The controversy over President Barack Obama continues with an interesting twist: Maj. Gen. Carroll Dean Childers (ret.) and active U.S. Air Force reservist Lt. Col. David Earl Graeff are supporting the litigation. On July 8th, Maj. Stefan Frederick Cook filed the suit July 8th in federal court demanding conscientious objector status and a preliminary injunction based upon his claim that President Barack Obama is not a natural-born citizen of the United States. He argued that, since Obama cannot serve as president of the United States, he cannot order him to deploy as commander-in-chief of the U.S. Armed Forces.
What is curious is the decision by the military to suddenly revoke the deployment orders of Cook. That served to fuel the growing movement spreading this rumor. The government is now claiming that the lawsuit is “moot” since Cook doesn’t have to go to Afghanistan. Cook in turn has added a claim to this lawsuit that he was retaliated against for his lawsuit after he was terminated at Simtech Inc., a Department of Defense contractor.
The addition of a retired major general and active colonel will have more of a promotional and legal benefit for these litigants. It was an unfortunate decision to revoke these orders. The Administration should have fought the lawsuit on the merits rather than try to moot the matter. The optics are perfect for those alleging a grand conspiracy to conceal Obama’s birth certificate (which has been viewed as third parties) and hide his alleged foreign born status.
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“Do we all agree that President Obama is the legal President of the US?”
Yes until the Supreme Court of the United States decides differently.”
FFLEO,
You old conservative coot, you know I would never doubt your
honesty, or your devotion to truth. You are in the parlance of old folks like us(and the Mafia unfortunately) a stand up guy. I always enjoy reading your posts, whether I agree with them or not.
It is really hot out by you and I’m not sure I could stand the weather, even if I did back in the day on my cross country wanderings. It’s hot down here to and my A/C is blasting, a fact that my fixed income will have to absorb when the energy bill comes in next month. I may not envy your weather, but are you far enough away from town to see the full sky? Being a City boy and going out west, I would eschew my tent and lay in my sleeping bag staring up at the magnificence of the heavens I had never seen at home. Sometimes I would even be lucky enough to have a woman sharing her bag hooked up to mine. While that was nice, the wonder of the heavens brought an ecstasy even greater. I remember watching meteor showers on a hill near Rapid City in 1977. Oops there I go rambling on again with no point.
Slartibartfast,
“If any other construction would render the clause inoperative, that is an additional reason for rejecting such other construction, and for adhering to the obvious meaning.”
Opinion of CJ John Marshall, Marbury v Madison, 5 U.S. 137, 175
As such, I don’t agree with your interpretation that the 14th and/or 19th Amendments had any effect on “natural born citizen”.
Again, I ask; what is your definition of “natural born citizen”?
What is the source of your definition?
“Mike and Vince get back with us and give us your opinion please.”
bdaman,
I can’t talk for Vince, but he’s a working attorney and probably is busy. In any event he has across a number of threads exhaustively and correctly rebutted every issue that came his way. To no effect, or even honest dispute of his rebuttals. As for me above I made my position on this well known, but since the birther people fail to engage it, or simply ignore it, to me the effort becomes pointless. Even though you and I agree on some things and strongly disagree on others, I feel we have engaged each other fairly and have had constructive debate. Say what one will about you, I believe that you honestly try to engage with people and I respect that.
Others, however, really do play rhetorical games and cover their game playing well. to deal with them I would have to de-construct their posts line by line continuously. Part of their technique is to ask supposedly “honest” questions, which in fact are really not too cleverly constructed traps.
What shows their true colors though is that they take great pains to reveal as little as possible about their real beliefs and couch themselves in the cloak of just fair minded inquiry. The tedium of tracking down every little rhetorical thrust, only to have my refutations/citations ignored, or dismissed really gets boring because their work is so essentially dishonest.
This is to me is the extent of the birther movement and the rich plutocracy that is supporting its “stars.” My original birth certificate in NYC was lost after my parent’s death. Two of the copies I received officially from the City of New York, were also lost through the years. The copy I have now is a poorly defined Xerox. It’s funny how when I’ve had to produce it on official business, like mortgages, passports, etc. no one has ever questioned its’ authenticity.
You can go on line and see a copy of President Obama’s birth
certificate. You have Hawaiian officials attesting to its’ validity. You have contemporaneous newspaper birth announcements and each document is treated by the birthers with caviling and caveats. We want to see more is their battle cry. As Vince said at one point and he was perfectly correct they will never be satisfied.
The reason for this is that this is not about whether the President is a “natural born” citizen, it is about de-legitimizing him as President. This is not a movement coming from people who give a rat’s ass about our Constitution, it is about people who are trying to maintain a plutocratic aristocracy in this country and are rich enough to find partisan fools on the make, like Orly Taitz, to front for them.
That some of their supporters are truly people concerned with constitutional government is true, but what separates them out is a willingness to acknowledge that President Obama is duly elected, until a SCOTUS judgment that will never come because even with a Republican Majority on SCOTUS, they understand that this case has no merits. Understand though that although FFLEO acknowledges this, Jim Byrne refuses to.
Perhaps I’m wrong and should give him the benefit of the doubt, but since Jim likes to pose and re-pose questions, rather than answering those put to him, I’ll go with my interpretation for now.
When he posits that the writings of Vatel, from the 1750’s should be indicative of the founder’s intent, he is dredging up the esoteric in defense of the undefendable. Vatel wrote at a time when women were considered their husband’s property, rather than full citizens. That has changed in American jurisprudence. Perhaps he will next argue this “Constitutional” fact:
“Slavery is seen in the Constitution in a few key places. The first is in the Enumeration Clause, where representatives are apportioned. Each state is given a number of representatives based on its population – in that population, slaves, called “other persons,” are counted as three-fifths of a whole person.”
On might posit that in Jim’s view President Obama, being black (the only legal race for slavery in the US)is only three-fifths of a whole person and therefore can’t be President. Now while we’ve had subsequent amendments over ruling this methodology, the “natural born” citizen argument is of the same quality, when it stoops to making Vatel, a Frenchman, into John Jay’s inspiration. There is no end to the tortuous logic and you know what, if I was one the other side of the fence, or perhaps just liked to argue, I could come up with much better reasons to make the same case. I wouldn’t, however, because the entire birther movement is a hoax of Machiavellian proportion, supported by a bunch of wealthy Plutocrats.
Slartibartfast 1, July 21, 2009 at 10:49 am
Jim B,
If the father can transmit (natural born) citizenship, then by the 19th amendment (making women full citizens) and the 14th amendment (making all citizens equal) so can the mother.
*****************************
Hey, here is a little secret, and don’t share this with anyone else ok. The 19th Amendment only applied to white women. They were the only ones that could not vote. The 13, 14, and 15 amendments only applied to “minorities” another little ole secret for ya, Susan B. Anthony, never paid the 100 dollar fine imposed against her for voting in New York when she knew she did not have the right to.
Now don’t tell anyone else. FYI, women had the right to vote in the Utah territory until they join this great ole union. The first female congresswoman hailed from either Montana or North Dakota, even before she had the right to vote for herself. Go figure.
Jim B,
If the father can transmit (natural born) citizenship, then by the 19th amendment (making women full citizens) and the 14th amendment (making all citizens equal) so can the mother.
Oh and you to Prof. Turley
Mario Appuzzo has now filed his Plaintiff’s Brief Opposing Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss: http://puzo1.blogspot.com/
Mike and Vince get back with us and give us your opinion please.
Slartibartfast,
The 14th Amendment has to do with citizenship, and the 19th suffrage. We’re talking about natural born citizen.
What are you using as the definition of “natural born citizen”?
Has anybody heard from Vince, not one comment on this thread.
Vince you out there buddy. Engage,engage do not eject.
Executive order 13489 signed Barack Obama Jan 21 2009
From the Executive Order text:
Upon receipt of a notice of intent to disclose Presidential records, the Attorney General (directly or through the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel) and the Counsel to the President shall review as they deem appropriate the records covered by the notice and consult with each other, the Archivist, and such other executive agencies as they deem appropriate concerning whether invocation of executive privilege is justified.
(b) The Attorney General and the Counsel to the President, in the exercise
of their discretion and after appropriate review and consultation under subsection
(a) of this section, may jointly determine that invocation of executive
privilege is not justified. The Archivist shall be notified promptly of any such determination.
Not only is the CINC playing hide and seek, he makes his own rules.
Rafflaw: I was parroting BVM’s posts, hello earth to Rafflaw, come in Rafflaw. Thats why I started the comment like this
so Bdaman and BVM which was copied from one of your comments.
Jim B,
As I said before, if the father’s citizenship is sufficient, then the mother’s is as well by the 19th and 14th amendments (unless you don’t recognize these amendments as part of the constitution…)
Some of the Plaintiffs
Captain Pamela Barnett, §
Lt. Colonel Richard Norton Bauerbach §
Captain Robin D. Biron §
Colonel John D. Blair, §
Captain Harry G. Butler, §
Chief Warrant O. Thomas S. Davidson §
Lt. Jason Freese, §
Commander David Fullmer LaRoque, §
MIL officer US Army Lita M. Lott, §
Major David Grant Mosby, §
MSGT Steven Kay Neuenschwander, §
State Representative Frank Niceley, TN §
SFC E7 Robert Lee Perry , §
Colonel Harry Riley, §
Sergeant Jeffrey Wayne Rosner §
MSGT Jeffrey Schwilk, §
Captain David Smithey, §
Lt. Commander John Bruce Steidel, §
Cmdr. Douglas Earl Stoeppelwerth §
Thomas J Taylor, §
Captain Neil B. Turner, §
LCDR Jeff Graham Winthrope, and §
Lt. Colonel Mark Wriggle, §
FFLEO,
I disagree with the video in that I don’t believe both parents are required to be citizens at the time of the birth on U.S. soil. -I think the mother can be of any citizenship. However, the father must be a U.S. Citizen.
Since Congress only has the authority to create uniform rules for naturalization (the process of making an alien a citizen), I believe they lacked the authority to redefine the definition of natural born in order to include John McCain. -Remember..that was a NON-BINDING resolution.
As such, the referenced “American Citizen(s)” from the video would also be a declaration that exceeds the constitutional authority granted to Congress.
Without the non-binding resolution, is there any other place that would require both parents to be citizens?
McCain’s status is detailed in the video above.
AY,
I do believe that the Panama Canal Zone was a US possession of the US back when Grampy McCain was born.
rafflaw 1, July 20, 2009 at 10:45 pm
Bdaman,
Where is your proof that Obama and Biden were not qualified for 2009 election? And I am not talking about the birth certificate crap.
**************************
If Obama is not qualified and he was born on America soil. I have a hell of a Question is McCain even in the running as he was born in an area that was not even a territory, state or possession of the US? Ok, that is just a pure accidental question.
Bdaman,
Where is your proof that Obama and Biden were not qualified for 2009 election? And I am not talking about the birth certificate crap. Where is your evidence for anything that you said? I’m sorry. I forgot that the neocon, tea partying crowd doesn’t deal in facts. My bad.
Rafflaw so Bdaman and BVM
Obama and Biden were not qualified for 2009 election. They are War Criminals and guilty of many other crimes.
Bush and Cheney are War Criminals and guilty of many other crimes.
Bush stole the 2000 election Obama hijacked a country.
Hi Jill,
I am fine. I do not have air conditioning in my home and the temps over the last 4 days have averaged 114 degrees with a high of 117. My computer desk temp is 104 degrees plus at those ambient temps. I have a computer hardware system monitor and if the core internal temps exceed 70 Celsius (158 F) I shut my computer off. Therefore, I spend most of my time outdoors, as I did during my career.