Posted on 01/16/2016 8:06:02 AM PST by conservativejoy
I've been amazed how many so-called conservatives are appealing to Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Tribe as an authority on what a natural born citizen is.
He's a very weak reed too lean on for lots of reasons. Pick almost any subject, and Tribe is most likely on the other side.
Tribe has described Ted Cruz as one of his brightest students when he was a student at Harvard Law School. This should tell conservatives something. If Cruz is that intelligent and a formidable debater, and he is on the other side ideologically from Tribe, liberals like himself must make sure Cruz does not get anywhere near the White House.
Here's a curious thing about Lawrence Tribe. I did not find this on my own, but I did recollect something about chimpanzee rights being pushed a few years ago. I wrote "Get Ready for Chimpanzee Voter Rights for Democrats" in 2014. Daniel Greenfield at Front Page Magazine found Lawrence Tribe's involvement in extending legal rights to chimpanzees in a Wall Street Journal article from 2002:
"The advocates of granting legal standing to chimps have gained support from constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe, a Harvard Law School professor. Mr. Tribe argues that the leap isn't as great as it might appear: Courts recognize corporations as juristic, or legal, 'persons'; that is, they enjoy and are subject to legal rights and duties.
Monkey citizens
"'The whole status of animals as things is what needs to be rethought,' says Mr. Tribe. 'Nonhuman animals certainly can be given standing.'
"In legal terms, animals are 'things,' that is, they don't possess rights on their own. The push is to extend the legal definition of 'persons' to Pan troglodytes, the species closest to man."
Consider for a moment how almost everything has been redefined today. Women can declare themselves to be men, and men can declare themselves to be women. White people can identify as black. Facebook has 50 or so gender identities to choose from.
Noting is safe from definitional change.
Given Tribe's legal logic regarding chimpanzees as "persons" who have "legal standing," it won't be long before they will be declared citizens, and if citizens they can be "natural born citizens" based on the provisions of the United States Constitution and thereby be eligible to be President of the United States.
But Ted Cruz can't be president because he was born in Canada to an American citizen mother and spent nearly his entire life in the United States.
Can a Planet of the Apes be far behind?
Everyone has boundaries around their bodies, so how about during childbirth the area around the mother’s body should be declared a temporary territory of her citizenship land so that she can naturally pass her citizenship on to her child no matter where she chooses to give birth. This would give every child born the current citizenship of their mother, therefore ending anchoring the child’s citizenship to a country which the mother is not a citizen, unless the father is a citizen of a different country then the mother, then the child has dual citizenship and when the child is of age 18 or 21, the child must declare one citizenship over another just like naturalized citizens do, they give up one citizenship for another. It seems very unnatural for a child not to be a citizen of his or her parents’ homeland(s). It doesn’t seem right that a nation could take away a child’s citizenship because the child was born there to parent(s) who are not citizens. Somewhere I read an old time statement that “A kitten born in the warming pan is not a biscuit, it’s a cat like its mother and its father.”
And your point is?
Was I not clear enough in my satire?
The statue from 1790 is pretty clear. You do not have to be a Philadelphia lawyer to understand it. Both parents have to be citizens when running for President or the VP slot. Trump is correct in that Cruz needs to get this settled.
Good observation.
The Act also establishes the United States citizenship of certain children of citizens, born abroad, without the need for naturalization: “the children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond Sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born Citizens”.
Sounds to me like that his mother’s citizenship made him a citizen at birth, or natural born citizen.
That is all fine and dandy but at the time of his birth Ted’s father was not a U.S. Citizen. Again the statue of 1790 says citizens, not citizen. Again we are talking about running for the President and the Vice President, not getting things like passports. This is why Ted needs to get this thing straightened out.
I know you support the Constitution like we all do but when it comes to the 1790 statue you appear to get weak in the knees.
I'm going to post you a private message about what a very famous supreme court ruling said. You will not like what they said. You need to be AWARE of what they said so you will quit stirring this pot.
It's d@mn frustrating to see you say these things and knowing how to rebut them, but not wanting to do so for fear of giving information to the enemy, so every time I see one of your postings pushing this line, I have to bite my tongue, and that is a very unnatural and unpleasant condition for me.
Stop stirring this pot.
Not clear at all when you jump to Catholics and Jews.
1. I believe the word you are looking for is statute, not statue.
2. The 1790 statue may be interesting, but the one in effect at the time Cruz was born is more relevant.
And then I did it too. Nice.
The “natural born” concept needs a little refinement due to changing technology. A child having the misfortune to be born on the International Space Station is a natural born citizen of nowhere.
Which one is that?
TITLE III NATIONALITY AND NATURALIZATION
CHAPTER 1 NATIONALITY AT BIRTH AND BY COLLECTIVE NATURALIZATION
NATIONALS AND CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES AT BIRTH
SEC. 301. (a) The following shall be nationals and citizens of the United States at birth:
(1) a person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof;
...
(7) a person born outside the geographical limits of the United States and its outlying possessions of parents one of whom is an alien, and the other a citizen of the United States who, prior to the birth of such person, was physically present in the United States or its outlying possessions for a period or periods totaling not less than ten years, at least five of which were after attaining the age of fourteen years...
My notes:
1. There is no difference in status at birth between paragraph (1) and (7)
2. I have heard several people advancing a theory that those born outside the US are "naturalized at birth," but the definitions in this statute put a monkey wrench in that:
TITLE I GENERAL
DEFINITIONS
SECTION 101. (a) As used in this Act-
...
(23) The term "naturalization" means the conferring of nationality of a state upon a person after birth, by any means whatsoever.
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