[Non-Sequitur]

It will be interesting to see if the duly elected CIC could infact be found to have issued illegal orders because of his birth status.

Obama did not order him to deploy, and all the wild claims that 'the buck stops with Obama' will not change that fact. The order to deploy came from somewhere in the administrative bureacracy of the Pentagon, far below the office of the President, and unless LCOL Lakin can prove that any of those people in his chain-of-command hold their rank illegally then he doesn't have a leg to stand on.

[Tallguy]

I think that you're wrong on this. All orders ultimately rest on the authority confered from above. Every officer-candidate learns the chain-of-command from the President-VP-SecDef-CoJChiefs-...- all the way down to HIM/HER. Why teach this if not to instill the idea that the officer is at the bottom of a long chain-of-authority that reaches to the Commander-in-Chief?

That said, a court-martial will be asked to interpret the colonel's actions in the narrowest possible sense (Conduct Unbecoming) and the prosecution will object to any attempt to widen the issue. That's the way the 'game' gets played.

[Getsmart64]

Obama did not order him to deploy

Hmm...so how does the chain of command work? If not the President, then the Sec of Def and/or the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is a loose cannon with deployment orders? My understanding is that the President directs one or the other to issue those orders.