Talk radio host and author of “Plunder and Deceit,” Mark Levin said that the 14th Amendment does not require birthright citizenship on Wednesday.
Host Sean Hannity stated, “Rand Paul was right on this, Trump was right on this, Cruz is right on this, Walker’s right on this.” He then put up a quotation from Citizenship Clause author Senator Jacob Howard (R-MI) during the debate on the 14th Amendment 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.”
Levin said that people are getting the clause wrong, “Because they’re result-oriented. Because they want to insist the Constitution says what it doesn’t say. Moreover, the Supreme Court has never ruled that the children of illegal aliens are American citizens. So the Supreme Court never ruled, even if they did, it would be wrong. The clause speaks for itself, the author of the clause made it abundantly, unequivocally clear, let’s add another thing, let’s read the clause together, shall we? ‘All persons born or naturalized in the United States.’ Let’s stop there. If it means what the proponents of birthright citizenship say, it would stop right there. ‘All persons born or naturalized in the United States’ are citizens. There’s no need for anything else, but that’s what it says. Then it says, and, ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof.’ Now, you have slip and fall lawyers, some phony constitutional lawyers, they have ‘Esquire’ after their name, they come on TV, they go all over the place, ‘Jurisdiction means geography.’ Jurisdiction has nothing to do with geography. zero. It had to do with political allegiance to the United States of America. How do we know it? Because they said it. And they also excluded everybody that the left, and some of the Republicans want to include. Now here’s the good news, there’s another part of the Constitution. It’s Article I, Section 8, Clause 4. Here’s what that says, in plain English. ‘The Congress shall have power to…establish a uniform rule of naturalization.’ Now, you know what that means, that means Congress, not the courts, not the president, not ICE, it means the United States Congress has the power to regulate immigration in this regard. And guess what, Sean, in the 1920s, that’s exactly what it did. The 14th Amendment excludes Indians, that is Native Americans, as US citizens, because they felt that they had allegiance to their own national tribes. Okay, great, and I believe it was in 1923, Congress reversed course, and said, ‘You know what? Under the 14th Amendment and under this Article I, we’ve decided to grant citizenship, national citizenship to all Native Americans.”
He added, “Of course Trump is right, and Cruz is right, and Sessions is right, they’re all right. And to hear so-called constitutional conservatives trip all over themselves to sound like liberals, to rewrite this provision, and accuse those of us who actually know something about it, know the history about it, know the senators who were involved in it, know what went into it, know what was meant by it, that we’re the activists, that we’re the extremists. Look, if you want of a policy of open borders, that anybody born here should become a United States citizen, you amend the Constitution. We don’t have to amend the Constitution, it says what we say it says, and by statutes, by statute, going forward, prospectively, Congress can, in fact, say, ‘We want to emphasize to this federal government, to this president, no, you cannot make children of illegal aliens American citizens automatically.'”
Levin also weighed in on Hillary Clinton’s server controversy, arguing Clinton and her aides should have to testify in front of a grand jury. And “Here’s the bottom line, that information belongs to the American people. That information, we paid for. That information may or may not be classified. If it’s classified, she’s in bigger trouble. Even if it’s not classified, if she has personal emails on a government server, they belong to us. Now, here’s the section of the law that is most problematic for Hillary Clinton, the Federal Penal Code, Section 793, ‘Whoever being entrusted with, or having lawful possession or control of any document…or information, relating to the national defense, through gross negligence,’ not purposeful intent, ‘permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed’ and so forth. Why do we not have a federal grand jury? Why do we have to learn all this piecemeal from the media? We don’t even know what kind of investigation is going on. This is serious business. Now, it’s time for Obama to get off the damn golf course and Martha’s Vineyard, and do something about this.”
Levin concluded that polling showing Donald Trump, Dr. Ben Carson, and Texas Senator Ted Cruz polling first, second, and third shows, “the heart and core of the Republican Party, Reagan conservatives, constitutional conservatives, are disgusted with a party that’s lost its way, and got majorities in the House and Senate by lying to us about defunding Obamacare, lying to us about immigration, and so forth and so on, and the American people, including we conservatives, we’re looking for a leader, we’re looking for a statesman, and we will find one, and we will nominate that person, and hopefully, we will elect that person to the presidency. We’ll see who it turns out to be, but that’s what’s going on, we are fed up with the Republican establishment.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett