Interesting discrepancy between the Arizona Senate and House on the meaning of Natural Born Citizen. This article says they are “nearly identical” but, no, the Senate’s bill is correct, and it is no minor distinction: their version would say Obama is not eligible, the House would say he was. I am glad that this article at least broaches the difference, and notes that only the President is required to be a “Natural Born Citizen” as opposed to merely a “citizen” or even a “citizen at birth.”
The Senate Government Reform Committee passed House Bill 2177 on Wednesday, and the House Government Committee passed a nearly identical Senate Bill 1157 on Tuesday…The bills now each go to a vote of their full chambers…
The bills would require political candidates at all levels of government to show proof of citizenship in order to run.
It would require presidential candidates to give the secretary of State proof that he or she is a natural-born citizen.
The Senate version of the bill includes wording that some lawmakers said defined natural-born citizens as children whose parents were citizens at the time of the candidate’s birth.
That wording was eliminated from the House version.
Citzenship is defined at the federal level, as both natural born citizen and further definition thereof are in the Constitution. Figures it’s Arizona pulling this stunt though.
But a state can set its election laws and who appears on the ballot, right? So they can say that people have to be eligible, and candidates have to be natural born citizens.
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p>And the whole argument is that natural born citizen isn’t defined anywhere, so we have to look at the framers intent and what they probably meant.
As to the first paragraph, yes technically they do, but it would be a grand mess if we had 50 different interpretations of constitutional eligibility. I really wish we’d admit that the President and Vice President were national offices and let Congress make all laws relative to their elections.
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p>As to the second paragraph, I deliberately didn’t go there this time because we’ve argued about this before and clearly won’t convince each other. I strongly stand by my previous contentions that precendent, intent, language, statute and scholarship point to natural-born refering to all persons born on US soil.
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p>Then again, this law would almost certainly be challenged in court if anyone were denied access in AZ while being fine in other states, so maybe we’d finally get an absolute and definitive answer from SCOTUS.
You think they really intended the children born to foreigners here on tourist visas to be eligible for President?
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p>Like these kids, who will grow up in China, were intended to be eligible to be President, but not a child who came here with his parents when he was 3 months old, and lived his whole life here and is fully naturalized? I think neither is a NBC, because both have dual claims of citizenship. NBC’s can not be anything other than Americans (except by naturalizing somewhere else that allows naturalization).
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p>OK, we don’t need to go through the whole thing again. Here is our last go round. I posted this story about the AZ bill because people had said I was a “lone voice” in thinking it has something to do with the citizenship of the father. The media, including this blog, is usually very complicit in promoting the false idea that the debate is simply about whether Obama was born in Hawaii or in Kenya, as if that was all that mattered. Even Obama has the band play “Born in the USA” as if that was the question. So I was posting this to educate people who might still be ignorant about the real debate.
Combining natural-born with elaboration by the 14th amendment I absolutely do believe that is how the law is. Whether it SHOULD be or not is I guess a legitimate debate, but definitely a different question.
Does anyone deny that Obama is President? He’s in the Oval Office with the red phone, the guy with the nuclear button follows him everywhere he goes…of course we are talking about what should be, not what is.
Doesn’t the Arizona legislature have anything better to do than waste its time on stupidity like this? Good grief. If I lived in Arizona, I’d want my money back.
and obama is wasting money dropping bombs on libya.
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p>When did the fiddle become so popular?