The issue here is not how Obama is to be removed. The question isn’t even whether he SHOULD be removed. The question is whether he has ever been able to act as Commander-in-Chief.
Whether or not the President elect becomes the President, he cannot have the Presidential powers if he has “failed to qualify” by Jan 20th. That’s what the 20th Amendment says.
To even BE the President elect, in Constitutional terms, he would have to have been declared the winner of the electoral vote, since the Constitution recognizes no popular vote. So there is obviously something more that has to be done to “qualify” besides just winning the electoral vote - a qualification that might be completed only after Congress is done certifying the results of the electoral vote.
And the Vice President elect can qualify even if the President elect doesn’t. So it is something that applies to an individual, not just to a ticket.
This goes beyond what Congress is authorized to do. Congress has nothing to do with this. The only role Congress plays in any of this is initially counting the already-certified electoral votes from the states, and deciding a split vote. Nowhere does the Constitution give Congress any role in interpreting or applying the Constitutional requirements for the chief executive.
Article 1 Section 5 gives each House sovereignty over the “elections, returns, and qualifications of its own members” - but not for the Presidency. That is obviously because Congress is not authorized to interpret or apply the Constitution, which is a necessary part of deciding issues about the Presidency. The judiciary, OTOH, is specifically given the task of deciding all cases, in interpretation and in fact, that arise from the Constitution.
In order to call something a “political question” a judge has to show that the Constitution specifically gives the authority to decide the issue in question to a different branch of government. What I see is that the 20th Amendment raises an issue of a President elect “failing to qualify” after Congress has already done everything they are authorized to do with the electoral vote. Congress has already acted; they have no more authority in the issue. Who does?
Article II, Section 2 says the judiciary. There is no way this is a “political question”, and the judges know that full well.
As to whether Obama could have qualified - it’s not even about whether he has proven to the proper people that he qualified. The fact of the matter is that Obama HAS NO legally-determined birth facts. This is like somebody having absolutely no legal documentation of age, parentage, or birthplace - an alien from outer space, for instance. How could that person “qualify”? Or better yet, how could that person “fail to qualify”? How would someone know that he had failed to qualify?
Well, those are really great questions. May it would have been better if the framers of the 20th Amendment had been a bit more clear about what they had in mind. Were they talking about age? Place of birth? Residency? Nowadays, prior service as president can serve to disqualify a person. How about a prior impeachment and removal from office? I don't know.
Outside of the electoral process and the counting of votes by the vice president, the Constitution does not create any procedure or forum for proving or disproving such things as age or place of birth and it would have been very easy for those responsible for the 20th Amendment to create such a forum or process. I think we're pretty much left with what they gave us.
By the way, even if a candidate were to provide what everyone would accept as a "birth certificate," how could we be sure that the fellow moving into the White House is actually the same person as the baby described in the "birth certificate." If you were forced to "prove" by witnesses with personal knowledge that a particular "birth certificate" described "your" birth, how would you go about doing that if the doctor and your parents had since died? How would the rest of us "know" that you hadn't just assumed somebody else's identity? Could a soldier who claimed "doubts" about all that refuse to obey your presidential orders until you figured out a way to satisfy his "doubts"? I don't know.
I wonder how many kings have looked at their "heirs" and wondered if their little princes were actually "their" sons. I don't know. A lot of little bastards probably became kings. And, as they got older and learned more about their parents, I wonder how many of them developed their own doubts about their legitimacy. Life goes on and all is not always perfect.
The only clear path that I can see to removing someone who is president is through the impeachment process. So long as the guy is president, he'll exercise presidential powers.