Texas Senator Ted Cruz has been rising in the polls of late, not only in Iowa, but nationally as well. (And high time, if you ask me.) It’s far too soon to declare him a resident of the top tier aside Trump with so few samples, but the prospect of his being a serious contender for the nomination can’t be discounted. And if he wins the Party’s endorsement, he may be in fine shape to take on Hillary Clinton and then be sworn in as the 45th President of the United States. So then what?

Well, at least according to Alan Grayson, we should file “a beautiful lawsuit” to challenge his qualifications to hold the office. (Mediaite)

Florida Congressman Alan Grayson told radio host Alan Colmes Wednesday that if Ted Cruz is elected president, he “will file that beautiful lawsuit saying that he’s unqualified for the job” according to the Constitution.

Cruz was born in Canada to a native-born American mother, making the presidential candidate a dual Canadian-American citizen. It was not until a 2013 Dallas Morning News article that Cruz acknowledged his Canadian citizenry publicly. In 2014, the senator renounced his Canadian citizenship altogether.

Lamenting the “appalling choices” Republicans have to choose among, Grayson told Colmes the Republican race “resolved itself into this weird reality show.”

Even if Grayson is just grousing and looking for a way to throw darts at Cruz, I think this is a great idea and we should absolutely move forward with it in the event that Ted Cruz is elected. In fact, it should start the day after he’s sworn in because this would no doubt take quite a while. I don’t say this because I have any doubt that Cruz would qualify under our current interpretation of the law.. he would. Under Title 8 rules we have what is currently a broadly accepted definition who who qualifies as a natural citizen at the time of their birth as opposed to someone who is naturalized. Cruz would most likely qualify under section (e) but most certainly under section (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

There’s just one problem with deciding that Cruz is qualified based on that snippet of legislation: it’s never been challenged all the way up through the courts and this issue keeps coming up over and over again. I’m not even talking about Barack Obama here… you may recall that Congress actually had to go to the trouble of passing a resolution in 2008 stating that John McCain was a natural born citizen. (McCain was born in Panama to a military family on assignment and his parents were citizens.)

So why not just pass another amendment like that for Ted Cruz? Because it doesn’t solve anything. The phrase “natural born citizen” is essentially unique in the writings of the Founders and they didn’t do a very good job of explaining themselves. If we had a ruling from the Supremes to put into the books – not just on Ted Cruz in particular, but on the exact meaning of the phrase – we could be done with this once and for all. It seems self evident that the Founders drew a clear distinction between two types of citizens; natural born and naturalized. Cruz, like McCain, never went through the naturalization process since it was always assumed they were citizens at the time of their birth, so they are either natural born citizens or they’re illegal aliens.

No matter how often we scratch our heads over the various rulings handed down from the Supremes these days, I can’t see where we lose on this one. Let them nail this thing down once and for all so we can be done with it without having to go through another constitutional amendment. It won’t affect President Cruz one bit and we can spare future generations all of this nonsense.