Posted on 07/21/2013 9:20:29 AM PDT by Ira_Louvin
Sen. Ted Cruz rejected questions Sunday over his eligibility to be president, saying that although he was born in Canada “the facts are clear” that he’s a U.S. citizen. “My mother was born in Wilmington, Delaware. She’s a U.S. citizen, so I’m a U.S. citizen by birth,” Cruz told ABC. “I’m not going to engage in a legal debate.” The Texas senator was born in Calgary, where his mother and father were working in the oil business. His father, Rafael Cruz, left Cuba in the 1950s to study at the University of Texas and subsequently became a naturalized citizen.
President Obama has been hounded by critics who contend he was born outside the U.S. and, therefore, ineligible to win the White House. Obama was born in Hawaii. But some Democratic critics have taken the same charge against Obama by so-called “birthers” and turned it against Cruz. The Supreme Court has not definitively ruled on presidential eligibility requirements. But a congressional study concludes that the constitutional requirement that a president be “a natural born citizen” includes those born abroad of one citizen parent who has met U.S. residency requirements.
“I can tell you where I was born and who my parents were. And then as a legal matter, others can worry about that. I’m not going to engage,” Cruz said in the interview with “This Week” on ABC.
(Excerpt) Read more at trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com ...
“1. Born in the US, you are automatically a US citizen, except in very rare cases. IE, a child to diplomats and borne on embassy grounds.That’s correct. Virtually everyone born in the United States is, legally speaking, a natural born citizen.”
No. Diplomats are in the U.S. by treaty to represent a non-U.S. country. Declaring a child of a diplomat a U.S. citizen violates the treaty between the two countries. Diplomats and their immediate family member have immunity from many U.S. laws in order to maintain their sovereignty.
However, the diplomat is entitled to obtain a birth certificate on behalf of their child to prove a live birth. Also, the diplomat is entitled to waive sovereign immunity and seek U.S. citizenship status on behalf of a child born in the U.S.
LOL! Whichever ones' citizenship they don't want to acknowledge, of course!
Most likely Obama’s puffed up autobiographies would somehow be shown to be complete and total fabrication.
That’s exactly what they are. Backstory to give the mystery man parents and birth pace. His purported life is a myth.
This thread is really drawing them out.
Anything goes now. Fat Lil’ Kim could bring an American woman to Nork, impregnate her, raise the kid in Nork for 4 years and then mom brings him to the US and apparently the kid would be eligible to be president.
You do understand that the founders who became president were constitutionally grandfathered in, right? No one alive today though is quite old enough to be under that clause.
This simply isn't true.
All children born in the country were "natural born subjects," whether their parents were English (or colonial) or not.
There's a pretty extensive discussion of this in the majority opinion of US v. Wong Kim Ark (1898). Anyone can read it for himself.
The same rule applied in the Colonies and in the United States after the Constitution was adopted.
Therefore every person born within the United States, its territories or districts, whether the parents are citizens or aliens, is a natural born citizen in the sense of the Constitution, and entitled to all the rights and privileges appertaining to that capacity. - William Rawle, A View of the Constitution of the United States (1829)
Rawle was one of our most prominent early legal scholars, and a close associate of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and several other Framers of the Constitution.
I agree with Ted Cruz that he is eligible to be president and I support his candidacy. The people who deny Cruz’s qualifications are lightweights who somehow got themselves tangled up in an 18th century French text written by a Swiss “philosopher” who argued that the State has first claim on the labor of every citizen.
Trying to paint 0buttatollah as a NBC since your signup date in 2012.
It is my opinion that people are trying to ignore the fact that the phrase "natural-born citizen" even exists in the Constitution by trying to invalidate it using classification of citizen as a red-herring.
I can follow the argument that one is either born a citizen or becomes a citizen via government approval. That's fine for defining who is a citizen of the United States. But it has nothing to do with the extra qualification that citizens must meet to become President. Just like the citizen requirement and the age requirement and the residency requirement, Presidents must also meet the "natural-born" requirement in a way that separates it from the Congressional requirement.
Thomas Paine wrote about this just four years after ratification of the Constitution in his 1791 book "The Rights Of Man," when he spoke of "foreignors" and "half-foreignors" being denied the ability to become a President. It's true that Paine fell into disfavor in his later years, but his writing in this book was contemporary with the Constitution, and he was known for speaking plainly for the American reader. I have yet to see other contemporary writing that defines the natural-born phrase. The closest that others present is the debate over the 14th amendment many years later.
-PJ
The grandfather clause was not included to make George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison eligible to be President. No competent historian claims that was the case.
The grandfather clause was included to make Alexander Hamilton (born on the island of Nevis in the Caribbean), James Wilson (born in Scotland) and other foreign-born patriots who helped give birth to our country, eligible to be President.
This is agreed on by all real historians and has been written about and commented on throughout US history.
I agree. As I said, I want the Constitution followed even when its requirements aren’t achieving the desired results.
Or President pro tem of the Senate.
But admitting that he did not meet the requirements for President or VP would be a tremendous boost to his credibility as a Supreme Court Justice.
I'm not sure things have really changed that much.
The Framers of the Constitution held a discussion of this when they were talking about citizenship qualifications for Senator and Representative. Someone commented (I think it was James Madison but not sure without looking it up) that the real danger was not politicians who had been born abroad, because the people would keep an eye on those. The real danger was native-born American politicians being secretly bribed by foreign interests.
In that case, after I indicated that I didn't understand what you meant, you decline to explain. So let's go back to your question, that you typed exactly as you meant it:
Please show me the authority enumerated in the Constitution that gives the federal government the ability to define the term 'natural born citizen'.Article I, Section 7. And Article III, Section 2.
I believe, and this is just my interpretation, that a NBC is either born in the United States to a parent who is legally there, or a baby born an automatic American anywhere in the world.
Thus John McCain did not need his congressional ruling to be a NBC. Born to two American parents serving their country (well, mom was accompanying her husband). No question.
Thus if Obama was born outside this country he would not be a NBC or even a citizen at birth and would have needed naturalization because the only parent with citizenship was not old enough to confer it.
Thus Ted Cruz would be a NBC because he was automatically American at birth.
Thus a Schwarzenegger would not be, as he was born outside the country to two non citizens.
I think my interpretation is the fairest. Naturally Born American. The second you are born, you are an American. I add the disqualifier that keeps anchor babies from that status.
Cruz - just another politician in it for himself.
No. He is not eligible.
But that’s a nice, narcissistic response he gave worthy of Obama.
He wants something so screw the Constitution. He’ll stab us in the back just as fast as Rubio/Obama.
Rules are for other people. That’s the warning sign.
Selfish ####.
His statement also shows his arrogance and ignorance.
He just wants his turn to piss on the Constitution because he certainly doesn’t respect it.
I disagree with William Safire that the Constitution is flawed. In fact, everyone who wants these ineligible candidates is SCREAMING THAT THE CONSTITUTION IS FLAWED. It’s not. Just a bunch of whiners who can’t get their way without cheating. But in the article below he rightly points out that it was clear back in 1987 that certain people were not eligible EVEN though they were American citizens.
ESSAY; The Constitution’s Flaw
By William Safire
Published: September 06, 1987
http://www.nytimes.com/1987/09/06/opinion/essay-the-constitution-s-flaw.html
That means Minnesota Senator Rudy Boschwitz is blocked from advancement because he was born in Berlin, and Connecticut’s Senator Lowell Weicker because he was born (of American parents) in Paris. New Hampshire Governor John Sununu, whose U.S. parents were in Havana when he was born, and Vermont’s Governor Madeleine Kunin, born in Zurich and naturalized 40 years ago, can forget about higher office.
Other citizens distinguished in their fields silently bridle at their political limitation. The economist and former Ambassador John Kenneth Galbraith is out as a potential President because he’s from Canada; Henry Kissinger, under whom two U.S.
SNIP
My newly-retired colleague, James Reston, could never entertain secret dreams of power because he was born in Scotland, and my new Op-Ed Page colleague, A. M. Rosenthal, cannot occupy Lincoln’s bedroom because he came from Canada. (My other columnist sidekicks and I are constitutionally clean but do not expect lightning to strike.)
Anchor babies are not the Posterity of We the People.
-PJ
Which clauses?
So then if a mother is a citizen then how is it that a child born to that mother NOT a citizen based on "inheritence by blood"?
For me the important thing is: What did the term mean in early America?
A lot of commenters in early America said you had to be "born in the United States" (note the lack of any mention at all of citizen parents) in order to be eligible.
I think this was just a bit sloppy, because they ignored those born US citizens abroad, who were also eligible.
And some other commenters noted specifically that such people were eligible, including James Bayard in his exposition of the Constitution.
Many commenters stated, more accurately, that you needed to be "born a citizen" or "a citizen by birth."
See the discussions in posts 199 and 226.
And for all of the important quotes on what our Founding Fathers and Framers actually said, including a mention of most or all of the very few people who thought otherwise, see this post.
SCOTUSA cannot redo the distinct/specific words of the Constitution that declares ‘natural born citizen’ for POTUSA vs just ‘citizen’ for other Congresspersons. I think there are only a few of the Justices that would want to or are even qualified to make any kind of ruling that speaks to the intention of what the Founders wanted/intended to establish. Justices like Ginsberg can only view the Founders intent as an archaic mentality of years ago.
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