With so many people on the republican side of the isle jumping on the runaway birther train, riding it all the way to CruzCan’tBePresidentVille, and gettin' all up in his stuff, Senator Ted Cruz fights an uphill battle. Donald Trump kicked it off of course, because Trump is that guy who will always go there. And Senator Grouch McCain gleefully joined in for the fun of kicking a man while he’s
And then the Washington Post had to go and make everything worser by finding a constitutional law professor lady, one Mary Brigid McManamon of Widener University’s Delaware Law School, to write an entire op-ed about how Senator Ted cannot be president on account of the fact that his mother pushed him out of her female lady parts while in the frozen socialist tundra of Canada rather than the USA. Now, because a lawyer who is also a professor lady wrote it, and because that lawyer who is also a professor lady is fighting with some other lawyers (probably chauvinist males types) who already wrote about how all-American Senator Ted is, the op-ed has one million lawyer words. We’ve helpfully skimmed over it and given myself a bad headache in order to find and bring you the money shot:
"The Constitution provides that “No person except a natural born citizen . . . shall be eligible to the office of President.” […] On this subject, the 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."
She also apparently feels so strongly about Senator Ted not being eligible to be president that she went and wrote an entire law review article about the Natural Born Citizen Clause last year, merrily name-checking
Cruz throughout. She gets all deep down and dirty originalist and
textualist about it, just the way we conservatives like,
and she concludes:
"The introduction to this Article posed a question: “in the eyes of early Americans, would someone born in a foreign country of American parents be a ‘natural born citizen’ and therefore eligible to be President of the United States?” The pertinent historical materials lead to only one conclusion: aside from children born to U.S. ambassadors or soldiers in hostile armies, the answer is “no.”So I guess she showed Senator Ted, and he should just pack it in and give it up. The Wapo's Constitutional Lawyer Lady friend from Delaware has spoken. And I, sharing the same unfortunate and unconstitutional black mark on my being, having been launched from my American Mother's female lady parts while in a foreign country, my devious future plans of becoming the first Lady