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Another thing the overindulgent family can (and, indeed, must) do is reduce their monthly expenditures. Some things that once seemed like good ideas when times were good and money was more plentiful must, regretfully, be eliminated now.

*COUGHCOUGH*

The fact that there are people like yourself out there with FM in your phone is proof enough that there is at least some market for the technology. As all mighty cell phones replace other portable technology, it may well happen that people start demanding FM radio, or HD, or, who knows, maybe even satellite radio in the future. If that’s what people want, and that’s where the market goes, I’m fine with that. (Honestly, while it’s not something I’d use all the time, I wouldn’t mind having a radio in my pocket on occasion, either.)

My own cheapass phone includes an FM receiver. While it was not a feature I was looking for when buying it, neither was the mp3 player that seems to be standard on phones these days. I don’t really understand the desire to run down a cellphone battery listening to music when it’s just as easy to have a separate device for that purpose, but I know people do, so whatever.

I am actively annoyed by how uncommon FM radio receivers are on MP3 players, that it’s a feature one needs to specifically shop for. While such a thing becoming law, particularly as part of a law basically written by businesses who have their own interests, may not fill me with warm fuzzy feelings, I -do- wish FM receivers would become a standard rather than ‘specialized’ feature. Hell, MP3 players should have HD radio receivers soon if not already. I like radio. It exposes me to new music, or reminds me of music I haven’t heard in ages and have forgotten about, without having to specifically seek it out.

So, it goes without saying that, since the conjunction “or” joins the words “born” or “naturalized,” with a modifier–“in the United States”–common to both, this would mean that an alien likewise needs to be “naturalized [only while] in the United States,” and not anywhere else abroad.

The question is: If a child does not qualify to being “born … in the United States”—having been born NOT “in the United States” but in the Panama Canal Zone, for instance–how could a law declare that same child as having been “naturalized in the United States” while evidently still abroad in the Panama Canal Zone at the moment of birth?

Justice Harry Blackmun in Rogers v. Bellei (1971) held that same view:

“The central fact, in our weighing of the plaintiff’s claim to continuing and therefore current United States citizenship, is that he was born abroad. He was not born in the United States. He was not naturalized in the United States …”

In any case, the words “foreigners” and “aliens” Ms Coulter is referring to actually connote the same meaning, and certainly do not refer to two separate classes of persons; hence, the author, Senator Jacob M. Howard, apparently employed the rhetorical repetition of the parenthetical expression, “aliens” (a term commonly used in legal parlance) to merely accentuate and clarify the significance of the synonym immediately preceding it–“foreigners.”

Thus, in the phrase “foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers,” the relative pronoun “who” refers to one and the same antecedent “foreigners, aliens” with one and the same attribute “who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers.”

In a word, what Senator Howard was simply conveying is: “foreigners [or those we also call by its synonym as] aliens, who belong to …”

As regards the children of “ambassadors or foreign ministers” who are “born … in the United States,” they are regarded as belonging to one of two “recognized exceptions” to the jus soli rule, exceptions “as old as the rule itself” (American Indians were added later as the third). These exceptions were already discussed and clarified in the Slaughterhouse Cases and U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, citing Blackstone and Coke.

My comments concerning the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” is quite long, since my reading is entirely different from what is now regarded as the official and judicial view. I read the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof”–NOT as a qualifier to the element preceding it, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States,” as claimed in U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark—but as the SECOND of the COMPOUND subject of the clause. My discussion on this subject is at: http://obamaandmccainnaturalborn.blogspot.com/