Posted on 01/22/2016 4:08:30 AM PST by monkapotamus
Do not insult my mother.
(This is how Cruz supporters are doing him NO favors. Think your smarmy attack with soften me toward your candidate? Think again.)
Having practiced law for several decades, including divorce law as maybe 10% of my practice, I think it is unrealistic to imagine that we can return to a society in which marriage for life is normative. Our divorce rate is at about 50% although that contains many repeat parties to divorces.
We no longer have much moral formation in our gummint skewel system, and divorces (among the declining number who marry at all) will occur at still higher rates. Men shamelessly turn in aging wives for trophies. Women shamelessly become serial gold diggers. This paragraph probably reflects my age and advancing social obsolescence but I do think that the world and mores of my increasingly distant youth made that world a better place than the one we now occupy.
Yesteryear, two fine young people Jane Wyman and Ronald Reagan married in what appeared to be a studio arranged marriage and divorced after a relatively few years in what was then a nasty divorce for its time. Her career was waxing as his was waning. His interest in matters political was accelerating and she did not much care to hear about it. They were not a good match. Yet asked by the usual media suspects how she reacted to his 1980 campaign for POTUS, panting for fresh dirt to throw at Reagan, the media were devastated when she would say only something to the effect: "Ronnie is a very fine man and this country would be very fortunate to have him as president."
It was a far better time.
Trump has been married three times: to Ivana, to Marla Maples and to his current wife. This is not particularly remarkable at his level of wealth and celebrity. That it is not says more about our Kardashian society than it does about any particular celebrity. OTOH, maybe a miracle occurs and Trump becomes a very fine POTUS but the evidence seems to be against that being likely except by a morally relativistic comparison to Comrade Obozo, Comrades Clinton and Comrade Sanders and Moral Monster Mitt Romney. That is a very low standard.
I’d think Team Cruz on FR has done way more to turn people off to him than it has to build support.
For those senators too disinterested in writing it themselves to ensure they know what is in it.
Excuse me if I have a bit more faith in Cruz and Levin than I do for Harry Reid, Hillary or any of their subversive staffers.
I just don’t see some seething conflict here.
You’re right.
For the last week I feel like my FRiends have turned into the GOPe.
I don’t think that anyone here hasn’t settled into their choice and it does no good to insult the individual like this.
I’d think Team Cruz on FR has done way more to turn people off to him than it has to build support.
Definitely. And it’s sad.
While I don’t approve of the manner in which Levin is dealing with Trump....
I don’t think Levin would have done a single thing differently, if this ‘conflict’ did not exists.
The one in danger of losing his credibility is Sundance, if he keeps this nonsense up.
Before the Fourteenth Amendment, there was only a citizen of a State, under Article IV, Section 2, Clause 1 of the Constitution of the United States of America ...a person, who is a native citizen of one State, never ceases to be a citizen thereof, until he has acquired a new citizenship elsewhere." ...
" . . . In the Constitution and laws of the United States, the word `citizen' is generally, if not always, used in a political sense to designate one who has the rights and privileges of a citizen of a State or of the United States. Baldwin v. Franks: 120 U.S. 678, at 690 (1887)....
While it thus establishes national citizenship from the mere circumstance of birth within the territory and jurisdiction of the United States, birth within a state does not establish citizenship thereof. State citizenship is ephemeral. It results only from residence and is gained or lost therewith." Edwards v. People of the State of California: 314 U.S. 160, 183 (concurring opinion of Jackson) (1941)
None of that pertinent to Cruz. Merely contentions relating to citizenship of a state, that may be confirmed or rejected by cite to authority. I am not saying that Goodman's contentions are honest summaries of the authorities, only that they appear to be.
FWIW, I agree with that. I could be wrong, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.
That said, his defense of the eligibility of Cruz is unconscionable.
Your argument here would deny citizenship of John McCain (born in Panama) and of Lowell P. Weicker, Jr., (born in Paris) and the late George Romney, born in Mexico of parents who had been citizens of Utah Territory before statehood and fled to Mexico in a snit over Congress requiring anti-polygamy laws as a condition of Utah statehood and forming a Mormon colony in Mexico with no evident intention of ever returning to Utah or any American jurisdiction.
Personally, I hate Weicker more than I hate Obozo but the mere fact that his parents were in Paris on business for Squibb Pharmaceutical when he was born in about 1930 did not render him ineligible as a non-NBC, much less being thereby rendered "not a citizen at all."
No. The Act of Congress in force at the time Obama was born (similar to the one in force) required the citizen parent to reside in the US subsequent to their 14th birthday. Comrade Stanley Anne birthed Barry when she was 18, so could not have completed the requirement recited in the Act.
-- If I understand your previous arguments, you were making a distinction between citizen at birth and NBC. --
Yes. A person who obtains citizenship solely by operation of a statute is naturalized. That is black letter law, thousands of precedents. All who read and understand the precedents will come to the same conclusion - it's an easy conclusion to reach.
That they are citizens is clear. That they were made citizens at birth is clear. It is also clear that they are citizens solely by operation of statute.
McCain has an argument that he would have been born in the US but for the fact the US ordered his parents out of the country. Still, simply looking at his birth situation and the fact that his citizenship attaches by an act of Congress, it appears he was naturalized at birth, perhaps retroactively (People born in Alaska after 1899 are citizens at birth, even though Alaska wasn't even a state, by operation of a statute passed after Alaska was made a state).
Weicker has an argument that he was born the citizen of a state, and Art IV, Sec. 2 citizen of the state his parents were domiciled in, even though he was born in France. Again, the paperwork trail that is normally generated makes him look naturalized, but he has a good argument for being an NBC, provided his parents had no allegiance to any country but the US.
All of them are citizens, no question. Except Obama who is not a citizen, if he was not born in the US.
I don't know of a born abroad case ever argued on the basis of Art IV, Sec. 2 and domicile in a state. There might be a few of those. I haven't looked, because Cruz's parents were domiciled in Canada, with pop seeking Canadian citizenship.
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