Posted on 03/13/2013 6:01:43 PM PDT by Fai Mao
On Mar. 8, reporter Carl Cameron on Special Report on Fox News Channel was surveying potential GOP 2016 presidential candidates. Then he raised Ted Cruz--one of the most brilliant constitutional lawyers ever to serve in the Senate--the new 41-year old Hispanic senator from Texas.
Cameron added, “But Cruz was born in Canada and is constitutionally ineligible” to run for president. While many people assume that, it’s probably not true.
Cameron was referring to the Constitution’s Article II requirement that only a “natural born citizen” can run for the White House.
No one is certain what that means. Citizenship was primarily defined by each state when the Constitution was adopted. Federal citizenship wasn’t clearly established until the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868. The Constitution is not clear whether it means you must be born on U.S. soil, or instead whether you must be born a U.S. citizen.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
You are a piece of work. If Bingham restricts the citizenship to those not owing foreign allegiance, then it is axiomatic that he regards "natural born citizenship" to be at least as strict. ( He does in fact, say that very thing.)
You ask for a quote as if you haven't been given the previous quotes from him. You sir, are a psyche case.
Again, Ignore any quotes from Jeff, for if he finds one from an Early Authority (several have been given him already) he will either refuse to acknowledge it, or mock the Authority from whence it came.
Jeff has only one purpose in mind; To enshrine a piece of stupidity into American law and culture, and pretend that it was always there.
And with this I agree. We are however, not arguing about common sense, but about a legal technicality. I'm generally in favor of ignoring legal technicalities, and the only reason I have for pushing this one is because it p*sses off all the right people.
If, as you contend, the Founders believed a woman could walk across the border and give birth to a brand-spankin' NEW natural born citizen within 9 months, why did they even bother with the naturalization process?
Because people aren't just born here, they also come here from other countries and want to become US citizens.
That's pretty basic, wouldn't you say?
And you have yet to answer the question as to how you come to the conclusion they said he was a natural born citizen when they THEMSELVES said that whether he was natural born wasn't even the question before the court?
For the purposes of this case, it is not necessary to solve these doubts.
Okay. This is the point at which, if you have the slightest amount of self-respect, you slink away from this conversation and never dare to even pretend to understand it again.
Truly.
Because it is absolutely clear that you don't have the faintest clue what you're talking about.
You don't understand law. You don't understand legal precedent. You seem to be mostly just repeating stuff you've heard other people claim. And you liked the claim that it takes two parents to make a natural born citizen, so you latched onto it, and repeat it without really understanding anything about the subject.
Because you are just some woman in Texas, who acts like she has a clue what she's talking about, when she doesn't.
In fact, at this point it becomes frankly embarrassing for me to even talk about this stuff with you. Because it is so excruciatingly clear that you don't have a clue.
The case we were discussing was US v Wong Kim Ark. And you, unbelievably, have just asked me:
And you have yet to answer the question as to how you come to the conclusion they said he was a natural born citizen when they THEMSELVES said that whether he was natural born wasn't even the question before the court?
For the purposes of this case, it is not necessary to solve these doubts.
Yes, those words do appear in US v Wong Kim Ark.
AS A QUOTE.
The Wong Court was quoting the MINOR Court, when the MINOR Court said that THEY (the Minor Court) were not going to decide the issue in THAT case - THAT IS, MINOR.
The case referred to by the words, "For the purposes of this case, it is not necessary to solve these doubts," is NOT US v Wong Kim Ark.
It is MINOR V. HAPPERSETT.
And this is the case that you and other birthers have insisted, despite the clear words you yourself just quoted, DID supposedly "resolve those doubts."
I will give you this much credit: You have read the words correctly. You've even interpreted their meaning correctly.
BUT YOU HAVE APPLIED THOSE WORDS TO WONG, WHEN THEY NEVER APPLIED TO WONG. THEY APPLIED TO MINOR, THE CASE THAT YOU CLAIM SUPPOSEDLY DECIDED THE ISSUE.
Again: Wong quoted Minor saying THAT THEY (THE MINOR COURT) WERE NOT GOING TO DECIDE THE ISSUE.
It is hard to imagine a more fundamentally incompetent error.
If you can't even get correct what case a quote applies to, there is no way that you can pretend to intelligently discuss case law, or even to have a clue what you're talking about.
I don't mean to be harsh, but you need to go back to being a Texas Mama, and leave discussing case law to people who are at least capable of reading a case well enough to appear as if they have a clue.
He's arguing that the common understanding was that simple birth inside our borders was sufficient. He intentionally truncated quotes from Bingham in an attempt to hide the truth; That the common understanding was that the children of parents who owe allegiance to foreign sovereignty do not qualify.
He is further ignoring the obvious point. If this was Bingham's understanding, it was most definitely the understanding of the rest of congress, therefore it was the explicit intent of the 14th amendment, therefore the 14th amendment does not mean what Jeff W. Alleges.
But people with common sense already knew this. The founders weren't stupid, and neither was John Bingham.
So you agree natural born citizen and a citizen of the United States is 2 totally seperate concepts?
Just trying to understand your point of view.
and I really don't care.
That was needlessly cruel.
I'm not sure who I'd be agreeing with--did somebody say that? Anyway, my opinion is that "natural born citizen [of the United States]" is a subset of "citizen of the United States." So no, not totally separate.
I appreciate your comment.
I do normally tend to apologize for errors and probably would have done so had he not already flat out called me a liar and made veiled threats concerning the owner of the website.
Posts like you responded to are just a normal tactics for him.
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Like I said, thank you.
Your graciousness does you credit.
LOL! Thanks for the clarification.
So a natural born citizen is a subset of a citizen of the United States.
Do you also consider a naturalized citizen as a subset of a citizen of the United States?
Do you believe their are any subsets besides those two?
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Sorry for what may appear to be annoying questions, but IMHO, a great deal of confusion comes from someone saying one term thinking it means one thing and the person they said it to thinks it means something totally different.
Thank you, MamaTexan. You are a very kind lady.
Point taken, but the point I'm making is that he's not engaging anyone in discussion about the topic. Others post citations, and offer logical, reasoned arguments to make the opposite case he's attempting to make.
If a person can't answer a simple question that goes to the heart of the matter, then he's little more than a robot who doesn't have the intellectual capacity to process the meaning of things.
Posting walls of citations doesn't prove anything, as any one of us can produce equivalent walls of citations to back up our contentions. In the end, you can't prove your contention by merely cutting and pasting selected excerpts of court decisions and historical quotes.
I am genuinely sorry that it came across that way. I didn't want to be needlessly cruel.
However, the situation is a little bit difficult. MamaTexan is here representing herself as someone who understands this issue. She has been presenting herself as something of an expert. She has been painting those of us who recognize that the historical understanding of "natural born citizen" is, legally and historically, the correct one, as either idiots or worse.
People who pose as experts to insist on wrong interpretations of the Constitution are not doing conservatives, or even themselves, any favors. This is particularly true when they would urge us to abandon good candidates who might lead us to a conservative victory, even a conservative renaissance, in the future. It's not just Ted Cruz. It's not necessarily just Marco Rubio, or Bobby Jindal, or Nikki Haley. We may have other rising stars in the future, in 2016, or 2020, who are perfectly well eligible to be elected President, whose candidacies could be negatively impacted by a false perception that they are not eligible.
You can be sure that liberals will have no such false limitation on them. They've already successfully run a candidate who clearly did not have two citizen parents at birth.
Mama Texan has said that if Ted Cruz should run for President, she would not vote for him. So imagine a lineup in which Ted Cruz faces someone like Obama. Mama Texan apparently believes that the "right" thing to do is stay home from the polls and not support a candidate like Cruz.
And she believes other people should do this as well.
In a close election (and most of them are close these days), that could cost us the Presidency. And we really cannot afford another 4 years of somebody like Obama. We can't afford the next 4 years, or even the 4 years with him that we've already had.
So I am genuinely sorry that that came across as needlessly cruel. At the same time, I think this is a pretty important issue.
Do you believe in freedom of speech? Do you believe in the validity of your argument? If you do, then I would think that you might have confidence in it, and perhaps realize that in responding as you did, you might have turned away more than you might have convinced, by treating as you did someone who disagreed with you.
You're taking the defensive posture that it's unnecessary for you to make your case, and that simply providing selected citations is sufficient. It's not, Jeff. You'd get nowhere in a court of law using that tactic, and you'll never win any debate that way.
This is simply not true.
When I lay out a clear and logical analysis, as I've done with US v Wong Kim Ark, birthers here (probably including yourself) accuse me of not having quoted authorities saying explicitly that the children of aliens are eligible.
When I provide direct quotes from the best legal authorities of how they defined "natural born citizen," including quotes such as the one from Rawle which explicitly says the children born on US soil of alien parents are natural born citizens, birthers then say I "haven't made an argument."
It really doesn't matter whether I present analysis or quotes. Whatever form of good evidence one presents, birthers such as yourself will demand the other.
As for winning debates and getting somewhere in a court of law, at least roughly half a dozen courts of law have ruled DIRECTLY AGAINST your claims, noting that the children born on US soil, even of aliens, are NATURAL BORN CITIZENS.
Answer me this:
If you're crafting a new model of government, and are setting forth the qualifications for the various offices, would you not...
This is the fundamental point at which you and other birthers have gone completely wrong.
It is to frame the question in those terms.
The question is NOT, "What would you do?"
The question is not even, "What 'would' the Founders and Framers 'have done'?"
The question is: "What DID the Founders and Framers DO?"
And the only way that can be answered is NOT to start with a theory. It is to start with history and law, and discern the theory behind their history and law once you've determined what they themselves did.
If you ask the WRONG question, then you come up with your OWN theory of natural born citizenship.
If you're lucky, then that theory matches the theory that our Founders and Framers were working with. If you're unlucky, then you end up producing a competing theory that is NOT the theory they were working with.
In that instance, you produce a competing theory to theirs. And you end up trying to push YOUR theory, not THEIR theory, and your imagined version of history, not the real one.
And that is exactly what birthers have done.
Well Bless your heart.
Do please show me where I said anything about 'staying home from the polls'.
OR where I claimed to be any kind of expert
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I'm here for knowledge, Jeff. NOT YOUR interpretation, not YOUR rationalizations, not your unsubstantiated textual assaults where you do nothing more that arrogantly INSTRUCT people in the error of their ways and pompously insult them when they disagree.
Rational debates are a give and take proposition, Jeff, and people here FOR rational debates realize that.
Again, I am genuinely sorry that what I said came across as needlessly cruel.
At the same time, I'm not sure that you appreciate what I and others have received and do regularly continue to receive here merely for posting our sincere understanding of the absolute truth. I think you would find that MamaTexan has not been excruciatingly polite herself.
Those of us who post an accurate view of history, law and the Constitution are regularly subjected to various forms of name-calling and abuse. We are "trolls," "Obots," "paid." MamaTexan, for example, earlier insulted me by asking, more than once, whether I was being "paid by the word."
DiogenesLamp once stated in all apparent seriousness that he would cheer if I could be taken out and shot.
This was the proposed penalty for my stating my understanding of the truth.
So if you wish to support civility and freedom of speech, I'm for that. It would be good though if both sides of the debate were sincerely sorry on occasions when they came across as cruel. In my own experience, I cannot recall that that has ever been the case.
Yes; no. At least, at the moment I can't think of a third.
Sorry for what may appear to be annoying questions, but IMHO, a great deal of confusion comes from someone saying one term thinking it means one thing and the person they said it to thinks it means something totally different.
No problem, and I agree. There's often quite a bit of mindreading in these topics, and the less of it the better.
Perhaps we can begin again. Take care.
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