Article 2, Section 1, Clause 5 of the Constitution of the USA.

Has this been changed in the UCAS? If so, when? If not, how could Dunkelzahn ever have been eligible? He obviously wasn't born in the UCAS. Is this a case of 'dragons get what they want'?

I think it would come down to Dunkelzahn, if necessary, producing some form of paperwork showing the movement of the techtonic plates from where he hatched becoming UCAS 5-10,000 years later.

The constitution was changed to get President Schwarzenegger into office.

Pretty much, special act of congress extended him citizenship (remember UCAS wasn't granting citizenship to non metahumans at the time) my guess is he likely got funny wording put in that was later used as the basis to run for president, which may not have been what the government foresaw but was likely Dunkelzahn's end goal.

Nah, no dragon ever would tell that. Besides, he was the sire of all-wings, who lived in Barsaive. He's a fucking Russian by that reasoning.


This makes Schwarzenegger cry.

I always thought he filed for citizenship like any immgrant. "Dare to say no, puny human."

True, but like any good politician with some form of (bullshit) documentation waving it around, he could just force them to attempt to prove otherwise... Anyone got a 10,000 year old birth certificate?

He's a Great Dragon! Just because his kids a Russian doesn't mean anything. I'm fairly certain he could circumnavigate the world for a piece of dragon tail if he wanted.

You know, on a side note, that's one CRAPPY dating pool. Maybe that's why he decided to go 'noble' and just decide to end it.

/shudder

Maybe they count "birth" from the time of his awakening in the Cherry Creek Lake in Colorado?

Actually, I thought Schwarzenegger had only made it as high as U.S. Senator in SR canon. I can't remember if the reference was in Native American Nations Volume 1 or the fiction piece that came with the Universal Brotherhood module though.

Considering that that's the United States constitution, and by the point Dunk nominated himself it had been forty something years since it had become the UCAS, things might have changed to allow a dragon to run for prez.

I believe you are right. He did run for president but his campaign was derailed by scandal.

I believe that only applies to candidates born after the formation of the United States. It wasn't until Martin Van Buren we had a President born in the United States. Dunky is a bit older than Marty.

I actually remember reading about the changing of the Constitution in some book or another...hell, it might actually be in Portfolio of a Dragon somwhere...almost certainly in Super Tuesday.

The burden of proof is always on the candidate. He has to provide proof of where and when he was born, and it has to stand up to challenges. It it is not that others have to prove anything to the contrary at all, so the lack of a 10,000 y/o birth certificate is not in D's favor.

Maybe the creation of the UCAS generated a new start date along the lines of "at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution".

This is probably it. The USA constitution says, "No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution..." As far as I can tell, Dunkelzahn has been active and going in the UCAS since he came back. If he'd been laying dormant within these borders, then wouldn't he at least fall under Title 8 Section 1401 which covers Eskimos and Indians who aren't technically USA citizens per-se but are still eligible to be president? The UCAS situation is probably the same.

The Neo-Anarchist’s Guide to North America

Then [circa 2022] came the 29th Amendment to the Constitution, which allowed a president to serve an unlimited number of terms in office.

The Universal Brotherhood

Conspiracies? Well, let’s see…Kennedy and the grassy knoll, Dallas…1963, wasn’t it? That pope late last century, the reformer who the cardinals didn’t quite approve of. The Big Four of ’16. Those anonymous phone calls that trashed Senator Schwarzenegger’s chances for the Oval Office. How am I doing?

With respect to Senator Schwarzenegger; IF the 29th Amendment also removed the native-born requirement, than he could have run in 2024 (age 77), or 2028 (age 81). Even if it did not, the 2032 election was under the UCAS constitution which presumably had no such restriction. (By 2036 California had left UCAS, so Schwarzenegger, if still alive, probably stayed with Cal Free).

Regardless Dunkelzahn ran under the UCAS constitution. I would be very surprised if it requires more than a SIN and residency.

EDIT: Super Tuesday confirms that only citizenship and residency are required to run for UCAS President.

Wasn't he a citizen at the formation of UCAS? Which gets him in under the forming a new nation. It would be crazy for Canada to join into a nation where their citizens would be unable to become president since they weren't born in the US after all.

That's essentially the loophole for the presidential run. In Super Tuesday, p7. in 2056 Dunkelzahn was awarded citizenship by act of congress. Congress wanted to tax him. He moved to UCAS, Prince Edward Island.

Later that year Dunkelzahn entered the presidential race using the same clause that allowed new citizens of UCAS to be president, a rule intended for all the "new" Canadian citizens to allow them to serve as president.

EDIT:

What DireRadiant said...

>_>
<_<

If we accept that Dunkelzahn = Mountainshadow (I'm not too sure on SR lore - has this ever been spelled out?) then he was the child of All-Wings, not the sire. All-Wings died back in the second age and probably did not even live in Barsaive.

I believe the reference to "President Schwarzenegger" was in the movie Demolition Man. However, the bandersnatch entry in PAoNA does mention that Schwarzenegger went into politics. That's probably the earliest in canon reference to it.

Thanks for clearing that up, DireRadiant!

Does Canada actually have the restriction on natural-born citizens? If not the constituent assembly probably flipped a coin to see which of the two laws would become UCAS law and Canada won (because the coin flip was manipulated by IEs).

Canada doesn't have a president. Our head of state is the Queen of England (who wasn't born in Canada), and in her absence the Governor General. Our current Governor General was born in Haiti.

If my lazyness had permitted me to look up the title of your head honcho, I wouldn't have had to ask if there are any requirments concerning the birthplace

The Ceremonial head of government is the British Monarch as represented by the Governor General of Canada.

Practically speaking the equivalent of the U.S. President is the Prime Minister of Canada. Legally, any Canadian citizen old enough to vote could be Prime Minister (no birth-related restrictions)

When the UCAS was formed, the then current U.S. President became the first UCAS President. The then current Prime Minister of Canada became the first UCAS Vice President.

Wow, is president a lethal job in Shadowrun.

The US presidents are especially amusing. Someone should put a writeup of their terms somewhere. And what happened to the guys who IRL became president.

As far as I know, no Shadowrun book has ever mentioned Clinton or Bush Jr. This implies that neither one accomplished much past Governor of their respective states.

What's funny, is that you could probably get almost all Americans to agree that losing the one they didn't like would be worth losing the one they did like.

P.S. It also almost certainly will not do any of us any good to get into which side of the sentiment you are on.

Considering that Clinton did not get elected into office until four years after SR1 was released, it makes sense that it was not included in their initial timeline creation. I am fine with it not being tossed in later as well. No need to rehash an existing timeline just to keep the presidential lineage intact. I play for the game, not for its ability to be presidentially accurate.

No, but - accepting realworld and shadowrun history part in 1989, I'd like to know some stuff about these presidents. Was one of them black? Did they have amusing scandals? Which parties were they from? Which arty is to blame for the Seretech laws?

And whatever happened to Seretech anyway, the original Evil, inc. of 1st Edition?

Oh, I did not mean to imply I did not want to see the data from the game world. I just do not want to see them give me game info only to axe it in later revisions in order to remain accurate to the real world. I love little tidbits of info like that. In other words, I could care less what became of Clinton, the Bushes, etc in the Shadowrun universe.

Ah, that, yes. Well, yeah, maybe it's better to keep them out of this entirely.

I seem to recall some fluff text implying that they were bought or taken apart by Universal Omnitech. Wasn't there some evil medical experimenter who went over to Universal Omnitech because of that?