Ted Cruz is not eligible to be president.

[prayin4rain]

99. The fact that he had citizenship at birth due to his mother being a citizen,

is not in dispute to my knowledge. The sole question is whether that canadian locale, US citizenship through his mother alone, is "natural born" citizenship.

I thought your first post was saying that although Congress has no power to interpret and define words in the Constitution, Congress can create rights (by statute or other means) that, once given, implicate other Constitutional rights, such that the initial right cannot then be easily taken back by a later court declaration that the Congressionally confered right was actually unconstitutional.

Vested rights are present rights as often as they are future rights and some present rights have not vested. In your land analogy, the persons presently owned the land and also had a vested right to own the land. I am presently a regular natural born citizen and it would be difficult for a court decision to change the nature of my citizenship, at this point, since it has long since vested.

So, anyway, I did misunderstand your first post. The question remains, is Cruz's present citizenship an automatic, instantaneous naturalized type of citizenship, or is it simply natural born citizenship. I, too, lean towards natural born, but I don't think the professors who lean the other way are stupid.