Posted on 01/09/2016 8:42:14 PM PST by randita
OTTUMWA, Iowa — Donald J. Trump sharply escalated his rhetoric about Senator Ted Cruz’s eligibility to be president on Saturday, suggesting that because he was born in Canada there were unanswered questions about whether he met the constitutional requirement to be a “natural-born citizen.’’
“You can’t have a person who’s running for office, even though Ted is very glib and he goes out and says ‘Well, I’m a natural-born citizen,’ but the point is you’re not,†Mr. Trump said while campaigning in Clear Lake, Iowa.
Mr. Cruz was born in Calgary, Canada, to an American mother, which automatically conferred American citizenship. Most legal experts agree that satisfies the requirement to be a “natural-born citizen,’’ a term that was not defined by the founders.
Mr. Trump, who began raising questions about Mr. Cruz’s ability to be president earlier in the week, said on Saturday that Mr. Cruz would have to go to court to get a “declaratory judgment†about his eligibility “or you have a candidate who just cannot run.’’ (Mr. Cruz could need a judgment if someone filed a lawsuit to challenge his candidacy and a court agreed to take up the question.)
With polls showing the race in Iowa tightening, and Mr. Cruz leading Mr. Trump by 4 percentage points in a Fox News poll released on Friday, Mr. Trump has returned to an issue that first gained him notoriety years ago when he challenged President Obama’s citizenship.
On Saturday night, before the final stop on a six-day bus tour of Iowa, Mr. Cruz said: “Under longstanding federal law, the child of a U.S. citizen born abroad is a natural-born citizen.â€
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Trump and Cruz not attacking each other was a good strategy- them running in 1st, 2nd or vice versa was a good thing- Kept GOPe out for as long as possible.
Just saw the Fox News power rating- Bush and Kasich have suddenly moved up. Isn't that wonderful?(/s)
In what world does Congress get to interpret the Constitution when that task is specifically given to the judiciary?
How about Congress just issue a finding that abortion is unconstitutional, and then everybody has to follow what Congress says? Or issue a “finding” that Obamacare is unconstitutional? Or that the Commerce Clause means they can take all our money whenever they want to? What limit is there to Congress if they get to do what the Constitution gives to the judiciary to do?
The checks and balances are all screwed up. Everything is screwed up. Most of all the people.
I give up. It’s time for Civil War. Right now. Bring it.
NON ISSUE? You are saying that the Constitution is a NON ISSUE! EGADS!!!!!!!
All three branches interpret the constitution, routinely. Elections are a political process, by nature, and the constitution gives Congress the DUTY to decide the qualifications of a president-elect.
Meanwhile, to give some comfort to its voters, the GOP could and should issue a statement that it finds Cruz to be qualified. That if Cruz gets the nomination, the party will submit his name on any electoral ballots that accrue to him.
Read the Law of Nations by E.Vattel or simply google it as pertaining to Natural Born Citizen and you will quickly learn the truth. Not only the Constitution but also the Declaration of independence reflects Vattels wording .......
, “the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them.....”
Psa 118:8 It is better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in man.
If God is a conservative, I’ll vote for him...as for now, Cruz is closest to both, so he’s my guy...
http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.35112102633445;view=2up;seq=43;skin=mobile
This is a great site.
http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.35112102633445;view=2up;seq=10;skin=mobile
The harm is that votes that Trump could have received were thrown away on a candidate that is ineligible. The harm is that Trump had to pay for ads to campaign against somebody who should not even have been able to make it onto the primary ballot.
Phil Berg filed a lawsuit over a primary race, and the courts were treating it earnestly until Obama came back from a sudden visit to Madeline Dunham in HI in mid-October 2008. Then all of a sudden the judge reversed himself and said all the legal filings he had presided over were moot because he should have ruled from the outset that Berg had no standing. Funny how the judge just suddenly realized there wasn’t even a case long after a bunch of stuff had already been filed and responded to.
In Roe v Wade the court took up the case of Norma McCorvey even though she had already given birth to her child, because they said there were POTENTIAL women with standing who could practically never have standing because by the time the court tried the case, the baby would always already be born. This is a similar situation. If no harm is done until the election is over, but once the election is over nothing can be done about it... then in effect the Constitution has a provision that is UNENFORCEABLE. And Constitutional interpretation says that if your interpretation of the Constitution means the Framers made a provision that can’t be enforced then your interpretation has to be wrong.
I’ve spent too much time on this, need to get a bunch of real-life things done. Seems like the comments on FR are almost always claims that it’s hopeless, nobody can ever do anything, we’re so screwed, etc. Why even talk about any of this if that’s the case? It’s just a waste of time. I’m not going to waste my time on people who believe nothing can ever be done so we just have to bend over and take what is inevitably coming to us.
Where do I sign up with those who believe there are ways to fight, and who are willing to do so because they believe America and freedom to be worth any attempts we make?
Cite the words of the Constitution which give Congress the DUTY to determine eligibility of Presidential candidates. It expressly says they have the duty to determine eligibility of THEIR OWN MEMBERS (whose qualifications are not dictated by the Constitution so it makes sense for them to handle that internally) but I don’t see anywhere that the same explicit authorization and command to determine Presidential eligibility is ever given to Congress. Show me the words.
Your welcome. The problem most have is they interpret Justice Story’s opinion in light of US Federal Law when the fact is, Justice Story, doing as he was required to do, relied upon the laws of the time when writing the opinion of the court and those laws were 100% British laws, with the one exception, the 1783 Peace Treaty with Britain, as US Federal laws did not exist therefore, they did not apply US Law to the case. Here is what Blackstone writes in regards to allegiance at birth:
“THE children of aliens, born here in England, are, generally speaking, natural-born subjects, and entitled to all the privileges of such. In which the constitution of France differs from ours; for there, by their jus albinatus, if a child be born of foreign parents, it is an alien.”
Now ask yourself, at the time of the revolution, who was the Ally of the States, Britain or France? Whose laws were the colonists seeking to cast off? The Britain who held the king as sovereign and master or the France who held the people as sovereigns and masters?
1st US Supreme Court decision (Chisholm v. Georgia) written by Chief Justice John Jay:
[T]he sovereignty of the nation is in the people of the nation, and the residuary sovereignty of each State in the people of each State…
[A]t the Revolution, the sovereignty devolved on the people; and they are truly the sovereigns of the country, but they are sovereigns without subjects…]
It doesn’t get much clearer than this, for one to be a sovereign of a nation, one must either be born to a father who is a citizen of the nation, or to a single mother who is a citizen of the nation or be naturalized as a citizen of the nation. At the time of the adoption of the US Constitution that contains the requirements to be president (vice president) there were ONLY 3 options per US Law and thus Ted Cruz was at birth a Canadian who, when upon the return of his parents to the US, through the subsequent laws of immigration and naturalization passed by Congress after WWII, Ted Cruz was able to gain US citizenship as a child. Since his father did not become a US citizen until 2005, and Ted’s parents were married, the ONLY way Ted became a US citizen was via an Act of Congress per the plenary powers held by Congress via Article I of the US Constitution.
To begin with, any challenge along those lines will not succeed. Cruz's eligibility is assured by statute and by precedent.
So...that renders all the legal contortions that are turning you into a pretzel, totally moot!
I would suggest that if you want to destroy Cruz, you should try something relevant. But then, you already have run the gamut...
I am a Cruz supporter. I have no wish to destroy him. I would like to vote for him, but not if a corrupt judge is just going to declare him ineligible and hand the Presidency to the democrat.
“It won’t work ‘cause it just won’t work.” Standard FR answer these days. Make false accusations, throw mud all over the place, and insist that nothing will ever work so we all just need to roll over and die. Typical these days, right when we should be loving our country enough to unite in the fight to save her. Sad.
FWIW, the qualifications for Congress are in the constitution, age, citizenship, and residency. There have been situations where elected members were challenged in the respective houses. Just saying, your "qualifications are not dictated by the Constitution" is flat out false.
One can assert all kinds of potential liabilities with any candidate, but to assert something that has never been done to any presidential candidate under the NBC argument is ludicrous to me.
I really don't know what legal doctrine they would use. The only arguable thing about it might entail trying to say that the citizenship can only transfer from the Father, which is based on old English thinking and no longer applies as women now carry equal legal standing. The birth mother now counts and this is enshrined in legal precedent. If it did not, Ted Cruz would have been put through a Naturalization procedure.
There is really no valid, real time argument to be made here. We can delve and many have, into the minutia of how all this developed, but to prosecute a successful challenge on this basis today would not only be expensive, it would most assuredly fail.
I think you are right to a degree, but you need to remember that FR is a contained environment/echo chamber. What happens here is not necessarily representative of what happens outside.
Having said that, I have been through several election cycles here on the forum and I have yet to witness a primary election where the results were satisfactory here, except when GWB ran unopposed.
You haven’t heard a word that anybody has said. There are differing opinions on this and it has never been decided specifically by the courts. That leaves it open to whatever a judge wants (or is told) to do. We already saw the GA judge (Maliki?) decide Obama’s eligibility to be on the ballot by “judge’s knowledge” - and yes, I think he does have Iranian heritage so maybe he comes by sharia rulings honestly. Not supposed to happen in the US... We’ve seen court clerks do every shenanigan in the book to sabotage cases on Obama’s eligibility. You missed all that? Wow.
Well, there’s not much use talking to you then. What Chief Justice Roberts did in the Obamacare decision had never been done to a case regarding requiring people to buy healthcare (or anything else) therefore it could never happen, by your logic (or lack thereof).
This discussion is pointless.
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