Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Of Course Not (Is Ted Cruz a "Natural Born Citizen?")


Our Founders did not want a "citizen of the world" serving as America's President. They wanted someone whose perspective was American. In modern parlance, they were "America Firsters" rather than "Globalists." Today's ruling class is just the opposite. They favor one-world government and the foreign entanglements which George Washington wisely advised we avoid.

Before I really get going let me say that I wish people cared a lot less who the President of the United States is, because I wish it mattered a lot less who the President of the United States is. Too much power has been placed in that one office. We should work to strengthen other institutions, such as the legislatures and state governments, so that who the President is matters less. With that being said...

Barack Obama is not a natural born citizen for reasons outlined here. Bristol Palin got more media scrutiny than Barack Obama got from the mainstream media over his eligibility. Most of their "coverage" of the issue consisted of savagely attacking or dismissing as a crank anyone who seriously investigated the issue. Not only would they not do their job, they savaged anyone else who tried to do it for them. Scratch that. The Establishment Media's job is not to inform the public, its to protect the establishment. In that sense they are doing their job. Same with the courts, which went to outrageous lengths to keep the real issues surrounding Obama's eligibility out of a court of law. This includes, I am not kidding, using the legal "reasoning" of an actor playing a judge in the movie "Miracle on 34th Street" as their "precedent" for dismissing a case!

But then of course Obama's opponent the first time was Senator John McCain, and there were also doubts about his eligibility, since he was born on the soil of what amounts to a foreign protectorate while our founders never envisioned us as an imperial power.  To show how rigged this system is though, the DEMOCRATS rushed to sponsor a Senate Resolution declaring that McCain was eligible. This was back when Hillary was the front runner and she supported the resolution too. On some issues, the two-party cabal will not attack each other. They are both globalist in outlook (and why not, they are funded largely by global corporations) and so there is no push back one to the other on this issue. Notice despite the invective they have hurled toward Ted Cruz, they are not calling him on this.

You would think that in a nation of over 300,000,000 people we could find a couple of good candidates who were indisputably natural born citizens- born on U.S. soil to parents who were U.S. citizens. The vast majority of people we live around and work with meet this simple qualification. That we can't seem to translate that into decent presidential candidates which meet this standard, and that the system seems to put forward candidates who do not, should alarm you. When Hillary Clinton is in a hurry to declare John McCain eligible, and made no issue of Obama's status, it should cause alarm bells to go off. Why are even our "outsider" choices of questionable American roots? That does not even include that the Senator's wife, a former Goldman Sacs banker, was a contributor to this Council On Foreign Relations paper advocating a North American Union.

My view is that no candidate for president is so indispensable that they are worth my being a hypocrite. Either one believes in the rule of law, or one does not. Either the constitution should be respected, or it should not. If there is no good candidate for president because we have a broken system, then the manful thing to do is to face that fact and get about the hard work of building alternatives, not sacrifice one's principles on the alter of expediency. Here is an example of how one might go about building an alternative.

 Is Senator Ted Cruz a "natural born" citizen of the United States and thus constitutionally eligible to serve as President? Of course not. There are two ways to become a citizen. One can be born a citizen, or one can be naturalized. The original definition of what a natural born citizen is may be unclear to us, but the 14th amendment's definition of a "born" citizen is crystal clear. It reads "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."

Senator Howard Jacob, who authored this clause, said "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" meant "full and complete" jurisdiction. But the main thing to notice here is the way to be "born" a citizen is to be born IN the United States and be "subject to the jurisdiction thereof".  Cruz was not born IN the United States, therefore he cannot be a "born" citizen, natural or otherwise. Ergo he must be a "naturalized" citizen. That is, made a citizen via a law from congress.

Here is the relevant section of US Code which made Cruz a citizen. Notice that "A" on the list reads like the 14th Amendment's citizenship clause. That is, if one is born in the US and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, one is a citizen. It then lists several other ways one can be declared a citizen at birth, including item "H" on the list which applies to Ted Cruz. The US Code does not make clear who on the list is a born citizen or who on the list is naturalized at birth. It just lists all of those who get citizenship at birth. But it does not matter if the US Code is unclear, because the 14th amendment's citizenship clause is very clear on what it takes to be a "born" citizen- one must be born in the United States. Anyone else who is a citizen is a citizen because they have been "naturalized" by Congress. While Congress has the power to naturalize people as citizens at birth they do NOT have the power to change the Constitution's definition of a "born" citizen.

Ted Cruz was naturalized at birth by the US Code. He was not a "born" citizen because the 14th amendment specifically says that "born" citizens are born "in the United States". If he is not a "born" citizen it is impossible for him to be a "natural born" citizen, an additional qualifier. He therefore must be a naturalized citizen. Raging at me for saying so does not alter the text of the constitution, nor address the fundamental problem of a "one party with two faces" candidate selection system which selects in favor of "citizens of the world" over those with specifically American roots.

Sunday, March 1, 2015

The Constitution Doesn't Need to Change, We Need to Change the Way We Select Candidates

This was from a debate sponsored by the Washington County Tea Party. The subject is whether or not now is the time for an article V amendments convention. Here I argue that the constitution does not need to change so much as the way we select candidates needs to change. We should dump the Unitary Party System where the same private political club elects candidates for state as well as federal office, for the Legislative branch as well as the Executive branch. This unitary party system serves to undermine the system of checks and balances the Founders put in place to protect us from an over-reaching government.

This position is in accord with the Third Pillar of Localism, that politics should move from national labels to local or state labels to decentralize political power. It is what we are trying to do at http://www.arneighbors.org 

I am not saying that we could not benefit from some changes to the constitution - Localism, a philosophy of government suggests several possible changes. Rather I am saying that until we change the way those ruling us are selected we can't trust them to meddle with the constitution.