I haven’t said that Obama is not president. I’ve said that he is not allowed by the 20th Amendment to exercise the Presidential powers.
Taking the oath of office is one of the 2 Constitutional requirements for someone - whether they are the President already or not - to be able to exercise the presidential powers. The other requirement is that they must “qualify” by Jan 20th. If Obama took the oath of office he meets ONE of the two requirements. He can’t have the presidential powers until he meets BOTH requirements.
So saying that he took the oath of office is neither here nor there to the question of whether he ever “qualified” - the other Constitutional prerequisite for exercising the Presidential powers.
Obama never “qualified”. The 20th Amendment says that the VP elect (Joe Biden) is to “act as President”.
As long as somebody besides Joe Biden is acting as President, the 20th Amendment is being violated, since Obama failed to qualify by Jan 20, 2009.
A president-elect can’t take the Oath of Office if he or she didn’t qualify and if he or she took the Oath of Office, they qualified.
A president-elect qualifies by being alive and not infirmed on Inauguration Day, you qualify by winning a majority of the electoral college votes and you qualify by having your electoral votes certified by the outgoing Vice President in his role as President of the Senate before a joint session of Congress with no objections from any two members of Congress (one Senator and one Representatives with the objections made in writing). If there are objections to certifying the Electoral College vote, you can qualify by having both Houses of Congress hear those objections and resolve them on a vote of each of the 50 states with each state congressional delegation having one vote.
The only thing that Butterdezillion is talking about is the fact that some of Obama’s detractors do not believe that he qualified for the office of president. But no official body has made such a ruling and no official body (Congress, the Judiciary) has even seriously considered such a finding.
The Courts have consistently found challenges to Obama’s qualifications to be “frivolous.”
Jamese, you continually ignore the points I’ve already made.
Nowhere does the Constitution or the 20th Amendment give Congress the job of determining Presidential eligibility. If the Constitution specifically gave that duty to another branch of government, it would be a “political question”. Otherwise, all cases arising out of the Constitution or laws are to be decided by the judiciary. This is clearly one of those issues, unless you can show me anywhere that the job is specifically given to somebody else in the Constitution.
See, one of the differences between thee and me is that I’ve read the Constitution and consider it to be the highest law of the land. Let me give you 4 references from the Constitution which support the idea that not every President can have the presidential powers or “act as President”.
Article II, Sec 1: “In case of the removal of the President from office, or of his death, resignation, or inability to discharge the powers and duties of the said office, the same shall devolve on the Vice President, and the Congress may by law provide for the case of removal, death, resignation or inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what officer shall then act as President, and such officer shall act accordingly, until the disability be removed, or a President shall be elected.”
Article II, Sec 1: “Before he enter on the execution of his office, he shall take the following oath or affirmation: - “I do solemnly swear (or affirm)( that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
Amendment XII: “And if the House of Representatives shall not choose a President whenever the right of choice shall devolve upon them, before the fourth day of March next following, then the Vice President shall act as President, as in the case of the death or other constitutional disability of the President.” (Note: this clarifies that the disability is a constitutional disability - that is, that the Constitution itself disables a standing President from acting as President.)
Amendment XX, Section 1 and Section 3: “The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January... and the terms of their successors shall then begin”....... “If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the President, the President elect shall have died, the Vice President elect shall become President. If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified...”
You have never addressed the fact that in Constitutional terms there is no recognition of a popular vote. For someone to be the President elect they had to have already gone through the process that Congress is involved in - counting the electoral votes and resolving issues if the electoral vote is split and thus results in no majority winner. The 20th Amendment lists separately the scenarios that the Pres elect has died or hasn’t been chosen. The part about the Pres elect failing to qualify is a different scenario.
A person can “fail to qualify” even after that process is all done. And a Pres elect can “fail to qualify” even though the VP elect qualifies. “Qualifying” is clearly something not related to the process but related to the personal circumstances of the individuals involved.
The only Constitutional disqualifiers from holding OFFICE (as opposed to disqualifiers from the execution of that office) is what is in Article II immediately preceding the first reference I cited in this post: “No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five years, and been fourteen years a resident within the United States.”
How can Obama ever have been found to be eligible to the office of President if his age has never even been legally determined? It hasn’t. He STILL hasn’t “qualified”. Even if the whole world signed oaths saying that he qualified, Hawaii law, HRS 338-17, says that the birth certificate Hawaii’s got for Obama doesn’t mean anything legally if somebody just looks at it. It has to be presented as evidence to a judicial or administrative person or body and legally determined as probative before it means anything legally. So there is nobody in this world who can say what Obama’s LEGAL birth facts are, because they have never been determined.