Feel the Bern

dnc said:

Sledog said:

Wouldn't matter under the founders definition as daddy was a foreign national non-citizen communist. Obama couldn't get a security clearance to empty the trash at Boeing.

Then Cruz isn't eligible either.

But they're both eligible.

What does it mean to be a "natural born citizen"?

Most legal experts contend it means someone is a citizen from birth and doesn’t have to go through a naturalization process to become a citizen.

If that’s the definition, then Cruz is a natural born citizen by being born to an American mother and having her citizenship at birth. The Congressional Research Service, the agency tasked with providing authoritative research to all members of Congress, published a report after the 2008 election supporting the thinking that "natural born" citizenship means citizenship held "at birth."

There are many legal and historical precedents to strongly back up this argument, experts have said.

Those precedents were the subject of a recent op-ed in the Harvard Law Review by two former solicitor generals of opposing parties, Neal Katyal and Paul Clement, who worked for Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, respectively. They wrote that "natural born" had a longstanding definition dating back to colonial times.

British common law recognized that children born outside of the British Empire remained subjects, and were described by law as "natural born," Katyal and Clement wrote.

"The framers, of course, would have been intimately familiar with these statutes and the way they used terms like ‘natural born,’ since the (British) statutes were binding law in the colonies before the Revolutionary War,’" they said.

Additionally, the first Congress of the United States passed the Naturalization Act of 1790, just three years after the Constitution was written, which stated that children born abroad to U.S. citizens were, too, natural born citizens. Many members of the inaugural Congress were also authors of the Constitution.

2001400ex said:

Sledog said:

dnc said:

Sledog said:

Wouldn't matter under the founders definition as daddy was a foreign national non-citizen communist. Obama couldn't get a security clearance to empty the trash at Boeing.

Then Cruz isn't eligible either.

But they're both eligible.

What does it mean to be a "natural born citizen"?

Most legal experts contend it means someone is a citizen from birth and doesn’t have to go through a naturalization process to become a citizen.

If that’s the definition, then Cruz is a natural born citizen by being born to an American mother and having her citizenship at birth. The Congressional Research Service, the agency tasked with providing authoritative research to all members of Congress, published a report after the 2008 election supporting the thinking that "natural born" citizenship means citizenship held "at birth."

There are many legal and historical precedents to strongly back up this argument, experts have said.

Those precedents were the subject of a recent op-ed in the Harvard Law Review by two former solicitor generals of opposing parties, Neal Katyal and Paul Clement, who worked for Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, respectively. They wrote that "natural born" had a longstanding definition dating back to colonial times.

British common law recognized that children born outside of the British Empire remained subjects, and were described by law as "natural born," Katyal and Clement wrote.

"The framers, of course, would have been intimately familiar with these statutes and the way they used terms like ‘natural born,’ since the (British) statutes were binding law in the colonies before the Revolutionary War,’" they said.

Additionally, the first Congress of the United States passed the Naturalization Act of 1790, just three years after the Constitution was written, which stated that children born abroad to U.S. citizens were, too, natural born citizens. Many members of the inaugural Congress were also authors of the Constitution.

Minor v. Happersett , 88 U.S. 162 (1875)

At common law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners as distinguished from aliens or foreigners

On the basis of the 14th Amendment, however, the majority opinion coined a new definition for “native citizen”, as anyone who was born in the U.S.A., under the jurisdiction of the United States. The Court gave a novel interpretation to jurisdiction, and thus extended citizenship to all born in the country (excepting those born of ambassadors and foreign armies etc.); but it did not extend the meaning of the term “natural born citizen.”

Same ruling in:

United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898)

Conclusion:

In this sense, the Supreme Court of the United States has never applied the term “natural born citizen” to any other category than “those born in the country of parents who are citizens thereof”.

Note "born in this country" and the plural "parents" who are citizens thereof.

As I read that both BHO and Cruz are not eligible. Believe what you want, it's your right.