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)
Really, I didn't know that the British had citizens.
Some nice stuff you have there, but my question on “show me” derived from another post saying to change NBC would require a Constitutional Amendment, which made my Constitutional pique most appropriate.
Considering you have more experience in the BS pollution business, how could we compare with another less baseless less opinionated post, in which case your last post could shockingly be true.
Have a good evening my FRiend.
Flattery will win any discussion X-spurt. Yes, changing NBC, until someone can support any other thesis with provisions of the Constitution, does require either an amendment or a Constitutional Convention. This is explicit in Article V. Otherwise Congress is not subject to judicial review since anything Congress doesn't agree with they would be able to change by reinterpreting the meaning of a provision. Requiring two thirds of both houses and confirmation by three quarters of the states would have buried Obamacare, which itself certainly tramples on several provisions.
A look at 8 U.S. code, and the always changing complexity of naturalization law suggests that the framers realized that the authority of the Constitution needed to be stable. Criteria for the leader of the country, commander in chief, and independence of the executive branch required it, and instability would be likely to cost freedoms, fortunes, and lives. Natural Born Citizen comes from natural law, with its millennia of acceptance. Chief Justice Waite noted in Minor v. Happersett that there was doubt about who were citizens, which definition had just undergone a major transformation with the 14th Amendment.
With the dozens of nationality laws after the 1790 Congress, that First Congress law has been used again and again to confuse the public. It has been cited again and again as if it had not been repealed in 1790 .
Our discussion shows the importance of Article 1 because most citizens are afraid to ask questions, the goal of propagandists. Public truth has the potential to attract the attention of the IRS or other government retribution such as was dealt now former Congressman Nathan Deal.
Sadly, since I think he has provided some balance to the mainstream media, Glen Beck's group have shown surprising partisanship against the framers, bringing on as a "Constitutional authority," a lawyer who stated that Senate Resolution 511 "proved" that John McCain was a natural born citizen. Resolutions, even to us amateurs, do not make law. This lawyer, in discussion with two other attorneys employed by Beck, also cited a pitiful hack job written by the Congressional Research Service, which most non-experts could detect as logically flawed. These discussions at FR display a depth of understanding that no media source provides. Beck, Limbaugh, Levin, ... avoid John Marshall, Jay, Waite, Bingham like the plague and are more concerned with Ashton Kucher (sp?} than with honestly informing the public. They are, of course, businesses, but once they show their feet of clay how many will buy their books, or subscribe to their networks?
The discussion, presumably about Cruz's eligibility, was led by a former aide to Republican Dana Rohrabacher, who had attempted to amend Article II Section 1 in the mid-2000s. She spoke with complete ignorance of the many cases and amendment attempts, as if natural born citizenship could be simply resolved by Congress. They completely ignored the attempt by Obama and McCaskill, Senate Bill 2678, the ‘‘Children of Military Families Natural Born Citizen Act’’, February 2008. Is Beck afraid of the truth, or has he found a niche not occupied by the competition? His collection of rare historical books glaringly lacks any of the three copies of Vattel from Jefferson's personal library, or the four, including the copy Washington borrowed from The New York Lending Library in 1789, and never returned.
Good question, and my apologies if my comment was short. We need to help people think for themselves, guided by the original sources, at least those not corrupted by Soros' acolytes, who modified twenty five Supreme Court cases that happened to cite Minor v Happersett which digital copies they provided on the largest free legal archive in the U.S.,Justia.com. Find paper if you can, books, though Justia has now returned their archive to its former accurate representation. They were granted access to original documents, and made money while they used and corrupted them for political purposes. (Thanks Diana Cotter and Leo Donofrio).
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.