Appearances & Schedule
- · This week: Barnes Brothers preview the Big 5 European football season.
- · Friday LIVE at 10, Betting w/ Barnes https://sportspicks.locals.com/post/5976993/live-betting-w-barnes-friday-august-9-2024
- · Saturday Movie: TBD by Board Poll
- · Sunday at 6 pm eastern: Law for the People w/ Viva
Art of the Day: The Bookstore: a vanishing place from the American landscape. Once a place of discovery for the curious knowledge seeker, now the few that exist often a habitue of would-be Marxists from their utopian college days drawing a state paycheck. But it’s present incarnation cannot erase the fondness of the memories I share there: holed up in a corner, a stack of a dozen books next to the chair to sit and soak up little bits of information and imagination off the written page as a day well spent (even better because I often couldn’t afford in my youth to actually buy any of the books). Uncovering and discovering new worlds either in unexplored fields of study or unknown worlds of the author’s imagination, and, in the process, learning the art of language itself as expressed in ink on the page. Bookstores in foreign nations tell their own tales, like the French love of psychology (as their books told the psychology of everything) or the Anglophile home in Paris as Shakespeare’s living library in the bookstore this photo reminds me most of. The Bookstore: a place held fondly in my mind’s eye that is never lost or too far away.
Book Recommendation: The Emerging Populist Majority https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/198466907-the-emerging-populist-majority
Closing Argument: Birthright Citizenship Debate – Is Harris Eligible?
Introduction: Top 10 Headlines of the Week
- Trouble in the markets
- Commercial real estate problems
- Harris Walzes to controversy
- Smartmatic indictment
- Musk Rumble win early against advertising boycott
- Ukraine escalation
- Ritter raided
- Gabbard on watchlist
- Trump crypto platform
- Rogan likes RFK
*Bonus: Healing power of classical music
Wisdom of the Day: “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.” United States Constitution, Amendment XIV.
The Evidence: Top Ten Articles Curated from The Barnes Library
- Election integrity in 2024. https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/08/election_integrity_in_swing_states.html
- Harris moderate pitch pitfalls. https://www.liberalpatriot.com/p/the-democrats-half-hearted-move-to
- Walz stolen valor. https://thefederalist.com/2024/08/09/tim-walz-misrepresented-his-military-service-he-needs-to-answer-some-questions/
- The Cat Lady campaign. https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2024/08/09/democrats_try_to_make_2024_the_cat_lady_election_151423.html
- Jewish doubt of Democrats. https://unherd.com/2024/08/jews-for-kamala-are-living-in-denial/
- The real alien conspiracy. https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/08/conspiracy_theories.html
- Hollywood troubles. https://www.axios.com/2024/08/09/cable-tv-business-paramount-warner-bros-losses
- Google breakup coming. https://www.newsweek.com/what-branding-google-monopoly-really-means-us-opinion-1935380
- 4-day school week not working. https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2024/07/16/the_4-day_school_week_its_a_trend_across_america__despite_questionable_results_1044894.html
- UBI fails. https://realinvestmentadvice.com/ubi-tried-tested-and-failed-as-expected/
*Bonus: Kids rescued.
Homework: Top Dozen Cases TBD on Sunday Show
I. Rumble anti-trust suit against advertising boycott.https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.txnd.393019/gov.uscourts.txnd.393019.1.0.pdf
II. Google antitrust win https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/images/press/Google%20Search%20Engine%20Monopoly%20Ruling.pdf
III. Ritter raid & Gabbard watchlist
IV. Walz Stolen Valor https://casetext.com/case/united-states-v-alvarez
V. Trump: DC & NY case
VI. J6 defendants released
VII. Ripple win
VIII. Navy Seals win vaccine lawsuit
IX. UK Censors Threaten Americans
X. Amos Miller Hearing
XI. 1stA Campaign finance laws https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/seventh-circuit-indiana-superPAC-financing-ruling.pdf
XII. Kennedy NY ballot case
*Bonus: Rekieta win
**Bonus: Yale Covid tuition.
*** Jury discrimination.
Closing Argument: Is Harris Eligible?
- A debate rages over birthright citizenship takes a particular turn when it concerns Kamala Harris, as someone born in the United States to foreign-born parents who were not citizens. The birthright citizenship debate took on greater significance in light of the immigration issues over the last decade. Let’s examine the two sides of the debate. As always, we should start with the text itself.
- “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.” United States Constitution, Amendment XIV.
- “No person except a natural born Citizen…shall be eligible to the Office of President.” United States Constitution, Article II, Section 1, Clause 5.
- The debate turns on the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” For some, a person born here is subject to the jurisdiction thereof unless exempted or excluded for some unique reason – e.g., the children of diplomats born here while the diplomats are no duty; the children of Indian tribes not subject to separate sovereignty; the children of enemy soldiers present in the land; and the like. For others, a person born here is only subject to the jurisdiction thereof if a parent is also subject to the jurisdiction thereof – e.g., a citizen.
- Let’s look next at the contemporary legislative history. At the time of the 14thAmendment, Congress also passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 using nearly identical language, chose the phrase “not subject to any foreign power” as a substitute for “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” Under this analysis, critics urge that a child born here of non-citizen parents is subject to the jurisdiction of a foreign power, and thus “not subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States.
- This requires turning to the broader philosophical issue: power of the state that arises from land and power of the state that arises from people. Critics urge that territorial jurisdiction is not the equal to “political jurisdiction” and thus read the “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” phrase to mean exclusively political jurisdiction not territorial jurisdiction. This, in turn, requires some philosophical understanding of principles of jurisdiction.
- Territorial jurisdiction holds that a state enjoys power over people and activities due to the location of those people and activities. It is useful to remember citizenship is a two-way street: it gives rights to the individual and it also imposes burdens on the individual due the state. Most criminal law still predicates and premises its power on territory: the state who holds power over the land where the crime took place enjoys the power and prerogative to prosecute and punish. In truth, much of this stems from feudal times – a person born in a particular lord’s land joined by birth the feudal contract entitling him to certain obligations from the lord (protection, justice, provisions) and to the lord (military service, judicial service, administrative service, and incomes/tax).
- Under traditional and ancestral understanding of territorial jurisdiction, a person born in the lord’s land would be a citizen of the land unless the conditions of their birth were unusual – as children of an enemy occupying army, children of diplomats of a foreign nation physically present as representatives of that foreign nation, and the like. If we extend that principle to the question of birthright citizenship, children born in America would be American citizens unless their parents’ physical presence was on the official representation of a foreign nation.
- A trilogy of Supreme Court cases did little to fully resolve the controversy, though they do provide precedent helpful to Harris. After the Amendment and before the turn of the century, the Supreme Court construed the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” to mean those who did not “owe immediate allegiance to” a foreign power, such as the “children of ministers, consuls, and citizens or subjects of foreign States born within the United States” unless they were legally present in the United States as permanent residents.
- A note of question for the critics – if owing allegiance to a foreign nation precludes citizenship attaching at birth, this could effectively shift the power of citizenship to foreign nations who could simply declare people citizens at birth of their nation regardless of ancestry or geography. Equally, the children of mixed-birth parents could be stripped of citizenship as well.
- In any controversy like this – where the textual and contextual debate earn merit on both sides – we come to the policy implications of the decision. We should always ask – who does the decision empower? Consider this: ceding to the state more power over citizenship through legislation on naturalization generally doesn’t work as intended for the benefit of freedoms and liberties – after all, this clause exists in response to the Dred Scott decision that effectively reversed the Amistad decision where we went from “born free, always free” to “once a slave, never a citizen.” The temptation to limit citizenship-by-illegal-immigration and foreigners in the White House could give the state the power to strip us all of citizenship. So think twice about what you might think you might want.
