There is a good discussion here...this comment relevant:
“The phrase “embarass”… is a term of art by legal entities where they acknowledge the seperation between co-equal jurisdictions.
Specifically it means, in this case, a re-iteration that the judicial branch has no right or authority to delve into another entities business, specifically political questions on the Presidents legitimacy which are reserved exclusively to Congress.”
At: http://court-martial-ucmj.com/lakin-2/ltc-lakins-defense-crushed-in-detail/
Absolutely wrong.
Congress is the only body that can remove a president. It is not the only body that can review evidence, so that in this instance (for example) a person can defend themselves against a court martial.
This guy isn’t claiming Obama should be removed by the court. That duty does solely remain the duty of Congress. He is merely demanding to know if Obama is qualified to be the CIC, and that he is therefore bound to follow his commands.
This is an honorable exercise. I don’t think every case should be accepted that challenges in this manner, but I do believe one test case should be. And it should be conducted by the rules of the court, just like any other.
If discovery does reveal something, then the member of the military is excused from following an illegitimate order, and it is then Congress’ duty to take action.
So going to ask a really stupid question,
Can we court martial the president for fraud?
I have read hundreds of federal court opinions and have never seen the word "embarrass" used in this manner. In the judge's opinion, the noun "embarrassment" was used to refer not to Congress, not to any Court, but to Obama himself. The potential embarrassment was personal, not institutional.
Specifically, it means, in this case, a re-iteration that the judicial branch has no right or authority to delve into another entities business.
I can give you hundereds of Supreme Court (and lower federal court) cases where the actions of private corporations or government agencies or officials were delved into, so this statement is nonsense in general.
But I'll concede that military courts are different in many ways, notably harsher in general against criminal defendants.
...specifically political questions on the Presidents [sic] legitimacy which are reserved exclusively to Congress.
Questions on the President's ligitimacy, i.e., the determination as who whether he qualifies for the office, are constitutional questions implicating the "Natural Born Citizen" clause of Article II. They are not "political" questions in the legal sense of the term.
Article III, Section 2 states in pertinent part that "[t]he judicial Power [of the federal courts] shall extend to all cases ... arising under this Constitution..." Plus, there is absolutely nothing in the Constitution nor in federal law supporting your contention that "political questions on the Presidents legitimacy ... are reserved exclusively to Congress." That's because the Founding Fathers and later Congresses never contemplated a situation such as this one, where a man might somehow attain the presidency without the integrity to document, if challenged, that he was a Natural Born Citizen.
But there is no way the judge can “intrude” on Congress’s right to impeach. Her authority extends only as far as the case before her.
She is denying a man a fundamental right to defend himself with facts and witnesses in order to avoid a completely imaginary danger—that her court might accidentally impeach the President.