The Birther Banshee (or, “The Dianna” Screeches)

Wiki says about the Banshee:

An Irish feminine spirit, the banshee can appear in a variety of guises. Most often she appears as an ugly, frightening hag, but she can also appear as a stunningly beautiful woman of any age that suits her.  Although not always seen, her mourning call is heard, usually at night when someone is about to die and usually around woods.  In some parts of Leinster, she is referred to as the bean chaointe (keening woman) whose wail can be so piercing that it shatters glass. In Kerry in the southwest of Ireland, her keen is experienced as a “low, pleasant singing”; in Tyrone in the north, as “the sound of two boards being struck together”; and on Rathlin Island as “a thin, screeching sound somewhere between the wail of a woman and the moan of an owl.”

The thin screeching sound somewhere between the wail of a woman and the moan of an owl accurately describes the writings of Dianna Cotter, aka Freeper Danae, aka The Dianna.  Journalists have a concept known as the 5 W’s which are regarded as the basics of information gathering:

• Who is it about?
• What happened?
• Where did it take place?
• When did it take place?
• Why did it happen?
• How did it happen?

Let’s examine an important excerpt from Cotter’s recent Pravda article, and see if she actually gathered any facts and  information and then arrived at a conclusion, or whether she simply applied her own conclusions to information :

http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/07-03-2012/120708-arizona_sheriff_obama-0/

Years before the 2008 election, Barack Obama was involved in efforts to amend the US Constitution to allow those who were born to parents who were not citizens to become President along with those born overseas. Those efforts have occurred several times in recent history, and all have failed. It must be intelligently asked why this was a concern at all for the then Senator.

There are two reasons for Obama’s concern. The first lay in Article 2 section 1 of the constitution which states: “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,”.

Except for Barack Obama.

The second reason  for Obama’s concern lies in the Supreme Court of the United States case Minor V. Happersett (88 U.S. 162) 1875 which defines Natural Born Citizen:

“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.” Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162, 168.

Has Cotter presented any evidence that Obama is concerned with Minor v. Hasppersett???  Birthers, including Cotter, are concerned with the case.  Either dishonestly, or through gross ignorance or stupidity, they tend to believe the case was precedent for defining natural born citizenship.  However, 99.9999% of lawyers and judges disagree and believe the case left the definition of natural born citizenship open. This belief is based upon the sentences the pseudo-journalist Cotter left out of the above case excerpt. Once again, lets fill in the part the Birthers leave out:

These were natives or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners. Some authorities go further and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their

Page 88 U. S. 168

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.

First, we can simply read the words of the case for ourselves to see that the Minor v. Happersett judges left the issue open. If we doubt our own ability to read these 3 simple sentences, we can see what an actual court said about this and look at Ankeny v. Governor (found in the website header as The Case The “Two Citizen Parents” Birthers Just HATE!!!):

In Minor, written only six years after the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, the Court observed that:

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. 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.

Id. at 167-168. Thus, the Court left open the issue of whether a person who is born within the United States of alien parents is considered a natural born citizen.12

Notice how the Court put the full quotation from the case into their decision, whereas Journalist Cotter was quite happy to pre-edit the quote for her readers. Also note, that the Ankeny Court at footnote 12, further distinguished Minor from Obama’s situation:

[12] Note that the Court in Minor contemplates only scenarios where both parents are either citizens or aliens, rather in the case of President Obama, whose mother was a U.S. citizen and father was a citizen of the United Kingdom.

After understanding this, the rest of Cotter’s article becomes worthless. Journalists are supposed to start with a clear and factual WHAT HAPPENED, and work their way to WHY DID IT HAPPEN.  Because you can’t figure out WHY something happened if you don’t know WHAT actually happened.

But Cotter didn’t bother to get her facts straight first, including an understanding of the applicable law. Instead, she started with a WHO that she dislikes, and a stupidly false WHY, to explain WHAT happened. Because, if Obama had no reason to be concerned about his eligibility status at any time, then all the reasons that Cotter gives for possible shenanigans becomes unnecessary. If two citizen-parents are an imaginary legal requirement, then her statement that  ”Barack Obama was involved in efforts to amend the US Constitution to allow those who were born to parents who were not citizens to become President” is completely wrong.   She might as well have based her story on the crank legal theory that Americans do not have to pay income taxes because the 16th Amendment was never ratified – and that is why the Main Stream Media are ignoring Sheriff Joe and why Obama is concerned. Same difference.

Her stupidly false conclusion about WHAT the law is, has sent her, and anyone unlucky enough to have read her article, off into quagmire of illogical bull manure. The question arises is she really that stupid, or is she just very dishonest. My opinion is that she is very dishonest. She attends college and supposedly maintains a 4.o GPA. She writes articles in which the grammar and sentence structure is proper. She appears to have no reading-comprehension impairments.

I debated with her a few times on Free Republic before the Birthers there got terrified of me and had me banned. (See the Internet Article here, Free Republic Birthers Run In Panic-Stricken Terror From The Truth!!! – with pictures of the crying  Birthers.) So, she has been exposed to the true state of affairs regarding the law. There aren’t but a few legal cases which deal with this issue, and both sides know them well. She is not ignorant of either Wong Kim Ark (1898) or Ankeny v. Governor (2009). So, in my human opinion, she knows better. She just doesn’t want to tell the truth.

Expect further analysis of The Dianna. Like that moaning owl in the above definition of a Banshee, all she knows is WHO WHO WHO. For her, there is only one W. And when her story is about Obama, don’t expect journalism.

Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter

Note 1. The Image. This is a still from The Cry of the Banshee (1970). Here is a review, and the site where I found the picture:

http://terrortitans.blogspot.com/2011/03/there-aint-much-irish-in-this-banshee.html

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