Sharon Rondeau’s Basic Instinct Moment!!!

Sharon Rondeau, Editor of The Post and Email,  fell victim to a Basic Instinct Moment a few days ago.  Don’t worry – the only thing she exposed was the basic flaw in Birther legal theory. You can see how it happened from her Internet Article:

Are Leon Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey Traitors?

PUTATIVE DEFENSE SECRETARY SAYS CONGRESS “IRRELEVANT” IN WAR DECISIONS by Sharon Rondeau (Mar. 10, 2012) — On March 8, 2012, putative Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told Congress that it was “irrelevant” during testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee. Panetta claimed that “international permission” dictates the policy of the U.S. military.

http://www.thepostemail.com/2012/03/10/are-leon-panetta-and-gen-martin-dempsey-traitors/

The rest of the Internet Article is hidden to non-subscribers. But you can see where Rondeau is going. Her basic instincts are telling her, “HELL NO! Americans do not cede their rights and powers to the international community which may permit the exercise thereof as decided by committee vote.”

She is right. Which makes it all the less comprehensible why she and the rest of the Birthers demand the rest of the country recognize international law when they propagandize about Emerich de Vattel and the two citizen-parents theory???  And when they strut around and preach how British Citizenship Law trumps American Citizenship Law inside the United States.

Excuse me, but the last time I  looked, British laws do not permit their Citizens to keep and bear arms the way Americans laws do.  Yet, if one were to preach that British gun laws supersede American law inside the United States, then I would sure pity the poor persons trying to enforce that interpretation. Particularly down here in Texas.  Yet isn’t that exactly what the Birthers are saying every time they spout that “once a Brit never legit” crap???

The International Law versus American Law argument was central to the Wong Kim Ark case in 1898. The two citizen-parent Birthers either ignore Wonk Kim Ark,  or flat out lie that Chief Justice Gray manipulated the other judges to cover up for the long dead Chester Arthur.  They do this because the WKA Court  did NOT recognize international law as the controlling law in the United States.  This is how the majority decision characterized the loser’s position:

IV. It was contended by one of the learned counsel for the United States that the rule of the Roman law, by which the citizenship of the child followed that of the parent, was the true rule of international law, as now recognized in most civilized countries, and had superseded the rule of the common law, depending on birth within the realm, originally founded on feudal considerations.

This was not just the majority putting words in the mouths of the dissent. Here is what Justice Fuller, one of the two dissenting judges said:

Obviously, where the Constitution deals with common law rights and uses common law phraseology, its language should be read in the light of the common law; but when the question arises as to what constitutes citizenship of the nation, involving as it does international relations, and political, as contradistinguished from civil, status, international principles must be considered, and, unless the municipal law of England appears to have been affirmatively accepted, it cannot be allowed to control in the matter of construction.

Nationality is essentially a political idea, and belongs to the sphere of public law. Hence, Mr. Justice Story, in Shanks v. Dupont, 3 Pet. 242, 248, said that the incapacities of femes [p708] covert at common law

do not reach their political rights, nor prevent their acquiring or losing a national character. Those political rights do not stand upon the mere doctrines of municipal law, applicable to ordinary transactions, but stand upon the more general principles of the law of nations.

Before the Revolution, the view of the publicists had been thus put by Vattel:

The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country of parents who are citizens. As the society cannot exist and perpetuate itself otherwise than by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights. The society is supposed to desire this in consequence of what it owes to its own preservation, and it is presumed as matter of course that each citizen, on entering into society, reserves to his children the right of becoming members of it. The country of the fathers is therefore that of the children, and these become true citizens merely by their tacit consent. We shall soon see whether, on their coming to the years of discretion, they may renounce their right, and what they owe to the society in which they were born. I say that, in order to be of the country, it is necessary that a person be born of a father who is a citizen; for, if he is born there of a foreigner, it will be only the place of his birth, and not his country.

Book I, c.19, § 212.

The true bond which connects the child with the body politic is not the matter of an inanimate piece of land, but the moral relations of his parentage. . . . The place of birth produces no change in the rule that children follow the condition of their fathers, for it is not naturally the place of birth that gives rights, but extraction.

And to the same effect are the modern writers, as for instance, [p709] Bar, who says:

To what nation a person belongs is by the laws of all nations closely dependent on descent; it is almost an universal rule that the citizenship of the parents determines it — that of the father where children are lawful, and, where they are bastards, that of their mother, without regard to the place of their birth, and that must necessarily be recognized as the correct canon, since nationality is, in its essence, dependent on descent.

Int.Law. § 31.

Please notice the bolded cite to International Law.  Some Birthers are probably dancing in their seats and waving their hands to say that Vattel only applies to natural born citizens and not 14th Amendment citizens. Nope. That is even more stupid. What, common law and Amendments decide who our citizens are, but International Law determines who is eligible to be our presidents???   Absurd. No, this is a straight International Law versus American Law issue. This was also the way the issue was viewed at the time. This is from an 1898 American Law Review article:

The Wong Kim Ark case, decided by the United States Supreme Court on March 28, 1898,  decides, for the first time in that tribunal, the question whether a person born in the United States of foreign parents is a citizen of the United States under the citizenship clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The decision holds, substantially, that the language used in the Fourteenth Amendment to the constitution is declaratory of the common-law doctrine, and not of the international law doctrine, and that, therefore, a person born in the United States is a citizen thereof, irrespective of the nationality or political status of his parents.

http://birtherthinktank.wordpress.com/2011/10/21/remember-the-maine-battleship-remember-the-wong-kim-ark/

Yet, 114 years later and the Birthers once again reignite a strange love affair with International Law.  As Mario Apuzzo, Esq. states: 

But the Founders did not rely upon the English common law to define the new national United States citizenship that they created for the new Constitutional Republic. Rather, the Founders replaced the English common law with the law of nations which became the new U.S. federal common law and the law of the federal government.

http://puzo1.blogspot.com/2009/08/law-of-nations-and-not-english-common.html

The law of nations became the law of the federal government??? Where are Sharon Rondeau’s basic instincts when she hears blathering nonsense like that??? Where are her basic instincts when the Birthers prattle on about how some Swiss guy writing about French Law trumps the Magna Carta and centuries of good solid English common law???

My guess is, that she and the rest of the Birthers have been so hot on Obama’s trail, that they never thought about it. And it probably wouldn’t have mattered if they did.

Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter

Note 1. The Image. This is Madame Defarge, played by Blanche Yurka from the 1935 film, A Tale of Two Cities. This excerpt from a free online essay explains the basics about her:

Madame Defarge

Madame Defarge, with her strong body, strong face, and strong features, likens herself to the wind, to fire, and to an earthquake. Like these natural force that are violent and cannot be stopped, Madame Defarge is ruthless and unstoppable. She is the “watchful eye” of the revolution, always observant and aware of what is going on, although she often appears to be aloof and unconcerned. She is usually seen knitting on her “register” that lists the names of aristocratic families that must perish in the revolution. During the course of the novel, Madame Defarge actually become the symbol of the revolution, with all of its hatred and desire for vengeance.

Under her calm exterior, Madame Defarge hides a passionate anger that will not be satisfied until she gets her revenge on the aristocracy, especially the Evremonde family, who is responsible for the deaths of her brother and sister. She is determined that Darnay will be executed for being an Evremonde by birth and determines his wife and child must also perish. When she finds out they have escaped, she is beside herself with anger. Wanting proof that Lucie is indeed not hiding in her room, she struggles with Miss Pross. Ironically, during the struggle her own gun falls to the floor and discharges, killing Madame Defarge immediately.

There seems to be much similarity between  Madame Defarge and the  Birthers in the way that both try to cover up their personal desires for vengeance by cloaking those desires in a supposedly impersonal patriotic desire for justice.

Note 2. For a thorough analysis of the International Law versus American Law issue,  Dr. Conspiracy published an Internet Article on this called Chan v. DeMaio, where a Nolu Chan demolished Mr. Joseph DeMaio, who publishes frequently at Ms. Rondeau’s website:

http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2012/02/chan-v-demaio/

Read more at Birther Think Tank