Monday, July 20, 2009

On my question the other day ref the birth certificate question,

I maybe should have phrased it differently:
If it turned out to be true that he's not legally qualified to be President, do we do what the law and right demands, or go with the "It would cause too much disruption!" argument and let him stay in?

Messy as hell either way. If we hold to the law, it means
He's out of office, immediately.
EVERY law, act, executive order, ANYTHING signed into effect by him is void.
Every appointee to any position is out.
And, of course, we'd wind up with Biden in the Oval Office(there's a nightmare for you).

If we don't do the above?
EVERYthing he's done or would do in the future is tainted. This is not something Congress could throw a quick law through to get over(and who would sign it?); we're talking having to actually amend the Constitution to change that. And God, wouldn't there be a mess while you were trying to do it? And lawsuits on everything in sight. Because "He was not a valid President when he signed/appointed/whatever.", and rightly so.

So the question, better put, is "Would you favor follow the law and let the chips fall, or somehow letting him stay in the office(IF a legal way could be found) so as to minimize disruption?(it wouldn't, the disruption might actually be worse, but that would be the argument)

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

If we abandon the Constitution, we abandon the Republic.

Anonymous said...

I'd follow the law. I'm curious, though, would Biden become President? If Obama was ineligible to run, wouldn't his pick of Biden be ineligible as well?

Brass

Mjolnir said...

I'm with Curtis. Regaredless of the fallout, if he is determined to be unconstitutionally elected, he needs to go. period.

Kevin said...

At this point I'm not sure that Biden wouldn't be better. As someone commented at my site a while back, "Sure, he's stupid, but at least he doesn't hate America."

jed said...

I disagree that we'd end up with Biden in office. But that's because, as I stated before, the entire electoral process would be null and void. I don't know that SCOTUS would hold such an opinion, and I think that that's where the question would wind up.

However, here's an interesting thought. We elected electors, not a president. I wonder about the possibility of reconvening the electoral college. I'm not sure how a slate of candidates would be presented to them.

But yes, we do what the law demands, no matter how messy. The main problem with this is that there are things which simply cannot be undone. Or perhaps I'm wrong about that, but how, e.g., do you return GM to it's pre-breakup state? Also, the solution proposed in comments to your prior post about Congress simply re-authorizing past bills raises ex-post-facto problems.

Tangental to this is the observation that if the damn feddies didn't have their fingers in every damn pie under the sun, and instead restricted their activities to those enumerated, this wouldn't be such a large problem to fix.

Firehand said...

I'm figuring that since Biden is actually qualified(birth-wise), he'd be put in. Either that or it'd devolve to Pelosi and THAT is a REAL nightmare.

skidmark said...

I'm going to basically repeat my comment to your previous post/ question -- leave the big chair vacant and coast along till the next election cycle.

Obama/Biden are out of office, and there is no line of succession to deal with. It would be as if we had voted for "None of the Above" and they won.

While we cannot undo what has already been done, we can immediately stop doing anything else under the laws, regulations and fiats issued. Congress effectively has its hands tied as there is nobody to sign legislation into law. If there is a budget issue that really needs to be funded, give out IOUs till the next time we have a genuine POTUS - if Cali can do it surely the USA can do it too.

stay safe.

wv: ollas - ollas your crap is ended