Like all of us, Chancellor Kent had a nose, some other body parts and opinions, some relevant to Wong Kim Ark and some not. The HOLDING of the case has NOTHING to do with an American citizen born in Canada. It merely affirms that Wong Kim Ark (child of Chinese citizens) born in San Francisco in 1870 or thereabouts was by that very fact and by that fact alone a US citizen legally entitled to be re-admitted to the USA despite the "Yellow Peril" hysteria of the usual gang of idiot bureaucrats who tried to keep him from coming home from a visit to China.
This embarrassment and disgrace were brought to us by the usual gang of hysterical paranoid nutcases who imagined that the USA was being overrun by the "Yellow Horde." Genghis Khan is coming! Genghis Khan is coming! He's been dead for centuries! He's coming anyhow!
Wong Kim Ark was NOT standing for POTUS. This has NOTHING to do with Cruz. Cruz's mother is/was an American citizen by birth and passed her citizenship to Ted Cruz. Rafael Cruz, Sr., had fought FOR Castro in his misspent youth and in his early 20s had been tortured in Castro's prisons. He fled Cuba permanently, as a result. If Ted Cruz was a citizen of each and every nation on earth, through his mother, a native of Delaware and an American citizen, Ted was a citizen. The HOLDING in Wong Kim Ark excludes no one and certainly no one situated as Ted Cruz.
Children of foreign ambassadors are specifically excluded from citizenship by birth in the USA. That is a LOT more than can be said for the Birther fantasy.
We call extraneous comments that are not PART of the HOLDING, DICTA. If the court says the sky was blue when Wong Kim Ark arrived from China to return home, the color of the sky is irrelevant and not part of the holding and of NO precedential value. The word "native" is not found in the constitution.
I am posting this part of my response before I lose it. More to come!
Common law is a body of judge made law, changeable by legislation consistent with the constitution and by changes in the constitution itself. However, importantly, common law "evolves" and, while based on precedents, those precedents may be set aside by judges when they deem such advisable.
After seven plus years of Obozo, and total refusal of every one of the many courts approached to do ANYTHING about his quite analogous birth circumstances, I must admit that I am not too friendly to the notion that legal eccentricity be applied only to the CONSERVATIVE candidate in the race.
While I would, so far, vote for Trump IF he is nominated, I will need vise grips on my nose after this shameful exercise in Trumponic Plague and Trumpmania. Buying a pig in a poke like Trump on most issues I care about is still better than the major party alternatives. If this crap keeps up, there ARE third party alternatives. I know and approve generally where The Donald stands on immigration (under current outrageous circumstances), guns and a few other issues. I am not satisfied on the basis of his generalized and quite non-specific pledge to do an undefined SOMETHING about an undefined SOMETHING with no specifics and the idea that I can just trust The Donald because he sounds mean and talks dirty to Megan Kelly.
I would remind anyone familiar with my posting history that I despise the GOP-E Wall Street, K Street, the US Chamber of Crony Commerce, etc., ad nauseam, and John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Kevin McCarthy, Paul Ryan-O, Mitchie McTurtle, John Cornyn, Thad Cockroach, etc. as much as anyone here.
Nonetheless, the purpose of this exercise is to elect a principled CONSERVATIVE candidate for POTUS and let the purges and retaliation begin. If Trump wants my vote, he NEEDS to prove he is that candidate more than others and not by these schoolyard bully tricks but by actual policy commitments WITH SPECIFIC DETAILS.
Given the REASONS we despise GOP-E "leadership" whores, electing someone who wrote The Art of the Deal does not sound like anything more than jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.
Everyone hears what they WANT to hear when the candidate REFUSES to be specific. Don't be suckered by the Birther sideshow.