Posted on 01/17/2016 4:37:25 PM PST by BlackFemaleArmyColonel
In recent weeks, much time and effort has been devoted to debating whether Ted Cruz is a "natural born citizen" eligible for the presidency. Whichever way you come down on this question of constitutional interpretation, the real lesson of this debate should be the absurdity of excluding naturalized citizens from the presidency in the first place. Categorically excluding immigrants from the presidency is a form of arbitrary discrimination based on place of birth (or, in a few cases, parentage), which is ultimately little different from discrimination on the basis of race or ethnicity. Both ethnicity and place of birth are morally arbitrary characteristics which do not, in themselves, determine a person's competence or moral fitness for high political office.
The "natural born" citizen requirement was originally inserted into the Constitution because some of the Founders feared that European royalty or nobles might move to the United States, get elected to the presidency, and then use the office to advance the interests of their houses. Whatever the merits of this concern back in the 1780s, it is hardly a plausible scenario today.
One can argue that immigrants have less knowledge of the country and its customs, and might make worse presidents for that reason. But that problem is surely addressed by the constitutional requirement that a candidate for president must have been resident in the United States for at least fourteen years. As a practical matter, anyone who attains the political connections and public recognition needed to make a serious run for the presidency is likely to have at least as much knowledge of the US and American politics as most serious native-born candidates do.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Cruz CLAIMS to be an originalist, BUT his ignoring the fact that he is ineligible AND claiming it is “SETTLED LAW” shows he is anything but!
indeed..... (UK/the British Empire was the KEY foreign-born or foreign-sired persons our Founders sought to bar from the new office of the Presidency, the idea being that the mother country might try to slip its agents into America to capture the US government, or at least its executive, this way...it would have been futile to fight the Revolutionary War if the Brits could then just take back control ...either via agents or just persons with familial affinity for Britain....... Perhaps then it is ironic that the first serious problem we’ve had with a foreign-sired, and probably also foreign=born, president..at least in our lifetimes...has origins in the British Empire/Kenya...)
As for the NBC question, I have a brother in law who is a law school professor and he believes in the strict definition of natural born citizen, so strict that he claims one would have to have be born in the USA with two American parents to be a natural born citizen.
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That is the definition the founders used and what was cited later in Minor vs Happerset.
That was the standard I was taught and thought everyone knew until Obama came along and suddenly it was good enough just to be born here.
McCain’s fig leaf Resolution cited two citizen parents as the standard.
McCain was as ineligible as Obama and they used that to put an usurper in office.
He is proof of the wisdom of the founders.
So you think the stupid nonsense about is Cruz, or isn’t Cruz, is just perfectly crystal clear?
I think the NBC requirement is an archaic rule that needs to be discarded entirely. A person should be judged on his own character and not on some theoretical lack of dual loyalty. It did not apply to the founders and by the time it began to apply, the country was on a fast track to the Civil War.
The same constitution that required the president to be an NBC denied the rights of black people to even be naturalized citizens despite the fact that some of their families had been on the soil and working the damned soil for a hundred years before the founders were born.
The founders were far from perfect people. The NBC rule did not apply to any of them. It may have been their intention to prevent divided loyalties, but it hasn’t worked and never will.
I would prefer a rule that said that to be president you have to profess a belief in Christ as Lord and King. Too bad they didn’t insert that little clause. It might have prevented the Muslim in Chief from taking office.
You are CORRECT!
Gee just like those two young me who blew up the Boston Marathon
That’d work
Yep.
Gee just like that natural born citizen Timothy McVeigh.
Good information. .
Oh man .... SNL had fun with it last night, I tell you whut.
Prince Romanov could have run for POTUS thanks to Cruz
Sometimes it's entertaining (in a morbid way).
Sometimes it is not.
But it never stops. Like an infectious disease, I have tried to build up a tolerance to it.
Exactly, they finally figured out “Who’s going to stop us”
Agreed
I did not vote for McCain because we was ineligible as Obama.
A clearer definition and a residency requirement. People who grow up here can still be traitors, but it might eliminate the more outrageous pretenders.
The leaders in our government do what they are told. There are string pullers hell bent on making national boudaries about as significant as state boundaries. Level playing field. You can keep your cultural ID, but you will ruled from afar. Welcome to plantation America.
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You’re really over the edge.
That was Mike you should see what he called me. So let’s ask where the kitties store tonight.
He certainly is on the wrong site. ( and he accused me of being a du plant loll lol )
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