Bret Baier Fox News Natural Born Citizen error, Fox motivation for media line?, Have Obama thugs threatened Fox?, Supreme Court must clarify

“Between these alternatives there is no middle ground. The constitution is either a superior, paramount law, unchangeable by ordinary means, or it is on a level with ordinary legislative acts, and like other acts, is alterable when the legislature shall please to alter it.”

“If then the courts are to regard the constitution; and the constitution is superior to any ordinary act of the legislature; the constitution, and not such ordinary act, must govern the case to which they both apply.”…Chief Justice Marshall opinion, Marbury Vs Madison

“If in the opinion of the People, the distribution or modification of the Constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation, for through this in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.”…George Washington

“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”…Abraham Lincoln

Bret Baier provided the following statements on the presidential requirement of Natural Born Citizen on Fox News May 1, 2012.

“Bret explains “natural born citizen” requirements for president and vice president”

“Many legal analysts and scholars agree with this take– and until the Supreme Court weighs in.. this is how the law is interpreted:

The Constitution requires that the president be a “natural born citizen,” but does not define the term. That job is left to federal law, in 8 U.S. Code, Section 1401. All the law requires is that the mother be an American citizen who has lived in the U.S. for five years or more, at least two of those years after the age of 14. If the mother fits those criteria, the child is a U.S. citizen at birth, regardless of the father’s nationality.

The brouhaha over President Obama’s birth certificate — has revealed a widespread ignorance of some of the basics of American citizenship. The Constitution, of course, requires that a president be a “natural born citizen,” but the Founding Fathers did not define the term, and it appears few people know what it means.

The law lists several categories of people who are considered American citizens at birth. There are the people born inside the United States; no question there. There are the people who are born outside the United States to parents who are both citizens, provided one of them has lived in the U.S. for any period of time. There are the people who are born outside the United States to one parent who is a U.S. citizen and the other who is a U.S. national (that is, from an outlying possession of the U.S.), provided the citizen parent has lived in the United States or its possessions for at least one year prior to the birth of the child. And then there are the people who are born outside the United States to one parent who is a U.S. citizen and the other who is an alien, provided the citizen parent lived in the United States or its possessions for at least five years, two of them after the age of 14.

They’re all natural born U.S. citizens. That also includes people who are born in Puerto Rico and people who were born in states before they became states. Born in Hawaii in 1950, a decade before statehood? You’re a natural born U.S. citizen.

That is how legal experts interpret the “natural born” requirement.. and how you get that status is actually pretty open. Until the Supreme Court weighs in on this issue (and there are no plans that we know of that that will happen)… — to your emails… Senator Marco Rubio and Governor Bobby Jindal are both eligible to run and become Vice President or President.”

http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/special-report/blog/2012/05/01/bret-explains-natural-born-citizen-requirements-president-and-vice-president

Bret Baier is correct about one thing, the US Supreme Court needs to clarify the definition of Natural Born Citizen.

The article starts out with some accuracy “Many legal analysts and scholars.”

This is true, there is much disagreement and debate.

However, the article ends “That is how legal experts interpret the “natural born” requirement”, implying a consensus.

Without getting into all the subtle intricacies of law and legal precedent, I will make this simple.

First, the framers of the constitution provided some clarity with this provision:

“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;”

A distinction is made between citizen and natural born citizen. Also, this allowed the founder fathers to be eligible and also children born from the time of independence to the adoption of the Constitution on September 17, 1787.

Chief Justice Waite, in Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162 (1875):

“The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners.