Having mastered fake news, now the media are trying out a little fake history.
... If you’d like to be the smartest person at your next cocktail party by knowing the truth about the 14th Amendment, this is the column for you!
Of course the president can end the citizenship of “anchor babies” by executive order — for the simple reason that no Supreme Court or U.S. Congress has ever conferred such a right....
How could anyone — even a not-very-bright person — imagine that granting citizenship to the children of illegal aliens is actually in our Constitution?
The first question would be: Why would they do that? ...
The Supreme Court has stated — repeatedly! — that the “main object” of the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment “was to settle the question … as to the citizenship of free negroes,” making them “citizens of the United States and of the state in which they reside.”....
As the court has explained again and again and again:
“(N)o one can fail to be impressed with the one pervading purpose found in (the 13th, 14th and 15th) amendments, lying at the foundation of each, and without which none of them would have been even suggested; we mean the freedom of the slave race, the security and firm establishment of that freedom, and the protection of the newly made freeman and citizen from the oppressions of those who had formerly exercised unlimited dominion over him.”
That’s why the amendment refers to people who are “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States “and of the state wherein they reside.” For generations, African-Americans were domiciled in this country. The only reason they weren’t citizens was because of slavery, which the country had just fought a civil war to end.
The 14th Amendment fixed that.
The amendment didn’t even make Indians citizens. Why? Because it was about freed slaves. Sixteen years after the 14th Amendment was ratified, the Supreme Court held that an American Indian, John Elk, was not a citizen, despite having been born here....
It’s something else entirely to claim that an illegal alien, subject to deportation, can drop a baby and suddenly claim to be the parent of a “citizen.”
This crackpot notion was concocted by liberal zealot Justice William Brennan and slipped into a footnote as dicta in a 1982 case. “Dicta” means it was not the ruling of the court, just a random aside, with zero legal significance....
It’s often said that journalism is the first draft of history. As we now we see, fake news is the first draft of fake history.