Mario Apuzzo, Vampire Hunter???

In 2010, author Seth Grahame-Smith released his novel, Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter.  It was a ripping good yarn and was made into a movie by the same name a few months ago. Wiki provides the gist of the story:

When Lincoln is eleven years old, he learns from his father Thomas Lincoln that vampires are, in fact, real. Thomas explains to his son that a vampire killed Abraham’s grandfather (also named Abraham Lincoln) in 1786. Young Abraham is also shocked to learn that his beloved mother Nancy Hanks Lincoln succumbed not to milk sickness but rather to being given a “fool’s dose” of vampire blood, the result of Thomas’s failure to repay a debt. A year later he lures the vampire responsible for his mother’s death to the family farm and manages to kill it with a homemade stake.

At the age of sixteen Lincoln gets word of a possible vampire attack along the Ohio River and investigates, but this time he is no match for the vampire and is nearly killed. He is saved at the last moment by the intervention of the vampire Henry Sturges. Henry nurses Lincoln back to health and explains some of the nature of vampirism, emphasizing that some vampires are good and others are evil. Lincoln spends the summer with Henry and trains for combat, becoming a skilled wrestler and silver coated axe-handler. For several years following, Henry sends Lincoln the names and addresses of evil vampires; Abraham dutifully tracks them down and kills them.

As a young adult, Lincoln and a friend travel down the Mississippi River to New Orleans on a flatboat to sell a number of goods. Here Lincoln’s life is changed forever after he witnesses a slave auction. Lincoln follows a slave buyer and his new slaves back to their plantation and discovers to his horror that the buyer is a vampire – the slaves are to be used not for labor but for food. Lincoln writes in his journal his belief that vampires will continue to exist in America as long as they can easily buy their victims in this manner – to end slavery is to end the scourge of vampires. Lincoln becomes an Abolitionist. He marries Mary Todd, begins to raise a family, starts a law firm, and is elected to a term in the U.S. House of Representatives.

While in Washington, Lincoln meets his old friend Edgar Allan Poe, who also knows the truth about vampires. Poe tells Lincoln that the vampires are being chased out of their ancestral homes in Europe (in part because of a public outcry over the bloody atrocities of Elizabeth Báthory) and are flocking to America because of the slave trade. Poe warns that if the vampires are left unchecked they will eventually seek to enslave all Americans, white and black. Lincoln leaves Washington in 1849 and declines to seek re-election; Poe is found murdered that same year in Baltimore, the victim of a vampire attack.

In 1857 Henry summons Lincoln to New York City. Here Lincoln and fellow vampire slayer William Seward are told that the vampires in the South intend to start a civil war so that they can conquer the north and enslave all humans of America. Lincoln runs for the U.S. Senate and debates Stephen A. Douglas in what became known as the Lincoln–Douglas debates. Although Lincoln loses to Douglas (an ally of the Southern vampires), he gains a great deal of publicity and respect, which allows him to capture the Republican Party nomination for President of the United States and then the office itself.

The secret behind creating these kinds of fictional works is the careful interweaving of real facts and real events into the story. For example, Lincoln really did win a seat in Congress in 1846, and he did decline re-election. He was handy with an axe. His mother did die in 1818. Poe died in 1849 and the circumstances of his death were shrouded in mystery. Lincoln did become an Abolitionist, etc.

In fact, for a story such as this to get to the level where one can suspend the disbelief  long enough to read the book or watch the movie, it must incorporate some patina of reality into the underlying framework of the fiction. Or, you end up with Plan 9 From Outer Space.

The same is true of the Birther movement.  Some are more skilled at this art than others.  For example, the Birthers who filed the Ankeny action in Indiana in 2009, simply left out all mention of the 1898 Scotus case, Wong Kim Ark.  Not surprisingly, that Court noticed this rather glaring omission. After explaining Wong Kim Ark (WKA) to the plaintiffs, at some length, they concluded:

The Plaintiffs do not mention the above United States Supreme Court authority [WKA] in their complaint or brief; they primarily rely instead on an eighteenth century treatise and quotations of Members of Congress made during the nineteenth century. To the extent that these authorities conflict with the United States Supreme Court‟s interpretation of what it means to be a natural born citizen, we believe that the Plaintiffs‟ arguments fall under the category of “conclusory, non-factual assertions or legal conclusions” that we need not accept as true when reviewing the grant of a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim.

Squeeky’s Law Dictionary defines conclusory, non-factual assertions or legal conclusions as:

Factual or legal material that a party has pulled out of their a$$ in the vain hope of influencing the tribunal.

But, where these Birthers were sloppy, and gave rise to the Ankeny precedent which is now found persuasive across the country, other Birthers work harder and incorporate the WKA case and other little tidbits of reality into their fictional dream narratives. Mario “The Mangler” Apuzzo, Esq. provides an excellent brief example, from just the other day:

A “natural born Citizen” is implicitly defined by the Naturalization Acts of 1790, 1795, 1802, and 1855 and explicitly defined by The Venus (C.J. Marshall concurring), Inglis, Shanks, Dred Scott (J.Daniels concurring), and Minor. Minor explained that under “common-law” which which the Framers were familiar when they adopted the Constitution, Virginia Minor was a “citizen,” who belonged to the “natural born Citizen” class. Minor and these sources which preceded it all relied upon the law of nations, as explained by Vattel in The Law of Nations, Section 212 (1758) and treated as American “common-law” and national law, to conclude that a “natural born Citizen” is a child born in the country to “citizen” parents.

This original definition of a “natural born Citizen” is the supreme law of the land as is the other two presidential eligibility requirements under Article II, Section 1, Clause 5, i.e., age of at least 35 years and residency of at least 14 years. Neither the Fourteenth Amendment nor Wong Kim Ark changed that American “common-law” definition of a “natural born Citizen.”

What the Fourteenth Amendment and Wong Kim Ark did was provide a definition of a “citizen of the United States” at birth, by looking to the colonial English common law as an aid in construing the “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” clause, which is not the definition of an Article II “natural born Citizen.” Wong Kim Ark defined a “citizen of the United States” which is a different class of “citizen” from the “natural born Citizen” class. Hence, your reliance on Wong Kim Ark to support your theory that the Founders and Framers defined a “natural born Citizen” the same as the English defined a “natural born subject” under the English common law is misplaced. Rather, today the definition of a “natural born Citizen” continues to be a child born in a country to parents who were “citizens” of the country at the time of the child’s birth.

Here is the link, and this was the second comment on the page:

Comments Mario Apuzzo’s Blog

Rather than go to one of his briefs and pull out a much longer excerpt, I am just picking on this short example. Apuzzo is engaged in a comment exchange with someone named “Linda,” who is whacking him around like a goat carcass on a Buzkashi field.

Anyway, look at how sneakingly Apuzzo slips in HIS characterization of WKA:

What the Fourteenth Amendment and Wong Kim Ark did was provide a definition of a “citizen of the United States” at birth, by looking to the colonial English common law as an aid in construing the “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” clause, which is not the definition of an Article II “natural born Citizen.”

There is some truth in that statement. The real question in WKA was not whether poor Wong was born in the United States,  but whether or not he was “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” as set out in the 14th Amendment. BUT, the WKA Court started it’s analysis with an in depth discussion of natural born citizenship as found in Article II of the Constitution.  That is the same place Apuzzo starts. In fact, two of the seven sections in the case dealt exclusively with the concept of natural born citizenship starting in England, and then continuing to the United States.

Apuzzo wants to separate “Article II natural born citizenship” from 14th Amendment’s “citizen of the United States” at birth. He wants to pretend that they are two distinct concepts. That way he can weave WKA into his fictional framework, and make his case more believable, all while ignoring the painful reality.  The painful reality is that  the WKA Court specifically says the two phrases are talking about the same underlying concept.  Which is, that the 14th Amendment affirms the concept of natural born citizenship for those born inside the United States, regardless of the citizenship of their parents, as long as they are neither foreign diplomats or invading soldiers.  From WKA Section V:

V. In the forefront both of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution and of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the fundamental principle of citizenship by birth within the dominion was reaffirmed in the most explicit and comprehensive terms.

So yes, WKA construed the meaning of the term “subject to the jurisdiction,” but WKA also found that concept to be the same thing as the requirement for natural born citizenship.

Article II natural born citizenship = birth within the dominion + subject to the jurisdiction

14th Amendment citizens at birth  = birth within the dominion + subject to the jurisdiction

And, the WKA Court explicitly states this:

The foregoing considerations and authorities irresistibly lead us to these conclusions: the Fourteenth Amendment affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory, in the allegiance and under the protection of the country, including all children here born of resident aliens, with the exceptions or qualifications (as old as the rule itself) of children of foreign sovereigns or their ministers, or born on foreign public ships, or of enemies within and during a hostile occupation of part of our territory, and with the single additional exception of children of members of the Indian tribes owing direct allegiance to their several tribes. The Amendment, in clear words and in manifest intent, includes the children born, within the territory of the United States, of all other persons, of whatever race or color, domiciled within the United States. Every citizen or subject of another country, while domiciled here, is within the allegiance and the protection, and consequently subject to the jurisdiction, of the United States. His allegiance to the United States is direct and immediate, and, although but local and temporary, continuing only so long as he remains within our territory, is yet, in the words of Lord Coke in Calvin’s Case, 7 Rep. 6a, “strong enough to make a natural subject, for if he hath issue here, that issue is a natural-born subject;”

This is not the only piece of reality that Apuzzo carves up and uses snippets from to weave into his creation. Natural born citizens truly are defined by various  naturalization statutes. The problem is, naturalization statutes have nothing to do with persons born INSIDE the United States. Those statutes only apply to the foreign born. From Section IV of WKA:

So far as we are informed, there is no authority, legislative, executive or judicial, in England or America, which maintains or intimates that the statutes (whether considered as declaratory or as merely prospective) conferring citizenship on foreign-born children of citizens have superseded or restricted, in any respect, the established rule of citizenship by birth within the dominion.

Darn, that is strange. I wonder how Mario Apuzzo, Esq. could have read WKA and not seen that part??? He is a lawyer, after all.  Similarly, there really was a case called, Minor v. Happersett  (1875),  but that case doesn’t run off to Emerich de Vattel of Switzerland for its definition of natural born citizenship any more that Lincoln sought out Edgar Allan Poe for advice on Vampires. Here is what the Minor Court says about the term, and where it went to get its definition:

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.

And that is usually where the Birthers leave off the cite, and somehow forget to provide the rest of the Court’s thoughts on the subject of who was a natural born citizen:

Some authorities go further and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their parents. As to this class there have been doubts, but never as to the first. For the purposes of this case it is not necessary to solve these doubts

Those doubts were solved 23 years later in WKA.  Apuzzo adds some more pizzazz to his tale with this:

This original definition of a “natural born Citizen” is the supreme law of the land as is the other two presidential eligibility requirements under Article II, Section 1, Clause 5, i.e., age of at least 35 years and residency of at least 14 years. Neither the Fourteenth Amendment nor Wong Kim Ark changed that American “common-law” definition of a “natural born Citizen.”

Yes, we have a constitution, and yes it is the supreme law of the land. But that document does not define natural born citizen. As both the Minor Court and the WKA Court stated, you have to go to English common law for the definition. And Emerich de Vattel’s writings ain’t common law. And his book called The Law of Nations is NOT part of the U.S. Constitution.

But that is how the Birthers roll. Little pieces of reality mixed in here and there with big chunks of fiction. The problem is, they keep trying to pass this crap off as a documentary, when it is more like a cheesy science fiction B movie called “Emerich de Vattel, Alien Hunter.

Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter

Note 1. The Image Easter Egg. This is a word play on Stanley Kowalski’s utterances in A Streetcar Named Desire.  The Image is a photoshopped job of Abe Lincoln chasing Edward Cullen from the Twilight vampire series. His girlfriend is named Bella Swan.