Posted on 08/07/2010 8:22:35 PM PDT by bushpilot1
Much has been said the orders sending Ltc Lakin to Afganistan were not from President Obama but from his military commander.
All military orders are from the President. In the book titled Military Law and Precedents by Colonel William Winthrop on page and 20 it states the following:
"Military Commanders giving orders represent the Commander-in-Chief, the President."
You still haven’t provided an independent source for these claims.
If you want to chew on something, we can look at the voting surveys from 2004 and 2008. Republican voting stayed about the same while Democrat voting appears to have increased ... 10 points better for Obama than for Jo.Ke., although Obama was a much, much better candidate. With Republicans holding steady at a solid two-thirds in two elections, there’s not much room for liberal growth in the military. Then you add in the failure of Obama to improve the economy and his sliding approval numbers ... why would we assume there’s going to be any dramatic shift in the future??
http://www.pollster.com/blogs/the_army_vote_the_military_tim.php
Well, this explains why your observations are different from mine.
I didn’t post any observations. Just responded to your poor and ridiculous comments in a manner as was deserved.
Oh please. The communist thing? Perfumed princes? Clinton's little project a decade ago? The curious continuity of the current admin?
Really, I wish you would get the wool out from between your ears, and maybe you'd be able to make some kind of case. Any kind ;). Please elucidate, or at least try to be lucid.
I just provided you a link to survey results of the last two general elections. Playing dumb isn’t a good strategy for you.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Maj. Gen. Thomas P. Bostick, commander of U.S. Army Recruiting Command, said the Army took in 170,000 men and women last year, which was about the size of the population of Newport News, Va.
According to Bostick, thus far in fiscal year 2009, which began in October, the regular Army is at about 105 percent of goal, and the Army Reserve is at 112 percent of its goal.
"It's the best start we've had in about six years," Bostick said. "I'm fully confident we'll accomplish the 78,000 mission for the regular Army and 26,500 mission for the Army Reserves."
--------------------------------------------------------
It's done through attrition all the time.
If you think the military today is monolithically conservative, keep burying your head in the sand. I can assure you it’s not.
I have been in 23 years and I still find that baffaling that everyone thinks that the military is some conservative bastion. I was especially saddened in 2008 when many military folks voted for Obama especially on the officer side. I know that I will be blasted for even mentioning this but the truth does hurt sometimes.
Got news for you, boobs. A pollster survey from 2008 trying to say something about party affiliation or political outlook isn't worth sh*t, in context. What the dems did back in 99-2000 was find out how many soldiers would fire on americans. Period.
You have provided nothing, as expected - except a lot of hot air. Are you, by any chance, Polarik in disguise? Your posting style is oddly similar :)).
Maybe you’re not understanding. I didn’t say that recruiting is down or that recruiting efforts haven’t been growing or aren’t successful. What Drew was suggesting is swapping out 5,000 new troops ON TOP of regular recruiting activities. This would be 5,000 troops leaving in addition to the normal attrition rates. Then he followed by claiming there’s a ideological shift going on (still unsubstantiated) that is supposably going to be filled through enlistment efforts, but without showing proof. We’re supposed to simply accept his anecdotal observation as authoritative.
Wow, since you offer nothing but namecalling and unsubstantiated claims, I’ll assume you can’t refute what I posted, so I accept your concession. Perhaps you should find a wet paper bag to test your wits against, although it’s not a sure thing you’ll win.
This is probably due to the 66 percent of military who voted for McCain in 2008 and 64 percent who voted for Bush in 2004. Yes, Obama got 25 percent of the vote, but this was based on knowing nothing about him other than he could speak well when cued by a teleprompter. His policies have not earned him strong approval ratings.
Boy. You *are* Polarik, aren’t you? I’ve seldom seen someone accelerate this quickly into dementia. GFYS, Ron ;).
Then I advise you to quit looking at yourself in the mirror. Grow up, son.
So, where is OldDeckHand now...that’s been posting KRAP responses to me for days about how Lakin’s orders ARE NOT from the president?
OldDeckHand, where are YOU????
pls add jamese777, Mr. Rogers. and others to the list.
Now, do I think any politician would be dumb enough to arbitrarily drop 5000 from the military rolls due to political affiliation? No.
Judging from the people who are supposedly respected among military officers and what I’ve seen of their willingness to spit on the Constitution rather than defend it, that goal of the leftists may already be done.
That’s why we’re all so worried about whether Lakin will even be allowed to give his full argument on why the order he disobeyed was not lawful. People keep telling us (basically), “Oh, they never let people defend themselves.”
It’s giving the military a black eye, but I’m wondering if it’s just exposing that this critical part of infrastructure is just another one that’s already taken over.
The scary part is if the military can in any way make it so that Lakin can’t appeal his case in the civilian courts or file a different suit claiming he suffered personal and justiciable harm from someone besides Joe Biden “acting as president” after the President elect “failed to qualify” by Jan 20th. If the military can and does do that, then the takeover of the US military is near-complete.
And apparently to the cheering of so-called “conservatives” like yourself.
The officer involved has rejected Lakin’s request for witnesses and documents, for instance, based on the idea that Obama’s Constitutional ability to exercise the presidential powers (assigning Cabinet members such as SecDef, acting as CIC, etc) is irrelevant to the Constitutionality and thus lawfulness of the orders down the chain of command.
But bushpilot1 has shown us that there is long-standing precedent saying that the top commanders derive their authority from the Commander-in-Chief.
To not even ALLOW that argument to be made is to say that the case is already decided. AND it is decided AGAINST hundreds of years of historical precedent, apparently on the basis of the Michael New case, which turns everything before it around on its heels.
If one case can ignore and undo hundreds of years of precedent and the text of the Constitution, then the takeover of the military actually happened very quickly - in the course of one court case, decided by a handful of people.
The need for 5,000 people to take over the military is exaggerated. It takes one person in the right position to corrupt the whole thing, because then the hands of millions are literally all tied up.
I should be heading to church soon so I’ll make this quick.
The connection to the Michael New case made in the response to Lakin’s request for witnesses and documents, IIRC, is that the issue of Obama’s Constitutional ability to exercise the presidential powers to act as CIC is a POLITICAL question. A question is political, in judicial terms, if it has been specifically designated to another branch of government to resolve.
In the case of Michael New that is a fair argument to make.
In the case of Lt Col Lakin it can only be made if one points to exactly where in the Constitution the job of determining whether the President elect (already certified as the electoral winner by Congress) has “failed to qualify” by Jan 20th.
I have challenged anybody to show me the words where that duty was given to anybody besides the judicial branch which is to decide all cases arising out of the Constitution or laws.
I challenge you to the same. Give me the words from the Constitution or - preferably - the 20th Amendment itself - which gives that job to somebody besides the judiciary.
The book Bushpilot1 has shown us talks about implied responsibilities and authority by virtue of the job description. It says that specific responsibilities don’t have to be spelled out - that they are in fact redundant when they are spelled out in addition to the general job description which applies. We have this idea that if the Constitution doesn’t say who determines whether a President is eligible, then nobody can do it. This document bushpilot1 has posted says that’s nuts. The job of the judiciary is to interpret the laws and Constitution and apply them to specific cases.
Nowhere has Congress or anybody else been given the authority to do just that, even though Congress has been given the authority to determine eligibility issues for itself. If they were to be given authority to judge eligibility for the executive branch, that is the place it would have been done, and it wasn’t. Something to do with the separation of powers and checks and balances, I think. The judiciary is the only body which can interpret what “natural born US citizen” means.
We haven't won a war since WWII and that's only because the government refuses to believe in the idea of absolute victory.
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.