Question of Ted Cruz's eligibility to be President headed to court. Awkward!

Courtesy of Vox:  

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 run-up to the South Carolina primary. 

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.


When this question initially came up, the conventional wisdom among constitutional lawyers was that it was a non-issue: 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 problem is the Constitution doesn't define "natural born Citizen." Neither does any current law. And no one has ever brought a court case to decisively settle the question as a matter of US law.

Until now that is. 

Okay we all have to admit at this point that this is the MOST entertaining presidential election in perhaps the entire history of the country.

Just when you think it just can't get any crazier, it does!

Sarah Palin says that any person who joins a terrorist organization should lose their citizenship. She may have a point.

"Only freedom lovin' Mericans can look at my butt."

Courtesy of Raw Story:  

Message to would-be ISIS recruits: Sarah Palin doesn’t want you back. The former Alaska governor and current media firebrand said in a Facebook post Friday that Americans who leave the country to join a foreign terrorist organization should be stripped of their citizenship. 

 “As crazy as it sounds, a U.S. citizen who leaves this country to join ISIS, al Qaeda, or any other terrorist organization does not immediately lose his or her citizenship,” Palin wrote in the post. “That needs to change!” 

The post, which was accompanied by a video in which Palin spoke of the “threat of radical Islam,” was shared more than 1,200 times within two hours. “It’s a simple fact that some people are drawn to ISIS’s brutality,” Palin says in the video. “They’re actually inspired by videos of beheadings and burnings. They actually believe ISIS’s religious message.”

Well of course stripping an American of their citizenship flies, without due process, in the face of the Fourteenth Amendment which states that; "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. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." But why should such a detail bother Palin?

Yeah that sort of makes it hard to enforce a rule which suggests that these individuals "immediately lose his or her citizenship" without first giving them the opportunity to be tried before a jury of their peers. 

Of course I'm sure that does not Palin any pause since the only part of the Constitution she seems to care about is the 2nd Amendment.

However I am not completely in disagreement with her point of view here.

I think that people who run off to join ISIS should probably be detained when they reenter the United States as a possible threat to our security, and if warranted imprisoned or even exiled.

IF they are first found guilty of course.

But hey why stop there. I mean if we are going to take away the citizenship of Americans who go overseas to collaborate with anti-American groups and terrorist organizations why not do the same to people who do it right here on our shores.

The FBI has labeled the sovereign citizen group a terrorist organization.

So I would guess that anybody who fraternized with a group like that, the Alaska Independence Party for instance, might need to be scrutinized by the Federal government to determine if they represent a potential threat.

And if that person were also known to support anti-government groups like the Tea Party, and hang out with folks who had made actual threats against the President of the United States and his Secretary of State like this guy..... 

...well I would think that somebody like that would be hanging onto their citizenship by a thread.

You know it is such a rarity when I even minimally agree with Sarah Palin, that when I do it represents kind of a nice change. Don't you agree?

Home schooled daughter of fundamentalist Christian parents cannot prove she is an American citizen.

Courtesy of The Friendly Atheist:  

Alecia Faith Pennington grew up in a homeschooling Christian household. As you might expect, her parents don’t like government regulations. We know that freedom can be abused, but I’ve never seen it go this far. 

Alecia’s mother Lisa, who runs a website called The Pennington Point, never obtained a birth certificate for her daughter. (She was born at home.) Furthermore, there’s no social security number for Alecia… or school records (since she never attended public school).

Because of that the young woman cannot attend school, get a driver's license, or even prove she is an American citizen. 

But hey, at least God knows she exists. Right?

Ted Cruz has just learned that he has dual citizenship. In response Donald Trump's hair has wrapped itself around his neck and is trying to strangle him to death. Update!

Well fuck me.

Courtesy of the Dallas News:

Born in Canada to an American mother, Ted Cruz became an instant U.S. citizen. But under Canadian law, he also became a citizen of that country the moment he was born. 

Unless the Texas Republican senator formally renounces that citizenship, he will remain a citizen of both countries, legal experts say. 

That means he could assert the right to vote in Canada or even run for Parliament. On a lunch break from the U.S. Senate, he could head to the nearby embassy — the one flying a bright red maple leaf flag — pull out his Calgary, Alberta, birth certificate and obtain a passport. 

“He’s a Canadian,” said Toronto lawyer Stephen Green, past chairman of the Canadian Bar Association’s Citizenship and Immigration Section. 

The circumstances of Cruz’s birth have fueled a simmering debate over his eligibility to run for president. Knowingly or not, dual citizenship is an apparent if inconvenient truth for the tea party firebrand, who shows every sign he’s angling for the White House. 

“Senator Cruz became a U.S. citizen at birth, and he never had to go through a naturalization process after birth to become a U.S. citizen,” said spokeswoman Catherine Frazier. “To our knowledge, he never had Canadian citizenship.” 

The U.S. Constitution allows only a “natural born” American citizen to serve as president. Most legal scholars who have studied the question agree that includes an American born overseas to an American parent, such as Cruz. 

The Constitution says nothing about would-be presidents born with dual citizenship.

I am just sitting here eating my popcorn and waiting to see how the Teabaggers, who LOVE Ted Cruz, are going to handle this. Because watching them trying to rationalize this, after what they did to President Obama, is going to be very entertaining!

I wonder how President Obama is reacting to the news?

Seems appropriate.

Update: Now Cruz has decided that he needs to renounce his Canadian citizenship:

“Now the Dallas Morning News says that I may technically have dual citizenship,” Cruz said in a statement. “Assuming that is true, then sure, I will renounce any Canadian citizenship. Nothing against Canada, but I’m an American by birth and as a U.S. senator; I believe I should be only an American.” 

I am really loving this story, for no other reason than to hear birthers backpedaling like crazy in order to rationalize why THIS is different than their Obama birth certificate witch hunt.

Here is my favorite line from this  Washington Post article.

“Given the raft of stories today about my birth certificate, it must be a slow news day,” Cruz said.

Seriously?  Somewhere you just know there are Right Wingers whose brains are exploding.

Margaret Doughty awarded citizenship after USCIS retracts request for proof of religious affiliation.

For those of you who may not remember, we covered the USCIS's bizarre request of Margaret early this month.

Courtesy of Divided Under God:

Ms. Doughty’s case was brought to the attention of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, who wrote a letter to the USCIS on her behalf, as well as the American Humanist Association, who did the same. Ms. Doughty’s local Congressman, Blake Farenthold, also got involved, helping to get her case escalated to the highest levels of the USCIS for review. 

Today, she received an email from the congressional office with the following message from the USCIS included: 

“This Service hereby withdraws the request for evidence (RFE) issued on June 7, 2013. This Service accepts your detailed statement in satisfaction of the information requested by the RFE. Your application for naturalization has been approved.” 

Margaret Doughty’s case can be seen as a victory for the non-religious in the U.S., many times referred to as the “nones” (based on religious affiliation questionnaire categories). Often called the fastest growing demographic in the country, those not affiliated with a religion are said to make up about 20% of the population. Atheists fall into this category, are widely misunderstood, and just as in this case, often discriminated against by the religious majority. Recent polls have shown atheists to be the least trusted group in America.

This is a huge victory for those of us who self identify as Atheists, and really everybody in this country if you think about it. 

The idea that just because you do not find anything reasonable about suspending your disbelief to embrace one religious faith or another it makes you a less trustworthy person is completely bizarre to me.

Of course I see it as quite the opposite, but recognize that I remain in the minority.

While we are on the topic I thought I would share with you Richard Dawkin's observations about Atheism and the people who embrace it.

We still have a long way to go, but I see the movement for the acceptance of Atheists in this country to be ultimately as important as the acceptance of the homosexual community.

64 year old conscientious objector denied US citizenship due to being an Atheist. Say, what?

Courtesy of Divided Under God: 

Margaret Doughty, a 64-year old woman from the UK who has spent the past 30+ years in the U.S., is in the process of applying for United States Citizenship and happens to be an atheist. She is currently a permanent resident running non-profit adult literacy organizations, doing her part to enrich the lives of American citizens. In the process of applying for citizenship, all candidates are asked if they’d be willing to take up arms in defense of the United States of America. Ms. Doughty responded, 

“I am sure the law would never require a 64 year-old woman like myself to bear arms, but if I am required to answer this question, I cannot lie. I must be honest. The truth is that I would not be willing to bear arms. Since my youth I have had a firm, fixed and sincere objection to participation in war in any form or in the bearing of arms. I deeply and sincerely believe that it is not moral or ethical to take another person’s life, and my lifelong spiritual/religious beliefs impose on me a duty of conscience not to contribute to warfare by taking up arms…my beliefs are as strong and deeply held as those who possess traditional religious beliefs and who believe in God…I want to make clear, however, that I am willing to perform work of national importance under civilian direction or to perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States if and when required by the law to do so.” 

Despite being an atheist, Ms. Doughty was told that any conscientious objection must be based on religious grounds, not simply moral objections. So as someone who was not religious, and didn’t believe in a god, she had no basis for objecting. Her statement has been denied and she has been informed that to move forward in the process she must submit a letter from the elders of her church to prove her conscientious objections are religiously based. 

She has been given until June 21st to show that her objection is religiously-based, or her application will be denied.

So to be clear, according to the United States government, this woman's refusal to kill anybody cannot possibly be considered moral if she is NOT a member of a religion.

As if the ONLY people on the planet who refuse to kill their fellow man, are those that have surrendered their critical thinking skills and embraced belief in one of the pantheon of gods recognized by the good ole US of A as being legitimate. For fuck's sake, she's 64 years old, who do they want her to kill anyway?

Should I tell you now how sick and tired I am to constantly hear that without a religion people cannot be considered moral?  This kind of crap really burns my ass.