Thursday, January 14, 2016

Ann Coulter's Progress: Only constitutional illiterates confuse citizens and natural born citizens


'A child born to American parents outside of U.S. territory may be a citizen the moment he is born -- but only by "naturalization," i.e., by laws passed by Congress. If Congress has to write a law to make you a citizen, you're not "natural born." ... Mostly, the Cruz partisans confuse being born a citizen with being a "natural born citizen." This is constitutional illiteracy. "Natural born" is a legal term of art. A retired judge who plays a lot of tennis is an active judge, but not an "active judge" in legal terminology.'

She seems, however, unaware that the 1790 Naturalization Act poses less of a problem for interpretation than she thinks, seeing that it was repealed by the Act of 1795, which scuttled the 1790 terminology "natural born".

Clearly the Congress had made an error in 1790, and realizing that making those born abroad natural born conflicted with the original intent of the constitution to restrict the designation to those born to citizens on US soil, Congress fixed it.

And this nugget Coulter pulls out is quite lovely in that regard:

"The only difference drawn by the Constitution is that only the 'natural born' citizen is eligible to be president." -- Schneider v. Rusk (1964)

Now if only we could get everyone to connect the dots.