What’s Wrong With This Picture??? (Or, The Great Birther Bait And Switch)

Some People Swore They Saw An Extra Smiley Face In The Image

Well, I usually check out the ObamaReleaseYourRecords website every day to see what’s shaking in the Birther Universe. I have noticed lately that EVERY POST seems to have the same message buried in it, right before the Kerchner Krap  scribd stuff.  Below is a screenshot of part of that message: (Click on the Image to enlarge it.)

Here is the link to this particular example:

http://obamareleaseyourrecords.blogspot.com/2012/08/america-doesnt-need-birther-in-chief.html

Outside of the advertising for Kerchner’s Art2SuperPAC  aka POOPpac did anything else in there  get your attention??? Maybe a little something that doesn’t make sense? Here, let me make it easy:

If someone has DOCUMENTED PROOF of something, why are we being directed to an AUDIO link???   Why aren’t we being directed to a DOCUMENT???  Maybe not to worry. Some guy named Breitbart Reporter Charles Johnson has an audio sooo, let’s go there. Then, when you hit the link, you get taken to this: (Click on the Image to enlarge it.)

Uh, was ist los ??? Now, we get some stuff from Breitbart Reporter Wayne Allyn Root. Huh. . . is this the old bait and switch??? Wow, there sure must be a lot of those  Breitbart Reporters running around the place.  Wait a minute. What does that little blurby thingy say???

What’s with this smoking gun WILL BE stuff??? Doesn’t WILL BE mean that it will happen sometime in the future? Not NOW? Crap, am I just being jerked around or what?  Oh wait, there is a video and an UPDATE BELOW VIDEO. Yippee!!! It’s been three weeks now since this article was first posted. Maybe they have managed to get the documentation together in the meantime???

Nope. No such luck. The first video is some radio talk show conversation between Wayne Allyn Root and Joe Pags. Blah, blah, blah, blah, and NO DOCUMENTATION.

The next two videos are of Wayne Allyn Root again, with Sean Hannity, and there is the same  blah, blah, blah,blah, and NO DOCUMENTATION. Don’t waste your time on the first two videos. The final 3:07 video tells the whole story. You wanna guess what the DOCUMENTATION is that Obama is an Indonesian citizen??? Sit down, because you may collapse in laughter, or shocked disbelief.

HUNCHES and GUT INSTINCT.

Yes, this whole stupid, frigging bunch of repetitious crap about  DOCUMENTATION comes down to Wayne Allyn Root’s HUNCHES and GUT INSTINCT that something is wrong.  Watch the whole thing below, but particularly the part at 2:05, where Root says:

I’m being honest. I don’t know. It’s a gut instinct.

Sooo,  to recap this, CDR Kerchner and the Birthers are going around telling people they have DOCUMENTATION and the documentation is just some clown’s GUT INSTINCT and HUNCH.  I still don’t know who Breitbart Reporter Charles Johnson is, and the links all go to Wayne Allyn Root stuff.  Did Wayne Allyn Root illegally usurp Charles Johnson’s identity???  Who knows?

Maybe they should have used this title:

Breitbart Reporter has a gut instinct hunch that Obama is Indonesian Citizen.

Somehow, I don’t think it would have mattered much to the Birthers if they had. It is sad to watch supposedly rational people wallow around in nonsense like this.

Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter

Note 1. The Image. This is from the wonderful and bizarre  1953 documentary film by Ed Wood, Glen or Glenda.  Wiki says, in part:

Wood’s big break came in 1953 when he was hired by producer George Weiss to make an exploitation film, I Changed My Sex, based on the life of transsexual Christine Jorgensen. After Jorgensen refused to collaborate on the film, Wood wrote a new autobiographical screenplay titled Glen or Glenda, a sincere and sympathetic study of transvestism. Wood directed and, using the alias Daniel Davis, played the titular character who has a fetish for cross-dressing and angora sweaters.[Which explains the Image Easter Egg.]

Glen or Glenda, shot in just four days for $26,000, was done in a semi-documentary style. Narration and voice-over dialog was added to generous amounts of film-library stock footage (a cost-saving trick he used in his later films).  Bela Lugosi, who was not told the film was about a transvestite, was paid $1,000 in cash for one day of filming. In a dark haunted-house set, speaking in metaphors and nursery rhymes, he played a portentous, omnipotent narrator.

The centerpiece of the film is a 15-minute fantasy sequence that illustrates Glen’s tormented state of mind. Wood utilizes a barrage of surreal, dream-like vignettes with personalized symbolism. Producer George Weiss also inserted footage of flagellation and bondage, reminiscent of the fetish films of Irving Klaw, from another production. In this sequence, Barbara is pinned beneath a large tree (in her living room), and Glen rescues her; they are married with the Devil acting as best man; a shirtless man vigorously flogs a woman reclining on a couch; lewd burlesque dancers gyrate to blaring jazz music and tear at their clothes; a woman gagged and bound to a yoke-like pole is untied by another gagged woman; a lust-crazed man roughly assaults a seductress in a flimsy negligee; an enraged Glenda rips Barbara’s blouse to shreds after she laughs at his appearance. Bela Lugosi appears in several scenes also rejecting Glenda and repeating the phrase “snips and snails and puppy-dog tails”. The film was released under several regional titles such as Transvestite, I Led Two Lives, and He or She?.

Note 2. Bait and Switch. A less than scrupulous sales tactic. Wiki explains the strategy:

Bait-and-switch is a form of fraud, most commonly used in retail sales but also applicable to other contexts. First, customers are “baited” by advertising for a product or service at a low price; second, the customers discover that the advertised good is not available and are “switched” to a costlier product.

Wiki also explains that there is a non-retail use of this tactic, for example:

Online dating sites have been known to post fake profiles as a way of enticing people to join; in some cases, employees of the site’s parent company send messages via a sockpuppet in order to encourage non-paying users to upgrade so they can message back.

Let me add to that non-retail use:

Birther websites are well known to promote new theories and put forth new facts, to reel in the unsuspecting individuals.  While either false or unsupported by evidence, these new discoveries are loudly touted across the Birther websites, and the converts get so caught up in the hoopla that they forget to critically examine the information.

Note 3. The Follow The Links Game! If you have a few minutes, start clicking on the various links in the Breitbart Reporter story above and watch how you get shuffled around to the same stuff, time and time again. It is amusing, in sad way.

Sharon Rondeau’s Basic Instinct Moment!!!

Madame DeRondeau Had So Much Practice, That She Could Knit "O-b-a-m-a" Without Even Looking

Sharon Rondeau, Editor of The Post and Email,  fell victim to a Basic Instinct Moment a few days ago.  Don’t worry – the only thing she exposed was the basic flaw in Birther legal theory. You can see how it happened from her Internet Article:

Are Leon Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey Traitors?

PUTATIVE DEFENSE SECRETARY SAYS CONGRESS “IRRELEVANT” IN WAR DECISIONS by Sharon Rondeau (Mar. 10, 2012) — On March 8, 2012, putative Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told Congress that it was “irrelevant” during testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee. Panetta claimed that “international permission” dictates the policy of the U.S. military.

http://www.thepostemail.com/2012/03/10/are-leon-panetta-and-gen-martin-dempsey-traitors/

The rest of the Internet Article is hidden to non-subscribers. But you can see where Rondeau is going. Her basic instincts are telling her, “HELL NO! Americans do not cede their rights and powers to the international community which may permit the exercise thereof as decided by committee vote.”

She is right. Which makes it all the less comprehensible why she and the rest of the Birthers demand the rest of the country recognize international law when they propagandize about Emerich de Vattel and the two citizen-parents theory???  And when they strut around and preach how British Citizenship Law trumps American Citizenship Law inside the United States.

Excuse me, but the last time I  looked, British laws do not permit their Citizens to keep and bear arms the way American laws do.  Yet, if one were to preach that British gun laws supersede American law inside the United States, then I would sure pity the poor persons trying to enforce that interpretation. Particularly down here in Texas.  Yet isn’t that exactly what the Birthers are saying every time they spout that “once a Brit never legit” crap???

The International Law versus American Law argument was central to the Wong Kim Ark case in 1898. The two citizen-parent Birthers either ignore Wonk Kim Ark,  or flat out lie that Chief Justice Gray manipulated the other judges to cover up for the long dead Chester Arthur.  They do this because the WKA Court  did NOT recognize international law as the controlling law in the United States.  This is how the majority decision characterized the loser’s position:

IV. It was contended by one of the learned counsel for the United States that the rule of the Roman law, by which the citizenship of the child followed that of the parent, was the true rule of international law, as now recognized in most civilized countries, and had superseded the rule of the common law, depending on birth within the realm, originally founded on feudal considerations.

This was not just the majority putting words in the mouths of the dissent. Here is what Justice Fuller, one of the two dissenting judges said:

Obviously, where the Constitution deals with common law rights and uses common law phraseology, its language should be read in the light of the common law; but when the question arises as to what constitutes citizenship of the nation, involving as it does international relations, and political, as contradistinguished from civil, status, international principles must be considered, and, unless the municipal law of England appears to have been affirmatively accepted, it cannot be allowed to control in the matter of construction.

Nationality is essentially a political idea, and belongs to the sphere of public law. Hence, Mr. Justice Story, in Shanks v. Dupont, 3 Pet. 242, 248, said that the incapacities of femes [p708] covert at common law

do not reach their political rights, nor prevent their acquiring or losing a national character. Those political rights do not stand upon the mere doctrines of municipal law, applicable to ordinary transactions, but stand upon the more general principles of the law of nations.

Before the Revolution, the view of the publicists had been thus put by Vattel:

The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country of parents who are citizens. As the society cannot exist and perpetuate itself otherwise than by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights. . . I say that, in order to be of the country, it is necessary that a person be born of a father who is a citizen; for, if he is born there of a foreigner, it will be only the place of his birth, and not his country.

Book I, c.19, § 212.

The true bond which connects the child with the body politic is not the matter of an inanimate piece of land, but the moral relations of his parentage. . . . The place of birth produces no change in the rule that children follow the condition of their fathers, for it is not naturally the place of birth that gives rights, but extraction.

And to the same effect are the modern writers, as for instance, [p709] Bar, who says:

To what nation a person belongs is by the laws of all nations closely dependent on descent; it is almost an universal rule that the citizenship of the parents determines it — that of the father where children are lawful, and, where they are bastards, that of their mother, without regard to the place of their birth, and that must necessarily be recognized as the correct canon, since nationality is, in its essence, dependent on descent.

Int.Law. § 31.

Please notice the bolded cite to International Law.  Some Birthers are probably dancing in their seats and waving their hands to say that Vattel only applies to natural born citizens and not 14th Amendment citizens. Nope. That is even more stupid. What, common law and Amendments decide who our citizens are, but International Law determines who is eligible to be our presidents???   Absurd. No, this is a straight International Law versus American Law issue. This was also the way the issue was viewed at the time. This is from an 1898 American Law Review article:

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.

https://birtherthinktank.wordpress.com/2011/10/21/remember-the-maine-battleship-remember-the-wong-kim-ark/

Yet, 114 years later and the Birthers once again reignite a strange love affair with International Law.  As Mario Apuzzo, Esq. states: 

But the Founders did not rely upon the English common law to define the new national United States citizenship that they created for the new Constitutional Republic. Rather, the Founders replaced the English common law with the law of nations which became the new U.S. federal common law and the law of the federal government.

http://puzo1.blogspot.com/2009/08/law-of-nations-and-not-english-common.html

The law of nations became the law of the federal government??? Where are Sharon Rondeau’s basic instincts when she hears blathering nonsense like that??? Where are her basic instincts when the Birthers prattle on about how some Swiss guy writing about French Law trumps the Magna Carta and centuries of good solid English common law??? Where are here basic instincts when the Birthers claim international permission dictates the policy of the U.S. judiciary???

My guess is, that she and the rest of the Birthers have been so hot on Obama’s trail, that they never thought twice about it.  And it probably wouldn’t have mattered if they did.

Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter

Note 1. The Image. This is Madame Defarge, played by Blanche Yurka from the 1935 film, A Tale of Two Cities. This excerpt from a free online essay explains the basics about her:

Madame Defarge

Madame Defarge, with her strong body, strong face, and strong features, likens herself to the wind, to fire, and to an earthquake. Like these natural force that are violent and cannot be stopped, Madame Defarge is ruthless and unstoppable. She is the “watchful eye” of the revolution, always observant and aware of what is going on, although she often appears to be aloof and unconcerned. She is usually seen knitting on her “register” that lists the names of aristocratic families that must perish in the revolution. During the course of the novel, Madame Defarge actually become the symbol of the revolution, with all of its hatred and desire for vengeance.

Under her calm exterior, Madame Defarge hides a passionate anger that will not be satisfied until she gets her revenge on the aristocracy, especially the Evremonde family, who is responsible for the deaths of her brother and sister. She is determined that Darnay will be executed for being an Evremonde by birth and determines his wife and child must also perish. When she finds out they have escaped, she is beside herself with anger. Wanting proof that Lucie is indeed not hiding in her room, she struggles with Miss Pross. Ironically, during the struggle her own gun falls to the floor and discharges, killing Madame Defarge immediately.

There seems to be much similarity between  Madame Defarge and the  Birthers in the way that both try to cover up their personal desires for vengeance by cloaking those desires in a supposedly impersonal patriotic desire for justice.

Note 2. For a thorough analysis of the International Law versus American Law issue,  Dr. Conspiracy published an Internet Article on this called Chan v. DeMaio, where a Nolu Chan demolished Mr. Joseph DeMaio, who publishes frequently at Ms. Rondeau’s website:

http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2012/02/chan-v-demaio/

Note 3. Basic Instinct Moment. This is a term based on the moment in the film  Basic Instinct (1992), when Actress Sharon Stone just kind of let it all hang out and went with the flow.  I see it as an instinctual response.

Chester Arthur, The First 007 British Secret Agent???

Royal Navy Commander Chester Arthur Meets His Contact Aboard The H.M.S. Stalwart

“I need to use your telegraph… She’ll wire you back.”
“Who are you?”
“Arthur,  Chester Arthur.”

Well, if you believe the Citizenium entry on Chester Arthur (Hat Tip to David Farrar!), Chester Arthur was definitely a British subject:

During Chester Arthur’s Vice-Presidential campaign alongside James A. Garfield,  Arthur P. Hinman, an attorney who had apparently been hired by the members of the Democratic party, explored the “rumors that Arthur had been born in a foreign country, was not a natural-born citizen of the United States, and was thus, by the Constitution, ineligible for the vice-presidency.” When Hinman’s initial claim of a birth in Ireland failed to gain traction, he maintained instead that Arthur was born in Canada and lobbied the press for support while searching for Arthur’s birth records, eventually in vain. After Arthur had become President due to Garfield’s assassination, Hinman published a pamphlet aimed to cast doubt on Arthur’s presidential eligibility.

However, due to the focus on Hinman’s unfounded allegations regarding Chester Arthur’s foreign place of birth, it remained unknown during the Garfield campaign that Arthur was nevertheless a natural-born subject of the British crown, because his British-Irish father William Arthur had not naturalized as a U.S. citizen until August 1843, fourteen years after Chester Arthur’s birth, and was at best a denizen of the State of Vermont.

Arthur himself continuously gave false information on his family’s history, thereby obscuring the circumstances and chronology of his own birth. Arthur knew of Hinman and his allegations and defended himself against the original claim that he was not a native-born citizen by stating that his father “came to this country when he was eighteen years of age, and resided here several years before he was married”, whereas in reality his father William emigrated from Ireland to Canada at the age of 22 or 23. Arthur further claimed that “his mother was a New Englander who had never left her native country—a statement every member of the Arthur family knew was untrue.”In a second interview he repeated some of the historical revisions and further stated that his father had been forty years of age at the time of his birth, which was revealed by Hinman to be a lie. Somewhere between 1870 and 1880 Chester Arthur had caused additional confusion by creating 1830 as a false year of his birth, which was quoted in several publications and was also engraved on his tombstone. Shortly before his death Arthur caused several Presidential materials, which had been in his private possession, to be destroyed, while other historical documents pertaining to Arthur’s life and presidency were lost for unknown reasons.

Here is the link to the Citizenium Internet Article, which also notes “Due to newly found sources on the issue this paragraph will be substantially rewritten soon.” Sooo, enjoy this while you can:

http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Chester_Arthur

Although the British Secret Service was not formally created until 1909, there was a long history of espionage work dating back at least to the days of Queen Elizabeth I.  Wiki says about Sir Francis Walsingham:

Sir Francis Walsingham (c. 1532– 6 April 1590) was Principal Secretary to Elizabeth I of England from 1573 until 1590, and is popularly remembered as her spymaster. Walsingham is frequently cited as one of the earliest practitioners of modern intelligence methods both for espionage and for domestic security. He oversaw operations which penetrated the heart of Spanish military preparation, gathered intelligence from across Europe, and disrupted a range of plots against the queen, securing the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots.

In foreign intelligence, the full range of Walsingham’s network of “intelligencers” (of news as well as secrets) may never be known, but it was substantial. While foreign intelligence was part of the principal secretary’s duties, Walsingham brought to it flair and ambition, and large sums of his own money. He also cast his net more widely than others had done hitherto, exploiting the insight into Spanish policy offered at the Italian courts; cultivating contacts in Constantinople and Aleppo, building complex connections with the Catholic exiles. Recent detective work by author John Bossy has suggested that he recruited Giordano Bruno, although this remains controversial. Among his minor spies may have been the playwright CHristopher Marlowe, who seems to have been one of a stream of false converts whom Walsingham planted in foreign seminaries for gathering intelligence and insinuating counter-intelligence A more central figure was the cryptographer Thomas Phelippes, expert in deciphering letters, creating false handwriting and breaking and repairing seals without detection.

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

The doctoring of documents and history is a well known trick-of-the-espionage trade. Further, Chester Arthur directed American military forces to salute the British flag. From chesterarthur.com:

Shortly after his accession to the presidency he participated in the dedication of the monument erected at Yorktown, Virginia, to commemorate the surrender of Lord Cornwallis at that place, 19 Oct., 1781. Representatives of our French allies and of the German participants were present. At the close of the celebration the president felicitously directed a salute to be fired in honor of the British flag, in recognition of the friendly relations so long and so happily subsisting between Great Britain and the United States, in the trust and confidence of peace and goodwill between the two countries for all the centuries to come, and especially as a mark of the profound respect entertained by the American people for the illustrious sovereign and gracious lady who sits upon the British throne.”

Sooo, I am waiting for the movie to come out, Chester Arthur, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.  I bet Jerome Corsi will play the Arthur P. Hinman role. They have a lot in common. Corsi also forgot to mention the two citizen parent requirement in his book, Obama Nation.

Oh, this alternative history stuff is FUN!!! I can see why the two-citizen parent Birthers do it so much!

Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter

Note 1:  Here is a fun place I found to learn stuff about James Bond, like the quote I mangled to start this about the telegraph, above.:

http://www.hmss.com/films/dalton/

Note 2: The name of the ship in the image, H.M.S. Stalwart, is a reference to the Stalwarts, which wiki says is:

The “Stalwarts” were a faction of the United States Republican Party toward the end of the 19th century.

During the Republican national convention in 1880, the Half-Breeds advocated the candidacy of James Blaine of Maine for President. A stalemate ensued between Half-breeds and Stalwarts, and a compromise was struck to nominate a decent, unabrasive man: James Garfield. Additionally, Chester Arthur, former collector for the port of New York, was chosen to be his running mate to satisfy the Stalwarts.

Chester A. Arthur, sympathetic to the Stalwart cause, became president upon Garfield’s death on September 19, 1881, due to being shot by the self-proclaimed “Stalwart of the Stalwarts,” Charles J. Guiteau on July 2, 1881. Arthur helped to create civil service reforms in his term in part because he felt that he had to follow up Garfield’s work.

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

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:

https://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.)