D

A State Board of Ed member who home schooled her brood. And they say irony is dead. Delicious!

PS..someone PLEASE tell Lowe the practice of matching your lipstick to your dress ended about 50 years ago…

The question about Obama’s citizenship is actually before the Supreme Court in a petition for a writ of certiorari. Obama’s response is due by December 1. The question has been raised by an attorney, Phillip Berg, from Pennsylvania who is a life long Democrat and a Hillary supporter. Berg claims that Obama’s grandmother in Kenya has been recorded as saying that she was at his birth in a hospital in Kenya. Records also seem to indicate that he was listed as a citizen of Indonesia after being adopted by his step-father and moving to Indonesia from Kenya. Berg questions the Hawaiian proof of birth that Obama has posted on his web site which he claims is not a real birth certificate. I was skeptical until he got to the part about Obama not releasing his college records which may show that he came as a foreign student. All he has to do is produce a real birth certificate to end the discussion but apparently he has been unwilling to do it and instead has opted to pay attorneys to keep the game going. McCain was forced to produce his birth records as he was born in Panama due to his father’s military assignment. The US Constitution requires that the President be a natural born citizen of the United States. Let’s hope that Obama hasn’t been lying about this as it would create a real mess. The Supreme Court case number is 08-570.

“My point was, I’m not saying that Obama would not respond to an attack, I just think the apprehension of not doing an attack would have been greater with McCain as president,” Dunbar said.

I found a website that defines a natural born citizen, http://www.wisegeek.com/in-the-united-states-what-is-a-natural-born-citizen.htm.

“For children born abroad, the principle which applies is jus sanguinis, or “rule of the blood,” and the rules can get a bit tricky. If a child is born to two parents who are both American citizens, the case is usually clear, and the parents need only apply for a United States passport on the child’s behalf to ensure that his or her citizenship is formally recognized. If only one parent is an American citizen, however, jus sanguinis may or may not apply, and the case must be considered before the child is classified as a natural born citizen.

In situations where only one parent is a United States citizen, he or she must have lived in the United States for at least five years at some point before the child’s birth as a full American citizen, and at least two of these five years must have occurred after the parent’s 14th birthday. In the case of a child born to an American mother, the child is usually considered a natural born citizen, whether or not the mother is married. However, if an American father is involved in a relationship with a foreign woman and the couple is not married, the father may need to fight for the child’s right to citizenship.”

Gadfly – jus sanguinis is codified by the following:
The 14th Amendment defines citizenship this way: “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.” But even this does not get specific enough. As usual, the Constitution provides the framework for the law, but it is the law that fills in the gaps.

Currently, Title 8 of the U.S. Code fills in those gaps. Section 1401 defines the following as people who are “citizens of the United States at birth:”

* Anyone born inside the United States
* Any Indian or Eskimo born in the United States, provided being a citizen of the U.S. does not impair the person’s status as a citizen of the tribe
* Any one born outside the United States, both of whose parents are citizens of the U.S., as long as one parent has lived in the U.S.
* Any one born outside the United States, if one parent is a citizen and lived in the U.S. for at least one year and the other parent is a U.S. national
* Any one born in a U.S. possession, if one parent is a citizen and lived in the U.S. for at least one year
* Any one found in the U.S. under the age of five, whose parentage cannot be determined, as long as proof of non-citizenship is not provided by age 21
* Any one born outside the United States, if one parent is an alien and as long as the other parent is a citizen of the U.S. who lived in the U.S. for at least five years (with military and diplomatic service included in this time)
* A final, historical condition: a person born before 5/24/1934 of an alien father and a U.S. citizen mother who has lived in the U.S.

Anyone falling into these categories is considered natural-born, and is eligible to run for President or Vice President. These provisions allow the children of military families to be considered natural-born, for example.

Separate sections handle territories that the United States has acquired over time, such as Puerto Rico (8 USC 1402), Alaska (8 USC 1404), Hawaii (8 USC 1405), the U.S. Virgin Islands (8 USC 1406), and Guam (8 USC 1407). Each of these sections confer citizenship on persons living in these territories as of a certain date, and usually confer natural-born status on persons born in those territories after that date. For example, for Puerto Rico, all persons born in Puerto Rico between April 11, 1899, and January 12, 1941, are automatically conferred citizenship as of the date the law was signed by the President (June 27, 1952). Additionally, all persons born in Puerto Rico on or after January 13, 1941, are natural-born citizens of the United States. Note that because of when the law was passed, for some, the natural-born status was retroactive.

The law contains one other section of historical note, concerning the Panama Canal Zone and the nation of Panama. In 8 USC 1403, the law states that anyone born in the Canal Zone or in Panama itself, on or after February 26, 1904, to a mother and/or father who is a United States citizen, was “declared” to be a United States citizen. Note that the terms “natural-born” or “citizen at birth” are missing from this section.

In 2008, when Arizona Senator John McCain ran for president on the Republican ticket, some theorized that because McCain was born in the Canal Zone, he was not actually qualified to be president. However, it should be noted that section 1403 was written to apply to a small group of people to whom section 1401 did not apply. McCain is a natural-born citizen under 8 USC 1401(c): “a person born outside of the United States and its outlying possessions of parents both of whom are citizens of the United States and one of whom has had a residence in the United States or one of its outlying possessions, prior to the birth of such person.” Not everyone agrees that this section includes McCain – but absent a court ruling either way, we must presume citizenship.

They are saying that at the time, the parent had to live for 5 years in the US after their 14th birthday and his mother was not old enough to meet that requirement when she had him (she was 18). His father was Muslim and they have a tendency to want to control that sort of thing. They are also claiming to have a certified birth certificate from a hospital in Kenya which would coincide with his grandmother’s story. The DNC should have been all over this and proved up a long time ago. The NY Times ran this story about McCain’s citizenship which was questioned. The press has been quiet about the Obama story.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/29/us/politics/29mccain.html?ref=us

Lawyers

Every conservative on the SBOE this election cycle won by a wide majority on Nov. 4… so it appears they do represent a segment of Texas voters.

What’s it pay? And why are we paying her anything at all? Oh, maybe because some of the people on here vote? I mean really, I thought D had an educated reader base. Alas.

Just because some of the SBOE members won by a majority vote in November does not mean indivuals were voting with any thought or awareness. Most voted straight ticket. This is why we continue to have David Bradley, one the most ignorant and arrogant SBOE members, representing Galveston, Clear Lake, Pasadena, etc. People need to wake up and know for whom they are voting. Some have simply become mindless golems.