Posted on 08/13/2013 3:12:38 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Via Mediaite and MFP, forget the legal niceties about what “natural born” might or should mean and look at this from a court’s perspective. Realistically, no judge is going to disqualify a national figure who stands a real chance of being the nominee of one of the two major parties unless the law leaves them no wiggle room to rule otherwise. Tens of millions of Americans would be willing to vote for Ted Cruz; to strike him from the ballot on a technicality in an ambiguous case would be momentously undemocratic. Against that backdrop, the Supreme Court would almost certainly end up reading “natural born” in the narrowest way, excluding anyone who was born abroad of two non-citizen parents but including everyone else. Cruz, who was born in Canada but whose mother was a U.S. citizen, would qualify, not only for the reason Ace gives here but more broadly because courts don’t want to be seen as hard-ass enforcers of what’s perceived by many to be an unusually archaic bit of the Constitution. They’ll dump a true foreigner because they have to. They don’t have to dump the son of an American citizen like Cruz, so they won’t. Take it to the bank.
But never mind that. Given the angst and ambiguity over the “natural born” clause in the last two cycles, why not pass an amendment to replace it with something like, say, a 25-year residency requirement? The point of the clause was to make sure that rich foreigners couldn’t cross the ocean and buy their way into the presidency, which wasn’t a baseless concern for a group of former British subjects who worried about loyalists to the throne subverting the revolution. In practice, though, it means that someone who’s born on U.S. soil but lives their entire life abroad, only to return and run for president decades later, is constitutionally more trustworthy than someone like Cruz who was born abroad but has lived his entire life here. Does anyone question whether Ted Cruz, decades later, might be more loyal to Canada than to the U.S.? Right at this moment, House Republicans are gearing up to pass a variation of the DREAM Act that would grant citizenship to illegals who were brought here at a young age by their parents on the theory that the place where you’re raised is more likely to shape your patriotic loyalty than the happenstance of your birth. If those kids are trustworthy enough to help decide at the polls who the president should be, why shouldn’t they be eligible for the presidency themselves? In a democracy, the president is, or should be, drawn from the citizenry. People who take certain draconian disqualifying actions, like committing felonies, are an exception, but what action has Cruz taken? Replace “natural born” with a residency requirement, which gives people the power to prove their loyalty, and you solve that problem.
(VIDEO-AT-LINK)
He's doing fine where he is. There are many capacities in which he can serve this country. The office of President may not be one of them. Several times in the past, I've outlined one, just one, scenario wherein Ted Cruz could be deemed eligible. There are some “ifs” involved:
- If Ted Cruz’ father is found to have thrown off his allegiance to pre-Revolutionary Cuba, by taking up arms against it and ultimately expatriating, then there can be no foreign claims of sovereignty upon Ted Cruz at birth paternally.
- If Canada made no jus soli claims of sovereignty upon Ted Cruz at birth due to his having been born under Canadian jurisdiction, then there can be no foreign claims of sovereignty upon Ted Cruz at birth as a result of having been born outside US jurisdiction.
If it is found that these two “ifs” resolve favorably for Ted Cruz, then he is eligible.
If not, then he's not.
Me too; he's eminently qualified for that job, in all respects. :)
Yes you are wrong, he was not born on the base but in a local civilian hospital.
You mean the letter that the hospital proudly displayed on the wall of the facility, until they took it down on the advice of Counsel? That letter?
Go back to the Fogbow, Obot.
No I don’t. Why would I have documented evidence? I’m just a guy posting on an Internet forum.
However a federal judge in Mississippi does have documented evidence including a copy of the original birth certificate and a Letter of Verification for it from the Hawaii state Registrar of Vital Statistics.
See pages 11 & 12: http://www.scribd.com/mobile/doc/96289285
It’s not up to me as voter to determine his elgibility and if it were to come to pass that he is on a Presidential ballot, I’m going to vote for him. A precedent has been set by obams’s election that if those whose duty it is to determine elgibilty fail and he’s elected there is nothing to do about it. I would certainly like to see a few more Ted Cruz types in the Senate and many more Louis Gohmerts in the House. Thank God for Texas.
Corruption runs deep considering that the la la governor couldn’t find the birth certificate anywhere, or have we frgot that?
Still defending your boy Obama on Free Republic, eh?
tic toc...
We sho don’t need no white hispanic cracka’s in the white house...
A trial on the merits was held in Georgia, at the specific request of the plaintiffs. Obama’s attorney had refused to show up and the judge was ready to issue a default judgement, but the plaintiffs requested a trial on the merits so it was held.
The judge ruled in Obama’s favor saying: “For the purposes of this analysis, the Court considered that Barack Obama was born in the United States. Therefore, as discussed in Ankeny, he became a citizen at birth and is a natural born citizen. Accordingly, President Barack Obama is eligible as a candidate for the presidential primary under O.C.G.A. under Section 21-2-5(b). February 3, 2012
http://www.scribd.com/doc/80424508/Swensson-Powell-Farrar-Welden-vs-Obama-Judge-Michael-Malihi-s-Final-Order-Georgia-Ballot-Access-Challenge-2-3-12
The Georgia Secretary of State then cleared Obama for the Georgia ballot. The plaintiffs appealed the ruling to the Georgia Superior Court and then on to the U.S. Supreme Court, but SCOTUS denied the appeal a hearing.
But he might also be... huh Ann? Book sales down a bit or do you have a new one about to launch?
Some on here want to take the “high road” on every issue as this nation plunges deeper and deeper into the pits. But, by golly - we can’t play the same game because we are better than that. yeah, look where that has gotten us. Of course, those purists will never find a candidate to vote for, because no one is good enough for them. At this rate, we’ll be stuck with another radical DEM for another 8 years after zero leaves office. Assuming, of course, that he does.
“He’s more eligible than Obama ever was, and remember this is Krispy Kreme’s ex wife.”
How far have conservative principles fallen if ‘more eligible than Obama’ is the criteria we use.
Excellent post. I do not want him taken away from me as one of the Senators for Texas. Cruz is doing an excellent job.
“’high road’ on every issue as this nation plunges deeper and deeper into the pits”
Well, that’s the conflict isn’t it? Some who believe that principles when inconvenient ought to be discarded and others who believe that principles are the guiding force in their life.
The point was loyalty -- not a document.
Cruz isn’t eligible.
He’s doing a good job where he is. Don’t fix something that isn’t broken.
Here’s the argument that McStain is not eligible:
“In 1936, the Canal Zone fell into a gap in the law, covered neither by the citizenship clause nor Revised Statutes section 1993 (passed as the Act of May 24, 1934), the only statute applicable to births to U.S. citizens outside the United States. As then-Representative John Sparkman explained in 1937: “the Canal Zone is not such foreign territory as to come under the law of 1855 [Revised Statutes section 1993] and, on the other hand, it is not part of the United States which would bring it within the fourteenth amendment.” The problem was well known; Richard W. Flournoy’s 1934 American Bar Association Journal article, Proposed Codification of Our Chaotic Nationality Laws, explained “we have no statutory provisions defining the nationality status of persons born in the Canal Zone . . . .”
Because the Canal Zone was a “no man’s land,” in the words of Representative Sparkman, in 1937 Congress passed a statute, the Act of Aug. 4, 1937 (now codified at 8 U.S.C. § 1403(a)) granting citizenship to “[a]ny person born in the Canal Zone on or after February 26, 1904” who had at least one U.S. citizen parent. This Act made Senator McCain a U.S. citizen before his first birthday. But again, to be a natural born citizen, one must be a citizen at the moment of birth. Since Senator McCain became a citizen in his eleventh month of life, he does not satisfy this criterion, is not a natural born citizen, and thus is not “eligible to the Office of President”
I report you decide. :-)
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