By: Mario Apuzzo, Esq.
May 29, 2011
Putative President Barack Obama’s enablers are out and about making their straw man arguments in order to win the presidential eligibility issue. “A straw man is a component of an argument and is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position. To ‘attack a straw man’ is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by substituting it with a superficially similar yet unequivalent proposition (the ‘straw man’), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man.
In arguing that putative President Barack Obama is an Article II “natural born Citizen, his defenders maintain that the “birthers” are wrong in believing otherwise because there is no requirement that one’s parents must be born in the U.S. to be a "natural born Citizen." This is a straw man argument given that it suggests that this is the “birthers’” argument when in fact it is not. This is not the only straw man argument that we have seen Obama’s enablers advance. We have seen their effort to win the Obama eligibility issue by misrepresenting the constitutional argument (e.g., they argue that a “natural born citizen” is the same as a “citizen” and then they set out to show what historically a “citizen” is and publicly concentrate on the place of birth issue but suppress from the same public the constitutional argument on the meaning of an Article II “natural born Citizen”); they present for public display “birthers” who may defend the constitutional position poorly as best defenders of that position; they invent a fictitious persona with actions or beliefs which are then ridiculed and criticized (they have invented the “birther” who they attack as being a racists and/or attached to nothing but conspiracy theories or in the words of Obama himself: "We're not going to solve our problems if we get distracted by carnival barkers and sideshows." [Barack Obama, April 27, 2011, in reference to Donald Trump]); and they oversimplify our constitutional position and attack that position (e.g. they mock the “birthers” for saying that a “natural born Citizen” is a child born in the country to citizen parents and add that a simple facial reading of the Constitution’s text contains no such requirement). They also use the slippery slope fallacy, saying that there is no reason for Obama to release any medical or other evidence proving his Hawaiian birth because the “birthers” will never be satisfied with no matter how much documentary evidence of his alleged Hawaiian birth Obama may present to the public. None of this is even to mention the unfounded charges of racism and other and various ad hominem attacks against anyone who would dare question Obama’s Article II constitutional eligibility to be President.
Now let us see how Obama’s enablers’ statement that the “birthers” put forth the argument that the President’s parents must be born in the United States is nothing but a straw man argument. First, we do not maintain that the parents need to be American born. Rather, we maintain that they must be "citizens of the United States," which status they can acquire by being "natural born Citizens" or naturalized at birth or after birth. The parents must be “citizens of the United States,” under any one of three scenarios: (1) “natural born Citizens” under Article II by being born in the U.S. or its jurisdictional equivalent to U.S. citizen parents; (2) naturalized at birth, under the 14th Amendment or 8 U.S.C. Sec. 1401(a) by being born in the U.S. to one or two alien parents or other Congressional Acts by being born out of the U.S. to one or two U.S. citizen parents; or (3) naturalized after birth under some Congressional Act or treaty when born out of the U.S. to two alien parents.
Second, these same individuals also confuse an Article II “natural born Citizen” with a "born citizen" under the 14th Amendment or 8 U.S.C. Sec. 1401(a) which as currently interpreted do not require U.S. citizen parents in order declare one a “citizen of the United States” at birth. This latter citizen, lacking the natural quality of being born to two U.S. citizen parents, is actually naturalized at birth by way of Congressional naturalization power at first questionably exercised by Congress through the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and then unquestionably exercised by it through the 14th Amendment. Today, we commonly refer to this citizen as a “native-born citizen,” not to be confused with a “native” under natural law and the law of nations which has the same meaning as a “natural born citizen.” On the contrary, to be an Article II "natural born citizen," one must be born in the U.S. (or its jurisdictional equivalent) to a U.S. citizen father and mother. Emer de Vattel, The Law of Nations, Or, Principles of the Law of Nature, Sections 212-217 (London 1797) (1st ed. Neuchatel 1758); Minor v. Happersett, 88
Obama is not and cannot be an Article II “natural born Citizen.” He maintains that he was born in Kapi’olani Hospital in Hawaii in 1961. But he has yet to conclusively establish that fact with a valid long-form Certificate of Live Birth or with any medical evidence. Rather, on April 27, 2011, after refusing to do so for over 2 ½ years and spending or causing to be spent countless millions of dollars of public and private funds and resources and even the 6-month imprisonment of a decorated military officer, LTC Terry Lakin, he released on the internet a forged internet image of his alleged long-form Certificate of Live Birth. This computer image is a forgery, as it contains evidence of electronic manipulation. Even if the internet image is a true representation of the alleged underlying Certificate of Live Birth, that underlying paper birth certificate, which is supposed to be a document filled in with a typewriter in 1961, is a forgery, for it contains evidence of kerning (a technique of spacing letters next to each other for aesthetic purposes) which cannot possibly be done on a typewriter in 1961. Also, there exist significant questions regarding whether Obama is using a valid social security number and whether his selective service military registration was also forged.
In any event, assuming the released birth certificate image to be valid, it conclusively establishes that Obama’s legitimate father was Barack Obama Sr. So, even assuming that Obama was born in Hawaii, he can be a “born” “citizen of the United States” under the 14th Amendment or 8 U.S.C. Sec. 1401(a), but he cannot be a “natural born” “citizen of the United States” under Article II. Under the British Nationality Act of 1948, Obama was born in 1961 to Barack Obama Sr., a British citizen father who was born in 1934 or 1936 in the then-British colony of Kenya and by descent from his father he himself was born a British citizen. He was therefore born with conflicting and divided loyalties to the U.S. and Great Britain, which under the Kenya Independence Act of 1963, converted to citizenship and allegiance to Kenya at age 2 which lasted until at least age 23. Consequently, Obama, was naturalized at birth and, like a person who is naturalized after birth is not eligible to be President, was not born with sole and undivided allegiance to the U.S. Obama is thus not and cannot be an Article II “natural born Citizen.” Obama is therefore not eligible to be President and Commander in Chief of the Military.
Mario Apuzzo, Esq.
May 29, 2011
http://puzo1.blogspot.com/
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Mario Apuzzo, Esq.
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