Prof. Jacobson Wins His Place In The Guinness Book Of World Records After Successfully Dodging 1,749 Copies Of Vattel’s The Law Of Nations!
There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Birther Zone.
Professor William Jacobson, a Cornell law professor, is finally ready to take on the question of whether Mark Rubio and Ted Cruz are eligible for the Presidency. Here are a few excerpts from an August 13, 2013 article:
Ted and Marco Eligibility – I Can’t Put It Off Any Longer
The analysis of the Natural Born Citizen clause in the Constitution as it applies to Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.
I promised to do this long ago, and did the research with the assistance of a former student, but couldn’t bring myself to actually write it up for multiple reasons:
(1) it’s a subject which brings out the most vitriolic commenters and e-mailers (hey, why don’t we talk about a non-controversial subject instead, like Islam or Gay Marriage?) and I haven’t been in the mood;
(2) views on the subject have become like religion, incapable of disproving;
(3) I’ve generally been distracted, with each week bringing some new “crisis” to write about;
(4) I’m lazy by nature;
(5) the process of relocating from RI to NY started in March and continued through July, and sapped what little free time I had;
(6) this isn’t actually my job,
(7) I’m lazy by nature (but I repeat myself); and
(8) bullet-proofing the analysis against the inevitable criticisms requires more painstaking drafting than normally takes place on the internet.But it can’t be ignored anymore.
The links there to a previous article in, February 2013, reveal some of what he has been going through:
The nature of the hostility directed at me has changed over the years.
In 2008-2010, it was mostly Obama supporters upset that someone who taught at an Ivy League law school would dissent. I guess they figured their love letters weren’t working, so that has mostly (but not completely) stopped.
The most unhinged of late are Elizabeth Warren supporters. (More on that, perhaps, in a later post.)
But along that road, there has been a consistent allegation that I was part of some vast conspiracy to conceal Obama’s alleged lack of constitutional qualification, first on birth place grounds and then on “natural born citizen” grounds.
That, even though I was one of the few people to defend the right of anyone to question the constitutional qualifications of any presidential candidate, so long as the challenge was not based on conspiracy theories and making stuff up. I never accepted the Barack Obama birthplace conspiracy theories any more than I accepted the Trig Palin birth mother conspiracy theories.
I, almost alone, delved into the history of constitutional challenges, dating back to Chester Arthur on through George Romney and John McCain, with others along the way, to show that challenging constitutional qualification was not inherently racist and did not begin with Barack Obama. No one pushed back against the abuse of the “Birther Card” more than I did. (On the flip side of the coin, some left-wingers accused me of being a “Birther” because I refused to buy into the race card use.)
He then goes on to discuss the hostility in more detail. There are a lot of good comments at both stories. I read his blog regularly, although I usually don’t comment very much. Two of his excuses for putting this off will strike a chord with both Obots and Anti-Birthers, to wit:
(2) views on the subject have become like religion, incapable of disproving;
(8) bullet-proofing the analysis against the inevitable criticisms requires more painstaking drafting than normally takes place on the internet.
Those two items lead me to suspect that he has had a whole lot more run-ins with the Birthers than I ever expected. Personally, I am curious what verbal canards the Birthers will lob at him and whether they will also chunk physical copies of The Law of Nations at him, in the manner of Arabs throwing shoes. I can hardly wait to read his analysis, which I suspect is not going to make Birthers very happy.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Note 1. The Image. This is from the TV series, The Twilight Zone. This episode is called “Time Enough At Last.” About which Wiki Says:
It was adapted from a short story by Lyn Venable (Marilyn Venable), which had been published in the January 1953 edition of the science fiction magazine If: Worlds of Science Fiction. “Time Enough at Last” became one of the most famous episodes of the original Twilight Zone, and has been frequently parodied since. It is “the story of a man who seeks salvation in the rubble of a ruined world” and tells of Henry Bemis /ˈbiːmɪs/, played by Burgess Meredith, who loves books, yet is surrounded by those who would prevent him from reading them. The episode follows Bemis through the post apocalyptic world, touching on such social issues as anti-intellectualism, the dangers of reliance upon technology, and the difference between aloneness (solitude) and loneliness.
There is more here:
The Birther Think Tank 