Good news for Rubio and for Cruz as well.
This sounds like it was written by an idiot.
No, there was only one, (prior to Obama) and he did everything he could to keep people from finding out about it, including lying about his year of birth.
No, all but one President were natural born citizens, except for the very first ones who were grandfathered in under article II.
If both situations are okay, then a person could be born outside the USA with no parents that are US citizens and that would be okay.
How crazy is that? We could end up with a president for a multiple of countries and the end of sovereignty.
George Washington’s parents weren’t US citizens, either.
”A Florida voter filed the suit, . . .”
The idea of an ordinary voter filing suit is a sharp contrast to the ”no standing” that many people got from the courts when Obama was likewise challenged.
Since everyone who was a citizen at the time of adoption is dead we can remove the grandfather clause wording. We are left with “No Person except a natural born Citizen [...] shall be eligible to the Office of President;”
Why does the Constitution speak of “citizens” and separately of “natural born citizens”? Why is the word “natural” inserted? It is a matter of allegiance.
A person can be a “citizen” if they were citizens or subjects in some other country first but have come here and met the naturalization requirements. Also, if one is the offspring of a citizen and a non-citizen, then one is a US citizen. However, in both these cases it can be argued that the person might choose allegiance to their former country or to the country of the foreign-born parent or at least the allegiance might be considered divided. That is, there is no natural allegiance of the offspring to one or the other parent’s country. It is this divided or alienated allegiance that the Constitutional provision is designed to prohibit.
If, however, both of one’s parents are themselves US citizens, then one is a “citizen” as well as a “natural born citizen”. The “natural born citizen” is one who at birth has no natural allegiance to any other country and the Framers felt could be trusted to be loyal to the US and not act as a foreign agent. [footnote: Also, in their time, the rules of royal succession held sway throught much of the world and the Founders wished to forstall any potential claims by the crowned heads of Europe or their scions to sovereignty in the US.]
Note that native born is not the same as natural born. Native born simply refers to the place of one’s birth, i.e., one’s nativity. The term does not speak to the legal circumstances of a birth, merely to its location.
What a mess. For sanity’s sake, BOTH Cruz and Rubio should get out of the race. This is not going to go away; the Dems and their toadies in the press will make this the ONLY issue if either gets the nomination.
How can Republicans make a case for either when it has been eight years of questioning the half breed’s eligibility? And now the GOP wants to nominate someone who is going to reignite the controversy.
Unless it is the Uniparty’s intent to destroy another piece of the Constitution, paving the way for a President Mohammed from Iran!
Precedent Obama has rendered that clause moot.
Under the current definition of simply being born a citizen, if even only on one’s mother’s side, makes every anchor baby and Winston Churchill eligible. (his mother was an American)
I went to school in the 1960’s and was taught that natural born citizen was a subset of citizen and required only for the office of President. Must be born here to citizen parents. Reading the writings of the people who wrote the Constitution confirms this. They wanted no divided allegiance. If you could be anything other than a U.S. citizen, you can’t be a natural born citizen. No foreign births, no foreign parents.
Many people wanted the definition changed for various reasons.
Forget natural born, he isn’t even a citizen.
It’s not what the lawyers say, it’s what the judge says that matters.