I think the problem was the local government officials did the voting and not the people. Technically the people probably elected the local officials, but it was in the last election and not for the primaries.
No doubt the system is fucked up in Colorado but really how can anyone complain? It's how they've always done it. Even when they had the primary in 92, 96, and 2000 they still had this system in place. This was the system in place when in 2003 they removed the primary part of the nomination process. It was the system in place in 2004, 2008, and 2012 when they had the straw poll. It is the system still in place when in 2015 to thwart the national GOP making the straw polls binding the Colorado Republicans got rid of the straw poll. In all the elections going back to 1912 this is how Colorado's Republican Party has done it. Trump can not claim he didn't know or that he was cheated. He just can't admit that his campaign fucked up big time in the state. He had his chance to campaign in Colorado. He didn't. And he paid the price for it. Just like he paid the price for skipping the debate right before the Iowa caucus.
Ted Cruz can become the nominee, but only if the GOP is brain damaged, because he can't assume the office. The other day I was reading James Kent's Commentaries on American Law (circa 1830 or so), which is interesting. From lecture 11 It has also been deemed fit and proper, in a country which was colonized originally from several parts of Europe, and has been disposed to adopt the most liberal policy towards the rest of mankind, that a period of citizenship sufficient to create an attachment to our government, and a knowledge of its principles, should render an emigrant eligible to office. The English policy is not quite so enlarged. No alien born can become a member of parliament. This disability was imposed by the act of settlement of 12 Wm. III c. 2.; and no bill of naturalization can be received in either house of parliament, without such disabling clause in it. I did not know that. "Alien born" I conjecture would refer to anyone not born in Britain, even if born to British parents, but I might have to dig deeper into that. Perhaps someone more familiar with British immigration law would have in depth knowledge of it. Blackstone holds that there are two basic types of people, natural born, those born in Britain, under the king's protection, and aliens, who are born without. Naturalization is then the process of converting the alien born into British citizens, as is done for children born abroad to British parents. Regarding the President, in lecture 13 Kent says: 2. The constitution requires, that the president should be a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of the constitution, and that he have attained to the age of thirty file years, and have been fourteen years a resident within the United States. Considering the greatness of the trust, and that this department is the ultimately efficient power in government, these restrictions will not appear altogether useless or unimportant. As the president is required to be a native citizen of the United States, ambitious foreigners cannot intrigue for the office, and the qualification of birth cuts off all those inducements from abroad to corruption, negotiation, and war, which have frequently and fatally harassed the elective monarchies of Germany and Poland, as well as the Pontificate at Rome. There's that "natural born = native born" formulation again, without so much as another thought about it. I cite the formulation because in Zivotofsky v Kerry (2015), the justices cited Samuel Johnson's dictionary of 1768 where he defined "Natural" as "native; native inhabitant", and the Supreme Court uses "natural born" and "native born" interchangeably. The words are virtual synonyms, though "natural" includes the oddities explained by Blackstone and recognized by everyone, including the Supreme Court when it talks about the exceptions to the 14th Amendment that are, I suppose, grandfathered in from Blackstone regarding diplomats, foreign occupation, etc. The definition Johnson gives that were cited in Zivotofsky v Kerry (2015) are these, btw: Natural f 1. A native; An original inhabitant; inhabitant; Raleigh Naturalization f (from naturalize). The act of investing aliens with the privileges of native subjects. Bacon Going back to Zivotofsky, the case about the child born to two US parents in Jerusalem and whether "Israel" could be listed as the birthplace on his passport, Scalia says in his dissent: Before turning to Presidential power under Article II, I think it well to establish the statute’s basis in congressional power under Article I. Congress’s power to “establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization,” Art. I, §8, cl. 4, enables it to grant American citizenship to someone born abroad. United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U. S. 649, 702–703 (1898). The naturalization power also enables Congress to furnish the people it makes citizens with papers verifying their citizenship—say a consular report of birth abroad (which certifies citizenship of an American born outside the United States) or a passport (which certifies citizenship for purposes of international travel). Zivotofsky was granted US citizenship through an act of legislation, and just like Cruz, he has a Consular Report of Birth Abroad provided through Congressional power over naturalization. Congress has no such power over natural born citizens, as Congress derives its very existence from natural born citizens. In Great Britain, Parliament had complete power of naturalization while the king had complete power over denization (the making of denizens). Neither had the power of making natural born British subjects except by the traditional way of having their babies born in Britain, just like everybody else. Under the Constitution, Congress has the power to write uniform laws for the naturalization of aliens. Nobody who was not an alien can be touched by those acts of Congress, and among those acts are the ones granting US citizenship to children born abroad to US parents. They have no power or affect on natural born citizens. It's something that applies to Mexicans or Bangladeshis. It has nothing to do with babies that are born in Indiana.
What a Trump supporting thinks isn't the issue, it's what the Constitution says and what the eight justices on the Supreme Court will decide to do if nobody establishes standing prior to Cruz winning the election. You see, the Constitution doesn't address the issue of an ineligible candidate winning the election. State laws vary on how the situation is handled. Sometimes the election is given to the person who came in second (which would seat Hillary or Bernie), and sometimes they treat it as a person who can no longer hold the office and just work down through the succession, which would seat the Vice President. But the Vice President couldn't have been elected if the winner had been ineligible from birth because his candidacy was void. There is no guidance to be had from the Constitution, so eight people in black robes will just have to make it up as they go. One of the option is of course to rule the entire election invalid and keep Obama in office.
You support Trump? That automatically disqualifies you from even caring about the Constitution. You're an idiot. Moron. Retard. Best thing that could happen to humanity at this point is for you to be hit by lightning and fried to a crisp.
You support someone who cannot assume the office under Article II of the Constitution. What does that make you? Oh, yes, a useful idiot for the GOP establishment, who let Cruz run knowing he was ridiculously ineligible. They let him run to mop up the strong conservative and evangelic "lanes" of the party, and then they were going to hand all his delegates to Jeb, doing an "oopsie" at the convention. That "oopsie" is going to be carefully crafted and staged. Notice that everybody with any knowledge of the Constitution knows that Cruz is 100% ineligible. It's open and shut. 7th graders know it. But the fact cannot be uttered by any establishment conservative website or media outlet. I had a several huge threads at National Review where I gave probably 30 or 40 Supreme Court citations, on top of my usual citations of Blackstone, Tucker, Kent, and others, and even though people there can say absolutely anything about Cruz they want, vicious vile stuff, DC madam prostitution accusations, and whatnot, nothing is deleted except citations to the Constitution and law on citizenship. That's because the GOP establishment is fully complicit in letting Cruz run under their plan A. The only people who have pointed out Cruz is ineligible are basically outsiders like Fiorina, Rand Paul, Huckabee, Trump, along with Santorum, who nobody apparently trusted. To be eligible for President, you have to be born on US soil (with the noted exceptions). End of story. Birtherism is the claim that a US presidential candidate was secretly born outside US soil so as to disqualify him. They've been doing that since Chester A. Arthur because, in fact, anyone born outside US soil is automatically disqualified under Article II. You might as well run a goat, sheep, or cat for office. You are apparently too stupid to realize you're being played as tool. Cruz will not get the nomination because he's not a natural born citizen, and all the lawyers at the top of the GOP establishment know it. That was the plan from the beginning, but they didn't think that Jeb, Rubio, and everyone else would get blown out. The only reason Kasich is still in it, and that the GOP hasn't met with him for a "come to God" moment, is that he's actually in second behind Trump, as Cruz is more like a CGI candidate who doesn't really exist. But at this point they're in for an ounce, in for a pound. They have to throw all their weight behind Cruz to get to the second ballot, throw the rule book out the window, and destroy Cruz's reputation (which is irrelevant) so they can burn him and substitute Kasich, Romney, or Ryan at the convention, because they can't nominate Cruz or he will win in a landslide, and the Supreme Court will seat Hillary, and all the Republicans will turn on the architects of this charade. Mention even a third of that on almost any GOP or conservative website and you can watch 12 hours of discussion just disappear, as if it never happened, because that's the plan. It's extremely amusing to watch, and yet sad, because there is no way they can get out of the hole they've dug.
He does not have that power, nor does the RNC. Of course, there's always the Massachusetts system, where we vote for candidates and delegates to a state convention. I have no idea what those delegates do, but they are on the ballot just the same.
Those delegates are the ones who are voting for the candidate in the convention. Those delegates are bound by law to the candidate for the first vote at the convention. So Trump for example will have 22 delegates guaranteed on the first vote. After the first vote if there is no nominee those delegates are free to do whatever ever they want regardless of the fact that Trump won the primary. Which is why it is so important for candidates to secure delegates to their side before the convention. It's also where Trump is failing big time because he's been ignoring the delegates.
Probably not by then. If she is sentenced to prison then we'd have to follow the normal procedures and replace her with a Vice President after impeaching her and removing her from office for high crimes and misdemeanors. What I'm saying is that nowhere does the Constitution address the victory of an ineligible candidate. The requirements are so trivially simple (35 or older, a resident for 14 years, born on US soil) that the Founders didn't contemplate that someone could fake their way through it, or that if they did it would be a matter of opinion, such as Barry Goldwater being born in Arizona when it was just a US territory - judgment calls in the gray area of interpretation. "How much US sovereignty over a birthplace is enough? What about how we would grandfather in natural born status to those born in territories that became US states?" They didn't contemplate that American politicians could be too stupid to know a native from a non-native. So the Supreme Court would have to make the call on how to rectify something that the Founders didn't think would ever happen - a duffed election and an invalid candidate's victory, resulting in the winner being unable to assume the office, and indeed unable to have legally won the election, raising the obvious solution of seating the loser. But that doesn't work either, because the whole purpose of the election is to seat the winner, as carefully laid out in the Constitution regarding electors, the popular vote, letting the House vote, what happens when the House can't decide, etc. There are different procedures, but no clear guide as to which one to invoke. That means that pretty nobody will accept the outcome of the Supreme Court's decision.
I'm not sure where you got this, but don't you see the glaring spelling mistakes? For instance thirty file instead of thirty five.
James Kent didn't use spell check, and he had his work typeset. I blame Oliver Wendell Holmes, who edited the 12th edition. James Kent's Commentaries on American Law What's amusing (or irritating) is the people I debate against who claim these early authors were nobodies whose opinions mean nothing compared to the esteemed Constitutional scholarship of Ted Cruz.
This one probably deserves its own thread: Ted Cruz dildo ban In perhaps the most noticeable line of the brief, Cruz's office declared, "There is no substantive-due-process right to stimulate one's genitals for non-medical purposes unrelated to procreation or outside of an interpersonal relationship." That is, the pursuit of such happiness had no constitutional standing. And the brief argued there was no "right to promote dildos, vibrators, and other obscene devices." So stop touching yourself goddamnit! You do not have a Constitutional right to do that! Oh, and he's also completely wrong about Article II.
Heritage foundation says "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 Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States." And it's wording comes from the constitution, not just writing about it. So yes I will comment on typos. Cruz was born a citizen (by parentage), so he is a natural born citizen. I'm not sure why this is a problem. He is afforded the protection of our country because one of his parents was a citizen, he is a citizen because of that.
It's only a problem in the minds of a handful of off-the-rails lunatics. There are plenty of reasons Cruz shouldn't be president, but constitutional eligibility isn't one of them.
No, because "natural" means "native", aka born on the soil. Children born abroad to American citizens are aliens, which is why Congress has the power to make them citizens through legislation. If Congress wanted to, tomorrow they could make those children stand in line just like any natural born Mexican, or even move to the back of the line because their parents, for some reason, left the country to have a child. From the US Supreme Court, discussing citizenship in US v Wong Kim Ark By the common law of England, every person born within the dominions of the Crown, no matter whether of English or of foreign parents, and, in the latter case, whether the parents were settled or merely temporarily sojourning, in the country, was an English subject, save only the children of foreign ambassadors (who were excepted because their fathers carried their own nationality with them), or a child born to a foreigner during the hostile occupation of any part of the territories of England. No effect appears to have been given to descent as a source of nationality. The US is one of the couple dozen countries that use jus soli (right of the soil) as the basis of citizenship. We mostly ignored citizenship by blood because we're not a tribe who all trace our ancestry back to the same origins. It is completely different from the way a person is Jewish by descent. Anyone who is born here is a natural born citizen, and nobody else is. But since we're a nation of immigrants, we naturalize (make as a native) people who show up, including babies of whatever parentage. Since it is assumed that US citizen parents abroad will be bringing their baby home to the US, we go ahead and make those babies citizens at birth (or after birth) - but they must also show up before age 21 to claim that citizenship (or express a clear intent to do so) or they can lose that citizenship, or at least that's what the law used to be. That means they aren't natural born citizens (another clue being that they're not natural born in the US), because natural born citizenship cannot be taken away by the government without the clear intent of the citizen to renounce that citizenship (8 USC 1481). They can't even take a natural born citizen's citizenship away if he leads a foreign army against the United States because the Constitution did not grant the government that power. In contrast, they can revoke a naturalized person's citizenship for all kinds of reasons (8 U.S.C. 1451), including the refusal to testify before a Congressional committee investigating subversive activities. Babies born abroad to US parents, and babies adopted abroad by US parents, are exactly the same as far as the law goes. In fact, the difference is just a check box on application form N-600. Whether a child does or doesn't qualify is explained by the Immigration Service: Citizenship through parents. Ted Cruz has a "Certificate of Citizenship". I've never even seen one before because I was natural born. The State Department even covers citizenship of children born to gestational mothers abroad And note what the State Department says about birth abroad Acquisition of U.S. Citizenship by a Child Born Abroad Natural born citizens don't "acquire" citizenship, they are the definition of it. Birth Abroad to Two U.S. Citizen Parents in Wedlock A child born abroad to two U.S. citizen parents acquires U.S. citizenship at birth under section 301(c) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) provided that one of the parents had a residence in the United States or one of its outlying possessions prior to the child’s birth. And here we see that the children acquire their citizenship under an Immigration and Nationality Act, which can only apply to aliens because that's the only power the Constitution grants to Congress regarding citizenship.
If the Constitution means that a president has to be a native born citizen, why does it say that a president has to be a natural born citizen?
I was born in North Carolina, and my parents were born in the U.S. When did I acquire my citizenship?
Because a) "Natural" is defined as "native" and "native inhabitant" in the dictionaries of the period. b) It was a legal term of art for a person born on British soil, under the protection of the British king, and included common-sense exceptions that were reasoned out, such as that the children of diplomats are always natural born citizens because their parents' nationality traveled with their parents (diplomatic immunity, etc). c) Everyone understood that "natural born" meant "native born", which is why they'd use the words interchangeably in the same paragraph. For example, above I gave a paragraph from Kent's Commentaries on American Law, which he started compiling from his lecture notes in 1794. The constitution requires, that the president should be a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of the constitution, and that he have attained to the age of thirty file years, and have been fourteen years a resident within the United States. Considering the greatness of the trust, and that this department is the ultimately efficient power in government, these restrictions will not appear altogether useless or unimportant. As the president is required to be a native citizen of the United States, ambitious foreigners cannot intrigue for the office, and the qualification of birth cuts off all those inducements from abroad to corruption, negotiation, and war, which have frequently and fatally harassed the elective monarchies of Germany and Poland, as well as the Pontificate at Rome. One of the things I think he's referring to is how in Europe, dynastic marriages were commonplace. So your prince or princess goes off any marries some foreign royal, say in Spain, and has a Spanish baby who is born and raised in Spain. That baby is a citizen by blood, and would then return and claim your throne. They didn't like that and it caused a whole lot of trouble, because that baby spent its entire life being told that its purpose is to go back to the parent's home country, take over, and subordinate it to Spain. Thus was born a brilliant idea. Let's require that our king be born here, not somewhere else.
When you popped out in North Carolina and drew a breath. All babies who pop out in North Carolina are natural born North Carolinians and natural born US citizens. The government of North Carolina exists because you, and the other natural born citizens, created it and allow it to continue. If you don't like it, you can alter or abolish it, though it is suggested that you shouldn't do that for light or transient causes. Also note that you were not a natural born citizen until you were born, the operative word being "born". Your status was undetermined, kind of like Schrodinger's cat. While gestating, you might pop out in North Carolina, or you might pop out in Florida, or you might pop out in France or Sweden. It just depends where your mother was at when you decided to part company.
Actually I'd guess this is aimed at the people who have been protesting against open carry by "open carrying" dildos
Texas allows open carry. Defending oneself with a dildo, and assaults committed with a dildo, are not cases that are unheard of or all that exceptional.
