I am just breezing over what you say because I’m looking for a specific rebuttal to what I said. When Lind said that the eligibility of the President is “irrelevant” to the lawfulness of orders, that means it doesn’t matter if it was somebody ineligible - like Joseph Stalin. Right?
If Joseph Stalin had been President and everybody knew he was ineligible, how would Lind’s decision have been any different? According to her own words, it would be irrelevant even if the whole wide world knew that the guy was ineligible and got into office through forgery, fraud, perjury, and treason. That’s what she said. Right?
And the reason I want to bring this point home is because I was in the middle of getting the evidence to show to this judge, and she ruled that it didn’t matter. She said - as if directly addressing me - that I could have a videotape of the guy admitting that he had committed perjury, forgery, perjury, obstruction of justice, and treason, and it would make absolutely no difference. The guy could be sitting in Gitmo as a foreign enemy combatant, and the military would still be “lawfully” doing whatever he tells them to do, throughout the chain of command. That’s what she said. That is what her ruling means.
I just want you and everybody else to come eyeball to eyeball with the full impact of what she said. She is saying that even after taking the oaths to protect and defend the US Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic, every person in the military would HAVE to obey a known foreign enemy combatant in the White House, with no recourse - because nothing they do is subject to the requirements of the Constitution, War Powers Act, Authorization to Use Force, or the regulations of the military which expressly state that orders not in compliance with the US Constitution are UNLAWFUL.
I just want you to say it loud, say it proud: If Joseph Stalin took an oath of office to be POTUS, everything the chain of command ordered at his bidding would be lawful and nobody could ever LAWFULLY even legally challenge the lawfulness of anything. There is NO WAY for an officer to successfully keep his oath of office if the country elects Joseph Stalin. The only oath he can actually keep is to protect and defend the US Constitution if it never NEEDS to be protected because the voters already ARE protecting it.
IOW, the military requires officers to take oaths they can never keep. If the system wasn’t already stacked in favor of the foreign enemy combatant, I’d say Lakin and the others would have a good case for saying the US military is guilty of entrapment - requiring something they know is not possible, because they MAKE it impossible.
“According to appellant, the prosecution failed to prove that he had received a lawful order because the order was in furtherance of actions which he viewed as illegal — the deployment of American troops to the Republic of Macedonia and the development of command and control functions and associated uniform requirements. As noted in the majority opinion, these matters were properly resolved by the military judge under the Supreme Court’s political question doctrine. See Gilligan v. Morgan, 413 U.S. 1, 6-12 (1973).
The political question doctrine serves a particularly important function in military trials by ensuring that courts-martial do not become a vehicle for altering the traditional relationship between the armed forces and the civilian policymaking branches of government. Since the days of George Washington, America has demonstrated that military professionalism is compatible with civilian control of the armed forces. With few exceptions, American military personnel have been faithful to the concept that once their advice has been tendered and considered, they are duty-bound to implement whatever policy decisions the civilian leadership may make.
Appellant would have us change the nature of that relationship by requiring courts-martial to adjudicate the relationships between Congress and the President regarding the deployment of military forces. Consider, for example, the implications of appellant’s approach in the context of the Korean conflict, where adversity in frozen fields far from home intensified a bitter national debate over the propriety of U.S. participation in an undeclared war conducted under the United Nations’ auspices. Under appellant’s approach, courts-martial would have been authorized to adjudicate the relationships between Congress and the President, potentially permitting members of the armed forces to disobey unpopular orders. There is nothing in the more than 2 centuries of our history as a Nation that suggests courts-martial should be empowered to rule on the propriety of deployment orders as a matter of either constitutional or military law.”
http://www.armfor.uscourts.gov/newcaaf/opinions/2001Term/99-0640.htm