Professional dancer Halifu Osmare, now an associate professor and director of African American and African studies at UC Davis, teaches a dance class at Rainbow Sign in 1973. (Photo by Leonard L. White; courtesy of Odette Pollar)
Vice President Harris and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met Saturday at the Munich Security Conference in Germany Saturday morning to discuss aggression from Russia and how the U.S. and its allies would respond.
Mixed Race Relations – are complex! Did Ginni wonder if her hubby was giving Kamala – the eye? Is Clarance thinking of switching parties, because he is A RHINO at heart? Kamala grew up around Black Panthers, and Clarance was a radical black man – who might capture the Black Vote if he TURNS on the Republican White Party. Does Clarance want to return to his roots…. now that folks are going to jail?
Ginni Thomas and John Eastman were BORN IN NEBRASKA ‘The Cornhusker State’. Our Vice President – WAS BORN IN OAKLAND! I want to do PR work for Kamala. Let it all hangout! I want to found a new Rainbow Sign in Florida. Kamala and her mother took lessons from Black Panthers.
John
Inside Rainbow Sign, a vibrant hub for black cultural arts | Berkeley News
Trump referenced and Ellis retweeted an op-ed in Newsweek by John C. Eastman, a law professor at Chapman University and senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, that posited Harris might not be a natural-born citizen, depending on her parents’ immigration status when she was born.
Trump promotes false claim that Harris might not be a natural-born U.S. citizen
Analysis by Salvador Rizzo Staff writer
August 13, 2020 at 8:12 p.m. EDT
Trump questions Kamala Harris’s citizenship
“It’s an open question, and one I think [Sen. Kamala D.] Harris should answer so the American people know for sure she is eligible.”
— Trump campaign legal adviser Jenna Ellis, in comments to ABC News, Aug. 13, 2020
“I heard it today that [Harris] doesn’t meet the requirements. And, by the way, the lawyer that wrote that piece is a very highly qualified, very talented lawyer. I have no idea if that’s right. I would have assumed the Democrats would have checked that out.”
— President Trump, in remarks to reporters, Aug. 13, 2020
A legal adviser and spokesperson for President Trump’s reelection campaign questioned the citizenship of Sen. Kamala D. Harris, a California native and the presumptive Democratic nominee for vice president. Later in the day, Trump said Harris possibly “doesn’t meet the requirements” to serve as vice president.
Harris’s citizenship is not under any serious question, legal experts told us.
For years, and as a presidential candidate in 2016, Trump stoked the “birther” conspiracy theory that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States. Now, the citizenship of another prominent African American politician is being challenged with no evidence.
Harris was born in Oakland, Calif., on Oct. 20, 1964. The 14th Amendment and a Supreme Court decision from 1898 give citizenship to people born in the territorial United States, according to constitutional law experts.
Trump perhaps knows this, because he announced in 2018 that he would try to end birthright citizenship with an executive order, which was never released.
The Facts
The Constitution requires the president and vice president to be natural-born U.S. citizens and at least 35 years old.
The 14th Amendment was adopted in 1868, repudiating the Supreme Court’s 7-to-2 decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, an 1857 ruling that denied citizenship to people of African descent born in the United States.
“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,” the amendment says. The Supreme Court ruled in 1898 that this right to citizenship covered Wong Kim Ark, who was born in San Francisco to Chinese nationals legally residing in the United States.
Harris’s mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was born in India and came to the United States at age 19 to earn a PhD in nutrition and endocrinology at the University of California at Berkeley. Her father, Donald Harris, who is Black, arrived from Jamaica in 1963 to earn a PhD in economics from UC-Berkeley.
Trump referenced and Ellis retweeted an op-ed in Newsweek by John C. Eastman, a law professor at Chapman University and senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, that posited Harris might not be a natural-born citizen, depending on her parents’ immigration status when she was born.
The op-ed incorrectly dismisses relevant parts of the Supreme Court’s ruling in the 1898 Wong Kim Ark case, legal experts told us. Stephen H. Legomsky, a professor at the Washington University in St. Louis School of Law and former chief counsel of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said “there is not a shred of doubt as to Kamala Harris’s legal eligibility to be either the vice president or the president.”
“A handful of fringe academics have seized on the requirement that one must be not only ‘born or naturalized in the United States,’ but also ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof,’ ” Legomsky wrote in an email, citing language from the 14th Amendment. “But the latter clause has no applicability to Kamala Harris.”
“The only people to whom that clause denies birthright citizenship are (1) American Indians born on tribal reservations (because Indian lands were considered to be a separate sovereign) and (2) the children of either enemy occupiers or foreign diplomats (because those were the categories included in the English common law from which the phrase was taken),” Legomsky added. “The Supreme Court in Wong Kim Ark specifically so held, and it has never once departed from that interpretation.”
Here’s that section of the Supreme Court opinion, as written by Justice Horace Gray:
“The Fourteenth Amendment affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory, in the allegiance and under the protection of the country, including all children here born of resident aliens, with the exceptions or qualifications (as old as the rule itself) of children of foreign sovereigns or their ministers, or born on foreign public ships, or of enemies within and during a hostile occupation of part of our territory, and with the single additional exception of children of members of the Indian tribes owing direct allegiance to their several tribes.
“The Amendment, in clear words and in manifest intent, includes the children born, within the territory of the United States, of all other persons, of whatever race or color, domiciled within the United States.”
We sent questions to the Trump campaign and did not get responses. In a 2018 interview with Axios shortly before the congressional midterms, Trump said he would be releasing an executive order to end birthright citizenship — which never came. Congressional leaders from both parties and legal experts quickly dismissed Trump’s plan and said it would not pass legal muster because birthright citizenship is in the Constitution.
“We’re the only country in the world where a person comes in, has a baby and the baby is essentially a citizen of the United States for 85 years, with all of those benefits,” Trump stated falsely at the time. Birthright citizenship is the law in more than 30 countries, including Canada and Mexico.
Birthright citizenship: A Trump-inspired history lesson on the 14th Amendment
“One of the hallmarks of the U.S. Constitution, by virtue of the 14th Amendment, is that it directly grants citizenship to those born in the United States, regardless of the ancestry of their parents,” Richard Pildes, a constitutional law professor at New York University School of Law, told HuffPost in a report documenting how a new strain of “birther” attacks on Harris has begun to spread. The United States, Pildes explained, adheres to the principle of “jus solis,” in which citizenship flows from birth “on the soil,” rather than “jus sanguinis,” in which it flows “from blood.”
Andrew Bates, a spokesman for Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, said that Trump “was the national leader of the grotesque, racist birther movement with respect to President Obama” and that his campaign was trying to distract from the administration’s record on handling the coronavirus pandemic with “demonstrably false lies.”
The Pinocchio Test
In 2018, Trump said he would end birthright citizenship. This year, the president and a legal adviser for his campaign are suggesting birthright citizenship perhaps never existed, at least not for some people born to immigrant postgraduate students in California in the 1960s, or at the very least not for one of them: Harris.
Which one is it? When the last national election was coming up, in 2018, birthright citizenship was real and Trump made empty threats to end it unilaterally. This election year, apparently, it’s not so real now that a California-born woman from Jamaican and Indian parents is running on the Democrats’ presidential ticket.
As explained above, and as Trump himself has acknowledged, the Constitution grants citizenship to people born in the territorial United States. Trump earns Four Pinocchios.
The theory advanced by Donald Trump and concocted by John Eastman – a former clerk to Justice Thomas and Judge Luttig and a pen pal of Ginni Thomas – was a lie. It was stitched from whole cloth to sate the ambitions of the Oval Office’s desperate occupant and his minions.
To quote Pence’s counsel, “there was no way” that a sitting vice-president could unilaterally decide or alter the election’s outcome at a joint session of Congress. The witnesses stressed that to say otherwise would license Kamala Harris to do just that in early 2025 or have conferred upon Al Gore the power to commit constitutional “mischief” back in January 2001.
Eastman’s name and theories received repeated mention throughout the hearing. In August 2020, Eastman wrote an op-ed challenging Kamala Harris’s US citizenship and her eligibility to run for vice-president. For the record, Harris was born in Oakland, California, which is very much part of the United States.
The Eastman-Ginni Thomas alliance hovered over the hearing but received no mention before the cameras. Starting Monday night, a stream of stories emerged of communications between Ms Thomas and Eastman. Further, the New York Times reported that Eastman conveyed to Kenneth Chesebro, a pro-Trump lawyer, the state of play within the high court.
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“So the odds are not based on the legal merits but an assessment of the justices’ spines, and I understand that there is a heated fight underway,” Eastman wrote.
From the sound of things, Eastman became privy to pillow-talk between the justice and his wife.
It was only a few short weeks ago that the right exploded over the leak of a draft of a supreme court decision that stands to overturn Roe v Wade and undo constitutional protections for reproductive freedom. Now, only crickets.
“We think it’s time that we, at some point, invite [Ginni Thomas] to come talk to the committee,” Bennie Thompson, the committee chair, told Axios on Thursday. “It’s time for us to invite her to come talk,” he relayed to CNN.
Like Bannon, Eastman failed in his efforts to undercut the committee. In March, a federal court ruled that Eastman could not block the production of certain documents despite their possibly constituting “attorney-work product”. Instead, the crime-fraud exception attached, and the privilege did not apply.
“Based on the evidence, the court finds that it is more likely than not that President Trump and Dr Eastman dishonestly conspired to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6 2021,” the court opined.
The Eastman-Ginni Thomas alliance hovered over the hearing but received no mention before the cameras
During the Trump administration’s waning days, Eastman sought but failed to obtain a presidential pardon. Herschmann told Eastman to lawyer up. Fittingly, Eastman has invoked his right against self-incrimination before the committee 100 times.
Despite all this, the hearings have not swayed broad swaths of the public. In Nevada, election-deniers ran the table in Tuesday’s Republican primaries. Further east, in Michigan, indicted Ryan Kelley is in the hunt for the party’s gubernatorial nomination.
Instead, a recent poll shows half the country predicting that someday the US will “cease” to be a democracy. And 49% of respondents answered that they were not following the hearings.
Judge Luttig repeated that the 45th president and some of his followers were a “threat” to democracy – not simply for what happened on 6 January 2021, but on account of the 2024 presidential race and what may follow.
At the moment, Trump is considering whether to announce his candidacy before November’s midterms. Beyond that, plans for a Trump-driven steal reportedly appear to be in the works. If Mike Pence prayed the morning of 6 January, he was right to.
Kamala ‘Daughter of Oakland’
Posted on February 4, 2021 by Royal Rosamond Press
Kamala was born in Kaiser Hospital that was located two blocks from where I lived with Gloria and our female lab, Deva, which I just discovered in the middle name of Kamala Devi Harris. Devi/Deva means ‘divine godlike shiny being’. Kamala is the goddess Lakshmi. Being a follower of Meher Baba while I lived on Yosemite, I can conjure up a divine image of Kamala’s birth and life from the perspective of her mother who took her famous daughter to India. I know Kamala is concerned with the Christian Identity of America. Let us remove this block by saying I came back to Oakland with Dottie Witherspoon whose great grandfather was Signer John Witherspoon, a Presbyterian Leader from South Carolina where we visited Baba’s retreat. I clear a path for the ever-dwelling presence of The Divine Light. Kaiser was torn down and is now a empty lot. I suggest the U.S. Government purchase this property and build a college and shrine for students who want to know the culture of India.
I can not find the address for the Oakland residence that I believe the photo of Kamala and her father was taken. I am well versed in the blend of Black Politics and the existence of a Divine Transcendence that was very prevalent in the Bay Area. This energy filled the air and hovered on the borderline of Oakland and Berkeley. I am going to retrieve this light and history. Deva lived with my wife, Mary Ann Tharaldsen, and my stepdaughter, Britt, on Miles Street, which is a half-mile away from Kaiser. Deva lived there too.
“On this day I found the Cal-Oregon Rainbow Coalition.”
On September 7, 2020, a month before Kamala was elected Vice President, I posted about the Rainbow Coalition. This morning I find the ‘Rainbow Sign’. Founding the Marin Sea Cadets is part of ‘The Kamala Prophecy’.
John Presco
Kennedy Brothers at Defremery Park | Rosamond Press
Inside Rainbow Sign, a vibrant hub for black cultural arts | Berkeley News
Black Franciscan Turners
Posted on August 29, 2020 by Royal Rosamond Press
Yesterday I suggested on the Black Panther group I am a member of that Huey Newton resembles Saint Francis. I then google the Secular Order of Saint Francis and discovered they came from the Alsace into Germany and dealt with a Cholera Pandemic. My kin are close to this order.
Because this group bid me to get in touch with my feelings in regards to the ragged boy wearing women’s shoes with the toe cut back, yesterday I decided to make David Hunt my Heir. He is the son of a Black Panther who died in a fire in Chicago. He is my daughter’s half-brother who I rescued in 1983. There were so many signs that said David was Heir to all our family history. Today the March on Washington was remembered. I got on my computer fifteen minutes ago and read the star of the Black Panther movie died.
I suggest the new Black Panthers be called the Black Knight Panthers. They will be in charge of the Post Office. I am turning the Rougemont Knight Templars over to David. I am going to contact the Sister of Saint Francis and see if they want to create a branch of Briarcliff college in Marin, preferably at the Buck Center. This city was built by the Federal Government on land they must have owned, in order to build Liberty Ships to defeat our enemies. I would like to see President Biden and Vice President Harris honor the survivors and their descendants with a Metal of Patriotic Order. I believe the Buck Foundation owes much to the these workers and their poor kindred. More details will be added to this post.
Also, I would life to see the founding of The Marin Shipmates and a Naval College associated with the City of Marin that should be declared a Black Reservation. This land would be owned by descendants of African Natives into perpetuity. I would like to see the Patriotic Brothers and Sisters become a special branch of the Navy and patrol the San Francisco Bay. David and Malcom are kin to my great, great grandfather, Commodore Hull, who was sent to fight the Barbary Coast Pirates that took many American Merchantmen as slaves, and sold them in a market. Isaac sailed the Enterprise to the Lydia and then fired cannon on the Caliph from the U.S.S. Constitution.
John Presco
President: Royal Rosamond Press
David Hunt and his son Malcom.
Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) made a video appearance at Friday’s civil rights event at the National Mall, delivering a call to action to demonstrators on the 57th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr. delivering his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech.
Harris told protesters in Washington, D.C., that the civil rights activists of the past would not let injustices against Black Americans stop them from striving for justice and equality.
“They would share in our anger and frustration as we continue to see Black men and women slain in our streets and left behind by an economy and justice system that have too often denied Black folks our dignity and rights,” she said. “But no doubt, they would turn it into fuel. They would be lacing up their shoes, locking arms and continuing right alongside us to continue in this ongoing fight for justice.”
Actor Chadwick Boseman has died at 43 after battling colon cancer for four years, according to a statement posted on his Twitter account.
“It is with immeasurable grief that we confirm the passing of Chadwick Boseman,” the statement reads. “It was the honor of his life to bring King T’Challa to life in Black Panther.”
Rosamond Press 