...worked as a dishwasher in Austin, TX for 50 cents/hr 7 days/week. Put himself through UT...
I wonder when he went to class, if he was working seven days a week for 50 cents an hour to pay his living expenses and tuition.
Posted on 08/26/2013 1:51:55 PM PDT by SoConPubbie
This article appeared on Daily Caller on August 26, 2013.
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.”
And you will be hearing this argument for the rest of your days.
You'd almost think that someone intentionally pitted us against each other...
Your use of upper case with regard to the “only place it appears” is critical from a legal standpoint. And all lawyers know it. A lawyer learns how to construe documents in his/her first year of study.
/johnny
"This is incorrect. Much of the Constitution is based on English Common Law, and the common law definition is quite different."
There is no definition in English Common Law for natural born Citizen, as the British were all subjects of the king.
"The citizenship of no man could be previous to the declaration of independence, and, as a natural right, belongs to none but those who have been born of citizens since the 4th of July, 1776."....David Ramsay, 1789.
A Dissertation on Manner of Acquiring Character & Privileges of Citizen of U.S.-by David Ramsay-1789
It is time for the Supreme Court to stop rejecting cases placed before them and make a ruling that includes a clear definition of NBC. We need to document the intent of the framers..... It is precisely a situation like this why our government was established with co-equal branches and checks and balances.
David Ramsay was a good man and a decent historian, but his views on citizenship were voted down by James Madison and the first House of Representatives, which included half a dozen or so Framers of the Constitution, 36 to 1.
That's pretty much unanimous.
So you could hardly find someone LESS representative of the views of the Founders and Framers if you quoted Satan himself.
So vote for Hillary then...
Clearly, she’s a MUCH more exemplary American...
If Ted Cruz should be elected, and reelected, 11 years.
11. More. Years.
It doesn't matter one bit.
All that is required Constitutionally is that a person be BORN A CITIZEN.
Anyone who tells you differently is either uninformed, fooled by the con artists, or a liar.
I'll bet there are more birthers here than you think. Most people just don't want to step into these interminable wars, so they don't comment.
Personally, I don't understand why someone should be labeled an 'idiot' for wanting to see the highest citizenship standard possible, enforced as a requirement for holding the office of President.
Maybe that requirement will never be enforced, but I see nothing wrong with advocating for it. Barack Obama is a perfect example of what can happen when a person's loyalties are divided by the circumstances of their birth. Why not insist upon a tighter standard?
There’s not the slightest damn evidence anywhere that the Framers of the Constitution gave Vattel any more credence on the “definition” of citizenship than they did on his views that only the elites and the military should be allowed to keep and bear arms.
Sorry, but I answer neither of your questions (and indeed I intend to drop my participation in this thread after this response to you, because I did not set out to resolve or even discuss constitutional law or history, and there may be others more “up” on those topics anyway, that may be able to answer your questions far better). I was only trying to say that there is a serious political risk if we were to nominate a certain otherwise-very-attractive gentleman. If O’s Dad was the African gentleman then that citizenship would be British and/or Kenyan .. and
there is also the indication of an Indonesian citizenship for Sonny. However all that would have played out by the time of Son’s adulthood, we’d need a lot more info (documents) and so I lack evidence to determine his current citizenship(s).
If ultimately Son were determined to be an American citizen, that would of course not decide the issue of constitutional qualification (natural born citizenship). Someday all will be made known to us. Faith. Meanwhile, I really lack time to research this further and so hope that others who follow it much closer to begin with will take up your questions, which are very interesting ones indeed, and answer them for you.
Thanks.
Then they don't count.
The hardcore birthers are idiots because they use the same convoluted and long-winded crap to try to make their point, instead of looking at the Constitution and the laws.
/johnny
Birther here. No, no he’s not...
In U. S. v. Rhodes (1866), Mr. Justice Swayne, sitting in the circuit court, said: 'All persons born in the allegiance of the king are natural- born subjects, and all persons born in the allegiance of the United States are natural-born citizens. Birth and allegiance go together. Such is the rule of the common law, and it is the common law of this country, as well as of England.' 'We find no warrant for the opinion [169 U.S. 649, 663] that this great principle of the common law has ever been changed in the United States. It has always obtained here with the same vigor, and subject only to the same exceptions, since as before the Revolution.' 1 Abb. (U. S.) 28, 40, 41, Fed. Cas. No. 16,151." [emphasis added]See also See also Lynch v. Clarke, 3 N.Y.Leg.Obs. 236, 1 Sand. Ch. 583 (1844),
The term citizen, was used in the constitution as a word, the meaning of which was already established and well understood. And the constitution itself contains a direct recognition of the subsisting common law principle, in the section which defines the qualification of the President. "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," ... The only standard which then existed, of a natural born citizen, was the rule of the common law, and no different standard has been adopted since. [emphasis added]Ainslie v. Martin, 9 Mass. 454, 456, 457 (1813)
And if, at common law, all human beings born within the ligeance of the King, and under the King’s obedience, were natural-born subjects, and not aliens, I do not perceive why this doctrine does not apply to these United States, in all cases in which there is no express constitutional or statute declaration to the contrary. . . . Subject and citizen are, in a degree, convertible terms as applied to natives, and though the term citizen seems to be appropriate to republican freemen, yet we are, equally with the inhabitants of all other countries, subjects, for we are equally bound by allegiance and subjection to the government and law of the land.
Actually looking at the laws on naturalization (of which, one can be naturalized by birth) is not as convoluted and doesn't appeal to them.
Which is why I alluded to "gnosticism". :-)
It goes along with modern 20th century gnostic practitioners like Madame Blavatsky. For all I care, those who prattle on about "original intent" with regards to natural born citizen may just as well go ahead and conduct a seance or rub a crystal ball...
I respectfully disagree with your first assertion and beg to differ with your characterizaation of “birther idiots” ...
INDEED there are “idiots” among every group of people I’ve ever met.
But our Founding Fathers attempted to seriously address this matter (and it reflected their concerns that future presidents be loyal to our country). The very last thing they wanted (at least for all time after their current generation) was for a foreign (especially in their historic context, British) subject to get anywhere near the office.
But I really haven’t the time right now to pursue this, so I must apologize for that. I do trust that there are a number of others, whether you see them as “birther idiots” or not, that can answer your note in greater depth for you.
If you wish to inform yourself further on the subject, though, you may wish to start with the Supreme Court case citations I posted earlier.. reviewing them in the light of our nation’s political history. I respectfully submit that you will come away from that little exercise with the knowledge that there is at least a serious issue involved here, and that at least some of the people who raise it are not necessarily “idiots.”
Thanks, and again my sincere apologies for dropping this for now... I really, really am hard-pressed for time...
thanks for your understanding and good luck with your research. (I do like the Senator very much...so it appears we at least agree on this.) Best regards,
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