Re: Life under an Islamic Republic of America

On Mar 31, 7:18 pm, Matt Silberstein
<RemoveThisPrefixmatts2nos...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Tue, 31 Mar 2009 17:07:14 +0000 (UTC), in
soc.culture.jewish.moderated , Omega <Omega....@xxxxxxxxx> in
<fa59739e-961e-465c-997e-33adaf7da...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

On Mar 31, 12:38 pm, Patty <pajh...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

[snip]

Good article.  The only thing they didn't report, I heard on my DC
news radio station: the same person filed a case against John McCain
on the grounds that he was born in the Phillipines, and that was also
rejected by the Supreme Court.

Cheers-

McCain was born in Panama I believe.  But back then both were US
territories thus anyone born there was a US citizen.

The McCain case is actually legally interesting. The Obama case is
not. Either he was born in Hawaii and so is a citizen or born in
Africa and so was not. That is a dull question of fact. But McCain was
born in the Canal Zone, not a territory. Now unlike territories the
Zone was not wholly controlled by the U.S. Congress. There are also
several SCOTUS decisions that say that the government is not required
to give constitutional rights to people in territories. The
Constitution does not follow the flag is the saying. There was enough
concern about this that Congress passed a law saying that those born
in the Zone after 1904 were citizens. Unfortunately for McCain (but
neat for us so we can discuss this) the law went into affect *after*
McCain was born. By the rule that the exception tests (shows the
existence of) the rule, a law making him a citizen implies that
Congress did not think they were citizens.

So we have the issue of what is a "natural born citizen", a term with
almost no case law. We have the question of whether the Zone was
sufficiently part of the U.S. And we have the question of whether
passing the law implies that he (they) were not citizens. All cool
legal issues. Unfortunately it is utterly clear that no court would
bother to even look at the question. Unless the Congress (or possibly
electors) bring the suit, the court will deny standing. No individual
citizen is harmed by the non-citizen becoming president and so they
have no right to get their suit heard.

I would argue that this, of everything, is the most interesting part
of the campaign for Jews. After all, what are Jews if not a people
concerns about complex application of the law to life? ;-)

--
Matt Silberstein

Do something today about the Darfur Genocide

http://www.beawitness.orghttp://www.darfurgenocide.orghttp://www.savedarfur.org

"Darfur: A Genocide We can Stop"

McCain was born on a U.S. Navy Base, which makes him an American
citizen.
.

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