Tag: U.S. President

Commentary: Congress and President Must Oversee the FISA Court and All FISA Warrants After Durham Report Revelations

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Special Counsel John Durham has finished his voluminous report outlining the Justice Department, State Department, intelligence agencies and FBI’s “confirmation bias” that led to a years-long investigation of former President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, transition and then administration falsely alleging that Trump and his campaign were Russian agents who had helped Moscow hack the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and put their emails onto Wikileaks despite the fact that the FBI could not “corroborate a single substantive allegation in the [Christopher] Steele dossier reporting,” which was sourced to the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC.

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Commentary: What The U.S. Constitution Really Says On The Subject Of Impeachment And Trial Removal Of The President

Gregory Watson

Before then-President-elect Donald Trump could even take the official oath of office on January 20, 2017, his critics were already chattering about the possibility of Trump’s tenure in the White House being truncated by means of involuntary removal. Throughout 2017 and 2018, there has been, and continues to be, spirited discussion by the President’s detractors of the possibility of expelling him from office by means of the impeachment-and-trial process that is found in separate parts of the U.S. Constitution. One of the most ardent advocates of ousting President Trump has been U.S. Representative Maxine Waters (D-California). Another has been her colleague, U.S. Representative Al Green (D-Texas) who actually went so far as to offer articles of impeachment against the President only to be soundly rebuffed, as recently as January 19, 2018, by a procedural motion-to-table Green’s House Resolution No. 705 with 355 yeas, 66 nays, 3 “present”, and 6 “not voting”. Prior to the recent November 6, 2018, general election, some members of the U.S. House of Representatives vowed that, if the partisan composition of that body would flip from majority Republican to majority Democrat — which it certainly did on November 6th — efforts to impeach the President would…

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Commentary: The Migrant ‘Caravan’ Marching Northbound To Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico and Texas, and What The U.S. Constitution Has To Say About It

Gregory Watson

The United States Constitution does contain a few references relative to immigration and naturalization as well as to persons seeking to enter the United States in contravention of its laws — whether violently or non-violently and whether singly or in the form of a human tsunami. In its Article I, Section 8, Clause 4, the Constitution specifically grants Congress the power “To establish a uniform Rule of Naturalization….” By expressly allocating this capacity to Congress, the Constitution seeks to prevent the confusion which would inevitably result if an individual state could itself bestow U.S. citizenship upon a person not born within the boundaries of that — or any other — state. Construing Clause 4, the United States Supreme Court, in the 1892 case of Boyd v. Nebraska ex rel. Thayer, defined “naturalization” as “…the act of adopting a foreigner, and clothing him with the privileges of a native [U.S.] citizen.” In Clause 11 of that same Article I, Section 8, the Constitution authorizes Congress “To declare War…and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water….” Interpreting Clause 11, the High Court ruled in the 1795 case of Penhallow v. Doane that the war power of the United States government is…

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What The United States Constitution Really Says About ‘Birthright Citizenship’

Gregory Watson
Constitution Series 14th Amendment

In Section 1 of its 14th Amendment, the U.S. Constitution reads in pertinent part: “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.” Proposed by Congress in 1866 — and deemed by a procedurally-rare subsequent vote of Congress to have been validly ratified by the sufficient number of state legislatures in 1868 — the 14th Amendment is among the Constitution’s lengthiest and it touches upon a number of different topics each of which could stand alone. Authorship of the above-quoted words has been attributed to United States Senator Jacob Howard of Michigan. This particular provision of the 14th Amendment is generally acknowledged to overturn the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in the now-infamous 1857 case of Dred Scott v. Sandford in which it had been determined that African-Americans born in the United States — to parents likewise born within the United States — could not be deemed to be American citizens. Often overlooked by persons professing to be in-the-know about the 14th Amendment, and what it does — or does not — convey about birth citizenship are the key words…

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