Posted on 03/12/2015 12:32:49 PM PDT by SoConPubbie
Two of the top lawyers for the Obama and Bush administrations agree on this: Sen. Ted Cruz can become president. Legally speaking, anyway.
Paul D. Clement, former solicitor general for President George W. Bush, and Neal Katyal, former acting solicitor general for President Obama, penned a piece for the Harvard Law Review tackling the question of what the Constitution means when it says that the president must be at least 35 years old, a U.S. resident for at least 14 years and a “natural born Citizen.”
“All the sources routinely used to interpret the Constitution confirm that the phrase ‘natural born Citizen’ has a specific meaning: namely, someone who was a U.S. citizen at birth with no need to go through a naturalization proceeding at some later time,” they wrote. “And Congress has made equally clear from the time of the framing of the Constitution to the current day that, subject to certain residency requirements on the parents, someone born to a U.S. citizen parent generally becomes a U.S. citizen without regard to whether the birth takes place in Canada, the Canal Zone, or the continental United States.”
Cruz was born in a Canadian hospital to a mother who was a U.S. citizen. But he’s only the latest potential presidential candidate who has had his qualifications questioned. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was born in the Panama Canal Zone. Former Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.) was born in Arizona before it was a state. Gov. George Romney (R-Mich.) was delivered in Mexico to U.S. residents. All were qualified to serve, . . . .
The First Congress, they noted, established that children born abroad to U.S. citizens were themselves citizens at birth “and explicitly recognized that such children were ‘natural born citizens.’
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
This is what I mean when I say I see a "larger Arc of History." Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote her book when slavery was an accepted institution. Before the dust Settled, Lincoln would remark, "So you're the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war!"
Also as Franklin said:
...when Truth and Error have fair Play, the former is always an overmatch for the latter...
Do not underestimate the power of truth in conquering the power of lies. This particular lie has just had a very good head start, and was initiated for the most altruistic of reasons.
The only advantage that the truth has is that it makes more sense and comports with the available facts.
There is only one way to keep any organization intact for an extended period. When severe disagreements arise, there HAS to be a mechanism by which they are settled. Otherwise, the organization falls apart.
Ha! Look around! :)
So if you want a country that lasts a long time, some group has to have the power to settle things. In our present system, that’s the Court.
So you will be okay with Abortion and Homosexual marriage? Cause I just don't intend to regard those issues as settled. For that matter, the Nation didn't regard the issue of Slavery settled either, even after the Supreme court ruled in Dred Scott v Sanford.
They may be able to decide what the legions of Federal guns will enforce, but this isn't the same thing as making people accept altered reality.
This is a very good article. thanks for posting it. Takes one more arrow out of the quiver of those opposing Cruz. Cruz has earned a grade in the A range on my ratings of GOPers possibly running for president. (Using Beck’s polls as a basis). About 5 others are in that range, according to my preferences. Needless to say, Bush, Cristie and Graham are in the D or F range...
Another good example of a Judiciary non-sequitur. They had no real proof of where he was born, and they just assumed that a citizen by the 14th amendment was the same thing as a "natural" citizen.
Shoddy and incompetent work, but the courts never have to answer for their blunders.
BTW, there have been claims President Arthur was born in Canada.
Well aware of it. This was actually alleged at the time, but President Arthur denied it. He also took great pains to muddle any efforts to find out more details about him. Among other things, he deliberately misled people as to his date of birth. He burned all his documentation before his death. He acted like a man with something to hide, and as Leo Donofrio pointed out, it appears that he had good reason to do so.
Retard alert
Yes, every time I see Ankeny v Daniels, I think "Well there goes an incredible bit of stupidity which I would be embarrassed to point at in support of my argument."
It's like citing Dred Scott v Sandford. It OUGHT to be an embarrassment.
Agreed, but the more important objection is that the gold standard simply does not provide a stable value to currency in an economy with variable production levels, even assuming a constant gold supply. To see this more easily, consider a simplified economy that produces only one good, widgets. Assume that the dollar is pegged at some level to a constant gold supply. That would imply a constant supply of dollars in the economy. For the sake of ease of math, let the constant dollar supply be $1,000. Now consider what happens in our simplified economy. Suppose in year one, 500 widgets are produced. That implies that the value of a widget is $2. Conversely, that implies that the real value of a dollar is 0.5 widgets. Next year, however, the widget factories only make 250 widgets. The cost of those widgets would be $4. The value of the dollar has plunged to 0.25 widgets!
The gold standard has NOT eliminated inflation, which is the primary reason that its proponents give in its favor. The solution is obviously to allow the supply of dollars to change. With $500 in the economy we retain the $2 widget price, and therefore the 0.5 widget dollar value. That’s why a variable money supply actually works better than a fixed money supply. Of course, that’s in theory; I would agree that in practice the Fed typically does not maintain dollar values well, but that’s also not its only policy goal. Rigid maintenance of dollar value also has negative effects on economic growth.
That very much depends on the definition you're using of stability -- having a store of value in gold [or silver] has traditionally been considered very good despite variances in the supply precisely because the metals themselves have intrinsic worth, which means that there is a baseline "bottom" to their value. (Fiat money systems have no such bottom: they can print money all they want to flood the market or, more easily, just add a few zeroes on in their electronic ledger.)
In this sense gold [and silver] really are stable. And, if you look toward antiquity, you'll see that metal coinage only really got screwed up when the purity standards were loosened.
To see this more easily, consider a simplified economy that produces only one good, widgets. Assume that the dollar is pegged at some level to a constant gold supply. That would imply a constant supply of dollars in the economy. For the sake of ease of math, let the constant dollar supply be $1,000. Now consider what happens in our simplified economy. Suppose in year one, 500 widgets are produced. That implies that the value of a widget is $2. Conversely, that implies that the real value of a dollar is 0.5 widgets. Next year, however, the widget factories only make 250 widgets. The cost of those widgets would be $4. The value of the dollar has plunged to 0.25 widgets!
And?
No, seriously, this isn't a bad model at all, nor is it a bad phenomenon — let real market forces work.
Let the producers compete to produce their widget cheaper.
The gold standard has NOT eliminated inflation, which is the primary reason that its proponents give in its favor.
Actually it does — What you illustrated was not inflation, but supply and demand.
The big difference between inflation and supply/demand is that inflation is essentially solely the money-supply — that good X might be made for much cheaper in the future [aluminum, as a historical example], or might go up in the future [gasoline, as a historical example]
The solution is obviously to allow the supply of dollars to change.
Why?
No, seriously — why should we allow the supply to be easily changeable?
We could just let it alone (or a slow increase, as forcing minting of purity-ensured coinage would be) and let the pressures act on the market.
With $500 in the economy we retain the $2 widget price, and therefore the 0.5 widget dollar value. That’s why a variable money supply actually works better than a fixed money supply. Of course, that’s in theory; I would agree that in practice the Fed typically does not maintain dollar values well, but that’s also not its only policy goal. Rigid maintenance of dollar value also has negative effects on economic growth.
It sounds to me like this is the solving of what is essentially a non-problem. (That is I reject the assertion that a Rigid maintenance of dollar value also has negative effects on economic growth.
)
If Senator Cruz’s parents applied for a “Consular Report of Birth Abroad of a Citizen of the United States of America” (Form FS-240), then he was classified as a “Citizen of the United States At Birth” and he will qualify as a Natural Born Citizen.
That document is recognized in the United States as proof of the acquisition of U.S. citizenship at Birth and not being a naturalized United States citizen.
Of course the Ankeny ruling must be viewed in that light by those on the other side of the issue and yet it is the most cited recent ruling on natural born citizen status and unlike Dred Scott v Sanford, it has generated next to no opposition within the legal/judicial community.
Three years after Ankeny v Daniels:
Voeltz v. Obama, John C. Cooper, Leon County, Florida Circuit Court Judge: “In addition, to the extent that the complaint alleges that President Obama is not a ‘natural born citizen’ even though born in the United States, the Court is in agreement with other courts that have considered this issue, namely, that persons born within the borders of the United States are ‘natural born citizens’ for Article II, Section 1 purposes, regardless of the citizenship of their parents.”—September 6, 2012
Its unkind to refer to Governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana of Ankeny v Daniels as a “retard.” ;-)
He was simply defending himself against the claim that he had no right to approve Indiana’s Electoral votes going to the winner of the popular vote in that state.
Governor Daniels had enough of his mental faculties to have served as Director of The Office of Management and Budget for President George W. Bush before becoming Governor.
Cut Mitch some slack!
I refer to the court
The court rules on the basis of the arguments presented by the plaintiff and the defendant.
The Supreme Court ruled in 1884 that there are only two types of American citizens: citizens at birth and naturalized citizens. There is no difference between a natural born citizen and a citizen of the United States at birth. They are identical, just slightly different terms of art.
If a sound Constitutional argument can be made that there is indeed a third category of citizen, “natural born” that is different from a “citizen of the United States at birth,” someone is going to need to find four Supreme Court Justices who will agree to hear an appeal based on that specific point. Thus far, those four Justices have not been uncovered. On the current court there is no Justice who supports that position.
Elk v Wilkins, 112 U. S. 94 (1884):
“The distinction between citizenship by birth and citizenship by naturalization is clearly marked in the provisions of the constitution, by which ‘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;’ and ‘the congress shall have power to establish an uniform rule of naturalization.’ Const. art. 2, § 1; art. 1, § 8.”
What would be your proposed mechanism for making your proposed interpretation effective?
As I think I made clear, I dislike much of what the Court decides, but I recognize that some mechanism to settle disputes, short of war, is necessary.
Your example of the Dred Scott decision is instructive. It was overridden by the people of the USA, but at a cost of 700,000+ dead men, immense financial expense and a long step towards the destruction of the system the Founders intended.
If you have a somewhat less destructive method for overturning Court decisions, I’d sure like to see it.
BTW, no offense, but your comment reminded me somewhat of Bluto in Animal House, “Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?”
The Constitution provides no mechanism for a candidate to prove his eligibility.
To me, the obvious reason for this is that the Founders thought the Electoral College would function as intended, that the Electors would actually elect the President they thought best suited to lead the nation. Thus the electors would decide whether a candidate met the specified criteria.
The EC, of course, only functioned as intended twice, electing Washington. It was simply one of the Founders more poorly designed systems. Just couldn’t work.
I quite agree.
For most of the 19th century the Gold Standard did prevent inflation. In fact, there was considerable deflation over the century, as the rapidly expanding economies of the world intermittently outran the supply of gold.
The ideal is to have the money supply expand at the same rate, or perhaps very slightly faster, than the amount of stuff it can be used to buy. The problem is that whoever is put in charge of deciding how much and when to expand the money supply is thereby given enormous power.
Your knowledge of economics is a bit off. Inflation IS supply and demand. Inflation is nothing more than a lowering of the price of money. This is certainly backwards from our ordinary way of thinking. We normally think of the price of goods in terms of money, but it’s just as valid to think of the cost of a dollar in terms of the goods (and services, of course, just abbreviating in my writing here) that can be purchased with a dollar. It’s certainly customary to think of a hamburger as costing $4. It’s just as valid, though, to say that a dollar costs 1/4 of a hamburger. Since money has a price associated with it, where does that price come from? It comes from the supply and demand of money, same as any other price. Inflation is the decline in the price of money. Deflation is the opposite; the rise in the price of money.
Money supply is to at least some extent controllable by monetary policy. Money demand is directly related to the economic output of the country’s economy. The more goods being produced, the more demand there is for money to facilitate the transactions involved with those goods. If the money supply remains constant, but the real economy grows, the demand for money increases, and therefore the cost of money increases as well - that’s deflation. If the real economy contracts with a constant supply of money, the demand for money falls and therefore it’s price declines - that’s inflation. (Remember falling price of money = rising price of goods and vice-versa). Only if the money supply is adjusted based on the production of goods can the price of money be kept stable.
I mentioned above that the supply of money can only be controlled to some extent by monetary policy because money does not just include currency, but anything that is functionally equivalent to money; that is anything that can be used to make transactions. Credit card debt, for instance, certainly functions as money in our economy. Bank deposits also create new money since banks don’t just leave them in their vaults, but loan those funds out to others. Thus, the dollar you deposit in your checking account is loaned to someone else and becomes a dollar in someone else’s hands as well. Other financial instruments to greater or lesser degrees also can function in this way as well. That issue is compounded by the fact that real-time information regarding the production level of the real economy is always lacking. Production level information is unavoidably information regarding PAST production, not present production.
In general, that’s why monetary policymakers don’t try to directly control the money supply based on economic output. Instead, indirect measures such as price levels and unemployment levels are used to determine whether a given monetary policy is appropriate, that is, whether the money supply should be expanded or contracted. It certainly could well be argued that active monetary policy is not even a desirable course of action and that market forces should be allowed to adjust the money supply as needed. (Remember this is possible because of non-currency moneys that are out there).
And of course, in my original post, I meant that IN THIS EXAMPLE, the gold standard hasn’t eliminated inflation. In an expanding economy with a static money supply, you obviously wouldn’t have inflation. Each dollar would correspond to more units of production, so the price of each unit of production would decline, which is deflation.
However, it was the gold standard combined with the expansion of the American economy, not the gold standard in and of itself that resulted in deflation.
Further, we are conditioned to view inflation as a negative (and it is), but that does not imply that the opposite is a positive. Deflation is just as bad, if not worse, in macroeconomic terms. For instance, consumer spending is poor in deflationary economies. Why would you buy something today (assuming you actually could do without it) when it will cost you less if you wait until later? Later, the same logic still applies. So deflation discourages consumption. Without consumption, what reason do producers have to produce goods? Thus, deflation encourages economic slowdowns. Of course, economic slowdowns, with the static money supply, tend to cause inflation, which in turn leads to increases in production. Therefore, this produced the classic “boom and bust” cycle that was a hallmark of the American economy during the years when the gold standard was in effect.
See my post to OneWingedShark above. It was not the gold standard that prevented inflation. It was the gold standard combined with the generally expansionary economy that did the job. The problem was that the gold standard contained within it the seeds of economic contraction. You are absolutely correct; the money supply should be adjusted to keep up with production. The gold standard, by definition, has a money supply that is independent of production. There are problems with the implementation of that ideal, though, as I outlined in my previous posts.
Ah, yes, the same unemployment numbers that say that we have no unemployment (and underemployment) problem, let's combine that with the reduction in container/serving sizes that we've seen in the past year and call that an accurate measure of the economy! Brilliant!
This is precisely why a tie to a non-replicable physical asset would be a good thing. Even with the variance of e.g. mines opening/closing, it would not be anywhere near as manipulable as this is.
Who said anything about a third category? Naturalization statutes can and do confer citizenship at birth.
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