Posted on 08/30/2013 12:02:15 PM PDT by Jim Robinson
By Ilya Shapiro, Senior Fellow In Constitutional Sudies and Editor-In-Chief, Cato Supreme Court Review
As we head into a potential government shutdown over the funding of Obamacare, the iconoclastic junior senator from Texas — love him or hate him — continues to stride across the national stage. With his presidential aspirations as big as everything in his home state, by now many know what has never been a secret: Ted Cruz was born in Canada.
(Full disclosure: I’m Canadian myself, with a green card. Also, Cruz has been a friend since his days representing Texas before the Supreme Court.)
But does that mean that Cruz’s presidential ambitions are gummed up with maple syrup or stuck in snowdrifts altogether different from those plaguing the Iowa caucuses? Are the birthers now hoist on their own petards, having been unable to find any proof that President Obama was born outside the United States but forcing their comrade-in-boots to disqualify himself by releasing his Alberta birth certificate?
No, actually, and it’s not even that complicated; you just have to look up the right law. It boils down to whether Cruz is a “natural born citizen” of the United States, the only class of people constitutionally eligible for the presidency. (The Founding Fathers didn’t want their newly independent nation to be taken over by foreigners on the sly.)
What’s a “natural born citizen”? The Constitution doesn’t say, but the Framers’ understanding, combined with statutes enacted by the First Congress, indicate that the phrase means both birth abroad to American parents — in a manner regulated by federal law — and birth within the nation’s territory regardless of parental citizenship. The Supreme Court has confirmed that definition on multiple occasions in various contexts.
There’s no ideological debate here: Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe and former solicitor general Ted Olson — who were on opposite sides in Bush v. Gore among other cases — co-authored a memorandum in March 2008 detailing the above legal explanation in the context of John McCain’s eligibility. Recall that McCain — lately one of Cruz’s chief antagonists — was born to U.S. citizen parents serving on a military base in the Panama Canal Zone.
In other words, anyone who is a citizen at birth — as opposed to someone who becomes a citizen later (“naturalizes”) or who isn’t a citizen at all — can be president.
So the one remaining question is whether Ted Cruz was a citizen at birth. That’s an easy one. The Nationality Act of 1940 outlines which children become “nationals and citizens of the United States at birth.” In addition to those who are born in the United States or born outside the country to parents who were both citizens — or, interestingly, found in the United States without parents and no proof of birth elsewhere — citizenship goes to babies born to one American parent who has spent a certain number of years here.
That single-parent requirement has been amended several times, but under the law in effect between 1952 and 1986 — Cruz was born in 1970 — someone must have a citizen parent who resided in the United States for at least 10 years, including five after the age of 14, in order to be considered a natural-born citizen. Cruz’s mother, Eleanor Darragh, was born in Delaware, lived most of her life in the United States, and gave birth to little Rafael Edward Cruz in her 30s. Q.E.D.
So why all the brouhaha about where Obama was born, given that there’s no dispute that his mother, Ann Dunham, was a citizen? Because his mother was 18 when she gave birth to the future president in 1961 and so couldn’t have met the 5-year-post-age-14 residency requirement. Had Obama been born a year later, it wouldn’t have mattered whether that birth took place in Hawaii, Kenya, Indonesia, or anywhere else. (For those born since 1986, by the way, the single citizen parent must have only resided here for five years, at least two of which must be after the age of 14.)
In short, it may be politically advantageous for Ted Cruz to renounce his Canadian citizenship before making a run at the White House, but his eligibility for that office shouldn’t be in doubt. As Tribe and Olson said about McCain — and could’ve said about Obama, or the Mexico-born George Romney, or the Arizona-territory-born Barry Goldwater — Cruz “is certainly not the hypothetical ‘foreigner’ who John Jay and George Washington were concerned might usurp the role of Commander in Chief.”
Yes, yes, yes.
You are most certainly the legend in your own mind.
I don’t think you are stupid but, age has addled more than your mind.
So, we allow abortion on demand until there is a political will to stop all abortions?
All or nothing?
You will get NOTHING with your immoral, ignorant approach. Yes, I am calling your approach prideful, harmful and immoral.
You have absolutely nothing to show for your efforts. BTW, abortion clinics are closing at a record rate the last few years, due to SMART restrictions at the State level, which make abortion less and less profitable.
You are being ridiculous now, with your insults.
I am very confident that your IQ at your prime would not match mine, today.
Bring it on, dude. Because every time you do this I get another opportunity to point readers back to the plumb line of principle upon which this free republic, and our claim to liberty, is premised.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men..."
Life and equal protection are by definition all or nothing.
If you're not alive, you're dead. If all are not provided with the equal protection of the laws, no one's life or liberties are secure.
It's never "smart" to sacrifice the very principles upon which the rule of law and your claim to liberty depend. It might look that way in the short run, but over the long haul it is national suicide.
Our God-given, UNALIENABLE rights are supposed to be protected by the laws, not by travel inconvenience.
At my Prime?
Chit! You must be really old...
BTW, Mr. now suddenly holier than thou.
It was you who started with the sophomoric insults.
I can do this all day long, using you as batting practice.
When you care to engage on the more substantive issue without the banal and intellectual meandering feel free to make your case.
And you have long ago lost whatever mind you may have ever possessed.
You are most certainly the legend in your own mind.
I don’t think you are stupid but, age has addled more than your mind.
I do not know what he once was, but he is currently very stupid. I can't recall ever having seen more inane and childish ranting than what this kook puts forth. The closest second place kook in my experience was "Squeeky Frome". At least SHE was kicked off Free Republic for being a kooky loon.
She's still out there ranting in internet land, but fortunately we no longer have to notice her.
Kansas58's sole argument is the fallacy of false authority. That's it. He has nothing else.
Squeeky Frome?
OMG!!!!
I remember that loon.
Hey, I don’t mind arguing particulars but, this guy ain’t right in the head.
Do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
In the real world, few things and few solutions are really perfect.
So, losers like you are against anything that works.
Yes, you promote a losing strategy based on your own personal need to feel superior, which makes YOU a loser.
Your idiotic legal theories have less support now than you had a year ago.
You consider yourself some kind of intellectual giant, but the more people study these issues, the more they turn against you.
Putting aside the continuous sophomoric personal attacks that have nothing to do with anything of any real importance, your argument falls apart on the idea that legislation which violates "you shall not commit murder," and "we hold these truths to be self-evident," and "to secure the Blessings of Liberty to Posterity," and "No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law," and "no State shall deprive any person of life without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws," is somehow "good."
After you given all that up, in the name of your "clever" strategy, what, pray tell, do you have left that argues against the practice of human abortion?
That's what I think too. We joke about this or that person being "nuts", but in this case I think there really is some sort of psychological problem.
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