This isn’t by any means an exhaustive analysis of the second part of the Stossel LP presidential debate but I wanted to share the video now before too much time passes and this becomes irrelevant.
In this second part, Fox News hosts Bill O’Reilly and Geraldo Rivera each posed a video question regarding drugs. O’Reilly said he had a question for “the libertarian geniuses” which it seemed that he thought he really had a question that would stump them. As it turned out, O’Reilly’s question made him look like a fool. What he thought was a fast ball was actually a hanging curveball that any libertarian worth his or her salt would have hit out of the park (It’s clear that either he doesn’t watch Stossel’s show because he crushes these kinds of questions on a regular basis). All three candidates indeed did hit it out of the park (bonus points for Petersen for calling O’Reilly a pin head).
Geraldo’s question was a bit more nuanced: Should government have programs to help drug addicts? Among the three candidates, I thought McAfee had the best answer. Treatment cannot be forced on those who don’t want it.
From there, Stossel addressed more of the issues in which libertarians are outside the mainstream.
Combining the two parts of the debate together, my opinion hasn’t changed much. I feel like Austin Petersen “won,” I liked much of what John McAfee had to say (he has a great voice too; he should get into broadcasting), and if anyone “lost” it was Gary Johnson.
All of that being said, any one of these individuals is lightyears better than what the blue and red teams are offering.
In case you missed it, the first half of the Libertarian Party Presidential Debate aired on Stossel on April 1st (the second half will air on Friday, April 8, 2016). The three participants were 2012 Libertarian Party presidential nominee and former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, software developer John McAfee, and the founder of the blog The Libertarian Republic Austin Petersen.
After watching some of the GOP debates and the first Democrat debate, watching the Libertarians debate was refreshing. No name calling or commenting on the appearance of the other candidates. No scolding the debate moderator for asking questions the candidates didn’t like. To the extent that one candidate challenged or disagreed with another they were on the substance of the issue at hand (more on that in a moment). There seemed to be more areas of agreement than disagreement (and even a kiss on the cheek) among them. This debate was more about presenting to a national cable audience the case for Libertartian policy alternatives to those of the Republicrats.
Did any candidate “win” Part 1 of the debate or help/hurt his chances with the LP faithful or viewers who are open to supporting a third party candidate?
I can only answer for myself. I enthusiastically supported Gary Johnson in 2012 all the way back from when he was running for the GOP nomination to election day as the LP’s nominee. Of the three, he’s the only one I was all that familiar with. I took the Isidewith.com survey on the issues (mentioned in the debate) several weeks ago and found that I sided with Austin Petersen 97%, Gary Johnson 92%, and Ted Cruz 77%. I’m not sure why John McAfee wasn’t among those I sided with because I found myself in agreement with much of what he said in the debate. Due to these results, though Gov. Johnson is sort of my default favorite I watched with an open mind.
To my surprise, indeed I did find myself agreeing more with the thirty-five year old Austin Petersen than the other two. For libertarians looking for “purity” of libertarian principles, Petersen is your guy it seems (based solely on one half of one debate). When asked about whether a cake decorator should be forced to make a cake for someone based on personal or religious reasons, Johnson (to my profound disappointment) said they should while Petersen said the market should decide making the freedom of association argument (an argument every good libertarian should have down pat).
The second strike against Johnson and for Petersen was the question of the so-called gender pay gap. Johnson sounded like a progressive echoing the “equal pay for equal” work line but said he would be hesitant to sign any equal pay legislation because “the devil is in the details.” Petersen on the other hand skillfully explained why the gender pay gap is a progressive myth. McAfee, for his part argued that if a person doesn’t like how much they are being paid they are free to look elsewhere.
There’s certainly more in the debate that I didn’t get into here. My conclusion as far as my opinion goes: Petersen helped himself, Johnson hurt himself, and McAfee is intriguing. In a world where Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are looking to be their party’s nominee any of the three would be hands down a better choice.
After doing some reflecting, I’ve come to the conclusion I have been wrong about Donald Trump. Yes, he’s a loud mouth and he insults people but maybe that’s what we need in a POTUS. And even though he’s against everything conservatives claim to stand for (i.e. property rights, free trade, limited government, free market healthcare etc.) maybe it’s time conservatives changed to suit him.
None of these things are important anymore. He’s taking a hard line against the M&Ms (Mexicans & Muslims) and all freedom loving American need to be united against Hillary Clinton in the fall.
And what if Trump doesn’t have the 1,237 delegates by the time the convention comes around? Let’s forget about the whole idea of requiring a majority to win the nomination, a plurality is good enough. Yeah, yeah, I know I’ve pointed out that this is against the rules that have been established since the very beginning of the GOP but screw tradition! We need a leader like Trump to “Make America Great Again” nobody’s got time for these antiquated rules!
Let all Conservatives and Libertarians join hands and back Trump no matter what our differences on principle. This whole time I’ve been saying #NeverTrump but my priorities were all wrong: #NeverHillary.
If I had a dollar for every time I heard someone say that Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are ineligible to run for president because they are not “natural-born citizens,” I would have more money than the recent $1.5 Billion Powerball winners. Donald Trump is wrong. The Constitution and case law are clear. Both Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are natural-born citizens, and therefore eligible to run for president.
Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution makes it clear that only a natural-born citizen, who is at least 35 years old, is eligible to be president:
No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five years, and been fourteen Years a resident within the United States.
So are Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio natural-born citizens under the Constitution? The answer is yes. While the Constitution does not define natural-born, statutes and the common law, dating back to pre-colonial English common law have addressed and settled this issue.
Ted Cruz is a Natural-Born U.S. Citizen
Ted Cruz was born December 22, 1970 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. His father, Rafael Cruz, was born in Cuba and his mother, Eleanor Wilson, was born in Wilmington, Delaware. The family relocated to Texas in 1974.
Most legal scholars agree that a natural-born citizen is one who does not need to go through the naturalization process. The Naturalization Act of 1790 addresses the issue of children born outside our borders to American citizens:
[T]he children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond Sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born Citizens: Provided, that the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States: Provided also, that no person heretofore proscribed by any States, shall be admitted a citizen as aforesaid, except by an Act of the Legislature of the State in which such person was proscribed.
Many birthers, such as Ann Coulter, make the argument that at the time the Naturalization Act of 1790 was passed, citizenship only passed through the father, requiring that the father must be a U.S. Citizen. While this is true, they hold the false belief that the Constitution has not been amended to change this. At the time of the signing of the Act, women also could not own property without her husband. Since it is not mentioned or amended in the Constitution, I hope that Coulter is prepared to forfeit her property she owns on her own since that is her interpretation of the Constitution. But I digress. Furthermore, the definition of a natural-born citizen was later codified at 8 U.S.C. 1401(d). It reads in pertinent part:
The following shall be nationals and citizens of the United States at birth:
(d) a person born outside of the United States and its outlying possessions of parents one of whom is a citizen of the United States who has been physically present in the United States or one of its outlying possessions for a continuous period of one year prior to the birth of such person, and the other of whom is a national, but not a citizen of the United States;
Since Ted Cruz’s mother is a natural-born citizen, Ted Cruz is also a natural born citizen. It does not matter that he was born in Canada. The Supreme Court has also answered this question. In Rogers v. Bellei, 401 U.S. 815 (1971), the Court held that the federal government may revoke the citizenship of a natural-born citizen if certain requirements were not met. In this case, Aldo Mario Bellei was born in Italy to an American mother and an Italian father. Mr. Bellei held both Italian and U.S. citizenship.
While the primary issue reviewed in Bellei was not on the definition of a natural-born citizen, the Court first had to determine that Mr. Bellei was a natural-born citizen. Upon determining that Mr. Bellei was a natural-born U.S. citizen, the Court held that the federal government may set a condition subsequent on citizenship for those born outside the United States. Specifically, the government may revoke the citizenship of natural-born citizens born outside the United States when citizens do not establish domicile within the United States by age 23 and remain for at least five (5) years. See Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1952 sec. 311.
In the case of Ted Cruz, he moved to the United States at the age of three (3) years old and has maintained domicile in the United States since then. Therefore, he is a natural-born citizen of the United States and eligible to run for and serve as President of the United States.
Marco Rubio is a Natural-Born U.S. Citizen
Presidential candidate, Donald Trump recently stated that he is unsure that Marco Rubio is eligible to run for president. The case for Rubio’s citizenship is more clear-cut than the case for Cruz. Marco Rubio was born on May 28, 1971 in Miami, FL. His parents came to the United States in 1956. At the time of Rubio’s birth, his parents were Permanent Residents of the United States. This means that his parents were here legally with their “green cards.” Federal law is clear that those born on U.S. soil and subject to the jurisdiction of the United States are natural-born citizens. 8 U.S.C. 1401(a) reads in pertinent part:
The following shall be nationals and citizens of the United States at birth:
(a) a person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.
Of course, the 14th Amendment sec. 1 provides 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.
(emphasis added)
Since Marco Rubio was born on American soil (last time I checked, Miami is still American soil), and he is subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, he is clearly a natural-born citizen.
The Supreme Court has also ruled on this. In U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898), the Court held that a child born on U.S. soil to permanent residents of the United States is a natural-born citizen by virtue of the 14th Amendment. Justice Horace Gray, citing to U.S. v. Rhodes (1866), stated in his majority opinion that:
All persons born in the allegiance of the King are natural-born subjects, and all persons born in the allegiance of the United States are natural-born citizens. Birth and allegiance go together. Such is the rule of the common law, and it is the common law of this country, as well as of England. . . .
Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. at 662. (emphasis added)
Conclusion
The fact that Donald Trump and other birthers would raise questions as to the eligibility of either Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio to run for president is absolutely absurd. Any litigation of these issues is frivolous and a waste of taxpayer money. It is this lawyer’s belief that anyone who brings such a frivolous suit should be sanctioned and responsible for government attorney fees. Enough is enough. It is time to put the birther argument to rest.
Albert is a licensed attorney and holds a J.D. from Barry University School of Law as well as an MBA and BA in Political Science from The University of Central Florida. He is a conservative libertarian and his interests include judicial politics, criminal procedure, and elections. He has one son named Albert and a black lab puppy named Lincoln. In his spare time, he plays and coaches soccer.
I’m by no means a Ted Cruz supporter but damn this is clever. If you think you have seen something like this before, this is a parody of that wonderful scene from the movie Office Space.
This isn’t by any means an exhaustive analysis of the second part of the Stossel LP presidential debate but I wanted to share the video now before too much time passes and this becomes irrelevant. 
