On HB 401, Loren Collins Had It Right

 Birthers, Citizenship, Elections: 2012, Legislation, State Government, Truth  Comments Off
Mar 092011
 

PolitiFact-Georgia checked Loren Collins’s op-ed in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which appeared last week, regarding Birther Bill, HB 401.

“There is not and never has been any constitutional rule mandating that the president ‘has never held dual or multiple citizenship.’ This is pure birther fantasy, a nonexistent bit of pseudo law that an attorney such as Hatfield should know better than to promote.”

PolitiFact-Georgia found that statement to be True:

Based on conclusions of legal scholars:

“If that [the bill] passes in Georgia’s Statehouse, it will be challenged and it will be struck down as unconstitutional. I am 100 percent confident,” said Peter Spiro, a Temple University law professor.

Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow with the conservative Heritage Foundation, said Hatfield’s bill contains a dual-citizenship ban that does not exist in the Constitution.

“It’s trying to add an additional requirement to the eligibility for president,” von Spakovsky said.

Loren Collins*, who is no Obama fan, had pointed out:

As written, Hatfield’s bill would absolutely forbid the incumbent president of the United States from appearing on any 2012 presidential ballot in Georgia. This is guaranteed to result in a legal challenge.

Also from the PolitiFact piece, in relation to a separate Birther claim, that parents of a natural born citizen also had to be citizens:

Emory University professor Polly Price explained. The United States adopted the concept of “natural born citizenship” from the English, Price said. For nearly 180 years before the Constitution was drafted, people were natural born citizens of England if they were born on English soil.

This understanding was widely accepted in the U.S. during the colonial period. People born in a colony were considered citizens of that colony, Price said.

“It may be that some of the founders intended to include only birth on U.S. soil as their understanding of ‘natural born citizen’, but it certainly would not have included that their parents also had to be U.S. citizens,” Price said.

Update: I am hearing that HB 401 did not appear on the agenda of the Governmental Affairs Committee this morning as was expected.

*Loren Collins is the blogger Barackryphal and a member, as I am, of The Fogbow. Collins was interviewed recently on Reality Check Radio; Sen. Hatfield was also scheduled that night, but didn’t show.

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 Posted by at 12:36 pm

Ooops. Sam Houston Was Anti-Secession

 Birthers, GOP Primaries, Right Wing Nutzoids, State Government, Treasonous Bastards  Comments Off
Mar 082011
 

Texas State Rep. Leo Berman, a steadfast, if consistently ignorant, Birther, sponsored a Texas Nationalist Movement rally, a cause he does not believe in, on Saturday.

He told the Houston Press:

“They have to have a legislative sponsor, and I’m willing to do that for just about anyone in order to let them be heard,” he said. “But I very strongly do not support secession.”

Mother Jones points out, neither did Sam Houston:

Also of note: Although the group’s poster features a severely mutton-chopped Sam Houston calling for Texas independence, the real Sam Houston famously took an unpopular stand against Texas secession on the eve of the Civil War. As he put it: “The Union is worth more than Mr. Lincoln. I was denounced then. I am denounced now. Be it so!”

The last Texas Nationalist Movement rally noticed by OFGS was held in August, 2009, when secessionist candidate, Larry Kilgore, then running in the Republican primaries, loudly proclaimed how much he hates the United States and Old Glory.

Take a look:

These people are treasonous pond scum, and I wish they would go someplace that is not the United States and form their own country.

 Posted by at 12:33 am

Georgia Birther Bill Bleeding Sponsors

 Birthers, Legislation, Pols, Republicans, State Government  Comments Off
Mar 042011
 

Loren Collins wrote yesterday at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about HB 401, the Birther Bill introduced by Rep. Mark Hatfield in Georgia:

Worse yet, the new bill is even more directly targeted at Obama. Hatfield’s list of mandated information reads like it was copied straight from a “birther” Web site. Of what legal significance is the name of the candidate’s delivery doctor? Or the birth places of the candidate’s parents?

Why would Hatfield desire the production of this irrelevant information? Because these are precisely the pieces of information that birther conspiracy theorists have demanded from Obama. …

As written, Hatfield’s bill would absolutely forbid the incumbent president of the United States from appearing on any 2012 presidential ballot in Georgia. This is guaranteed to result in a legal challenge.

And because the “no dual citizenships” requirement is nothing more than a birther delusion, the law will be struck down.

And that outcome will serve only to embarrass the state. As the House considers Hatfield’s bill, those representatives who have signed onto it need to pause and recognize just how unconstitutional it is.

That seems to be what is happening.

The image is from Jim Galloway’s column, which says:

When state Rep. Mark Hatfield, R-Waycross, dropped his bill to require next year presidential candidates to provide hard proof of their birth on U.S. soil, the paperwork contained the signatures of 93 of his House colleagues – 92 of them Republican.

Word of House Speaker David Ralston’s coolness toward the legislation spread through the Capitol on Wednesday. Those concerned with the Port of Savannah made their opinions known.

By the end of Thursday, at least 23 House members had changed their minds, according to my AJC colleague April Hunt – and the above image of blotted out, former supporters.

Update from April Hunt at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Five more lawmakers on Friday removed their names from a “birther” bill making its way in the Georgia House.

That brings the total number of co-sponsors who have dropped their support to 27, leaving House Bill 401 with 66 backers, all of them Republican. …

The subcommittee weighing the proposal is slated to next meet Tuesday, but it was unclear Friday afternoon whether the bill will be heard then.

You would think legislators read the bills they support before sponsoring or signing on to them, but we learned last week from Sen. Beavers of Tennessee, they don’t necessarily do that legwork. She admits they are just following Birther Bills filed in other states.

Rep. Hatfield didn’t show up for a scheduled interview on Reality Check Radio, but Loren Collins did. The Skype connection was difficult at first, but keep listening, as they switch to a land line, and the discussion is worth hearing.

Tonyaa Weathersbee at BlackAmericaWeb talks about just how insidious this legislative effort going on around the country is, going far beyond the individual, President Obama:

It’s about thwarting the possibility of more black or brown people being elected to high offices by creating new hoops for them to jump through to get their names on state ballots. …

For Americans who are supposed to be so enamored with the Constitution, it seems they don’t know much about it.

But they do seem to know what to do to thwart people of color from voting and running for office. And I believe we ignore them at our peril – because these efforts are part of a virulent backlash to the growing influence of blacks and Latinos in America.

Now, it’s true that some of the birth certificate requirements could affect white candidates as well. But it seems to me that certain specifics, such as requiring that the names of a child’s parents be on the certificate, could disproportionately hurt black candidates because many are born to single mothers who, in many cases, have been abandoned by, or are estranged from, the father. …

Chances are most of these birther proposals won’t make it into law. But the problem is that the fanatics who are behind it are so driven by their hatred of Obama and a future in which minorities will soon be the majority that they’ll keep trying until they find something that sticks.

Exactly right. As someone who has written about this hate-fueled idiocy for a couple of years now, rest assured, Birthers will never give up. They have too much invested.

 Posted by at 10:06 am

Wisconsin, You Are Winning

 Labor, Polls, Republicans, Right Wing Nutzoids, State Government, Video  Comments Off
Mar 042011
 

Meanwhile, Gov. Scott Walker is lying, not leading.

From Greg Sargent:

This new ad from the Republican Governors Association backing up Scott Walker in Wisconsin is getting a ton of media attention today, but no one seems to want to point out that the spot is premised on a serious distortion that borders on an outright falsehood …

Some on the right have argued that the position of the unions isn’t actually a concession, because rolling back bargaining rights is the only way to put the state on sound fiscal footing over the long haul. But even if one were to accept this to be the case, the ad is still a demonstrable and very serious distortion. It’s a matter of simple factual reality that unions have agreed to the benefit concessions Walker wants — whether or not you agree that this is enough on their part.

The larger point here is that these facts are absolutely central to the ongoing public opinion war in Wisconsin. Labor and Dems worry that the message in the ad — that public employees need to pony up just like everyone else — is a powerful one. At the same time, the right knows that if it’s broadly understood that labor has already agreed to the fiscal concessions Walker has asked for, that could be lethal to their side. Armed with this info, the public is more likely to conclude that Walker’s proposal is all about destroying unions, and to reject it as extreme.

Also, the Dane County District Attorney found the prank call conversation between “David Koch” and Gov. Walker alarming:

Dane County, Wisc., District Attorney Ismael Ozanne says he found nothing criminal in the conversation Gov. Scott Walker (R) had a with a prank caller posing as David Koch last week, according to WisPolitics. Nevertheless, Ozanne told reporters on Tuesday that he found some of Walker’s comments “very concerning and sometimes quite alarming.”

Ozanne singled out a comment Walker made that he’d “thought about” planting troublemakers in the crowd. Although the DA said there was no evidence a law was broken, he said the comment “speaks directly to character.”

The DA said he’d also looked into the state Senate Democrats’ walkout, after inquiries from citizens, and found nothing illegal there, either.

“They are working within the rule of the house to make their voices heard,” he said. “Because that frustrates the majority is not a crime.”

A Wisconsin Republican Rep is bothered:

And yet another poll, Wall Street Journal/NBC:

Eliminating collective bargaining rights for public-sector workers over health care, pensions or other benefits would be either “mostly unacceptable” or “totally unacceptable,” 62% of those surveyed said. Only 33% support such limits. …

The poll shows 68% of the respondents would like public employees to contribute more for their retirement benefits and 63% want these workers to pay more for their health care. Only 29% and 34% find these moves either “mostly” or “totally unacceptable.” A clear majority, 58%, also find it acceptable to freeze government workers’ salaries as governments get a handle on spending, whereas 40% think that would be unacceptable.

Similarly, 77% of the 1,000 adults interviewed for the poll think unionized state and municipal employees should have the same rights as those union members who work for private companies.

Joe Scarborough’s wishful thinking.

 Posted by at 12:07 am

Imagine Moammar Gadhafi In Our Presidential Politics

 Birthers, Legislation, Right Wing Nutzoids, State Government  Comments Off
Mar 032011
 

Thunderhaven discusses the absurdity of the various Birther Bills popping up in the states:

Some of these bills also include clauses requiring that the Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates provide proof that their parents were both American citizens at the time of the child’s birth and an affidavit from the candidate stating he has never held or was eligible for dual citizenship. Of course, neither of these are actually requirements to be President. The only requirements are that the person is over 35 years old, has resided in the US for 14 years (and, unlike some of these bills seems to indicate, it’s not 14 consecutive years, just 14 years total) and is a natural-born Citizen.

Some birthers will argue that in order to be a natural-born citizen, one must be born to two citizen parents and have never held (or been eligible for) dual citizenship, neither of which is true. The Constitution only has two kinds of citizenship – natural-born and naturalized. Naturalized citizens have to go through a process to obtain their citizenship, whereas natural-born citizens are citizens automatically. Several court cases have established that anyone born within the US is automatically an American citizen, regardless of the citizenship status of their parents. It’s one of the reasons why anti-immigration politicians are trying to revoke birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants.

As for the issue of dual citizenship, it has no effect on whether someone is a natural-born citizen or not. All the US cares about is someone’s citizenship status under American law. Our laws do not care who else might claim you as a citizen, and with very good reason. Imagine that Moammar Gadhafi (to pick a random leader who might do something crazy) were to decide he didn’t want to see Sarah Palin become the President of the United States, so he declares her a Libyan citizen, making her a dual US/Libyan citizen. Would that stop her from running for President? According to some of these bills, it just might, as she would be unable to swear that she had never held dual citizenship, but in reality, it wouldn’t have any effect at all on her eligibility, because the US is only concerned with who our laws deem to be a citizen. Likewise, it doesn’t matter if the UK, Kenya or Mars considered Obama to be a dual citizen. As far as the US is concerned, he is a US citizen, and that’s all that matters.

There are other issues in these bills as well, but the point is that these bills are examples of what happens when politicians decide to pander to extreme elements in their base and don’t thoroughly think through what effects these laws would have or if the even make sense. Politicians who propose laws that are so badly flawed have no business being in politics. Hopefully, others in the state legislatures will realize just how bad these proposed laws are and they will fail to pass.

 Posted by at 12:55 am

GOP Governors Don’t See What The Public Wants

 Labor, Polls, State Government, Taxes  Comments Off
Mar 032011
 

From a New York Times/CBS News poll this past weekend:

Americans oppose weakening the bargaining rights of public employee unions by a margin of nearly two to one: 60 percent to 33 percent. While a slim majority of Republicans favored taking away some bargaining rights, they were outnumbered by large majorities of Democrats and independents who said they opposed weakening them.

Those surveyed said they opposed, 56 percent to 37 percent, cutting the pay or benefits of public employees to reduce deficits, breaking down along similar party lines. A majority of respondents who have no union members living in their households opposed both cuts in pay or benefits and taking away the collective bargaining rights of public employees.

Governors in both parties have been making the case that public workers are either overpaid or have overly generous health and pension benefits. But 61 percent of those polled — including just over half of Republicans — said they thought the salaries and benefits of most public employees were either “about right” or “too low” for the work they do. …

Tax increases were not as unpopular among those surveyed as they are among many governors, who have vowed to avoid them. Asked how they would choose to reduce their state’s deficits, those polled preferred tax increases over benefit cuts for state workers by nearly two to one. Given a list of options to reduce the deficit, 40 percent said they would increase taxes, 22 percent chose decreasing the benefits of public employees, 20 percent said they would cut financing for roads and 3 percent said they would cut financing for education.

 Posted by at 12:48 am
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