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Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” while discussing Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) performance at Saturday’s ABC News Republican presidential debate in which he repeated several times that President Barack Obama’s policies are no accident but instead he knows exactly what he is doing, MSNBC’s “Hardball” host Chris Matthews called it “strange” and said it was “not a human response.”

The concluding statement in the article: "The introduction to this Article posed a question: “in the eyes of early Americans, would someone born in a foreign country of American parents be a ‘natural born citizen’ and therefore eligible to be President of the United States?” The pertinent historical materials lead to only one conclusion: aside from children born to U.S. ambassadors or soldiers in hostile armies, the answer is “no.”"

A lot of sound and fury has been generated in the past month concerning the natural born citizenship requirement found in the Constitution as a requirement for holding the office of the presidency. The issue has been around since Obama's first run for that office, though it was largely ignored at the time by the media and the political establishment. More recently, Donald Trump stumbled (quite by accident, I presume) into actually mentioning the Constitution when he raised the issue with regard to his competitor for the nomination, Ted Cruz. Now, the purpose of this present essay is not to...

(CNN)... If Cruz gets enough electoral votes this fall,then Congress and not the Supreme Court should be the final legal judge of Cruz's eligibility.The Constitution's 12th Amendment clearly says thatCongress counts the electoral votes at a special session;and thus Congress is constitutionally authorizedto refuse to count any electoral votes that Congress considers invalid. Elsewhere, Article I, section 5 of the Constitution makes clear thateach house of Congress may "judge" whethera would-be member of that house meets the constitutional eligibility rules for that house. ... If a dispute arises ... the Constitution clearly saysthe Senate is "the judge" of Smith's...

The Republican National Committee (RNC) has formally split with NBC for its debate next month in Houston, announcing Monday that it will partner with CNN to broadcast the event. The debate was originally slated to take place Feb. 26 at the University of Houston. Now it will take place a day earlier, Feb. 25, in Houston at a location that has yet to be announced. Spanish-language media company Telemundo will continue to co-host the event, along with conservative magazine National Review and radio network Salem Communications, RNC chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement. The RNC had announced in late...

Donald Trump stepped up his attack on Ted Cruz on Monday, tweeting that the Texas senator needs to "either settle his problem" of having been born in Canada or leave the race. "It's time for Ted Cruz to either settle his problem with the FACT that he was born in Canada and was a citizen of Canada, or get out of race," Trump tweeted Monday morning, on the heels of Fox News polls released over the weekend that showed him with double-digit leads over Cruz in both Iowa and New Hampshire. Trump has insisted over the course of the last...

Here we go again. Donald Trump will speak Sunday, January 24, 2016 in Muscatine, IA at Muscatine High School at 12:00 PM CST. I will post additional Live Feeds. Mr. Trump will be attending church services this morning at New Hope Christian Church in Marshall Town, IA. I think it would be over the top for the media to be filming this. Mr. Trump will do TV shows via phone today as well: CBS’ “Face the Nation”: Trump will call into the show to gauge his chances in the Iowa caucus, with Sanders speaking afterwards. NBC’s “Meet the Press”: Clinton...

If Ted Cruz is a “natural-born citizen,” eligible to be president, what was all the fuss about Obama being born in Kenya? No one disputed that Obama’s mother was a U.S. citizen.Cruz was born in Canada to an American citizen mother and an alien father. If he’s eligible to be president, then so was Obama — even if he’d been born in Kenya.As with most constitutional arguments, whether or not Cruz is a “natural-born citizen” under the Constitution apparently comes down to whether you support Cruz for president. (Or, for liberals, whether you think U.S. citizenship is a worthless thing...

Sunday night's NBC face-off between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders was watched by 10.2 million viewers, making it the most-watched Democratic primary debate since October. The ratings were an improvement over the other two Democratic debates on broadcast networks this election season. CBS's Democratic debate on a Saturday night in November averaged 8.5 million viewers. The ABC debate on the Saturday before Christmas in December had 7.8 million. NBC had an advantage over ABC and CBS, since Sunday nights have heavier TV viewership. Still, NBC's debate -- the fourth of the Democratic cycle -- didn't come close to matching the...

The Republican National Committee (RNC) officially voted on Monday afternoon to sever its business relationship with NBC News for the previously-scheduled Feb. 26, 2016, GOP presidential primary debate, Breitbart News has learned. The Debate Committee for the RNC met via conference call and after hearing updates from RNC chairman Reince Priebus officially voted to cancel the partnership with NBC, according to sources on the call. The vote was unanimous. After the October debate hosted by NBC partner CNBC—in which co-moderator John Harwood was roundly criticized for a poor performance—the RNC suspended its relationship with NBC News over that upcoming Houston...

There was another Democratic debate last night? Why was I not advised? Not that I would have watched it anyway as it was Lady M’s birthday (52!) which takes precedence over everything. I’d do a highlight reel of last year’s fashion high points butt NBC Washington has already done that. It’s almost identical to the fawning review MO got after her first year “in office”  from the LA Times. Here are a few of the points made in this year’s version, which I’ve taken the liberty of illustrating for them: “Since arriving at the White House in 2009, FLOTUS became...

FLINT - Filmmaker and Davison native Michael Moore spoke before a fired-up crowd in downtown Flint today about the water crisis. In his speech he asked that President Barack Obama visit Flint, when the president is at the North American International Auto Show next week. Moore said that Obama needs to come to Flint before it becomes the president's version of Katrina, conjuring images of when President Bush flew over, but initially did not go to, New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina stuck the city.

NBC News journalists - including veteran reporter Andrea Mitchell - conducted interviews last week with Juanita Broaddrick, the Arkansas woman who says Bill Clinton raped her in 1978, but decided not to go forward with a story, claiming that there was not "anything new" to report. "When Juanita Broaddrick went public last week, NBC News sent an associate producer to Arkansas to see if there was anything new in her story. We established there was not, and decided not to pursue it any further," an NBC spokesperson told Buzzfeed News. Broaddrick, a 73-year-old retired nursing home administrator, spoke out on...

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz would beat rival Donald Trump in a theoretical head-to-head matchup, a new national poll from The Wall Street Journal and NBC News shows. However, among all GOP candidates, Trump still holds a commanding lead as the first choice of 33 percent support nationally. Cruz takes second, with 20 percent.

Mark Levin has been trying to stay out of the conflict between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.  He says he likes both men and has both on his show.  But as Trump has escalated his birther attacks on Cruz, Levin has spent hours of airtime defending Cruz against these arguments...while studiously not mentioning who is making these arguments. Well, it looks as though Levin has finally had enough, because ConservativeReview.com, of which he is editor in chief, has published a piece (that Levin has tweeted a link to) that exposes Donald Trump's political inconsistencies, point by point. Entitled Trump's...

No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President... -Article II, Section 1 of the United States Constitution This is a passage that has weighed heavily upon us in recent years. There are those among us, known commonly as "Birthers" who dispute the eligibility of various politicians to be President or Vice-President of the United States. The most popular target of the Birthers is Barack Obama, of course, but of late, Birthers have been training their sights on...

Birth of U.S. Citizens Abroad A child born abroad to a U.S. citizen parent or parents may acquire U.S. citizenship at birth if certain statutory requirements are met. The child’s parents should contact the nearest U.S. embassy or consulate to apply for a Consular Report of Birth Abroad of a Citizen of the United States of America (CRBA) to document that the child is a U.S. citizen. If the U.S. embassy or consulate determines that the child acquired U.S. citizenship at birth, a consular officer will approve the CRBA application and the Department of State will issue a CRBA, also...

Thomas Lee, a professor of constitutional law and international law at Fordham Law School, writes in the Los Angeles Times that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)97% would not be considered a "natural born citizen" under an originalist view of the Constitution. From the LA Times: Under either a textualist or a "living Constitution" theory, Cruz is a "natural born Citizen," eligible to be president; under an originalist view, however, he isn't. It's the conservative theory that would exclude the conservative Cruz from presidential eligibility. To an originalist, a "natural born Citizen" is a person who is a citizen of the United...

Iowa GOP top line. Cruz 28, Trump 24, Rubio 13, Carson 11, Bush 4, Paul 5, Christie 3, Huckabee 2, Fiorina 3, Kasich 2, Santorum 0. If we flash back to the FoxNews poll we have Cruz 27, Trump 23, Rubio 15, Carson 9, Bush 7, Huckabee 2, Paul 5, Christie 4, Fiorina 1, Kasich 1, Santorum 1. Back just before Christmas, Gravis also did an Iowa poll, Gravis, as you know, was the gold standard for Iowa polling in 2014. Cruz 31, Trump 31, Rubio 9, Carson 7, Bush 4, Huckabee 4, Paul 1, Christie 2, Fiorina 3, Kasich...

Jeb Bush on Saturday addressed Donald Trump's efforts to brand him as "low energy," saying he's been puzzled by the "weird" and unfounded knock on his stamina. "I've never understood this," he said during a campaign appearance in Hilton Head, South Carolina. "For a guy who doesn't even know me, [he] just repeats it over and over again, it becomes the truth -- It's the weirdest thing in the world." Bush attracted one of his largest crowds to date -- more than 500 -- to an oceanside hotel ballroom, where voters made a point of complementing both the governor's energy...