Posted on 01/14/2013 7:58:24 PM PST by Uncle Sham
The Constitution does not allow someone who does not meet the eligibility requirements for President to legally serve no matter what the election results are. It's right there in the Constitution under the Twentieth Amendment, Section Three:
"3. If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the President, the President elect shall have died, the Vice President elect shall become President. 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, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified; and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President elect nor a Vice President elect shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualified."
A few notes.
1. There is no such position as a "President elect", legally, until such a time as Congress has accepted the results of the electoral college votes and a person is actually named as the "President elect". This means that the term "shall have qualified" refers to something other than the results of winning an election. There is only one place left in the Constitution having to do with "qualifications" for the office of President, that being the eligibility requirements from Article two.
"No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States."
2. Since it is the duty of Congress to name an interim President in the event of a President elect's "failure to qualify", they, Congress, must know whether or not to do so. This means that they, Congress, must be aware of whether or not a President elect meets the eligibility requirements from Article two. It is the burden of the President elect to "qualify" or "fail to qualify", thus NOT proving one is eligible under Article Two to Congress is the same thing as "failing to qualify." Congress avoiding its duty to uphold Section 3 results in the same "failure to qualify".
3. How was Obama's eligibility proven to Congress without a valid long form birth certificate? He apparently does not possess such a thing or we would have seen it a million times by now.
4. The eligibility requirements start out with two simple words which forever preclude anyone who "fails to qualify" from serving as a legal president, "No person". Someone who sneaks in because Congress failed to uphold it's responsibility to enforce the Twentieth Amendment, Section 3 doesn't legally exist. The Constitution cannot be fooled just because Congress didn't act when it was supposed to. A President elect either qualifies or he cannot ever be President, period.
Thus it is that we have protection from someone who is ineligible to serve as President already written into the Constitution. Unfortunately, we also have a Congress that did not uphold it's oath to support the Constitution and a usurpation of the office of President is the result. We know he is illegal strictly on the basis that we don't know if he is eligible. If he "qualified", there would be no debating the subject. The fact that nobody in Congress is able to say whether or not he is eligible means that he never proved to them that he was and thus has "failed to qualify".
Now, as to who has "standing". Any elected official at the state or federal level who took the oath of office in Article Six has standing, to demand that the Constitution be obeyed. This means that no judge can deny them the enforcement of their oath to "support the Constitution" if they have a question about whether or not any portion of that Constitution has not been adhered to. In this case, the Twentieth Amendment, Section 3 has clearly been IGNORED by the primary party instructed to act under it, Congress.
Tomorrow, January 15th, they get another shot at upholding their oaths of office or committing treason by ignoring the Twentieth Amendment, Section three. Perhaps someone will finally have the courage to do what is right.
Yes, I know what it says. I also understand what it says. Try and follow:
1. The Court in WKA found that "a child born in the United States [a bunch of stuff having to do specifically with Chinese parents] becomes at the time of his birth a citizen of the United States."
2. The Indiana court said that based on WKA, "we conclude that persons born within the borders of the United States are 'natural born Citizens' for Article II, Section 1 purposes, regardless of the citizenship of their parents."
3. So, obviously, the Indiana court thought WKA was found to be a natural born citizen, even though they didn't say so in so many words.
I'm sorry if that's too difficult.
I think you are forgetting that there is a two week period that we are in right now between the certification of the votes of the Electors and taking the Oath of Office on January 20th. A president-elect can conceivably “fail to qualify” in that period. But after Noon on January 20th, there is no more President-Elect, there is only a President.
If a challenge to the electors of a candidate who received a majority of the votes is upheld in both Houses of Congress, a President-Elect could fail to qualify.
Unfortunately there were no challenges from any member of Congress to Barack Obama’s Electoral votes or his Electors. It would only have taken written objections from any one Representative and any one Senator.
The most recent decision is here, in PDF: Grinols v. Electoral College
Page 5, lines 16, 17, 18: "Moreover, since 2009, when President-Elect Obama was first inaugurated, no laws have been enacted to make proof of "natural born citizen(ship)" a requirement under the law.
This is correct. No laws were needed. It exist already within the text of the Twentieth Amendment, section three.
Page 7, lines 25, 26, and 27:
"The twentieth Amendment empowers Congress to create a procedure In the event that neither the president-elect nor the Vice Pesident-elect qualifies to serve as President."
To say that Congress is empowered to act in the event of a circumstance means that Congress must be made aware of whether the circumstance exist.
In this instance the term "qualifies" has NOTHING to do with election results. You do not have a person named as the President-elect until the election results have been approved by Congress. The only thing left in the Constitution to qualify for are the eligibility requirements in Article Two. The wording of the passage from the Twentieth Amendment state: "or if the President-Elect" shall have failed to qualify"
This is something the President-elect does or does not do, it is his/her burden. Fail to qualify and Congress MUST act. Even in the even of Congressional inaction, someone who has failed to qualify cannot be President. The eligibility requirements themselves state this quite clearly in their first two words, "No Person".
Congressional inactivity does not result in a President, but a Usurper to the Presidency. That's where we have been and apparently where we are stuck. Germanicus, you are incorrect.
“Congressional inactivity does not result in a President, but a Usurper to the Presidency.”
Isn’t Congressional inaction the precedent? Have they ever taken any affirmative action between the certifing of the Electoral College vote and the inauguration. It seems to me that if Congress fails to act between the certification and January 20th, it is because they see no issue to act on.
The judge's point about no new statute having been passed is that Obama is required under the 20th Amendment to "qualify" in the same way every previous president has qualified. No one asked Richard Nixon to show a birth certificate, or Ronald Reagan, or Bill Clinton. Or any President. If Congress had a concern, they could do something, but until they do, the Court is not going to write a new law that would apply only to Obama and no previous President.
To the extent that these authorities conflict with the United States Supreme Court‟s interpretation of what it means to be a natural born citizen, we believe that the Plaintiffs‟ arguments fall under the category of “conclusory, non-factual assertions or legal conclusions” that we need not accept as true when reviewing the grant of a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim.
The court isn't being honest because "these authorities" do NOT actually conflict with the SCOTUS' interpretation of what it means to be a natural-born citizen. They admit by footnote that their own conclusion is not supported by a legal precedent in the WKA decision and second, they contradicted their conclusion when they cited Minor and said:
In Minor, written only six years after the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, the Court observed that: The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens.
The conclusion reached by the Indiana Appeals Court is NOT a conclusion reached by the Supreme Court, so these authorities do not conflict with each other. The IAC was only creating this argument in order to say, "the Plaintiffs‟ arguments fall under the category of “conclusory, non-factual assertions or legal conclusions” that we need not accept as true ..." Nowhere in this decision is Obama (or McCain) declared to be a natural-born citizen. They couldn't because there's no proof that Obama was "born within the borders of the United States ..."
And then one other point: This court says:
"We note the fact that the Court in Wong Kim Ark did not actually pronounce the plaintiff a “natural born Citizen” using the Constitution‟s Article II language is immaterial. For all but forty-four people in our nation‟s history (the forty-four Presidents), the dichotomy between who is a natural born citizen and who is a naturalized citizen under the Fourteenth Amendment is irrelevant."
They're trying to say this doesn't matter to anyone except whoever is president. This is nonsense. The requirement isn't in the Constitution as a favor to the president. It's a form of protection to try to prevent conflicts of interests in the executive office to the benefit of the people of the United States. This is why there are laws that allow citizens to challenge the eligibility of candidates INCLUDING presidential candidates.
That's an assumption on your part. The Twentieth Amendment, Section Three does not allow for an assumption. It instructs Congress to act if an event is present. To obey the Constitution, they must know whether to act or not. They either obeyed the Constitution, or evaded it. If they obeyed it, what did the President-elect provide to them to keep them from appointing an interim President? That's the question to ask of every member of Congress. In my opinion, the evidence is clear that this has been totally evaded. If this is the case, there has been a failure to qualify. He who fails to qualify cannot legally be President.
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Congress is not concerned about enforcing the Constitution and there is no need for any "new" law. The Twentieth Amendment, Section Three is already in existence right there in the Constitution.
To obey the Constitution, they must know whether to act or not.Are you trying to say that no one in Congress is aware that Obama's eligibility has been challenged? Seriously?
“It instructs Congress to act if an event is present. To obey the Constitution, they must know whether to act or not.”
And if Congress believes that no event is present then they know not to act.
So if they don’t act by tomorrow, then they must believe that no event is present.
The same thing every prior President provided.
Actually, the scan I used as an example has the same variation in monochrome and grayscale as well as variable pixel sizes.
This is from page 9 of the PDF
You can see that on the same page, the image is scanned in grayscale, while the text gets scanned at a higher resolution.
It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that I was incorrect! Just ask my wife.
But I think that I will stick with my personal opinion in lieu of factual evidence to the contrary.
We are talking about a political process of determining who has qualified and it only takes one Senator out of a hundred and one Representative out of 435 to trigger a congressional investigation into whether a president-elect has qualified or not.
No. What I am saying is that a President-Elect who "shall have failed to qualify" is not now or ever can be a legal President. I am also saying that it is the job of Congress to ensure that he or she "qualifies" or they must name a replacement. In addition, I am saying that it does not matter how a non-qualification occurs, either through a lack of proof being presented or a lack of concern from Congress about obtaining the proof, the end result is in fact a "failure to qualify".
Once again, this is an assumption on your part. Perhaps they are all just committing treason would be a more likely reason.
Perhaps they are all just committing treason would be a more likely reason.Occam's razor says that the simplest explanation is usually correct. The simplest explanation is that Congress does not believe there is an issue. If we're going to going to abandon Occam's razor, then why stop at accusing the entire Congress -- conservatives and Republicans included -- of treason? Why not speculate that they are in thrall to the Bavarian Illuminati, or Aliens from Planet X? Frankly, I find space aliens more believable than the claim that people like Michele Bachmann or Louis Gohmmert are deliberately committing treason.
Let's just go with what the FACTS are and what the FACTS say. The facts are that Congress is instructed to act in the event of two circumstances. The fact is that Congress cannot know whether to act if it doesn't know if either of of those circumstances exist. One of those circumstances requires that a President-elect "shall have qualified". If nobody in Congress can cite how this was done, or if in fact, it was never done at all, then this "shall have qualified" never took place. This doesn't mean we have a legal President and a inattentive Congress. The FACTS say this proves we have a usurper thanks to a treasonous Congress.
Now these are the FACTS no matter how much you'd like to shave them with your Occam's razor.
FACTS
The FACT is that no one has established a credible doubt as to Obama's eligibility. There are documents, sworn statements, historical newspaper records and personal witnesses to Obama's Hawaiian birth. On the other side is a whole lot of nitpicking and invention. Congress is too busy doing nothing about anything to bother doing something about nothing.
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