The recent debate over Ted Cruz's citizenship took center stage at Thursday's GOP debate on Fox Business Network. VPC


Use tax money legally, well

Likely, as someone has said, a gas tax, an additional half-cent sales tax and impact taxes are all needed. Good roads are essential.

The huge catch? Amendment 1. When you misuse funds you need to be punished. Now. Have you noticed not one word has come up about Amendment 1 this year? Who is enforcing that?

The devil is in every detail. When gas taxes were brought up at one point someone said “most of the money” would be used for roads. Well, no, use all of the money for roads with legal enforcement. Don’t use it right? Go to jail, do not collect $200.

The bottom line is we can’t trust you to use our money. Fix that legally before you come to us with your requests and all will be fine. There also have to be non-renewable end dates like five years, which cannot be extended. Otherwise, just whine to yourselves.

Sharon Adams, Titusville

Constitutional convention time?

The recent USA Today editorial opposing Marco Rubio’s call for a constitutional convention is fearful of chaos with a balanced federal budget and term limits imposed on Congress and Supreme Court.

If states have constitutionally balanced budgets, why not the federal government? The editorial’s concern over a national security crisis is provided in every serious balanced budget amendment proposal I have seen. It is the other 85 percent of federal spending that is out of control.

The editors believe term limits will lead to lobbyist controlling legislation. In fact, new members pose the greatest hope to controlling the runaway federal government. The chaos in Washington because of term limits will be within the lobbying ranks of government agencies, along with the foreign and private sectors. If every election brought a turnover of 50 percent or more, these groups would have greater difficulties indoctrinating the Congress.

Editors are concerned over tinkering with the 240-year-old Constitution. Actually, tinkering with the Constitution has been occurring over the last 100 years with presidential orders, congressional laws and Supreme Court decisions outside the Constitution. A convention organized by the states appears to be the only way to restore power to the states and the people.

Bill Tolley, Melbourne

Obama overlooks some murders

I applaud President Obama for his respect for human life. He arranged for the presence of an empty chair at his State of the Union address to honor the memory of those who have been murdered. Unfortunately, Barack Obama has myopically honored only people killed by guns. Shall we forget the millions of our fellow citizens legally killed by abortion?

All people, living and dead deserve respect. Let us join the president of our great country by honoring victims of murder. Perhaps you can leave an empty booster seat or an empty high chair at your kitchen table on Jan. 22. On that day, I will honor the 58 million Americans killed by abortion since the fatal Supreme Court decision in 1973.

Kathleen AmRhein, Melbourne

‘Natural born’ means born in U.S.

I am neither a lawyer nor a scholar of the Constitution, but thanks to the nuns at Sacred Heart School, I can read.

“Natural born” means born on American soil and possibly on the soil of one of our territories. Period.

I do not understand how Senator Cruz, a highly educated person, can consider himself eligible to be our president.

This reminds me of the wives of American servicemen stationed overseas who would fly home, to American soil, at their own expense, to give birth and thereby not deny their child the possibility of becoming president of the United States.

Joe Pannitto, Melbourne

Cruz should be declared eligible

The writer who recently stated that a person both of American parents on military assignment in a foreign country is not eligible to run for president is mistaken.

The Supremes have yet to rule on the meaning of “natural born citizen” in the Constitution. Scholars, though, universally agree that U.S. service men or women on assignment outside the United States who give birth are for legal purposes stationed in the U.S., but are serving temporarily in another country (under the American flag on authorized military premises), so the birth in that country is for legal purposes a birth in an American jurisdiction.

The writer will have to correct her friend born in Tripoli in 1950, whose father was clearly not a constitutional law scholar.

The issue of birth related to presidential eligibility of a person born in a foreign country of parents not serving in the U.S. military is still a complex one, and definitely not black and white based on location alone. Therefore, Sen. Cruz should not be written off as ineligible.

Francis Clifford, Melbourne

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