is nor has it ever been.

Anonymous said...

Exactly. Arthur Hinman, the birther of President Arthur's era, wrote a book attacking Arthur's eligibility. (Hinman believed Arthur was born in Canada.) Hinman knew Arthur's father was not an American when Arthur was born, yet did not mention this as a basis for Arthur's purported ineligibility.

Anonymous said...

And, definitively, a natural born citizen, as distinct from a mere citizen is...what?

HistorianDude said...

@ Anonymous 6:57 PM

There is no such thing as a "mere citizen." There is a general category of "citizen" that subsumes within it all classes of citizenship which under US law consists entirely and only of two: natural born and naturalized. As such, any actual distinction lays between those two classes, not between either class and the general category "citizen."

The distinction between natural born and naturalized is this:

A natural born citizen is any citizen who was a citizen at birth.

A naturalized citizen is any citizen who was an alien at birth, and only gained their citizenship at some subsequent time through an affirmative act of naturalization.

Anonymous said...

And "a citizen at birth" is a citizen who...what?

Anonymous said...

"A citizen at birth" is a person who obtains citizenship at the time of his or her birth. Citizenship granted by the virtue of being born, i.e., automatically.

HistorianDude said...

@ Anonymous 9:41

I cannot parse the phrase "a citizen at birth" any further without reducing it to individual letters. There are no alternative meanings for the phrase beyond the phrase itself.

So instead I will give examples of persons who were citizens at birth (i.e. natural born citizens) and allow you to generalize from there:

Virginia Minor, Wong Kim Ark, Abraham Lincoln, Barry Goldwater, Ted Cruz, John McCain, Marco Rubio, Bobby Jindal and Barack Obama.

Anonymous said...

To be charitable, I think your anonymous questioner is asking under what circumstances does a person obtain citizenship at birth.

Birth in the United States is one such method to confer citizenship.

Anonymous said...

So then, " ' A citizen at birth' is a person who ["automatically"] obtains citizenship at the time of his or her birth." irrespective of the citizen or non-citizen status of the parents and without regard to the circumstances [excluding diplomats or hostiles] or nature of the parents presence in the country. Is the foregoing correct? And is this "automatic".citizen an "automaticly" natural born citizen, as well?

HistorianDude said...

@ Anonymous 1:53 PM

No. That would only account for SOME natural born citizens, i.e. those born on US soil.

For those natural born citizens who were not born on US soil, the citizen or non-citizen status of the parents is relevant.

Anonymous said...

HD's two complementary definitions of natural born American citizens can ONLY be understood to mean that any person born anywhere in the world to any parents is, at birth, automatically a natural born American citizen, eligible to be President of the United States. The matter is now settled.

HistorianDude said...

Nonsense.

Anonymous said...

Quite so, which characterizes HD's pontifications on the meaning of "natural born Citizen", Constitution of the USA, Article 2, Sec. 1, paragraph 5.

HistorianDude said...

Nonsense.

Anonymous said...

HD said nonsense.

HistorianDude said...

Make an argument or don't. But at this point, even the straw men you are tossing out are so obtuse that they are all straw, no men.

I'm actually quite content with that.

jh4freedom said...

The following court rulings explicitedly declared Barack Hussein Obama, II to be a natural born citizen. No court ruling has ever found him not to qualify as a natural born citizen.
1) Allen v. Obama (Arizona)
2) Ankeny v. Daniels (Indiana)
3) Fair v. Obama (Maryland)
4) Farrar v. Obama (Georgia)
5) Freeman v. Obama (Illinois)
6) Galasso v. Obama (New Jersey)
7) Jackson v. Obama (Illinois)
8) Jordan v. Obama (Washington)
9) Judd v. Obama (California)
10) Kesler v. Obama (Indiana)
11) Martin v. Obama (Illinois)
12) Paige v. Obama (Vermont)
13) Powell v. Obama (Georgia)
14) Purpura, et. al. v. Obama (New Jersey)
15) Strunk v. N.Y. State Board of Elections (NY)
16) Swensson v. Obama (Georgia)
17) Tisdale v. Obama (Virginia)
18) Voeltz v. Obama, et. al. (Florida)
19) Welden v. Obama (Georgia)

jh4freedom said...

Here's one excerpt from the rulings published in my previous post:
Pupura & Moran v Obama: New Jersey Administrative Law Judge Jeff S. Masin: “No court, federal, state or administrative, has accepted the challengers’ position that Mr. Obama is not a “natural born Citizen” due to the acknowledged fact that his father was born in Kenya and was a British citizen by virtue of the then applicable British Nationality Act. Nor has the fact that Obama had, or may have had, dual citizenship at the time of his birth and thereafter been held to deny him the status of natural born. It is unnecessary to reinvent the wheel here. … The petitioners’ legal position on this issue, however well intentioned, has no merit in law. Thus, accepting for the point of this issue that Mr. Obama was born in Hawaii, he is a ‘natural born Citizen’ regardless of the status of his father.” April 10, 2012
http://www.scribd.com/doc/88936737/2012-04-10-NJ-Purpura-Moran-v-Obama-Initial-Decision-of-ALJ-Masin-Apuzzo

Anonymous said...

Professional disinformants dedicated to judicial malfeasance; an indelible stain on the honor of the republic.

jh4freedom said...

Rhodes v MacDonald, US District Court Judge Clay D. Land: “A spurious claim questioning the president’s constitutional legitimacy may be protected by the First Amendment, but a Court’s placement of its imprimatur upon a claim that is so lacking in factual support that it is frivolous would undoubtedly disserve the public interest.”—US District Court for the Middle District of Georgia, September 16, 2009.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/19809978/RHODES-v-MacDONALD-13-ORDER-denying-3-Motion-for-TRO-granting-8-Motion-to-Dismiss-Ordered-by-Judge-Clay-D-Land-on-09162009-CGC-Entered-0

Anonymous said...

@Anonymous 5:21 PM

I put your post through Google Translate. It came out as:

"Waaaaaaaaah!!!!!Waaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!!!

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Anonymous said...

You would have been even happier, after 1933, with German judges.

HistorianDude said...

Yawn. If you had an actual argument you wouldn't have to go full Godwin.

Anonymous said...

"Waaaaaaaaah!!!!!Waaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!!! Nazis!
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Hitler!
Wwwwwwaaaaaaah!!!

Anonymous said...

Accessories before, during, and after the fact.

Anonymous said...

Nope. Still not even an attempt at argument. The elephant hath labored mightily, and delivered unto us a mouse.

jh4freedom said...

Allen v Obama, Arizona Superior Court Judge Richard E. Gordon: "Arizona courts are bound by United States Supreme Court precedent in construing the United States Constitution, and this precedent fully supports that President Obama is a natural born citizen under the Constitution and thus qualified to hold the office of President. Contrary to Plaintiff’s assertion, Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162 (1874), does not hold otherwise."--Pima County Superior Court, Tuscon, Arizona, March 7, 2012
http://www.scribd.com/doc/84531299/AZ-2012-03-07-Allen-v-Obama-C20121317-ORDER-Dismissing-Complaint

Anonymous said...

Another ludicrous and transparent ruling. That you cite this is the measure of you.

Anonymous said...

No, my detached-from-reality-friend. It is a measure of the law of the land. Be a man. Suck it up.

Anonymous said...

Rather than admit they are wrong, birthers believe they know more than every judge, and envision a vast conspiracy to explain away their losses.

Anonymous said...

Clearly, none of you have the remotest idea of the historical immensity and the irreparable consequences of the crime to which you are wittingly or unwitteningly lending yourselves.

Anonymous said...

There has been no crime.

Anonymous said...

Ah but remember all those letters Vogt and SIbley sent to judges they thought might be friendly. There could be grand juries meeting right now to review Vogt's daffydavit. Or not.

Anonymous said...

You are all dancing on your graves.

Anonymous said...

Oooooh. Spooooky!

jh4freedom said...

Every court's ruling stands unless and until it is overturned by a higher court. No ruling on Obama's eligibility has ever been overturned and no court, no judge and no Justice has ever ruled the President to be ineligible for the office he was twice elected to.

Anonymous said...

"Nevertheless it moves"; Obama is ineligible.

HistorianDude said...

@ Anonymous 12:46 AM

1) Galileo never actually said that.

2) Obama is President of the United States.

Anonymous said...

Obama is a dual citizen by his own admission, and an ineligible, de facto President, with no legal proof , not a single document, which a court would accept as proof of US citizenship in a criminal (or civil) proceeding. Every member of the state and federal judicial, legislative, and executive branches (and the media) faces a vicious reputation and career ending attack by the incumbent Left, if he respects his oath of office, initiates an inquiry and subpoena's the Hawaiian Obama birth records. The Left has succeeded in fully suppressing any inquiry. Congratulations. Unperturbed, you will continue providing disinformation. So get on with it.

HistorianDude said...

1) There is not and never has been any US law, statute, rule, regulation, court decision or Constitutional provision that prohibits a dual citizen from being President of the United States.

2) The Constitution tells us what a President must be, not what a President cannot be. As a result, a person can have as many other citizenships as foreign governments are willing to grant them. As long as one of the is natural born US citizenship, they are eligible for the presidency.

3) Thomas Jefferson was a naturalized citizen of France at a time the US Congress (consisting largely of Framers) elected him to Vice President once and President twice without any objection. And while he was VP, we were even at undeclared war with his adopted country and the men who had actually written the US Constitution never even blinked.

4) At least the following Presidents were all dual citizens at the time of their election and during their terms: Truman, Tyler, Taft, Arthur, FDR, Eisenhower and JFK. JFK was arguably a triple.

5) There are tens of millions of natural born US citizens who are also, by the law of other nations, dual citizens... generally without even their knowledge. To assert (as some Birthers do) that they are not eligible for the Presidency is to declare US law inferior to the law of all other countries on the planet from Russia to Rwanda. It would give any foreign nation the power to determine who can or cannot be the President of the United States simply by declaring them a dual citizen. That would be stupid.

6) Obama's short form birth certificate (let alone long form) is under US law absolute legal proof of his natural born citizenship, and would alone have been all the documentation required for him to get a US passport.

7) It really sucks to be a Birther.

Anonymous said...

To assert that Obama's COLB is genuine are the words of those complicit in, or sympathetic to, a criminal act--or the words of the self-deluded.

HistorianDude said...

It appears that I am in a battle of wits with unarmed men.

Come back when you have something substantive in response. But your oblivious whining has merely gone from pathetic to boring.

Anonymous said...

p.s.

Marinate your words of support for this elected criminal; you will be eating them.

Your use of the work "sucks" as a pejorative is misogynistic, offending women and depriving men.

HistorianDude said...

I will eat nothing, but I will continue to drink. I drink Birther tears. I drink them up.

More than 226 Birther cases lost. I drink them up.

More than 90 Birther losses on appeal. I drink them up.

More than 25 Birther rejections by SCOTUS. I drink them up.

Almost 2 dozen court decisions declaring Barack Obama to be a natural born US citizen. I drink them up.

The only President in a generation to win more than 50% of the popular vote in two elections. I drink them up.

The fact that it continues after more than 5 years to really suck to be a Birther. I drink it up.

Marinate you say? I'm too busy drinking.

Anonymous said...

What you drink to is the infamous product of fear, greed, and the indelible stain of dishonor.

HistorianDude said...

I drink your failure and my victory.

You have lived with it for five years. You will live with it for the rest of your life.

Anonymous said...

You've been hugely successful: You've twice elected a criminal as President of the US. Bottoms up!

HistorianDude said...

Of course I have been successful, and of course you have failed. I am right and you are wrong. He is not a criminal. You are simply delusional. And reality will have out in spite of the intensity of your delusion.

The falling boulder will crush you whether you believe it is real or not.

Anonymous said...

Correction: "statues" [sic] statutes

Anonymous said...

Here's what a real judge whose ruling was upheld by a state Court of Appeals and a state Supreme Court had to say on the issue of dual citizenship and presidential eligibility:
Purpura & Moran v Obama: New Jersey Administrative Law Judge Jeff S. Masin: “No court, federal, state or administrative, has accepted the challengers’ position that Mr. Obama is not a “natural born Citizen” due to the acknowledged fact that his father was born in Kenya and was a British citizen by virtue of the then applicable British Nationality Act. Nor has the fact that Obama had, or may have had, dual citizenship at the time of his birth and thereafter been held to deny him the status of natural born. It is unnecessary to reinvent the wheel here. … The petitioners’ legal position on this issue, however well intentioned, has no merit in law. Thus, accepting for the point of this issue that Mr. Obama was born in Hawaii, he is a ‘natural born Citizen’ regardless of the status of his father.” April 10, 2012
http://www.scribd.com/doc/88936737/2012-04-10-NJ-Purpura-Moran-v-Obama-Initial-Decision-of-ALJ-Masin-Apuzzo=

Anonymous said...

You know that I am correct, hence you offer nothing more than an assertion--dictum. Publish the relevant statute on this page, or shut up.

HistorianDude said...

If you were correct, you would have managed to get a single favorable court decision out of the almost 250 attempts. You could not be less correct if you were trying to sell bacon sandwiches in Tehran.

Further, President Obama's status is not governed by statute, Einstein. It is governed by 500 plus years of Anglo-American common law. After a half millennium, perhaps it is time for you to catch up.

jh4freedom said...

Here is the relevant statute, published on this page. It can be found in Title 8 of the US Code of Laws in Section 1401:
8 USC 1401
The following shall be nationals and citizens of the United States at birth:
(a) a person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof;

jh4freedom said...

Rhodes v MacDonald, US District Court Judge Clay D. Land: “A spurious claim questioning the president’s constitutional legitimacy may be protected by the First Amendment, but a Court’s placement of its imprimatur upon a claim that is so lacking in factual support that it is frivolous would undoubtedly disserve the public interest.”—US District Court for the Middle District of Georgia, September 16, 2009.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/19809978/RHODES-v-MacDONALD-13-ORDER-denying-3-Motion-for-TRO-granting-8-Motion-to-Dismiss-Ordered-by-Judge-Clay-D-Land-on-09162009-CGC-Entered-0

jh4freedom said...

Taitz v Obama (Quo Warranto) “This is one of several such suits filed by Ms. Taitz in her quixotic attempt to prove that President Obama is not a natural born citizen, as is required by the Constitution. This Court is not willing to go tilting at windmills with her.”-- Chief US District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth, US District Court for the District of Columbia, April 14, 2010
http://www.scribd.com/doc/30040084/TAITZ-v-OBAMA-QW-23-MEMORANDUM-OPINION-dcd-04502943496-23-0

jh4freedom said...

Tisdale v Obama, US District Court Judge John A. Gibney, Jr.: "It is well settled that those born within the United States are natural born citizens."-- Tisdale v Obama, US District Court of the Eastern District of Virginia, January 23, 2012.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/82011399/Tisdale-v-Obama-EDVA-3-12-cv-00036-Doc-2-ORDER-23-Jan-2012

HistorianDude said...

Are you paying attention Anonymous Birther?

The falling boulder will crush you whether you believe it is real or not.

jh4freedom has dropped a number of very large boulders on your idiotic assertions. Birthism is reduced to a red spot on the roadway.

Anonymous said...

225 or more civil law cases regarding Obama's constitutional ineligibility and or criminality have been filed. Despite strong evidence and strong circumstantial evidence in these cases, no federal district court judge has allowed a single case to be tried on its merits or sent to a federal grand jury for inquiry. This assault on the judicial oath and on mathematical probability is celebrated by Obot posters, who have reason to believe that the remaining 400 federal district court judges have been similarly intimidated or corrupted.

HistorianDude said...

An idiotic falsehood.

1) Standing is the first "merit" of any civil case. In contrast, there is no standing hurdle for a criminal case. The problem for Birthers is that rather than "strong evidence" (circumstantial or otherwise) no admissible evidence exists AT ALL that would justify a criminal prosecution.

2) SEVERAL of the "225 or more" cases ACTUALLY WERE tried on the merits. This includes one of the very first Birther cases ever filed, or to get in front of the Supreme Court, Donofrio v. Wells. In every single one of them, the Birthers lost. In about two dozen of them, he courts declared Obama to be a natural born US citizen.

3) Of course Obots celebrate these results. They settle the issue. And we won. More than 200 times.

http://tesibria.typepad.com/whats_your_evidence/BIRTHER%20CASE%20LIST.pdf

Anonymous said...

Israel Science and Technology:
www.science.co.il/Obama-Birth-Certificate

Anonymous said...

Yawn

Anonymous said...

"Yawn" How else could have this Obot disinformer respond to a report from Israel--one of the world's most technologically advanced countries--published in Israel's national database and directory of science and technolology, which declares Obama's COLB to be a complete fabrication?

Anonymous said...

It's a blog, Einstein. There are no shortage of ignorant and incompetent personal Birther blogs on the Internet, even from Israel.

Hint: There are stupid in people in Israel too.

What there IS a shortage of are Birther wins in court, and Birthers in general who are not credulous suckers for idiotic blogs like the one you linked to.

My yawn was actually an exaggeration for rhetorical effect. Your link was not even exciting enough to actually earn a yawn.

Anonymous said...

I write that because it is true.

It is a personal blog that has no connection whatsoever with the Israeli government, with the Israeli scientific community or the nation of Israel other than it's server is hosted there. For god's sake.... it;s not even a database. It's a bunch of weblinks.

The host is a biochemist who when commenting on the President's birth certificate is no more qualified than your average plumber. I could name a blog anything I want. I could name a blog, "The Official National Republican Database and Reference Dictionary of Approved Convention Shoe-ware." That wouldn't actually make it an official anything.

You linked to a personal blog. That you actually believed it was some sort of official Israel anything only demonstrates that you have the critical thinking skills of a tunicate.

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