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.
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I recall her saying she’s given up on Christie and she’s for Cruz.
Nothing to do with Canada - his father was a Cuban citizen at the time of Cruz’s birth.
There is no ambiguity; natural born means to parents of two US citizens, regardless of location of the actual birth.
If one parent is in the process of becoming a US citizen, I could see some wiggle room. That judgement should be an act of Congress.
So far, I think Ted Cruz has been great.
Which is why he was disqualified and McCain became president... oh, wait, that never happened...
Too busy on her knee's with Romney and Christie; although I'm still not convinced she plays for the right team..
Ann has placed unmerited trust in the courts. I believe her statement holds true IF and ONLY IF said candidate is a liberal. If the candidate is conservative, I have no doubt the courts, given the opportunity, will pull out all stops to find some figment, any figment, to hang their “ineligible” hat on, and gleefully deny voters the opportunity to vote for a conservative.
I understood the McClame issue to be that he was born of two American parents, but on a US military base in Panama, and the Congress was declaring that being born on the base was like being born in the US. Am I wrong on this?
I don’t think the issues were at all the same with that Bat, Juano.
Obama has produced three forged documents, the “certification of live birth,” the “birth certificate,” and the “draft registration,” and locked up everything else.
Ted Cruz has produced no forgeries.
I will care that Cruz was born in Canada and had a non-citizen father when Obama is put in jail for his forgeries, for fraudulently collecting a federal salary, and for his usurpation of a federal office.
Cruz may or may not be eligible but one thing is for sure: if he ever runs, this controversy will sink his candidacy.
National elections these days are very close and he’ll lose a lot of votes because he is Canadian.
Ann’s full on GOPe.
If O was born in Hawaii it wasn’t on the day he says is his birthday.
His mother was in Washington state just a few weeks later.
In 1961 it would have been virtually impossible for her to travel from Hawaii to Washington state with a baby she just spit out a few weeks before.
I’m not even sure a baby today can fly just a few weeks after birth because of the risk of rupturing their eardrums with pressure up and pressure down.
Why would Cruz even want to run in hopes of presiding over THIS mess?
There are plenty of people who are born overseas to American mothers. They are considered Americans themselves. I knew plenty of people like that overseas, when I grew up. Sometimes they had the option of dual citizenship if born in another country, but they were automatically given citizenship of the U.S. because it was the mother’s country of citizenship. So, if this is indeed Cruz’s situation, I don’t see how this should disqualify him - unless he was given Canadian citizenship exclusively, upon birth.
There are plenty of people who are born overseas to American mothers. They are considered Americans themselves. I knew plenty of people like that overseas, when I grew up. Sometimes they had the option of dual citizenship if born in another country, but they were automatically given citizenship of the U.S. because it was the mother’s country of citizenship. So, if this is indeed Cruz’s situation, I don’t see how this should disqualify him - unless he was given Canadian citizenship exclusively, upon birth.
??/
She had her name changed to ‘Obama’ on their divorce, according to another thread (unusual in my experience) so that her signature on the purported birth certificate was fraudulent, ie someone added ‘Obama.’
Everything about him has a bad odor.
Adams Apple Annie wore out several pair of knee pads...and wasn’t KK’s wife but rather his lover....EEEuuu...
She's a partisan establishment weasel like Karl Rove.
We find a guy who has some qualities of Reagan (fearlessness and courage) and weasels like Rove and Coulter are the first to gripe and moan.
She’s hetero.... Many male lovers and one night stands. I imagine that social life is waning along with her looks.
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