Posted on 09/08/2009 10:52:36 PM PDT by sig226
Suppose Obama is proven to be ineligible to be the President of The United States of America. I assume that a candidate for federal elective office is required to certify that he is eligible to hold that office, and that a false answer could result in prosecution for perjury. We all saw how well that worked out with Bill Clinton. Now there is a democrat house and senate, and they have no shame.
There is another relevant part of the constitution which was voted in 1967; Amendment 25, section 4:
Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.
Robert KKK Byrd is the Senate President Pro Tempore and you know who is the Speaker of the House. In theroy, they could just ignore such a letter from Joe Biden, which would be submitted as a formality if he presumed that no action would be taken on it. But Congress must have written law on this subject after it was made an amendment to the constitution. Can anyone provide references where those laws can be found in the U.S. Code (USC) and the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR)?
4. Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.
Can anyone provide references where those laws can be found in the U.S. Code (USC) and the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR)?
***
Section 4 continues:
Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.
The 25th Amendment already provides for the Vice-President and Cabinet to decide whether the President is disabled, unless the President voluntarily submits the declaration himself.
The 25th Amendment only stipulates “... or of such other body as Congress may by law provide ...”.
Since I cannot find relevant law in the United States Code, as of now, the Vice-President and the Cabinet decide. Otherwise, Congress would have codified into law a “commission” of some sort that would make the decision instead of them.
Section 1.: In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.
The scenario would be that the Supreme Court had affirmed a lower court judgement that the President is not Constitutionally qualified and is, de jure and defacto, not the President, and order his removal from office. Ths order would presumably be enforced by the US Marshall's Service.
Effective immediately upon issuance of the ruling and order by the Court, Biden would become President, and presumably would be sworn in forthwith. The Congress would not be involved.
Here’s the rub.... Biden’s way too stupid to ever be president and Obama’s way too evil. And then you have Pelosi who’s way too stupid AND too evil.
What a predicament the dems have put us all into.
Why are we getting into all this irrelevant verbiage?
***
I was only responding to his question about applicable law.
I do take issue though, with your premise that Biden would be POTUS.
My position is that, if Obama is found ineligible, the Electoral College will be deemed NOT to have chosen POTUS since Obama is DQ’d and McCain did not get a majority of the votes. In which case, the 12th Amendment provides for the House to choose.
But, if you read the 12th Amendment carefully, the House may only choose from a list of up to 3 names that they voted for. Since Obama is DQ’d, the list only contains 1 name (McCain). McCain would then need 26 votes to claim the Presidency (the House votes as State delegations).
As for Biden - who knows ???
He might temporarily assume the Presidency under the 25th Amendment, but his election is also tainted by the fact that he was elected as a “ticket” with Obama. They were Obama electors who elected him AND Biden. Since their votes for Obama were thrown out, a case could be made that Biden’s should be too (Fruit of the Poisonous Tree doctrine).
And, as such, he could not succeed Obama under the 25th Amendment.
So, I would think that Pelosi would assume the Presidency temporarily under the 25th Amendment and that Biden would have to stand before the Senate.
Under the 12th Amendment, the Senate would choose the VEEP - one man one vote, 51 votes to be elected. From a list of 2 (Biden and Palin) Given the current make-up of the Senate, Biden would win.
So, it would be McCain/Biden.
I want a special prosecutor to investigate who knew what and I want people in cahoots with Obama tried for fraud and\or treason. McCain will be one of them since he lied about checking Obama’s eligibility.
No one in Congress should get away with doing this to our constitution and people. I don’t care if they were purposefully ignorant, they were negligent in carrying out their oath to defend and protect the constitution.
They could not lift a finger to check even after the people were complaining to them. Juan is more loyal to the interests of foreigners than he is to Americans. He mislead the whole GOP in his never ending thirst to please foreigners.
We would need a new Presidential election fast because all the people in line to replace Obama are in cahoots with the treason.
Yea and the Secret Service would no longer have to guard him either as a civilian imposter to the Presidency....I guess he will have to hire the Black Panthers or Code Pink or somebody to bring him and Michelle coffee.
Interesting, but I don’t think it would work out that way. Biden is Constitutionally qualified, and would succed immediately to the Presidency as there is no established procedure for tossing out the entirety of an election.
Following some of your logic, you might make an argument that the every candidate elected to any Federal office in 2008 was “tanited” in the same waay as the VP was by virtue of being on the same ballot as Obama.
As I said, I don’t think the remedy would extend beyond booting Obama out - making Biden the President.
But, that’s just how I see it.
I’m looking specifically for the part of the USC that describes what to do in such an event. Congress can’t just make it up as they go along. If they did that, their actions would be subject to nullification by the judicial branch because they acted without statutory authority. I really want to know how the minority party could initiate the proceeding if the majority party and the Vice President didn’t want to do it.
Here’s the rub: That man won the 2008 presidential election, and Biden was on the ticket with him. I can’t think of any constitutional authority to settle the issue in case the president is found to be ineligible for the office. It seems like they never considered the possibility. So pretend that Obama admits that he’s not a natural born citizen. Now what? No legal authority seems to exist to do anything about it. I mentioned impeachment on the grounds of perjury when he signed whatever eligibility documents he had to sign. We already know how that worked out from the last time.
Incapacity is generally taken to mean illness that affects the mind. But ineligibility also fits under incapacity. If he’s found to be ineligible to be president, he lacks the legal capacity to issue the orders and sign the documents required in the executive branch.
The devil is in the details.
In my opinion and in the opinion of others, ineligibility means just that: Someone who is ineligible cannot hold the office. If he is ineligible, he IS not President, never was, and there is no need to “remove” him, except physically from the premises.
That would be done by the US Marshals under a court order, presumably from the Supremes.
Top 5, actually, but that's moot, as only McCain would be qualified.
As unlikely as it would be to happen, the most "ideal" result would be McCain as President and Biden as Vice-President, since although Biden's electors are the same as Obama's, they were on separate ballots, and Biden has no eligibility issues.
Since there is no actual U.S. code to deal with it though, it becomes a political question -- the USSC would kick it back to Congress, as Congress is generally the arbiter of election issues, and if the Constitution is silent on the topic, the USSC should stay out of it (not that it always does, but that's another story).
The most politically expedient thing to do would be to simply have Biden assume the office, and Biden would appoint a new VP based on the consent of the Senate.
Find a law that says that. That's the issue here. I don't know of any such law. Even though I think the guy is a natural born citizen, I find this whole thing tremendously entertaining. Whenever somebody at huffpo complains about birthers, I laugh and think of seven years of truthers. I hope they enjoy the monster they created. It serves them right.
But, it raises a legitimate question. Suppose Obama, or some president in the future, is determined to be ineligible to hold the office. What then? Under what legal authority can he be removed? The closest law I can find is the 25th amendment. If there is a more relevant rule, I'd like to know about it. The alternative is that he gets removed not because of law, but because of politics. That's a banana republic. Even though it might ultimately mean leaving a Marxist blowhard in the White House, I'd rather have that than a country that decides its policies based on whoever makes the loudest noise.
LOL!
That's what ineligible means. You don't need laws to define words. That's what dictionaries are for.
Right. We don’t need laws.
Well, we do have one law that covers this situation.
It’s called the “Constitution of the United States,” a.k.a. “the supreme law of the land.” Heard of it?
LOL!!
Look, not to trivialize this, but...
The position you have staked out for yourself is ludicrous beyond words. Laws are made up of words strung together into meaningful sentences and arranged into paragraphs. The words used in laws have meaning, and that meaning is the generally the meaning they had to the legislators who wrote the laws. Generally that’s good enough. Linguistic drift is usually not so extreme as to muddy the meaning. The meanings of words are normally set out in books called dictionaries. Look up “eligible,” as in “no one shall be eligible...”
You apparently want to turn that natural order on its head to have words be made up of laws. That’s - well, that’s dumb, because in your system, you would have laws made up of words made up of laws made up of words made up of laws made up of words made up of laws made up of words, and eventually you would either pull down a dictionary, or you would die of old age trying to work your way out of an infinite regression.
Bluntly, you don't know what you are talking about. I have tried to stay away from character descriptions of YOU, and keep the comments focused on your stated position.
You have been spouting rubbish, you keep spouting rubbish, and you inexplicably keep defending your spouting of rubbish.
I've wasted enough of my time on your nonsense.
Bye.
Good riddance.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.