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Cruz: Excluding Muslims from presidency is unconstituional
Minforms ^ | 9/20/15 | Staff

Posted on 09/20/2015 1:49:44 PM PDT by VinL

It would be unconstitutional to disqualify a Muslim from the presidency because of religion, Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz said Sunday.

“You know, the Constitution specifies there shall be no religious test for public office and I am a constitutionalist,” the Texas senator said during the taping of “Iowa Press” at Iowa Public Television.

Cruz was about Ben Carson’s televised statement that Islam is inconsistent with the U.S. Constitution. “I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation. I absolutely would not agree with that,” Carson said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.

Cruz also referred to the ongoing controversy raised in the media over whether Donald Trump should have corrected a man who incorrectly stated at a rally that President Obama is a Muslim and not an American. “My view, listen. The president’s faith is between him and God. What I’m going to focus on is his public policy record,” Cruz said.

One area in which Cruz did not mind excluding Muslims, however, was from the ranks of refugees from Syria seeking asylum in the United States. He said they should settle in other Middle Eastern countries, citing concerns that some of the purported refugees may actually be terrorists.

“I think the Christians are a very different circumstance because Christians are being persecuted, they are being persecuted directly for their faith and the Obama administration has abandoned Middle East Christians,” Cruz said.

Several other Republican presidential candidates weighed in on the issue of Syrian refugees Saturday during a forum in Des Moines. Mike Huckabee agreed with Cruz that the U.S. should exclude Muslim refugees but accept Christians. Rick Santorum argued that even the Christians should be assisted in the region so they can return home when the violence ends.

Following his visit at Iowa Public Television, Cruz visited with restaurant-goers at the Machine Shed Restaurant in Urbandale for more light-hearted discussions while Iowans enjoyed their morning brunch.


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: bencarson; captainobvious; carson; cruz; islam; muslims; naturalborncitizen; tedcruz
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To: austingirl

No, Cruz cannot fight all fights until AFTER he has been elected.


401 posted on 09/21/2015 2:20:03 PM PDT by alstewartfan (Even when I cannot see him I can feel it in my bones That he's still there. Trespasser by Al Stewart)
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To: alstewartfan

Agree 100%.


402 posted on 09/21/2015 2:39:14 PM PDT by erod (Chicago Conservative | Cruz or Lose!)
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To: austingirl

The GOP-e will lose the social issues debate hands down because the Democrats control it based on emotion vs. reality and the public buys it. The more they distract us towards their strengths the weaker we become. Now that the nation has had their attention diverted guess what isn’t in the news? Hillary and her illegal emails., the Feds once again leaving interest rates unchecked, any further discussion concerning the flow of Syrians to this country. The economy will take down this country far faster than a social issue. Unfortunate? Yes because this economy is one quarter away from negative growth leading to a bad recession. The ONLY thing keeping it propped up are the Feds.


403 posted on 09/21/2015 4:09:24 PM PDT by Jarhead9297
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To: VinL
Surely you jest.

Surely you must study up on the Constitution until you really understand what it does/doesn't prohibit and decide whether you think we need to follow it or just make up stuff as we go. Some instances (such as the potential for a Muslim President) may torque one's jaws, but it's supposed to be a package deal - else we are all Obamas and Clintons who are willing to make up stuff "for the common good"..

404 posted on 09/22/2015 2:29:29 AM PDT by trebb (Where in the the hell has my country gone?)
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To: Nero Germanicus
Chester A Arthur did not burn his father’s naturalization certificate which can be viewed on the Internet.

There was not much Internet activity during the 1880s. Chester managed to mislead people by withholding his Vermont birth certificate, which was never found. That aroused enough suspicion, along with his journalist friend's book, that no one thought to examine Arthur's father's citizenship. Concealing with the intent of burning his fathers naturalization papers, no one bothered to Google William's naturalization docuemts. Chester served until his health prevented him from running for a term of his own, having become president when James Garfield was assassinated.

No one until the issue arose around Obama's legitimacy asked questions about Chester's father until Leo Donofrio, who had learned not to trust Internet documents and sought paper in libraries, or in the case of Chester Arthur, among the archives gathered by a Chester Arthur biographer. There was no mention in newspapers of the time and the Hinman book seems carefully to avoid the issue of Arthur's father's citizenship, which lends credence to the intentional misdirection hypothesis. In a book about presidential ineligibility, written just five years after the passage of Minor v. Happersett, there was no doubt about the need to have had parents who were citizens at the birth of the child.

I sincerely thank you for turning up the "Sun Yat-Sen Biographer" documents on Scribd. You may have noticed that the William Arthur birth certificate was provided by Sun Yat-Sen Biographer on 22 Jan 2009, just about the time Mr. Donofrio and his sister, whom I understand is an historian, discovered the document pictured at Scribd. You must have noticed that also provided at the Sun Yat-Sen Briographer Scribd locaton was the birth certificate of Sun Yat-Sen, the father of twentieth century China, born, according to the certificate of birth, in Honolulu in 1870. I had not seen the Hinman book, but can see why it was effective as misdirection.

It "sunyatsenbiographer" may not be Donofrio, who always dismissed the birth certificate issue as misdirection, but was certainly someone closely following his work since the media were in full see no evil, hear no evil, and write no evil about Obama mode in early 2009.

405 posted on 09/22/2015 2:39:31 AM PDT by Spaulding
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To: trebb

Surely you must study up on the Constitution
*****************

And surely, my friend, you must study up on this thread- ascertain who started it- and who has defended Cruz’s position throughout, before you arrived and apparently misapprehended one of my posts.


406 posted on 09/22/2015 6:24:54 AM PDT by VinL (It is better to suffer every wrong, then to consent to wrong.)
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To: Spaulding
[M]ost of the principles we assume to be true clearly explained in this 18th century compendium. Law of Nations is what is called "common law" because we commoner's believe these truths.

What you write is NOT the meaning of "common law." "Common law" (a.k.a., "judge-made law") is the collection of judicial decisions in England dating back to the middle ages. It was this body of law that was incorporated, to varying degrees, into the law of each of the American States after independence.

Vattel was NOT an expositor of the common law. He wrote more from the perspective of the Continental, civil law tradition.

Chief Justice John Marshall cited Vattel in The Venus, 12 U.S. 253, as the most concise source for the definition of what it means to be a natural born citizen.

Citizenship was not in dispute in The Venus. Marshall (who in any event is writing a dissenting opinion) cites Vattel to resolve a question of domicile. The translation of Vattel that Marshall uses doesn't use the term "natural born citizen," so it's ridiculous to suggest that the quotation somehow is in reference to the U.S. Constitution.

Madison explained (Mark Levin quoted him in Liberty and Tyranny, p37) that if we don't interpret the Constitution using the common language and law understood by its framers (the very language of Chief Justice Waite in Minor v Happersett), the Constitution will lose its intended meanings.

And as to Constitutional matters, what "common language" has the U.S. Supreme Court stated provides the interpretative background? Answer: English common law.

"There is no common law of the United States, in the sense of a national customary law, distinct from the common law of England as adopted by the several States each for itself, applied as its local law, and subject to such alteration as may be provided by its own statutes. . . . There is, however, one clear exception to the statement that there is no national common law. The interpretation of the Constitution of the United States is necessarily influenced by the fact that its provisions are framed in the language of the English common law, and are to be read in the light of its history." U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) (citing Smith v. Alabama (1888)).

So the common language for understanding terms like "natural born citizen" is not Vattel, but rather English common law (which the SCOTUS analyzes at length in Wong Kim Ark to have derived from the English "natural born subject."

Before Minor v. Happersett in 1875, Virginia Minor's citizenship before the 14th Amendment needed to be clarified,

Virginia Minor's citizenship was not in dispute. Justice Waite addresses the citizenship point only to note that Minor was a citizen (who had no voting rights) before the adoption of the 14th Amendment. Since the Amendment was merely declaratory of existing law, Minor gained no voting rights by that Amendment's adoption.

The only constitutional citizens before the 14th Amendment wee natural born citizens.

Nonsense. Naturalized citizens were "constitutional citizens." Article I permits naturalized citizens to serve as Congressmen.

Minor v. Happersett never mentions Vattel, but uses exactly the Vattel definition.

The Minor Court was NOT referencing Vattel. Here's how one can know this. What J. Waite wrote:

At common law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children, born in a country of parents who were its citizens, became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also.

Waite is speaking of the nomenclature deriving "at common law." As noted above, Vattel was NOT an expositor of the common law. Therefore, this is not a reference to Vattel. Waite is just stating the obvious -- that Virginia Minor unquestionably was a citizen at birth.

let me add that the best explanations of these issues I've found are on attorney Mario Apuzzo's blog at puzo1.blogspot.com.

And he who relies on Mario Apuzzo will repeat Apuzzo's same errors. You need a better source.

407 posted on 09/22/2015 8:16:07 AM PDT by CpnHook
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To: Spaulding

Of course in 1880, if anyone had cared about William Arthur’s citizenship status, they could have checked at the Hall of Records in Fort Edward, Washington County seat, New York.
In the Nineteenth Century, no one cared.


408 posted on 09/22/2015 11:43:19 AM PDT by Nero Germanicus
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To: VinL
And surely, my friend, you must study up on this thread- ascertain who started it- and who has defended Cruz’s position throughout, before you arrived and apparently misapprehended one of my posts.

Being busy stirring so many pots I sometimes get ahead of myself and eject some hot brass on a comrade - many apologies for the goof.

GO CRUZ!!! Keep it up Trump!!

409 posted on 09/23/2015 3:22:41 AM PDT by trebb (Where in the the hell has my country gone?)
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To: Spaulding
Thank you for writing another of your helpfully informative posts!

I share a couple of question marks with you:

To his credit, Trump, about whom I still have many questions, opened that door. Too bad that Cruz, with all his obvious brilliance, has not used it to explain our legal history and put himself in line for a Supreme Court appointment.
For an untrusting observer of a world where not all is as it seems and much is designed to unerringly fool the casual and the ignorant, I think Trump is a fascinating counter-character, as is Cruz at this time.

I can't help but wonder if Cruz could have even had a presidential candidacy pre-obama. I seriously doubt it.

I don't see a way that either obama or Cruz could have had a viable presidential candidacy prior to the 1970s or even as late as Reagan and the fall of the Wall.

Curious to have so many similarly eligible candidates on the republican side now at this time in our nation's history.

Moreover, in such a large and diverse nation, it's interesting that so many children of our nation's former enemies and of their allies in the running to be our leader.

I wonder how that would have been viewed by the founders and I also wonder what comes after "interesting" times.

410 posted on 09/25/2015 9:44:21 AM PDT by GBA (Just a hick in paradise)
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