The opinion of a lifetime bureaucrat from the department formerly headed by Hillary Clinton carries no weight.
What matters to me is whether we as Freepers are going to go to war on this issue in order that Chris Chrisie and Lindsey Graham will sneak in under the tent and grab the nomination.
If anyone is so willing to die on this hill and let the country slide further towards tyranny, then we should let them die on the vine before the battle begins.
Right now Free Republic appears to be THE gathering place for those who are so intent on dying on the NBC hill, even if it results in the destruction of our Liberty and taking as many people as they can down that road.
The issue is at best an esoteric exercise in the interpretation of an archaic expression which never had a uniform definition before the Constitution was drafted and is now even more subject to varied opinions as to what was meant. The clause was inserted to prevent a president from having divided loyalties. No one on this forum can possibly state that Ted Cruz, who was born in Canada while his parents were working under a US work Visa has ANY loyalty to the country of his birth. There is no possibility that the founders would have allowed the country to go to hell in order to prevent a person in the shoes of Ted Cruz from becoming President at a time such as this.
Ted Cruz is in every sense of the word a Natural Born Citizen of the United States of America. The burden to show otherwise is not only on those who claim otherwise, but if their arguments must legally rise to the level of Clear and Convincing proof that Ted Cruz is not included in the definition of NBC both in the literal sense of the words as they were understood at the time of the drafting of the constitution, but also that it was the intent of the framers to specifically exclude all citizens in the same situation as Ted Cruz, even if it meant that it would result in the election of someone who had no regard whatsoever for the preservation of the Constitution itself.
Ted Cruz may be our last best hope to save the Constitution. If we get an NBC like Chris Christie or Lindsey Graham, then the Constitution will surely find its final testing place as a dead letter.
Yup.
He was born of two citizen parents.
He was born on US soil.
If you'd like, I can produce a birth certificate every bit as valid as the one The Won uses to prove his bona fides to prove it.
Understood and agreed.
I began my mostly adversarial relationship with FR birthers in 2008 (after having been one of them for a short time) because I thought some of their conclusions and theories damaged the reputation of FR and conservatism. I spent months disputing demonstrably false Internet rumors. It was brutal at times and a lot of fun at other times.
Then I came to the realization that I had reached those I could and mostly left them alone. I agree with them on some points and disagree with them on others. In the process of getting to this point, I came to know many of them. Most of them have pure intentions and do not want to betray their principles.
I’m hopeful that both sides can come to respect the position of the other so neither side has to die on hill, so-to-speak.
FWIW, that part of the Foreign Affairs manual was written long before Hillary Clinton. It’s been the official position of the U.S. government for a long time.