More citizenship questions for Ted Cruz
The problems continue to mount for Ted Cruz. It turns out that both his mother and father appeared on Canadian voter rolls. This story was actually known to Talking Points Memo (TPM) back in 2013.They shared the information with Cruz’s office then. Cruz’s office then said that appearance on the roll was not an indication of citizenship. TPM said they sat on the story because at the time Ted Cruz was not a candidate.
Talking Points Memo decided to to publish the story because Donald Trump made it an issue and Breitbart.com published an article about the same document TPM had shared with Cruz’s office in 2013. While Cruz’s office dismissed his mother’s appearance on the list as inconsequential, as the article points out these are certified rolls in which each person appearing on the roll was interviewed and asked to validate their citizenship. Did Cruz’s mother simply tell the electoral official she was a citizen of Canada even thou supposedly she was not naturalized?
Ted Cruz would have one believe that his citizenship issue is settled. It is not. A court has never tested or interpreted the ‘natural born citizen’ phrase in the constitution. While the Right has and continue to question President Obama’s citizenship mostly because of geographical ignorance, questioning Ted Cruz’s citizenship is actually valid.
Congressman Alan Grayson said as much. He said in no uncertain terms that he intends to challenge Ted Cruz’s eligibility to be President of the United States in court. Grayson said it is not a partisan issue but a legal issue.
The words of President Obama’s Press Secretary Josh Earnest are rather telling.
“It would be quite ironic,” Josh Earnest said. “If after seven or eight years of drama over the President’s birth certificate, if Republican voters were to choose Senator Cruz as their nominee, somebody who actually wasn’t born in the United States and only eighteen months ago renounced his Canadian citizenship.”
While the birther story never had real legs for President Obama’s eligibility for President, ironically they do for the bastion of the Right Wing, Ted Cruz.