Re: SF Politics and Super Tuesday

"Michael S. Schiffer" <mschiffe@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> writes:

> Peter Bruells <usernet@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in
> news:m2tzklchvi.fsf@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 
>
>>> The law says "found".  While there are probably laws relating
>>> to re****ting foundlings, I would be very surprised if there
>>> were any statutes or cases that treated "found in a spacecraft"
>>> as a special case.  (Well, maybe in the DCU...)
>
>> Finding a child in an alien space craft crashlanded on Earth
>> seems - at least to me - establish that it wasn't born on Earth.

> How do you know the origin of the spacecraft?  In at least one
> telling, even the Kents weren't even sure-- Jonathan speculated that
> it might be Russian.

And how convenient it was to lie to the authorities so that the truth
wasn't found out.  

> And after all, in the DCU, humans, including children, have been
> taken off Earth and returned.  At least one origin of Donna (Wonder
> Girl/Troia/various other identities) Troy has her being born on
> Earth, taken off to the stars around age two or so for rearing and
> training, and then returned to Earth (with superpowers) as an
> adolescent.  The children of Van-Zee and Sylvia were born on Venus
> but had derived US citizen****p via their mother.  Brainiac's been
> known to borrow entire cities.  Mere presence in an alien spacecraft
> doesn't tell us where the child was born, or who his parents were.

Granted.  I'll change that to "an abandoned alien child in an alien
space craft".

> I'd be inclined to assume that a human-looking 

The catch is "looking". He's looking like a human, but isn't one,
which can be easily proved.

> baby was from Earth, and I'd guess that the legal system would do
> likewise.  Especially since Congress probably wasn't aware of the
> large numbers of human- looking aliens in the DCU when the law was
> formulated, so it's hard to argue that their intent was to recognize
> that situation.  But even if it were, it doesn't seem like good
> public policy to place such foundlings in legal limbo, with no
> citizen****p anywhere on Earth.

I'm not saying that they should get no citizen****p. He could get
naturalized. 


> If Congress wanted to create such an exception, it would probably
> have to make it explicit.  And while it might not strictly run afoul
> of the ban on ex post facto laws to make it retroactive-- that's
> generally limited to criminal law-- stripping someone of citizen****p
> status retroactively is vani****ngly rare.  (It usually requires
> something like concealing Nazi war criminal status at
> naturalization.)  Even if future foundlings were denied citizen****p
> going forward, then, Superman's status would probably be safe.

It's not about stripping him of his citizen****p, but of his status as
natural born citizen. Arnold Schwarzenegger will probabbly never ever
be challanged on his nationality - he's an American and very likely he'll
die an American - but he'll never run for president.

Of course, the sensible thing would be to drop the "natural born
clause" anyway.