I’ve been following Judge Andrew Napolitano long enough to know he is a Reason-type, left-libertarian, who supports Civil Wrongs legislation, even coming down occasionally against the most basic of liberties: absolute freedom of association and the rights of private property.
Therefore, I like not only that Ann Coulter is finally naming names, but that she has offered a serious corrective to the Judge’s ideologically skewed facts, in “Fox News anchored in stupidity on 14th Amendment”
… Judge Andrew Napolitano, Fox’s senior judicial analyst … at least got the century right. He mentioned the Civil War – and then went on to inform Bream that the purpose of the 14th Amendment was to – I quote – “make certain that the former slaves and the native Americans would be recognized as American citizens no matter what kind of prejudice there might be against them.”
Huh. In 1884, 16 years after the 14th Amendment was ratified, John Elk, who – as you may have surmised by his name – was an Indian, had to go to the Supreme Court to argue that he was an American citizen because he was born in the United States.
He lost. In Elk v. Wilkins, 112 U.S. 94, the Supreme Court ruled that the 14th Amendment did not grant Indians citizenship.
The “main object of the opening sentence of the 14th Amendment,” the court explained – and not for the first or last time – “was to settle the question, upon which there had been a difference of opinion throughout the country and in this court, as to the citizenship of free negroes and to put it beyond doubt that all persons, white or black … should be citizens of the United States and of the state in which they reside.”
American Indians were not made citizens until 1924. Lo those 56 years after the ratification of the 14th Amendment, Indians were not American citizens, despite the considered opinion of Judge Napolitano.
Of course it’s easy for legal experts to miss the welter of rulings on Indian citizenship inasmuch as they obtained citizenship in a law perplexingly titled: “THE INDIAN CITIZENSHIP ACT OF 1924.”
Yeah, Trump’s the idiot. Or as Bream said to Napolitano after his completely insane analysis, “I feel smarter just having been in your presence.”
Incidentally, it is true that since “Adios!” Ann Coulter can do no wrong. That she has recovered recently and magnificently does not mean that you should forget the years of neoconism, lauding the lovely Bush wars (calling them magnificent), ignoring immigration, and being wrong on too many things. I didn’t read her column for years (except on court cases and feminism) until now. I bought only “Treason,” which is a great book. The rest of her books were witty riffs on the theme, “Liberals this; liberals that,” seldom considering that Repubs are liberals too. To forget what neoconism’s most bright and beautiful representatives had wrought is unforgivable.
However, the always-adorable Ann is fast making up for past sins.