All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and the States wherein they reside.

Everyone says that means if you're born here, you're a citizen. Automatically.

But what's with that "subject to the jurisidiction therof" clause mean? If it means nothing, what's it doing in there at all? Does it restrict the broader preceeding clause?

Derbyshire catches this compelling argument that it does in fact restrict the "all persons born" language, and from no lesser authority than the man who drafted the Citizenship Clause himself:

Mr. HOWARD: I now move to take up House joint resolution No. 127.

The motion was agreed to; and the Senate, as in Committee of the Whole, resumed the consideration of the joint resolution (H.R. No. 127) proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

The first amendment is to section one, declaring that all "persons born in the United States and Subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the States wherein they reside. I do not propose to say anything on that subject except that the question of citizenship has been fully discussed in this body as not to need any further elucidation, in my opinion. This amendment which I have offered is simply declaratory of what I regard as the law of the land already, that every person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States. This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons. It settles the great question of citizenship and removes all doubt as to what persons are or are not citizens of the United States. This has long been a great desideratum in the jurisprudence and legislation of this country.

Emphasis not in original, but found in author's quotation.

Interesting.

How the hell has this been ignored for so long? I mean, I suppose constitutional scholars know all about this, but how do they argue against what appears to be the clear meaning of the intent behind the clause?

The Divine Miss M Update: Michelle Malkin was here long before.

Posted by: Ace at 12:42 PM | Comments (35)
Post contains 433 words, total size 3 kb.

That's the rumor.

Thanks to Brak.

Also... Non-candidate candidate Gonzales says there's no personal right to own a firearm under the Second Amendment.

What was Bush thinking?

Oh, right. He's a "friend."

My friend Stinky always cracks me up during our marathon Dungeons & Dragons sessions with his pitch-perfect rendition of The Knights Who Say Ni! That doesn't make him a good nominee for the Supreme Court.

Posted by: Ace at 12:20 PM | Comments (15)
Post contains 75 words, total size 1 kb.

Numbers, numbers, numbers.

Jayson at PoliPundit continues comparing "the worst economy since Herbert Hoover" and Clinton's "Miracle Economy" and keeps finding, strangely enough, the current economy as as good or better than Clinton's.

Why, you'd almost begin to suspect that the media denigrates the current economy for reasons having nothing to do with objective economic evidence.

Almost.

Let's not jump to any hasty conclusions.

What'd we do, baby, without us...?
What'd we do, baby, without us?
Well there ain't no nothin'
we can't love each other throu-ooo-ough...
What'd we do, baby, without uh-uh-us?
Sha-na-na-na.

Sit, Ubu, Sit. Good penis.

This pic & last one from www.hissandpop.com.

Posted by: Ace at 12:08 PM | Comments (15)
Post contains 114 words, total size 1 kb.

From someone who will remain nameless, conducting a search for reasons about which I will not speculate.

Googling rutgers+gay+cruising+spots... nails me at #4.

Honestly, I thought I was going to a sorority mixer. I wasn't sure what the mixer was doing out in the middle of the woods in an abandoned and rickety men's lavatory, but when you're wasted on Everclear and Yoo-Hoo, you don't ask too many questions.

Did I manage to escape with my "male virtue" intact?

Well, let's just say: you win some, you lose some.*

I'd really rather not talk about it.

* Not my joke. It's from Just Shoot Me. But it's a good one.

Posted by: Ace at 11:53 AM | Comments (6)
Post contains 128 words, total size 1 kb.

My alternate theory was that the Times had attempted to "help" the author by suggesting more juicy (anti-Bush) language by placing it in the article, just to, um, see how it all looked together. Like picking the right purse for an ensemble.

Say Anything pressed Gail Collins on the made-up language, and she fesses up that that's more or less what happened.

Still seems like leading the witness to me. I've no doubt that reporters will often try to elicit the "killer quote" from a source ("Would you agree that President George Bush is a low-functioning retard psychopathic serial killer? If so, why? If not, why not?") and that seems a bit sketchy, too-- suggesting the "right quote" to a source and then quoting the source saying it (or merely affirming it) without noting the actual quote came from the reporter.

If there's nothing wrong with this-- why did the Times seek to hide what had actually happened with an uniformative and vague "correction" chalking the whole thing up to a "production error"?

They knew they were caught dirty on this, and they tried to hide it.

Not really a shock. I guess the shock is that they admitted it to Say Anything.

Update: BigE reminds:

Didnt the MSM get caught doing a similarly leading the witness type incident regarding the armor for humvees? Some GI hammered on Rummy about it and it turned out to have been fed to him by a reporter (and that the guys unit's humvees were already armored).

Looks like we are stumbling on to a tactic, Take what you believe and want to say and then go find someone who you can attribute the statements too. Preferebly someone with more credibility (i.e. if you want to hammer Bush about the war find a GI you can attribute your statments to).

That's how I remember it.

Bloggers aren't trained journalists, but we're all getting a crash-course in the stuff they don't teach you at J-school but which, apparently, a professional reporter needs to know how to do.

Posted by: Ace at 11:06 AM | Comments (1)
Post contains 354 words, total size 2 kb.

He frets we're jumping to conclusions about the perpetrators of the mass-slaughter in the Tubes:

We don't have remotely enough information about what took place in London or who did it to engage in sensible speculation about why it happened or what ought to be done as a result. Speed is the enemy of sensibility in such situations. (So let's all try to resist the urge to exploit the tragedy to demonstrate how right we were about everything in the first place and just show some respect, and compassion, for its victims.)

In related news, Alterman also wrings his hands that we're being "far too hasty" in trying to pin Lincoln's assassination on a "contrarian actor" ("Time to round up the artists and poets, eh?") and also worries "How do we know the shark killed all those people in Jaws? Maybe it was just a big moray eel, like the one in The Deep. I question the timing."

He promises further handwringing when the sun sets tonight, but cautions, "let's make no off-the-cuff speculations about whether the sixty-million-year-old revolution of the earth will continue indefinitely. That smacks of racism to me. You know what else smacks of racism? Fig newtons, that's what."

"The Reality-Based Community"

It's far too early to make judgments about anything, except about our own intellectual and moral superiority. And we have to keep pointing it out to you because, damnit, no one else is picking up the slack.

Thanks to the finally-linkable Blogometer from the National Journal.

Have I Misread Alterman's Intent? Hubris thinks that perhaps Alterman was cautioning his leftist brethren, not saying "let's not rush to pin this on Al Qaeda affiliated terrorists:"

This is actually one of the few statements ever made by Alterman that I have not found offensive. Note his phrasing:

So let's all try to resist the urge to exploit the tragedy to demonstrate how right we were about everything.

To me, he's not only talking to his opponents, but also asking people like Oliver Willis and Atrios refrain from the kind of crap they slapped up on the screen yesterday (to no avail, obviously).

Also, I don't think he was saying "let's not rush to judgment on whether the perpetrators were bastards."

I don't see the problem there. Plenty of problems at Atrios and Oliver Willis, who will certainly keep us safe if Fox News correspondents ever try to storm our beaches.

Emphasis in Hubris' quotation, putting that stress on "we."

Plausible, I guess, but I have to say I switch between "we" meaning, you know, "we" and "we" meaning our opponents (what they're saying, or thinking, whatever) all the time. Really, when you do that, you should put the language in quotes to connote that these aren't your own words, but the (made-up) words you're putting in an unnamed straw-man's opponent's mouth; but I write sloppy, and often omit the quotes.

In the post about the Supreme Court, I first wrote that a pro-choice libertarian judge would be "acceptable;" I realized I hadn't specified acceptable to whom, and had to edit to "acceptable to Chuckie Schumer."

Maybe he means what Hubris says. I don't think so, but it is a possibility. If Alterman did mean to rap the left's knuckles, he shouldn't have been so chickenshit about citing an example.

Alterman is a hack, so I just doubt he has much bad to say about the left at all, even a minor caution. David Corn is on the left, too, but he tries, from time to time, to achieve something close to "fairness." If it were David Corn we were talking about, I'd be more likely to accept Hubris' reading.

In any event, I have to quote his quibbling, just because of that killer last line:

Plenty of problems at Atrios and Oliver Willis, who will certainly keep us safe if Fox News correspondents ever try to storm our beaches.

Amen, brother. I feel all warm and secure knowing that Filet-O-Fish will be right there to save me from the deviant sexual predations of Laurie Dhue.

Posted by: Ace at 10:57 AM | Comments (18)
Post contains 696 words, total size 4 kb.

Hired by Wired:

For the moment, I can’t go into too many details about what I’ll be doing there. It’s just too tasty a story to let out of the oven before it’s baked. But here’s what I can say: I’ll be embedding with a high-tech Army unit – one that’s playing an absolutely central role in the counterinsurgency there. If these soldiers fail in their missions, the entire coalition operation could go up in smoke. If they succeed, lots and lots of American and Iraqi lives will be saved.

That's a hell of a teaser. Based on his previous posts, I'd have to guess he'll be with a unit using some sort of medium/long-range bomb detection/detonation equipment. But that's just a guess.

He's also down on London's surveillance camera system, noting that as a preventitive system it had no effect on the terrorists. They knew they were being taped, but carried out their attacks anyway.

But he concedes the obvious-- as an after-the-fact forensic tool, the cameras will almost certainly put most or even all of the hands-on culprits at the scenes of the crime.

It's a debate I don't feel like getting into, really. I know libertarian-trending people get all up in arms about Big Brother and all, but honestly, what the hell do you care that you're being videotaped on your way to the dry-cleaners?

One of the libertarian complaints about pervasive surveillance -- no one is really watching the cameras anyway, at least not in real time, so what's the point? -- seems more or less directly at odds with their other complaint -- we've lost our right to move about freely, as we're being eyeballed constantly.

Well, no you're not, really. Unless you're a hot lipstick lesbian making out with a busty and coquettish cheerleader on the street, you're probably not being eyeballed much at all. And the tapes and hard-drives are periodically erased -- both to save money and to not keep permanent surveillance records of trivial events.

So, again, unless you're engaging in semi-legal-but-really-f'n'-hot behavior in public, you're probably just fine.

So many libertarian arguments, all about one's "right" to go to a Mr. Softee ice-cream truck without being spotted by a camera, seem awfully useful to criminals and terrorists. The don't mean to help criminals and terrorists, I know-- but that's the upshot.

All this worry about hypothetical invasions of privacy (while in public, mind you) and being watched performing utterly anodyne chores and commuting to work must be balanced against the fact that real criminals and murderous terrorists are being taped too, and videotape is a powerful law enforcement tool.

Posted by: Ace at 10:36 AM | Comments (10)
Post contains 447 words, total size 3 kb.

Modest job growth in June, but May's numbers were revised upwards a bit. And of course the unemployment rate fell to 5%-- the lowest in years.

Highlights:

· 146,000 new payroll jobs were created in June. Payroll job gains in May were revised up to 104,000.

· Twenty-five consecutive months of job gains have added over 3.7 million new jobs to payrolls.

· Payroll employment has increased by 2.1 million over the year and over 1 million new payroll jobs have been created so far this year.

· The unemployment rate (calculated from the household survey of employment) edged down to 5.0% in June, from 5.1% in May. Last June, the unemployment rate was 5.6%.

· The unemployment rate is the lowest since September 11, 2001 and remains below the averages of each of the past 3 decades.

Thanks to my other top-secret government source, Mr. X.

He leaks me all sorts of sensitive reports that only about 300,000 people in government and the media get.

Oh, and if you call up for it, they'll send it to you, no questions asked.

So, you know, I'm really very important.

As promised some time ago, not cowbell, nor Kim Richards, but...

Mallory!

Goddess of Bubbleheaded Mall-Obsessed Consumerism. Patron Saint of Expanding Retail Sales Figures.

Posted by: Ace at 10:18 AM | Comments (11)
Post contains 217 words, total size 2 kb.

Who did it? Well, of course, it's all rather obvious to those in the, ahem, reality-based community: a secretive cabal of Karl Rove, the CIA, Texas oil men, the Cigarette Smoking Man from the X-Files, and the Ghost of Richard Milhouse Nixon.

But those miscreants will never be brought before the bar of justice, because they're "untouchable," either figuratively or, in the case of Tricky Dick's spectre, quite literally.

Although when he rushes past you in the corridor to the Oval Office you do have this odd compulsion to begin compiling an "Enemy's List." For reasons unfathomable, you always want to put Chubby Checkers at the top of the list. Why? I don't know. Whatever beef they have must have happened after death.

But the more practical question is-- which innocent-as-a-lamb patriotic Muslim are they going to pin this on in order to distract us from whatever the left is all hopped up about this week?

There is an an alleged human being they're looking at:

British police have asked their European counterparts for information on a Moroccan man, Mohamed Guerbouzi, in relation to the terrorist attacks in London yesterday, a Brussels-based European police official said. Mr. Guerbouzi has been under investigation in Britain in connection with two previous attacks, a 2003 suicide bombing in Morocco and last year's attack in Madrid. He has been living in Britain for about a decade, the police official said.

Mohamed? I did not see that one coming.

That just shows you the problem with racial profiling. Most of those simplissime police and intelligence officials on the case were quite sure that the chief suspect in the crime would be named "Stan" or, perhaps, "Cavendish."

Posted by: Ace at 09:53 AM | Comments (8)
Post contains 291 words, total size 2 kb.

England has been a bulldog in Iraq, but it continues to be soft and too delighted by its own "tolerance" when it comes to domestic policing of terrorists.

France takes internal terrorist threats seriously; despite a bit of tightening after 9-11, England still does not:

BEIRUT - When Islamic militants massacred 58 tourists in Egypt in 1997, the government issued a list of 14 most-wanted militants it accused of inspiring the attacks. Half were living in London, and none were arrested.

A year later, when suicide bombers attacked two U.S. embassies in East Africa, killing 224 people, three men with ties to Egyptian militant groups were arrested in London for circulating claims of responsibility. They are still fighting extradition to the United States.

For two decades, London has been a haven for Islamic militants fleeing crackdowns in the Middle East. Yesterday, for the first time, the city appeared to fall victim to Islamist violence.

...

"These militant networks kept growing for years, under the British government's nose," said a retired Egyptian security official who asked not to be named. "They were allowed to preach, to raise money and to send recruits to fight in militant causes all over the world."

Hopefully this will change. A committment to openness and tolerance should not be a suicide pact.

Posted by: Ace at 08:11 AM | Comments (7)
Post contains 228 words, total size 2 kb.