Re: SF Politics and Super Tuesday

On 2008-02-07 09:20:37 -0800, Peter Bruells <usernet@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> said:

> Kurt Busiek <kurt@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> writes:
> 
>> On 2008-02-07 00:04:17 -0800, Peter Bruells <usernet@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> said:
>> 
>> 
>>> Finding a child in an alien space craft crashlanded on Earth seems
>>> - at least to me - establish that it wasn't born on Earth.
> 
>> Not necessarily.  In one telling of the story, the Kents assume the
>> space****p is "some sort of Sputnik," and that the baby is thus
>> Russian.
> 
> Sounds like Cletus from the Simpsons. :-)
> 
>> Finding a human-looking child in a crashed spacecraft doesn't actually
>> establish that it's an alien spacecraft.  It could be a failed launch
>> from twenty miles away.
> 
> More the reasons to re****t this to the authorities, so they can return
> the child to its parents.

That would indict the Kents for failing in their moral duty, but it 
wouldn't affect whether the baby would be legally considered an 
American.

> Besides, any capable engeneer would've been able to determine that the
> spacecraft was of alien origin.

Jonathan Kent can repair a tractor pretty good, but I don't think he 
counts as a "capable engineer."

Your argument seems to depend on the idea that it was possible for it 
to be discovered that baby Kal wasn't born on US soil.  While that's 
true, it's not germane -- what matters to the law is whether it was 
_discovered_ that he wasn't. And by "discovered," I don't think they 
mean discovered by anyone but never re****ted, but officially discovered 
and noted by the state -- otherwise, presumably, the law wouldn't work 
at all, because a child born outside the US but found within the US has 
someone who knew he was born outside the US -- the people or person 
there at the birth, and/or those who brought the child in.  That they 
may all be dead doesn't mean they weren't aware of it, so what matters 
is whether the US government is aware of it, not whether someone, 
somewhere, is but it never makes the official record.

kdb