[Arthur Wildfire! March]

BTW ... I found another Cruz defender who is willing to debate original intent.

John Valentine and Yosemitest — you guys should coordinate, maybe ping each other.

I’m just trying to clear this up, and Cruz deserves a strong defense on this forum.

I’m not always clear on the difference between originalism and ‘breathing document’. Is it originalist to remove gender considerations regarding natural born status?

[Arthur Wildfire! March]

‘Both ways of looking at it from your post don’t seem relevant. The US law on dual-citizenship does not mention gender ...’

The following is no intent to impune Cruz’ patriotism. I would support an amendment to make him elibible. But what was original intent?

So what was the founding fathers’ intent regarding ‘natural born citizen’? Was not the driving intention to prevent English nobles [or royalty] from siring children [possibly bastards] who could become our defacto king?

[Yosemitest]

Those IDIOTS could NOT BE MORE WRONG, EVEN IF THEY TRIED !

Arizona Court Declares Lawyers Mario Apuzzo and Leo Donofrio Totally Cracked on What Makes a Natural Born Citizen

Now IF the Court had given such a “definition,” it still would’ve merely been non-binding dicta, or side commentary —
as any such determination was clearly non-essential to the matter they were deciding.
Such reasoning might have been convincing to a later Court — or it might not have been.

But the fact is,
they simply didn’t create any such “definition” of “natural born citizen” —
in spite of Apuzzo’s (and Leo Donofrio’s) elaborate twisting of their words to try and make it sound as if they did.

And even if they had — which they didn’t — it would’ve been OVERTURNED 23 years later, in the definitive citizenship case of US v. Wong Kim Ark.
In that case, the Supreme Court told us quite clearly, in not one, but in two different ways, that Wong Kim Ark,
who was born on US soil of two NON-citizen Chinese parents, wasn’t thereby JUST “a citizen” —
he was ALSO “natural born.”

If he was “natural born,” and he was “a citizen,”
then it is inescapable that the Court found young Mr. Wong to be a natural born citizen.


The 6 Justices who agreed on the majority opinion (against only 2 dissenters) also discussed the implications of such status for Presidential eligibility.
So they in fact found
that Wong Kim Ark would be legally eligible to run for President upon meeting the other qualifications — reaching the age of 35, and 14 years’ residence.

Mr. Wong, who lived most of his life as a simple Chinese cook in Chinatown, never ran for President, of course.
And in the highly racial America of his day Wong almost certainly could not have been elected if he had tried.

But according to the United States Supreme Court, legally speaking,
Mr. Wong DID HAVE the legal qualification to eventually run for, and serve as, President of the United States —
if the People should have decided that he was the right person for the job.

There’s much deeper we could go into the issue, of course.
I haven’t found the time to refute Mr. Apuzzo’s bogus “two citizen parents” claims in the full, absolute detail that I would like to.
There is an awful lot of refutation here, here, and here,
though.

It would be nice to put ALL of the pieces together in one place.
However, for those who don’t mind a bit of digging, the references given above are a good start.

But never mind — a court in the State of Arizona the day before yesterday quite clearly and authoritatively refuted Mr. Apuzzo for me.
The court smacked down Apuzzo’s and Donofrio’s claims in no uncertain terms.

Judge Richard Gordon DISMISSED the ballot-challenge case of Allen v. Arizona Democratic Party.
And he did so “WITH PREJUDICE,” which means
“This case has been fully heard and judged on its merits
and we’re done with it —
don’t attempt to darken my door with this same accusation ever again.”

Note that again:
Apuzzo’s claim has been officially tried in a court of law, on its merits, and found to be totally cracked.
And the ruling struggled to stretch barely past two pages into three.
That is NOT a lot of discussion,
which indicates that this was not anything even REMOTELY resembling a “close call.”


The pertinent language in Judge Gordon’s ruling is as follows:

“Plaintiff claims that
President Obama cannot stand for reelection [in the State of Arizona] because he is not a ‘natural born citizen’ as required by the United States Constitution… Most importantly, Arizona courts are bound by United States Supreme Court precedent in construing the United States Constitution,
Arizona v. Jay J. Garfield Bldg. Co., 39 Ariz. 45, 54, 3 P.2d 983, 986 (1931),
and this precedent fully supports
that President Obama is a natural born citizen under the Constitution
and thus qualified to hold the office of President.
See United States v. Wong Kim Ark
, 169 U.S. 649, 702-03 (1898) (addressing U. S. Const. amend. XIV); Ankeny v. Governor of the State of Indiana,
916 N.E.2d 678, 684-88 (Ind. App. 2010) (addressing the precise issue).
Contrary to Plaintiff's assertion, Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162 (1874), does not hold otherwise.“

Ouch. That’s gonna leave a mark.

So your statement that "natural born means both parents " has been DENIED by the courts !

These IDIOTS ALWAYS QUOTE LIBERALS !

Not only could the Founding Father define "natural born citizen", BUT ... THE FOUNDING FATHERS DID DEFINE IT !
And you ARE refusing the definition of "natural born citizen" CLEARLY DEFINED by our FOUNDING FATHERS !

Ted Cruz's PARENTS fulfilled ALL those requirements of the law that time, for Ted Cruz to be a "Natural Born Citizen".
Ted Cruz did NOT NEED a Court and a Judge to "Nationalize" him.

“Senator Cruz became a U.S. citizen at birth, and he never had to go through a naturalization process after birth to become a U.S. citizen,” said spokeswoman Catherine Frazier.
... The U.S. Constitution allows only a “natural born” American citizen to serve as president.
Most legal scholars who have studied the question agree that includes an American born overseas to an American parent, such as Cruz.

The only definition that matters is the one GIVEN BY OUR FOUNDING FATHERS.

They addressed children of citizens,
where one parent who was a citizen,
and one parent who was an immigrant who had resident in the United States for a period of time,
and the child's RIGHT to be a NATURAL BORN CITIZEN,
EVEN IF "born beyond Sea, or OUT of the limits of the United States, SHALL BE CONSIDERED AS NATURAL BORN CITIZENS :
Provided, that the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have NEVER been RESIDENT IN the United States:"

1st United States Congress, 21-26 Senators and 59-65 Representatives

As Hans von Spakovsky wrote in his Commentary "An Un-Naturally Born Non-Controversy":

... The Constitution, federal law, and the historical understanding of the Framers, as well as prior British legal traditions and law, all support this view.
In a recent article in the Harvard Law Review, two former U.S. Solicitor Generals, Paul Clement (who served under President George W. Bush) and Neal Katyal (who served under President Barack Obama) stated:

All the sources routinely used to interpret the Constitution confirm that the phrase “natural born Citizen” has a specific meaning:
namely, someone who was a U.S. citizen at birth
with no need to go through a naturalization proceeding at some later time.
And Congress has made equally clear from the time of the framing of the Constitution to the current day that,
subject to certain residency requirements on the parents,
someone born to a U.S. citizen parent generally becomes a U.S. citizen without regard to whether the birth takes place in Canada, the Canal Zone, or the continental United States.

Thus, former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger would not be eligible to run for president
because the Austrian native had to go through the naturalization process to become a U.S. citizen.

Certainly the Framers of the Constitution held this view of “natural born” citizen.
They had a deep understanding of British common law and applied its precepts, particularly as explained in Blackstone’s Commentaries, throughout the Constitution.
The U.S. Supreme Court in Smith v. Alabama (1888) recognized that
“the interpretation of the Constitution of the United States is necessarily influenced by the fact that
its provisions are framed in the language of the English common law,
and are to be read in the light of its history.”

Senator Cruz meets all three qualifications in the Constitution to be the president of the United States
if the American people make that choice.

One of those precepts of British law was
that children born to British citizens anywhere in the world,
even outside the dominions of the British Empire,
were “natural born” citizens of the Empire
who owed their allegiance to the Crown.
This historical understanding is explained in great detail by the Supreme Court in a well-known 1898 case, U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark.

The First Congress, which included many of the Framers of the Constitution, codified this view of a natural born citizen.
A mere three years after the Constitution was drafted, they passed the Naturalization Act of 1790,
which specified that the children of U.S. citizens born
“out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born Citizens.”
The modern version of this Act is found at 8 U.S.C. §1401.
It contains a list of all individuals who are considered “nationals and citizens of the United States at birth.”
Paragraph (g) includes:

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 five years,
at least two of which were after attaining the age of fourteen years. 

Ted Cruz was born in Canada in 1970;
his mother, who was a U.S. citizen by birth from Delaware, was in her 30s at the time.
She met Cruz’s father, who was born in Cuba, as a student at Rice University.
These facts show that
Cruz’s family background clearly meets the standard set out in the federal statute for being a natural born citizen who did not have to go through any naturalization process to become a citizen.;
That was also the case for Senator Barry Goldwater, who was born in Arizona before it became a state,
and Governor George Romney, who was born in Mexico.

The bottom line is that Senator Cruz meets all three qualifications in the Constitution to be the president of the United States if the American people make that choice.
The same is true of my wife, who was born in Manila.
Her father, whose family had been in America since shortly after the Pilgrims got to Massachusetts,
was temporarily working abroad for an American company—just like Ted Cruz’s father.

My wife is not likely to run for president,
but there is no question that she—like Ted Cruz, Barry Goldwater, George Romney, and John McCain—is eligible to be president
and to swear an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”


Hans A. von Spakovsky is a a former commissioner on the Federal Election Commission and Justice Department lawyer. 
He is the coauthor of “Who’s Counting? How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk”(Encounter 2012)
and  “Obama’s Enforcer: Eric Holder’s Justice Department” (HarperCollins/Broadside 2014).