This week, it was announced that budget cuts would now include canceling the Mars missions. However, Rep. Cliff Steans (R-FL) wants to go further. In a recent speech, Steans called for the selling off of national park lands. We have previously seen states sell off park lands, government buildings and other property — even as we burned hundreds of billions in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In a town hall meeting Belleview, Florida, on February 25 that Steans stated “we don’t need any more national parks in this country” and that we need to “actually sell off some of our national parks.” That is a remarkable proposal since national parks are the most successful program in the government with rising demands of citizens visiting parks and sites. One would think we would be expanding the parks not cutting off one of the most popular government programs.
Here is the full statement:
I got attacked in a previous town meeting for not supporting another national park in this country, a 200-mile trailway. And I told the man that we don’t need more national parks in this country, we need to actually sell off some of our national parks, and try and do what a normal family would do is — they wouldn’t ask Uncle Joe for a loan, they would sell their Cadillac, or they would take their kids out of private schools and put them into public schools to save to money instead of asking for their credit card to increase their debt ceiling.
Putting aside the thousands of jobs and millions of recreational hours supplied to citizens through these parks, we continue to show a bizarre sense of priority in sending billions abroad to fund wars in countries with growing anti-American sentiments. Instead of saving hundreds of billions of dollars, we will instead continue to cut educational, scientific, and environmental programs that protect our future.
Source: Think Progress as first seen on Reddit
Neil,
Qualifications for President and the “Natural Born” Citizenship Eligibility Requirement
Congressional Research Service
Jack Maskell
Legislative Attorney
11/14/2011
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42097.pdf
Bdaman 1, March 13, 2012 at 1:24 pm
P.S. nice job on hijacking the thread. This thread is about Cliff Stearns and the idea of selling federal lands to pay down debt.
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They sell that land under false pretenses, saying it is part of a globe, part of global climate.
“Climate change is occurring … and poses significant risks to humans and the environment,” reports the National Academy of Sciences. As climate-change science moves in one direction, Republicans in Congress are moving in another. Why?”
Why are republicans in congress moving in The W Direction?
Because they are well aware that a 5,000 year old flat planet cannot have anything “global”, because that is naturally an unbelievable shape for wise guys who have flatulence in this context.
As to the other topics … I really do miss Vince Treacy.
The government does manage to make a buck or two from the land it owns. Since no one has mentioned it, there is always the Office of Natural Resources Revenue
http://www.onrr.gov/About/faqs.htm#ques2
“The Office of Natural Resources Revenue — and its predecessor agency the Minerals Revenue Management Program – has collected and disbursed more than $210 billion since the program was originally created in 1982. Collections and disbursements averaged $7.5 billion during the last 28 years. In Fiscal Year 2009, the program disbursed $10.7 billion.”
“The process begins as some federal lands are leased to individuals and companies for natural resources development. Lease holders competitively bid, initially pay a bonus, and subsequently rent, for the right to develop the resources on these onshore and offshore lands. Within the Department of the Interior, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement is responsible for offshore federal leasing, the Bureau of Land Management is responsible for federal onshore leasing, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs coordinates leasing on Indian lands.
The ONRR acts on behalf of the American people to manage the royalties, rents, bonuses and other revenues generated throughout the leasing process. Using sophisticated, computerized accounting systems, ONRR processes, or collects, approximately $1 billion each month. Bonuses, rents and royalties from more than 62,000 leases can amount to several billion dollars each year ”
If one really wants to get into all the minutia, one can spend months studying this.
http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/law/laws1.pdf
Bob Esquire, I understand that I don’t have justiciability with this, but I am not filing a court case. I am under no delusions that any court would ever rule in favor of my argument. That does not mean that the argument, on its face, is not sound. It’s a very simple argument based on a very simple Supreme Court opinion, which is why all the arguments against it seem to be either fallacious or procedural per current legal practices.
Elaine, the article contains the statement,,,
“This argument takes full advantage of the fact that the framers of the Constitution never defined the term “natural-born citizen,” and the fact that the Supreme Court has never specifically defined it either.”
He apparently hasn’t read Minor v. Happersett.
Idealist, I told you. These people born to Mexican parents in L.A. hospitals everyday may be citizens, but they are not natural-born citizens as the Supreme Court defines it, and they are therefore constitutionally ineligible to become President.
Elaine M. and MM,
Coúld I have it etched in brass? Beautifully done.
Dredd,
You too.
Let’s not fight. Stop kicking each other. Kick the politicians and the 1 %.
As for President Obama’s miserable and inexcusable “budget priorities,” his bloated and incompetent Pentagon spent something like $20 billion in 2011 just on air conditioning tents and trailers for our military and associated mercenaries in Iraq and Afghanistan — more than the entire budget of NASA. And that white elephant monstrosity of an “embassy” in Baghdad will apparently suck up even more billions in the year ahead (until the panicked helicopter evacuations take place in the not-too-far-distant future). President Obama lives in such abject terror of Republicans and the Apartheid Zionist Entity (owners and operators of many politicians in his own party as well) that he cannot tell the difference between a true American interest and the next campaign contribution he hopes to solicit from his Wall Street golfing buddies.
Ken McBride 1, March 13, 2012 at 1:09 pm
If it is not vaginal probes invading women’s health and ravings about contraceptives, it is selling off the national treasures that are the National Parks! Is this really the 21st Century? As someone else noted, those who voted for this teabag clown are responsible!
===================================
Only if the teabag clown revealed his real mindset during the campaign.
Don’t blame your fellow citizens so quickly.
The politicians who run for office today are hand chosen by the 1% machinations who have the money. Money talks and bullshit walks, remember.
Once they are chosen they are told what to say during a campaign, and once they are elected they are told what to do, which are less and less similar as time moves backwards towards the age of ignorance.
The people do not want to be plundered, sent to senseless wars to feed the greedy bastards, leave no world for their children, nor turn their country into a plutocracy.
That has been done by the criminal 1% who are enslaving us even as we speak.
Do not turn on your fellow citizens, those who have been fighting terrorism for 200 years, because that is what the 1% plutocrats want you to do so they can finish us off.
“Do not turn on your fellow citizens, those who have been fighting terrorism for 200 years, because that is what the 1% plutocrats want you to do so they can finish us off.”
Dredd,
Amen to that!
Senator John McCain’s mother gave birth to him in Panama — not one of the United States. Several years after his birth, a treaty between the U.S. and Panama grandfathered him into post-birth, naturalized American citizenship. Nonetheless, although ineligible for the office of President of the United States, the Republican party nominated him for the job, anyway. Barack Obama, the American citizen by birth, won the presidency in 2008, so the people of the United States never had to find out just how much the Republican party valued the Constitution. We already know the answer to that pseudo-question — not one damn thing (See Bush v. Gore 2000) — but sparing us yet another example of their baldfaced hypocrisy at least counts as something of a minor blessing.
Everything You Need To Know About Being A “Natural-Born Citizen”
by Simon Maloy
May 12, 2011
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201105120013
Excerpt:
Were you born within the territorial boundaries of the United States? Were your parents not in the service of a foreign government at the time of your birth? If so, then congratulations! You’re a natural-born citizen of the United States of America. If you’re over 35 and have been a resident of the U.S. for 14 years, then you also meet the basic requirements to run for the presidency, as laid out in Article II of the Constitution. What’s more, you share these qualities with the current President of the United States, Barack Obama (update your resume).
However, there is a small segment of America that would seek to deny you the rights you have as a natural-born American citizen. They are the remnants of the birther movement whose determination to the cause has not wavered even after President Obama released his birth certificate and proved beyond any doubt that he was, in fact, born in the United States. They are the post-birthers.
They will deploy a variety of arguments endeavoring to explain why you and the president are a second-class citizens undeserving of your birthright. But rest assured: those arguments are all complete garbage.
One Parent — The Father, For Example — Is Not A U.S. Citizen
This is the biggie — the argument that, post-birth certificate, the birther faithful are clinging to like grim death. It basically goes like this: the fact that Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961 is immaterial given that his father was not a U.S. citizen, and thus the younger Obama is not a “natural-born citizen” as stipulated in Article II and is ineligible for the presidency. This argument takes full advantage of the fact that the framers of the Constitution never defined the term “natural-born citizen,” and the fact that the Supreme Court has never specifically defined it either.
According to proponents of this theory, since the framers did not define “natural-born citizen,” we instead have to gauge their intent, and the framers’ intent — they claim — was to exclude the children of non-citizens. There seem to be two popular bases for this claim: one is the writing of Swiss philosopher Emmerich de Vattel, a contemporary of the Founders who wrote on principles of citizenship; the other is the Bible, which is very specific about making sure the children of Moabites not become kings of Judah.
The Founders, for their part, apparently didn’t spend any time debating the definition of “natural-born citizen” before voting unanimously to include it in Article II. However, that doesn’t mean we don’t know what they understood the term to mean. Christina Lohman argued in a 2001 article for the Gonzaga Law Review that the absence of debate over “natural-born citizen” is an indication that the Founders had a clear understanding of its meaning as described by English common law, which subscribed to the principle of jus soli — “law of the soil,” or birthright citizenship:
Under the English common law, from which the constitutional Framers apparently derived the words “natural-born citizen,” at least some foreign born children of American citizen parents are “natural-born.” Included are children born within the allegiance or jurisdiction of the United States. Children born to citizen parents who are in a foreign land as a result of United States government employment undoubtedly fall within the allegiance of the United States, and, therefore, are eligible for the Office of the Presidency.
Over 150 years of judicial opinion and Constitutional amendments have helped solidify the definition of birthright citizenship in those terms. If you were born within the territorial boundaries of the United States, regardless of your parents’ citizenship status (diplomats excluded), you are a natural-born U.S. citizen and entitled to all the attendant rights and privileges. The Fourteenth Amendment indicates as much: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” (The issue of who is a citizen by birth comes up in litigation mainly through interpretation of the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause, which was put in place to reverse the Supreme Court’s pre-Civil War decision that black people were not citizens.)
The Supreme Court has hewed closely to this understanding of citizenship by birth. In 1898, the court ruled in United States v. Wong Kim Ark that a man born in the U.S. to parents who were “subjects of the Emperor of China” was, according to the Fourteenth Amendment, a U.S. citizen by birth. In 1985, the court’s opinion in INS v. Rios-Pineda stated that the respondents, a married couple who were citizens of Mexico but residing in the U.S., “had given birth to a child, who, born in the United States, was a citizen of this country.” Lower courts have actually weighed in on the question of whether Obama qualifies as a natural-born citizen. In a 2009 ruling, the Indiana Court of Appeals cited Wong Kim Ark in stating 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.”
And there’s historical precedent. There have been at least four previous presidents with one parent born in a foreign country. Andrew Jackson’s father was born in Northern Ireland. James Buchanan’s father was born in Ireland, as was Chester A. Arthur’s. Herbert Hoover’s mother emigrated to the United States from Canada when she was 11 years old.
A 2009 report from the Congressional Research Service on the definition of “natural-born citizen” concluded that the “weight of scholarly legal and historical opinion appears to support the notion that ‘natural born Citizen’ means one who is entitled under the Constitution or laws of the United States to U.S. citizenship ‘at birth’ or ‘by birth,’ including any child born ‘in’ the United States (other than to foreign diplomats serving their country).”
As a side note: The post-birthers do have one Supreme Court ruling they can cite supporting the notion that certain persons born within the territorial United States are not entitled to the full privileges of citizenship, but it’s a case that hasn’t really been cited very much in the past 150 years.
Neil,
You still haven’t answered the question?
Why thousands of new borns birthed by Mexican mother who save their money and buy birth trips to the USA to get an anchor baby, are GRANTED american citizenship?
They are born everyday in LA hospitals.
And none of these newborns have ANY parents with USA citizenship.
Explain that.
Rafflaw,
Absolutely; and don’t forget to check out the Washington Monument shaped hookahs while you’re there.
Bob, Esq.,
Is that glass bong etched with a picture of the Washington Monument that was replaced by the Stearns Mall?
By Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
Your ´blog is giving me a 404 error.
Come on down to the Steans Strip Mall and buy yourself a commemorative glass bong at Spencers.
Neil Davis,
Who elects the president; the people or the states?
Who said Obama is a natural born citizen qualified to sit as president of the United States? The people or the state of Hawaii?
Who has standing to object to Hawaii’s determination of Obama’s status as natural born citizen? You or those 49 other states?
Did those 49 other states voice any problem with the full faith and credit clause per Obama’s citizenship status?
The word you’re looking for, to describe the reason why your arguments are so futile, is ‘justiciability.’
Not the birther nonsense again??!
I’m getting this
Error 404 – Not Found
from Turley’s new Political Hate Speech thread.
Whazzup.??????????
OS,
Let’s just hope she’s a better dentist than she is a lawyer.