Posted on 07/26/2005 8:01:10 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON - The Senate approved a bill Tuesday to raise the homeland security secretary from last to eighth place in the presidential line of succession, just after the attorney general.
The bill, sponsored by Sen. Mike DeWine (news, bio, voting record), R-Ohio, passed without objection just before the chamber adjourned. The companion House bill, sponsored by Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., is pending before the Judiciary and Government Reform committees.
If the bill also passes the House, the order of those in line to assume the presidency if President Bush is unable to serve would be:
_Vice President Dick Cheney
_House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill.
_Senate President Pro Tem Ted Stevens, R-Alaska
_Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
_Treasury Secretary John Snow
_Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld
_Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
_Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff
_Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton
_Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns
_Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez
_Labor Secretary Elaine Chao
_Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt
_Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson
_Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta
_Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman
_Education Secretary Margaret Spellings
_Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson
The Constitution, however, requires that the president be a natural-born citizen, so Gutierrez, born in Cuba, and Chao, born in Taiwan, would be ineligible.
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The bills are S. 442 and H.R. 1455.
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Que the Twilight Zone theme. :-}
Well,If it ever gets that bad they the enemy will have alot more to worry about,us.
At least it won't be Nancy Pelosi. If the 2006 elections don't go well, she could be #3.
If the President and the next seven people in succession are all killed or disabled, are we sure we trust the person who was supposed to handle Homeland Security to take over at that point?
Jim Robinson should be listed.
I can just see some national emergency occuring, and Nancy suddenly in charge. Her leadership abilities ought to be gauged at "2", on a scale of 1 to 10...and the nationa would demand an immedate election to get her out of the office.
That is such an excellent point.
Our homeland would have been experiencing very little security.
If Nancy Pelosi ever becomes President, I will immediately sell everything I own and invest the money in gold. Then I will move to Australia, or if they won't let me in, New Zealand.
Haven't figured out what I'll do if Hillary becomes President yet. That's a more urgent matter, I think, but a bit harder to figure out.
This is just technical stuff, because if it ever gets that far into the chain of command than we're already in deep doo-doo and most of us probably wouldn't be around anymore to witness the succession of governance
We did not eliminate a Cabinet position when we created DHS, did we?
Now there is a scary thought
Rummy is 6 degrees removed. I do not want anything to happen to the prez or the others, understand, but Imagine Mccain and the rest have their heads explode with Rummy as Prez. LOL
Gotta get Underperformin' Norman off that list altogether.
God help us if it gets to Chao.
It's an actual possibility. Jimmy Carter won.
Ugh! I scare my self.
We ought to go ahead and extend the list to the fifty state governors.
That way, in the event of a nuclear attack, the probability of someone in the line of succession surviving would be much greater.
BTW, why the H@ll are the HUD and Ag secretaries ahead of the energy secretary in line of succession.
According to constitutional law scholars I spoke to on this subject (not the change of the sequence part but the citizenship of the persons in the lineup), the authority vested in the President would be in that persons hands, but would be required to at the first available opportunity elect a President meeting the constitutional requirmenents, if within time period of less than half of a full term (4 years), it will be on the next scheduled election cycle, if more than that, a special interim presidential election would have to be conducted in a joint session of Congress as soon as it can be reconvened, with the representatives and senators serving as electors for an interim period, and the person elected again, must pass the constitutional requirements, and will serve until the next scheduled presidential election.
In plain english.. Had something happened in mid 1999 to Clintoon and Gore and Hastert and Thurmond, Madeline Halfbright would have been president till after the 2000 elections. Before that, it would have been until Congress reconvened, they would act as electors, and that person would fill the unexpired term.
Chao wouldn't be a bad POTUS, remember her hubby is god, err Mitch McConnell.
as for the change in sequence, pursuant to Article I and the 25th Ammendment, I believe this is unconstitutional (when it gets down to departments, line of succession goes by order of cabinet department creation--since War Department was merely renamed Defense Department, it maintained its position.).
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