My response to @realDonaldTrump calling into question my natural-born citizenship? https://t.co/gWfAHznlCY

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) January 5, 2016

Good response, Trump cleverly raised it, Cruz cleverly responded.

Here’s a short comment as to the law of what ‘natural born citizen’ means. Natural born covers people born here or born of American citizen parents. Cruz’s mother was an American citizen. The point of the stricture was to prevent foreign influence from seizing the Presidency.

And more:

According to 8 U.S.C. §1401, the class of people considered “nationals and citizens of the United States at birth” includes the following:

(g) a person born outside the geographical limits of the United States and its outlying possessions of parents one of whom is an alien, and the other a citizen of the United States who, prior to the birth of such person, was physically present in the United States or its outlying possessions for a period or periods totaling not less than five years, at least two of which were after attaining the age of fourteen years

I can’t find a year-by-year timeline for Cruz’s mother but she was born and raised in Delaware and graduated from Rice University in Texas, which should take care of all of the temporal requirements listed above. I’m a little surprised that Cruz didn’t mention the statute in the clip below, choosing instead to reference John McCain, George Romney, and Barry Goldwater. They were each born outside the U.S. too, but if I’m not mistaken, each was born to parents both of whom were U.S. citizens. (McCain is also a natural-born citizen under rules granting that status to children of servicemen and servicewomen born abroad while their parent is serving.)

Same groups that ‘fact checked’ Obama’s gun control speech.

Via Washington Times:

Rosa Parks was trending on Twitter Wednesday morning after numerous mainstream media outlets falsely reported that Ammon Bundy, leader of the Oregon refuge takeover, compared his group’s efforts to that of the civil rights icon.

“We are doing the same thing as Rosa Parks did. We are standing up against bad laws which dehumanize us and destroy our freedom,” a user tweeted early Wednesday under the Twitter handle @Ammon_Bundy.

MSNBC reporter Tony Dokoupil, reporting from Oregon, confirmed that the account is a fake and that Mr. Bundy is not on Twitter.

But that didn’t stop numerous major news outlets, including The Washington Post, Business Insider, USA Today and Time magazine, from crediting the real Mr. Bundy with the tweet.

“To be clear: Rosa Parks — the black woman who, on Dec. 1, 1955, refused to give her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Ala., to a white man — was protesting legally sanctioned discrimination. She was willing to be arrested — to serve time and expose an unjust system,” The Post reported. “Bundy, armed and possibly dangerous, takes a quite different position. He says his protest won’t ‘end until we get our public lands back,’ denying the federal government’s role in land management — a legally dubious position.”

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Porter can’t be compelled since he is scheduled to be re-tried again.

Via Slate:

The legal team for Baltimore Police Officer William Porter took steps Tuesday to keep him from being called to testify against his colleagues for the death of Freddie Gray in April. Porter’s lawyers filed a motion with the court saying he planned to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights and that he cannot be compelled to appear as a witness in the trials of fellow officers Caesar R. Goodson Jr. and Alicia White.

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Hillary picked a bad time to ignore Trump.

Via NY Times:

At a campaign event for Donald J. Trump in Mississippi last weekend, Lynette Hardaway and Rochelle Richardson — two African-American YouTube stars who go by the names Diamond and Silk — rallied the roaring crowd with a plea. “Ditch and switch! Ditch and switch!” they yelled.

The pitch was directed at Democrats and independents in the audience, urging them to become Republicans and vote for Mr. Trump if they really want to show their support.

It could be an important strategy for Mr. Trump as the pace of primary season picks up, and he looks to turn his raucous campaign events into voters, delegates and ultimately the Republican nomination. To accomplish that, Mr. Trump will be relying on people who do not tend to vote and trying to persuade some Democrats and independents to change parties so that they can vote in states that allow only registered Republicans to participate.

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Cosby escapes again.

Via The Wrap:

District attorney’s office declines to prosecute on two separate accusations.

Whatever the numerous legal hurdles facing Bill Cosby, criminal charges from the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office aren’t among them.
Cosby won’t face charges stemming from two of his accusers, the DA’s office announced Wednesday.

In the case of the first sexual assault allegation, the DA’s office cited the statute of limitations in its decision not to pursue charges. That accuser claimed that Cosby took her to a Hollywood jazz club in 1965 when she was 17 years old and bought her alcoholic beverages.

The accuser had claimed that Cosby then took her to a private residence and forced her to have intercourse with him.

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Bet they blame Keystone XL somehow.

Via NY Times:

More than two months after a natural gas leak began emitting large amounts of a greenhouse gas near a wealthy neighborhood here, Gov. Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency on Wednesday, ordering California agencies to move as quickly as possible to resolve the issue after previous attempts to stem the flow of methane failed.

In his statement, the governor said that he acted based on the requests of residents in the planned community of Porter Ranch in northern Los Angeles, and the “prolonged and continuing” nature of the gas blowout at the storage facility. Hundreds of residents have been evacuated since the leak began at a nearby natural gas storage field on Oct. 23.

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No one else does.

Via The Hill:

Vice President Biden said Wednesday he regrets not running for president in 2016, but stressed it was ultimately the right call.

“I regret it every day but it was the right decision for my family and for me and I plan on staying deeply involved,” he said in an interview with Hartford, Conn., NBC affiliate WVIT.

It’s one of the first times Biden has publicly conveyed remorse about not jumping into the race to succeed President Obama.
Biden agonized over the decision for months during the late summer and early fall following the death of his son, Beau, from brain cancer.

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Nothing to worry about then right?

Via Sputnik News:

According to a Kyodo news agency report, the RC 135V reconnaissance plane took off from the Kadena airbase at 10:30 a.m. local time. Ten minutes later seismic stations registered underground tremors in North Korea apparently caused by a nuclear explosion.

The North Korean authorities later announced a successful test of what they described as a ‘miniaturized hydrogen bomb.”

The RC 135V returned to base six hours later, Kyodo reported, adding that the spy plane had apparently been keeping an eye on North Korean territory.

Earlier reports said that Pyongyang had not informed other countries about its scheduled nuclear test.

A US reconnaissance plane was on a similar reconnaissance mission along the North Korean border when Pyongyang carried out a nuclear test in 2013.

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Lovely.

Via ABC:

Two men who were captured by the U.S. in Afghanistan and held at the base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for nearly 14 years without charge have been released and sent to this West African nation for resettlement, officials said Wednesday.

The two Yemenis are the first in a wave of 17 expected to be released this month as President Barack Obama’s administration seeks to whittle down the population of low-level prisoners as part of a broader effort, opposed by many in Congress, to close the detention center and move remaining detainees to the U.S. There are now 105 held at the Navy base, including nearly 50 who have been cleared for release.

Both of the men released Wednesday, Mahmud Umar Muhammad Bin Atef and Khalid Muhammad Salih Al-Dhuby, were held as enemy combatants, accused of training with al-Qaida and fighting with the Taliban. They had been cleared for release in 2009, but the U.S. won’t send Guantanamo prisoners to Yemen because of instability there and officials had to find another country to accept them.

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The happy couple.

Wow, such language.

Via Washington Examiner:

Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton on Wednesday condemned North Korea’s latest missile test.

“This is a provocative and dangerous act,” Clinton said in a statement. “North Korea’s goal is to blackmail the world into easing the pressure on its rogue regime.

“We can’t give in to or in any way encourage this kind of bullying,” Clinton said.

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Lovely.

Via The Daily Caller:

Missouri Department of Social Services eligibility specialist Pamela O’Dell faces criminal charges after she went on a shopping spree with $52,000 worth of food stamps she stole, according to a news release from the Department of Justice.

O’Dell was responsible for processing Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program applications and files and used her position to replace participants’ home addresses with her own government office address in Dunklin County, Mo., when participants opted out of the program. That office then issued new Electronic Benefit Transfer or EBT cards using O’Dell’s information.

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Coming soon to the USA.

Via Washington Post:

Hackers caused a power outage in Ukraine during holiday season, researchers say, signalling a potentially troubling new escalation in digital attacks.

“This is the first incident we know of where an attack caused a blackout,” said John Hultquist, head of iSIGHT Partner’s cyberespionage intelligence practice. “It’s always been the scenario we’ve been worried about for years because it has ramifications across broad sectors.”

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When someone says they’ve built a nuclear weapon, you don’t scream out “Oh yeah?! Prove it!”

Via NBC:

The White House says the U.S. government’s early analysis of underground activity in North Korea “is not consistent” with that country’s claim of having conducted a successful hydrogen bomb test.

Spokesman Josh Earnest also says nothing has happened to change the U.S. government’s assessment of North Korea’s technical or military capabilities.

He says the U.S. government is still doing the work that’s needed to learn more about the nuclear test North Korea claims to have conducted successfully on Wednesday.
Pyongyang’s announcement of a successful hydrogen bomb test would mark a major and unanticipated advance for its still-limited nuclear arsenal.

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WARNING: NSFW language, violence.

“Hello, thank you for calling Comcast, my name is Kim, how may I help you today?”

Games afoot.

Via VOA:

Iran isn’t alone in issuing dire threats against Saudi Arabia — the Islamic State has ratcheted up a propaganda campaign against the Gulf kingdom’s ruling family, denouncing them for siding with the U.S.-led coalition against the jihadists and urging followers to oust them.

“The Islamic State has exerted much effort in the last couple of weeks to attacking Saudi Arabia in an extensive and well-coordinated media campaign,” says Marwan Khayat, an analyst at the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), a Washington-based group that monitors jihadist propaganda.

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Wonderful.

Via San Diego Radar:

Among the several dozen Pakistani and Afghan men who have entered the U.S. illegally, coming into San Diego from Tijuana, two were found to have ties to terrorist groups, according to a letter sent by U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter to the Department of Homeland Security.

Muhammad Azeem and Muktar Ahmad, both in their 20s, surrendered to U.S. Border Patrol agents in September, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. One was listed on the Terrorist Screening Database for “associations with a known or suspected terrorist. The other was a positive match for derogatory information in an alternative database,” according to Hunter’s letter.

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The definition of irony.

Via WJLA:

An ABC7 News crew car was broken into while attending a press conference held by D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and Police Chief Cathy Lanier to discuss a Task Force created to fight robberies.

According to ABC7 News reporter Stephen Tschida, thieves tore through the news vehicle early Wednesday afternoon and a culprit smashed a window out of the car and stole a cache of equipment.

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