Untimely Ripped – A Halloween Special

A Spelling Bee? The Pot Thickens!

Untimely Ripped
by Squeeky Fromm, Girl Reporter

A dark Cave. In the middle, a Caldron boiling. Thunder.

First Birther Witch: Cursed long form on the loose!
Second Birther Witch: Honolulu born papoose!
Third Birther Witch: Sank my book, and cooked my goose!

First Birther Witch:

Hair of dog, and hemlock bark
Make them forget Wong Kim Ark.
Poppy flowers pink and blue
Toss it all into the brew.
Add some roofies if you please
(Wong Kim Ark sounds sooo Chinese!)

All

Around about the cauldron go;
And in some poison’d thinking throw.

Second Birther Witch:

Case of Minor Happersett
Throw it in, you won’t regret.
Cut a paragraph in two
Throw the first part in the stew.
Here’s the part you must leave out
It’s the half that mentions “doubt”.
They won’t find it, so we think
(Justia has lost the link!)

All

So dance about the magic pot;
And Thank God, ethics. . . we have not.

Third Birther Witch:

So we start our bouillabaisse
But we need a stronger case.
Something fishy. . . something French
Add some de Vattel. . . a pinch.
Page from Law of Nations book.
Shred it up and let it cook.
And to recognize our Dream
Some Hot Air to make it steam!

Sympathetic magic rules:
“Like gets like” and we like fools.
So to  help us sell this dud,
What we need is Baboon blood.
But it’s missing from the shelf!
Never mind, I’ll prick myself.

All

Fire burn, and cauldron bubble;
We can’t wait to start some trouble.

2 WITCH.

Run in circles, scream and shout;
In thirty days we’ll have him out!

Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter

Note 1: Untimely Ripped  A line from Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth, referring to MacDuff who was, in one sense,  “not naturally born.”  Macbeth cannot be harmed, according to the witches, by ‘man born of woman’.  However, MacDuff was “untimely ripped” from his mother’s womb…by Cesarean section.

This poem is “ripped” from that play Act IV, Scene I. Shakespeare’s poem is provided in full, below.

Note 2: Witch Gender

In the 17th century, witches were both male and female persons who had made a pact to serve the devil. In exchange, the devil passed along certain powers to the witches. According to confessed witch William Barker, the devil promised to pay all Barker’s debts and that he would live comfortably. The devil also told him that he wanted to set up his own kingdom where there would be neither punishment nor shame for sin.

http://salem.lib.virginia.edu/archivist.html

Note 3: Poppy Flowers – used to make opiates. Roofies are the slang term for Rohypnol, the date rape drug. Said to cause sedative, hypnotic, dissociative, and/or amnesiac effects.

Note 4: Bouil·la·baisse  (bool ya base or boo ya base) Noun.

1. A highly seasoned stew made of several kinds of fish and shellfish.
2. A combination of various different, often incongruous elements: a bouillabaisse of special interests.

Note 5: Sympathetic Magic. Basically, that like produces like.  The “baboon blood” (which is also found in Shakespeare poem), is being added to attract other monkeys to the theory. From wiki:

The theory of sympathetic magic was first developed by Sir James George Frazer in The Golden Bough. He further subcategorised sympathetic magic into two varieties: that relying on similarity, and that relying on contact or ‘contagion’:

If we analyze the principles of thought on which magic is based, they will probably be found to resolve themselves into two: first, that like produces like, or that an effect resembles its cause; and, second, that things which have once been in contact with each other continue to act on each other at a distance after the physical contact has been severed. The former principle may be called the Law of Similarity, the latter the Law of Contact or Contagion. From the first of these principles, namely the Law of Similarity, the magician infers that he can produce any effect he desires merely by imitating it: from the second he infers that whatever he does to a material object will affect equally the person with whom the object was once in contact, whether it formed part of his body or not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sympathetic_magic

Note 6:

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) from Macbeth – Act IV Scene I:

A dark Cave. In the middle, a Caldron boiling. Thunder.

Enter the three Witches.

1 WITCH.  Thrice the brinded cat hath mew’d.
2 WITCH.  Thrice and once, the hedge-pig whin’d.
3 WITCH.  Harpier cries:—’tis time! ’tis time!

1 WITCH.  Round about the caldron go;
In the poison’d entrails throw.—
Toad, that under cold stone,
Days and nights has thirty-one;
Swelter’d venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot!

ALL.  Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.

2 WITCH.  Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the caldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg, and owlet’s wing,—
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

ALL.  Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.

3 WITCH.  Scale of dragon; tooth of wolf;
Witches’ mummy; maw and gulf
Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark;
Root of hemlock digg’d i the dark;
Liver of blaspheming Jew;
Gall of goat, and slips of yew
Sliver’d in the moon’s eclipse;
Nose of Turk, and Tartar’s lips;
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-deliver’d by a drab,—
Make the gruel thick and slab:
Add thereto a tiger’s chaudron,
For the ingrediants of our caldron.

ALL.  Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.

2 WITCH.  Cool it with a baboon’s blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.

brinded – having obscure dark streaks or flecks on gray
gulf – the throat
drab – prostitute
chaudron – entrails

Precedent Evil – The MHV Virus Spreads Beyond Squirrel City!!!

The Girl Reporter Runs To Warn The World That The Minor Happersett Virus (MHV) Has Broken Out Of Squirrel City

Well, I have been writing a lot of Internet Articles lately about the Minor v. Happersett voting rights case from 1875. The two citizen parent Birthers (who I also teasingly call the Vattle Birthers, because of their reliance on Emerich de Vattel) have worked themselves into an illogical frenzy trying to make the case say things it doesn’t. Here is the language which drives the Vattle Birthers into mindless babbling insanity:

The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, 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. For the purposes of this case it is not necessary to solve these doubts.

Clearly, the judges in that case are NOT tackling the issue of whether children born here of foreigners are natural born citizens. The Wong Kim Ark SCOTUS case did that 23 years later in 1898. In addition to being a matter of common sense and basic reading skills, the fact that Minor v. Happersett did NOT resolve the issue is also a matter of law. The Indiana Court of Appeals stated in 2009, in a Vattle Birther suit:

Id. at 167-168. Thus, the [Minor] Court left open the issue of whether a person who is born within the United States of alien parents is considered a natural born citizen.12

While this should be enough for people with common sense, no one can accuse the Vattle Birthers of suffering from that particular affliction. An outfit called the Liberty Legal Foundation filed suit in federal court and state court against the National Democratic  Party, and asking the Court to affirm the definition of natural born citizenship in Minor v. Happersett. Here is the link to the lawsuit, and the idiotic language is in the second paragraph:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/70525434/LIBERTY-LEGAL-FOUNDATION-et-al-v-NDP-of-USA-INC-et-al-USDC-AZ-1-COMPLAINT-Gov-uscourts-azd-651381-1-0

Here is the paragraph:

2. This Complaint does not request or require this Court to find that President Obama is not qualified to hold the office of President of the United States. Instead, this complaint is directed toward defining the term “natural born citizen” under the Constitution of the United States, and toward negligence or intentionalmisrepresentations of the Democratic Party. This Complaint requests this Court to affirm the Supreme Court’s definition of “natural born citizen” as “all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens.” See Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S.162 (1875)

This so-called precedent is not a precedent and can’t be since it did not resolve the issue. To try to use it as such is both evil and stupid. It should not take the court long to drive a stake through the heart of this Precedent Evil.

Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter

Note:  The title of this Internet Article is  a pun based on the Resident Evil series of movies and video games.  Squirrel City is a play on Raccoon City, which (as wiki says) is a fictional metropolis located in the Arklay Mountains of North America that succumbed to the deadly T-Virus outbreak and was consequently destroyed via a nuclear missile attack issued by the United States government. The town served a critical junction for the series’ progression as one of the main catalysts to Umbrella’s downfall as well as the entry point for some of the series’ most notable characters. Of course Squirrel also implies the Vattle Birthers are nutz. The MHV Virus is a spoof on the T-Virus.

The heroine is Alice Abernathy.  Here is a great drawing of her by GorillazFiggo and can be found at:

http://gorillazfiggo.deviantart.com/art/Alice-Resident-Evil-187613566

Alice, Resident Evil by GorillazFiggo

The Missing Link

Anthropologists Theorized The Homo Para-Cletus Evolutionary Branch Was Missing A Few Twigs

There is a Two -Citizen Parent Birther by the name of Leo Donofrio (aka The Paraclete) who is pushing a theory that Justia, an online publishing company, has twiddled with the links and citations to the case of Minor v. Happersett, an 1875 voting SCOTUS voting rights case which held the 14th Amendment did not grant women the right to vote.  Lacking any semblance of a legal case to support their idiotic theory that it takes two citizen parents for a person to be a natural born citizen, these individuals have latched onto Minor v. Happersett with both hands trying to mis-represent it as such a case.

This has been discussed at length at The Birther Think Tank, but in brief, the Vattle Birthers (my sarcastic name for the two-citizen parent Birthers because of their reliance on French law, and Emerich de Vattel) have tried to twist this paragraph from Minor v. Happersett into having resolved doubts about children of foreign parents, even though the court says clearly it is NOT resolving those doubts.

The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, 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. For the purposes of this case it is not necessary to solve these doubts.

To elevate the importance of this case, the Vattle Birthers are now trying to pretend this case was purposely hidden from the world to keep people from knowing about it during Obama’s election. This is absurd, because the case does not make any attempt to define a natural born citizen, and even if it did what the Vattle Birthers claimed, it would have been overturned by Wong Kim Ark case 23 years later. All this, and other problems with the Vattle Birther’s Theory are discussed in multiple articles here. The purpose of this Internet Article is to simply to review some of Mr. Donofrio’s Missing Links and see what they reveal.

First, here is the link to Donofrio’s (aka The Paraclete)latest Internet Article on this nonsense:

http://naturalborncitizen.wordpress.com/2011/10/26/justiagate-ceo-tim-stanley-claims-innocense-after-blocking-access-to-wayback-machine-snapshots-of-all-supreme-court-cases-published-by-justia/

Now, let’s look at some of those wonderful cites!

Boyd. v. Nebraska, 143 U.S. 135 (1892). [Dealt with evidence of naturalization process]

As remarked by Mr. Chief Justice Waite in Minor v. Happersett, 21 Wall. 162, 88 U. S. 167:

“Whoever, then, was one of the people of either of these states when the Constitution of the United States was adopted became ipso facto a citizen — a member of the nation created by its adoption. He was one of the persons associating together to form the nation, and was consequently one of its original citizens. As to this there has never been a doubt. Disputes have arisen as to whether or not certain persons or certain classes of persons were part of the people at the time, but never as to their citizenship if they were.”

Rogers v. Bellei, 401 U.S. 815 (1971). [Dealt with naturalization process outside of the country.]

169 U.S. at 169 U. S. 702-703. The Court in Wong Kim Ark thus stated a broad and comprehensive definition of naturalization. As shown in Wong Kim Ark, naturalization, when used in its constitutional sense, is a generic term describing and including within its meaning all those modes of acquiring American citizenship other than birth in this country. All means of obtaining American citizenship which are dependent upon a congressional enactment are forms of naturalization. This inclusive definition has been adopted in several opinions of this Court besides United States v. Wong Kim Ark, supra. Thus, in Minor v. Happersett, 21 Wall. 162, 88 U. S. 167 (1875), the Court said:

“Additions might always be made to the citizenship of the United States in two ways: first, by birth, and second, by naturalization. . . . [N]ew citizens may be born, or they may be created by naturalization.”

City of Mobile v. Bolden, 446 U.S 55 (1980) [A voting rights case.]

More than 100 years ago, the Court unanimously held that “the Constitution of the United States does not confer the right of suffrage upon anyone. . . .” Minor v. Happersett, 21 Wall. 162, 88 U. S. 178.

Snowden v. Hughes, 321 U.S. 1 (1944) [A voting rights case.]

Minor v. Happersett, 21 Wall. 162, 88 U. S. 170-178; Pope v. Williams, 193 U. S. 621, 193 U. S. 632; Breedlove v. Suttles, 302 U. S. 277, 302 U. S. 283, is a right or privilege of state citizenship, not of national citizenship, which alone is protected by the privileges and immunities clause.

So, after reviewing these four cites, none of the cases dealt with natural born citizenship. One cite specifically notes the Minor Court had doubts. The remaining two were voting rights cases. Not a single case about natural born citizenship, and not one single case having any relation whatsoever to Obama’s situation. Then, the keen-eyed Girl Reporter discovered an actual case of cite scrubbing!!!  Here it is, in all its glory:

The Donofrio Shuffle (2011)

Mr. Donofrio pulls a cute trick. He accuses Justia of scrubbing the Wong Kim Ark case of this link. Just click on the image to make it larger and easier to read:

How To Do The Donofrio Shuffle: You Put The Wrong Quote In, You Take The Right Quote Out; You Put The Wrong Quote In, And You Twist It All About. . .

BUT, Donofrio does a little scrubbing and history re-writing of his own. He provides an incorrect quote from Scott v. Sandford, which is more famously known as the  Dred Scott case.  The case is cited in Wong Kim Ark, but here is the actual quote, not what Donofrio said it was:

In Dred Scott v. Sandford, (1857) 19 How. 393, Mr. Justice Curtis said:

The first section of the second article of the Constitution uses the language, “a natural-born citizen.” It thus assumes that citizenship may be acquired by birth. Undoubtedly, this language of the Constitution was used in reference to that principle of public law, well understood in this country at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, which referred citizenship to the place of birth.

19 How. 576. And, to this extent, no different opinion was expressed or intimated by any of the other judges.

Busted Donofrio. Cold Busted. Slipping in the words you like, and leaving out what the majority decision actually said. And where exactly does one  find the words quoted by Mr. Donofrio? They are NOT in Minor v. Happersett. They are NOT in Wong Kim Ark in the majority decision. They are in the Wong Kim Ark DISSENT, the losing side. Where, oh where might those words have come from??? Let’s see, what did Donofrio say, again, from the image above:

and Scott v. Sandford (removed from US v. Wong Kim Ark) which features the following definition of natural-born citizen:

“The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens.”

Sound familiar? It’s the same definition of natural-born citizen as in Minor v. Happersett. 

Well, come to find out those words are NOT the same definition as because Minor v. Happersett  is kind of doubt-y when it comes to the whole issue. Those words come from Emerich de Vattel’s Law of Nations.  They are cited on page 476 of the Dred Scott by Justice Daniel as part of a general citizenship discussion to the effect that slaves were not citizens, and that Dred Scott lacked the standing to sue. It started with Justice Daniel stating:

Hence it follows necessarily that a slave, the peculium or property of a master, and possessing within himself no civil nor political rights or capacities, cannot be a CITIZEN. For who, it may be asked, is a citizen?

To decide who are citizens (not natural born citizens) Justice Daniel quotes from Vattel’s Law of Nations, and also quotes from Roman law. Some of this he got from Edward Gibbon’s book,  The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and some just from Roman Law. Here is a small excerpt:

The above account of slavery and its modifications will be found in strictest conformity with the Institutes of Justinian. Thus, in book 1st, title 3d, it is said: “The first general division of persons in respect to their rights is into freemen and slaves.” The same title, sec. 4th: “Slaves are born such, or become so. They are born such of bondwomen; they become so either by the law of nations, as by capture, or by the civil law.”

I guess Leo Donofrio would feel equally comfortable with feeding Christians to lions which was legal under Roman law.  The point is, that the place where Donofrio found the words in the case, what they were being quoted for had nothing to do with determining what a natural born citizen was in a legal sense. The Law of Nations book had no greater legal impact than The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire book.  Which is some more of the slipperiness that you saw above with the other cases.

But you know, when you are busy re-writing legal history yourself,  what is a little French or Swiss law slipped in every once in while. Plus, phrasing it that way makes the whole thing sound sooo much more definite. Not all doubt-y and wishy-washy like what you really find in Minor v. Happersett.

Mr. Donofrio, have you no shame???

Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter

Note 1: What is a Missing Link???  The term “missing link” refers to a species between ape and man which would prove the evolution of humans from apes.  While some people think this makes men out of monkeys, the opposite is also true and some people have made monkeys out of men. For example, take the Piltdown Man. Wiki says:

The Piltdown Man was a hoax in which bone fragments were presented as the fossilised remains of a previously unknown early human. These fragments consisted of parts of a skull and jawbone, said to have been collected in 1912 from a gravel pit at Piltdown, East Sussex, England. The Latin name Eoanthropus dawsoni (“Dawson’s dawn-man”, after the collector Charles Dawson) was given to the specimen. The significance of the specimen remained the subject of controversy until it was exposed in 1953 as a forgery, consisting of the lower jawbone of an orangutan that had been deliberately combined with the skull of a fully developed modern human.

The Piltdown hoax is perhaps the most famous paleontological hoax ever. It has been prominent for two reasons: the attention paid to the issue of human evolution, and the length of time (more than 40 years) that elapsed from its discovery to its full exposure as a forgery. The identity of the Piltdown forger remains unknown, but suspects have included Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes.

Note 2: Homo Para Cletus: The Birther Think Tank suspects Homo Para-Cletus may be such a missing link, bridging the gap between a group of apelike hominids known as Australopithicus, which first emerged in Africa around 3.9 million years ago, and Homo Habilis, the first species to be described as distinctly human, which began to appear around 2.5 million years ago.

Note 3:  While reviewing this Internet Article, I re-read what Mr. Donofrio wrote, and it is possible he was referring to Wong Kim Ark and the quote from Minor v. Happersett being similar to the Emerich de Vattel quote,  “The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens.”  It is difficult to tell. If so, then Mr. Donofrio is ever further FRIED, as I will show below.

First, you will find the proper quote from Dred Scott, as provided above,  in Section III of the  Wong Kim Ark decision.  Immediately following the Dred Scott quote in Section III of the case, you will find this quote from U.S. v. Rhodes. (Remember this section number, because it becomes important later on):

19 How. 576. And, to this extent, no different opinion was expressed or intimated by any of the other judges.

In United States v. Rhodes (1866), Mr. Justice Swayne, sitting in the Circuit Court, said:

All persons born in the allegiance of the King are natural-born subjects, and all persons born in the allegiance of the United States are natural-born citizens. Birth and allegiance go together. Such is the rule of the common law, and it is the common law of this country, as well as of England. . . . We find no warrant for the opinion [p663] that this great principle of the common law has ever been changed in the United States. It has always obtained here with the same vigor, and subject only to the same exceptions, since as before the Revolution.

1 Abbott (U.S.) 28, 40, 41.

How SELECTIVE Mr. Donofrio is in what he presents to the readers of his blog, and the public.  First, he swaps Dred Scott quotes, and then ignores the quote from U.S. vs. Rhodes right after the one he just scrubbed out,  which completely contradicts Mr. Donofrio’s whole two citizen parents theory. Donofrio had to be there reading the Wong Kim Ark case to do the scrubbing.  Did he miss it on purpose or on accident?  That is for you to decide. Whichever, you get a little taste of why Mr. Donofrio and his Vattle Birther buds try to steer clear of Wong Kim Ark.  Hitching a ride on the WayBack Machine to 23 years before Wong Kim Ark and landing on Minor v. Happersett in 1875 is a great alternative to having to explain all that troubling language one finds in 1898.

But, on the other hand,  even if Donofrio  was trying to say that those words either came from Wong Kim Ark,  or are similar to the Minor v. Happersett language, then he is still playing games.  Those similar words from Minor v. Happersett are NOT being quoted by Wong Kim Ark for the purposes of defining natural born citizenship. Which means Mr. Donofrio either never read Wong Kim Ark and that is why he didn’t know why Minor v. Happersett was being quoted, which is pretty bad if you are a lawyer and don’t understand the most important citizenship case of all. Or, it means that he is trying to mis-lead people about the Minor Happersett case, and does not want people to know that the case wasn’t quoted to define natural born citizenship. Remember, Wong Kim Ark was the very first SCOTUS case which defined natural born citizenship.

The Wong Kim Ark case is provided here at the top of this page, in the header, so you can verify what I am about to tell you for yourself.  The particular Minor v. Happersett quote is found in Section V of the decision, which discussed the 14th Amendment.   Here is how those words from Minor v. Happersett came to be in Wong Kim Ark.

In a previous case, the Slaughterhouse Cases, which were decided in 1873, 2 years before Minor v. Happersett in 1875, one of the judges, Justice Miller, made a comment which the losing side in Wong Kim Ark tried to use to say that the 14th Amendment did not apply to foreigners. From the Wong Kim Ark case, with my italics and bolding:

Mr. Justice Miller, indeed, while discussing the causes which led to the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, made this remark:

The phrase, “subject to its jurisdiction” was intended to exclude from its operation children of ministers, consuls, and citizens or subjects of foreign States born within the United States.

16 Wall. 73. This was wholly aside from the question in judgment and from the course of reasoning bearing upon that question. It was unsupported by any argument, or by any reference to authorities. . .

To show that remark was not the intent of either Justice Miller, or the other Slaughterhouse Cases judges, the Wong Kim Ark judges said that could not have been what those judges meant, because just 2 years later in Minor v. Happersett, those same judges said that “allegiance and protection” in connection to citizenship, were “reciprocal obligations.” Here is the exact wording from Wong Kim Ark:

That neither Mr. Justice Miller nor any of the justices who took part in the decision of The Slaughterhouse Cases understood the court to be committed to the view that all children born in the United States of citizens or subjects of foreign States were excluded from the operation of the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment is manifest from a unanimous judgment of the Court, delivered but two years later, while all those judges but Chief Justice Chase were still on the bench, in which Chief Justice Waite said: “Allegiance and protection are, in this connection” (that is, in relation to citizenship),

reciprocal obligations. The one is a compensation for the other: allegiance for protection, and protection for allegiance. . . . At common law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children, born in a country of [p680] parents who were its citizens, became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, 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. For the purposes of this case, it is not necessary to solve these doubts. It is sufficient for everything we have now to consider that all children born of citizen parents within the jurisdiction are themselves citizens.

Minor v. Happersett (1874), 21 Wall. 162, 166-168. The decision in that case was that a woman born of citizen parents within the United States was a citizen of the United States, although not entitled to vote, the right to the elective franchise not being essential to citizenship.

Note, that the Minor v. Happersett quote is NOT being accepted by the judges to define natural born citizenship. The Wong Kim Ark judges consider it a voting rights case.  The case is simply being quoted here for the purpose of refuting an alternative interpretation of another case having nothing to do with natural born citizenship. Mr. Donofrio, however, claims either those words, or similar language is being quoted to define natural born citizenship, which had already been defined by the Wong Kim Ark judges in Sections II and III of the case.   Oh well. I guess when it comes to scrubbing and re-writing legal history, what is true of certain smelly forms of hot air,  holds true here, and the faker is the maker.

Note 4: Cold Busted means:

To get caught doing something you shouldn’t and are  convicted guilty of said act to 100% certainty.  Usually by your trifling girlfriend.

“Yo. My girl walked in on me in bed with her sister. Tried to tell her it wasn’t me.”

“Dawg, you got Cold Busted!”

Note 5:  I had to edit this Internet Article some, once I found out where it was in the Dred Scott decision that Donofrio was pulling the Vattel language.  He was not nice enough to tell people what purpose the language was being quoted for, or that it was located in a concurring opinion.  Sooo I had to read the whole case to bust him out.  But, the WayBack Machine can probably document the changes if that kind of stuff interests you.

Bonus: Alternative Image for this Internet Article:

The Plane Facts Knocked Homo-Para Cletus Off His Perch

Night Of The Living Brain-Dead Zombies!!! (Vattel Birthers)

It Was Eerie!!! They Just Kept Mumbling, "Minor Happersett, Minor Happersett."

Zombie movies are very popular right now, and AMC’s series, “The Walking Dead”  is doing so well that it has been renewed for a third season just two shows into the second season. Being one of the few people who actually owns the  Carl Jung art book,  Man and His Symbols, I have to wonder if all this zombie stuff is a manifestation of our collective unconscious and archetypes. Do the mobs of brain-dead zombies intent on eating other people alive have any relationship to something in our REAL lives??? This is the kind of stuff Think Tanks have to think about.

While there are probably many such correlations that can be made, I think that you have to add Vattle Birthers to the mix. (Vattle Birthers is my humorous sarcastic name for the two-citizen parent Birthers who think Emerich de Vattel is the source of our laws.) Anybody who has debated these people knows what I mean.  The Vattle Birthers have no sense of reality, and the fact that their theories are not supported by either a recognizable legal basis, or any relationship to historical facts, does not deter them. They just keep banging their heads into those brick walls long past the point where the gray matter looks like mashed potatoes.

For example, take their latest and most popular argument, the case of Minor v. Happersett (1875). Historically, this case was pretty much a voting rights case, where the court ruled that the 14th Amendment did not create a woman’s rights to vote.  (There are many Internet Articles here which discuss this case.) The Minor court did a brief survey of citizenship, in general, to see if women were considered citizens before the 14th Amendment and did being a citizen then confer the right to vote. The Plaintiff, Virginia Minor was native-born,  and all sides admitted she was a citizen, so the Minor court did not have to decide what citizenship was. Here is what they said:

The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, 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. For the purposes of this case it is not necessary to solve these doubts.

Vattle Birthers often present the first part of that paragraph, and omit the bolded part. Then they try to shoehorn what the Court said into being a complete definition of natural born citizenship. Which, even if it were, it would have been over-ruled by the Wong Kim Ark case 23 years later.  But most people who can read English, understand that the Minor court left the issue open. This does not require a law school education to figure out.

Further, if Reality matters, Judge Waite, who wrote the Minor Decision swore in Chester Arthur as President 6 years this decision. Arthur’s father was a non-citizen when Chester Arthur was born. The opposition in the 1880 Presidential race tried to run a smear campaign on Arthur, claiming he was not born in the United States, while completely ignoring the issue of Arthur’s non-citizen father. Common sense tells you this would not have happened if historically, Minor v. Happersett was seen as providing a compete definition of natural born citizenship.

Both of these facts were noted in a 2009 decision by the Indiana Court of Appeals. The three judges unanimously agreed the Minor court left the issue open, when after providing the above quote, they said:

Id. at 167-168. Thus, the [Minor] Court left open the issue of whether a person who is born within the United States of alien parents is considered a natural born citizen.12

Pretty simple, huh? That same court also noticed the Chester Arthur thingy:

[16] We note that President Obama is not the first U.S. President born of parents of differing citizenship. Chester A. Arthur, the twenty-first U.S. President, was born of a mother who was a United States citizen and a father who was an Irish citizen. See THOMAS C. REEVES, GENTLEMAN BOSS, THE LIFE OF CHESTER ALAN ARTHUR 3-4 (1975). During the election of 1880, there arose a rumor “that [Arthur] had been born in Canada, rather than in Vermont as he claimed, and was thus constitutionally ineligible to become the Chief Executive.” Id. at 3. Although President Arthur‟s status as a natural born citizen was challenged in the 1880 Presidential Election on the grounds that he was born in Canada rather than Vermont, the argument was not made that because Arthur‟s father was an Irish citizen he was constitutionally ineligible to be President. See generally id.

Here is a link to the Ankeny v. Governor case if you want to read it for yourself. It is short, and simple, and shoots the Vattle Birthers down in flames over Indianapolis:

http://birtherthinktank.wordpress.com/the-case-the-two-citizen-parent-birthers-just-hate/

But, does  any of this stop the Vattle Birthers??? Nope. They take the low road and keep a’ coming through the lie. Joseph Farah, editor of World Net Daily has jumped on the Minor Happersett band wagon and the Vattle Birther mob is right behind him.

Wiki says that ” a brain-dead individual has no clinical evidence of brain function upon physical examination. When a person can’t understand something as simple as the above on Minor v. Happersett, brain death is a strong possibility.  They’re a mob, and they are trying to eat our brains, too. Yeah, they’re ZOMBIES!!!

Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter

NOTE: If you are interested in the Carl Jung book, here is a link to the book, which is just FULL of pictures and art!

http://books.google.com/books/about/Man_and_his_symbols.html?id=EuBOAAAAMAAJ

Here is something about archetypes from wiki:

According Carl Jung, “archetypes” are innate universal psychic dispositions that form the substrate from which the basic symbols or representations of unconscious experience emerge. According to Jung there are four universal archetypes: Mother, Rebirth, Spirit, and Trickster (or Devil).

And yes, monsters can be archetypes!

http://jungian.info/library.cfm?idsLibrary=9

Breaking News!!! 1880 Republicans “Scrubbed” Libraries of Minor v. Happersett!!!

Republican Scrub Team At The Astor Library - 1880

Oh, this is BREAKING NEWS!!! According to a very well-known Vattle Birther lawyer (my humorous term for the two citizen parent Vattel Birthers) , who wishes to remain anonymous, and will just be called Deep Threap, Republicans scrubbed libraries of the 1875 Minor Happersett decision by the United States Supreme Court prior to the presidential election of 1880!!!  Several Vattle Birther attorneys have lodged similar complaints about 2008 and the alleged scrubbing of this case which they say defines natural born citizenship by operatives of President Obama.  In the words of one Vattle Birther attorney, Leo Donofrio, Esq.:

The Court’s unanimous opinion in Minor defines those born in the US to citizen parents as natural-born citizens:

The Constitution does not in words say who shall be natural-born citizens.  Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners.

Here is a link to this excerpt:

http://naturalborncitizen.wordpress.com/2011/10/20/justia-com-surgically-removed-minor-v-happersett-from-25-supreme-court-opinions-in-run-up-to-08-election/

In 1880, Chester Arthur ran for the vice-presidency as a Republican. It was well-known that his father was born in Ireland and was NOT a citizen of the United States at the time of Arthur’s birth.  As wiki says:

William Arthur’s [Chester Arthur's father] frequent moves would later form the basis for accusations that Chester Arthur was not a native-born citizen of the United States. After Arthur was nominated for Vice President in 1880, his political opponents suggested that he might be constitutionally ineligible to hold that office. A New York attorney, Arthur P. Hinman, apparently hired by his opponents, explored rumors of Arthur’s foreign birth. Hinman initially alleged that Arthur was born in Ireland and did not come to the United States until he was fourteen years old, which would make him ineligible for the Vice Presidency under the United States Constitution’s natural-born citizen clause. When that story did not take root, Hinman spread a new rumor that Arthur was born in Canada, but this claim also failed to gain credence.

Deep Threap, the anonymous Vattle Birther attorney, says that had people only known of the Minor v. Happersett decision 4 years earlier, the place of Arthur’s birth would not have mattered. Arthur would have been ineligible because of his father. As Deep Threap explains, the fact that nobody objected to Arthur because of his father not being a citizen is CONCLUSIVE PROOF, that America’s libraries had been scrubbed of the case.

As Deep Threap explained:

I don’t know how they did it.  How they managed to scrub all the libraries in America, all the law libraries, and all the newspaper files.  I don’t know how they managed to keep all the judges and lawyers, even the opposition lawyers and judges, quiet about Minor v. Happersett, but they did.  They must have found a way, or the American public never would have voted for Chester Arthur, and somebody would have complained that Arthur was not a natural born citizen under the decision in Minor v. Happersett.  The only other alternative is that us Vattle Birthers could be wrong about Minor v. Happersett, and that the case did not define natural born citizenship.  And that certainly couldn’t be the case. I mean, there’s no way we could ever be wrong.  No, they had to scrub all the libraries in 1880. That is the only answer that makes any sense.

As someone who has read the case, it is very easy for me to accept the possibility that the Vattle Birthers could be wrong.  All one has to do is read the COMPLETE paragraph quote from Minor v. Happersett, not the scrubbed version on Mr. Donofrio’s website:

The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, 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. For the purposes of this case it is not necessary to solve these doubts. It is sufficient for everything we have now to consider that all children born of citizen parents within the jurisdiction are themselves citizens. The words “all children” are certainly as comprehensive, when used in this connection, as “all persons,” and if females are included in the last they must be in the first. That they are included in the last is not denied. In fact the whole argument of the plaintiffs proceeds upon that idea.

Somehow, the Vattle Birthers keep forgetting to put in the bolded part which proves the Minor court did NOT attempt to define natural born citizenship. But, as a Girl Reporter, I must report the news as I get it.  But WAITE!!!  Here is another important part of this tale of alleged scrubbing and political favors. Guess who swore in Chester Arthur when he became President??? None other than Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite, who wrote the opinion in Minor v. Happersett!!!

Yes, in this case which supposedly defined natural born citizenship, the Judge who wrote it, swore in a guy as President who had a non-citizen father, which fact was very well known.  Oh, the silly Vattle Birther world!!!  Ivory Soap ain’t the only thing floating there.

Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter

Notes 1: What did a REAL Court say about Minor v. Happersett???

The Indiana Court of Appeals 2009, Ankeny v. Governor:

In Minor, written only six years after the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, the Court observed that:

The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, 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. For the purposes of this case it is not necessary to solve these doubts.

Id. at 167-168. Thus, the Court left open the issue of whether a person who is born within the United States of alien parents is considered a natural born citizen.12

This case is provided above, in the header, as The Case The “Two-Citizen Parent” Birthers Just HATE!!!

Threap means:

Verb: To maintain obstinately against denial or contradiction; also to contend or argue against (another) with obstinacy; To contend obstinately; to be pertinacious (stubborn and obstinate.)

Noun: An obstinate decision. A pertinacious affirmation.

Bonus: Image of Ivory Soap Ad from 1898, the year of Wong Kim Ark:

The Case of the Sleeping Case (A Whimsy)

She Left The Bar Thinking Of A Minor Happenstance???

The Case of the Sleeping Case
A Pot Boiler by Squeeky Fromm, Girl Reporter

It was a dark and stormy night. Inside the dimly lit speak easy, two shadowy figures defied the rules and spoke hard. Leo “the Dip” was sweating bullets, and Mario “the Mangler” obsessively policed the brass. “I’m worried,” said Leo. “There’s a paper trail a mile wide and a hundred and thirty six years long. How are we ever going to convince these mugs that a case that has been on ice all these years is The One???”

“Leave da doity bizzness to me,” said the Mangler, in his thick New Joisey accent. “I’ll cover it up in French. Nobody talks French no more, not even the French,” the Mangler said as he called out to the bartender, “Laisse tomber les filles.” (Which means, “Please fill up the tumbler.”)

“It takes a lot of gall to use France, doesn’t it, and don’t the judges come right out and say they aren’t messing with this citizenship stuff?” the Dip asked.

“Judges smudges,” said the Mangler off-handedly, as he loaded up his BAC Calculator App and began talking to himself. “I know what I’m thinking. Did I have six shots or only five?” Well, to tell me the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a Sailor Venus, and has three different kinds of alcohol in it, and would blow my mind clean off, I gotta ask myself one question: “Do I feel lucky?” Well, do I, punk?”

“Yo, Mario, snap out of it!”  the Dip exclaimed, and continued.  “I’m serious here, man. This Minor Happersett case isn’t even about citizenship. It’s a voting rights case. It’s sat there un-noticed and un-loved for 136 plus years now. Nobody has ever cited it for a definition of natural born citizenship. We could be skating on thin ethical ice. And are you down with using the losing sides of Lynch v. Clarke and Wong Kim Ark for our arguments? What if somebody catches that? What if some palooka asks about Chester Arthur???  How his father wasn’t a citizen and he became president just 5 years after Minor Happersett? Or finds out that the same judge who wrote the decision is the one who swore him in???”

“You worry too much,” answered the Mangler. “Nobody we want to convince is going to go back to 1844 or 1898 to read the loser’s arguments, or the dissent in Wong Kim Ark.  Chester Arthur? These saps don’t know from Adam about Chester Arthur. Plus, we can find some speeches and letters to fluff it out with and make it look legal. Anybody who takes the time to read this dribble isn’t going to believe what we’re saying in da foist place. Hey, mebbe that would be a good name for my website, The Foist Place, ya know where you foist stuff off on people?  No, I probably need sumptin simple, like ‘A Place To Ask Questions About This Crap,’ you know sumptin like that. I bet I can get it up and running by April, maybe even March. . .”

“Would you just forget about the damn website for a minute, and let’s talk how we approach this. I mean I don’t want to get sanctioned or anything. We could ruin our reputations and end up having to do public defender work on Dee Wees (DWIs) for a living,” the Dip lamented.

“Hey, don’t knock Dee Wees!” The Mangler interjected. “They help pay the bills. I’m writing the tab tonight  off my taxes as research on one of my cases. And don’t worry I have two backup plans. First, if we get busted out, we just say it is Satire about the Legal System. I mean who could take this crap we’re writing seriously?”

“What’s the second backup plan?”  Leo inquired.

Well, I have been to the courthouse and the flag in the courtroom has a fringe on it. That means it’s a Maritime Court!!! And they can’t sanction a lawyer in a Maritime Court unless he is an officer on active duty. So, we’re covered,” explained the Mangler. “And, being in Maritime Court, I have the perfect client to shepherd this through.”

Meanwhile, in the next booth, a young girl, slender as a reed, sat quietly like a cattail on a hot tin roof, afraid to move or all the fuzzy white stuff would fly every where. She sipped on her drink, a White Russian, and silently cursed her Blackberry, as the spell checker repeatedly returned Hasenpfeffer, and tried to sell her a download of a Bugs Bunny cartoon.  Maybe it wasn’t Minnie Hasenpfeffer she had overheard, maybe it was Minor Happenstance??? No matter. She would figure it out soon enough. What she heard from the two swells enraged her sense of decency. No moral fiber, she thought, in French, either of them.“Poupée de sire, poupée de son” (Which means the poop flows down from the father to the son,  just like citizenship in France.)

She pulled her fedora lower over her face, and hid in its soft felt embrace. She snuggled into her trench coat, and thought of that famous poem, “

In brightest day, in blackest night, No evil shall escape my sight. Let those who worship evil’s might, Beware my power… Green Lantern’s light!

Well, green wasn’t her favorite color. Maybe black. Or Black and purple? In the fall orange delighted her with it earthy pumpkiny tones. And, she didn’t have a lantern. Just a flashlight. The kind with the big battery. Oh well, never mind. She would find something to make it work.

She waited until the two Wise Guys left, and then winked at a stranger, flashed a brief glimpse of her shapely gams, and her tab was picked up.  But not her. She left the bar, and entered the night. And then, maybe it was inspiration, or maybe that fourth White Russian had loosened up her axons,  or maybe it was just that stupid Megalodon movie she had watched a few weeks earlier about the giant dinosaur shark, whichevah!  But it came to her. The Girl Reporter found a Rhyme to go with her Reason. . .a rhyme which she pledged to repeat daily,  in front of her computer screen:

In brightest day, in blackest night, No evil shall escape my sight.
Let those who worship evil’s might, Beware my power… the MegaBite!

Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter

Notes: The above story is fiction and satire and is protected by something, I am sure. Maybe the First Amendment??? Any resemblance to persons living or dead or committed under 72 Hour Mental Evaluation Orders is purely coincidental.

That being said, there are people known as Vattle Birthers (my humorous name for two citizen parent Birthers, or Vattel Birthers). There really is an 1875 SCOTUS case, Minor v. Happersett which is now being promoted as a case which defines the term natural born citizen.  The Case really has been sleeping for 136 years, masquerading all this time as a  historical Women’s Voting Rights case and is still cited for the proposition that the Constitution does not confer the right to vote. The case is NOT cited anywhere for defining citizenship or resolving questions about who is a natural born citizen. Such a characterization is a blatant falsehood. There are many Internet Articles here which discuss how this case is no such thing. And even if it was what the Vattle Birthers try to claim it was, it would still be trumped by the 1898 Won Kim Ark case which was decided 23 years later.

Vex-illogical Arguments: As far as the fringe on the flag comment: Yes, there really are people who believe that “gold fringe” on a flag means all kinds of strange things.  Here is a fair representation of the belief culled together from several comments on the Internet:

The gold fringes on three edges of the flag means that it is the Admiralty flag. The flag you fly represents the jurisdiction you are under. Anyone saying otherwise is either lying or trying to miss lead you and put you back to sleep. The admiralty flag represent maritime law (international law) so when you surrender to the jurisdiction of the court by entering a plea or subjecting yourself to their jurisdiction in some way you are then trapped in that system. If you have done your homework, gotten up from your stupor, turned off the ball game, tuned out the media brainwash news and educated yourself you will know how to successfully challenge jurisdiction. The Admiralty flag is in every court house in the US. But they are federal enclaves and do not represent US law. Entering in to such a court is entering in to a foreign jurisdiction where they trick you in to becoming subordinate to their jurisdiction.

A gold fringe flag. That is an American Flag with a golden rim around it then know that youre in a military court being court marshalled under military laws. You will have no rights and can be executed immediately after a speedy trial!!!

This is what happens when idiots pretend to be lawyers.  The Gold Fringe idiots and the sincere Vattle Birther idiots are cut from the same cloth. You can read more about this and many other Idiot Legal Arguments at:

http://www.adl.org/mwd/suss4.asp

As one court tell the Idiots:

As to the physical composition of the flag in the courtroom, the General Services Administration and the Administrative Office of the Courts supply furnishings for the courtroom.  Defendants should address any complaints about the form of the courtroom flag to the General Services Administration.” Moeller v. D’Arrigo (ED Va 1995) 163 FRD 489

and as another tells them:

 Jurisdiction is a matter of law, statute, and constitution, not a child’s game wherein one’s power is magnified or diminished by the display of some magic talisman. McCann v. Greenway (WD Mo 1997) 952 F.Supp 647

Vexillology is the scholarly study of flags.

Whimsy means:

1. a capricious idea or notion

2. light or fanciful humour

3. something quaint or unusual

A Sailor Venus is a drink made thusly :

120 ml white wine
15 ml Galliano® herbal liqueur
30 ml white rum
20 ml lemon juice
ice
Shake and strain to pousse cafe glass. Garnish with a peel of lemon.

This is also a veiled reference to an 1814 case, The Venus, which the Vattle Birthers frequently misrepresent.  Perhaps too many Sailor Venus’s are the reason???

A Potboiler is a book, painting, or recording produced merely to make the writer or artist a living. (Something I have been accused of.  Making a living. And so it goes on, for this is how [I] must make a living.)

A Minor Inconvenience For the Knot Heads

When You're A Knot Head, It's Hard To See The "NOT"

The Vattel Birthers,  particularly Leo Donfrio, Esq. and Mario Apuzzo, Esq., claim that Minor v. Happersett (1875) is the case that defines beyond a shadow of a doubt that  two citizen parents are  required for a person to be a natural born citizen and thus eligible for the Presidency or Vice-Presidency.  This case, they claim, is The One.

Rational people say this case was merely a voting rights case, and did not define natural born citizenship and note that the Minor judges, themselves, explicitly stated that they were not going to address that citizenship issue.

What did a neutral observer from 1876 think about this???

Here is what the American Law Review 1n 1876 said about the ground-breaking, earth-shattering most importantest, biggest dang Citizenship case in the Universe!!!  (Hint:  If you are having problems finding it, look for the 19 word sentence in the third paragraph.)

Meanwhile, the case on dueling has more written about it. Apparently, the Vattle Birthers (my humorous term for the two citizen parent crowd.) have a little problem understanding the meaning of the word, “Not.” Perhaps it is the CRYPTIC language the Minor judges utilize, and which I have bolded in this paragraph from the case:

The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, 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. For the purposes of this case it is NOT necessary to solve these doubts. It is sufficient for everything we have now to consider that all children born of citizen parents within the jurisdiction are themselves citizens.

What a strange universe we live in.

Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter

NOTE:

For people who do not know what a Knot Head is, from The Urban Dictionary:

(1) A person who has trouble thinking in a logical progression. this is usually caused by a profound amount of circular reasoning tying their brain into a knot.

(2) A dumb ass

(3) – Any person that is unwilling to listen to, learn from and heed the counsel and the wisdom of someone who has gone before them, and foresees the pain, consequences and heartache that lie ahead in the path the person has chosen.

(4) – Someone who only learns by suffering and/or sad experience.

(5) – A student of the School of Hard Knocks.

Here is a link to the google book, above:

http://books.google.com/books?id=akoZAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA307&lpg=PA307&dq=american+law+review+minor+happersett&source=bl&ots=xK1nRNB85e&sig=tSWNlHk2ROhLAR7fNNvCc0-TC0c&hl=en&ei=GpGhTpnxMsK9tge064WMBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&sqi=2&ved=0CEQQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

Remember the Maine, Battleship!!! Remember the Wong Kim Ark???

While Wong Kim Ark's Size is Unknown, The Maine Was 212 Cubits Long and 38 Cubits Wide

This is a short, 8 page  article from the 1898 American Law Review about another Big SHIP event in 1898, CitizenSHIP.  On February 15, 1898, an American battleship called The Maine, exploded in a harbor in Cuba. This is what started the conflict known as the Spanish American War. Six weeks later on March 28, 1898, the United States Supreme Court decided the case of  Wong Kim Ark, which ended all doubts about the citizenship of children born to foreigners in the United States. This case ended the conflict over who were natural born citizens, aka citizens by birth, under the 14th Amendment.

The Vattel Birthers (whom I usually call Vattle Birthers, to tease them) don’t like this case at all, because it is the basis of Barack Obama, Mark Rubio, and Bobby Jindal being eligible to run for President or Vice-President.  The Vattle Birthers have several reasons for avoiding this case because it is clear that the Supreme Court chose the common law interpretation of the term natural born citizen,  over the international law version. For Americans, a natural born citizen is simply someone born in the United States and within its jurisdiction.

The Vattle Birthers are trying to re-write history and claim that an 1874 SCOTUS decision, Minor vs. Happersett established a different standard, one requiring two citizen parents to be a natural born citizen. This is nonsense. The Minor decision made no attempt to define citizenship, and openly stated so in its decision. There are several Internet Articles here which discuss the Minor case, and as you can see from the first two sentences of the first page below, Wong Kim Ark , not Minor Happersett, is THE FIRST TIME the Supreme Court decided this issue:

The Wong Kim Ark case, decided by the United States Supreme Court on March 28, 1898,  decides, for the first time in that tribunal, the question whether a person born in the United States of foreign parents is a citizen of the United States under the citizenship clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The decision holds, substantially, that the language used in the Fourteenth Amendment to the constitution is declaratory of the common-law doctrine, and not of the international law doctrine, and that, therefore, a person born in the United States is a citizen thereof, irrespective of the nationality or political status of his parents.

This is a very scholarly Birther Think Tank Internet Article about this subject, and is using a source from the exact same year as the case. Here is a link to the google book:

http://books.google.com/books?pg=PA555&lpg=PA555&dq=law+review+articles+wong+kim+ark&id=_kgZAAAAYAAJ&ots=0VY-iUaXIu#v=onepage&q=law%20review%20articles%20wong%20kim%20ark&f=false

What all this means is that the Vattle Birthers are just plain wrong.  Wong Kim Ark was the first Supreme Court case to deal with this issue, and not Minor v. Happsett. If you are interested in reading about the Vattle Birther’s Minor v. Happesett wild goose chase, see here:

http://birtherthinktank.wordpress.com/2011/10/11/contributing-to-the-delinquency-of-minor-and-happersett-un-natural-born-acts/

This means that Mario Apuzzo, Esq. is WRONG. This means that Leo Donofrio, Esq, is WRONG. Mr. Donofrio is particularly WRONG since he is the chief person pushing the Minor v. Happersett nonsense, and he should be ashamed of himself for accusing anybody else of trying to scrub or revise history.  This 1898 American Law Review article is PROOF of how the law was viewed back when it was fresh on everybody’s mind, and it sure wasn’t Minor v. Happersett to which they were turning.

Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter

Contributing To The Delinquency Of Minor and Happersett!!! (Un-Natural Born Acts???)

Virginia Wanted To Do What Only Men Had Been Allowed To Do!!!

Well, this Internet Article is not quite as racy as it sounds. Actually, Virgina Minor just wanted the right to vote, and in 1874 Missouri, women were not allowed to vote. Sooo, Virginia Minor sued Happersatt, the registrar of voters. This was 6 years after the passing of the 14th Amendment, which not only provided that all persons born in America, with a few exceptions, were citizens, but also insured “No State shall make or enforce any law, which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.“

Since men could vote, Virginia Minor wanted the same privilege. The Minor judges said NO, basically because the 14th Amendment created no extra citizenship rights for Virgina Minor, because she had been a  native born citizen since her birth in 1826.  This was before the 14th Amendment passed in 1868.  Since being a female citizen did not give her the right to vote before the passage of the 14th Amendment,  it did not give her the right afterwards, either.

Here is a link to the very short Supreme Court case, MINOR v. HAPPERSETT 88 U.S. 162;  21 Wall. 162

http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/minorvhapp.html

Sooo, you may be asking yourself, what does this Women’s voting rights case have to do with any Birtherism issues???  Well not much unless you are a Vattle Birther. (I intentionally mis-spell Vattel as a form of satire.) And, if you are a Vattle Birther, then this case is the one which proves their two citizen parent theory beyond a shadow of a doubt. Yep.  I kid you NOT!!! This case supposedly proves that to be a natural born citizen, and eligible for the presidency, you must have two citizen parents.  Here is the language that throws the Vattle Birthers for a loop, with some bolding by ME:

The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, 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. For the purposes of this case it is not necessary to solve these doubts. It is sufficient for everything we have now to consider that all children born of citizen parents within the jurisdiction are themselves citizens.

Now, to most people, it reads like the Minor Judges did not make any ruling on whether or not children of foreigners were natural born citizens if born here.   And, to the rest of The Free World, when a court says in a particular case that “it  is not necessary to solve these doubts” , well,  uh. . . it means they are not going to solve the doubts.  BUT,  the Vattle Birthers have a little reading comprehension problem caused by the fact that later court cases, like Wong Kim Ark , in 1898, do go on to resolve these doubts, and NOT in a way the Vattle Birthers like.  Sooo, Minor vs. Happersett 1874 is like a retreat to the womb for the Vattle Birthers.  It is a place to be warm, and safe, and not have to deal with that troublesome Big Kid known as REALITY.  They can lay there, all comfy cozy in a fetal position, thumbs in their mouths, and pretend away those bolded words above.

What is even more ironic, is that 24 years later, the Wong Kim Ark judges did quote the Minor case, but not for any supposed definition of natural born citizens. They quoted it to show that the Court had to resort to common law to determine what natural born citizen meant, and that there were only two kinds of citizen, people born citizens and people naturalized as citizens. And, the Wong Kim Ark judges said:

. . . aliens, while residing in the dominions possessed by the crown of England, were within the allegiance, the obedience, the faith or loyalty, the protection, the power, and the jurisdiction of the English sovereign; and therefore every child born in England of alien parents was a natural-born subject. . .The same rule was in force in all the English colonies upon this continent down to the time of the Declaration of Independence, and in the United States afterwards, and continued to prevail under the constitution as originally established.13

Ooops!!! That is not good if you’re a Vattle Birther. Sure enough, if you debate the Vattle Birthers, you will see them avoiding Wong Kim Ark 1898 like the plague.  Sometimes, they are nice enough to do it in court where everybody can enjoy it.  In a 2009 case, which you can find at this website as “The Case The “Two Citizen Parent” Birthers Just HATE!!!“, the Judges, after quoting very heavily from Wong Kim Ark, noted:

The Plaintiffs do not mention the above United States Supreme Court authority [Wong Kim Ark]  in their complaint or brief; they primarily rely instead on an eighteenth century treatise [Emerich de Vattel, I bet!!!] and quotations of Members of Congress made during the nineteenth century. To the extent that these authorities conflict with the United States Supreme Court‟s interpretation of what it means to be a natural born citizen, we believe that the Plaintiffs‟ arguments fall under the category of “conclusory, non-factual assertions or legal conclusions” that we need not accept as true when reviewing the grant of a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim.

That same court also said:

Based upon 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 British 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.”15

Sooo, if you hear somebody carrying on about how Minor vs. Happersett 1874 decided the whole issue of natural born citizenship, well . . . now you know the rest of the story.

Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter

NOTE: I do a lot of Internet Debating with Vattle Birthers, and they will just go on forever and twist words all over the place to try to make the Minor case say the opposite of what it does.  Here is a example of something I told one of them to make it clearer for him, and also for the normal people reading it. It is a very age appropriate example for the Vattel Birthers:

The Case of Virginia Rabbit Versus Happersett (1875)

The Court:  At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all rabbits were mammals, and their children were mammals, too. These were mammals, or common sense mammals, as distinguished from critters like platypuses or weird animals. Some authorities go further and include as mammals, platypuses. As to this class there have been doubts, but never as to the first.  For the purposes of this case it is not necessary to solve these doubts.

Vattle Birthers: See!!! This PROVES platypuses are NOT mammals!!!

Rational People: Uh. . .No.  Because  the case was about a rabbit,  they didn’t have to deal with platypuses at all.

(Yes. We really do have to deal with issues that are this simple and obvious.)