Can we overturn Marbury v Madison?
I’m 49 percent kidding
2 Likes
If only.
2 Likes
I thought this was an interesting angle on birthright citizenship: national security.
.@JoshuaSteinman has submitted a national security-related amicus brief in the pending birthright citizenship case before SCOTUS.
— Benjamin Weingarten (@bhweingarten) January 28, 2026
This is a critical angle that has gone largely ignored in discussion of the case.
He writes in part:
"With a round-trip plane ticket, a malign… pic.twitter.com/ASMhGXVn3j
2 Likes
Citizenship is not an unalloyed good. Lifetime tax liability attaches to it. Ask Boris Johnson.
3 Likes
Yeah, but not for the, ah, “economic migrants”. They broken the law to get here, th3y break the law to pay any taxes they can’t avoid* and they break the law by avoiding the rest of the taxes we all pay.
- I say this because if necessary they use fraudulent or stolen SS #s— but never fear, the IRS knows that and has a program to deal with it, allowing IRS to keep the revenue.
4 Likes
Let’s also note that the (working) illegal alien is aided & abetted in that tax avoidance by citizens who hire them to work for less than a citizen would accept and pay them in cash under the table. That kind of behavior by citizens is also against the laws which Congress had passed – but is apparently very rarely prosecuted.
The knotty problems with citizenship start with our extremely unrepresentative “Representatives” in Congress. Replace those worthless self-enriching political greasy-pole climbers with random citizens serving for short periods, and it is amazing how quickly many of those knotty problems would quickly be solved.
3 Likes
This is reminiscent of that Buckley quote,
I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the telephone directory than by the Harvard University faculty.
While the comparison is still valid, would you really want to be governed by a collection of randos? Depends on where you live, I suppose.
Considering the current state of discourse, the idea is frightening. Of course, Buckley might just have said that because he was a Yale man.
4 Likes
What have we got today? I would not trust either of my State’s often re-elected “Senators” to take the dog for a walk.
The hidden part of representation by “jury service”-type random citizens lies in the definition of citizen. In my post-Collapse world, citizenship will have to be earned. No more of this becoming a full voting citizen purely by the accident of location of birth.
It could be argued that the only full citizens of the US today in the true sense of the word are the naturalized immigrants – people who chose to become US citizens, came to the country legally, played by the rules, paid their taxes, proved that they knew how to speak English, demonstrated understanding of US history and the US Constitution, and swore an oath to abjure all other loyalties and support the US.
Of course, the lawyers who reign over us have screwed that up by allowing dual-citizenship – an obvious abomination.
5 Likes
That definition might make me one of the few ‘full citizens’ on this forum.
6 Likes
All our elected betters swear an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, even as most of them are insouciant and fully half (the demoncrats, obviously) are fully committed to destroying.
6 Likes
Well, hey, guys, on The Free Press this AM I read that we ‘re finally actually deporting Mahmoud Khalil! (Or is it Khalil Mahmoud, I can’t keep it straight..). Wow, THAT only took a couple of years and a detour during which he ws flown to DC to address Congress! THE SYSTEM WORKS!!
(Nah, actually, I think it’s just that the checkered keffiyeh is no longer a get-outta-jail-free badge. Nobody cares, Mahmoud. You shoulda gone to Minnesota while the going was good.)
3 Likes
I wrote an article for our state bar magazine called “Upon Our Oaths” maybe a decade ago now, about how ironic it was that we, an aggressively secular society, still could never do anything important, like enter a profession, get married, take public office—without swearing an oath.
What that means is you’re staking your immortal soul on your veracity.
Oh of course we don’t really believe that, but….we do it anyway.
And one of the things I mentioned—oh God, the naivté!— was that it could still cause a frisson when Keith Ellison, then recently elected to Congress, insisted on posing for his photo-op being sworn in with his hand on…the Koran!!
(of course the real swearing-in of legislators takes place en masse in the chamber where they’ll be sitting, and no books are involved. But still…)
Now, of course, nobody batted an eye when Mamdani was sworn in on the Koran. I’m sure it’s done all the time now. ( Gee, wonder what would happen if someone wanted to swear in on the Torah..?)
I really (yes I mean it) feel, with the benefit of hindsight, that Ellison should NOT have been allowed to do that.
Somebody, whatever clerk or committee is in charge of these ceremonies, should have said, as at least one brave Philadelphia Common Pleas judge did in connection with the witness oath:
Mr. ELlison, you are not required to touch ANY book, neither for the in-chamber response, nor for this photograph with Ms. Pelosi.
But, IF you do want to touch a book,
It’s going to be the Holy Bible.
4 Likes
Well, the oral arguments portend ill, with various commentators re-affirming their view that anyone from anywhere can simply invade, multiply (not necessarily in that order) and become full-fledged citizens - along with a long chain of “family members”. Apparently both Roberts and Barrett are on board with this. Though it’s merely one in a long series of suicidal acts by Western (former) nations, it will go down in history (if there is any and if anyone other than the green/red usurpers - now primed to prevail [before they fight each other, to the death] - gets to write any). It turns out the constitution (sic) actually IS a suicide pact, after all. FINIS. THE END.
4 Likes
I agree, the arguments didn’t go well, from what I heard.
The govt didn’t ask the Court to overrule Wong Kim Ark. its position was that Wong is correct on its facts, but is factually distinguishable, because the li’l Chink’s parents, though not citizens, were lawfully domiciled here. And then there’s the famous line of dicta to the effect that the parents’ legal or illegal status makes no difference.
At one point they discussed birth tourism, asked Sauer about the numbers—but then one of the justices asked him to agree that that had nothing to do with the case at bar, where the issue was simply the interpretation of the 14th amendment, lotsa discussion about the Congressional record from 1865.
Govt should have asked the court at least in the alternative to overrule Wong. Then, I think the govt could have talked about the effect birthright citizenship is having in the present, which the “founders” never could have envisioned, like birth tourism.
So then what avenue to eliminate birthright citizenship is still open to the govt? Is a constitutional amendment the only possibility?
If we keep control of congress, we could at least eliminate the chain migration provisions.
4 Likes
From what I understand, to become a citizen in the United Arab Emirates, it is necessary to prove (1) that your grandfather immigrated to the country legally, (2) that your father was a legal resident, and (3) that you were born in the country.
Of course, the Law in other countries is relevant only when it supports the prejudices of the Usual Suspects.
2 Likes
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, as in Starship Troopers;
Service Guarantees Citizenship
Just a reference from Quora:
How does Heinlein’s vision of citizenship through military service in “Starship Troopers” work, and why do some readers misunderstand it?
Larry Fontenot writes:
In the book, people on Earth have two levels of residency. Everyone is a resident, but only those who serve in a military organization can become “citizens”.
There are no differences between the rights and opportunities of the two classifications except one. Residents can’t vote and cannot run for a political office.
In the history of the story, the politicians of the past led the world into a widespread and devastating war over essentially nothing. The soldiers of all of the nations involved got sick and tired of being killed or wounded for politicians that stayed safe at home expending their lives. There was a mass rebellion.
When the dust settled, the soldiers had ousted all of their political masters. They got together and decided on a new form of governance in which one had to be a soldier before one could become a politician. The goal was to make sure that they were led by people who knew what it felt like to crawl through the dirt in mortal terror and all of the other things soldiers endured.
In the book, it worked. No one was obligated to enlist in military service. In fact, ex-soldiers taught a course in schools called “History and Moral Philosophy” to discourage kids from forming romanticized ideas about military service and citizenship. The majority of Earth’s people viewed citizenship as unnecessary.
The misunderstandings about it can mostly be laid squarely at the feet of Paul Verhoeven. When he made his movie, he actively hated the book. He went out of his way to twist the society it portrayed into fascism in a heavy-handed and clumsy attempt to make it an anti-Nazi story. He changed the aliens they were fighting from a highly intelligent species that resembled spiders and used weapons into something essentially unintelligent that wasn’t anything like what the book described.
(Another case where the book was better than the movie.)
5 Likes
It is perfectly legal for a woman to come here, as a tourist, for the purpose of giving birth and obtaining citizenship for her spawn. The crime would be lying about the purpose of the visit. But so long as she’s upfront about it, border patrol can’t keep her out for that reason, unless she admits she doosnt have the means to pay for her maternity care.
As I listened to Sauer hammer the point about “domicile”, it occurred to me that a lot of illegals, um , do meet that definition: residence wherein the individual intends to remain. The birth tourist mom doesn’t meet it, but plenty of illegals DO have that intent, they mean to stay if they can.
The other thing is about “allegiance”. It’s MORE than just the fact that the host country can arrest you if you commit a crime, and/or that you can seek justice in the host country’s courts if you are a victim of crime, sez the govt. (Anyway in our country those rights were guaranteed to all “persons” a century earlier in the Fifth Amendment). Originally Indians weren’t considered citizens of U.S. because of tribal allegiance. Well then what about the babies of African (or Irish) former slaves? They certainly kept their tribal memories alive. Some Africans went back after emancipation and founded Liberia.
So, sadly, I can see the argument that if all the draughtsmen of the 14th intended was to confer citizenship on children born to formerly enslaved persons, they coulda just said that.
I didn’t read the briefs, but the justices stressed that in his, Sauer had not asked them to overrule WKA, only to construe it in the govt’s favor. The oral argument was…unfortunate. A scratchy RFKJr-voiced white guy with a German last name, arguing against a young Sino-American ACLU attorney? She is Wong Kim Ark incarnate.
She opened her argument by saying, ask ANY American how a child becomes a citizen and they will tell you; by being born here. Does that really matter? Idk, i thought from the beginning that the Court would somehow end up saying, on whatever rationale: it’s been this way forever and if you want to change it, you can only do so by amending the Constitution.
3 Likes
So, if we’re invaded by thousands of ground forces of both sexes and the invasion lasts long enough or some of the females arrive and fight! pregnant - do their offspring automatically become citizens?
3 Likes
Amy Coney Barrett will be the swing vote. Roberts is a lost cause.