Tag Archive for: Bobby Jindal

2016 GOP Hopefuls Set To Speak At Salem Media Group’s RedState Gathering In August

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CAMARILLO, Calif./PRNewswire/ — Erick Erickson, Editor-in-Chief of Salem Media Group’s (NASDAQ: SALM) RedState.com, announced on Tuesday the first speaker lineup for the 2015 RedState Gathering. Governor Scott Walker, Governor Jeb Bush, Governor Rick Perry, Governor Bobby Jindal, Carly Fiorina and Senator Marco Rubio have all confirmed they will speak at the event.

In a slight change of tradition, this year’s RedState Gathering will be themed “Vision 2020.”

“Though I am loathe to ever suggest a topic for speakers, I have asked each of the 2016 candidates to focus on one thing: I’d like them to present their 2020 vision for what the nation should look like after their first four years,” Erickson said. “We need to know what they see as the areas that need fixing and how their fixes will reshape the country.

Jonathan Garthwaite, Salem Vice President and General Manager of Townhall Media (under which RedState operates) said, “RedState Gathering attendees are some of the hardest working conservative activists online and door-to-door who have pushed hundreds of conservative candidates to the top. There is no better place than the Gathering for the presidential candidates to come to and give their vision for America.”

The RedState Gathering will take place at the Intercontinental Buckhead Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia, August 6-9, 2015. In addition to a majority of the GOP presidential field, invitations have also been extended to members of Congress and other local and state elected officials. The weekend will kick-off on Thursday with a discussion between Erick Ericksonr and MSNBC host Joe Scarborough and wind down with a new event on Saturday evening called the RedState Tailgate, featuring a surprise guest speaker.

Registrations to attend the RedState Gathering are currently open. To register or for additional information, please visit RedStateGathering.com. The early bird registration fee of $249 expires May 23rd.

ABOUT SALEM MEDIA GROUP:

Salem Media Group is America’s leading Christian and conservative multi-media corporation, with media properties comprising radio, digital media and book, magazine and newsletter publishing.  Each day Salem serves a loyal and dedicated audience of listeners and readers numbering in the millions nationally.  With its unique programming focus, Salem provides compelling content, fresh commentary and relevant information from some of the most respected figures across the media landscape.

The company, through its Salem Radio Group, is the largest commercial U.S. radio broadcasting company providing Christian and conservative programming.  Salem owns and operates 110 local radio stations, with 65 stations in the top 25 media markets.  Salem Radio Network (“SRN”) is a full-service national radio network, with nationally syndicated programs comprising Christian teaching and talk, conservative talk, news, and music.  SRN is home to many industry-leading hosts including: Bill Bennett, Mike Gallagher, Hugh Hewitt, Michael Medved, Dennis Prager and Eric Metaxas.

Salem New Media is a powerful source of Christian and conservative themed news, analysis, and commentary.  Salem’s Christian sites include: Christianity.com®, BibleStudyTools.com, GodTube.com, GodVine.com,WorshipHouseMedia.com and OnePlace.com. Considered by many to be a consolidation of the conservative news and opinion sector’s most influential brands, Salem’s conservative sites include Red State.com, Townhall.com®, HotAir.com, Twitchy.com,  BearingArms.com and Human Events.com .

Salem’s Regnery Publishing unit, with a 65-year history, remains the nation’s leading publisher of conservative books.  Having published many of the seminal works of the early conservative movement, Regnery today continues as the dominant publisher in the conservative space, with leading authors including: Ann Coulter, Dinesh D’Souza, Newt Gingrich, David Limbaugh, Ed Klein and Mark Steyn. Salem’s book publishing business also includes Xulon Press™, a leading provider of self-publishing services for Christian and conservative authors.

Salem Publishing™ publishes Christian and conservative magazines including Homecoming®, YouthWorker Journal™, The Singing News, and Preaching.

Salem Media Group also owns Eagle Financial Publications and Eagle Wellness. Eagle Financial Publications provide market analysis and specific investment advice for individual investors from financial commentators Mark Skousen, Nicholas Vardy, Chris Versace, Bryan Perry and Doug Fabian. Eagle Wellness provides practical health advice and is a trusted source for nutritional supplements from one of the country’s leading complementary health physicians.

RELATED VIDEO: A new poll in New Hampshire puts Rand Paul and Scott Walker in first place among GOP candidates in the Granite State. Hillary Clinton still leads among Democrats, but she is showing some weakness. Hear why.

Why Natural Born Citizen is Non-Negotiable

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Not so long ago, Americans placed little faith and trust in ambulance chasers (a.k.a. lawyers) or politicians, and wisely so according to our Founders who had no faith or trust in any person seeking power and dominion over others. Now, too many Americans place all of their faith in people seeking power and dominion over others, and even worse, a class of people who have already proven most dangerous to the Constitutional Republic and Rule of Law… the lawyer law-makers…

Ever since Barack Obama stole the show at the Kerry Convention in 2004 and rocketed from total obscurity to the most powerful political office in our land four years later, the subject of Article II requirements for the Oval Office has been a subject of great debate, all over three simple words, natural born Citizen (NBC), aka “True Citizen.”

Where did it come from, what does it mean, why did our Founders limit access to only two political offices in our nation to no one other than a natural born Citizen, and what do we do now that we know Barack Obama is not a natural born Citizen of the United States? These questions have been the source of much political debate, confusion and anxiety, now threatening the GOP as a result of numerous potential 2016 GOP candidates also failing to meet the requirement.

Some of the most blatantly insane arguments have been floated…

“Well, the constitution does not provide a definition for the term”… which is of course true, since the U.S. Constitution provides no definition for any word found in the document.

“Our naturalization laws define natural born Citizen” (when in fact our naturalization laws only pertain to naturalized citizens, immigrants seeking basic citizen rights from congress).

“The courts will have to tell us what the term means”… despite knowing that it is the courts that created terms of art like “undocumented citizen” (a.k.a. illegal alien) and “Constitutional Rights for non-citizens and even enemy combatants” (while denying American citizen any constitutional protection of natural rights at all) and “social justice” (the opposite of real justice under Constitutional Law).

Others rely upon “legal scholars” also known as lawyers of the political class in line for political appointments and eager to please those in positions to help them ascend to those lofty positions in the judiciary, ignoring the reality that these scholars have powerful political motivations for the opinions they write, and that no opinion has the power to amend the U.S. Constitution except by amendment process.

The simple truth is that Article II of the U.S. Constitution has only been amended once in U.S. history, by Amendment XII extending the requirements for President to the Vice President as well. It has not been otherwise amended, despite at least eight failed attempts by Congress to eliminate the natural born requirement for high office. Further, no amendment has ever mentioned, changed or in any way altered the original meaning of natural born Citizen as intended by our Founders and ratified by all fifty states.

So, the term natural born Citizen means the same today as it did in 1787 when the Founders placed that requirement in Article II… unless you buy into the notion that naturalization statutes or amendments, or scholarly legal arguments carry with them the legal force to amend the constitution – in which case, the term has no meaning at all, and neither does anything else in our Founding documents.

Before Barack Obama arrived on the scene, the nobody from nowhere with a blank résumé and no verifiable past, not too many Americans ever thought about the term. Most Americans assumed that no one would ever be bold enough to attempt such a massive fraud by falsely claiming natural born eligibility, and they assumed that if anyone ever did make such an attempt, our strict election laws, free press and national security agency oversight would surely catch it, expose it and stop it from happening. These assumptions have proven to be wrong… in fact, such attempts are now becoming common place. Barack was the first, but now there are others…

Most Americans have entered the discussion from a purely political purpose, attempting to either qualify their political messiah of choice, or disqualify another. But the natural born Citizen concept is actually far more important to our society than merely who can and cannot hold the office of Commander-in-Chief.

I was recently asked a question I have been asked literally thousands of times since I started writing on the subject, how do I know for sure what the Founders meant by natural born Citizen?

How do we know what any word or phrase means? Most people reach to their book shelf and grab a dictionary when they want to know the true definition of a word of phrase. Most people have never come upon a word or phrase that they needed a lawyer, or a court, or anything more than a dictionary to properly interpret… I find this to be the case here as well.

People don’t have any trouble understanding the word “born” (the moment of birth) or the word “citizen” (a legal member of a society). The word people seem to struggle with is “natural.”

At this moment, a collective effort is underway to claim that the following three words are synonymous… natural – native – naturalized…. Which would make anyone eligible for the Oval Office, including the courts new citizen class the “undocumented citizen.”

People trying to disqualify John McCain in 2008 decided that natural and native are synonymous terms and people now trying to qualify Obama, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are claiming that natural, native and naturalized are all synonymous terms of art. Before they can eliminate the NBC requirement from Article II, they must first make the term ambiguous, potentially having more than one meaning… of course…

Any dictionary will disagree with these claims…

Naturalized – “to admit (a foreigner) to the citizenship of a country.”

Native – “being the place or environment in which a person was born.”

Natural – “existing in or formed by nature.”

Clearly, these three words have three very different definitions and meanings, only one of which is related to the Constitutional requirement for the Oval Office… “Natural.”

As a simple dictionary review confirms, these three words are in no way synonymous. It is not possible for the following three terms to be synonymous, natural born, native born and naturalized. Yet, many will continue to make the false claim that they are… because they believe these claims to suit their political agenda of the moment.

Many know exactly what natural born Citizen means, and still, for political expediency, they refuse to stand on this truth. Just this morning another “political commentator” wrote me this…

“NATIVE BORN CITIZENS ARE DIFFERENT… .. I see the reference to the father’s citizenship alone as determinING the birthright of the child… BUT YOU KNOW AS WELL AS I DO THAT AINT GONNA FLY today NO MORE THAN DENYING WOMEN THE RIGHT TO VOTE. YOU WILL ALIENATE HALF THE COUNTRY WITH SUCH NONSENSE” – Scott Rohter (exactly as sent to me, yelling caps and all)

As you can see, Mr. Rohter first confirms that he is aware of the truth, before shifting to all CAPS to scream his refusal to stick to the truth, referring to that truth as “nonsense” because that truth will offend some who do not like this truth. It is this practice which has made the NBC term appear “ambiguous,” opening the door for the lawyer law-making political class to enter the discussion with new invented definitions of the term.

As Mr. Rohter confirmed in our exchange, we agree on 99% of the issues… unfortunately, the 1% we disagree on is the most important – of critical importance, especially at this moment in history, when every American must deal only in truth. Mr. Rohter is not alone in his position. Numerous others have made the same false claims for exactly the same reasons.

The Harvard Lawyers are intentionally lying to the people when claiming NBC is synonymous with naturalized citizen at birth. But people like Rohter are also intentionally lying to the people for their set of political reasons. Both are responsible for allowing unconstitutional candidates to seek and hold the most powerful office in our land, that of Commander-in-Chief.

The term natural born Citizen is based on historical concepts as old as all recorded time. If you want to know where and why the Founders borrowed the term for Article II, I cover that in this piece… and if you want to know the true historical definition of the term, I cover that in this piece.

Natural born Citizen is a term based in biblical teachings based upon the concepts of a patriarchal society wherein in the Father is the head of the family unit. The intentional destruction of the family unit has greatly complicated the discussion with scholarly changes in the definition of words like marriage, family and shifting gender roles forced by liberal restructuring of American society, also for political purposes.

14th Naturalization Amendment terms like “citizen at birth” and “birthright citizenship” have been intentionally been tossed into the mix to further complicate the understanding of three basic English words defined in every English dictionary. The purpose of all these efforts is to eliminate the NBC requirement for office by simply redefining the term. But that is not the only purpose…

Setting politics aside for a moment, natural born Citizenship is the inalienable natural right of every child to inherit the country of their natural birth father upon birth, not only due to no application of man-made statute or legal opinions, but inalienable by these means.

When people begin to play with definitions, it is an overt effort to alter our Founding principles and values and Constitutional protections of all inalienable Natural Rights as guaranteed by our Constitution and Bill of Rights. It is a much larger issue than who can or cannot occupy the Oval Office, although this is indeed an issue paramount to the sovereignty and security of these United States.

Contrary to the intentional mis-education of American society, we do not enjoy “constitutional rights.” We have long enjoyed “constitutionally protected Natural Rights.”

Beginning in 2008, when folks were trying to disqualify John McCain, born the son of American parentage stationed abroad in Panama on the service of our country with the U.S. Navy, some plucked a single sentence from the proper source of the Founders NBC term, The Law of Nations by Vattel, as if they believe that it was unnecessary for Vattel to take great care to write an entire chapter on the subject, when a single sentence says it all.

“The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens.”

As already demonstrated above, natives and naturals are in fact two different things, which confirms that the structure of this single sentence is not the definition of any one thing, but rather a general statement about more than one thing… Reference to “parents” does not mean both parents within the family unit, but rather all citizen family units which bear “citizen” children.

Why did these individuals not pluck any of the following single sentences from Vattel, appearing in the same paragraph Section 212 of Chapter XIX of the Law of Nations?

“As the society cannot exist and perpetuate itself otherwise than by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights.”

Or this one – “as matter of course, that each citizen, on entering into society, reserves to his children the right of becoming members of it.”

Or this one – “The country of the fathers is therefore that of the children; and these become true citizens merely by their tacit consent.”

Or even this one – “I say, that, in order to be of the country, it is necessary that a person be born of a father who is a citizen; for, if he is born there of a foreigner, it will be only the place of his birth, and not his country.”

When trying to sum up natural born Citizen using a single sentence from Vattel, any of the four sentences above would be accurate. So, why didn’t the people who cherry-picked the unrelated general sentence pluck any of these other single sentences from the same paragraph?

There are two reasons… first, the truth did not suit the political agenda, which was to disqualify John McCain on the basis that although he was born to a citizen father (and mother), he was born in Panama, not on U.S. soil – and second, because the progressive shifting definitions of marriage and family, along with gender roles lead many to believe that the original definition and Founders intent of the term are antiquated and outdated. It leads many to falsely think it is some offense to women’s rights…

The Citizenship Act of 1934 pertaining only to “naturalized citizenship” is the cornerstone of today’s effort to destroy the NBC term and thereby eliminate the requirement from Article II. FDR’s Naturalization Act was the result of an international treaty from a Pan American conference of December 26, 1933, essentially agreeing that there should be no distinction between the sexes as it related to nationality under legislative processes. Of course, this pertained only to “naturalized citizenship” under congressional naturalization legislation.

Still, it has since been improperly used to claim that citizenship and even natural born Citizenship can pass from either Father or Mother, as a matter of alleged gender equality. Yet, this claim pertains only to naturalized citizenship, which is mutually exclusive of natural born Citizenship.

As all governmental power in the United States is limited in nature and derived from the people, nothing beyond what which was ratified by the people in the Constitution and Bill of Rights is under the consent of the people. The people have not consented to any alterations of Article II requirements for high office, so no alterations have been legally made.

Why natural born Citizen is non-negotiable

Much more than a political ambition or agenda is at stake here… The Natural Right of every child to inherit the condition of their birth family, specifically that of the Father (patriarch), the head of the family, is a constitutionally protected Natural Right.

Americans must understand that everything our Founders created was based upon inalienable Natural Rights, not man-made laws via legislative process or judicial review. When anyone begins to mess around with natural born, they are in fact messing around the Natural Law and all Natural Rights, the cornerstone of our Founders creation and any form of freedom and liberty.

If a child born to an American Father is stripped of their Natural Right to inherit the country of their Father, what other Natural Rights can be stripped from the child or the parent by mere man-made statute, court interpretation or Harvard Law Review? The answer is all of them…

In my personal opinion, the three most important words in all of the U.S. Constitution are natural born Citizen… because all Natural Rights flow through this patriarchal social concept and the sovereignty and security of our Constitutional Republic are protected from foreign invasion at the highest level by these three simple words, natural born Citizen.

Once any citizen of any type, by any means, including “undocumented citizens” can occupy the Oval Office, then any foreign entity can occupy that office, controlling the future of this nation and form of freedom and liberty itself as Commander-in-Chief of the most powerful military force on earth.

Mere momentary political interest is not enough reason to let everything die…

I pray that Americans will cease to be so blind and foolish…. quickly!

RELATED ARTICLE: Media Repression on the Question of What is a “natural born Citizen?”

Who is Natural Born, Who is Not?

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Now that the Iowa Freedom Summit has officially kicked off the 2016 Republican presidential primaries, it’s time that, as a matter of party policy, Republicans agreed on who is a natural born citizen and who is not.  Three conservatives… Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), Governor Bobby Jindal (R-LA), and Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL)… are prominently mentioned as potential candidates.  But the question arises, are they eligible to serve?  And if not, are conservatives and Republicans willing to turn their backs on the U.S. Constitution, cloaking themselves in the specious argument that, if the Democrats could get away with it for eight years, why shouldn’t they?  In other words, are Cruz, Jindal, and Rubio supporters willing to make the case that two wrongs make a right… the Constitution be damned?

If Republicans wish to avoid embarrassment and a potential constitutional crisis midway through a presidential campaign, party leaders would be well-advised to resolve the question before the issue blows up in their collective faces.  By doing so, they can kill two birds with one stone: 1) they can prove to the American people that, unlike Democrats, Republicans still honor the words and the spirit of the U.S. Constitution, and 2) they can permanently stain the Obama legacy by shining the light of day on his ineligibility… eight years too late, but better late than never.

Some Republicans may be foolish enough to think that Democrats, after nominating and electing  an ineligible candidate in 2008 and again in 2012, would hesitate to make a political issue out of the “natural born” status of Cruz, Jindal, or Rubio.  Those who make that assumption simply don’t know Democrats.  As former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld remarked in his book, Rumsfeld’s Rules, “Never assume the other guy would never do something you would never do.”

When the Founders drafted Article II of the U.S. Constitution, they were highly concerned that the chief executive of the United States should not, under any circumstance, be even remotely subject to or encumbered by foreign influences.

On July 25, 1787, John Jay, a member of the Continental Congress and the first Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, sent a letter to General George Washington, president of the Constitutional Convention, expressing his concern over the prospect that an individual with some level of potential foreign allegiance, however remote, might be elected to serve as president of the United States and commander-in-chief of the Army and the Navy.  He wrote: “Permit me to hint whether it would be wise and seasonable to provide a strong check to the admission of foreigners into the administration of our national government; and to declare expressly that the commander-in-chief of the American army shall not be given to, nor devolve on, any but a natural born citizen (italics added).”

On March 12, 1788, in Federalist Paper No. 68, Alexander Hamilton expressed the widely held fear of foreign influence on the president of the United States.  He wrote, “Nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption.  These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one quarter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils.  How could they better gratify this than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy (presidency) of the Union?

It should be noted that the Framers did not require the president and vice president to be devoid of all friends and acquaintances in foreign lands; they did not choose to limit the presidency and the vice presidency only to those without living relatives in foreign lands; nor did they limit the presidency and the vice presidency only to those without material offshore assets.  But they did produce language in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution requiring that all candidates for president and vice president must be “natural BORN.”

Accordingly, the final product of the Constitutional Convention contained the following language, unchanged and unchallenged in the past 227 years.  Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 of the Constitution reads as follows: “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.”

As the Constitution was being drafted, southern Democrats demanded, as a means of increasing their representation in the U.S. Congress, a provision that allowed each slave to be counted as three-fifths of a person.  However, nearly a century later, the states ratified the 14th Amendment, a Republican-sponsored proposal granting full citizenship to all persons born on U.S. soil.

While the amendment was designed to give full citizenship to emancipated slaves, the authors could not have foreseen an age in which international travel would be so commonplace that expectant foreign women could travel to the U.S. just to have their babies born on U.S. soil, creating a class of citizens known as “anchor babies.”  Had they been able to predict the future, they would likely have limited the amendment to full time legal residents of the United States, almost all of whom were emancipated slaves.

The 14th Amendment does not confer, nor was it ever intended to confer, “natural born” status on children of emancipated slaves or on today’s “anchor babies” because, like our first seven presidents… Washington, J. Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, J.Q. Adams, and Jackson… none of whom were “natural born” citizens, those infants were born to parents who were not U.S. citizens at the time of their birth.  And while none of our first seven presidents were natural born, all were “citizens” on the day the Constitution was ratified and were “grandfathered” under the phrase, “…or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution.”    

Most Obama apologists, while insisting that Obama is a “natural born” citizen, even though he was born to an American mother and a Kenyan father, will agree that Arnold Schwarzenegger, for example, is not a “natural born” citizen because he was born in Austria to Austrian parents and became a “naturalized” citizen after emigrating to the U.S.

When an alien seeks to become a naturalized citizen, he/she must demonstrate that they have been of good moral character for the statutory period prior to filing for naturalization.  Then,

upon being found suitable for U.S. citizenship, applicants must swear the following oath:

“I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.”

As a “citizen of Kenya by birth,” under terms of the August 4, 2010 Kenyan constitution, Barack Obama has failed to renounce his Kenyan citizenship and is required to obey the laws of Kenya whenever he happens to visit that country.  Therefore, he has not “absolutely and entirely renounced and abjured all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty…”  Nor has he shown himself to be a man of good moral character.

Any investigation into who is natural born and who is not, must have as its starting point, a realization that there are only two jobs in the entire United States, public sector or private sector, that require the incumbents to be “natural born” citizens.  Those who are naturalized citizens or regular citizens can serve in state and local office, in state courts, in the U.S. Congress, and in the federal courts.  They are even eligible to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, but they may not serve as president or vice president of the United States.

The Framers obviously intended the qualifications for president and vice president to be far and above the qualifications for any other office in the land.  As such, those who insist that the terms “citizen” and “natural born citizen” are synonymous have an obligation to explain to the rest of us exactly what they see as the exclusivity factor that make eligibility requirements for president and vice president different from those of all other offices.

The acid test for those who claim natural born citizenship involves two factors, and two factors alone.  The first is “place” and the other is “parentage.”  Individuals born in a foreign land, to alien parents, can become “naturalized,” but never “natural born” citizens; “anchor babies” born to one or more non-citizen parents on U.S. soil can be “citizens,” but never “natural born” citizens; and those born anywhere on Earth to one American citizen and one who is not, can be American “citizens” with dual nationality, but never “natural born” citizens.

In January 2009 and again in January 2013, it was the obligation of congressional Republicans to question Barack Obama’s eligibility when they met in joint session to certify the votes of the Electoral College, but they lacked the courage to do so.  Nor did they have the courage or the political will to hold public hearings on the question.  Now they have the opportunity to shine the light of day on the question of Obama’s ineligibility by openly questioning the eligibility of three Republicans.  Such hearings will show that, in terms of eligibility for the highest office in the land, Barack Obama, Ted Cruz, Bobby Jindal, and Marco Rubio are all “birds of a feather.”

All Those Obamacare Stories You Told Us Were Untrue

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“There’s plenty of horror stories being told. All of them are untrue.” – Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.)

“Many of the tall tales that have been told about this law have been debunked.” – President Barack Obama

Amy Payne from Heritage writes, “Last week was ‘victory lap‘ week for liberals on Obamacare. After years of telling the American people that we just don’t understand the health law enough to love it properly, the president and his allies are now crowing that all debate should be over. Our readers have told us about Obamacare’s effects in their lives—hiking their insurance costs and canceling many of their plans. I guess Harry Reid thinks you guys made these up.”

[youtube]http://youtu.be/UNeHvIJ1CmU[/youtube]

Payne notes:

But he didn’t stop with insulting everyday Americans. Reid took a dig last week at Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), himself a doctor who is resigning from the Senate to continue cancer treatment.

Coburn initially lost his cancer specialist when he was forced into the Obamacare system. But when Coburn voiced concern—from experience—about the lack of cancer treatment centers covered under Obamacare, Reid said he was just “getting into the weeds” and that “I think we need to look at the overall context of this bill.”

The editorial board of Investor’s Business Daily marveled :

We recently called Senate Majority Leader Reid “delusional” on another topic, but to that we can now add “callous” and “insensitive” — in his disregard of cancer sufferers and the hardships imposed on them by administration politics and ObamaCare.

… Reid coldly dismisses people such as Edie Sundby, a stage four cancer patient, who was told that the plan that had paid out $1.2 million and helped her survive all these years was substandard and would be canceled because it didn’t contain the one-size-fits-all coverage mandates of ObamaCare.

Meanwhile, President Obama exulted in claiming that the “tall tales” about Obamacare “have been debunked.” Was he talking about Obamacare’s job-killing effects? Its limiting of patient choices? Its forcing all Americans into a one-size-fits-all health care model?

Thankfully, this isn’t the end of the story. In the same week, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (R) released a blueprint for health care reform. Heritage experts have been working on patient-centered solutions for years. Americans know that the horror stories are real, and that there has to be a better way to go.

Obama’s Eligibility – The Final Word

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In recent days I have been drawn into yet another debate over presidential eligibility, as specified in Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution.  Given that Barack Obama has occupied the Oval Office illegally for more than five years, without so much as a whimper of protest from most American voters or the mainstream media, some may feel that any further discussion of this matter may be akin to “beating a dead horse.” Nevertheless, if we insist on referring to ourselves as a constitutional republic, and if we continue to insist that we honor constitutional principles and the rule of law, then we have no choice but to understand precisely what the Founders intended when they drafted our governing document in 1787.

What generated my recent exchange on the subject of presidential eligibility was an article in the January 31, 2014 edition of pegAlert, the newsletter of the Pennsylvania Business Council.  The article in question was titled, “SANTORUM PREPPING FOR ANOTHER RUN IN 2016.”

In response, I asked the question, “Who keeps propping up Santorum’s ambitions … other than Rick Santorum?  Unless I’m wrong, his father was still an Italian citizen when he was born.  That makes him ineligible for the presidency.”  To which a representative of the Business Council replied, “That might be so, but Santorum was born in the USA so that makes him a citizen.”

To that nonsensical assertion I replied, “… If Santorum was born in the US, which I assume he was, that does make him a ‘citizen.’  But that’s not what is at issue.  What is at issue is his status as a ‘natural born’ citizen, which he must be if he wants to run for president.  In order for him to be a ‘natural born’ citizen, both of his parents must have been US citizens.  If Santorum’s father was still an Italian citizen when he was born, then he is not a ‘natural born’ citizen…”

The final response from the Pennsylvania Business Council brought us straight to the nub of the issue.  The reply read, “Under (that) definition, none of our initial 6 or 7 presidents, would have qualified.”  Bingo!!  Without even trying, he inadvertently proved my point.

Once again I found myself confronted face-to-face with the harebrained notion that the terms “citizen” and “natural born Citizen” are synonymous… that to be a “citizen” equates to being a “natural born” citizen.  That simply is not true.  One would think that simple intellectual curiosity would lead those who share that mistaken belief to question why the Founders found it necessary to modify the phrase, “No person except a natural born Citizen,” with the phrase, “… or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution…”

Even the most unthinking and uneducated among us must agree that the use of the word “or” requires an implicit understanding that those who would seek the presidency had to be either “natural born citizens,” or “citizens of the United States” on the day that the Constitution became the law of the land.

On the day that the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776, every citizen of the thirteen original colonies became citizens of a new nation, the United States of America.  And the very first child born to newly-minted US citizens on July 4, 1776, before the ink was dry on John Hancock’s signature, became the nation’s very first “natural born” citizen.

The Constitution required that, in addition to being a resident of the United States for at least fourteen years, those who would seek the presidency must be at least thirty-five years of age.  There were a great many men who met those two criteria, but the country needed a president and the only “natural born” citizens available on June 21, 1788, the day the Constitution was ratified, were children under twelve years of age.  To solve that problem, the Framers added a grandfather clause, making it possible for newly-minted US citizens, none of them “natural born,” to serve as president.  This was necessary until such time as a body of individuals, born to US citizen parents after the Declaration of Independence, reached age thirty-five.

George Washington, our first president, was born at Wakefield, Virginia on February 22, 1732, forty-four years before the Declaration of Independence.  He was a “citizen,” but not a “natural born” citizen because both of his parents were British subjects at the time of his birth.

John Adams, our second president, was born at Braintree, Massachusetts on October 30, 1735, forty-one years before the Declaration of Independence.  He was a “citizen” because he was born in Massachusetts, but he was not a “natural born” citizen because both of his parents were British subjects at the time of his birth and owed their allegiance to the British crown.

Thomas Jefferson, our third president, was born at Shadwell, Virginia on April 13, 1743, thirty-three years before the Declaration of Independence.  He was a “citizen” because he was born in Virginia, but he was not a “natural born” citizen because both of his parents were British subjects at the time of his birth.

James Madison, our fourth president, born in Virginia on March 16, 1751, twenty-five years before the Declaration of Independence; James Monroe, our fifth president, born in Virginia on April 28, 1758, eighteen years before the Declaration of Independence; John Quincy Adams, our sixth president, born in Massachusetts on July 11, 1767, nine years before the Declaration of Independence; and Andrew Jackson, our seventh president, born in South Carolina on March 15, 1767, nine years before the Declaration of Independence; were all “citizens” because they were born in what came to be the United States of America, but they were not “natural born” citizens because their parents were not US citizens at the time of their birth.

However, Martin Van Buren, our eighth president, was born at Kinderhook, New York on December 5, 1782, six years and five months after the Declaration of Independence.  Unlike his seven predecessors, he was not just a “citizen,” he was a “natural born” citizen… the first president, at least thirty-five years of age, who was born to US citizen parents after the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

What a great many patriotic, but ill-informed, Americans refuse to accept is the fact that, while the Founders intended that only “natural born” citizens should ever serve as president, there were no 35-year-old “natural born” citizens available during the first 35 years of our nation’s history. Accordingly, it became necessary to provide an exemption of limited duration covering those citizens born prior to July 4, 1776.  All were “grandfathered” and made eligible under the phrase, “or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution…”

Every U.S. president since Van Buren… with the exception of Chester A. Arthur, whose Irish father was a British subject at the time of his birth, and Barack Obama, whose Kenyan father was also a British subject at the time of his birth… has been a “natural born” U.S. citizen, as required by Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution.

Barack Obama was born with dual US-British citizenship “by descent” from his Kenyan father and his American mother.  However, under Chapter VI, Sec. 97(1) of the Kenyan Constitution of December 12, 1963, Kenyan Independence Day, Obama lost his British citizenship on August 4, 1984, his twenty-third birthday.  However, his eligibility status is now complicated by the fact that, under Chapter 3, Section 14 of a revised Kenyan Constitution, adopted on August 4, 2010, he became a citizen of Kenya “by birth” and is required to obey the laws of Kenya, should he ever set foot in that country during or after his stay in the White House.

The Framers found it inconceivable that a president of the United States, commander in chief of the Army and the Navy, should ever be required to obey the laws of a foreign nation.  Barack Obama provides, if nothing else, a definitive example of why the Founders insisted that the president must be a “natural born” citizen, untainted by any hint of foreign allegiances.

Although Democrats have successfully defended Obama’s illegal presidency, based largely on the fact that he is a black man, insulated from the rule of law by the color of his skin, we must insist that constitutional mandates apply equally to presidents of both parties, Democrats and Republicans.  This means, of course, that conservatives such as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Gov. Nicki Haley (R-SC), Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA), Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), and former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA)… all born to one or more non-US citizen parents… are not natural born citizens and must be eliminated from consideration for the 2016 GOP nomination.

In the days of Washington, Adams, and Jefferson, a man of Barack Obama’s background and qualifications would have received zero consideration for the presidency.  Without question, he would have been declared ineligible.  Yet, in spite of the fact that the Constitutional criteria for the presidency have not changed one iota since 1787, millions of Americans today insist that he is eligible for the office.  By what tortured reasoning, what conceivable standard, they won’t say.

Liberals and Democrats being what they are, we can always count on them to expect to have things both ways.  But conservatives and Republicans believe in constitutional principles and the rule of law and we simply cannot allow the bandwagon-riders in our party to circumvent the Constitution.  So, sorry, Ted, Nicki, Bobby, Marco, and Rick… we love you all and you’re a great credit to our country, but you just can’t play in our presidential sandbox.