SUPER FUCKING TUESDAY!!!1!

you live in Texas, which is not - yet - in play. You have a free pass to vote for anyone and it won't affect the outcome of the general election.

He doesn't live in Texas.

Thankfully governors and the military intervened to completely disobey Obama and the CDC or Ebola would have spread all over the place.

Now what has that to do with whether Cruz is eligible?

So far this thread has had only one good comment arguing that he is (citing a Harvard Law paper), a string of comments asserting merely that he's a US citizen and trying to ferret out if that's the same as a natural born citizen, and then a long serious of juvenile ad hominem attacks because none of you can make a cogent reply on the topic of discussion: Is Ted Cruz Constitutionally eligible to hold the office of President?

Lawrence Tribe, professor at Harvard Law who defended Al Gore in 2000, says there's no way Cruz is eligible.

But lets take a look at the inestimable period source, Blackstone's Commentaries, where he writes a great deal about rights and citizenship.

The first and most obvious division of the people is into aliens and natural-born subjects. Natural-born subjects are such as are born within the dominions of the crown of England; that is, within the ligeance, or as it is generally called, the allegiance of the king; and aliens, such as are born out of it. Allegiance is the tie, or ligamen,which binds the subject to the king, in return for that protection which the king affords the subject. The thing itself, or substantial part of it, is founded in reason and the nature of government; the name and the form are derived to us from our Gothic ancestors.​

The phrase "natural born" only appears once in the Constitution, and indeed in US law so far as I know. But the phrase appears time and time again in Blackstone's Commentaries, which every lawyer back then read from cover to cover.

So what does Blackstone say about the natural allegiance of these "natural born" subjects, and from where does such allegiance arise?

Allegiance, both express and implied, is however distinguished by the law into two sorts or species, the one natural, the other local; the former being also perpetual, the latter temporary. Natural allegiance is such as is due from all men born within the king's dominions immediately upon their birth. For, immediately upon their birth, they are under the king's protection; at a time too, when (during their infancy) they are incapable of protecting themselves. Natural allegiance is therefore a debt of gratitude; which cannot be forfeited, cancelled, or altered, by any change of time, place, or circumstance, nor by any thing but the united concurrence of the legislature. An Englishman who removes to France, or to China, owes the same allegiance to the king of England there as at home, and twenty years hence as well as now. For it is a principle of universal law, that the natural-born subject of one prince cannot by any act of his own, no, not by swearing allegiance to another, put off or discharge his natural allegiance to the former: for this natural allegiance was intrinsic, and primitive, and antecedent to the other; and cannot be devested without the concurrent act of that prince to whom it was first due. Indeed the natural-born subject of one prince, to whom he owes allegiance, may be entangled by subjecting himself absolutely to another; but it is his own act that brings him into these straits and difficulties, of owing service to two masters; and it is unreasonable that, by such voluntary act of his own, he should be able at pleasure to unloose those bands, by which he is connected to his natural prince.​

This view would hold that Ted Cruz's natural allegiance would be to Canada, not the United States. It would also explain why the Founding Fathers would limit the office of President to someone who was "natural born" to the United States.

And he goes on to say:

... the prince is always under a constant tie to protect his natural-born subjects, at all times and in all countries, for this reason their allegiance due to him is equally universal and permanent. But, on the other hand, as the prince affords his protection to an alien, only during his residence in this realm, the allegiance of an alien is confined (in point of time) to the duration of such his residence, and (in point of locality) to the dominions of the British empire.​

Thus allegiance, then, both express and implied, is the duty of all the king's subjects, under the distinctions here laid down, of local and temporary, or universal and perpetual. Their rights are also distinguishable by the same criterions of time and locality; natural-born subjects having a great variety of rights, which they acquire by being born within the king's ligeance, and can never forfeit by any distance of place or time, but only by their own misbehaviour:​

So a child born abroad may not have full allegiance. He also goes at great lengths to note that certain high offices in England are not open to aliens. One must be born in England to merit that level of trust. James Madison and the other Founders read Blackstone all the time. Benedict Arnold even used Blackstone's commentaries as a cipher. It was the go-to reference for everybody.

And Blackstone also said:

The children of aliens, born here in England, are generally speaking, natural-born subjects, and entitled to all the privileges of such. In which the constitution of France differs from ours; for there, by their jus albinatus, if a child be born of foreign parents, it is an alien.​

And there is birth-right citizenship described.

So does anyone here care to argue against yet another comment full of quotes and references, or are you just going to fling more jejune insults like a bunch of spoiled little children?

Damn, and you were so close to getting this one right, too! Those pesky governors and the military with their secret coup that only you noticed!

No, not Texas. I believe he lives in a contested state, actually, so his choice will like push Clinton over the top!

Am I beginning to hallucinate, or did this thread only a few hours ago contain another response from @gturner in which he claimed that Trump & Co. was a result of the open revolt that had broken out against Obama's handling of Ebola?

I live in Virginia.

You could say the same thing about California. If he lasts long enough Bernie has a decent chance of winning this state but because we are one of the last states in the primary our choices never really matter because everyone has normally dropped out by then. Our choice usually boils down to rubber stamping the front runner other states already picked or just not bothering to show up to vote in a primary.

gonna have to ban you for posting while hallucinating...

Actually, no, you're not. Being an admin has its perks and we can see those phantom posts

I figured I was probably too tired to have made the argument I wanted and since nobody had probably read it, I'd just delete it and start over with it later if the topic resurfaced.

Right now I'm using summaries of my natural birth comments over at Instapundit, where there are both Cruz supporters and law professors.

The faster Cruz's eligibility is seriously questioned and ruled out, the less the backlash will be from conservative and evangelicals who got hoodwinked into throwing their votes away. As it stands things are already very bad. Will those Cruz delegates be given to middle-of-the-road Kasich, Rubio of the Gang of Eight, Donald Trump, or Mitt Romney? I'm sure most Cruz supporters would scream with rage at the thought of it, and the GOP establishment is entirely to blame for the situation.

So you didn't delete it because you realized it was super bat shit fucking crazy even for you? I always look at the deleted posts, and they hardly ever generate a huge from me, but that one sure did.

You say that about every comment I make.

But to reiterate the main point, when the public feels that politicians are not acting in their interests, and in fact willingly harming those interests to posture and preen, the public gets pretty angry. We see that in Germany where the far-right has surged in regional and local elections this weekend. We saw it when a public outcry caused governors and the military to buck Obama's orders about handling Ebola, while his "czar" never uttered a peep before slinking back to the financial sector. We see it in Trump's surge where he went from joke to serious threat just by saying 'Keep the Muslims out!' and 'I'll build a wall!' The pundits thought he was committing political suicide, but instead he surged - because they're out of touch with how angry many people are that the political class has been less than useless, they've been actively building and enabling the threats that ordinary people are so concerned about. This leaves people feeling angry, helpless, and desperate. That's the recipe for changing all the name tags at the important conference tables, or as Jefferson put it,

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. ​

Safety and happiness have been in short supply lately, and we know whose fault that is. Obama, Hillary, Kerry, McConnell, Boehner, and the other usual suspects from the Ivy League, the Chamber of Commerce, Goldman Sachs, and media outlets like MSNBC that tell Hillary's spokesmen what questions they'll ask before the cameras start rolling (or before they think the cameras are rolling -- major flub today).

It can even lead to Tweets like this:

If nothing else, gturner has this bit correct.

Here's a Townhall article making much the same point.

This election is the Republican Altamont, where conservatives got knifed by the Hell’s Angels. It’s our own fault too – the GOP teased its base, looked down upon it, lied to it, and when it turned out it wasn’t playing games and pulled a blade the establishment wasn’t ready.

I spent the last few days at CPAC, surrounded by conservatives, and there was a clear preference for focusing on the symptom – Donald Trump and his myriad failings – rather than the disease. Our problem is not this digitally-challenged, bizarrely phallocentric clown; it’s our failure to represent the people left behind as we got ahead.

Donald Trump is the fault of the GOP elite, including movement conservatives, who failed to listen, who failed to follow through, who thought we were meant to lead the benighted past their narrow self-interests and unseemly prejudices to a wonderful new world reflecting our benevolent self-interests and elite prejudices. Funny how the conservative, globalized utopia we sought to impose always worked out really well for us. Except those left behind aren’t laughing.​

Most of the Townhall columnists scream that Trump isn't a conservative, and perhaps is the anti-Christ, but Kurt Schlichter hit the nail on the head with that one.

I've been debating Cruz's eligibility at Instapundit and other places, and finally I came up with some relevant Supreme Court cases. Contrary to what some legal scholars have claimed, there are a lot of prior cases that discuss "natural born citizen". Many are cited in US v. Wong Kim Ark in 1898.

Wong Kim Ark was born and raised in San Francisco. When he grew up he visited China. The second time he did he was refused re-entry into the US because he wasn't a citizen (the Chinese exclusion laws were in effect). He sued. It went to the Supreme Court, where they dug into lots of prior cases and ruled that Wong Kim Ark as a natural born citizen of the US. Given what they said, and what they said in all the cases they quoted, including a great deal about natural born citizenship under the common laws of England, the case against Cruz is open and shut.

Cool, just post the relevant passages. I don't have time to read the entire ruling right now, but I can tell you that the phrase "natural born" does not appear once in that document (unless my text search is faulty).

Us a dash instead of a space in "natural-born". 45 references.

There is so much that's wonderfully quotable that it would take me a while to cut it down to a few favorites.

Canada is a colony of the United States, Cruz is a natural born US citizen.

At any rate, @gturner is correct. It's a slam dunk.

Cruz is a natural born citizen, Q.E.D.

You obviously skipped the previous paragraph which is setting that up as an aberrant case.

"The notion that there is any common law principle to naturalize the children born in foreign countries, of native-born American father and mother, father or mother, must be discarded. There is not, and never was, any such common law principle." ​

Under common law, Ted Cruz isn't even a US citizen. And the ruling cites common law as the authoritative reading. Keep in mind that when the common law says "all citizens at birth are natural born", it didn't acknowledge any citizens at birth other than those born IN England.

The Congressional Research Service (the group that actually decides whether or not someone is eligible to be prez) doesn't think it's all that aberrant.

"Although the eligibility of native born U.S. citizens has been settled law for more than a century, there have been legitimate legal issues raised concerning those born outside of the country to U.S. citizens. From historical material and case law, it appears that the common understanding of the term “natural born” in England and in the American colonies in the 1700s may have included both the strict common law meaning as born in the territory (jus soli), as well as the statutory laws adopted in England since at least 1350, which included children born abroad to British fathers (jus sanguinis, the law of descent).

The weight of legal and historical authority indicates that the term “natural born” citizen would mean a person who is entitled to U.S. citizenship “by birth” or “at birth,” either by being born “in” the United States and under its jurisdiction, even those born to alien parents; by being born abroad to U.S. citizen-parents; or by being born in other situations meeting legal requirements for U.S. citizenship “at birth.” Such term, however, would not include a person who was not a U.S. citizen by birth or at birth, and who was thus born an “alien” required to go through the legal process of “naturalization” to become a U.S. citizen."

According to the Supreme Court, the CRS is wrong about that.

"The right of citizenship never descends in the legal sense, either by the common law, or under the common naturalization acts. It is incident to birth in the country, or it is given personally by statute. "​

We passed legislation to grant citizenship to children born abroad to US parents in some cases.

The closest you might get is the naturalization act of 1790 which says:

"The children of citizens of the United States, that may be 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."​

That got repealed and for decades children born abroad to Americans weren't even citizens It also makes clear that children born abroad are not natural born citizens or it wouldn't says they should be considered as such - with exceptions. You don't write laws that say a man shall be considered a man, you right laws to cover cases where things not a man shall be considered a man. Also note that the law in question is a naturalization act, naturalizing children born abroad to US parents, which would make them naturalized citizens at birth.

​

The link addresses US vs Kim Wong Ark multiple times.

All that quote says is that Congress can determine other situations that are defined as natural citizenship. It doesn't at all limit the definition.

Oh, the ruling goes on and on with great clarity

*****

And, from 1795, the provisions of those acts, which granted citizenship to foreign-born children of American parents, described such children as "born out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States." Acts of January 29, 1795, c. 20, § 3; 1 Stat. 415; April 14, 1802, c. 28, § 4; 2 Stat. 155; February 10, 1855, c. 71; 10 Stat. 604; Rev. Stat. §§ 1993, 2172. Thus Congress, when dealing with the question of citizenship in that aspect, treated aliens residing in this country as "under the jurisdiction of the United States," and American parents residing abroad as "out of the jurisdiction of the United States."

The words "in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof," in the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, must be presumed to have been understood and intended by the Congress which proposed the Amendment, and by the legislatures which adopted it, in the same sense in which the like words had been used by Chief Justice Marshall in the well known case of The Exchange; and as the equivalent of the words "within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States," and the converse of the words, "out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States," as habitually used in the naturalization acts. This presumption is confirmed by the use of the word "jurisdiction" in the last clause of the same section of the Fourteenth Amendment, which forbids any State to "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." It is impossible to construe the words "subject to the jurisdiction thereof," in the opening sentence, as less comprehensive than the words "within its jurisdiction," in the concluding sentence of the same section; or to hold that persons "within the jurisdiction" of one of the States of the Union are not "subject to the jurisdiction of the United States."

These considerations confirm the view, already expressed in this opinion, that the opening sentence of the Fourteenth 688*688 Amendment is throughout affirmative and declaratory, intended to allay doubts and to settle controversies which had arisen, and not to impose any new restrictions upon citizenship.

By the Civil Rights Act of 1866, "all persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed," were declared to be citizens of the United States. In the light of the law as previously established, and of the history of the times, it can hardly be doubted that the words of that act, "not subject to any foreign power," were not intended to exclude any children born in this country from the citizenship which would theretofore have been their birthright; or, for instance, for the first time in our history, to deny the right of citizenship to native-born children of foreign white parents not in the diplomatic service of their own country, nor in hostile occupation of part of our territory. But any possible doubt in this regard was removed when the negative words of the Civil Rights Act, "not subject to any foreign power," gave way, in the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, to the affirmative words, "subject to the jurisdiction of the United States."

This sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment is declaratory of existing rights, and affirmative of existing law, as to each of the qualifications therein expressed — "born in the United States," "naturalized in the United States," and "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" — in short, as to everything relating to the acquisition of citizenship by facts occurring within the limits of the United States. But it has not touched the acquisition of citizenship by being born abroad of American parents; and has left that subject to be regulated, as it had always been, by Congress, in the exercise of the power conferred by the Constitution to establish an uniform rule of naturalization.

The effect of the enactments conferring citizenship on foreign-born children of American parents has been defined, and the fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the dominion of the United States, notwithstanding alienage of parents, has been affirmed, in well considered opinions of the executive departments of the Government, since the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution.

****

That, and hundreds and hundreds of other paragraphs in the ruling, make clear that natural-born citizens are born in the United States, regardless of their parentage, with the exception of diplomats or areas under foreign occupation, such as happened during the War of 1812 in Maine, where US sovereignty was suspended. The defining element the ruling brings up time and again is that to be natural born you have to be born under the sole and complete protection of the government of the United States.

Children born outside that protection may or may not be given citizenship (the laws vary over time), but they most certainly are not natural born citizens, who status could only be altered by a Constitutional Amendment (thus the above section). The Constitution grants Congress the power to write laws for naturalization, and thus to determine who is a naturalized citizen. Congress has no power to determine who is a natural-born citizen, as those are not naturalized but citizens by the fact of their birth on US soil under complete US sovereignty and protection. Even if Congress grants foreign-born children the same rights as natural-born citizens, it cannot make them natural-born citizens (which is a circumstance of birth), it can only make them equivalent. Congress cannot make a black man into a white man, it can only make them equal before the law.

Similarly, it is not within Congress's power to in any way make a child born abroad meet the requirements of Article II, section 1, anymore than they could declare 21-year olds to be fully adult and equivalent to a 35-year old. The Constitution says the President must be at least 35 years old, and nothing Congress does on age legislation can get around that requirement. The President must be a natural-born citizen, which, as the ruling makes clear time-and-time again, means born on US soil. It cites a few English laws granting natural-born status to children born abroad (and in many cases those laws only applied to the king, so that his heirs could inherit the throne), but it could not make them natural-born. So when the Framers used the phrase "natural-born" they were using the common understanding of the common law, in which are found the operative definitions known to all. Thus, the President has to be born on US soil because the Constitution says so. That's why all the grade-school civics books written over the past 200 years have said that.

Amicus brief from Harvard Law professor for the challenge against Cruz in New York.

He first addresses the issue the Cruz challenges have been having, which is finding a judge who thinks anyone has standing to bring the case. Looking at the ruling in Pennsylvania you'd think that no one was empowered to actually enforce the Constitution, not electors, not Congress, not anybody, because the Constitution doesn't grant anybody specific authority about making sure the requirements are met. The judge in the Pennsylvania case made a number of other key logical errors, which is why it will probably go to appeal, but not every judge in every state will make those mistakes (relying on secondary sources, not having two brain cells to rub together, etc).

And then he gets to the creamy caramel center, "Is Cruz eligible?" The answer is no fucking way.

Well, for the sane among us, there's a nice little soap opera scenario in which the following happens:

1. The GOP manages to drag Cruz across the line with a plurality of delegates
2. The convention ruses to nominate him while Trump goes to court to get an injunction to prevent it
3. chaos ensues

It would be hella fun to watch!