Laurence Tribe thinks Ted Cruz is ineligible from one perspective, and buries "reputed born in the country" during the founding for a reason

Here in the Boston Globe:

'To his kind of judge, [Ted] Cruz ironically wouldn’t be eligible, because the legal principles that prevailed in the 1780s and ’90s required that someone actually be born on US soil to be a “natural born” citizen. Even having two US parents wouldn’t suffice. And having just an American mother, as Cruz did, would have been insufficient at a time that made patrilineal descent decisive. ... This narrow definition reflected 18th-century fears of a tyrannical takeover of our nation by someone loyal to a foreign power — fears that no longer make sense.'

Oh really? They make more sense now than ever with the diffidently un-American Obama in the Oval, whom the originalist position should also have prevented but didn't precisely because liberal interpreters like Tribe have prevailed by burying truths.

Such as: Children born abroad to US diplomats and soldiers were considered at the time of the American founding "reputed born in the country". For example, Emer de Vattel, paragraphs 216ff., whom the founders used like a textbook:

"... it is not naturally the place of birth that gives rights, but extraction. ... the children born out of the country in the armies of the state, or in the house of its minister at a foreign court, are reputed born in the country."

So it's not just a simple matter of being born on US soil, otherwise every slave child ever born here would have been a natural born citizen, making that whole 14th Amendment thingy kind of beside the point. Tribe is taking only half of the originalist position and using it against Cruz, when there is another half, which should have made Obama ineligible.

Ted Cruz is not a natural born citizen only in part because he was born in Canada without military, diplomatic or some other "official" American cover, but Barack Obama is not a natural born citizen because he was born without citizen cover from both parents. Tribe wants to ignore the latter in the case of Cruz to obscure Obama's ineligibility and argue for the priority of soil against Cruz. It's the way liberals argue, by not telling the whole truth.

But blood was equally important with soil at the founding, and you might say that in the matter of presidential eligibility, the genius of the constitution was singularly expressed in the fusing of jus soli and jus sanguinis in the person elected to embody the executive power in order to protect it, and us.

Presidents should be born in the country, to (married heterosexual) citizens.

But good luck getting that through after what Obama and the Democrats have done to this country. Next stop, a test-tube president whose parents are a Chinese lesbian from Vancouver married to her kitty cat from a pet shelter in Seattle.

Ann Coulter jokes Donald Trump should deport Republican Governor Nikki Haley who stands for open borders

Story here.

Best tweet from Coulter:

"J@s@sF-ingChr@st - even GOP response to Obama's SOTU is a paean to immigrants. And GOP can't figure out why Trump is sweeping the country."

To avoid taking God's name in vain, observant Jews similarly always spell it G-d.

Trump is in first with 36% in new CBS News poll, 17 points ahead of Cruz

None of our early presidents were natural born citizens, but were grandfathered in by Article II

"Publius Huldah", here, correctly making the proper distinction between citizens, and natural born citizens who are eligible to be president:

In § 214, Vattel states that “fundamental law” may withhold from naturalized citizens some of the rights of citizens, such as holding public office. The Constitution is our “fundamental law”; and, following Vattel, Art. II, §1, cl. 5 withholds from naturalized citizens (except for our Founding Generation which was “grandfathered in”) the right to hold the office of President.

Remember! None of our early Presidents were “natural born Citizens”, even though they were all born here. They were all born as subjects of the British Crown. They became naturalized citizens with the Declaration of Independence. That is why it was necessary to provide a grandfather clause for them ["or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution"]. But after our Founding Generation was gone, their successors were required to be born as citizens of the United States - not merely born here (as were our Founders), but born as citizens.

And do not forget that the children born here of slaves did not become “citizens” by virtue of being born here. Their parents were slaves; hence (succeeding to the condition of their parents) they were born as slaves. Black people born here did not become citizens until 1868 and the ratification of the 14th Amendment.

So! Do you see? If Our Framers understood that merely being born here were sufficient to confer status as a “natural born citizen”; it would not have been necessary to grandfather in our first generation of Presidents; and all the slaves born here would have been “natural born citizens”. But they were born as non-citizen slaves, because their parents were non-citizen slaves.

Hey Levin you dummy! Citizens by statute are NOT natural born citizens!

If they were, they wouldn't need a statute making them citizens, dummkopf.

Donald Trump is a natural born citizen: His mother became a citizen four years before he was born

The Christian Science Monitor reported here last August:

'The couple had a son, Frederick, in New York City, in 1905. This was Donald Trump’s father. His birth in America, and subsequent automatic US citizenship, disproves rumors that The Donald is himself an “anchor baby” born to noncitizen US immigrants. ... In 1930, Fred Trump met a young Scot in New York on holiday, Mary MacLeod. They married in 1936. Born on the Isle of Lewis, Trump’s mother was proud of her Scottish heritage. Nevertheless, she became a US citizen on March 10, 1942.'

Rush Limbaugh continued his fascination with homosexuality today by making sure to open the show marking the death of David Bowie

He even protested that he never really got into Bowie's music.

So why mention him then?

Rush famously paid Elton John to sing for his (latest) wedding, and uses Klaus Nomi's "You don't own me" for his occasional gay update theme. Nomi was once a backup singer for a Bowie performance.

Latent homosexuality much?

Rush Limbaugh, the big boob on the right, sides with those who say Cruz is a natural born citizen

Just now at the end of the half hour.

The caller who challenged Rush did a good job right up to the end of the call when he mistakenly agreed that Cruz was not a citizen.

Of course, what he meant to say was Cruz was a citizen, just not a natural born citizen, and Rush jumped all over the guy and bulled his way through to maintain his position against the caller's.

Too bad, because the caller was right and Rush was . . . 

Some perverts are more equal than others

Trump rises to new high 34% in IBD poll, +16 ahead of Cruz

Congress corrected itself in 1795 dropping "natural born citizens" of children born abroad to citizens

"And 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."

-- Naturalization Act of 1790

"[T]he children of citizens of the United States, born out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States, shall be considered as citizens of the United States."

-- Naturalization Act of 1795

Katyal and Clement are completely disingenuous by ignoring the correction in their discussion last March because they know full well that the Act of 1795 repealed the Act of 1790.

h/t Mario Apuzzo, here:

'The authors cite to the Naturalization Act of 1790 and ignore the fact that the Naturalization Act of 1795, with the lead of then-Rep. James Madison and with the approval of President George Washington, repealed it and specifically changed "shall be considered as natural born citizens" to "shall be considered as citizens of the United States."  This is even more a blatant omission given that they argue that the English naturalization statutes referred to persons born out of the King's dominion to British subject parents as "natural born subjects."  They fail to address this critical change made by our early Congress, critical because Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 provides that a “Citizen” of the United States was eligible to be President only if born before the adoption of the Constitution and that thereafter only a “natural born Citizen” was so eligible.'

How bad could it be if the leader of your country wasn't natural born to it?

Well, he could be a natural born Austrian, for example.

Wow, Ross Douthat joins PEGIDA, calls for Germany to close its borders, deport refugees and kick out Merkel

In The New York Times, here:

". . . [P]rudence requires . . . closing Germany’s borders to new arrivals for the time being. It means beginning an orderly deportation process for able-bodied young men. It means giving up the fond illusion that Germany’s past sins can be absolved with a reckless humanitarianism in the present. It means that Angela Merkel must go — so that her country, and the continent it bestrides, can avoid paying too high a price for her high-minded folly."

Another achievement for Obama, the worst president ever: Worst ever opening week for stocks

Story here:

The Dow Jones Industrial Average careened into the close on Friday, finishing down 169 points, or 1%, at 16346. That left it off about 6.2% for the first five trading days of the new year. That is the worst opening five days in the index’s history, eclipsing the 5.6% drop the index had in 1978.

The S&P 500 is in the same boat. It dropped 21 points, or 1.1%, on Friday, closing at 1922 and down about 6% for the week. That is the worst opening five-day stretch for the index ever, wider than the 5.3% loss in 2008.

FOX News poll kicks off 2016 with Trump ahead of Cruz by 15

Randy Barnett in WaPo completely ignores the distinction between citizens and natural born citizens in Article II

Randy Barnett here.

Instead he gives us another one of those forays into individualism for which libertarians are infamous for their obscurantism. That he had to correct his post to acknowledge state constitutions used "natural born" shows that he has hardly looked into the matter adequately:

'UPDATE: My post erroneously stated that the phrase “natural born citizen” was devised by the framers of the Constitution, when in fact it had been previously used in state constitutions after the founding of the United States.  See, for example, here. Although this does not affect the substance of my point about how the change from “subject” to “citizen” results from a shift from monarchical to popular sovereignty at the founding, I do regret the error (now corrected), which was based on my misrecollection of an article on the subject.'

Obama has been for gun confiscation since his Univ. of Chicago days

So says John R. Lott, Jr. here:

"I don't believe people should be able to own guns," Obama told Lott one day at the University of Chicago Law School. ... "Barack Obama is the most anti-gun president ever.  That claim is based not on my own interactions with him back in the 1990's but on his own public record over many years."

Republican Congress' first bill to reach the president to roll back ObamaCare and defund Planned Parenthood vetoed

From the story here:

The veto was the eighth of Obama’s presidency and the sixth since last year, when Republicans took over both chambers of Congress. ...

“The idea that Obamacare is the law of the land for good is a myth. This law will collapse under its own weight, or it will be repealed,” [Speaker Ryan] said. “We have now shown that there is a clear path to repealing Obamacare without 60 votes in the Senate. So, next year, if we’re sending this bill to a Republican president, it will get signed into law.”

The votes to attempt overriding the president's veto are expected to take place later this month and potentially coincide with the date of the annual March for Life. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) made a motion on the House floor Friday afternoon to postpone action on the veto until Jan. 26.

Mark Levin is behind the 8-ball on "natural born citizen"

Mark Levin tonight doesn't want to entertain if Ted Cruz is ineligible for the presidency because Ted's not a natural born citizen. To Levin the matter was never in question: "it is a settled constitutional and statutory matter." As far as Levin is concerned, Cruz is a natural born citizen.

Like hell.

Levin must consider that his position must mean that Article II is being superfluous when it makes a distinction between natural born citizen and citizen:

"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."

As John Marshall, I believe, said, none of the language of the constitution can be considered superfluous. Or as Newt Gingrich once observed, even the commas carry meaning.

The main phrase is "No Person except a natural born Citizen shall be eligible to the Office of President".

Subordinate to this is the clause "or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution". This clause was for the practical reason having to do with the start-up of the new nation. To wit: the founders knew that many of themselves would run for the presidency to guide the young American republic, and would need to, but that none of themselves were "natural born" citizens. They were citizens, as is Ted Cruz, but not "natural born". The language of Article II was specifically designed to permit them to serve as president, but not Ted Cruz or any other not naturally born citizen person for the simple reason that in the case of Ted Cruz he was not a citizen at the time of the constitution's adoption.

The founders adopted the distinction between citizen and natural born citizen because they wanted the future of the country to rest more securely in the hands of leadership which was not divided in its loyalties. The chief loyalty to be wary of at the time was that of Loyalists, those "Americans" who were not in agreement with the break with Great Britain. They were quite numerous, and constituted an ongoing impediment to the success of the revolution. The founders imagined it possible that one of these might secure the presidency, and undo what they with enormous sacrifice had achieved. Hence the language making this less likely, if not impossible. With time, the danger passed, and only individuals born to a pair of citizens could rise to the presidency.

Fast forward to today. The whole argument over citizenship now falsely puts the priority on place of birth when lineage was meant to be paramount. The discussion suffers from amnesia. John McCain was eligible for the presidency in 2008 not because he was born in a US territory but because both his parents were US citizens. That he says otherwise is immaterial. He knows as little about it as the rest. Unfortunately, Barack Obama did not meet the requirement of Article II, but because the priority was falsely placed on his place of origin, a terrible precedent has been set. Frankly, his entire presidency is illegitimate because one of his parents was not a citizen. And after almost seven years in office, he has amply proven that his loyalties lie elsewhere than with the constitution and the American republic as we've known it.

Neither does Ted Cruz meet the requirement of Article II. It is immaterial where he was born. What is material is that one of his parents wasn't a citizen at the time of his birth. He is ineligible to be president, though otherwise well qualified he may be.

Same for Marco Rubio, who was born to Cuban immigrants before they became citizens.

It is assumed that Donald Trump's mother, a Scottish immigrant, was a citizen by the time of Donald's birth in 1946, but maybe The Donald should look into it.

FBI will recommend criminal charges against Hillary et al. to Obama's Justice Dept. before the end of winter

So says R. Emmett Tyrell Jr. here.

The kinder, friendlier boltneck may get another whack at the presidency yet.