'Questions Are Being Asked': Chuck Todd Takes On Sen. Ted Cruz's Potential 'Birther Controversy'

“Another birther controversy could be brewing for 2016,” MSNBC host Chuck Todd informed on Monday. Though this time aimed at a Republican: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who was born in Canada. While Cruz likely doesn’t face any real eligibility problems, Todd acknowledged, “questions are being asked.”

How exactly is “natural-born citizen” defined? Since Cruz’s mother was born in the U.S. and his father became a citizen in 2005, Todd explained, going on to list similar scrutiny faced by President Obama, George Romney, and John McCain.

“The legal evidence seems to side with Cruz,” Todd argued, “but there is a grey area, and that may be all his opponents need.”

“It’s pretty clear that he qualifies as natural born,” Peter Spiro, a professor at Temple University, stated in response to Todd’s earlier question about how the term is defined. To clarify, Todd summed up: “If you are born to U.S. citizens abroad, no matter where, if they are U.S. citizens, if…one of your parents is a U.S. citizen — then that should qualify as natural born.”

Tisdale v Obama, US District Court Judge John A. Gibney, Jr.: “It is well settled that those born within the United States are natural born citizens.”— Tisdale v Obama, US District Court of the Eastern District of Virginia, January 23, 2012.

I regard your persistence in citing modern day cases as nothing but provocation. I have no respect for modern courts. Utterly NONE. They are clown proceedings with no underlying principle or legitimacy. They are the creaking of the hull plates as this massive ship slowly twists before sinking.

It is pretty much accepted amongst conservatives that the courts are political tools, and do not accurately reflect what is the law, but rather the opinion of the people who are nominated to them. Court decisions are the darling of Liberals, Conservatives tend to loath them because too often have we been the victim of foolhardy and ridiculous pronouncements from the courts.

Why do you persist in citing institutions of which conservatives have precious little respect, and often down right hatred? What sort of conservative hides beneath the black robes of the despised liberal courts?

Yes the Court used the colloquial term “native born” to be synonymous with “natural born.”

And what did the court mean by usage of the word "Native" in say, 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, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners.

Funny, their definition of the word "native" corresponds to OUR definition of the word "natural born" but not yours. How did the Justice Waite every become Chief Justice without understanding the meaning of this term "native"?

It's a mystery! Obviously the 1875 court is wrong, not you.

Yes, I know. Any court or judge who disagrees with you is stupid and corrupt. Save yourself the trouble of writing it again.

You have this backwards. Any court which is stupid and corrupt, I will disagree with.

Do you agree with Kelo v New London? Do you agree with Larrance v Texas? Do you agree with Wickard v Fillburn? Do you agree with Roe v Wade, or Plessy v Ferguson? How about Dred Scott v Sanford?

Tell us conservatives who have learned to detest the biased and corrupt court system how you agree with all these despised decisions because the courts "say so."

If you believe the basis of our laws should be "because the courts say so", then you are at complete odds with my understanding of Moral principle, and would no doubt have defended the decisions of the Volksgerichtshof as they stole the money and property from the Jews.

The Courts are not GOD.

I’m quite sure you didn’t expect my response. Arrogant jerks are never aware of what they are. When your type gets slapped with a little reality, it doesn’t go down well.

So keep on squalling and barking at the moon, Missy.

Good afternoon, now.

Ho hum, been through this quite a few times, thank you very much. I put a pin in your balloon, and you screech. This is what passes for reasoned debate nowadays.

No wonder the country is breaking on the rocks.

You left out significant sections of the Minor v. Happersett holding which help explain why it has not been successfully applied to Obama eligibility actions.
“Additions might always be made to the citizenship of the United States in two ways: first, by birth, and second, by naturalization. This is apparent from the Constitution itself, for it provides that ‘no person except a natural-born citizen, or a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President,’ and that Congress shall have power ‘to establish a uniform rule of naturalization.’Thus new citizens may be born or they may be created by naturalization.”

And the next sentence following what you quoted is very important: “ Some authorities go further and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their parents. As to this class there have been doubts, but never as to the first. For the purposes of this case it is not necessary to solve these doubts.”

I like how they gloss over this part as well....

“These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners.”

Was Cruz an alien or foreigner at birth? No. He was born a citizen.

One is either born a citizen with natural allegiance, or one is an alien or foreigner and must be ‘naturalized’ into a condition of allegiance.

It took an act of Congress (the particular law in place at the time of his birth) in order for him to be a citizen. The U.S. Constitution doesn't grant citizenship to those born in foreign lands whether to citizen parent(s) or not.

Congress only has the power of naturalization. Although, they did try back in 1790 to legislate those born to citizen parents overseas, to be natural born Citizen. But they repealed that in 1795.

The Congress has, of course, changed the law many times:

U.S. Immigration Laws Over Time

Sen. Ted Cruz, assuming he was born in Canada in 1970 to a U.S. citizen mother, would have his citizenship status governed by the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, a.k.a. the Hart-Cellar Act.

Cruz was presumably naturalized whenever it was that his mother (most likely) filed the appropriate documents (similar to those) as described on the Naturalization Services page. Since he wouldn't have a birth certificate from a Hospital (or attending/certifying medical personnel) in the U.S., his mother would have needed to apply if she wanted/needed proof of his U.S. Citizenship - N-600. Application for Certificate of Citizenship or applied for a passport for him.

The difference here, is that those who want/need to prove their U.S. citizenship after being born in a foreign country (like Cruz), needed to apply for either a passport or use the N-600 form to lawfully enter the country permanently. Persons born in the U.S. obviously don't need to do that.

So far as I know, nobody in the public domain has seen his birth documents. We are simply taking his word at this point that he is a "citizen"...obtained through the powers and discretion of Congressional naturalization.

There is a 14th Amemdment citizen who is born here and subject to the jurisdiction of our laws. These are todays' "native" born citizens.

You'll notice, the 14th says nothing at all about "natural born" citizens.

In fact, the father of the 14th amendment, and all those in congress at the time, knew that a "natural born" citizen was one born in the soverign territory to two citizen parents. The authors of the 14th clearly knew there was a difference between a "natural born" citizen and a "native" citizen and their new amendment (the 14th) had zero to do with defining who was a "natural born Citizen."

Somehow in today's world, people believe they know better than our forefathers and what they themselves knew when it comes to these issues.

There was also another type of citizen, specifically mentioned in the Constitution "or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution."

Whatever the Founding Fathers might have believed (and I’m sure you know that they were not of one mind on practically any subject) since the adoption of the 14th Amendment there has been no distinction in law or practice between a born citizen and a natural born citizen. In the modern world they are considered to be one and the same.
As far back as the 1898 landmark US v Wong Kim Ark decision, it was recognized that the 14th Amendment would impact natural born citizen status.
The government wrote in its brief for the Supreme Court: “Are Chinese children born in this country to share with the descendants of the patriots of the American Revolution the exalted qualification of being eligible to the Presidency of the nation, conferred by the Constitution in recognition of the importance and dignity of citizenship by birth? If so, then verily there has been a most degenerative departure from the patriotic ideals of our forefathers; and surely in that case American citizenship is not worth having.”

The Supreme Court ruled 6-2 against the position of the government.

“So far as I know, nobody in the public domain has seen his birth documents. We are simply taking his word at this point that he is a “citizen”...obtained through the powers and discretion of Congressional naturalization.”

Barack Obama has never seen his vault copy birth vital records but those records have been seen by three persons in the public domain: Dr. Chiyome Fukino, former Director of the Hawaii Department of Health, Dr. Alvin T. Onaka, Hawaii Registrar of Vital Statistics, and Loretta Fuddy, current Director of the Hawaii Department of Health. All three have issued official statements of verification for the original birth records and those statements have been entered as exhibits in courts of law.
The courts and Congress have taken their words for it, not Obama’s.
For example: “The state of Hawaii has said that the President was born there, that’s good enough for me.”—Rep. John Boehner, Speaker of the House.

Ten courts have ruled explicitly or implicitly that Barack Obama is a natural born citizen. No court has ruled that he is not a natural born citizen.

For example: Allen v Obama, Arizona Superior Court Judge Richard E. Gordon: “Arizona courts are bound by United States Supreme Court precedent in construing the United States Constitution, and this precedent fully supports that President Obama is a natural born citizen under the Constitution and thus qualified to hold the office of President. Contrary to Plaintiff’s assertion, Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162 (1874), does not hold otherwise.”—Pima County Superior Court, Tuscon, Arizona, March 7, 2012

No court has ever ruled that Obama is ineligible or that he is not a natural born citizen, whether Minor v. Happersett has been cited or not.

Thanks for making a dumb point and showing how inconsistent these rulings are since each fails to provide any sort of an actual legal foundation.

Purpura: No court has accepted the challengers position. That's circular logic. It doesn't make any reference to a legal foundation for this claim or the following claim. "The petitioners’ legal position on this issue, however well intentioned, has no merit in law." And of course no law is actually cited by the judge, plus we have to ignore that at least 27 justices said there is merit on this subject in the law.

Allen: Arizona is bound by Supreme Court precedent ... except the obvious precedent in Minor ... which the court denies without any legal basis. And speaking of no legal basis: there is none for the court's assumption that Obama would be a natural-born citizen.

Swensson: Doesn't cite the Supreme Court. Cites a state appeals court that never said Obama was a natural-born citizen nor did that court say he was eligible for office. Claims that it "considered" Obama was born in Hawaii despite the absence of ANY legal proof.

Voeltz: Cites the 14th amendment but ignores that both Minor and Wong Kim Ark said the 14th amendment does not define natural-born citizen. Uses circular logic to cite other courts (when in Purpura it was the inverse ... "No court ...").

Again, thanks for showing that none of these cases gives any positive citations to caselaw that specifically defines natural-born citizen while they deny the one case that did and that was affirmed unanimously as setting precedent on Art. II eligibility.

There’s been a lot of time to reverse Wong Kim Ark. It hasn’t happened and its been cited as “stare decisis” as recently as last year.

Tisdale v Obama, US District Court Judge John A. Gibney, Jr.: “It is well settled that those born within the United States are natural born citizens.”— Tisdale v Obama, US District Court of the Eastern District of Virginia, January 23, 2012.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/82011399/Tisdale-v-Obama-EDVA-3-12-cv-00036-Doc-2-ORDER-23-Jan-2012

Yes, I know. Any court or judge who disagrees with you is stupid and corrupt. Save yourself the trouble of writing it again.

This isn't about somebody being stupid simply because they disagree. It's because there's nothing in Supreme Court case law that supports this claim ... and we do have one court that already admitted that Wong Kim Ark did NOT declare its plaintiff to be a natural-born citizen on the basis of the criteria used by the court (thanks, Indiana Appeals Court). This federal court you cited is right to one degree ... it IS well-settled that those person born within the United State are natural-born citizens, but ONLY if they are born to citizen parents. Minor v. Happersett AND U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark.

The Minor court doesn't say that solving doubts about whether these person are citizens or not would make them natural-born citizens. In context, it has already say they are not. Natural-born citizen was used to exclusively characterize one class of persons. If the second class that you cited could be natural-born citizens, then the court had no reason to reject Virginia Minor's argument of being a citizen via the 14th amendment. What other point does it serve to talk about being born to citizen parents??

I like how they gloss over this part as well....

“These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners.”

Was Cruz an alien or foreigner at birth? No. He was born a citizen.

One is either born a citizen with natural allegiance, or one is an alien or foreigner and must be ‘naturalized’ into a condition of allegiance.

There's no reason to gloss over this. Vattel said that some countries naturalize aliens at birth. Such falls under a category of collective naturalization. Cruz's citizenship can only be established under statutory U.S. law, which means that under natural law, he is definitely considered to be an alien at birth.

For the sake of brevity I excerpted just the pertinent paragraphs from judges’ rulings that pertain to the subject of this thread. There are sections of the full orders of each judge devoted to discussions of relevant statutes and cited precedents. Anyone can read the full orders at scribd.com
You have a black belt in parsing language but a ruling stands unless and until it is reversed by a higher court.
There have been 90 state and federal appellate rulings on eligibility challenges and also 26 petitions and applications at SCOTUS. All of the original jurisdiction rulings stand and as I ‘m sure you know, appeals courts rule on possible incorrect application of law and legal procedure.
There’s never been a single ruling of an incorrect application of law; and of course state court rulings cite similar rulings in other states.

American general elections are conducted on a 50 state plus federal district basis. Purpura (NJ), Allen (AZ), Voeltz (FL) and Swensson, et. al. (GA) were challenges to eligibility for STATE ballots.

So you say, yet if you wanted to present a persuasive argument, you could show where these excerpts are backed up by a sound legal foundation. So far, this has been an epic fail as I just showed.

You have a black belt in parsing language but a ruling stands unless and until it is reversed by a higher court.

We already have a well-established precedent from the highest court in the land that prevents Obama from qualifying for the office of president. Certainly, lower courts can fail to follow Supreme Court precedence and you have shown that pretty clearly.

There have been 90 state and federal appellate rulings on eligibility challenges and also 26 petitions and applications at SCOTUS. All of the original jurisdiction rulings stand and as I ‘m sure you know, appeals courts rule on possible incorrect application of law and legal procedure.

Or they don't. You're relying on circular logic. Supremacy by error doesn't override the error.

There’s never been a single ruling of an incorrect application of law; and of course state court rulings cite similar rulings in other states.

Nonsense. All rulings that refer to the natural-born citizen clause have been incorrect when compared to Supreme Court citations. The rest may be correct on procedural obstacles such as legal standing, officers who are exempted from responsiblity for vetting presidential candidates, timing of legal filings, etc., but they still don't override the principle on Article II eligibility that has been consistently defined by the Supreme Court as all children born in the country to citizen parents.

American general elections are conducted on a 50 state plus federal district basis. Purpura (NJ), Allen (AZ), Voeltz (FL) and Swensson, et. al. (GA) were challenges to eligibility for STATE ballots.

Yeah ... and the point is what?? No one has disputed that these were challeges to eligibility on state ballots.

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