Nothing forces wingnuts to intellectual (if that's the right word) contortions more than the issue of birthright citizenship. The concept is based on the opening sentence of the 14th Amendment, which holds that "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." In other words, if you're born here, you're a citizen. Obviously, an "originalist" would be correct in claiming that the drafters of the provision were not seeking to allow someone to illegally cross the border in the middle of the night for the purpose of giving birth, since the 14th Amendment was drafted to protect the rights of freed slaves, and in particular to overturn the Dred Scott decision. Immigration laws, such as they were, didn't exist in the late-1860's.

But that language is so damned unambiguous, and since any self-respecting "strict constructionist" who believes that legal interpretation should consist of little more than understanding that words mean what they say is obligated to follow the clear language of the law, the only way to end the practice would have to be to alter the 14th Amendment. Not to worry, though: a number of lawmakers from Texas and other points west of the Mississippi, led by the odious Tom Tancredo, have decided to introduce a bill that will simply ignore the 14th Amendment, using a technicality that would have been the envy of any law clerk from the Warren Court. Their hitch is that the provision, "subject to the jurisdiction thereof", somehow excludes illegal immigrants, which flies in the face of logic and any sound method of semantic interpretation (for example, if someone violates the law to enter the country, aren't we acknowledging that they are "subject to the jurisdiction" of the law just by the fact that we're making a stink about it?)

So that technicality isn't going to fly, although after these born-again judicial activists are finished, I'm sure we're eventually going to hear about how stripping infants of their citizenship is somehow a penumbral Constitutional requirement. A better idea would be to simply deport the corrupt scumbags of the Texas Republican Party, en masse.