Posted on 01/16/2016 10:14:22 AM PST by conservativejoy
There's a reason the Supreme Court has never decided a case of "Natural Born Citizen." It's a Pandora's box filled with evil and second-class citizenship.
SCOTUS never decided a case of who owns real estate on the moon either, but that doesn't mean you can buy a crater. However, since there's now a lawsuit filed to determine just what a "Natural Born Citizen" is, we can ask exactly how stupid it would be to really address the question.
While former prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy put the question to bed, legally, I kicked it around with my lawyer buddies to see exactly how far down the stupid hole this thing goes. It goes pretty far.
Jonah Goldberg put it in perspective, noting that the term only applies to one job: President of the United States.
Now imagine there are also all sorts of jobs you are barred from having. Not only can you not be president, but you can't be, say, a chiropodist or an embalmer. Pick your restrictions: You can't go to certain colleges or you can't get the best ESPN bundle. Americans born abroad can't buy basset hounds. Unless you were born here, you can't get cheese on your hamburger. Whatever. It really doesn't matter.
If the high court defined "Natural Born Citizen" to mean something besides "anything other than a naturalized citizen" (which is the only definition in use now), it would create a new category of citizenship. A second-class citizen who is technically not naturalized, but not eligible for the benefits of being "natural born," that one benefit being the presidency.
If that were the only possible application, the Court would certainly find it to be surplussage. But there are other applications which would certainly emerge in current law. If only a natural born citizen, under a new definition, is qualified to serve as president, should Congress revisit the line of succession? There's a "failure to qualify" disclaimer in the current version of the Presidential Succession Act, but what would constitute a failure?
Should Congress decide to create boundaries around succession that keeps non-natural born citizens out of the lineup? How about the Vice President, which Trump specifically mentioned? Should the Secretary of State be natural born? Speaker of the House? President Pro-Tempore of the Senate?
For that matter: Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of Defense, Attorney General, Secretary of the Interior, Secretary of Agriculture, Secretary of Commerce, Secretary of Labor, Secretary of Health and Human Services, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Secretary of Transportation, Secretary of Energy, Secretary of Education, Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Secretary of Homeland Security. They are all in line.
And then you get to the "best ESPN bundle" argument Goldberg made.
This lawsuit has terrible consequences if the courts should decide to do anything but dismiss it, because it creates a third category of U.S. citizen without fully considering the potentially massive consequences of such an act. If the only purpose of the lawsuit (which it most certainly is) is to plant doubt about Cruz's eligibility, and give Trump an excuse to pander to Rubio as a potential VP pick, then it should be heaped quickly into the dustbin of irrelevant lawsuits that don't deserve the court's attention.
And it should be done quickly, or else Trump will have accomplished what he admitted he set out to do: sink Cruz because he's rising in the polls.
P.S. One more point my lawyer friend mentioned: Nobody goes to court seeking a declaratory judgment (as Trump recommended to Cruz) for something they know isn't wrong. You don't ask permission to do something that's legal or unchallenged. Cruz is absolutely right to say he won't be taking legal advice from Donald Trump.
IMHO the 1790 statue is very clear on the subject. It says citizens as in mother and father. It does not say citizen. I like how the Cruz people are all for the Constitution as all of us on here on FR are but when it comes to the 1790 statue the knees start to give.
The stupid, it hurts.
The word children is plural, hence the word citizen is plural. That’s just proper English.
You should inform yourself. But your goal is pimping for DT. Never mind.
The only reason Cruz is lying about being "natrualized authomatically by operation of statute" is that he wants to be president.
Mr. Bellei, who lost his US citizenship, actually argued that he was born in the US. His BC from Italy contradicted him.
Ted Cruz was born in Canada....
LIVE BY THE LAWS AMERICA WAS FOUNDED UPON
GO. TRUMP. GO!!!
“You should inform yourself. But your goal is pimping for DT. Never mind.”
Please inform me instead of throwing out insults.
For purposes of excise tax, an apple shall be considered an orange."
For purposes of enforcing traffic laws, a bicycle shall be considered as a motorcycle"
The thing that "is," gets treated in law as something it isn't.
Citizenship law works the same way. The constitution defines citizen - Art IV, Sec. 2; and the 14th amendment. If you aren't in one of those, well, we'll consider you to be a citizen if you meet the statutory conditions.
Cruz and the popular press have fallen into error, and now it's a herd of lemmings.
“You don’t ask permission to do something that’s legal or unchallenged. Cruz is absolutely right to say he won’t be taking legal advice from Donald Trump.”
Id bring this up at every stump speech form here on out until the DONNY just gives up and tweets himself into a LATHER
GO TED ....GO MARK LEVIN....
FORWARD TO IOWA...
“If the high court defined “Natural Born Citizen” to mean something besides “anything other than a naturalized citizen” (which is the only definition in use now), it would create a new category of citizenship. A second-class citizen who is technically not naturalized, but not eligible for the benefits of being “natural born,” that one benefit being the presidency.”
That is the oft repeated lie used to justify an invalid strawman argument. The fact is that there has been a naturalized citizenship at birth status in Anglo-American jurisprudence ever since the passage of the Naturalization Act of 1541 by the English Parliament. The English and British governments have traditionally maintained limitations upon the right of a person born with alien parents to service in the Privy Council and other public offices in England and Britain. The authors of the Constitution decided to open up those traditional restrictions to every public office except the Office of the President and the Office of the Vice President. This limitation of rights for naturalization citizenship at birth has always been a part of U.S. citizenship law, so it is not a new category of citizenship and it is nothing new. The author’s argument is a strawman argument, and it is a fraud being used to deceive the readers.
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. The Republicans had many more ineligible people coming up than the Democrats so they gave Obama a pass.
Having an usurper in office has not been good for the country, has it?
Nice try but that will not fly. We are talking about running for the President and the Vice President. The statue is quite clear. You sound like liberal going after the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution. Twisting words to your own favor.
Yet, clearly it is being challenged.
This is distraction, nothing more. An attempt by both the Left and the “moderate Right” (i.e., GOPEs and RINOs) to through doubt on Ted Cruz. The Left is also using this as a poke in the eye of the people who have been thwarted by the Democrat Socialists as well as the GOPEs/RINOs and the liberal media (pardon the redundancies) in removing the actual one who does not meet the Constitutional requirement for President.
at the risk of being thouught of as being Mean Spirited let me share my suspicion
Donal Trump Is Reality Challenged!!
Breaking the law does not make it moot, it makes you a lawbreaker and others involved accomplices. The next guy trying it on may find it easier to get away with or may not.
I'm also an Obama birther, but that nut is much tougher to crack.
Hang in there. We all want a prosperous country with a small, honest and efficient government.
If you watched the debate, Trump clearly stated that Cruz did not have to listen to him, the information came from noted Constitutional Scholars. The issue of lines of succession if something happened to POTUS or VPOTUS on down the line, was covered under the Law Of Nations. Clearly stated, to have Natural Born Status, your parents must be BORN in the US, and You must be born in the US. Unless your an immigrant and less than 2 generations in the US, your Natural Born, The purpose is to have NO ALLEGIANCE to any country OUTSIDE of the US. The only exception was when the US was originally formed, and 2 generations after. As it was impossible to attain NATURAL BORN status, until the 3rd Generation after the US was established. The rights of succession if the Pres or VP were to fall, was to maintain temporary control over the government until new elections could reasonably be held, not to be a permanent solution. IMO, the people writing and preaching against NBC, either do not want to understand the why of it, and rather want to change the Constitution for their own ends. I do hope that we clarify the intent of the definition and understand the reason why the framers did this. It makes perfect sense to me. I will add that John McCain went to congress, and they affirmed that he could run. https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/110/sres511/text
This, I think is what Trump was referring to for Cruz.
Obama has no less than 27 lawsuits, some before he took office, questioning his qualification as a Natural Born Citizen. We know that he was adopted by Lolo Soetoro, that his real name is Barry Soetoro, and he never changed his name legally to Barak Obama, is an Indonesian Citizen, and never took US Citizenship from a US Embassy after his 18th birthday, and his mother did not satisfy the requirements of living in the US to confer citizenship to him. Yet, the Supreme Court consistently refused to hear any of the cases. I think they will now have to hear this case. At least, I hope so.
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