use your brain, use logic. stop making lame illogical “appeals to authority”. Levin has avoided this issue like the plague because any other conclusion leaves you in an extremely uncomfortable place.
The key point is that the constitution uses both of these terms, “natural born citizen” and “citizen” for describing eligibility as president and as a member of congress, respectively. HOW are the terms different from each other. One has to define something categorically different from the other.
Taking Cruz’s case, he has had to stretch and twist in order to accomodate someone for whom: 1) Was NOT born on American soil, and 2) One parent was not American.
So he hung everything on the ideas of an American mother and residency requirements. Does that pass the smell test as “natural born citizen” for you? So, how is that different from a citizen?
So, show some thinking. You are supposedly a conservative. Produce a logical rebuttal that gives clear distinctions between “natural born citizen” and “citizen”.
Thanks bioqubit. One never knows the intent of FR contributors, but the documents abound and there is no equivocation. It is disappointing to hear Levin inventing again, but clearly is willing to use his pulpit and the ignorance of most readers to maintain his place at the rostrum of Constitutional experts.
Your point is well explained. If naturalized and natural born citizens were the same, which is what Levin and Cruz imply, there would be no reason to have both terms. There would have been no reason for Washington and Madison to remove any mention by Congress of natural born citizenship after they confused people in the 1st Congress with the statement used by Larry Tribe (Obama’s Harvard Law adviser) and Mark Levin claiming natural born citizenship for those born to citizen parents but “beyond the seas”. That was to support McCain’s problem, since no part of Panama was designated by Congress as sovereign U.S. territory until 1937, the year after McCain was born.
But the 1790 Congress’ act was entirely rescinded in 1795, with natural born citizen replaced by “citizen”. Citizens are either naturalized or natural born. Washington knew the difference, as did Madison, and they clarified the issue. A careful attorney, Mario Apuzzo, pointed out that being “reputed natural born” is not being natural born. Never again did Congress mention natural born citizenship because only the Supreme Court may interpret the Constitution.
The original author of the 14th Amendment, and author of the citizenship clause, Section 1, Ohio Congressman, abolitionist, John Bingham to the House in 1866:
“I find no fault with the introductory clause [S 61 Bill], which is simply declaratory of what is written in the Constitution, that every human being born within the jurisdiction of the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty is, in the language of your Constitution itself, a natural born citizen….”
Chief Justice John Marshall, educated at William and Mary’s Law School created by Thomas Jefferson in 1779 and designating our first law book, Vattel’s Law of Nations, writing in The Venus, 12 U.S. 253 in 1814:
“The citizens are the members of the civil society; bound to this society by certain duties, and subject to its authority, they equally participate in its advantages. The natives or indigenes are those born in the country of parents who are citizens. Society not being able to subsist and to perpetuate itself but by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights.”
Chief Justice Morrison Waite writing, with the unanimous agreement of the Court, the decision in Minor v. Happersett, and creating precedent for the definition of who were natural born citizens. Before the 14th Amendment the only constitutional citizens were natural born citizens, and Virginia minor’s decision could only have applied to a citizen. Virginia was a citizen because she was a natural born citizen. This decision established precedent, though it didn’t differ from Bingham, or Marshall, or Gray, or Charles Evens Hughes, for the term natural born citizen:
“The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. 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. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners.”
Cruz, Rubio, Jindal and Levin are a disappointment. Obama is too but for different reasons. He never claimed to be a natural born citizen. He was a “made man”. He took the job he was chosen for. He was dishonest about many things but he was hired to read a teleprompter, and say what he was told to say. The quotations above were by men of integrity for whom The Declaration and Constitution were our foundations. What they clearly explain is at odds with our politicians, both would-be and elected. The media and dishonest men must have their reasons for dissembling. But the words of our Supreme Court Justices, when they aren’t hidden or edited, as Justia.com and Google did in 2008, are still accessible - for the time being.
As Constitutional scholar Bill Clinton famously, and correctly said, “it depends upon what is is”. Is, to the law and not coincidentally mathematics, means “the same thing as.” It means equality. The definition locked down by Minor, but stated as dictum in many cases before 1875, was common law. After Minor it became precedent, used and cited in Wong Kim Ark and many other cases. It isn’t “either born to two parents who were its citizens, or born to one parent who had a student visa whose father thought he could find a better job in another country, or to two parents who weren’t quite sure they wanted to stay until 14 years after their child was born, but really had sole allegiance after that”. There isn’t an “or” in the defintion.
Not only does Trump understand the Constitution, so does Hillary, and should something happen to Trump, it is hard to imagine that she will not challenge eligibility, which would, based upon the Amendment XX, open presidential appointment to the Congress. If Cruz and Rubio were president and vice president, Trump having said something unforgivable to the media, Congress would have some latitude in choosing a “qualified” president. There are people who understand the law, whether or when they will act, as John Roberts showed when swearing in Obama, is uncertain, and dangerous. There seem likely to be many opportunities we the people aren’t aware tempting politicians, steering them from the old-fashioned notion of preserving, defending, and protecting the Constitution. Could these be related to campaign contributions or promises of lobbying employment after their government service?
WOW, so you and your “great comment BFF!” BFF clearly understand the Constitution better than ALL other individuals (foreign and domestic).