Durbin: I don’t think the WH should rule out the 14 Amendment debt-limit option

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment:

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Bill Ayres bombed the U.S. Capitol building and the Pentagon. Bill Ayers engaged in insurrection and rebellion against the United States.

Question: Did Barack Obama ever give aid or comfort to Bill Ayers?

Bill Ayers admitted that Obama and he are “Family Friends”.

ITguy on December 6, 2012 at 10:31 PM

Funny thing about Obama and the 14th Amendment… (continued)

Why do you think the Obama campaign had to scrub their initial claim that “Obama became a citizen at birth under the first section of the 14th Amendment”?

Could it be becuase the Supreme Court, in the case of Minor v. Happersett, ruled that

The Fourteenth Amendment did not affect the citizenship of women any more than it did of men. In this particular, therefore, the rights of Mrs. Minor do not depend upon the amendment.

…

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. It is sufficient for everything we have now to consider that all children born of citizen parents within the jurisdiction are themselves citizens.

The Supreme Court did not construe the 14th Amendment in that case because Virginia Minor was a natural born citizen.

Natural born citizens do not need the 14th Amendment in order to be considered citizens.

The contrapositive is that anyone who needs the 14th Amendment in order to be considered a citizen is therefore not a natural born citizen.

And Obama’s own campaign web site in 2008 said:

“Obama became a citizen at birth under the first section of the 14th Amendment”.

And Obama’s own campaign web site later in 2008 said:

“As a Kenyan native, Barack Obama Sr. was a British subject whose citizenship status was governed by The British Nationality Act of 1948. That same act governed the status of Obama Sr.‘s children.”

Regardless of birthplace, Obama was born a British subject, subject to the British crown. He needed the 14th Amendment in order to be considered a U.S. Citizen. But natural born citizens, born in the country to parents who are its citizens, do not need the 14th Amendment.

Obama may have been a U.S. citizen at birth, but he is not a natural born citizen of the United States.

Someone born a natural born subject of the British crown is not a natural born citizen of the United States.

ITguy on December 6, 2012 at 10:52 PM