Bad news for Ted Cruz: his eligibility for president is going to court
Looks like we need more pictures of Trump since he doesn't seem to be going away. Maybe we could use this image until then. ;-)
The Circuit Court of Cook County in Chicago has agreed to hear a lawsuit on Sen. Ted Cruz's eligibility for president -- virtually ensuring that the issue dominates the news in the runup to the South Carolina primary.
Funny graphic, unless it's that time of year.
Cruz was born in Canada to a US citizen mother and a noncitizen father. The Constitution requires presidents be "natural-born citizens," but what exactly that requires hasn't been settled in court.
Now, perhaps, it will be. The lawsuit in Illinois aims to resolve the question by challenging Cruz's eligibility for the presidency. It was filed by Lawrence Joyce, an attorney who has told local media that he supports Dr. Ben Carson and has had no connection with the Trump campaign.
"Joyce said his concern is that the eligibility issue lie unresolved during Republican primaries, thus letting the Democrats take advantage of it after a potential Cruz nomination, when it'd be too late," reports the Washington Examiner.
When this question initially came up, the conventional wisdom among constitutional lawyers was that it was a nonissue: Cruz was obviously eligible. But as the debate has heated up among candidates (with Donald Trump, in particular, fanning the flames), it's also begun to heat up among constitutional law scholars.
The issue is actually twofold: whether Ted Cruz should be considered a natural-born citizen, and whether Cruz's own preferred school of constitutional interpretation would see it that way.
Much more at the link. Note to posters -- these should be trimmed way back. Interested readers can hit the link. |
Posted by: gorb 2016-02-19 |