{"id":12294,"date":"2016-01-09T22:38:06","date_gmt":"2016-01-09T22:38:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=12294"},"modified":"2016-01-09T22:38:06","modified_gmt":"2016-01-09T22:38:06","slug":"irony-abounds-in-cruz-citizenship-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=12294","title":{"rendered":"Irony abounds in Cruz citizenship debate"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/ted-cruz-sexy-eyes.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-12296\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-12296\" src=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/ted-cruz-sexy-eyes-300x181.jpg\" alt=\"ted-cruz-sexy-eyes\" width=\"300\" height=\"181\" srcset=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/ted-cruz-sexy-eyes-300x181.jpg 300w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/ted-cruz-sexy-eyes-768x463.jpg 768w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/ted-cruz-sexy-eyes-1024x617.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/ted-cruz-sexy-eyes.jpg 1269w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s no denying the irony in this growing discussion over whether U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz is constitutionally qualified to run for president of the United States.<\/p>\n<p>To my mind &#8212; and to many others who know a whole lot more about constitutional law than I do &#8212; there should be no question about the Republican presidential candidate&#8217;s eligibility.<\/p>\n<p>He is eligible to run. Period. End of discussion. The Constitution spells it out. He is a &#8220;natural-born citizen&#8221; whose mother is an American; thus, he is granted U.S. citizenship by birthright, even though he was born in Canada.<\/p>\n<p>The irony?<\/p>\n<p>Well, this issue came up regarding Barack Obama, except that some individuals didn&#8217;t believe what Obama had said, which is that he was born in Hawaii. They kept harping on his alleged birth in Kenya. So, what&#8217;s the big deal? The president&#8217;s mother also was an American citizen; his father was Kenyan.<\/p>\n<p>If either Obama or Cruz &#8212; or <em>both of them<\/em>, for that matter &#8212; had been born on <em>Mars<\/em>, their citizenship shouldn&#8217;t be an issue.<\/p>\n<p>The other irony is that Cruz is relying on the opinion of courts comprising <em>unelected<\/em> federal judges. He calls this matter a case of &#8220;settled law.&#8221; Strange, actually, that he would say such a thing, given the disdain he expressed for the federal judiciary after the Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that gay marriage is now legal throughout the country, that the Constitution&#8217;s equal protection clause in the 14th Amendment applied to gay citizens seeking to marry people of the same gender.<\/p>\n<p>I happen to believe\u00a0that Cruz is right about the citizenship issue.<\/p>\n<p>It won&#8217;t go away as long as Donald J. Trump continues to raise it along the GOP presidential campaign trail. Other Republicans now are beginning to echo Trump&#8217;s questioning of Cruz&#8217;s eligibility &#8212; although this concern seems born more out of Cruz&#8217;s rising poll numbers than of actual doubt over whether he&#8217;s a qualified U.S. citizen seeking the highest office in the land.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/2016\/01\/08\/questions-about-cruzs-citizenship-reach-new-volume\/\">The volume is rising<\/a>\u00a0among those who are seeking to stall the Texas Republican&#8217;s campaign momentum.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s entertaining, to be sure, to watch the irony build on itself as this (non)-issue continues to fester.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m wondering: How does President Obama feel about it?<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;s no denying the irony in this growing discussion over whether U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz is constitutionally qualified to run for president of the United States. To my mind &#8212; and to many others who know a whole lot more about constitutional law than I do &#8212; there should be no question about the Republican &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=12294\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Irony abounds in Cruz citizenship debate<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,13,14,18],"tags":[29,540,1610,1708,1863,4537,5043],"class_list":["post-12294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international-news","category-national-news","category-political-news","category-state-news","tag-14th-amendment","tag-barack-obama","tag-equal-protection-clause","tag-federal-judiciary","tag-gay-marriage","tag-ted-cruz","tag-us-constitution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12294"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12297,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12294\/revisions\/12297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}