With all due caution.
Obama retook his oath of office. And rightly so.
See, when our new President was
Problem was, Roberts misspoke. And then so did Barack Obama.
The last paragraph of Article II, Section I of the United States Constitution spells out the Oath Of Office for the President Of The United States:
Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:--''I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.''What he SAID was:
And, while I recognize that the gist is the same, that's not what the document says he must say."I, Barack Huessein Obama do solemnly swear that I will execute the Office of President to the United States faithfully, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
What is worrisome is that the White House Counsel pooh-poohed this fact:
Then the damned fool goes on to admit the obvious:
First, Sparky, I count more than one word misused."Yet the oath appears in the Constitution itself. And out of the abundance of caution, because there was one word out of sequence, Chief Justice John Roberts will administer the oath a second time."
Second, if you're going to begin your career as White House Counsel by publicly contradicting yourself , you're going to be remembered as a buffoon. If the President isn't sworn in by the letter of the Constitution, then he's not constitutionally the President.
He would do well to remember that he is bound to follow that document to the letter. And, like our last president, he would do well to get some new legal counsel.
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*Edited to correct my own misspeak: Roberts administered the oath.
Labels: in the news, Politics
posted by Matt G @ 1:56 AM
11 Comments:
Hey, cut the guy some slack. He wasn't using a tele-prompter.
slight correction. CJ Roberts. Not Stevens.
What about the arguments that were being touted on NPR prior to the 'Chosen One' retaking the oath, that the oath requirement was no longer a requirement? They stated that the 20th(?) amendment was structured and worded so that the oath was no longer necessary, and that the duly elected president would take office at Noon on the 20th of January. They claimed that this superceded the original oath requirement?
Your thoughts?
Casey
Stevens isn't the SCOTUS CJ. That's Roberts.
Interestingly, we all know that there is also no requirement for the chief justice to be present for the oath. I think if I was 44 I would've taken care of this with someone OTHER than the man who flubbed his lines, perhaps a qualified JP. You would've thought this occasioned a little practice before.
That would be Chief Justice John Roberts, not Stevens.
Roberts, who administered the oath later than night, is now getting all the blame instead of the lib, Stevens. When the oath was redone, is was sans bible.
As a note, this has happened twice before in the 19th century and the oaths had to be re-administered.
Uh Matt... I believe it was Chief Justice John Roberts who administered the oath.
I don't know why I wanted to put Stevens behind the gaff. Possibly my slip came from the fact I consider the old fart to be part of the biggest problem with our government today. He authored Gonzales v. Raich, which ushered in a new era of federal powers to regulate whatever the federal government wants to, under the the "interstate commerce" clause. (Medical marijuana that your doctor prescribed and your state allows for and you grew in your back yard and never bought and never sold? The federal government can come sieze it, arrest you, and convict you, because it has powers under "Interstate Commerce." Make a gun at home, for your own use, that doesn't comply somehow with BATF's idea of legal? Why the federal government will prosecute you and convict you, under its powers of interstate commerce. Nevermind that it wasn't bought or sold. Never mind that it never crossed a county line, more less a state line. If it's what would be considered a "fungible item," then they can (and will) regulate it. What of the 10th amendment?) Basically, Stevens is a tool, and I suppose that I had to consider him the cause of such a gaff.
Yeah. That's the ticket.
I heard someone making much of the fact that when he went back and swore the oath in correct form, he did not swear on a bible. Paranoid? Perhaps, but definitely interesting.
Matt,
I don't know if this is true or not but at least commentator on this event reported that several presidents when being sworn in, did not repeat the oath after the Chief Justice, rather responding with,"I do."
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