Posted on 07/22/2009 7:22:24 PM PDT by Grig
Biden as interim raises interesting questions because he, as did all senators, signed Senate Res. 511, which must be assumed just as valid for Obama, even though it was written in insure that McCain would be Obama’s opponent, states clearly that a natural born citizen is two parents who are US citizens. Thus Biden would seem to be complicit. Then so does Nancy Pelosi. Who's next?
Someone raised the seemingly valid point that since Obama is not a constitutional president, impeachment, even if High Crimes and Misdemeanors could be identified, is not appropriate. There do appear to be a number of felonies: Obama lied about not having other names aliases, on his application to the Illinois bar (no Barry Soetoro, which name his friends at Occidental knew him by before he decided to be Barack Hussein). He lied about his natural born qualifications when he applied for candidacy in the (57) states.
Obama, along with many of his academic legal colleagues, have been quite critical of the Article II Sect I natural-born requirement. As he said publicly, while a state senator, there are many things the constitution prevents him from doing. One of them, when he said this in 2001, was to run for president. Before it was scrubbed, I saw a youtube video in which Alan Keyes made just that point in a debate during the Illinois senate compaign. Further “proof” of this is comes from a law firm closely associated with Obama from before his Harvard years, and now with generous contracts from Obama. A bright young lawyer, Sarah Herlihy, wrote one of dozens of papers for the Chicago-Kent Law Review title “Amending the Natural Born Citizen Requirement” in 2006. Kent Law School has recently scrubbed the article but it is still here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/12873456/Amending-the-Natural-Born-Citizen-Requirement-Sarah-p-Herlihy-Feb-22-2006
Obama’s supporters consider our constitution “an interesting but flawed historical document.” His eligibility is irrelevent. He is a means to a higher end. Having people upset over his birth certificate keeps them from paying more attention to the nationalization of banks, auto companies, health care, weakening of the military, supporting criminal organizations such as Acorn with billions of dollars to further corrupt what is left of legitimacy of our elections.
Fortunately, pay-to-play is beginning to show some weaknesses, as the far left is running out of IOUs with which to pay off co-conspirators, and congressmen are realizing that they've put their jobs at risk as unemployment heads for twenty percent, baby boomers are told to take pain killers so the the money saved from their medical care can be spent on revenue and vote generating illegal aliens, and we are cheerfully told that paying ten times our current utility bills will stop global warming and enable India and China to become more green like us - as they laugh at our foolish diplomats.
Federal criminal court would seem where it should stop, but Holder can be expected to run interference. He can be assumed to prefer putting suspected terrorists who question Obama’s eligibility in prison, or a rehabilitation camp. I don't think Bahama, where we might join the Uighurs for fishing and ice cream, has room for one hundred million or so people. State courts, as someone suggested, may be where it needs to begin. We'll see what New Jersey does with the Kerchner cases.
I think we accomplish the most by communicating to everyone who will listen the simple truth as stated by Patrick Leahy: “A natural born citizen is born on US soil of parents who are US citizens”. http://leahy.senate.gov/press/200804/041008c.html Our constitution requires that of a president. Obama doesn't meet the requirement, but also doesn't believe in the constitution, except when it helps him achieve the “Dreams from his Father”. His father dreamed of turning the Christian democracy Kenya into a Marxist Muslim utopia, like Cuba. There doesn't need to be much discovery, since Obama has not made a secret of his father's origins. His father was never a US citizen. Remember, "parents who are citizens. He may have lied about his father. That is what birth documents might show. A court must ask for the birth documents. If he lied, and his real father was a citizen, then he can probably be impeached, though the Democratic majority doesn't make that a sure thing. If he didn't lie, he cannot be president. Either way, his usefulness to the party, Communist or Democratic, will be ended.
To all the others who lectured me as well: it's one thing for a soldier or officer or any citizen to refuse to obey orders he believes to be illegal because the issuer is illegitimate or to launch in the courts an inquiry intended to raise the question of their legality.
It's another thing to overthrow the government by force.
One of my lecturers said that it would be right for the military (or any citizen) to arrest a president whom they know to be illegitimate.
But that's the problem, isn't it? We don't know that he is legitimate, we suspect he is not, we want the truth to come out.
No military officer could, in the present circumstances, perform a citizen's arrest because he cannot know for sure whether Barry is or is not legitimate.
I'm sorry, all you condescending experts in constitutional law, calling on the military to act this way in these circumstances would exceed their legitimate power or duty. That's the genius of Barry's stonewalling. It's hard for us to prove a negative. We can rightly suspect that his refusal to produce proof means he has none, but we cannot prove that he has none. The courts or Congress have the authority and means to compell him to prove his legitimacy. If they refuse, then constitutionally redress lies with the 2010 elections, with electing a different Congress that will pursue the issue or (unrealistic because it takes too long) changing the makeup of the courts. Realistically, the solution under our constitution is political and rests with the elected legislature.
Under these circumstances, to bluster around about the military taking things into their own hands is just as wrong as Barry's presumed illegitimacy. I'm sick and tired of foolish exaggeration. You want to save the village of the rule of law by destroying it. Count me out. And spare me the libertarian posse comitatus civics lectures.
.....Count me out.....
You expressed well the problem. You have clearly become part of the problem. You are hidebound to rules that are killing out society and hold to those rules while you are slowly being killed
Obama took power by changing rules. He must be deposed in like manner. Once the problem is solved, perhaps there can be return to a rule of law rather than a rule of lawyers.
Thw Constitution provides avenues for redress of grievances. If the Constitution is not being followed, then the solution is to elect representatives who follow it. Our system is a political system, not a raw-power system, deliberately so.
It is conceivable that we could reach a state, in the course of human events, where the political/electoral/constitutional process no longer functions. Then revolution might be needed—that was the claim made in 1776.
But to ask the Joint Chiefs to claim the authority to arrest the president over this issue is not a call for a general revolution justified under the principles of the Declaration. All sorts of political and constitutional wheels still are turning or have yet to begin to turn. The kind of impatience from which this call for action by the Joint Chiefs arises is dangerous for our society, even given the bad situation we are in. Be careful what you ask for—the cure you call for might be worse than the disease.
The Founders were wise in recognizing that the solution to most problems is political. Notice how, as Barry’s charisma fades, the birthers are getting more visibility. The time may well come when the issue actually does get some real attention, even perhaps some redress. It may not. But the degree to which this gets traction partly depends on the political climate. And that has always been the case. Before calling for a military coup, it would be wise to keep pushing the issue through the courts and above all, in the court of public opinion.
Action by the Joint Chiefs would guarantee failure to remove Barry from office. Just where in the hell do you think sufficient POLITICAL legitimacy for such a move is going to come? Granted, under your reading of the constitution, the Joint Chiefs or any citizen has the authority to make a “citizen’s arrest.” Nice theory. But legitimacy is not merely a legal matter on paper. It is always and always will be a matter of political (in the best sense of the word) legitimacy. The Joint Chiefs do not have that sort of legitimacy for the action you propose and, if they did, I’d say it would be bad thing that they did have it.
“True, but under our Constitution, which every military officer swears to support and defend against all enemies, foreign and domestic the Constitution.”
True, but you left out one little thing. Who gets to decide when official X has become an enemy of the Constitution? No civil society can long endure if every individual citizen or a group of high-ranking military officers gets to decide on their own that Congressman Hornswoggle or President Billy Bob is an enemy of the Constitution. The Constitution prescribes the elected and appointed legislative and judicial officers as the ones who get to decide. If the people don’t like the deciding or non-deciding they are doing, they are supposed to elect new officials who appoint new judges.
But, but, but, but, but, but you say, what about a state of emergency, what about when the Congress is derelict in duty to the Constitution, what about, what about, what about . . . .
Who gets to decide that such an “in the course of human events” emergency exists? Did three of the militia commanders in 1776 make that finding and move to arrest the royal governors? No, they gathered broad-based representation from the various colonies in a Continental Congress (a Continental Gathering is all that that maans) and debated the issue for a good long time. Only then did they write “In the course of human events.”
Calling on the Joint Chiefs to do this is really very unAmerican, very un-constitutional. Just because our opponents are violating the Constitution doesn’t make it right for our side to violate it. Two wrongs don’t make a right.
“However, I would LOVE to have a top-tier council of generals call the TOTUS aside in a private meeting:
“Look, sir, we now have 2,326 officers and 8,772 enlisted members, all of whom were about to ship over to Afghanistan and Iraq, who have instead filed suit questioning your qualifications to serve as commander in chief. We can’t cancel all of their orders, like we did with Major Cook, and now we’re no longer able to support our overseas commitments due to a personnel shortage. Would you please make public that damned birth certificate, sir, so we can do our jobs?”
THis would be one example of a political handling of the problem. And if he refuses, publicizing the meeting and the refusal would be the next step. It would give the issue “standing” in the court of public opinion. At some point, that standing would pressure Congress or the courts to take it up.
“If the occupant of the Oval Office is not eligible to the Office of President, he’s not the President.”
Fine. But who sez he’s not the president? You sez. Who are you?
Don’t you understand that societies that live under the rule of law depend on competent and legitimate bodies of authority to decide whether an elected or appointed official is legitimately appointed or elected?
The very claim that Obama is not legitimately president has to be validated legitimately, not illegitimately.
If you don’t understand this, then you are just as bad as Obama, thinking you can ignore the rule of law and act illegitimately yet claim legitimacy.
I wrote: “Because we are not a military dictatorship.”
You wrote; “Yet. Give it a few years. We’re already developing aspects of the political culture of a third world country.”
And having the JCS arrest Obama would turn the “a few years” into “right now.” And that’s why it would be wrong to do it. You’d turn the country into exactly what you say it is becoming. You’d destroy the village to save it.
Robert Bolt’s words put in the mouth of Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons when More’s son-in-law, William Roper the Younger, accused More of being willing to give the Devil the benefit of the law, that is, not arresting More’s informant-servant until the servant had clearly committed an illegal act.
Roper wanted More to act preemptively, outside the law, to stop a man dangerous to More’s own life. More said, until he’s done something illegal, I cannot arrest him. When Roper said to More, you would protect the Devil by giving him the benefit of the law, More said, (paraphrasing from memory): “The laws of England are like trees, the country is planted thick with them. And if you’ve cut down all the trees to get after the Devil, what are you going to do when the Devil turns on you and you have cut down all the laws that you now would need in order to protect you.”
Granted, there’s a hell of a lot of violation of our laws going on by our elected officials.
But the solution cannot be violating the law in order to get after the lawbreakers. The founders provided political solutions—elections. You can bluster about elections being fraudulent etc. I know all about ACORN and voter fraud. But the solution there has to be political activism to expose and legitimately penalize by law ACORN and other electoral defrauders, to restore the credibility of elections. The solution cannot be to act extra-legally.
As the founders said, the time can come, in the course of human events to break political bonds and overthrow the current regime and establish a new one.
But before people say that, they better be damn sure that that’s the pass we have come to because it is a call to revolution, to overthrowing of the existing rule of law.
To claim that one is upholding the law by acting outside the law is foolish.
Even if Obama is the Devil himself, efforts to remove him must proceed legally or otherwise, you will have removed a fraudulent leader by being a fraudulent leader yourself.
And appeals to posse comitatus are not sufficient to cloak these calls to action in legality—unless you want to grant to the Kos Kids the same legality to engage in extra-legal posse comitatus action whenever they feel like it.
Trust me, you don’t want to go there.
I can live with that, most kos kids don’t know which end of a gun the bullet thingee comes out of.
And our founding fathers chopped down the forest of English laws meant to enslave them.
“And our founding fathers chopped down the forest of English laws meant to enslave them.”
You know, that’s just dumb. The entire argument of the Declaration is that England’s Constitution was being violated. They did not call for anarchy, did not chop down England’s laws. Their quarrel was with the King’s enforcement of the constitution and laws. They argued that certain laws (Stamp Act) were unjust because they violated constitutional law, no taxation without representation.
They upheld and obeyed and took for granted that English law would continue to apply. They were trained in English law, they appealed to English law. They simply argued that the present regime was not following the law and claimed standing as leaders under the laws of their colonies to dissolve their links to the King.
For you to say they chopped down England’s laws demonstrates you have no grasp of the issues involved in the question of Obama’s legitimacy.
Addendum: They appealed, of course, to natural law as well as to the English Constitution, both of which they believed were being violated. But they did so on the basis of their own legitimacy as elected leaders in their colonies, not as individual citizens or as military officers in a coup d’etat. They took care to assemble a Continental Congress and to act as a body. They staked the legitimacy of their act on that.
Calling for military overthrow of an elected POTUS as an individual FR keyboard jockey is not the same thing.
Are you a subject of the king?
No and why?
Because our founding fathers decided that the King’s laws should not apply to us, in reality using Moore’s argument they had to cut down the forest to plant their own trees.
And they included in their new forest those tool necessary to ensure that should any tree within it become diseased or a sanctuary for the devil we had the means to chop it down and plant anew.
“If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term” is the first part of that clause you cite.
“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,...”
That clause is about situations where we dont have a President on Jan 20th of the inauguration year.
Once a President is inaugurated, its the ‘removal’ provisions that hold, ie section 1 of Amendment 25:
AMendment 25: “In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.”
You reduce England’s laws to the King’s laws. That’s exactly what they did not do. The did not throw the baby out with the bathwater. They accused the King and his ministers of abusing English law, of passing illegitimate laws, unjust laws.
They declared themselves no longer his subjects. But they in no way declared their desire to cut down all laws. They argued that they were acting lawfully, based on natural law and the English constitution in severing their relation as subjects to the King of England.
This thread began with a call for extra-legal, unconstitutional action by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, by the military.
When FReepers said that would be unconstitutional, that constitutionally redress has to come from Congress (or the courts, ultimately Congress),some commenters replied that it would be constitutional to make a citizens’ arrest. I think that’s wrong but at least it makes a pretense of recognizing the need to act legitimately when removing an illegitimate official.
But you are taking a different line. You are justifying the destroying of legality/legitimacy in the name of correcting illegitimacy and claiming that that’s what the American Founders thought they were doing.
NO.
They argued that their actions were legitimate, legitimated by natural law and the underlying English constitution that guaranteed them representation before being taxed.
They would have agreed with More, not Roper. You are a Roperian hothead.
I’m all in favor of Obama’s eligibility to be president being tested and clarified. But it has to be done legitimately, through sufficient political pressure on Congress. We may never reach that threshold, or, as Obama’s popularity fades, we may.
Even if it is demonstrated some day that he was not a natural-born citizen, he will be retroactively legitimated. You can take that to the bank.
To blusteringly compare this issue to those that precipitated the Declaration of Independence is foolish.
And cutting down all laws is always foolish, unjust, evil. The Founders would be aghast at your claiming them on behalf of that course of action.
“Because I will not concede he is President until the SCOTIS rules are the Real BC is made permanent.”
This has not been the case for prior Presidents. They became President upon inauguration.
“Reasoning His original attempt at a BC was proven to be a fake.”
Not really.
” Millions of dollars spent to evade answering the question.”
Not really.
I should add, as others have pointed out, that the redress has to come politically but that political power within an individual state could also be a likely channel for gaining standing to get the issue into the courts. Either way, the solution has to be political, not military or vigilante.
“In our current climate I think even if Obama did something like declare himself the first United States Emporer the house and senate would confirm him.”
“I disagree. If nothing else, enough Blue Dogs and RINO’s would p*ss on him to wash him out of office.”
We are seeing this already in ObamaCare. He overreached and now its falling apart.
If we band together and unite, we can shut down the Obama Agenda express.
Rgarding your second paragraph: I have explained several times why that does not relieve us of the responsibility to have this president present his qualifications. I cannot explain it any more without just repeating. If you don’t accept that and are willing to let a fraud be perpetrated than have it your way.
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