ConstitutionPolitics

Lawrence Tribe Says Cruz is Not a Natural Born Citizen but Chimpanzees Could Be

I’ve been amazed how many so-called conservatives are appealing to Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Tribe as an authority on what a natural born citizen is.

He’s a very weak reed too lean on for lots of reasons. Pick almost any subject, and Tribe is most likely on the other side.

Tribe has described Ted Cruz as one of his brightest students when he was a student at Harvard Law School. This should tell conservatives something. If Cruz is that intelligent and a formidable debater, and he is on the other side ideologically from Tribe, liberals like himself must make sure Cruz does not get anywhere near the White House.

Here’s a curious thing about Lawrence Tribe. I did not find this on my own, but I did recollect something about chimpanzee rights being pushed a few years ago. I wrote “Get Ready for Chimpanzee Voter Rights for Democrats” in 2014. Daniel Greenfield at Front Page Magazine found Lawrence Tribe’s involvement in extending legal rights to chimpanzees in a Wall Street Journal article from 2002:

“The advocates of granting legal standing to chimps have gained support from constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe, a Harvard Law School professor. Mr. Tribe argues that the leap isn’t as great as it might appear: Courts recognize corporations as juristic, or legal, ‘persons’; that is, they enjoy and are subject to legal rights and duties.

Monkey citizens

“‘The whole status of animals as things is what needs to be rethought,’ says Mr. Tribe. ‘Nonhuman animals certainly can be given standing.’

“In legal terms, animals are ‘things,’ that is, they don’t possess rights on their own. The push is to extend the legal definition of ‘persons’ to Pan troglodytes, the species closest to man.”

Consider for a moment how almost everything has been redefined today. Women can declare themselves to be men, and men can declare themselves to be women. White people can identify as black. Facebook has 50 or so gender identities to choose from.

Noting is safe from definitional change.

Given Tribe’s legal logic regarding chimpanzees as “persons” who have “legal standing,” it won’t be long before they will be declared citizens, and if citizens they can be “natural born citizens” based on the provisions of the United States Constitution and thereby be eligible to be President of the United States.

But Ted Cruz can’t be president because he was born in Canada to an American citizen mother and spent nearly his entire life in the United States.

Can a Planet of the Apes be far behind?

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