Coulter: Ted Cruz might not be eligible for the presidency

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.

The Court didn’t have any interest in 2nd Amendment cases for decades. They avoided the subject for over 70 years. When they finally ruled in DC v. Heller, they overturned dozens of “precedents”.

US v. Miller was a flawed decision to begin with, but lower courts had twisted it to he point where you would have a hard time recognizing what they were citing if they didn’t name the decision. And the Supreme Court looked the other way.

Does that mean the lower courts (and the Supreme Court) were right all that time? Or were they just cowards that refused to admit their mistake?

In another context: the 1st Amendment was only considered to protect POLITICAL speech until the Court ruled that it also protected all forms of speech. Does that mean we didn’t have that right before that ruling?

It’s time for the Court to stop hiding behind the skirts of unrelated precedents. It has never been an issue before now, because no one has so brazenly ignored the Constitutional eligibility requirements for a President.

All:

Article II

No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

As commas are used now, the second comma wouldn't be written. Besides, in the context of the time of adoption (preventing foreign influences), that's the only way it made sense, with citizens having been born elsewhere having been eligible only at the time of adoption of our Constitution.

The meaning of the phrase, natural born citizen, is obvious to us all. I disagree that those born in other countries to American parents should be described as natural born citizens for the purpose of presidential elections, because too many of them are exposed too much to foreign culture and government (or worse, to global government)--antithetical to the reasons our founding fathers authored such language into our Constitution (for avoiding foreign influences in our government). Too many Americans on foreign soil for more than short visits are now more loyal to foreign nations or global government than to the U.S.A.

Xsins, you are confused, and according our framers and justices less respect than they deserve. Words have meaning. You have spent many sentences reciting U.S.C. - U.S. Code - when the definition of natural born citizen is not found anywhere in U.S. Code. There are two classes of citizen, natural born and naturalized. U.S. Code only deals with naturalization, having its justification in Article 1 Section 8, and the first federal definition for who were citizens in the 14th Amendment, 1867.

I won’t repeat from my earlier note, the words of two chief justices and the author of the naturalization amendment, John Bingham. I don’t know why you insist, but we have original sources, including John Jay’s note to change Madison’s requirement for presidential eligibility from “citizen” to “natural born citizen.” That change had to be made because the only citizen defined in the Constitution is a natural born citizen, each state having its own rules for naturalization, and most states differed from one another.

The case most cited by Obots claiming it rendered Obama eligible, is Wong Kim Ark. Justice Gray, who wrote the decision took a cook’s tour of English common-law before arriving at his decision, and discussed the meaning of the British natural-born-subject. Obama supporters knew they could confuse people, citing some sloppy state opinions claiming that our natural born citizen is equivalent. Gray wrote a labyrinthine decision, but cited Chief Justice Waite’s decision and quoted the Minor definition repeated above, perhaps because he may have know that his sponsor, Chester Arthur, was born on our soil to a British father. Wong Kim, born on our soil to parents who were domiciled in the U.S. was not rendered natural born; he is a 14th Amendment naturalized citizen, like Obama, Rubio, Cruz, Haley, Jindal, and McCain.

If you really want to understand, read Perkins v. Elg, a 1939 case about a girl, Marie Elg, born to naturalized parents in New York, but taken back to Sweden because her father had found work there (the depression). When she was twenty, Marie decided to return to her birth place, but was refused by the AG, who thought she had given up her citizenship. Her parents repudiated their U.S. citizenship. The decision from Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, who once ran for the presidency against Woodrow Wilson, was that Marie’s citizenship, natural born citizenship, was granted by God and could not be denied by men - congress.

That decision is interesting for a number of reasons, but here, the clear application of the Minor precedent, her parents were both naturalized citizens and she was born on our soil, is what is striking. Even though raised in Sweden, by parents who later repudiated their U.S. Citizenship, Marie was a natural born citizen, and, after reaching 35 years and with 14 years residence, could run for President if she wished.

We have a Constitution we can change, so it is noteworthy how many presumed conservatives blithely declare that because Obama did it, Article II Section 1 is now moot. By that they imply that we are ruled by a mob, or by what they tell us is popular opinion. But then why did seven Congressmen try to amend the Constitutions eligibility requirement between G.W. and Obama?

They, and who “they” are is not at all clear, wanted power and have no problem, like many if not most on this thread, depreciating the Constitution to achieve power. A few months ago they were chomping to agree with the anti-Constitutional reformers to bless Rubio. Now it is Cruz. Don’t you all wonder why the GOP power brokers seem only to be finding naturalized citizen to opposed Hillary”.

Noting that no response in this thread questions the citations I provided, quotations from founders and our Supreme Court, readers should read carefully and critically because the domination of digital media is an openly stated tactic of the left. When people argue about laws and don’t cite their sources, or intentionally confuse the terms, it probably isn’t an accident.

The Supreme Court has refused to hear any of the eligibility cases, so the Minor interpretation remains the law. Because the two Obama appointees who will lose their jobs of Obama is recognized as ineligible refuse to recuse themselves. The Supreme Court is helpless, and, as we have learned, has a Chief Justice who may be compromised, and will decide as he is ordered to decide. Many cases cite Minor as precedent, and many of those may have to be re-examined if the Minor precedent is discarded. Precedent isn’t binding, but the law is certainly weakened as it becomes more and more arbitrary.

The change being argued for Cruz, Rubio, Jindal, Haley, and Obama would likely render anchor babies eligible to our presidency, and allow Congress to make a law to enable anyone they choose to be president, certainly not what our framers and founders intended. It would further blur the lines between branches of government, already disappearing as Obama’s handlers find ways to circumvent the legislature. Much of our Constitution is already moot with federal law trumping state law whenever a judge so decides.
But when you cite U.S. Code as controlling who may be President, who is a natural born citizen, unless you enjoy being creative, you are in legal limbo. U.S. Code nowhere defines natural born citizens, and the Article Section 1 still requires that our President be natural born, regardless of what Ann Coulter says.

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