Right Side
NY Times’ Latest McCain Hatchet Job
By John Armor
Mar 2, 2008 - 12:34:18 PM

About half the time when the press falls down on the job, I attack the whole press.
 But sometimes, I attack the New York Times in particular.  Especially on so-called investigative journalism, when the Times prints a piece on a new subject, other media will run with it, assuming that the Times has done its homework.

        Therefore, when the Times butchers its homework and produces a biased article, it is important to attack the Times and do so right away.  That way, perhaps a few of the following media will get the message, and not run off the information cliff following the Times.

        This morning (28 February, 2008) the New York Times ran an article by Carl Hulse,entitled, “McCain’s Canal Zone Birth Prompts Queries About Whether that Rules Him Out.”  The article spends 21 paragraphs getting sweaty palmed over whether John McCain is eligible to be elected President, since he was born outside the mainland United States.

        The article begins, of course, with the requirement in the Constitution that to be President a person must be a “natural born Citizen.”   The Constitution also requires that President be “thirty five Years” old, and “fourteen years a Resident within the United States.”  The Times left out that last requirement, which makes clear that citizenship and residency are not the same thing.

The article quotes various experts who claim McCain might not be eligible.  Only three paragraphs from the end does the article mention that Congress passed a law to deal with this precise matter.  That law defined children of US citizens born in the Canal Zone after 1904, as US citizens “at birth.”  The Times also misses a law passed in 1790, written by many of the same people who wrote the Constitution, which provided “citizenship at birth” to children born to US citizen parents, outside the country.

        The story which the Times also ignores the power of Congress to pass laws defining citizenship.  The original authority is in Article I, Section 8, Clause 8, which gives Congress the power to “establish an (sic) uniform Rule of
Naturalization.”  More recent and more important, the 14th Amendment begins, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof....”   That Amendment ends with, “The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this
article.”

        Note the critical phrase, “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof....”
Jurisdiction is a legal matter, which is defined in this instance by federal law,
not by accidents of geography.

        The bottom line is clear.  The 14th Amendment gives Congress the power to define a child of US parents born outside the US, as nonetheless a “natural born citizen.”  Therefore the Act of Congress to include children born to US parents in the Canal Zone is plainly constitutional.

        So, by doing incomplete homework, perhaps deliberately, the New York Times has created another hatchet job on John McCain, to benefit either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, either of whom the Times prefers.  The Times has also, again, damaged its reputation as a newspaper that supposedly seeks and publishes the facts.

        But the Times has also done an accidental public service with this article.  It has drawn public attention to Congress’ authority to define, by law, the circumstances which make a child a “natural born” American. 

        If Congress has the power to declare that a child of American parents, but born overseas, is an American, then Congress has the equal power to declare that a child born of Mexican parents in the United States is NOT an American citizen.  That would apply only if the Mexican, or Canadian, or any other nationality, parents were not legally in the US at the time of the child’s birth.

        Long before I became a candidate for Congress, I was writing that the problem of “anchor babies,” children of illegal immigrants who were “US citizens by birth,” could and should be solved by Congress.  As I pointed out months ago, it is routine federal law that children of embassy personnel in D.C. are citizens of their parents’ nations, not of the US, even when they are born in US hospitals.
This is not rocket science.

        Those who say that only a constitutional amendment can solve the “anchor baby” problem, including the Times, are incompetent in doing their homework.

        What is the application of this (somewhat) tedious discussion of law to the race for Congress?  Anyone who seeks to serve in Congress ought to have a basic understanding of how the federal government works, including the Constitution.  The New York Times has just displayed its ignorance about citizenship law.  How many candidates for Congress were able to spot the errors in this article, immediately?