Mark Levin Addresses Ted Cruz Eligibility Issue posed by Ridgewood, NJ Man at Book Signing

Mark Levin: Before we jump in, all I can say is, Wow! You guys, open your microphones a second. Thousands of people at both booksignings. Wasn’t that unbelievable?

Mark Levin: And the people were just spectacular, weren’t they? Except for one guy in New Jersey which I’ll talk about later.

Mark Levin: This… this birther stuff is way, way out of contr…”Now Ted Cruz” … I swear I almost hit this guy… “Ted Cruz is not a citizen!” No, he’s born to an American mother, no he’s born in Canada to an American mother. So all you pregnant ladies travelling overseas: According to certain birther, uh, groups, if you have a child while you are on vacation, they’re not Americans. They’re not natural-born Americans. I just thought you’d wanna know, if you were thinking of your kid as a potential presidential candidate, uh, because they say so. They have no historical background whatsoever… None! But it’s, it’s just amazing! Absolutely stunning! But we had so many wonderful people, and let me add, all races, both genders… I don’t know the sexual preferences, that wasn’t a requirement to say hello…young people, elderly, middle age people. A particularly young crowd, yeah, we had dogs come too, everybody so well behaved, and uh, it was a pleasure. In New York, we were there about four-and-a-half hours, in New Jersey about five, five-and-a-half hours, and I wanted to be respectful to everybody, so… I just want to thank you all, and this Saturday, Tyson’s Corner, Virginia, at Barnes and Noble. I should add, if you want to see the crowd that was at New York, Mr. Producer went down the line, and this was early on, this, this line kept growing and growing throughout the day…you can go look at uh MarkLevinShow.com on our website, as well as the social sites MarkLevinShow Facebook, MarkLevinShow Twitter. Um, Christians, Coptic Christians are being wiped out in Egypt. Their churches are being burned to the ground….

Steve: Oh, I got a great story for you, I loved your uh, Hannity special, I enjoyed it very much, I listened to it three times over the weekend…

Steve: …I got my wife, I got my wife to tape for me, or TIVO it, and she watched it. And she really enjoyed it. She’s not big on politics or anything, and she gets sick of hearing me talk about it, but it was funny ‘cause she said “He is so calm, Steve.” He was, she was trying to do a little wifey/husband training? And…

Steve: she said “He is so calm, and he gets his point across. He didn’t raise his voice, or get upset…

Steve: …and I laughed so hard. I said “How do you, uh, where do you think I learned how to yell?” [laughs] “I just listen to Mark.” And she knows you’re my hero, I go around quotin’ ya, and tellin’ everybody to listen to ya, and…

Steve: she just … to get me to calm down a little, and I said you just need to listen to Mark. [laughs]

Mark Levin: Well, thank you, uh…well listen, you know what, this is called passion, just remind her it’s passion, you know, and um…what was truly exceptional about the Hannity program, number one, the man has enormous class and decency, and number two, he was asking me questions because he wanted me to inform the public about what I’d written, and to engage the studio audience. And notice we didn’t have a bunch of left-wing bomb throwers just yelling and talking over people. There were conversations actually occurring, did you notice that?

Steve: Yes, there was no crazy, I mean a lot of times he’s got the left wingers on there, and it’s just, kind, it’s almost funny to watch, but that was so interesting and…and it didn’t get me upset, and it just, I just wanted to listen to it over and over and absorb every second of it, and every bit of information, it…it’s just brilliant, Mark, I, you know I hope when um…we’ve got President Cruz, he has the wisdom to make you his chief of staff or vice-president.

Mark Levin: No, no no no no no. And he’s got a great chief of staff, by the way. No, I…I do what I do, and uh, and he will do a great job should he be president. Thank you for your call my friend. And uh, I’m so sick of these birthers. I was going to tell you about this, uh, incident. Just a wonderful group of people, uh, we were in Bookends, Ridgewood, New Jersey, and everyone was respectful until…and it was hot outside, it got hot, hotter than uh originally forecast and it was a very long line, and you know we try to go through it quickly out of respect for everybody in line, but I also try to be respectful to everybody in line. Um…but this fella [breathes out] gets in my face and first of all he points to some obscure note on page I don’t know whatever and he said [cough] excuse me folks, and he says “You were wrong about this, you were wrong about”, and honestly I, I, I didn’t have time to read it, and I’ll go back and check it, if I’m wrong about it I’ll fix it, and that happens sometimes in these books when you’re going into the notes, you might put a word when you mean another word, or a state when you mean another state, so I’m going to check it out, I just haven’t had time. And then he goes, he says uh “And Ted Cruz is not eligible to be president. He’s not a natural-born Citizen.” And I thought to myself, you know I, this is not a subject that I have studied so thoroughly, but he’s born of a mother who is an American citizen. Doesn’t that make him a natural-born Ci… “No, but he was in Canada when he was born!” Okay, but she wasn’t Canadian, she was an American citizen! She was an American citizen. And so, the issue isn’t what the Constitution says in that regard, the issue is how do we interpret that. And the way I interpret it is, his mother’s an American citizen, so he’s an American citizen! That’s not a constitutional issue, that’s an interpretive issue… or, a statutory issue if Congress has passed some law subsequent to that to enforce that provision of the Constitution. So, the face of the Constitution isn’t terribly helpful. If he was born of non-citizens in a foreign country that would be easy, and there’s a lot of easy cases. So the guy gets in my face, and he starts pointing and pointing, and I looked at him and I pointed back, and I cursed, unfortunately, but the, because, uh you know, he was…he was a nutjob. And I thought to myself: Why do you come here and do that? Is this, is this sort of the way you…you excite yourself or something? No. So, I just want you folks to know who like Ted Cruz. I…I assume they’re going to do this to Rubio, or some of these other people too, whether you like ‘em or not for president I’m just making a point, but now this has become an entire industry. And of course [chuckles] Ted Cruz [laughs], he immediately issued today or yesterday his long form birth certificate. Now, some of this is probably coming from the left. So now they’re the birthers. But some of it’s coming from others, too. People just get obsessed, or conspiratorial, and there’s no end to it, on a matter like this, and there’s nothing I can say or point to that’s going to change their mind. But in my view there’s no doubt about it that he’s eligible for president, should he choose to run, just as I believe McCain was eligible for president, when he ran. So…that’s my opinion! You may not like it… But what particularly bothered me about this guy…he was disrespectful in his conduct to everybody else standing there. They were pleasant, talking to each other, you know…listening, watching and so forth. I’m a big boy; I’ve seen this and a thousand times worse. But he was quite obnoxious. He’s the only one…oh no there was another guy, had a prob, wha wha, he what…he had a problem, he was screaming upstairs, I don’t know what he was screamin’ about. It was kind of eventful there in New Jersey. No, there wasn’t anything like that in New York, was there boys? [Staff: No. Peaceful in ji…you know in Long Island] It was peaceful on Long Island! [chuckles] But is was peaceful in New Jersey, too. It really, really was. It was just terrific. If you could have seen that line, well, actually you can. We have the uh video, and this is just the start of the day with the line. It got longer and longer at uh… at Book Review in Long Island if you want to take a look on MarkLevinShow.com or MarkLevi…oh there is now? The…the New Jersey line? Okay. Both lines. On MarkLevinShow.com, are they both on the social sites too? Or…just the Long Island. But we’ll put the other one up later so some of you can see yourselves, too. Alright. GoldLine!

(further information and videos at: http://queenofliberty.com/2013/08/14/mark-levin-rolls-out-his-new-book/)

"As much as I appreciate and respect Ted Cruz, I do not believe he meets the requirement. However, I will vote for him if the alternative is any Democrat.... for the good of the country."

I generally agree with you Mason-Dixon. My qualification is because an attorney from a good law school would have read the Constitution and pertinent cases. My assumption is that Cruz is avoiding the issue, but that before the last two elections, he would have been précised, and honest, about our law. That would give me more confidence that he still believes that the Constitution is the basis for our Republic. In these times anyone should ask why it is that our political kingmakers are floating one naturalized citizen after another, Cruz, Jindal, Rubio, Haley, when we have so many natural born citizens to chose from, Suzanne Martinez, Michelle Bachmann, Alan West, Sarah Palin, ....

Someone asked what Mark Levin said about Cruz? Levin, in whose Liberty and Tyranny Mark quotes Madison’s letter explaining why there are not definitions in the Constitution, cited the 1790 Naturalization Act, the First Congress, which made children of citizens born beyond the seas, natural born citizens. That is the citation used by Larry Tribe, Obama’s Harvard Con. Law professor and adviser. The 1790 act, signed by Washington, was entirely rescinded, repealed, in the 1795 Naturalization Act with “natural born citizen” changed to “citizen”. The 1795 Act was also signed by Washington, who acceded to John Jay's letter and had Madison change the presidential eligibility requirements from "citizen" to "natural born citizen". These men staked their lives and the lives of most in the new nation upon these laws and definitions, laws replacing the arbitrary legal system from Britain that had governed them for over two hundred years.

Cruz is an impressive man, but his lack of candor about his status "I'll leave those questions to the courts", is a little disturbing to someone who has been inspired by Obama to read and learn about our founders, framers and the law. As Chief Justice Waite very carefully explained, in Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162 (1875) “At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens.”

The Constitution didn’t define “citizens”, probably because there would not have been ratification with some states permitting naturalization of slaves. The only citizen defined in the Constitution, using the common-law and language of the framers, is a natural born citizen. That is why the definition was essential to the decision addressing Virginia Minor’s status before the 14th Amendment, a naturalization amendment. The only application in the Constitution for the definition of natural born citizenship was to eligibility of our President and Commander in Chief (so here, probably for the first time, I disagree with rxsid from whom I have learned so much). Citizens were initially defined by the laws in the Constitutions of each state before 1787.

As to equivalence between native-born citizens of the U.S., the 14tn Amendment does not make native-born resident American Indians into citizens. The 14th Amendment makes slaves into citizens, but not natural born citizens. 8 U.S. Code, all of our immigration law, naturalized the children of aliens born on our soil AT BIRTH. Wong Kim Ark, 168 U.S. 649, (1898), citing and quoting Chief Justice Waite’s Minor decision, decided that Wong Kim, born and raised in San Francisco to domiciled Chinese parents was a 'citizen', but not a natural born citizen - a “native-born citizen of the U.S.” - exactly the definition given by Barack on his own web site for his status.

And for the handwaving claim that Vattel was not important to our founders and framers, cite some authority. From F.X. Ruddy, Grotian Society Papers 1972, Vattel was the most cited legal reference in U.S. jurisprudence between 1789 and 1841. It was our first law book at our first law school created by Jefferson out of William and Mary in 1779. It was the only book on Washington’s desk on his first day in office in New York in 1789. Hamilton cited it, in one of his letters to Washington while serving as Treasury Secretary, as is most trusted source.

As the author of the 14th Amendment, Judge/Congressman John Bingham clarified while explaining his bill to the House, “I find no fault with the introductory clause [S 61 Bill], which is simply declaratory of what is written in the Constitution, that every human being born within the jurisdiction of the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty is, in the language of your Constitution itself, a natural born citizen….”

I too would pick the best candidate standing, but I refuse to pretend that our framers didn’t mean what they said. Their avoidance of definitions was intentional, because, well read as most all were, they knew that language changes. They didn’t want the evolution of language to change the meanings, based upon “Natural Law”, “God’s Law”.

If our host doesn’t allow argument in search of the truth in Free Repbulic’s threads, though I don’t believe that is his intent, then FR no longer represents a free republic. I would vote for the candidate most consistent with the Constitution, and today, if the choices were Cruz and Hillary, Cruz is an easy choice. I would prefer he seek to replace Roberts, who is likely impeachable. Democrats, Obama/McCaskill, and McCaskill/Leahy, sponsored two bills to support McCain’s candidacy, SB 2678 in Feb. 2008, the ‘‘Children of Military Families Natural Born Citizen Act’’, which failed to pass, and Senate Resolution 511, The John McCain Natural Born Citizen Resolution, in April. They all knew McCain wasn't eligible, but knew with even more certainty that Obama wasn't eligible. Cruz is being used to provide cover for Republicans who agreed not to vet Obama in exchange. As Levin suggests, and I agree, let's amend the Constitution, Article II Section 1, and consider Levin’s eleven proposals. Honesty and accuracy remain essential. Adherence to our Constitution should not depend upon expedience. We have more natural born citizens, at least until all illegals become voters, than naturalized citizens. There is a reason every proposed Republican is naturalized, and not natural born, so this is not the time to fight this battle. But choosing candidates whose eligibility we tacitly agree to ignore weakens our republic, making provisions ignorable if they aren't politically expedient.

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