Thanks for this passage. Somehow, in my perusal (again) of the Constitution yesterday, I missed it. This takes away almost all of the wiggle room I was fearing.
I tend to agree with Luke SkyFreeper, that there still remains a small amount of legalistic opportunity, but I'm pretty confident that the USSC would likely strike it down based on this one passage. Without it, I wouldn't have placed a bet either way.
Wow! What a powerful statement .. I was looking through my pocket Constitution all day yesterday, and I didn't see that passage. Where is it found ..??
Of course, such a statement means nothing to the dems. They only cite the law when it benefits them.
I find it more than intereting that the dems want to go back there with all the scandals and such from the Clintons. And .. it does play into their myth that if Bill Clinton was just president, THERE WOULD BE NO TERRORISM .. because he hid it so well .. most of the moon-bats don't even know it existed back then too.
I saw Jim Lampley on PBS last night while I was channel surfing. I recognized him right away so I stayed with the program a few minutes to hear what he had to say. He was introducing some author who write hate books against the administration (I've never heard of the guy), and I was stunned to hear Jim say that both the 2000 and 2004 elections were "fraudulent" .. which garnered a mighty round of applause.
Well .. the Kennedy/Nixon election was fraudulent too .. but I don't recall the repubs acting the way the dems are now - running all over the country with their smarmy talk. Maybe we were too gutless, but maybe it was more important to keep the country together than it was to tear it apart like the dems are doing.
Well .. I want to see Hillary Clinton go down to a resounding DEFEAT. And .. then she can travel around and stir up trouble all over again .. but this time she will not have an audience - except for a few moonbats .. and we'll always have them.
There are two ways you can strike it down.
1) Rule that the words of the 12th Amendment, in spite of the fact that they don't explicitly say it, apply NOT ONLY to serving or "being" Vice-President, but also to "becoming" Vice-President.
There's a very good case to be made for that, by the way. (Billybob should've made this case, but he has completely failed to do so.)
And the case is simply this: the CONTEXT. The entire context is talking about the election process. So it's NOT a stretch to claim that the 12th Amendment would prevent Clinton from taking office as Vice-President... but again, you do have to read into the sentence words that aren't physically there.
Interestingly, this opens up an entire other possibility: the possibility, as mentioned earlier, that Clinton could be appointed Vice-President and confirmed by a majority of both houses of Congress.
As far as I see, it's conceivable, but highly unlikely. Any VP candidate who is strong enough to help carry a ticket to the White House isn't going to step aside for Bill. And frankly, I can't imagine any President -- not even Hillary -- actually appointing Bill as a Vice-President.
You simply don't want and don't need a former President, especially one as fawned upon as BJ is, to be your Vice-President, if you have a choice. It's inconceivable that he could cause anything but trouble.
On the other hand, the VP-running-mate scenario is a bit different. Someone (Hillary, for example) might choose him as a VP running mate if the Presidential candidate believed that the only way (s)he could be elected would be with Bill as a running mate.
2) The second way you can strike the VP option down is to rule that the 22nd Amendment applies not only to election, but also to all other means of becoming President. You can potentially strike it down by ruling that the intent of the framers of the 22nd Amendment (and of those who voted to ratify it) was to create constitutional ineligibility.
So, take your choice. There are a couple of ways to do it.
But you either have to
--> Rule that "no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States" actually means "no person constitutionally ineligible to be elected to the office of President shall be eligible to be elected to that of Vice-President of the United States" (again, this still appears to leave the unlikely appointment-confirmation loophole), or
--> You have to find clear intent to create constitutional ineligibility to serve in the 22nd Amendment, in spite of the fact that the specific words only speak of the election process.
Obviously, it could ultimately be for the Supreme Court to decide.