Cruzing

Law profs Lawrence Tribe and Mary Brigid McManamon have convinced me.

By the intended meaning of the U.S. Constitution's requirement for a "natural born Citizen", Ted Cruz is not legally eligible to be President.

McManamon explains the distinction. A natural-born citizen is one born in U.S. territory. (Frustratingly, McManamon doesn't clarify whether this is restricted to the metropolitan U.S. or includes other territory under U.S. control, which would cover Barry Goldwater and John McCain.) Cruz wasn't. He was born in a foreign country. End of story.

But his mother was a U.S. citizen, you object. Here's where McManamon gets ingenious. His mother's status made Cruz a naturalized citizen: naturalized automatically, at birth, instead of having to go through a naturalization procedure later on. But he's not a natural-born citizen.

That's what the Constitution was written to intend. Tribe puts the argument in context. If put to the Court today, the decision would probably go for the more inclusive meaning. But Cruz wants justices who stick to the original intent. Well, then, he can't have them, because they'd have to rule he was ineligible to appoint them.

I have no doubt, however, that if Cruz is nominated and then elected, the question will be just brushed aside.

how to update a Potlatch restaurant guide

This is going to be a quick and dirty Potlatch, so it needs just a quick and dirty restaurant guide.

1. Fetch a few copies of the latest version of the Downtown San Jose Dining Guide map from the city's Convention Center offices.

2. Map on one copy the geographic sections I used in the old restaurant guide from two years ago.

3. That one had four circles of proximity: nearby, close, closer, and closest. Decide the last two are as far out as we need to go this time (plus a few selected favorites from further out), and measure on the map how far that was.

4. Using a drawing compass, transfer that to a circle drawn around our new venue.

5. Identify which sections, and parts of sections, of the old guide are within the limits of the new.

6. Copy the relevant parts of the old guide into a new document file, renumber the sections, and rearrange the order of the individual entries to fit a walk from our new venue. Map that on another copy of the Dining Guide.

7. Compare the entries one by one with the dining guide's listings. Find that, of 47 relevant entries on the old list, apparently 10 have closed and 7 new ones have opened.

Next step, checking them out on the ground to see how well the map matches the territory, and trying out some of the new places, along with updating hours and such for the old ones.