-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
The Constitution’s text on the issue states “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President.” The problem arises due to a pesky comma. Does the clause “at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution” refer only to “a Citizen of the United States” or to both clauses including “a natural born Citizen?” It turns out that according to accepted rules of grammar in 1787, the pesky comma means that “at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution” refers to both antecedent clauses.
This means that the President must be a natural born citizen at the time of adoption or a citizen at the time of adoption, 1789. Any person born after 1789 isn’t eligible to be President of the United States. That makes Zachary Taylor the last constitutional President.
You might think that the pesky comma was just a typo (writo?) by an overworked scrivener or maybe a drop of ink that ran a little. But the commas were removed and reinserted numerous times for different drafts of the Constitution, so it was something that was given serious thought by the framers. There’s no backspace when using quill and ink, so you have to decide what to write before you write it.
Wait, it gets better. The rest of the statement reads “neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty-five years, and been fourteen years a resident within the United States.” Article VII states that “The ratification of the conventions of nine states, shall be sufficient for the establishment of this constitution between the states so ratifying the same.” The ninth state was New Hampshire which ratified on June 21, 1788.
This means that nobody would have been a resident until June 21, 1788 and nobody could be President until June 21, 1802. That makes Thomas Jefferson the first legal President of the United States.
We must conclude that, based on originalism, George Washington was unconstitutional.
H/T: Balkinization, Steiker, Levinson, Balkin (pdf).
Notice how Nal has not been back on this thread even to fix his one major error…
“…..nobody could be President until June 21, 1802. That makes Thomas Jefferson the first legal President of the United States.”
Jefferson would be excluded too since he became Prez in 1801, but Nal doesn’t care about facts—and Turley doesn’t even monitor his own blog. What a shame.
Frank, I have actually heard that before, that Washington wasn’t technically the FIRST president.
Mick, I agreed 100% with every word of your post. Excellent. Why isn’t Mick a guest blogger? Because Turley sounds like a Hamiltonian constitutionalist [which is really NOT a constitutionist in my opinion]. His guest bloggers all seem to hold the Hamiltonian/Lincolnian view of big central government/no states rights/mercantilism and imperialist concept of America.
“It turns out”, “the truth is”, “in reality”
All are tried and true catch-phrases of the Left, just before they start lying. The author asserts that he knows what the rules of grammar in 1787 were, and thus that the text of the Constitution is basically meaningless w/ regard to Presidential eligibility, with no documentation.
The word “or” plainly shows that “Citizen and “natural born Citizen” are 2 separate concepts.
The United States began w/ the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the beginning of the Revolutionary War, on 4/19/1775. Washington was inaugurated 4/30/1789, 14 years later.
Martin Van Buren b. 12/5/1782 to American Citizen Parents in New York was the first natural born Citizen President.
The natural born Citizen clause was inserted to ensure, to the highest possibility, allegiance and attachment to the US by ensuring SINGULAR ALLEGIANCE at birth. Van Buren was the first born with this singular allegiance, even though born before the ratification of the USC. Tyler was the second natural born Citizen.
Obama was born (at best) with dual allegiance to Britain, due to his father’s Kenyan citizenship, and the British Nationality Act of 1948. As such, being born after 1789, he would NOT be eligible as a natural born Citizen, even if born in the White House. There is NO WAY POSSIBLE that the founders would have thought someone born w/ allegiance to Britain would be eligible to be POTUS.
Anyone born after 1789 must be born to US Citizen parents to be a natural born Citizen, before that they were grandfathered in by the “grandfather clause”, “or a citizen…” if they were a “citizen” in 1789.
Obama’s admitted dual allegiance
According to author Joey Green in his book CONTRARY to Popular Belief:
“George Washington was the ninth president of the United States.
The United States was established on July 4, 1776. George Washington was inaugurated president 13 years later, on April 30, 1789. During the intervening years, the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia drew up the Articles of Confederation (the first American constitution).In 1781, Maryland representative John Hanson was elected the first president of the Congress of the Confederation. His official title was ” president of the United States in Congress Assembled”. After Hanson, seven other men also served as president: Elias Boudinot, Thomas Mifflin, Richard Henry Lee, John Hancock, Nathaniel Gorham, Arthur St. Clair, and Cyrus Griffin. In 1787, Congress held a constitutional convention. The delegates wrote the current constitution, ratified by the states in 1788. The following year, the ratifying states elected Washington our nation’s ninth president (but the first president under the new constitution),”
First edition published 2005
Mr. Treacy what you say.
Don’t shoot Nal he was just the messenger 🙂
I think Larry is really hip to the joke and is schooling all of you about staying in character 😛
Res non ipsa loquitur?
Brian is not laughing.
This means that the President must be a natural born citizen at the time of adoption or a citizen at the time of adoption, 1789.
==================================================
hahahahahahahahahaha!
I love it……………..so silly 🙂
I DO blame you Nal. If someone writes bullshit and you do a story on their bullshit and you don’t condemn it or refute it, then you’re dignifying and endorsing it. It wasn’t Balkin, Steiker or Levison who posted it on this blog, was it?
I criticized Turley recently for the guest bloggers, and that was ONLY because of the fact you existed. Now, I will go further and say it is now the CONTENT of the posts that should call Turley’s use of you guys into question. In my opinion, Turley’s credibility is already blown for not monitoring his blog and allowing this story to remain. You’re basically saying Washington and Adams aren’t really presidents when everyone knows they were grandfathered in and were exempt from the clauses.
How can a constitutional professor allow this bullshit on his blog? It’s mindbaffling to me how he can allow it. Is anyone here with me on this or is everyone on this blog blindly following Nal because he has been appointed to blog by Lord Turley?
This paragraph kills me:
“This means that the President must be a natural born citizen at the time of adoption or a citizen at the time of adoption, 1789. Any person born after 1789 isn’t eligible to be President of the United States. That makes Zachary Taylor the last constitutional President.”
So, you’re saying the first two Presidents aren’t eligible at all because they were not residents for 14 years [even though the WERE] and every President after Taylor is not eligible because they were born after 1789? Oh my Nal! It’s a grand conspiracy by the founders that NO ONE except Presidents 4-12 [Madison thru Taylor] be president!
I excluded Jefferson because according to your stupid theory, even Jefferson wouldn’t be eligible [one of your many mistakes] because you said “This means that nobody would have been a resident until June 21, 1788 and nobody could be President until June 21, 1802.” Jefferson was elected in 1800 and inaugurated in 1801, so he would not be eligible as well according to your stupid theory. You JUST SAID “nobody could be President UNTIL June 21, 1802”. That means everyone AFTER 1802 was free to run and be eligible. Everyone before 1802 was NOT.
Your story is the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen on any left or right blog since I’ve been blogging, and there’s tons of errors in it [I’ve already corrected like 5 of the alone]. You have changed one but left the others go, and then you have the audacity to blame it on others.
Turley, your reputation is on the line with this idiotic story. Nal cannot claim that he just “got it from another source” when he is not reporting it as if OTHERS are saying it. Look how it’s written. It’s a story that HE is agreeing with. He doesn’t even mention Yale Prof. Jack Balkin, UT Profs. Jordan Steiker and Sandy Levison IN the actual article. He just LINKS to them at the bottom. If he was just getting the story from other sources, he would have started off the story like this:
“It appears that the first 3 presidents are not eligible to be President according to Yale Prof. Jack Balkin, UT Profs. Jordan Steiker and Sandy Levison, who claim that the absence of a simple comma changes the meaning of the Constitution…”
But, you don’t see that, do you? He is writing the story in agreement with these 3 as if they are his own beliefs. You can’t blame “others” for being the source when you ADOPT that belief yourself and fail to mention their names WITHIN the actual article as if you are just reporting it!
Turley: GET RID OF THE GUEST BLOGGERS. They adopt the beliefs of their sources and when they are nailed with facts, they BLAME the sources! That’s research????? That’s journalism??
That’s FOX News!
Larry,
Don’t blame me, blame my source material … Yale Prof. Jack Balkin, UT Profs. Jordan Steiker and Sandy Levison.
“So my mistake in increasing his year of 1805 to 1804”
I meant DEcreasing….Jesus.
I said above:
“WTF? NOBODY would be a resident until June 21, 1789 [you meant 1788]and nobody could be president until June 21, 1805 [you mean 1804 if you had a point…but you don’t]?”
While I was giving Nal the correct year of 1788 [instead of 1789], I simply decreased HIS year of 1805 and put in 1804 as the year he should’ve put in. I was wrong to put 1804, because even if Nal was correct with putting 1805, he was still wrong in the fact that it is not 14 years between 1789 and 1805, but 16 years. So my mistake in increasing his year of 1805 to 1804 was based upon the 1805 being right, which it wasn’t because Nal’s original “1789” was wrong. Nevertheless, Nal has put the correct year of 1802….[1788–1802…14 years].
I still say Nal’s article is pure crapola and Turley should drop him as a guest blogger as to save his dignity, but my guess is…he won’t.
Wanted my daughter to get Sanford Levinson for Con Law, but she did not. Instead, she got a visiting professor with a pro-Scalia bend.
Nal, Steiker, Levinson, Balkin lose all credibility when thy said this:
“Many constitutional thinkers,including Abraham Lincoln, argue that the identity of the “United States” pre-exists the ratification of the Constitution.28 The text of the Constitution surely encourages this view. The famous beginning of the Preamble—”We the People of the United States … do hereby ordain and establish this Constitution”—suggests that the “United States” preceded the particular political structure established by the new Constitution.”
First of all, Lincoln did everything possible in his power to destroy the Constitution. Second, Lincoln did not believe the States pre-existed the ratification of the Constitution. He believed the opposite. By the way, it IS correct that the states were formed FIRST, before the federal government…but Lincoln didn’t believe that. It was this very principle that Lincoln declared war on the South and claimed they were committing an act of treason. If Lincoln had believed the states came first, he would have believed in state’s rights, which he clearly did not.
Lincoln never ONCE stated the war was about SLAVERY. He said it was to “save the Union”, but the Union was formed by a confederation of states that adopted ordinances in their state constitutions that they could reserve the right to secede from the Union. The “United States” is not supposed to be a monolitic entity but individual states that form a compact.
Lincoln claimed in the Gettysburg Address that the war was being fought in defense of government by consent, but the opposite was true: the federal government under Lincoln were denying the right of government by consent–because the South certainly did not consent to remaining in the Union.
I brought Lincoln up because the people who Nal linked to brought Lincoln up, and since they claimed Lincoln was a “constitutional thinker”, I couldn’t ignore that and had to present facts. If Steiker, Levinson, Balkin claim that Lincoln was guided by the Constitution [which can EASILY be refuted], then anything they say is subject to scrutiny.
Fixed the dates. They were correct in the .pdf file but Prof. Balkin mistyped them in his blog.
CITIZENSHIP STATUS of the PRESIDENTS OF USA
http://www.scribd.com/doc/48856102/U-S-Presidents-Eligibility-Grandfather-Clause-Natural-Born-Citizen-Clause-or-Seated-by-Fraud
“Thanks a lot, Nal … now all the Jefferson lovers are going to get even bigger heads!”
The fact that he was the greatest president ever can’t make our heads any bigger. What was that supposed to mean? You don’t think Jefferson was great?
The best compliment my above post can possibly receive is being ignored [and you all have ignored it] because that means it’s not been refuted.
“Larry,
I took the article to be a sarcastic look at the failings of originalism and how it could be taken to an extreme. But maybe I am mistaken.”
“Failings of originalism”? What’s that mean? Nal is saying because there is ONE lousy comma inserted where he claims it shouldn’t be, that means Washington and Adams are not eligible to be President [even though everyone knows they were grandfathered in] yet he gets a year wrong [he put 1789 when it’s really 1788] and even AFTER I corrected him, he still leaves it in! And getting a year right is easily researchable.
Bdaman,
If they are partial to Obama for nominating them, would they not also be partial to the Republican members of the Senate who voted to approve the nomination? And if that is your threshold for ethics, why didn’t Souter recuse himself from Bush v.Gore since Bush I nominated him to the court or any Reagan justices since Bush I was his VP?
“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.”
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=88&invol=162