10/31/2018

Some notes on the idea of citizenship

This is an unpolished collection of sources and thoughts prompted both by the so-called migrant caravan working its way up from Central America and also the daily ongoing ingress of illegals sneaking through our southern border.

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CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES
ARTICLE II, Section 1, Paragraph 5.
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.
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AMENDMENT XIV. [ratified 1869]
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.
SECTION. 2. [Deals with apportioning the number of the states' members of the House of Representatives by population. Basically holds that former slaves are whole persons now. (summarized for brevity)]
SECTION. 3. [Former members of Congress who went with the Confederacy in the Civil War can no longer hold office unless a special act passed by two-thirds of both houses of Congress says they can. (summarized for brevity)]
SECTION. 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.
SECTION. 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

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Sec. 1992 of U.S. Revised Statutes says, "All persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are declared to be citizens of the United States." [emphasis added] This was enacted by the same Congress that had adopted the 14th Amendment after the Civil War.  They were making sure in the Constitution and in statutory law that the former slaves would have citizenship in the United States of America.

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Constitution Amendment XIV Section 1 uses the qualifier "...and subject to the jurisdiction thereof."

The law in Section 1992 of U.S. Revised Statutes uses the qualifier "...and not subject to any foreign power."

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"Framer of the Fourteenth Amendments first section, John Bingham, said Sec. 1992 of U.S. Revised Statutes meant '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.' If this statute merely reaffirmed the old common law rule of citizenship by birth then the condition of the parents would be entirely irrelevant."  This quote is from the Federalist Blog – Read the whole scholarly article!  Michael Anton from Hillsdale College has an article in the commie WaPo that sheds some light if you can get past the formatting, disclaimers, and possible paywall – including this: "The notion that simply being born within the geographical limits of the United States automatically confers U.S. citizenship is an absurdity – historically, constitutionally, philosophically and practically."

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Seems to me all the President of the United States needs to do is direct the Departments of which he is the chief executive to read "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" and "and not subject to any foreign power" to mean that persons entering the United States illegally are extrajudicial invaders who are actually subject to the foreign power of their native land, and are to be apprehended and prosecuted under existing law.

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House Speaker Paul Ryan reportedly said in an interview, "You cannot end birthright citizenship with an Executive Order."  Ryan is wrong.

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Adding another link 10/31/18, 11:58AM –
Matt Walsh at PJ Media has more analysis.


10/18/2018

I told him not to click those chum boxes...

Had to fix one of the computers at work.  I won't say whose....

Original complaint: customer email with attachment not opening.

Foxit PDF reader was not working at all.

Uninstall and reinstall Foxit.

No go.

Uninstall Foxit, bite the bullet, and – even though I hate Adobe – install Adobe Acrobat PDF reader.

That works.

Email works, attachment opens.

Routine cleanup -- ran Malwarebytes, just because.  Client uses Avast antivirus because, "Well, I always have!"  

Sigh.  He's an old guy.  So am I, but he's an even older guy, so whatever.

Malwarebytes finds like 500 suspicious / malicious files.  Looks like this person gets like all their news and information from chum box click-bait junk sites.  So I quarantine all those files because who has time to sort it all out?

Did I mention this machine is running XP, and has a pirated copy of the student version of Autocad, and a really iffy looking installation of MS Office, and . . . Oh hell, what do I care? The attachment opens now.

Okay bye. And don't click those sidebar- and bottom-dwelling links!

"Well, I always have!..."

10/17/2018

Our 'Spotless' Sun


This is from NASA latest solar image “movies” available here. This shows a 48 hour time lapse of the surface of the sun, 15 October to 17 October 2018.  The surface of the sun is currently “spotless” in that there are no “sunspots.”  But as you can see, it is hardly featureless; in fact a coronal hole pointed our way may cause visible aurora if you live in a dark place close enough to the poles.   



10/12/2018

So now they are ESJWs?

Not just Social Justice, but Eco-Social Justice!

From Canada, but probably coming to an Ivy Covered Tower near you:  Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math are RAYCISS!!!  And STEM is probably all the other double-plus un-good negatives-du-jour.

The little paper by sociologists (social scientists? social engineers? socialists?) Marc Higgins, Maria F. G. Wallace, and Jesse Bazzul, writing in "Canadian Journal of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education," (September 2018, Volume 18, Issue 3, pp 187–192) urges us to get woke to
 "...directly addressing the central role that STEM plays in (re)producing individual and systemic racism."

Math.  Is. Racist.  I mean, look at it.  Sure, they have an "equal" sign, but what about the sinister power of "greater than" and "less than?" 

Engineering. Is. Racist.  I mean, look at how the roadbed of a suspension bridge is locked into the system of dependency.  Slavery! Colonialism!

Technology. Is. Racist.  I mean, look at programming.  Say you come across a program containing "memcpy()."  That's a built-in C++ function.  "Function."  Think about that.  How would that make you feel if you were dysfunctional or "differently functional" yourself?  And what makes the C++ programming language think it's so superior with its double-plus, hmmmm???

Science. Is. Racist.  I mean – Old White Men.  Like Marie Curie, and Hedy Lamarr, or even Ralph Bunche.  Oh, never mind -- it's mostly Old White Men.  Who are evil or something for some reason or other.

So get woke already, especially you Canadian STEM teachers, or else Marc, Maria, and Jesse are going to be (re)producing some really downer vibes.



10/08/2018

Oh Canada, You're Doing It Wrong

Today is Columbus Day (Observed) in the United States.

But it is Thanksgiving Day in Canada.  That is because by mid- to late-November the air in Canada freezes into a thick snow-flavored Slurpee® and life comes to a winter halt until, like, June.  In thanksgiving for their few months of non-lethal weather, Canada moved their Thanksgiving holiday a few weeks toward the autumnal equinox – just enough to avoid being buried under, like 80 feet of snow.

That was a smart move.  But the implementation lacks the genius of the American Way.  Canada's Thanksgiving is always on a Monday.  (See where I'm going with this?)  

In the Good Old U. S. of A., we follow the Pilgrim tradition of throwing a feast the Right Way.  Start on Thursday.  Overindulge.  Enjoy the leftovers over an extended weekend.  That's the way to Give Thanks!

In fact, in an Ideal World, there would be a Thursday-start holiday every two months or so.  I could get behind that.  That's a winning platform.

We didn't need a Monday Holiday Act.  It's been 50 years.  Time to fix it!  What we needed was a Thursday Holiday Act.