Birthright Citizenship

Nigel Piddlewhite arrives in the US as an exchange student from York, England, to attend the University of Nebraska.  To his great delight, he meets Fiona Feversham who happens to be from Leeds, England.  Both are freshman and quickly hit it off.  By their sophomore year, they have married and have a son, Algernon Piddlewhite.  Upon graduation, Nigel and Fiona return to England with young Algernon to begin careers and have another child.  Life is great and Algernon soon has a younger brother and sister.  On his 18th birthday, an official-looking letter arrives from America!  It is a request for him to enroll in Selective Services.  Is he legally obligated to do so?  Might an effort to extradite him be made if he failed to enroll?  Is Algernon an American citizen?  Certainly, neither of his parents are American citizens.  Nor are his siblings.

Maria Cortes is 6 months pregnant when she pays a coyote to get her across the US border into Arizona.  She has cousins in Tucson who support her until she has the baby.  Little Ximena is a healthy baby girl.  However, ICE has grabbed Maria and want to deport her.  Immigration lawyers declared that Ximena is an American citizen and the US must let her mother stay to raise her.  Is Ximena an American citizen or is she the same nationality as her mother who just happened to be born in another country?

The 14th Amendment states that:

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

Was it the intent of the authors of this amendment to provide such a path to citizenship?  It must be remembered that this amendment was passed in the wake of the Civil War and with the intent of countering the Dred Scott Decision.  The 13th abolished slavery and the 15th provided the vote regardless of race.  The 14th granted citizenship to former slaves.  What was meant to be a one-and-done granting of citizenship has somehow morphed into birthright citizenship for the children of whomever can get across the border and give birth.

President Trump has signed an executive order that will see this issue hashed out in the courts in the near future.

Supreme Court rules 9 - 0 in favor of Trump

The Supreme Court has struck down Colorado's effort to remove Donald Trump from the ballot on account of a 14th Amendment violation (i.e., engaging in insurrection).  Even the liberal justices on the court (Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson) found the arguments presented unconvincing.  Those who hold to Colorado's (and Maine's and Illinois') arguments for removing Trump are clearly suffering Trump Derangement Syndrome.  They are so anti-Trump, they will embrace lunacy to oppose him.  If you think SCOTUS ruled incorrectly in this case, you need to do some self-reflection.

Much as various apparatchiks around the country have sought to disqualify Trump from running for office again, deep staters have used lawfare to attack him.  With a bipartisan consensus on the court against the first group, how confident are Democrat partisans that the deep staters are honestly pursuing Trump for crimes rather than just abusing their power?  Clearly, SCOTUS has ruled that Colorado abused its power.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Lord Acton

A Return to Federalism

“The country is coming apart at the seams, and the fundamental reason, in my opinion, is a lack of federalism.  What I mean by that is, is whoever is in power in Washington D.C., whether it’s Republicans or Democrats, roughly 50% of the country is angry about everything that is happening.”

Mark Meckler

Yes.  Absolutely correct.  I have long argued for a federalist approach to most issues.  Abortion law is unchanged in many states.  The most vociferous defenders of Roe v. Wade live in states that have retained the same laws as they had last week.  Their states are pro-choice.  They are protesting about laws in states where they do not live.  Meckler further states:

“There’s too much being decided in D.C., and the way we solve the discord and calm everything down is to take the power away from D.C. and give it back to the states. Then we can debate these issues in the states where it was always intended to be done."

Exactly right.  Decisions made in D.C. become a one-size-fits-all solution for 50 different states.  A gun control policy ideal for New York could be impractical for Wyoming.  A water conservation law that would be perfect for Nevada might be ludicrous for Hawaii.  Each state can come to its own conclusion.

The Supreme Court imposed a policy for all 50 states in 1973.  The current court has announced that each state may decide how it wants to legislate the issue.  Rather than a majority of 9 people deciding for more than 300 million people, the individual states will come to decisions with considerably more input from the voters.

The Dobbs decision does signal a sea change in the court.  If the overbroad interpretation of the 14th amendment was incorrect in the case of Roe v. Wade, then it was also incorrect in a number of other instances.  The pendulum is starting to swing the other direction.

Meckler holds that the country is on a path of dissolution.  He calls it the Great Decoupling.  It could come apart by secession and civil war (I have addressed this with posts on Calexit and Texit) or by a return to federalism.  The central government will lose power either way, but the latter is peaceful and preserves the union.  The question is, can we return to federalism peacefully?

Gay Marriage Ratified in 1868!

Section 1. 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. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

14th Amendment of US Constitution

The men who wrote and ratified this amendment in 1868 would surely be surprised that they had codified abortion, anchor babies, and gay marriage.  Their intent was to raise the freed slaves to full citizenship - which had been denied by Dred Scott - and force Southern States to treat them as equal to other citizens.  Reading more into it than that is just judges stretching the law to allow them to rule whatever they want to rule.  They aren't making new rights, they are merely adjudicating rights that have existed since 1868.  Really?

 

There are two options: The amendment was intentionally written to achieve the modern ends or it was unwittingly written in a manner that allowed modern ends to be achieved.  What is more likely?  The answer is obvious.  The amendment has too much wiggle room for 'interpretation' and the judiciary has exploited it.  The judges on the Supreme Court all know the purpose of the amendment - they are lawyers who presumably made some study of the Constitution - but it provides endless power grab opportunities.

 

This is why original intent is so important.  If you cut the Constitution free of the context in which it was written, much of the language suddenly becomes malleable to a variety of interpretations.  Those who ratified the amendment in 1868 obviously didn't intend gay marriage to be validated.  It isn't even arguable.  But, having freed the amendment from its context, it is just a case of equal protection that allows a massive cultural shift that most states had voted against.