Glad to see Teddy responding. Time for his super PACS to carpet bomb DT.
The Low-Information Voters already heard the message: Cruz is not eligible for President, but Obama is. Cruz will probably begin to fall in the polls soon.
And then, the Establishment Uniparty can begin to attack Trump anew, libeling him a crazy old man.
When it's all over, America will have her first communist President.
I am going to have to break down and do a side by side comparison of the First and Fourth Congress.
All of these pundits want to ignore that JAMES MADISON REPEALED THAT LAW AND TOOK OUT THE WORDS ABOUT NATURAL BORN CITIZEN
All that is asked is a fair and lawful verdict w/o ANY politics whatsoever. Sen Cruz - the ball is in your court. Serve it!!
This won’t stop the FR DUmmies from posting ad infinitum that Cruz is not a citizen. Originalist constitutional scholars say he’s natural born. Leftist say orginalist interpretation says he’s not. Conservatives don’t accept leftists’ interpretation of the constitution.
Most folks call me crazy but..FWIW, here’s the Cletus Interpretation for NATURAL Born citizen [after several readings of the Founders writings and The Federalist Papers]:
A child born of 2 US citizens (either natural-born or immigrant/nationalized) and ^either^ on US soil - or while those same parents are abroad and in the public-service of the USA.
No more...no less makes an NBC.
The emmaculation of Obamugabe lowered that standard and we are...simply...STUCK with it.
Legal Precedent is a Bee-Otch.
Flame away.
"I was born in Canada while my dad was working there. That's the same as any American kid whose parents were living abroad because they were in the military, or working in business or the State Department, or maybe even just travelling. Does anyone really want to suggest that military kids, State Department kids, or the children of business people on an overseas assignment are ineligible to run for President?"
Since everyone who was a citizen at the time of adoption is dead we can remove the grandfather clause wording. We are left with “No Person except a natural born Citizen [...] shall be eligible to the Office of President;”
Why does the Constitution speak of “citizens” and separately of “natural born citizens”? Why is the word “natural” inserted? It is a matter of allegiance.
A person can be a “citizen” if they were citizens or subjects in some other country first but have come here and met the naturalization requirements. Also, if one is the offspring of a citizen and a non-citizen, then one is a US citizen. However, in both these cases it can be argued that the person might choose allegiance to their former country or to the country of the foreign-born parent or at least the allegiance might be considered divided. That is, there is no natural allegiance of the offspring to one or the other parent’s country. It is this divided or alienated allegiance that the Constitutional provision is designed to prohibit.
If, however, both of one’s parents are themselves US citizens, then one is a “citizen” as well as a “natural born citizen”. The “natural born citizen” is one who at birth has no natural allegiance to any other country and the Framers felt could be trusted to be loyal to the US and not act as a foreign agent. [footnote: Also, in their time, the rules of royal succession held sway throught much of the world and the Founders wished to forstall any potential claims by the crowned heads of Europe or their scions to sovereignty in the US.]
Note that native born is not the same as natural born. Native born simply refers to the place of one’s birth, i.e., one’s nativity. The term does not speak to the legal circumstances of a birth, merely to its location.
James Madison could rise from the dead, stand in the rotunda of the US Capitol and proclaim Cruz’s eligibility and you’d still have FReepers shouting about it. In fact, they’d probably claim that without Washington’s notes, Franklins assurances, or Hamilton’s opinions, you can’t be sure Madison really knew what the passage meant.
There are two tracks here, one legal and the other involves a broader concept of allegiance:
1. In some countries, citizenship by lineage flows through only the father. In some others, only through the mother. In yet some other countries, either but only one (the person must make a choice). In yet others, either and a person could be a natural-born citizen of two countries. In terms of citizenship by lineage, ours is in the last category. So is the UK. Therefore, Trump is a natural born dual citizen of the UK and the US, although he has never acted on his UK citizenship. He is a natural born citizen of the US for three reasons (his mother, his father and his place of birth). He is a natural born citizen of the UK because the UK allows dual citizenship, and so his mother upon naturalizing as a US citizen did not lose her UK citizenship. But, Trump’s UK citizenship has laid dormant for so long, it’s not an issue. Nevertheless, he should renounce it, like Cruz has renounced his Canadian citizenship, so as to clarify that his allegiance.
2. There is the issue of being “international” versus being “American.” Does the person have an American born wife, like Cruz, or a foreign born wife, like Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and Donald Trump? Does he have international investments in places like Panama, Brazil, Scotland, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates? Can you be sure that a person who is so international will always put America first, or will have a conflict of interest when a decision affects his mother’s homeland, his wife’s homeland, and all his many businesses and business partners?
3. Or, is all the stuff so much grist for the mill? Just so much razzle-dazzle, and what does this say of the opinion of Trump of his followers?
As We the People - both individually and collectively - posses the sovereignty in the U.S., our offspring are the functional equivalent of he King's offspring in England-i.e., "natural born" citizens of the U.S., regardless of where they are born.
AFAIC, that settles it.
Read
It is an act of Congress, a statute, that allows Ted to claim US Citizenship. The 1934 Naturalization laws allows a US mother to pass US citizenship to her child. Ted was naturalized at birth via the 1934 law and other later statutes. A naturalized citizen is not a natural born citizen. A natural born citizen requires no laws to make him a citizen. A natural born citizen is of the soil and of the blood. Born on soil to two citizen parents.
This is settled law. Like McCain and Romney Sr, Cruz was a citizen at the moment of his birth by the citizenship of his mother.
If this becomes an election deciding issue, either in the General or Primary, we will all have TRump to thank for electing Hillary.
Ross Perot ensured Clinton's election in 1992. Without Bill's election, there would be no Hillary in 2016.
TRump: Another rich Republican whose ego is more important to him than our country!