Posted on 08/22/2013 2:11:52 PM PDT by Delacon
In AMES, Iowa — For 30 long seconds on a Saturday early this month, Ted Cruz stood silent and beaming as hundreds of conservative activists showered him with heartfelt applause in a dimly lighted auditorium. Then he started up again.
“And that reaction right there,” he declared, pointing at the crowd with his thumb and forefinger together, “shows how we win this fight. If I were sitting in the Senate cloakroom, the reaction to that statement would be fundamentally different. I don’t know that I’m quick enough to dodge all the things that would be thrown at me.”
Just like that, Cruz summed up his first seven months as a U.S. senator and exposed the conundrum he represents for the Republican Party: a hero to the conservative base and a worry for the establishment.
Cruz, 42, is a full-bore conservative from Texas whose certitude and combativeness in defense of his positions have made him a rock star to the GOP’s far-right-leaning activists. The comment that brought the crowd to it feet was about shredding Obamacare at all costs.
But that certitude and combativeness also have made him one of the most controversial figures in the Senate, a lightning rod for public and private criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike. The question many are left to ponder as Cruz travels the country targeting President Obama’s health-care law is: What can he realistically hope to achieve in a Senate steeped in tradition and hierarchy as an eloquent yet sharply polarizing figure?
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Really?
Do you believe that Jefferson included the phrase “natural born citizen” as INTENTIONALLY vague? He was a democrat, after all.
/johnny
OK
US Constitution, Article 2
/johnny
OK.
When you provide the “statutory” definition of “the people”, the “statutory” definition of “congress” and the “statutory” definition of “abridged” (see A-1 and A-2) then, I’ll see what I can do with your weasel attempt at applying a modernist construct to the words of Jefferson and Madison.
GFL
/johnny
Absolutely Cletus. In short, the Constitution, by design, and a brilliant design at that, doesn't contain definitions. Our framers understood that languages change and the Constitution, based upon ‘Natures Law’ and ‘Law of Nations’ was assumed based upon eternal wisdom. Chief Justice Waite explained exactly that when he confirmed the Vattel definition. And, ironically, it was Mark Levin, in Liberty and Tyranny, p37, who quoted the Madison letter explaining the omission of definitions in the Constitution.
But there is ‘Statutory’ confirmation, in spite of separation of powers preventing Congress from addressing provisions in the Constitution. It is, as I noted above, in the Naturalization Act intentionally ignored by Larry Tribe, Ted Olson, and Mark Levine, confirmed in 1795 when it entirely replaced the 1790 Act which made children ‘born beyond sea, or out of the limits of The United States, shall be considered as natural born citizen’. Congress realized that the 1790 Act was in conflict with the Constitution, and repealed it entirely, replacing the term ‘natural born citizen’ with the term ‘citizen.’ That is the only statutory confirmation of the common-law, and now, positive law (from Minor v Happersett) definition.
There may be a later confirmation than that of Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes in the 1939 case Perkins v. Elg, but I expect one of the legal experts to whom I owe much of what I've learned at FR will point to it. I would also point to the exhaustive Chicago Law Review article by Breckenridge Long in 1916, Vol 49. Had Evans Hughes beaten Woodrow Wilson - and the nation might have avoided the depression had that been the case - Charles Evans Hughes would have been legally challenged by Democrats. just as Hillary will have an attorney, perhaps Phil Berg, disqualify Cruz or Rubio or Jindal or Haley. After losing that election, Hughes was appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and wrote the Perkins v. Elg decision, implying that he either learned, or knew that citizen parents were one prerequisite for Presidential eligibility. Hughes was born to British parents in New York. This isn't the first time!
/johnny
Cruz is under no obligation to adhere to the bogus, made-up standard of eligibility that birthers have failed to sell to anyone outside of their own circus.
The Founding Fathers really messed up on that one. If they only knew the trouble caused by their omitting a precise
statutory definition of “natural-born citizen,” they’d be hanging their heads in shame.
The problem is that “everybody knew” what it meant at the time, and it didn’t occur to them to clarify it, forgetting
that some definitions that “everybody knows” are lost over a long time if they aren’t recorded for posterity.
/johnny
Thank you ,I have been saying the same thing.
Now I know what the common citizen in Germany must have felt like when the Furher was coming to power,there is nothing we can do,the media just slanders, lies with impunity.
“Far-Right” was just white bread normal in 1955
So they’re waiting for O’Blama to term limit out before they peg down the definition?
Not that I don’t understand their reticence in defying His Won-derfulness.
/johnny
Absolutely JRandomFreeper. Cruz, Obama, McCain, Rubio, Jindal, and Haley were all made citizens by the Naturalization Amendment authorized by Article 1 Section 8. Obama was honest about, and counted on the path paved for his accession to the throne covering for him. Part of the cover was to have McCain as an opponent, part the complete monopoly on mainstream media, even including the controlling ownership of News Corp/Fox/WSJ by the Saudis, and to literally have family members of the major media in executive positions in the White House. I have often wondered if this was the plan, a quid-pro-quo for McCain, who certainly would not be viable at close to 80, for another shot in 2016.
I don't expect ever to know because anyone revealing the truth would become a pariah to his tribe. Whittaker Chambers showed that courage, and so did those State Department officials who came forward to open the door to what really went on at Benghazi, along with the But the scale of this cover-up dwarfs Benghazi. When Chambers broke his former KGB associations Alger Hiss and Dexter White and Harry Hopkins were no longer controlling so much of our government. McCain and Obama are still very actively promoting both socialism and the restoration of the Caliphate, but getting some pushback from the Egyptians who hate the Muslim Brotherhood, and curiously, even from the Saudis. who fund the Muslim Brotherhood, but apparently aren't ready to force the issue this time. As Julian Assange pointed out, the Obama administration has prosecuted twice as many whistleblowers as all other administrations combined (fascinating times when conservatives find counterculture rebels more believable than the crooks in power).
/johnny
Bill Clinton's famous “It depends upon what is is” has acquired legitimacy over the years. It depends upon what you mean by “statutory.” Wikipedia, whose validity I always question, offers: “Typically, statutes command or prohibit something, or declare policy.[1] The word is often used to distinguish law made by legislative bodies from case law, decided by courts, and regulations issued by government agencies.[1] Statutes are sometimes referred to as legislation or “black letter law.” As a source of law, statutes are considered primary authority.”
Since some twenty five cases after 1785 used the definition made precedent by Chief Justice Waite in Minor v. Happersett, Minor could satisfy a general interpretation of a Statute, not that it matters. If a case needs the presidential definition, and has no agenda, Minor provides that precedence because the nine justices all agreed with the definition necessary to the resolution of Virginia Minor's citizenship. Rejecting precedence means that the Supreme Court would need to invalidate the acceptance of the term used for two hundred twenty years by our courts and understood for thousands of years, documented by
Aristotle, part of Roman law and a key concept in ‘Natural Law’ prevalent in The Enlightenment. Our legal system can rule on practically anything, but eventually lose the trust of society, leading to unrest and probably, revolution. There is no compulsion for a court to follow precedent. There was no compulsion for the two Obama appointees to recuse themselves from the panel deciding whether the Supreme Court should hear cases concerning Obama’s eligibility, even when those justices, Kagan and Sotomayor, had millions of dollars at stake in the outcome. That cost the Supreme Court a piece of its reputation, just as Chief Justice Robert's rewriting the Democrat case for Obamacare has demonstrated partiality.
The more common usage for “Statutory” is law that is part of U.S. Code, and the ;last time U.S. Code addressed the definition of natural born citizen was in 1795 when Congress repealed the 1790 Naturalization Act and made it conformant with the Vattel/Marshall/Wilson/Jay/Washington/Jefferson/Waite/Gray/Evans Hughes definition cited in dozens of Supreme Court cases. Congress told us that children born over seas to citizen parents are citizens, and not natural born citizens. There is a word that escapes me describing a negative definition, but that is what the 1795 ‘Statute’ is. It is also trouble for Ted Cruz and Mark Levin, Ted who wants to leave it to ‘authorities’ and Mark, the ‘authority’ who doesn't know the law.
That's a simple yes or no.
/johnny
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