Why Pelosi Signed Two Certificates of Nomination

Sept 8, 2010 | Butterdezillion

[butterdezillion]

Nancy Pelosi signed one certificate of nomination which was sent to 49 states and another - saying that Obama is Constitutionally eligible - to Hawaii. People have asked why she didn't send the eligibility-certifying one to all the states, but the more pressing question is, "Why did the Hawaii Democratic Party refuse to certify Obama's eligibility?"

This is on my blog but I'll post the whole thing in the first response and the link to the blog post in the 2nd response so the links will be (hopefully) clickable.

[butterdezillion]

I mostly agree but there’s one issue that deserves further scrutiny. If you look at the rules regarding how Congress is supposed to contest the certification of the electoral results, the issues all deal with whether the votes were properly certified by the states before being delivered to Congress. Congress’ job is just to count the votes and certify what the end vote tabulation was - unless there is a split vote where nobody gets a majority, in which case Congress has to vote on just the top 2 from the electoral vote.

So I don’t know whether Congress actually CAN contest the eligibility of the candidate.

There were some who officially contested Florida’s certification of the electoral votes in the 2000 election, but Gore presided over the count and threw out those objections - probably because the Bush v Gore case had already decided the issue.

Maybe some of the legal eagles here can tell us, based upon the rules for contesting the electoral vote counting, whether the issue of eligibility can be contested by Congressmen.

[Mr. Wright]

If this is, indeed, a fact, Pelosi should be removed from Office and put on trial for fraud, misuse of process, and whatever other charges are relevant.

[Eye of Unk]

If I was vacationing in Hawaii I would make a viral video of throwing signed copies of the Koran by Obama into one of the active volcanoes.

[butterdezillion]

Maybe the Lord allowed them to be figuratively drowned in the Red Sea. lol.

I’ll take the calm while I have it. =)

[butterdezillion]

lol. You don’t believe in living dangerously, do you, Eye of Unk? lol

I’m lazy enough I’d rather just fart in their general direction. lol. (I get more fun out of those vile French Monty Python guys... lol)

[ExTexasRedhead]

Has any other President in history had this kind of incident instigated by a Speaker of the House? If the answer is no, whose investigating why did Pelosi was allowed to do this? Why hasn’t anyone in Congress asked for an investigation? Can We The People instigate a class action suit against Pelosi?

[butterdezillion]

It would require an investigation and depositions to prove this to a legal standard, but yes, that is exactly what should happen. I’m hoping Darrell Issa will agree (and that we can get the R’s to take the house so Issa will be the chair of the House Ethics Committee).

Actually it would be even better if some lowly prosecuting attorney - preferably from Arizona - brought San Fran Nan to justice.

[butterdezillion]

I’m not a lawyer so I can’t answer for sure, but my understanding is that criminal charges can only be made by legal authorities such as AG’s, US attorneys, special prosecutors, etc.

So the only thing that the rest of us can do LEGALLY is civil lawsuits, and the courts require a person in a civil suit to have standing - that is, to have experienced particular harm not experienced by everybody else and that can be remedied by the court.

And even in instances where the person should have had standing (such as the cases with Major Cook and Alan Keyes), the courts have denied standing and/or Obama acted to remove standing. The same thing may happen with the Chrysler dealerships suit brought by Donofrio and Pidgeon; the Obama administration may do whatever necessary to appease the dealerships because they know Donofrio is willing to push the eligibility issue if necessary.

So we’re in a legal mess. We’ve got prosecutors such as Mike Nifong and the guy in the Tom DeLay case (forget his name, but he’s been a political hack for a long time - Ron Earl?) using their position to make false charges for political power, but we’ve got people like AG Holder (and before him, AG Reno) refusing to investigate and/or prosecute crimes and actually suing to make sure they are the only ones who CAN investigate and/or prosecute some crimes.

It’s really a crisis of our whole system, because the corruption is so widespread and there is nothing to check or balance the corrupt powers.

[Eye of Unk]

Obama this morning spoke in person against the Koran burning and suggested in short it was a bad idea.

What legal authority will he have to stop any person from doing this?

Does he have the legal position to tell our Armed Forces that they have to burn bibles overseas?

I take some pleasure watching him make those comments and the facial expression and haltingly manner of speech indicates he is deeply troubled that America will not surrender to Islam and are defying it in protest by burning the most holiest books that Obama was raised upon.

[Cboldt]

-- So I don't know whether Congress actually CAN contest the eligibility of the candidate. --

You mentioned the challenge to Florida votes, and in 2004, Kerry was the senator (of a Senator/Rep pair) who contested Ohio's electoral ballots.

As for the permitted basis (or, if more than one, bases) for challenge, Congress must have the authority to review the winner for satisfaction of qualifications, otherwise the qualification requirements in the constitution are moot as unreviewable and unenforceable. Yet the constitution assigns Congress the duty of deciding which candidate will be seated as president.

US Const., 20th Amendment: ... if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified; and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President elect nor a Vice President elect shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualified.

The statutory embodiment is in 3 USC 15 - Counting electoral votes in Congress

Upon such reading of any such certificate or paper, the President of the Senate shall call for objections, if any. Every objection shall be made in writing, and shall state clearly and concisely, and without argument, the ground thereof, and shall be signed by at least one Senator and one Member of the House of Representatives before the same shall be received.

That objections are assigned to states is relevant only in that electors of some states may cast unobjectionable electoral votes. You may be wondering about the following "limitation" in the same section of law:

no electoral vote or votes from any State which shall have been regularly given by electors whose appointment has been lawfully certified to according to section 6 of this title from which but one return has been received shall be rejected

The point of that is to facilitate determining which electoral votes will be tallied, when a state provides more than one set of electors or otherwise creates confusion as to the state's will. But legitimacy of a vote is not the same as qualification of a candidate. People could and did vote for the party that would have had Eldridge Cleaver as president. You can write in "Mickey Mouse," and in theory, an elector could likewise cast an electoral vote for Mickey Mouse. It is up to Congress to decide whether the winner of the election is qualified; and that is a different inquiry from whether the ballot represents the voter's or elector's decision.

See 3 USC 19 - Vacancy in offices of both President and Vice President for the situation of disqualification.

[freekitty]

I really hope Nancy Pelosi goes to jail. It is where she belongs.

[Tedro]

Gore’s and Kerry’s certification were the exact same as Obama. None of them include to constitionally eligible bit and all three have the though/through typo. This is not a legitimate argument.

http://nativeborncitizen.wordpress.com/2010/04/18/certification-of-nomination/

http://www.scribd.com/doc/19712995/Gore-2000-Cert

http://www.scribd.com/doc/19712996/Kerry-2004-Cert

[butterdezillion]

Thanks for the links. Those are helpful.

I’m not seeing where the Constitution gives Congress the right to decide who will be seated, but only in determining who won the electoral vote - except in cases where both the Pres and VP elect have failed to qualify.

After the winner is declared by Congress, the President elect and Vice President elect can still “fail to qualify”. The Constitution doesn’t specifically state who determines whether they failed to qualify, but the failure to qualify can happen independently of Congress’ certification of the electoral winner so I don’t think it should be assumed that Congress has that power - especially since it would require interpreting and applying the term “natural born US citizen”, and Article III specifically gives the judiciary the job of interpreting and applying the Constitution to specific cases.

It’s been a while since I looked at the vote-counting statute. I’ll look at it after I post to check for sure, but I thought there was a stipulation about the counting being completed in one day. Am I imagining that? I’ll have to check that out. If electoral votes were contested on grounds of Constitutional ineligibility it would require a judicial decision because each state is responsible for its own election and it would be members of Congress pitted against a state SOS claiming that the candidate was eligible (although actually a bunch of the SOS’s claim that they have to accept a candidate on the ballot if certified as eligible by the political party).

Let me ask you this. If members of Congress had contested, say, California’s electoral votes because the Keyes case was still pending, how should the rest of the story go? What should have happened from there, on the day the electoral winner was supposed to be certified and the days and weeks afterward?

[bmwcyle]

He is a muslim illegal.

[butterdezillion]

OK. I was mistaken; it doesn’t say the process has to take place within the day. It gives no deadline. And actually if I had been thinking straight I would have realized that the 20th Amendment provides for the possibility that Congress may not have decided who the electoral winner was by Jan 20th, so that obviously shows the process can take a long time.

As you say, if nobody can review and enforce the Constitutional requirements, those requirements are moot. That seems to be what the after-birthers claim: that the requirements are moot because the Constitution never says who enforces them, by what standard, or how. If the requirement is in the Constitution, the authors of the Constitution obviously believed they gave somebody the authority to enforce it.

My inclination is to believe they thought the judiciary was given that responsibility, since the judiciary is to settle all cases arising from the Constitution or laws. It could be that Congress has the right to bring up objections - which would be one way for a “case” to arise, with the judiciary ultimately deciding that case.

So maybe it’s both. Maybe Congress has the ability to contest the electoral vote by bringing a case. But I don’t think that means that Congress is the ONLY entity which can bring a case, or that Congress can ultimately decide the case.

Does that make sense?

[Hoosier-Daddy]

It does make sense, and yet, the very fact that all judges are not permitting discovery of Obama’s bona fides suggest that another tactic needs to be used. For some reason, though, with all of the lawsuits filed, the lack of eligibility due to the father being a British Subject has been avoided.

The rulings that tell the governed that they lack Standing makes my blood boil.

[Cboldt]

-- I'm not seeing where the Constitution gives Congress the right to decide who will be seated, but only in determining who won the electoral vote - except in cases where both the Pres and VP elect have failed to qualify. --

"President elect" means the candidate obtained a majority of legitimate electoral votes, not that this person is qualified.

The form of objection is unstated, beyond having to be in writing and clearly, concisely, and without argument, stating the grounds for objection. See, perhaps, for a parallel, the argument in Congress surrounding the seating of Smith (1789) on account of his not being a citizen for the required 7 years.

Given the objection, or question, Congress is required to vote on the objection. There is a time limit for debate, 2 hours! (3 USC 17).

3 USC 19 states the possibility of vacancy in the office of president, by reason of failure to qualify. If neither the president elect nor VP elect qualify, the Speaker (or whoever down the line of succession is qualified) becomes president until there is a qualified president, which may take as long as the 4 year term.

-- If contested on grounds of Constitutional ineligibility it would require a judicial decision because each state is responsible for its own election and it would be members of Congress pitted against a state SOS claiming that the candidate was eligible ... --

I think the issue of eligibility would run against the political party, not the state. From the state's perspective, the voters have chosen an elector, not a president - and it is up to the elector to vote for a qualified candidate.

-- If members of Congress had contested, say, California's electoral votes because the Keyes case was still pending, how should the rest of the story go? --

Congress has a free hand here. If Congress has a question about the qualifications of the person obtaining a majority of the electoral votes, it needs to settle that issue, publicly.

I think Congress is utterly corrupt and derelict. IT can see the party candidates coming from months away. It saw fit to paper-over McCain's qualification in advance. Why not a similar papering over for born dual citizen Obama?

[butterdezillion]

For most of the states the certifications were the same in all the years.

But Hawaii is different. In 2000 it appears that the DNC did send a different certification to Hawaii, with a typed-in addition at the end of what was included on all the others, saying “and meet the constitutional requirements for the Office of the President and Vice President of the United States.”

The Hawaii Democratic Party also certified the Constitutional eligibility that year, so they were doubly covered on meeting Hawaii’s requirements that year.

In 2004 the DNC sent Hawaii the same certification as everywhere else - without the eligibility language. But that was fine because the HDP certified the eligibility. Those 2 elections - both of which the DNC was counseled by Joe Sandler - showed that it didn’t matter who certified eligibility, as long as somebody did.

Then we get to 2008. The DNC, supposedly in the name of being more cautious, tries a combo they’ve never done before: just the DNC certifying eligibility. That’s the only combo they hadn’t already tried while Sandler was their counsel. They knew every other combo had worked. So in the name of caution they try something new? Their stated reason makes no sense.

The bigger question - as I said in the post - is why the HDP didn’t certify eligibility in 2008. If everybody was being cautious (as somebody from the DNC allegedly claimed) they would have done like the 2000 situation, where BOTH the HDP and DNC certified eligibility. But instead, the HDP just this one time changed all their procedures so that they didn’t end up certifying Obama’s eligibility.

And this is no trifle, either, because the DNC claims that the national party relies on the state parties to do the vetting of the candidates. So if the state won’t certify the eligibility, that is supposed to be a big deal because that is supposed to be the basis for Pelosi signing her certification. IOW, if the state won’t certify it, then neither will Pelosi.

This one time alone, the HDP wouldn’t certify it.

Why is that?

[woofie]

the wieners roast....the candy melts.....the steaks sizzle

[butterdezillion]

Me too. My blood is boiling over so many things it just never stops.

I don’t have proof of it so it’s all just speculation at this point and probably sounds wacky, but I have a strong gut feeling that at least some of the people who are seeming to betray us and their own principles are actually doing so under duress.

I believe Soros and the Islamists have threatened SCOTUS and other key leaders including Bush and Cheney by saying they will create a financial panic that destroys the world economy unless the communist-Islamist coup is allowed to continue.

There’s too much that only makes sense if this is the case.