[JakilSong]

TPM:
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2...es.php?ref=fpa

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was asked today about growing calls from Republicans to hold hearings about the 14th Amendment and whether children born to illegal immigrants can rightfully be citizens.

Reid (D-NV) quoted extensively from a column written by Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson on Friday. Reid read this portion from the podium of his press conference:

The authors of the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed citizenship to all people "born or naturalized in the United States" for a reason. They wished to directly repudiate the Dred Scott decision, which said that citizenship could be granted or denied by political caprice.

They purposely chose an objective standard of citizenship -- birth -- that was not subject to politics. Reconstruction leaders established a firm, sound principle: To be an American citizen, you don't have to please a majority, you just have to be born here.Then Reid said of Republicans pushing the issue, "They've either taken leave of their senses or their principles."

[Zptmsemk]

A TPM reader nails the far-right thinking that fuels this push to challenge the 14th amendment:
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/arc....php?ref=fpblg
In some sense, birthright citizenship is birtherism writ large--Obama is the son of a non-American born on American soil. It draws attention to Obama's alleged "foreign" origins. It isn't a mere stalking horse--in other countries, including, until recently Germany, the child of a male citizen and a female non-citizen was a citizen but the child of a female citizen and a male non-citizen was not a citizen. Although equal protection would likely prohibit such an interpretation here, attitudes like this are installed deep in some human psyches.

But more important it brings up the question upon which all of this madness, birtherism and the like turns. Will America forever be a white country? For any demographer, this question has answered itself for many years. But the very existence of Barack Obama has startled a significant part of the population into realizing what the rest of the world has known for some time--that the day fast approaches when America will no longer be majority white--not just in population, but in governance and culture. It is only through this prism that the the new political hysterics can be understood.

[iOqedeyH]

Something tells me that punishing children is going to be a difficult sell for two-thirds of Congress and and even harder sell for three-quarters of the States.

[Kragh]

It's Sarah Palin math. Supporters of this nativist approach are playing to a very small base of right-wing extremists. To what end, who knows, because they're on the losing side of population trends, where a growing percentage of the voter base is becoming more and more sympathetic to the concerns of immigrant families because they actually come from immigrant families.

[Hftqdxpm]

I believe in England, to be considered a citizen your father had to be a citizen, but if your mother was the citizen and not your father it doesnt count. I have always wondered about that and why it is. Sorry, but this has been standard for 100+ years and it should stay like that. If you are born in this country you are then a citizen; now that all this is being listed together, I think America did a good thing by not determining citizenship based on the parents.
As for our Prez. you know there are going to be some nuts grabbing hold of this to prove he really isn't an American.