Wednesday, January 13, 2016

Long Form, Teddy, Long Form!

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

After nearly eight long years of listening to Republican politicians and other opportunists piss and moan about Barack Obama's "ineligibility" to serve as President because of their belief that he was born abroad (probably in Africa, of all places) and then had a trumped up United States birth nefariously established so that he could one day run for President, it is an absolute joy to hear people now questioning the eligibility of Ted Cruz to run for President - on the same grounds!

President Obama has been the subject of countless rumors, lies, and investigations regarding the actual place of his birth, and such notables as Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio even sent some of his deputies on a taxpayer-funded holiday investigatory trip to Honolulu to look into the matter.  The local newspaper in Honolulu carried an announcement of his birth at a local hospital, but even though Hawaii was a state at the time of Baby Barack's birth, it wasn't good enough for the lunatic "birthers."

Then Hawaii coughed up an official birth certificate, but that didn't satisfy the miscreants either - as if anything would.  Hawaii gave "investigators" a standard "short form" birth certificate, but the conspiratorists wanted to see the official "long" form.  Finally, after much ballyhooing and bad acting on the part of the poor losers, President Obama handed over his official copy of his long form birth certificate - a document issued by the state of Hawaii.  He had apparently had it all along and sat back smiling while the knuckleheads made fools of themselves.  That devious bastard!

And, of course, years later there are still naysayers out there making speeches and selling books with claims that somehow or another the President managed to hide his African birth and make suckers of us all.

Barack Obama was born in the United States of America and is fully eligible to serve as President of the United States.  Rafael Edward "Ted "Cruz, however, is a different story.  Ted Cruz was born in a foreign country.

Young Teddy, the son of a Cuban father and an American mother, was born in Calgary, Canada - a fact he is unable to deny.  He lived in Canada until the age of four.  Ted Cruz finally got around to renouncing his Canadian citizenship in 2014.  Dudley Dooright, it would seem, has nothing on Calgary Cruz.

Ted Cruz says he meets the Constitutional requirement of being a natural born citizen by virtue of his mother being an American citizen.  Ted's papa was born in Cuba, but mama breathed her first in our nation's first state - Delaware - and it's hard to be more American than that!

Questions persist as to just what constitutes a natural born citizen.  President Obama also had a foreign father and an American mother - but he was born in the United States - whether wackadoodle dentist Orly Taitz or Joe R. Piehole want to concede that fact or not.  Ted Cruz clearly was not born in the United States.  So far the courts have declined to wade into the issue as to just what the term "natural born citizen" means.  However, Constitutional scholar Lawrence Tribe of Harvard feels that Ted Cruz is not a natural born citizen, and, more importantly, so does Donald Trump. 

The Donald says Ted Cruz is absolutely not a natural born citizen of the United States, and Carly Fiorina wonders aloud why it took Ted so many years to renounce his Canadian citizenship.  John McCain, the Republican candidate for President in 2008 was born outside of the United States, but in an American territory at the time - the Panama Canal Zone.  The United States Senate got involved in his eligibility quest by proclaiming unanimously that he was a "natural born citizen," with Senators Obama and Clinton both supporting that declaration.

But now McCain is expressing doubts about Cruz's eligibility to run for President, and Mitch McConnell, the Senate's leading Republican, isn't interested in pursuing a Senate proclamation on the matter.  (Rumor has it that the junior senator from Texas has few friends in the Senate - or among people who actually know him.)

So is Rafael Edward "Ted" Cruz a natural born citizen of the United States - or isn't he?  The Supreme Court would be the final arbiter in the matter, but unless one of the fifty states refuses to put his name on the ballot, a Supreme Court review seems unlikely.  Which means that Ted's race will continue, regardless of what Donald Trump has to say about it - and in the abysmal event that he is elected, a whole new group of birthers will emerge.

And the new birthers will have a much more solid argument to go on than their predecessors did.  Long form, Teddy, long form!

1 comment:

Xobekim said...

Persons whose physical births occur outside the geographical are of the United States or its Territories* having one or more American citizen as a biological parent are deemed to be naturalized Americans; naturalized at birth.

Hence, Barry Goldwater, born in Arizona Territory is considered to have been a natural born American.

*Territories fall into two classifications. First are incorporated territories, such as the former Arizona and Oklahoma territories which are now States of the Union. In an ugly racist line of cases the judiciary established the unincorporated territories whose indigenous populations are of alien races. Persons born in unincorporated territories are not considered natural born citizens. That line of cases needs to be overturned just as the infamous separate but equal Plessy v. Ferguson was overturned.

Ted Cruz was born in Canada and was naturalized by birth to an American parent, he is not a natural born American. In contrast children born inside the physical boundaries of the United States to undocumented parents who are not American citizens, and defamed as "anchor babies," are indeed natural born Americans.

Why? First the natural born clause has not been interpreted by SCOTUS but is derived from the English Common law and grafted into our jurisprudence as our Organic Law. It was a legal term of art at the time the Republic was founded. Likewise much of it has to do with the guarantee of due process of law found in the Fourteenth Amendment, which applies to all persons and not just citizens.

This is the stuff of which Tea Party nightmares are born!