The “Congressional” Natural Born Citizen Part I : A ‘Tribe’-ute to DC Liberal Activism

This will be a multi-part series that focuses on Congresses knowledge of the meaning of ‘natural born citizen’ and how they have purposely side stepped the constitution & the intent of the founding fathers regarding US citizenship by using ‘baby steps’ to achieve their ultimate goal:

“An Amendment to the Constitution to make eligible for the office of President any person who has been a US citizen for (X) amount of years”

I use (X) because there are several versions, all with differing views as to the number of years the citizen must be a continual resident prior to running for office.

‘Hope-n-Change’ Floats 

“The written Constitution ‘floats’ in a vast and deep – and, crucially, invisible – ocean of ideas, propositions, recovered memories, and imagined experiences…The Invisible Constitution is not simply a mask for imposing a particular ideology on the Constitution, which is what people sometimes think.”…”What I am hoping is that people will come to see that we’re all engaged in the same game and that the political reality of the Constitution, which is not confined to the written text, is an equal-opportunity reality.”

Laurence H. Tribe (The Invisible Constitution) 2008

This folks is the view of every liberal progressive ideologue on capital hill today.

Laurence Tribe’s roots to the progressive movement span decades. Tribe graduated from Harvard Law in 1966, immediately clerked for Trobiner in the Ca Supreme Court for a year, then moved to DC where he clerked for Stewart for a year. Not having any real world experience, Tribe then joins Harvard as an assistant professor in 1968 and after 4 years, he received his tenure from Harvard in 1972.

Sounding familiar? Let’s continue on…

Laurence Tribe is the co-founder of the liberal activist “American Constitution Society”, a law and policy organization formed to breed and pit young activist lawyers, like himself, against originalism and constitutional jurisprudence. Tribe is considered as a demigod at Harvard and the cast of characters surrounding him over the years sounds like a who’s who of liberal activism progressive style. We have Aharon Barach, chief justice of Israel who believes in letting unrepentant genocidal terrorists roam free; Doris Kearn Goodwin, liberal revisionist historian; Akhil Amar, liberal law professor at Yale; Nina Totenberg, liberal legal correspondent for NPR. Most notably in Tribe’s cast of contributing characters, we find none other than Cass Sunstein, Dianne Feinstein (D-Ca) & Barack Obama. The one I shall take note of today is Barack Obama.

While studying at Harvard, Obama became a research assistant to Tribe on his book – “Abortion: The Clash of Absolutes” (1990) and in turn, during Obama’s candidacy, Tribe did a political commercial congratulating Obama and publically supporting the Obama campaign.

During the campaign last year, Ellis Washington wrote this of Tribe:

‘Tribes judicial philosophy would be right up there with the most radical leftists of the Supreme Court, like Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, John Paul Stevens, Earl Warren, Harry Blackmun, William Brennan, Thurgood Marshall and many other enemies of the original intent of the framers.”

Tribe’s Congress

Tribe wrote his initial commentary on the Constitution in 1978 call “American Constitutional Law”. With this initial commentary, Tribe ascended to the throne and since has been the liberal’s commandant in their efforts to over throw capitalism and our Republic’s Judeo Christian heritage through backdoor congressional activist legislation.

In 1987, Michael Greve of the ‘Reason Magazine’ wrote a review of Scalia’s book, A Matter of Interpretation. Scalia’s book expounds on the ‘textualist’ theory and his qualities as a judicial ‘statesman’. Neither of which is Tribe.

Greve writes that Tribe is [n]otorious for urging judges to go boldly where none have gone before and that [T]ribe’s pretenses are a thin cover for their effort to mobilize the Constitution for left-liberal causes.

Enter Liberal Left Election Activism Through Legislation

Of Tribe’s most notable influences on congressional committee hearings are those during the Nixon & Clinton impeachment hearings, The Gore/Bush election & most currently the judiciary committee hearings on S. Res. 511:

Recognizing that John Sidney McCain, III, is a natural born citizen.

There are many more areas where tribe’s activist views have been sought to pass radical legislation, however, for the purposes of this series, we shall stick to the topic at hand.

I can not say with certainty when it all began; but the legislative moves to forever redefine/remove the term ‘natural born citizen’ as it exists in the founding documents of the United States of America, have been going on far longer than I had thought.

Not only have they moved to redefine/remove it from the Constitution, they have actively been bestowing ‘natural born’ citizenship status on individual citizens for decades through ‘private’ laws. 

A search of Thomas.gov revealed that since 1973. Congress has bestowed ‘natural born’ citizenship 13 times through this ‘private law’ practice. I was only able to retrieve the basics, as I assume, the fact that they are ‘private law’ bills, the contents are sealed, and therefore not available to the public. This is as specific as they get, no congressional committee minutes are available through Thomas.gov:

Title: A bill for the relief of Phillip Harper. Became Private Law No. 98-39 (1983) 

In 1987, a bill was introduced which was entitled, ‘The overseas American Children’s Human Right’s Act of 1987’. The summary concludes that children born outside of the US to mixed parents (one being an alien) shall be a U.S. citizen at birth and then goes on to grant US national and natural born citizen status to any person born, whether in or out of wedlock, to a US citizen parent outside the United States.

This bill as far as I can tell never made it out of committee. A similar bill appeared in 1989 that met the same demise.

Were these bills a precursor for the currently behind closed committee door activism in Congress? Were they Congresses initial ‘baby steps’ towards the ultimate destruction of the ‘natural born’ citizen?

From 1973 – current, attempts have been made to remove ‘natural born’ from Article II of the Constitution. Additional attempts have also been made to formally define/change the meaning of ‘natural born’, therefore opening the door for any and all citizens to be able to run for President, regardless of their type of citizenship.

Committee minutes from the earlier days are nil, thus lending me to believe no merit was given to the early attempts. However, the sponsor of the earliest 6 amendments from 1973-77 was Rep. Jonathan B. Bingham (NY). Jonathan Bingham was a Connecticut Bingham and I do not know at this time if there is a direct relation to Rep. John A Bingham who was one of the founders of the 14th Amendment that left this famous quote which is recorded in congressional records for all time:

Rep. Bingham commenting on Section 1992 said it means “every human being born within the jurisdiction of the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty is, in the language of your Constitution itself, a natural born citizen.” (Cong. Globe, 39th, 1st Sess., 1291 (1866))

Coincidence? I think not. To believe that a representative with the same family surname, a surname of a long historical list of politicians dating back to the revolution, was not aware or had studied the congressional records during the drafting of the 14th Amendment would be naïve.

These early attempts, that are still available to be retrieved online at Thomas.gov, also coincide with the appearance of Laurence Tribe onto the scene that had this to say about natural born citizen:

“The Framers substituted the word ‘citizen’ for ‘subject’ to reflect the shift from a monarchy to democracy”

Well, had the Framers actually adopted a Constitution for a Democracy instead of a Constitutional Republic, Tribe may have been right. This is also just one tiny example of his influence on Congress over the past several decades of Constitutional abuse.

From 1973 – current, there have been 15 silent secret attempts to remove the words ‘natural born’ from the Constitution and replace them with just citizen. It is the ideology of the leftist-liberals that the words ‘natural born’ are discriminatory and therefore keep naturalized citizens and those born with dual citizenship from their imaginary right to be president.

Part II to come: Breaking down of the most current secret legislation proposed from 2000-08.

Part III will focus specifically on S. Res. 511 and Tribe’s extensive influence in Congresses cover-up of ineligible presidential candidates that continues to this day.

Linda A. Melin, Citizen Researcher

http://www.constitutionallyspeaking.wordpress.com

Copyright 2009