Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Posted on 08/22/2006 12:55:07 AM PDT by Mo1
..... But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.
This is more than explicit enough for the Supremes to refuse to administer the oath of office of Vice President if the other side should be stupid enough to brazen it out.
Next stop after that would be federal marshals to detain him until a suitable VP was found if she managed to get elected.
Hmmm ... would that invalidate the entire election or would she merely be allowed to select a VP subject to ratification?
The it would go to the Supreme Court to solve it. The Constitution is a single document and later Amendments would apply to the constitutional test as well.
There are many more posts on this subject than the few you seem to have read.
The main thrust of all the discussion hinges not on whether the reference to "constitutionally ineligible" refers to pre-existing conditions, as I think it does, or to a modified set of conditions for eligibility, but on the fact, let me repeat that word, FACT, that the 22nd amendment does not, let me repeat that word too, NOT, make a person who has served two terms as an elected Preisdent ineligible to serve as President for a further term. The Amendment does NOT do that. It merely, solely and explicitly makes that person ineligible to be ELECTED to a further term as president. And that is ALL it says.
That does NOT make such a person serving as Vice President ineligible to serve as President during exigent circumstances, as he would NOT have been elected to the office of President.
Look, I make my living reading, writing, and interpreting legal documents. There are well understood rules and guides to gleaning menaing from them, and basically the gist of all of it is to take words at their plain meaning. This is especially true when the mening is explicit and unambiguous, as it is in this case, even when one says to one's self, as in this case, "That can't really be what they meant to say, could it?"
If the drafters had wanted to say something else, they easily could have. But they did not.
The result is the language that exists, and that is the language we are all bound by, even if we don't like it very much. It is the language that was ratified and adopted. Any court would agree. This is a slam dunk, open and shut issue.
Sorry for the reality check.
Billy Bob is constitutionally prohibited from holding the office of the Vice Presidency or any other office within the chain of succession.
Article. [XXII.]If you are suggesting that a person who has served two terms is only ineligible to be elected to the position, but is still eligible to ascend to the office by other means, then I think you would have a hard time convincing the courts of that argument.
[Proposed 1947; Ratified 1951]Section. 1. No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this Article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.
Section. 2. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission to the States by the Congress.
What about that language closes off assuming the office of President by succession?
How is that argument, or dispute, ever going to go before a court?
There will be no case or controversy until after an election has been completed. Are you seriously suggesting that any court would use the "shall not be elected" language to overturn an election for another office by linking it to Article II and the twelfth amendment and translating "shall not be elected" as "is constitutionally ineligible"?
Never happen.
It is an elected position. To be ineligible to be elected to the position is to be ineligible to the position. Otherwise, a popular two-term president could run as the VP candidate with his VP running as president (with an understanding that he would step down after the inauguration).
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Which would be perfectly legal.
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