Free Republic

If you thought some in the conservative media lost their minds over President Obama's birth certificate, you were right. But the current brouhaha over Ted Cruz's place of birth -- in which Donald Trump reprises his role as chief instigator -- might be even more compelling, in its own way, because of the civil war it has sparked on the right side of the press. Sadly, there is no way that Ted Cruz can continue running in the Republican Primary unless he can erase doubt on eligibility. Dems will sue!-- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 13, 2016 Witness this week's...

IS TED CRUZ A “NATURAL BORN” U.S. CITIZEN?: According to Widener law school’s Mary Brigid McManamon, who has an oped in the Washington Post today, the answer is “no.” Her reasoning is a bit shaky: On this subject, the common law is clear and unambiguous. The 18th-century English jurist William Blackstone, the preeminent authority on it, declared natural-born citizens are "such as are born within the dominions of the crown of England," while aliens are "such as are born out of it." The key to this division is the assumption of allegiance to one's country of birth. The Americans...

A leftover from Sunday that I missed yesterday. If you’re going to stand on the Senate floor and call the majority leader a liar and a crony, I guess you shouldn’t be surprised when he won’t do you a favor.Although … this is sort of a favor to Cruz, isn’t it? Every time he gets to tell his fans that it’s McCain or McConnell who’s behind the attacks on eligibility rather than Trump, it makes it easier for populist voters to dismiss them out of hand. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) says the upper chamber won't issue a...

Yesterday, Leon posted on the epic gutlessness of RNC Chairman Reince Priebus to say that Ted Cruz is a natural born citizen as understood under the 14th Amendment. In response to a media question, Priebus said: Listen, I don't get involved. I'm not going to get in the middle of all these candidate issues. It's a bad place for me to be. I'll let all these folks argue about this stuff, and I'm going to stay out of it. This is stunning when you think about it. The head of the RNC won’t even say that one of the two...

Mary Brigid McManamon is a constitutional law professor at Widener University’s Delaware Law School. __________________________________________________ Donald Trump is actually right about something: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) is not a natural-born citizen and therefore is not eligible to be president or vice president of the United States. The Constitution provides that "No person except a natural born citizen .?.?. shall be eligible to the office of President." The concept of "natural born" comes from the common law, and it is that law the Supreme Court has said we must turn to for the concept's definition. On this subject, the common law...

I rarely agree with liberal Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus, but she’s recently penned two pieces that actually make sense.  Though Marcus is a strong supporter of Hillary Clinton, she acknowledged a couple weeks ago that Donald Trump’s threat to go after the Democrat frontrunner for enabling her sexually predatory husband was perfectly legitimate.  Now, as Ted Cruz is under attack from Trump (and some on the left) for being born in Canada, she’s sensibly calling for the end of the presidential natural-born citizen test. I heard a lot about this test from a young age.  My father was...

:: Cruz's Dilemma- By: Larry Walker, II -The concept of natural born Citizenship is clear and concise, to anyone with a rational mind. Although some may wish to contort its meaning to fit the presidential candidate of their choice, natural law is incapable of such bias. It takes two parents to produce a child, one male and one female, but you would never know it if your source of information is the lamestream media. By its logic, only one parent is sufficient.Epigrammatically speaking, if both of your parents were U.S. Citizens at the time of your birth, you are without...

Even Donald Trump thought so, at least before Ted Cruz slipped past him to top the Iowa polls. As recently as last August Trump was saying all the legal people he talked to vouched for Ted Cruz’s eligibility to be president. As ABC News reported The Donald’s flip-flop: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has reversed his position on Ted Cruz’s eligibility to run for president, now saying his Canadian birthplace shouldn’t disqualify him.

Commentary on the Commentary[o]n the Meaning of “Natural Born Citizen” or“Do these people know that we plebes have a thing called ‘the internet’?” Commentary by Neal Katyal & Paul Clement (text in black)(Web link: http://harvardlawreview.org/2015/03/on-the-meaning-of-natural-born-citizen/)Commentary on the Commentary by Farmer John (interspersed text in red)(Footnotes in the original commentary are brought into text with numbers retained for reference)We have both had the privilege of heading the Office of the Solicitor General during different administrations. [This is an appeal to authority, not evidence—“trust us, we’re the experts.”] We may have different ideas about the ideal candidate in the next presidential election,...

For a five year period of time, the term “Natural Born Citizen” had a definition which differed from the “two-citizen parents, born under United States jurisdiction” description generally accepted for most of this nation’s existence. The Nationality Act of 1790 referred to those born to citizens beyond Sea or out of the limits of the United States as being “natural born citizens”. Because of the term “citizens” as it pertains to parentage, there is an argument to be made that this requires two citizen parents for this to be allowed. Below is a quote from the 1790 Act. Since this...

A document uncovered by Breitbart News indicates that the parents of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) were named on a Calgary list of electors for Canada's federal election of July 8, 1974. Ted Cruz parents are listed as Cruz, Eleanor, Mrs. nd Cruz, Raphael, self employed, both at 920 Riverdale Avenue, South West in Calgary, Alberta. Canadian law restricts (and restricted) federal voting rights to Canadian citizens. In a statement to Breitbart News—the full text of which follows this article—Jason Johnson, chief strategist for Cruz for President, said that “the document itself does not purport to be a list of ‘registered...

Linking to this succinct but powerful essay by Paul Clement and my Georgetown colleague Neal Katyal, Jonathan usefully summarizes the legal argument for why Ted Cruz, who was born in Canada to an American mother, is a "natural born citizen" under Article II, section 1 of the Constitution, which provides: No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution,shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five...

Via BuzzFeed, this makes three big names from three very different sectors of the party suddenly questioning Cruz’s eligibility. McCain represents the establishmentarians; Rand Paul represents libertarians; and Donald Trump represents … whatever the hell Trumpism is. It seems we’ve reached the “any weapon to hand” stage among Cruz’s political enemies. Which is interesting in ol’ Mav’s case, since his 2008 campaign against Obama will forever be remembered by grassroots righties for his refusal to go kitchen-sink on O. In the end, I guess the “wacko birds” were the real threat all along. May the McCain/Paul/Trump alliance last a thousand...

WASHINGTON - It seems like only yesterday that skeptics of Barack Obama's birth in Hawaii rushed to the Supreme Court to try to block the son of an American mother and Kenyan father from taking office as president. The justices turned away those challenges as fast as they arrived at the courthouse door, much as lower courts did. Seven years later, Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz is dealing with pointed remarks from rival Donald Trump that Cruz's birth in Canada to an American mother and Cuban father raises doubt about his eligibility to be president and could dog his campaign...

Tuan Anh Nguyen vs IRS (No 99-2071) Transcript at the Oral Argument pop-up Justice Scalia: I mean, isn't it clear that the natural born requirement in the Constitution was intended explicitly to exclude some Englishmen who had come here and spent some time here and then went back and raised their families in England ? They did not want that. Davis: Yes, by the same token... Scalia: That is jus soli, isn't it ? Davis: By the same token, one could say that the provision would apply now to ensure that Congress can't apply suspect classifications to keep certain individuals...

You knew it was coming! Donald Trump said in an interview that rival Ted Cruz’s Canadian birthplace was a “very precarious” issue that could make the Texas senator vulnerable if he became the Republican presidential nominee. “Republicans are going to have to ask themselves the question: ‘Do we want a candidate who could be tied up in court for two years?’ That’d be a big problem,” Trump said when asked about the topic. This is how Donald Trump operates: whenever he's threatened by someone in the polls, he tries to smear his opponents. He did so with Dr. Ben Carson,...

This is an authenticated timeline of known facts concerning the citizenship of Senator Ted Cruz. FACTUAL CRUZ CITIZENSHIP TIMELINE (Everything presented in this timeline is a matter of public record. All of it is based upon publicly reported events, public statements made by Rafael Cruz, Ted Cruz, officials with the Elect Ted movement or U.S. and Canadian officials.)

My response to @realDonaldTrump calling into question my natural-born citizenship? Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4ZGKI8vpcg- @tedcruzJanuary 5, 2016

We have both had the privilege of heading the Office of the Solicitor General during different administrations. We may have different ideas about the ideal candidate in the next presidential election, but we agree on one important principle: voters should be able to choose from all constitutionally eligible candidates, free from spurious arguments that a U.S. citizen at birth is somehow not constitutionally eligible to serve as President simply because he was delivered at a hospital abroad. The Constitution directly addresses the minimum qualifications necessary to serve as President. In addition to requiring thirty-five years of age and fourteen years...

The ever entertaining and mercurial Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Florida, threatened to file a lawsuit if the Republican Party picks Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas as its presidential nominee in 2016, according to a Friday story in the Washington Times. Grayson made this threat while appearing on Alan Colmes’ radio show. The stated reason for the threat is that, in Grayson’s view, Cruz is not a natural born American as required for being president in the United States Constitution, having been born in Canada, albeit to an American mother.