Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Leo Berman: Bill Will Challenge Legality of 14th Amendment

Aha, so there is a method to Leo Berman’s (R – Tyler) utter madness.

I think I have mentioned in passing that one of the matters to be considered by Texas’ 81st Legislature is the matter of HB 256 entitled “AN ACT relating to birth records of children born in this state; creating an offense,” the title of which is enough to give offense.

Authored by Leo Berman and co-authored by neoconservative colleagues Dennis Bonnen (R - Angleton), Debbie Riddle (R - Houston) and Allen Fletcher (R - Houston), the purpose of the legislation, as Berman revealed here, is to challenge the constitutionality of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution.

He proposes to do this by denying the issuance of birth certificates to any infant born to alien parents within the borders of Texas, a condition that is in direct contravention of Section 1 of the 14th Amendment, to wit:

“Section 1. 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. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

No where is there any reference to special circumstances, like their parents were not citizens, illegal alien or not.

Berman revealed his true intensions in a speech he gave yesterday to some of his anhängen, The Minutemen Civil Defense Corps.

From The Chron’s Texas Politics Blog:

“Berman said if his proposal to prohibit automatic citizenship for U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants passes it would undoubtedly spark a court fight that he hopes lands in the U.S. Supreme Court.”

“‘That's exactly what we're looking for,’ said Berman, R-Tyler. ‘We want to be sued into federal court where our attorney general can take this all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.’”

Exactly what he wants, it seems, is to do away with that troublesome 14th Amendment. You know, the one that has guaranteed the rights of every man, woman (lately), and child of life liberty and property. The one that promises “due process.” The 14th Amendment was the crowning achievement of the Number One rated US President, Abraham Lincoln.

But Leo Berman and his sordid ilk want it done away with, and he thinks Texas Attorney General Gregg Abbott (or his Republican successor) is just the man to do it.

Well I find State Rep. Leo Berman’s latest efforts to be fantastically refreshing and I want to urge that he keep it up, and propose other bills, as he has in the past and present, in the same vein.

What better way to prove a central point in my thinking, that the post Civil War Reconstruction Period ended much too soon in Texas, as it did over much of the former Confederate States of America.

The Grand Army of the Republic and the federal government back then made a classic mistake, one that was once the sole method (besides abstinence, which has since been discredited by Bristol Palin) of birth control: pulling out too soon.

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