Ted Cruz's presidential campaign has produced his mother's birth certificate after Republican rivals suggested Cruz might not be eligible for the Oval Office because he was born outside the United States.
The campaign provided the certificate—showing his mother, then named Eleanor Darragh, was born in Delaware on November 23, 1934—to conservative news outlet Breitbart. The campaign's decision to release the birth certificate comes in response to a threat by Democratic U.S. Representative Alan Grayson of Florida to bring a lawsuit challenging Cruz's eligibility for the presidency if he becomes his party's nominee, an increasingly likely possibility.
As New York business mogul Donald Trump has pointed out repeatedly in the past week, Cruz was born in Calgary, Canada. The U.S. Constitution sets three requirements for presidential hopefuls: They must be 35 years old, have been a resident of the U.S. for 14 years and be a "natural-born citizen" of the United States. But the founders did not explicitly define what was meant by "natural-born citizen," which leaves room for debate.
But most constitutional scholars argue that anyone with at least one parent who was a U.S. citizen at the time of birth automatically inherits that parent's citizenship. Cruz has said that because his mother was a U.S. citizen when he was born, he is a natural-born citizen.
So to be clear here, President Obama, who WAS born in the United States, was pressured to provide his actual birth certificate to prove it, and yet the Right Wing refused to accept that as adequate proof.
And yet Ted Cruz, who actually WAS born in Canada, only has to provide his mother's birth certificate in order to prove he meets the requirements to be President?
Okay well I'm glad we straightened that out.
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