By John Lawrence
The Republican political arena has become the theater of the absurd largely thanks to the emergence of Donald Trump as the new standard bearer of the Republican Party. He has stood all the rules on their heads and made a mockery out of political correctness. Somehow this has breathed fresh air into the stodgy world of Republican memes and mantras.
For example, let’s take the birther controversy which the Donald was a big part of a few years ago when he and others made an attempt to prove that President Obama was not a “natural born citizen” as required by the Constitution in order to be President. In fact, as Trump and others maintained, Obama was born in Kenya. Turns out not to be true.
Then enter Ted Cruz and The Donald is up to his old tricks maintaining that Cruz is not a natural born citizen since he was born in Canada. Makes sense since, if Obama had actually been born in Kenya, there would be no doubt that he was not a “natural born citizen” even though he was born to an American citizen mother which no one disputes. Cruz maintains that, since his mother is a “natural born citizen” he is also regardless of what country he was born in. It seems that the birther problem, although not pertaining to Obama, in fact does pertain to Cruz. How ironic! But then leave it to Trump to point out the obvious and destroy a political opponent in the process.
Mary Brigid McManamon, a constitutional law professor at Widener University’s Delaware Law School, in an article, Ted Cruz is Not Eligible to be President, says:
Donald Trump is actually right about something: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) is not a natural-born citizen and therefore is not eligible to be president or vice president of the United States.
The Constitution provides that “No person except a natural born Citizen . . . shall be eligible to the Office of President.” The concept of “natural born” comes from common law, and it is that law the Supreme Court has said we must turn to for the concept’s definition. On this subject, common law is clear and unambiguous. The 18th-century English jurist William Blackstone, the preeminent authority on it, declared natural-born citizens are “such as are born within the dominions of the crown of England,” while aliens are “such as are born out of it.” The key to this division is the assumption of allegiance to one’s country of birth. The Americans who drafted the Constitution adopted this principle for the United States. James Madison, known as the “father of the Constitution,” stated, “It is an established maxim that birth is a criterion of allegiance. . . . [And] place is the most certain criterion; it is what applies in the United States.”
For that matter John McCain, the Republican who ran for President in 2008, was not a natural born citizen either. He was born on a military base in Panama. The Constitution does not make an exception for military bases, and they certainly are not a part of the territorial United States. Democrats shouldn’t hesitate to attack Republicans on this issue especially since Republicans created so much misery about it for Barack Obama.
Since You Brought it up Republicans …
If Cruz ends up being the Republican nominee, it would be up to Hillary or Bernie to make the birther case against Cruz. They would have to do it or they would be remiss in their duty. If they have to sue, let the suit begin. Republicans have no hesitancy about suing Democrats.
Remember George W Bush suing Al Gore and in the process becoming President even though Gore won the election. And Gore was too nice stepping aside “for the good of the country.” Then look what happened. Bush lied us into war, took out Saddam Hussein and cast the whole middle east into turmoil with the result that ISIS is casting the whole western world into turmoil, not to mention hundreds of thousands dead and millions of refugees. “The good of the country”? I don’t think so.
For nearly 10 years, thousands of conservatives have openly claimed President Obama is not an American citizen. With no evidence at all, they have regularly claimed that instead of being born in Hawaii, he was actually born in Kenya or even Indonesia, to his American mother and African father.
This is from the New York Daily News:
What’s wild is that the true story of Cruz — the one supported by him and by the facts — is actually the exact same fictional story that the birther movement has claimed for 10 years disqualifies Obama from being president.
On Dec. 22, 1970, Ted Cruz was actually born in a foreign country — Canada — to an American mother, Eleanor Darragh, and a father, Rafael Cruz, who was not an American citizen.
His father, born and raised in Cuba, actually did not become an American citizen until 2005. When Ted Cruz was born, his parents weren’t visiting Canada or working on a military base — they had lived there for years.
Now since there is doubt that a Republican running for President is a “natural born citizen,” conservatives have their panties all in a wad to redefine what actually is a “natural born citizen.” In other words, their hypocrisy over this issue is written all over their faces. They unshamefacedly assert that, while Obama is not a natural born citizen since he was born in Kenya to an American mother, Ted Cruz is a natural born citizen since he was born in Canada to an American mother. I guess it has to do more with the fact that Canada is a predominantly white near neighbor to the US while Kenya is thousands of miles away and is predominantly black.
So while conservatives are willing to twist the words of the Constitution when their ox is being gored, they will in no way allow any such twisting regarding the Second Amendment. “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Well, what does that actually mean?
One interpretation would be that the right to bear arms should only be in the context of a well-regulated militia. The militias extant these days are anything but well regulated. Therefore, the right of the people to bear arms necessarily needs to be infringed. Besides in 1776, they didn’t have semi-automatic or fully automatic weapons. Let the people’s right not be infringed when it comes to the weaponry they had in 1776, but the weapons available today are definitely infringeable. Conservatives are willing to twist and bend the Constitution when their interests are at stake but are original constructionists when it’s in their interests to maintain wording which in no way is applicable to today’s’ realities.
Donald Trump and The Wall
One of the most humorous Trump originated issues is the building of The Wall which infuriates the Left and gets cheers from the Right. The absurdity of the situation is that there is a wall already there. Has anyone been to San Ysidro lately? Looks like a wall to me. But all the Yahoo followers of Donald Trump don’t already know this. They think it’s possible just to walk back and forth across the Mexican-American border at will, and Trump doesn’t discourage them from thinking this. In fact he maintains that he’ll even get Mexico to pay for The Wall. It led to one of the funniest skits on Saturday Night Live when Trump was hosting. In comes the Mexican President with a large Publishers Clearing House-style check for The Donald and he says, “Here this is for The Wall.”
Now since progressives are supposedly smarter than Trump’s followers, why are they so upset over this issue when it is really a non-issue? Sure there are gaps in the wall. It isn’t continuous along the whole Mexican-American border, but it’s there in one form or other along much of it so why is this even an issue? Bush signed the Secure Fence Act of 2006.Work has been underway ever since. By April 2009 Homeland Security had erected about 613 miles of new pedestrian fencing and vehicle barriers along the southwest border from California to Texas. This was during the Obama administration I might add.
To be accurate, Trump should have said, “I will complete the wall along the border,” but this wouldn’t have the same hyperbolic effect that stating the issue in such stark terms has. Nuances are not The Donald’s strong suit. Or maybe they are for the effect he intends to achieve.
In the final analysis The Wall is a fig newton of Trump’s imagination calculated to get his supporters cheering and make his detractors apoplectic. This issue is a pure contrivance calculated to rile up and antagonize on the one hand and to pander to people’s fears on the other. It’s a litmus test to see how your knee jerk reaction defines you as a progressive or a conservative and ignores the reality of what actually is.
Sure a wall could be built or more accurately the gaps could be filled in. Some say it would be prohibitively expensive at $30 billion. That’s a fraction of what’s being spent on the military-industrial complex which sucks in a trillion or more each and every year. The issue is just a non-issue as advanced surveillance systems are already being used at the border and are being expanded and improved each year. Are progressives saying that the “wall” as it already exists should be taken down? I don’t think so. Donald is right that every country has the right to protect its borders from encroachment.
Donald Trump and Anchor Babies
While Trump thinks that Cruz is not a natural born citizen since he was born in Canada, he also thinks that babies born in America are not American citizens if their parents are not.
This is from Politifact:
Donald Trump says his plan to roll back birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrants will pass constitutional muster because “many of the great scholars say that anchor babies are not covered.”
“Many of the great scholars” — really? That comment caught our attention.
In case you need a refresher on birthright citizenship: As it stands now, any person born on U.S. soil is a citizen — regardless of the parents’ immigration status — because of the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment. Trump has recently advocated for pulling back citizenship for illegal immigrants’ children. Some, like Trump, refer to these children as “anchor babies.”
“The parents have to come in legally,” Trump said, talking to reporters in New Hampshire Aug. 19. “Now we’re going to have to find out what’s going to happen from a court standpoint. But many people, many of the great scholars say that anchor babies are not covered (by the 14th Amendment). We’re going to have to find out.”
Considering that about 300,000 babies are born to illegal immigrants and become citizens every year, we wondered if Trump is right to say that “many” scholars think this isn’t necessarily a constitutional right.
We won’t dig into who’s a “great” scholar, but we will look at how widespread this position is and if “many” say the 14th Amendment isn’t an impediment to Trump’s plan.
The 14th Amendment became part of the Constitution in 1868 following the Civil War. The amendment established birthright citizenship and equal protection under the law for all citizens, making newly freed slaves full American citizens.
The relevant clause 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.”
Today, this clause is widely understood to mean that the Constitution requires that everyone born on U.S. soil — regardless of parents’ citizenship — is automatically an American citizen. We polled a number of experts in immigration law, and each one told us that this is the mainstream view among legal scholars, without question.
“We’re going to have to find out,” no Muslims entering the US “till we find out what’s going on,” “many scholars say…”, Trump has a way of always qualifying his hyperbole in such a way as to make it sound more reasonable.
It seems that, although Trump may be right about Ted Cruz, he has his head up his ass regarding anchor babies unless you want to change the Constitution. And if you’re going to change the Constitution, you might as well change the outdated and dangerous Second Amendment as well to be in line with today’s realities regarding guns. Something along the lines of “… a citizen has no absolute right to gun ownership except those guns that were available when the Constitution was signed …”
So according to Trump, if you’re born in Canada, you’re not a natural-born American citizen, and if you’re born in the US, you’re not an American citizen either if your parents were not American citizens. How ironic that the birther issue resurfaces at this time to come back and bite Republicans in the ass! Politics really does make strange bedfellows.
John Lawrence
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Thank you for positioning the absurdities of Trump’s blustering trumpet call in the light of some background facts…something the general media fails to do.
Sandy
Very well said, John. The Trump phenomenon, stirring the pot of Nativism in our political discourse, brought to mind Sinclair Lewis’s novel, It Can’t Happen Here. The only thing keeping us from falling into that pit is an economy that hasn’t yet fallen apart the way it had for the Germans before the rise of Hitler. Bernie’s right about it’s unfairness, of course. And if we should descend into another deep recession, I think “it” could happen here.
Another Trump absurdity: He wants to ban all Muslims from entering the country until “…we figure out what’s going on…” (whatever that means!) And in the next breath he says he will “cut the head off ISIS”. Apparently, he intends to “cut the head off ISIS” and then figure out what’s going on. Sounds a little absurd to me!
Did Trump ever actually accuse Obama of being from Kenya? Or was he simply the one who finally forced Obama to produce his long-form birth certificate?
Trump and his fellow Republicans are even scarier when it comes to their extremely old west style way of seeing our world “stature”. They never mention diplomacy and only talk about lack of respect other countries have for us and always have a macho approach to being a world leader..it is “show them we are tough” and confrontation, war and violence. Nothing could be more dangerous to our country than this approach.Their living in a fantasy world will ruin us all.
Self-described conservatives will bomb people they don’t know into oblivion. But we can’t call them radicals or terrorists.
You mean “bomb people into oblivion” the way Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton did?
Yes we can!
What makes a terrorist? Violence in service of a religious idea that seeks to change some official policy.
The fellow that shot people in the Colorado Planned Parenthood — terrorist. Yes, call him a “christian extremist terrorist”. Those folks in Oregon… they haven’t gotten violent yet, but they are armed — terrorists!
We gotta call it what it is or we’ll lose sight of what it is.
So you think Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton all showed a lack of respect for other countries?
War is just terrorism under official auspices; usually, but not always, with a declaration. This is especially so when one warring party is much stronger than the other.
I see. So Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton are all terrorists in your mind?
Mischa,
Your comments do civil discourse a tremendous disservice and only alienate your conservative views from any qualitative debate. In effect you exclude yourself from any meaningful conversation by belligerently insisting you are right and that is all there is to it. This attitude is what is causing the Republican party to cannibalize itself, and the fact of the matter is conservative viewpoints are as important to our democracy as progressive viewpoints.
JFK was ending the conflict in Vietnam before it became a “war”. This was one of the main reasons he was assassinated. So Mischa you can leave him out.
President Harry S. Truman quickly committed American forces to a combined United Nations military effort in Korea. Fifteen other nations also sent troops under the U.N. command. Truman did not seek a formal declaration of war from Congress; officially, America’s presence in Korea amounted to no more than a “police action.”
Franklin Roosevelt refused to involve our nation in war until after the willful and deliberate attack on Pearl Harbor. And it was Congress that “Declared War”.
Bill Clinton never waged war; however did engage militarily against Milosevic during the Bosnian conflict. Diplomacy inevitably ended the conflict rather than war.
Woodrow Wilson was a leader of the Progressive Movement. After a policy of neutrality at the outbreak of World War I, Wilson led America into war in order to “make the world safe for democracy.”
After the Germans signed the Armistice in November 1918, Wilson went to Paris to try to build an enduring peace. He later presented to the Senate the Versailles Treaty, containing the Covenant of the League of Nations, and asked, “Dare we reject it and break the heart of the world?”
LBJ was an a*^hole. I will give you that. However It was Richard Nixon that carpet bombed civilians for no good reason at the very the end of the Vietnam war. Under Nixon in just 1971 alone the military dropped more explosive ordinances on civilians than all of the allies combined dropped in total during all of WWII.
Now then, lets talk about the Poppy Bush blood for oil campaign of “Desert Storm…
And then we can have a discussion about Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleeza Rice, George Tennet, Dick Cheney and Alfred E.Newman.
“It is better to keep your mouth shut and seem a fool, than to open it and remove all doubt.”
– Abraham Lincoln
Why do you waste time and effort
on these losers. Your father
and my father were republicans.
I’m sure they would be repulsed
by this mob.
Well, Morty, they’re here and one of them could be the next President so we have to deal with them. Besides this article brought up several Constitutional issues including the 2nd and 14th amendments.
Mr. Lawrence:
This can’t be correct:
“For that matter John McCain, the Republican who ran for President in 2008, was not a natural born citizen either. He was born on a military base in Panama. The Constitution does not make an exception for military bases, and they certainly are not a part of the territorial United States.”
You mean that my friend who was born on a military base to an American father and Japanese mother is NOT a US citizen??
Well, official policy may be that you’re an American citizen if one of you parents was an American citizen, even if you were born anywhere in the world. But I don’t think that is what the Constitution literally says. If it actually does say that, please send me the quote.
This is from Wikipedia and supports my contention that a “natural born citizen” is one born within the boundaries of the US:
“Status as a natural-born citizen of the United States is one of the eligibility requirements established in the United States Constitution for election to the office of President or Vice President. This requirement was intended to protect the nation from foreign influence.
“The U.S. Constitution uses but does not define the phrase “natural born Citizen”, and various opinions have been offered over time regarding its precise meaning. The consensus of early 21st-century constitutional scholars, together with relevant case law, is that natural-born citizens include, subject to exceptions, those born in the United States. For those born elsewhere, there is an emerging consensus that they are also natural born citizens provided they meet the legal requirements for U.S. citizenship “at the moment of birth”, but the matter remains unsettled. Every president to date was either a citizen at the adoption of the Constitution in 1789 or born in the United States; of those in the latter group, every president except two had two U.S.-citizen parents.
“The natural-born-citizen clause has been mentioned in passing in several decisions of the United States Supreme Court, and by some lower courts that have addressed eligibility challenges, but the Supreme Court has never directly addressed the question of a specific presidential or vice-presidential candidate’s eligibility as a natural-born citizen. Many eligibility lawsuits from the 2008 and 2012 election cycles were dismissed in lower courts due to the challengers’ difficulty in showing that they had standing to raise legal objections. Additionally, some experts have suggested that the precise meaning of the natural-born-citizen clause may never be decided by the courts because, in the end, presidential eligibility may be determined to be a non-justiciable political question that can be decided only by Congress rather than by the judicial branch of government.”
Therefore, neither John McCain nor Ted Cruz are natural born citizens.
Not arguing with the way they 14th amendment is currently interpreted and applied. My point is that many constitutional concepts have been altered over the past 217 years and those changes have been made into law. That’s what the founders intended.
So, McCain is a citizen after all. But not Cruz.
“For nearly 10 years, thousands of conservatives have openly claimed President Obama is not an American citizen”
Actually, we can thank Hilary Clinton for starting that rumor. Her primary campaign put it out after the dust jacket on one of Obama’s books declared that he had been born in Kenya.
PolitiFact: The Claim That Clinton Started The Birther Movement Is “False.
“New analysis from the Washington Post removes any doubt that the anti-Obama Birther movement was started in 2007 and 2008 by Hillary Clinton, her campaign, and her Democrat supporters.” http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2015/09/26/washington-post-confirms-hillary-clinton-started-the-birther-movement/
Andrew Breitbart was a rank propagandist; the website he left behind is a swamp of paranoid ideologues. What it isn’t is journalism.
Breitbart: The site to go to when Fox News isn’t crazy enough.
Same can be said for Media Matters.
I can tell Mischa Popoff wants to make America grate again.
Breitbart site says global warming is a hoax; Andrew Breitbart claimed Obama’s birth certificate was a fake; today a Breitbart headline attacked an astronaut-climate scientist with terminal cancer with the very classy “NASA Chief: Global Warming is Real because I have Cancer.
So no, Breitbart isn’t the same as Media Matters.
Mischa Popoff — not a real name.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it isn’t a real name…it wouldn’t be the first time someone who lacked the courage to own what they have to say went online with a pseudonym…who are you, really, Mischa?
Trump’s politically orchestrated ‘birther’ issue comes down to two simple rules: one constitutionally qualifies as a ‘natural born citizen’ for the presidency if born in the U.S., or if born abroad to least one U.S. citizen-parent at the time of birth.
Many think the term ‘natural born citizen’ applies only to someone born in U.S. and, if so, then one constitutionally cannot become president. Such is not the case. The term applies to anyone who is a citizen at birth, or by birth to a citizen-parent.
Obama was born in Hawaii and his mother in Kansas, so he meets the rules. Even if he had been born in Kenya, as Trump claims, his mother’s birth in Kansas still qualifies Obama as a natural born citizen (i.e., children born abroad to parents of whom at least one is a U.S. citizen). Latter rule also applies to Cruz and John McCain, as you note, John. It’s my understanding that babies born in the U.S. to parents not legally here or not U.S. citizens are automatically a U.S. citizen according to the 14th Amendment.
Trump is making much ado about nothing here. And his wild, deficit-plunging policy-action buffoonery – like The Wall, sending millions of Mexicans back to Mexico for re-immigration reprocessing – doesn’t help his credence as a ‘natural born citizen’ to serve as president.
Again, it was Hilary Clinton who first claimed Obama was born in Kenya. Not Trump.
See above comments. Totally untrue. Breitbart isn’t a source for anything factual.
This (the use of the term, “natural-born citizen”) is not the only example where the Framers (authors) of the US Constitution used a specific term without defining it. Article V does the same thing, leaving details of implementation and interpretation of its terms open to argument, thereby limiting implementation since use is always subject to interpretation. And one’s interpretation is always subject to one’s point-of-view!
Jeez, maybe we need to rewrite the Constitution where all these terms are spelled out and defined – do you think?
John,
It’s my impression that the Constitution is a governmental framework and the 27 amendments is each a moral imperative on the issue it addresses. The use of generalized terms is intentional. The problem with re-writing the Constitution is whose definitions and specifics are we to use since none of the Framers are still around to inform us of the original intent. So, I can envision endless fighting over whose interpretation will prevail.
Mischa,
I’m certainly not the first to notice, but your link is not to the Washington Post, but to Andrew Breitbart, who begins his piece on this, “New analysis from the Washington Post…” “NEW ANALYSIS”?… Who’s analysis? Breitbart’s, of course! It sure looks to me like Breitbart is twisting something he found in the Washington Post to sound the way HE wants it to sound! Everyone knows Breitbart’s take on things. So, you can draw your own conclusions…if you want anyone to believe you, quote the Washington Post itself, not Andrew Breitbart!
This is from Here’s Why Ted Cruz Isn’t Eligible to Run for President:
“The closer you study the Constitution, the weaker Cruz’s case squares with the actual meaning of ‘natural-born.’
“The constitutional text provides that a president, unlike other elected officials, must be a “natural born citizen.” This language could not mean anyone born a citizen or else the text would have simply stated “born citizen.” The word “natural” is a limiting qualifier that indicates only some persons who are born citizens qualify. Moreover, when the Constitution was enacted, the word “natural” meant something not created by statute, as with natural rights or natural law, which instead were part of the common law.”
I’ll play the devil’s advocate here, but for a reason… couldn’t someone who is not constitutional scholar or doctor (like myself) take the phrase “natural born citizen” to refer very simply to any person who was born via a vaginal birth, as opposed to having been born through an intervention?
My point here is that interpreting some of the generalizations in the Constitution is not always so obvious and leaves plenty of room for argument.
That interpretation is not possible, Paul, since there is plenty of precedent as to what “natural born citizen” means, and it means one who is born within the boundaries of the country in which one becomes a citizen.
I know the interpretation I gave of the phrase “natural born citizen” is not possible, John. I only cited it as an absurd example in order to make the point that interpreting some of the generalizations in the Constitution is not always so obvious and leaves plenty of room for argument.
Thanks, John, I cannot wrap my mind around all this, how on God’s green earth could people even think of putting someone like Trump in office?
Betty,
Maybe the earth is not as green as we would like it to be, and that’s the reason people like Trump get themselves elected to public office!