LTC LAKIN

What are your thoughts on the applicability of the de facto officer doctrine, and the question of whether it will act as a bar to discovery?

Phil, those are my thoughts too. But I wonder, will that be sufficient to pre-empt all attempts to elicit eligibility testimony, even in the discovery phase?

I don’t see why he (BO) hasn’t released any of his vital records as of yet. What is there to hide. That’s the real issue here. I commend Lakin for his efforts to, at a minimum, expose who our “most transparent President ever”…is, whether he is qualified to hold office …or not. Who the heck is this guy in the White House anyway?

2 million dollars to keep all vital records sealed. Can a president do that? Shouldn’t we know who this guy is? what his beliefs are? Who he allies himself with? His thought process? HOW COULD WE ELECT A PRESIDENT THAT WE KNOW ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT? Someone pinch me…I must be dreaming.

Lakin/Palin 2012

Is the “de facto doctrine” ever codified into the UCMJ? If so, does it make all orders by a non-eligible official lawful (unless ordering illegal acts), OR does it say that as long as the acts ordered aren’t illegal, the non-lawful orders by the ineligible official are STILL TO BE OBEYED?

IOW, have the orders of ineligible officials ever been defined as “lawful orders”?

It makes a difference as to how the military would charge Lakin. If there were no lawful orders given, then he can’t be charged with disobeying a lawful order. He COULD be charged with violating the “de facto doctrine”, which requires him to obey non-lawful orders if the only reason they are non-lawful is because the person giving them is ineligible.

So the question is where the “de facto doctrine” is codified and whether it redefines non-lawful orders as lawful orders. If it doesn’t, then Lakin is being charged with the wrong thing. Article 92 isn’t the rule which required Lakin to follow Obama’s deployment orders, if Obama is only the de facto president. The “de facto doctrine” would be the rule that would apply.

Another question about whether the military can question the legality of “political decisions”: What constitutes a “political issue”? Couldn’t the people charged at Nuremburg have said that scientific experiments on Jews, etc were “political issues” – especially given that a law had been passed stripping Jews of normal legal protections offered to “the higher race”?

Orders that are “illegal on their face” wouldn’t be illegal any more if Congress (for instance) legalized them. Since Germany legalized discrimination against Jews, would not German soldiers have been questioning a “political decision” if they refused to treat Jews as commanded by the Nazi military leadership and as allowed by the laws passed by the Nazi regime?

In America the issue is compounded by the question of “standing”. Who but military members would have “standing” to question the legality of a “political decision” affecting the military? The combination of “standing” and “political question” issues basically means that nobody can question the legality of any decisions involving the military.

How does that translate into anything BUT the military being the president’s personal militia = i.e. the US as a Banana Republic? Seems to me that if these principles are applied without the allowance for exceptions, we’ve tied our hands behind our back to make sure nobody can tie our hands behind our back.

Thank you for the amazing research and information, including Viking’s comment at /-7. We’re wondering what happens after the 32 hearing… above it’s mentioned, “In reality it is often a mere road-bump on the way to trial.” For the layperson, what does that mean from a timing and news standpoint? Will it take a long time for the actual trial? Does Lakin face any risk at the 32 of being arrested? How will the Lakin camp try to spin this?

Many thanks for the outstanding explanations, my message was prior to the waiver of the 32 so I really appreciate your taking the time to comment. A few followups if you have a moment and think they would be helpful to others as well:
1. I understand that the IO’s report is not binding on the Judge (will that be MG Horst?) but as you’ve pointed out, Driscoll’s experience makes it likely his report will be well respected. In light of that, will Team Lakin get another bite of the apple regarding discovery? Or can/will the IO’s shutdown prevail?
2. I’ve read there’s a difference between conditional and unconditional waivers; the statement didn’t mention which LTC Lakin selected. Would that make any difference?
3. I’ve seen that sometimes a 32 is waived if there’s a plea in progress but I’m not at all confident with 99% of the people opining on this matter. Could there be a plea in progress? What potential plea could be arranged and in your experience is this a possible outcome?
4. Between the EDN, arraignment and discovery, how quickly do these matters proceed? Specifically, do you see this coming back up before the 2010 Elections and considering they are pursuing this (incorrectly) as a political question, are there things Team Lakin can do bring this to a boil in, say, October?
Thank you again, fascinating information.

You are purposefully misrepresenting the facts. The courts determined he was a “citizen” they did not converge the title of “natural born citizen” on Wong. There is a distinct difference. The constitution allows for a citizen IE: “Mr. Wong” to be a Senator, Representative, ETC. The constitution purposefully differentiates been the two for being president. Nowhere in US vs Wong does it mention a “natural” born citizen. That case was mealy on “Citizenship”. To hold the office of the President of the United States one must be a “Natural” born citizen.

Vattel’s The Law of Nations stipulates the difference between the two and specifically says… to be a “NATURAL” born citizen one must “born to parents of citizens”. This was the law “book” called upon when our constitution was written.

Nice try.

Looks like the deck is stacked. All the oath taking to protect and defend the Constitution has been for naught. All these Military officers forgot their oaths once they took it. The military is corrupt as the regular judiciary.

Looking at http://usmilitary.about.com/od/punitivearticles/a/mcm92.htm , under the explanation for the elements, the element of lawfulness is described this way:

“(c) A general order or regulation is lawful unless it is contrary to the Constitution, the laws of the United States, or lawful superior orders or for some other reason is beyond the authority of the official issuing it. See the discussion of lawfulness in paragraph 14c(2)(a).”

It seems to me that this states directly that an order issued contrary to the Constitution is an unlawful order. The Constitution doesn’t waive the natural born citizenship requirement simply because somebody certifies an election. The Constitution forbids anyone who is not a natural born US citizen from being the Commander-in-Chief. If Obama is not a natural born citizen, then his orders are – as the description mentions – “contrary to the Constitution”.

The authorization for the use of force against those who perpetrated 9-11 was given to the president. Someone who is not the valid president cannot issue a lawful general order moving our troops into combat operations on foreign soil. Without a valid presidential order, Lakin’s commander has no more authority to deploy him to Afghanistan than he would have to deploy him to Iran at the current time. His orders to Lakin would be – as the description above states – “beyond the authority of the official issuing it.”

It seems to me that this description makes clear that the constitutionality of an order is not a political issue but a legitimate qualifier for the lawfulness of an order – an issue the military has a duty to resolve. Since the military cannot resolve issues of Constitutionality on their own, they would have to ask the civil courts to decide this – which keeps the military within its boundaries of not deciding the law. If the military refused to refer this to a civil court for a decision the military would be over-stepping their authority by deciding the law on their own.

To date, all courts have refused to address the issue because they say that nobody has “standing” – that nobody is personally harmed if a usurper is acting as president. All this case would do – if it is handled rightly – is force the civil courts to address the question because – yes – somebody DOES give a damn whether the Constitution is trashed. Without a valid CIC there are no lawful orders for combat operations. All Lakin’s case is intended to do is to force the civil courts to acknowledge that it does INDEED hurt “somebody” if the Constitution is trashed.

What most folks don’t know is that the HDOH has already confirmed – in 2 different ways through official communications – that the Factcheck COLB is a forgery. They have made a statutory admission that Obama’s birth certificate has been amended (which must be noted on a genuine COLB but isn’t noted on Factcheck) and have confirmed that the certificate numbers were always issued by the state registrar on the “date filed” (making the Factcheck “date filed” incompatible with the Nordyke twins’ certificates, since Obama’s was supposedly given a number 3 days earlier but the number given was 2 later than the Nordyke twins’). Documentation for all this is at http://butterdezillion.wordpress.com/2010/01/11/red-flags-in-hawaii-2/

Hawaii law says that an amended birth certificate doesn’t qualify as prima facie evidence. HRS 338-17 says that the probative value of a late or amended BC must be determined by an administrative or judicial person or body when presented as evidence. The facts of Obama’s birth CANNOT be determined simply by Nancy Pelosi looking at Obama’s birth certificate (even though the HDOH has confirmed that nobody in the DNC or Hawaii Democratic Party has ever even ASKED to see Obama’s documents) because she is legislative – not administrative or judicial.

And every judge to date has refused to look at the BC. Obama is – literally – an undocumented worker. According to law he’s not even supposed to be able to receive a federal paycheck until his documentation is verified.

So we know that anybody who certified Obama’s eligibility (and the only one who even claims to have done that is Nancy Pelosi) absolutely committed perjury in doing so – because the facts of Obama’s birth can only be determined by a judge looking at the BC itself when it is presented as evidence. And we know that has never happened.

Butterdezillion repeatedly says “It seems to me …” in her long re-writing of the law to suit her, and therein is her problem.

No matter how it seems to her, or what arguments she and her friends may make that things should be the way they want them, what will matter is how the law and the facts seem to the judges.

I suppose the purpose is to keep the money flowing in from the true believers, because I can’t imagine any other reason.

Ducktape, I am a teacher by training, not a lawyer. I don’t know what penumbras the lawyers put around Article 92 in order to interpret it to mean the opposite of what it actually says.

I deal with basic reading comprehension, and a straightforward reading of Article 92 and the description of the elements contained in it shows that Constitutionality of an order from the very top is in NO WAY a “political question” but at the very center of whether a person can accurately be accused of violating a “lawful order”.

I suppose the lawyers can so mangle things that the words no longer mean anything in reality, but me saying this is about equivalent to a little kid saying, “The emperor is naked.” I say what I see.

I have asked the military lawyers on Free Republic, and nobody is willing to say that Lakin’s brigade commander could issue a lawful order deploying Lakin to Iran right now. The only way his orders to deploy Lakin to Afghanistan are lawful is if the general order for combat operations in Afghanistan is a lawful order by the person authorized to give that general order: and the resolution passed after 9-11 gave that authority only to “the president”. If Obama is not a Constitutional president, then his military orders are “contrary to the Constitution” and thus not lawful (by definition of the elements in Article 92), and Lakin’s brigade commander has acted outside his authority in ordering Lakin to Afghanistan.

When I see the claims being made and then look with my own eyes and see what Article 92 actually says it makes me wonder whether the current military leadership can be trusted, or whether they are just as corrupt as every other government entity I’ve had experience with.

Then when I find out that Quantico and Centcom are constantly trying to hack The Post & E-mail, it REALLY makes me wonder what the heck is going on. Exactly who do they think their “enemy” is? All the talk about the military not being “political” is revealed to be a huge lie when you realize that the military leadership is attacking news websites reporting facts inconvenient to the “politics” of the current administration.

Guys, the emperor is naked. The people are waking up to that fact, and it’s not going to be pretty when it becomes known that Obama has remained in power because of a military cabal bent on protecting him instead of protecting the US Constitution and the United States of America, as they swore to do. The military may not have PUT Obama in power; the corrupt government, media, and law enforcement systems have done that. But the military is sure as heck doing everything they can to KEEP him in power – against their own oaths and the law.

This issue is destroying the credibility of the US military. I have nothing but respect for the men and women who fight for this country. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for the military leadership as I observe the political games they are playing with the lives of our brave men and women. I believe our men and women in uniform are the cream of the crop, the best we have to offer, who are doing the hardest and most noble work in incredibly difficult circumstances and with little fanfare or thanks. I believe they deserve better than to have their leadership sell them and their noble oaths down the river because of “politics”. We saw it with the Haditha guys, with Nidal Hasan, and we see it now. Our military heroes deserve better than that.

The “Elements” section with Article 92 says that an order is lawful if it is not (among other things) contrary to the Constitution or laws, or beyond the authority of the official who issues it.

A person doesn’t need “legal scholarship” to see that an order that is contrary to the Constitution is not a lawful order under those definitions – any more than it takes “legal scholarship” to see that “The cat is dead” means that the cat is dead. It is a matter of simple reading comprehension. If the IO can’t tell that much just by reading then no amount of “legal scholarship” is going to help him see it.

Because the authorization of the use of force which was enacted after 9-11 gives the authority to “the President”, only a president can issue those general orders. Just as a brigade commander could not issue deployment orders to Iran right now because the decision to initiate combat operations in a foreign country is beyond his/her authority to do…. a brigade commander would be acting outside his/her authority to deploy troops to Afghanistan without a lawful order for the use of force (which was only given to the President).

So if the orders issued by the alleged POTUS are contrary to the Constitution and/or against the law, then the brigade commander’s orders would be just as unlawful as if he had ordered Lt Col Lakin to Iran right now. HE doesn’t have the authority to make that kind of decision.

This is plainly stated in the description of the “Elements” of Article 92, which clearly make the Constitutionality of an order of paramount importance – NOT a mere “political” issue but the very crux of the lawfulness of the orders. No way is constitutionality irrelevant if the lawfulness is absolutely dependent on it.

By insisting that there has to be “legal scholarship” the IO is basically telling us he can’t read for himself. In such a case, why is he even in the position he’s in? And why should he be able to punish Lakin just because the IO can’t read?

I know this is not what you want to hear, but I don’t know how else to say it. We can argue about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin and deny justice to anybody who refuses to play that game with us, but the clear language of Article 92 and the description of the “Elements” of it have to be reckoned with….. if we are still a nation under the rule of law.

And that is the crux of this issue. When the elements of Article 92 are defined, are those definitions legally binding on the IO, or does there have to be “legal scholarship” before he is accountable to the actual law?

If Lakin’s direct superiors had ordered him to Iran, would it be a lawful order? What factors would determine the lawfulness of the order?

And I should add that if that is their argument, then they should stop saying that the Constitutionality of the order doesn’t matter because their argument is that GW BUSH gave Constitutional orders, and therefore the orders are lawful because they were given by HIM.

If I understand correctly, one of the reasons Lakin obeyed the previous orders is because they were under the blanket of Bush’s general orders unless and until Obama issued new orders to replace them – which he finally did, after dithering about for months and then ignoring what his commanders said they needed. Lakin disobeyed no orders until after the orders originated with Obama.

Do Lakin’s brigade commanders answer to GW Bush? Are they carrying out orders from GW Bush?

Many thanks for pointing out the Article 88 article and your insight into what I agree is the inanity of the Lakin conduct.

The President’s remarks today seemed to indicate that he’s had enough of the type of behavior Lakin has taken to the extreme. In light of the McChrystal events, do you think it will make an impact on Lakin? Is this the beginning of more rigorous enforcement of Article 88?

Joey, according to the 20th Amendment, the time for a president-elect to QUALIFY is before the inauguration. Obama didn’t do it. According to the 20th Amendment he could not become president.

Until that violation of the Constitution happened, the process hadn’t been violated (except for the perjury that took place).

Are you trying to say that the Constitution can be overturned by the vote of 69.4 million Americans, the vote of the Electoral Colege, and a swearing-in ceremony? I’m no Constitutional scholar, but I thought it could only be overturned by an amendment, which requires far more than any of that.

How many votes have courts overturned because what was voted for was unconstitutional? I don’t buy that argument. The Constitutionality of what was voted on has always had the ability to undo a vote. Why is this any different?

The ACLU is going to ask the courts to overturn the voters of Fremont, Nebraska – a large majority of which voted to require a person to have a license verifying legal residency before they can be hired or rent. Nobody could possibly have “standing” to contest the constitutionality of the vote, according to the standards applied to the Obama eligibility cases – but what do you want to bet that the courts give the ACLU “standing”? And what do you bet that the issue of whether the court can overturn a vote doesn’t even get mentioned, because the courts KNOW that an unconstitutional vote MUST be overturned.

If the court refuses to do what must be done that only proves my point – that we have lost the rule of law in this nation, at the hands of a bunch of government crooks and wimps (and their accomplices in media and law enforcement).

But getting back to the issue at hand – the lawfulness of the orders – does Lakin’s IO have to abide by the description of what constitutes a lawful order – and particularly the 4 listed conditions which would negate an order’s lawfulness (contrary to the Constitution, contrary to the law, given by someone acting beyond their authority, or some other reason)?

If so, how can evidence regarding whether any of those 4 conditions are present be considered “irrelevant” to the issue of whether a lawful order was even given – much less disobeyed?

It would be like saying that it’s irrelevant whether the coat I’m accused of stealing actually belonged to me the whole time. I can’t steal what already belongs to me. Only a banana republic jury would convict somebody by saying it is irrelevant whether a crime was even committed.

Lakin can’t disobey lawful orders if there WERE no lawful orders. The lawfulness of the orders is absolutely relevant – including whether any or all of the 4 disqualifying conditions were actually present in the case.

If Obama’s general order was contrary to the Constitution and there was thus no lawful order for combat operations in Afghanistan, then the brigade commander was acting beyond his authority in ordering Lakin to deploy there. The lawfulness of the order that Lakin received is absolutely dependent on whether a lawful general order was given for the use of force. Like I said before, if the military wants to argue that Lakin’s orders were authorized by BUSH’s general order for the use of force then that’s what they should say – NOT that the Constitutionality of the order is irrelevant.

butterdezillion (B.D.) makes so many fundamental errors, one hardly knows where to start. But let’s look at a claim that B.D. repeatedly makes — some variation of this: “If there are no lawful orders to go to war in Afghanistan, then a brigade commander would be acting above his authority to send somebody there for combat operations.” Now look at what the charge sheet actually charges LTC Lakin with. You’ll note that none of the charges alleges a failure to deploy to Afghanistan. Rather, every charge and every spec alleges a failure to perform a duty in the continental United States.

The first charge, missing movement, alleges that LTC Lakin missed a flight from BWI to Charlotte, North Carolina. Specs 1 and 2 of the 92 charge allege that he violated an order to report to his brigade commander in Arlington, Virginia. Specs 3 and 4 allege that he violated an order to report to Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

So even if B.D.’s theories had any legal merit (they don’t), they woud still be irrelevant to the charges LTC Lakin actually faces, since none alleges a failure to deploy to Afghanistan. B.D. seems to concede that the Army can lawfully order its soldiers about the United States. The only offenses alleged against LTC Lakin are violating orders to report to various places in the United States. The word “Afghanistan” doesn’t even appear on the charge sheet.

That’s one of the many reasons why LTC Lakin’s case doesn’t present a vehicle to test the birthers’ guano-crazy theories. Unless someone wants to argue that the United States military can’t require any servicemember to do anything (and what judge would spend even a minute considering that argument?), those theories don’t present a potential defense to any of the charges or specifications that have been preferred against LTC Lakin.

Dwight Sullivan, do you agree with the IO that the lawfulness of orders is either “irrelevant” or a “political question”?

Do you believe that justice can be served if the points you’ve brought up and the points I’ve brought up, and any other point regarding the lawfulness of the order are not allowed to be presented in the proceeding because they are “irrelevant”? Can a guy be found guilty when it’s never been proven that what he did is actually a crime? When the issue of whether what he did is a crime is NOT EVEN ALLOWED TO BE DISCUSSED?

Is that the kind of “military justice” you think this country is all about?

“An order to LTC Lakin to report to his Brigade commander in Arlington, VA was illegal because” …the chain of command that gave the order is under the influence of the Commander-In-Chief, and the CIC is not qualified to be CIC. Same for the other questions.

With regards to your other attempted “statement” Perhaps all other presidents had a BC as part of their Senate record or Representative Record or Military record or School records. For BO no such document has been presented and therefore the logical presumption is no such document exists. None-The-Less, historical precedence does not remove the “requirement” to qualify. Qualification must come from the person trying to qualify and it has not, unless you have proof otherwise. (That is what I’d really like to see…”PROOF” he is lagite, then this could all end.)

“With regards to your other attempted “statement” Perhaps all other presidents had a BC as part of their Senate record or Representative Record or Military record or School records. For BO no such document has been presented and therefore the logical presumption is no such document exists. None-The-Less, historical precedence does not remove the “requirement” to qualify. Qualification must come from the person trying to qualify and it has not, unless you have proof otherwise. (That is what I’d really like to see…”PROOF” he is lagite, then this could all end.)”

President Obama has done better than other Presidents. He posted a copy of his birth certificate on the internet for the entire world to see six months prior to the general election. Plus the Governor of the state of his birth (who is a member of the loyal opposition party) has verified his birth there AND the Registrar of Vital Records, the Director of the Health Department and the Attorney General of Hawaii (all appointees of the Republican Governor) have also verified his place of birth as Honolulu, Hawaii.
“Governor Lingle Answers Birthers…”
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/right-now/2010/05/hawaii_gov_lingle_answers_the.html

For Immediate Release: October 31, 2008 08-93
STATEMENT BY DR. CHIYOME FUKINO
“There have been numerous requests for Sen. Barack Hussein Obama’s official birth certificate. State law (Hawai‘i Revised Statutes §338-18) prohibits the release of a certified birth certificate to persons who do not have a tangible interest in the vital record.
“Therefore, I as Director of Health for the State of Hawai‘i, along with the Registrar of Vital Statistics who has statutory authority to oversee and maintain these type of vital records, have personally seen and verified that the Hawai‘i State Department of Health has Sen. Obama’s original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures.
“No state official, including Governor Linda Lingle, has ever instructed that this vital record be handled in a manner different from any other vital record in the possession of the State of Hawai‘i.”

“I, Dr. Chiyome Fukino, director of the Hawaii State Department of Health, have seen the original vital records maintained on file by the Hawaii State Department of Health verifying Barack Hussein Obama was born in Hawaii and is a natural-born American citizen. I have nothing further to add to this statement or my original statement issued in October 2008 over eight months ago.”—July 27, 2009

Furthermore, a state Court of Appeals has declared that he qualifies as a Natural Born Citizen and seven different challenges to his eligibility have been rejected at the US Supreme Court.
“Based upon the language of Article II, Section 1, Clause 4 and the guidance provided by [the Supreme Court of the United States in their 1898 decision in the case of U.S. v.] Wong Kim Ark, 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. Just as a person “born within the British dominions [was] a natural-born British subject” at the time of the framing of the U.S. Constitution, so too were those “born in the allegiance of the United States natural-born citizens.”—Indiana Court of Appeals, “Ankeny et. al. v The Governor of Indiana, Mitch Daniels,” Nov. 12, 2009

Dwight, I’ve looked at the preferred charges against Lakin, which you linked to, and the actual orders Lakin was given, found at http://www.safeguardourconstitution.com/images/stories/documents/apf01-lakinorders12mar2010.pdf . The thing that stood out immediately in the charges against him was the context provided – that the movement he was to make was in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. When I looked at the orders, the orders were for his service in support of OEF, after which time he was to report back to his permanent assignment. The report date was simply the beginning of that service. So the orders to move were never given independent of his assignment to support OEF – with the additional forces to be deployed authorized by Barack Obama.

So it was never just a deal where he was told to report. He was told to support OEF, beginning by reporting to KY.

Legally, context is absolutely vital. I’m going to give an example that I believe illustrates the different arguments in Lakin’s case.

Let’s say that Dr Jones gives orders to Nurse Nancy to inject a combination of Medicine A and Medicine B to Mr Body. Dr Jones is authorized to dispense both medicines. Is Dr Jones’ order lawful?

Well….. let’s look at some different contexts:

A. The medicines are given to relieve pain, with Mr Body’s consent.

B. The medicines are given to kill Mr Body because he knows Dr Jones is cheating on his wife. Mr. Body signed a general consent for treatment upon entering the clinic.

C. The medicines are given to execute Mr. Body through a court-ordered lethal injection.

D. The medicines are given to assist suicide in Oregon, with the consent of Mr. Body.

E. The medicines are given to exterminate Mr. Body, a “sub-human” Jew, under orders from Der Fuhrer.

F. The medicines are given to involuntarily sterilize Mr. Body in China, as ordered by government officials.

Dr. Jones can legally order the dispensing of those medicines. But depending on WHY he orders them, his orders can also be unlawful. If he orders them in order to accomplish an unlawful purpose then the orders are unlawful. Though not unlawful in and of themselves, the CONTEXT makes them unlawful.

Now suppose it’s scenario D – assisted suicide. The consent is legally required and can only be signed in the presence of a judge. Nurse Nancy knows Mr. Body has never even seen a judge. Dr Jones shows a consent sheet given to him by Mr. Body’s wife (with whom he is cheating), who will get $5 million in death benefits when Mr. Body dies. The sheet shows signs of forgery.

Nurse Nancy refuses to follow the order because she knows that legal consent can’t possibly have happened and that Dr Jones’ orders are therefore unlawful. In court she requests to see the record of the patient’s appearance before a judge and the judge’s copy of the legally-signed consent form in order to show that the consent Mrs. Body provided was forged, the proper legal procedures were never followed, and Dr Jones was therefore never authorized to order those medicines for the purpose of killing a non-consenting patient.

The judge says she can argue whatever she wants but isn’t allowed to get any documents in discovery because the issue of whether there was a lawful consent for that particular context is irrelevant because the doctor has a license to use those medicines and it’s not the nurse’s place to question the purpose of his orders.

Whose side would you support? Did the nurse receive a lawful order? Does it matter whether the doctor had ever received the legally-required consent to give orders for that purpose? Does the context truly not matter?

Fill in the blanks….

The doctor’s order to dispense Medication A is unlawful because……
The doctor’s order to dispense Medication B is unlawful because…..

Sorry, make that “safeguardourconstitution.com.”

It’s a pretty good sign that your legal theories have no merit when you’re strategizing about how to avoid being sanctioned for frivolous filings rather than how to actually win.

Dwight, I think you’re missing my point. Giving the medications in combination would be illegal (provided that it’s not legal assisted suicide or the other scenarios I mentioned). Sounds to me like you’re saying that if the combination of smaller actions is known to equal an illegal action, then the smaller actions – though legal in and of themselves – are illegal because of the combined factors.

That is my point.

You say all that matters is whether hopping on a plane to KY is illegal. But Lakin never received orders to hop on a plane to KY. He was told to serve a one-year (?) stint in Afghanistan to support Operation Enduring Freedom, starting by reporting to KY. The order to show up in KY was never separate from the order to serve in Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Show me where he ever received an order to simply appear in KY – absent the other ingredient in the combination: the order to support OEF.

YOu seem to be saying that since the nurse was told to dispense Medicine A and that is legal, then it doesn’t matter if she was AT THE SAME TIME ordered to dispense Medicine B. But the fact of the matter is that Lakin was never given order #1 (report in KY) without also being given order #2 (support OEF). How then can you say that Order #2 has no bearing on the lawfulness of Order #1? The two orders came as one unit; they were never separate orders. The first step in carrying out #2 was by doing #1. They were not independent orders.

So basically, going back to your answer regarding the nurse, you seem to be saying that Dispensing Medicine #1 is unlawful because when combined with Medicine #2 the result would be homicide, which is a crime. But I was applying to you the same standard that you gave me. You wanted me to say what was unlawful about flying to KY in and of itself.

So I’m asking you: “IN AND OF ITSELF (which means you can’t consider any other combination of factors to provide context, just like you and the IO won’t allow me or Lakin to combine the one action with any other context which would make the order unlawful), why would dispensing Medicine #1 be unlawful?

See, what I’m objecting to here is the IO’s order that context is irrelevant. OK, if that’s the standard, then practice what you preach. Tell me what is wrong with Dispensing Medicine #1 if you can’t also consider the OTHER part of the order: dispensing Medicine #2. You said that if the nurse knows the order – in context – would result in an unlawful action, then she has a duty to refuse the order. So which is it? Does she – and thus also any IO looking at the lawfulness of the orders – have a duty to consider context and the net result of the COMBINATION of orders, or is context irrelevant?

Dispensing medicine #1 would not kill anyone. It’s only when medicine #2 is ALSO dispensed that the action becomes unlawful. If every order stands alone, without context, then what would be unlawful about Dispensing medicine #1? What would be unlawful about dispensing medicine #2? Since neither action is unlawful, and context can’t even be considered (using the standard you’re applying to Lakin), there is no way that the nurse could legally do anything except kill Mr Body by obeying 2 legal but lethal orders.

STANDING — join the newly refreshed 1776 american revolution — each state has different election law statutes — asap formally announce that you are a write-in candidate for say congress in any district (or even in any state) you desire to have a write-in campaign as a legal-political statement to both the state and federal courts regarding political office eligibility and especially POTUS/CINC natural born citizen eligibility. We can not expect rank-and-file senior officers (O-5 and O-6′s) to carry the entire constitutional load with their particularized military-civilian standing — as different from commissioned junior officers and all enlisted — Kerchner & Co. should file an application/motion at USCA3C and/or SCOTUS to remove the Kerchner case jurisdiction of the military standing question to USDC-DC — the quo warranto court.

B.D. –

Serious question — where do you get your “information.” Evidence tying Sadddam to the 9-11 attack. What would that be?

You ask what the military is afraid of. One thing I’m afraid of is that if military members had the widespread view that there’s legal support for what LTC Lakin is doing (which there isn’t), then any member of the military would believe that he or she can disovey any order with impunity. At that point, the U.S. military would cease to exist as a disciplined, effective fighting force.

The military doesn’t pick our leaders. What LTC Lakin is trying to do is about the worst possible means of testing the constitutional legitimacy of a President. It isn’t up to the military to decide whether the President is constitutionally eligible. I’m sure that the vast majority of the members of the military would not want the U.S. military to descend into anarchy. That’s why LTC Lakin’s and Paul Jensen’s arguments are so insidious. Fortunately, they’re flagrantly meritless. They’ll be quickly rejected and their particular threat to good order and discipline will be extinguished. Serious question, B.D., do you think that a recruit at Parris Island is legally entitled to tell a D.I. that he declines to drop and give him 20 because the recruit has questions about whether the President is constitutionally eligible to serve? If not, do you believe that a fire team of Marines fighting in Marjaj today can all drop their weapons, walk to Afghanistan and fly home? According to your rationale, I think you’d have to answer that question affirmatively. Will you at least concede that giving every U.S. servicemember in Afghanistan such discretion presents an enormous threat to the physical satefy of EVERY U.S. servicemember in Afghanistan and that members of the U.S. military would rationally fear such a breakdown in command and control?\

Youwrite, “every judge has ruled that it’s nobody’s damn business if we have an illegal president.” Please point to one judge who said that. Most of the opinions I’ve read have indicated that whether the President is constitutionally eligible is a political question. That means it’s up to Congress to decide, not the courts. Of course, Congress represents the vast majority of Americans. (Not those in the District of Columbia, of course. And not those who live in other areas that aren’t states, but the vast majority of Americans.) So it’s everybody’s business working through their elected representatives. That’s what is guaranteed by the Constitution — a republican form of government.

You write that LTC Lakin wasn’t ordered to hop on a plane to Kentucky. If he wasn’t ordered to report to Kentucky, then he’ll be acquitted of two of the specifications against him. Spec 3 of Charge II alleges that he received an order from Colonel Peter McHugh requiring LTC Lakin “to report to Fort Campbell, Kentucky no later than 1500 hours on 12 April 2010.” Spec 4 alleges that LTC Lakin was “derelict in the performance of [his] duites in that he willfully failed to report to Fort Campbell, Kentucky in accordance with Temporary Change of Station orders 099-17, dated 9 April 2010.” So he’s charged with failing to report to Fort Campbell. If you’re right that he was never ordered to do so, he certainly won’t be found guilty. But I’m betting he wouldn’t have been charged with that unless the government had evidence that he was, in fact, ordered to report to Fort Campbell NLT 1500 on 12 April.

Now, going back to your nurse hypo. First, we’re assuming this is a military setting, so there’s no issued of assisted suicide — which would be illegal. If the nurse knew that the doctor was attempting to kill the patient, it would be illegal to administer Drug 1 because that would be an act that aids and abets the homicide of the patient. Assuming that knowledge, it would certainly be illegal. See Article 77, Uniform Code of Military Justice.

But again, that analogy proves nothing. Because not only is hopping on a plane from BWI to Charlotte not illegal, and not only is reporting to Fort Campbell, Kentucky not illegal, but deploying from Fort Campbell to Afghanistan also isn’t illegal. And as Phil Cave pointed out above, oddly, not even LTC Lakin or Mr. Jensen has argued that it would be illegal for LTC Lakin to fly to Afghanistan.

So, again, President Obama’s constitutional eligibility doesn’t serve as a legal defense to any charge LTC Lakin faces, even if one were to go beyond the charges alleged and wonder whether his constitutional eligibility would be relevant if LTC Lakin had been charged with disobeying an order to fly to Afghanistan, which he wasn’t.

B.D.,

Even if the IO wanted to go beyond what LTC Lakin was actually charged with to consider whether LTC Lakin could also be charged with disobeying an order to deploy to Afghanistan, and even if he decided that for some reason the Presdient’s constitutional eligibility was relevant to the question of whether someone other than the President could order LTC Lakin to deploy to Afghanistan, he would have been required under Supreme Court precedent to conclude that under the de facto officer doctrine, the Commander in Chief’s orders must be given legal effect. As the Supreme Court has repeatedly reiterated, “The de facto officer doctrine, we have explained, ‘confers validity upon acts performed by a person acting under the color of official title even though it is later discovered that the legality of that person’s appointment or election to office is deficient.’ Ryder v. United States, 515 U.S. 177, 180 (1995). ” Nguyen v. United States, 539 U.S. 69, 77 (2003). So even if a hypothetical President were, for some reason, constitutionally ineligible to serve, an order issued by that President would not be subject to retroactive nullification if the President were thereafter removed from office.

In the law, we don’t make it up as we go along. We apply precedent to the case before us. Nguyen and Ryder are precedent that would be applied if a servicemember were to actually be charged wtih violating an order issued directly by the Commander in Chief.

All of this suggests why Mr. Jensen was apparently unable to make a cogent argument to the IO as to why he was entitled to discovery concerning President Obama’s constitutional eligibility. And he will be no more able to make such a cogent argument at the trial or on appeal. Because there isn’t one.

B.D. — another serious question (or, as it turns out, series of questions). Do you believe that if one servicemember (let’s just say, the Chief of Staff of the Army), orders a subordinate servicemember to report for duty in Afghanistan today, he is committing a criminal offense. In other words, is it actually ILLEGAL for any member of the military to take an action to facilitate another deploying to Afghanistan? If so, is the pilot of any transport plane that flies troops to Iraq committing an illegal act? If they are, what is the crime? Is the Captain of any Naval vessel that sails into proximity with Afghanistan for the purpose of supporting operations there committing a crime? How about crew members? Must an officer of the day legally disobey all orders to move the ship into a position where it can support combat operations in Afghanistan? What if it’s a hospital ship? Are the Captain and crew committing a crime if they sail to an area where they can treat U.S. servicemembers wounded in Afghanistan? If so, what is the crime? If not, what if the President personally ordered the CNO to have the ship sail there? Would it be a crime to comply with that order? If so, what crime?

And if you agree that those servicemembers wouldn’t be committing any crime in those scenarios, do you concede that your lethal medicationhypo breaks down because in that situation, the individual giving the order is committing a crime by giving the order?

Dwight, I don’t know how the de facto officer doctrine plays into this. Even unlawful orders are supposed to be obeyed as long as what they order is not criminal on its face. At least, that’s how it’s been explained to me. Please correct me if I misunderstand.

So it could be that the example orders you gave could be obeyed and no crime committed.

But if the military wanted to accuse somebody of disobeying LAWFUL orders when they disobeyed any of those orders, they would have to show that the order was indeed lawful – and that would involve checking whether the 4 circumtances that disqualify an order from being lawful were present.

Lethal injection is not a crime in and of itself. It is only a crime when not properly authorized. I don’t know if there’s a de facto officer policy regarding judges. That’s why initially I used the assisted suicide case, where the issue is whether proper consent was documented – and what duty the nurse has if she knows that the legally-required proper consent could never have been given.

That, right there, is as close to an exact equivalent of the Obama-Lakin situation as anybody can find. We know that Obama’s birth facts have never been legally determined. That can only be done by a judge when the BC is presented as evidence and no judge will look at the BC. WE know that Nancy Pelosi perjured herself. The nurse who KNOWS the legal requirement has never been met has an obligation to disobey the orders. And that is precisely Lakin’s position. He KNOWS the facts of Obama’s birth have never been legally determined. We also know that the Hawaii DOH has admitted that the Factcheck COLB is a forgery. A nurse who knewno legal consent had been given and that a forged consent had been presented instead would be negligent in not checking it out. And that’s pretty much where the military is right now.

But then we dropped the assisted suicide scenario because it doesn’t fit the military meme.

One other question for you. If the military knew that Obama is not a valid CIC what responsibility would they have to insure that they get a valid CIC? Anybody in the military who has looked at the communications from the HDOH knows that Pelosi’s certification is perjury, that the Factcheck COLB is a forgery, that the facts of Obama’s birth have never been legally determined, and thus every ballot in this nation violated state laws, and the Constitutional requirement for a natural born US citizen as president/CIC has never been legally determined to be met. They know that – at best – the lawfulness of every order by Obama is unverified, and that Obama is pushing to keep it that way even to the point of presenting a forged COLB. At what point does the military become negligent if they fail to insist on having a Constitutional CIC?

Whoops — 2008 U.S. election. Sorry!

Dwight, you’re taking my statement out of context. Here is the full context:

“You say all that matters is whether hopping on a plane to KY is illegal. But Lakin never received orders to hop on a plane to KY. He was told to serve a one-year (?) stint in Afghanistan to support Operation Enduring Freedom, starting by reporting to KY. The order to show up in KY was never separate from the order to serve in Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Show me where he ever received an order to simply appear in KY – absent the other ingredient in the combination: the order to support OEF.”

Article 92 says that an order is lawful unless (among other things) it is contrary to the US Constitution. The only way to legally decide whether something is contrary to the US Constitution is by getting a decision from SCOTUS. The law doesn’t tell every step along the way regarding how that determination is to be made, but by virtue of requiring lawful orders to be Constitutional Article 92 requires the SCOTUS to ultimately determine the lawfulness of orders when there are questions of whether the order is “contrary to the Constitution”.

Congress can’t remove an ineligible president. They can impeach somebody who already is the president – which only became the supposed case because judges kept saying nobody had standing before Congress certified the electoral vote and/or the inauguration. Berg’s suit was filed before Obama was elected. Congress had nothing to do with that. Keyes’ lawsuit was also filed before the election.

And if you look at the cases of Donofrio and Wrotnowski, for instance, the decision was that citizens didn’t have standing to require their Secretary of State to obey the laws which required them to verify eligibility before placing a candidate on the ballot. It was an issue of whether the name could even be on the ballot. Congress has no bearing on that. The decision was – quite frankly – “It’s none of your business, you little peons. Your job is to be screwed just like everybody else is screwed.”

I am opposed to straight democracy. That is not what America is. We are a Constitutional Republic. If 51% of the voters decided that atheists should be beheaded it would (supposedly) not happen in America anyway because our Constitution requires much more than a 51% majority to change the basic guarantees that are in our Constitution. A judge would rule that vote unconstitutional. That is their job to protect the basic guarantees from an electorate who would vote that person off the island.

We can vote to get rid of the Constitution’s natural born citizenship requirement, but that is a different vote than a presidential election. The Constitution may not be overturned by a simple 51% majority in any one presidential election. And that Constitution says that nobody CAN be president except a natural born citizen who is the proper age and has been a resident of the US the proper time. It’s not a question of what we do if he becomes president. The Constitution says he CANNOT be the president if he doesn’t meet those requirements. And the 20th Amendment further clarifies that if he doesn’t qualify BY THE TIME OF THE INAUGURATION, the previous VP is to act as president until somebody who qualifies is chosen as POTUS. That’s very specific language, and it has never been obeyed.

Our process works, when it is followed. And that is precisely my gripe: government, media, and law enforcement are violating our process and our laws. I don’t care if Obama is president as long as the laws are kept. They have not been kept. Not even CLOSE. Every government, media, and law enforcement entity that I have dealt with – at every level – has either broken laws themselves or winked at those who broke them.

There is no way that can be OK with people who recognize the importance of the rule of law. And if there is no way for we the people to force our government to enforce the laws, what voice do the people have? We can elect somebody else. Big deal. They make MORE laws that nobody will enforce while they mock those who insist on the importance of the rule of law.

Elena Kagan said that government can ban books because it wouldn’t be enforced anyway. How do you get a more blase’ acceptance of the utter failure of the rule of law than that? She knows that a law that isn’t enforced basically doesn’t exist, and she’s perfectly comfortable with the unelected, unaccountable ENFORCERS of law deciding which laws exist and which don’t. That’s why ICE can say they won’t respond to referrals from Arizona. That’s why the IRS can threaten Chrysler lawyers with drummed-up tax evasion, and why Obama can fire Gerald Walpin against the very law that Obama sponsored. They can pick and choose which laws exist and which are just frosting on top of a shit sandwich – a pretty covering to hide what’s really going down.

I’m sick of frosting on top of a shit sandwich. I’m sick of words meaning nothing and lawyers arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin while our country is being eaten alive and the judges are refusing to hear the big issues.

SCOTUS doesn’t have to rule on anything – as long as they’re content with having a military that has no idea whether any of its orders are lawful.

I would hope that anybody who made it to SCOTUS would have more respect for the wellbeing of the nation than that. But then again, I would have thought that anybody who was even considered for SCOTUS would not judge Constitutionality of a law as irrelevant because the law wouldn’t be enforced anyway.

I don’t recognize this country.

How is the military supposed to determine when an order is “contrary to the Constitution” if SCOTUS doesn’t offer advisory opinions? Seems like the only way for the lawfulness to be determined is for somebody to be court-martialed and appeal to SCOTUS so it’s not an advisory opinion being requested but an actual ruling on the guilt or innocence of the accused person. Seems like that’s exactly what Lakin is trying to do – following the process that Article 92 implies must be followed.

I stand corrected on the 20th Amendment.

I wasn’t sure whether a VP running on the ticket with a disqualified president would himself qualify. It’s a little confusing because the 12th Amendment doesn’t act as if the presidential and vice-presidential candidates are on the same ballot, running as one unit (as they are now, where we don’t vote for the VP on a separate ballot). But the previous VP (Dick Cheney) wouldn’t be called a VP-elect either way so I guess the VP elected on a disqualified ticket would be the only person who could be called the “vice president elect”. So you’re probably right. Joe Biden would act as president until a president who qualified would be chosen.

My apologies for that mistake.

I wonder what would have happened if – as the 12th Amendment seems to allow – Obama had received the most votes for president and Sarah Palin had received the most votes for vice-president. The 12th amendment says the ballots for president and VP are to be distinct from each other – which certainly doesn’t seem to be followed today.

Something else I notice in the 12th Amendment: it is the electors themselves who certify their votes. Congress simply opens the sealed certificates and counts the votes. If Congress certifies anything it’s because of some law besides the Constitution.

Come to think of it, seems like all the 2-party political garbage that clogs up our system is absent from the Constitution. It gives the House and Senate the power to make its own rules and that’s apparently where all the 2-party garbage enters the picture.

I think correcting misstatements by butterdezillion might be a full-time job.

Butterdezillion writes: “Elena Kagan said that government can ban books because it wouldn’t be enforced anyway.” Later, B.D. writes: “I would have thought that anybody who was even considered for SCOTUS would not judge Constitutionality of a law as irrelevant because the law wouldn’t be enforced anyway.”

Based on a thorough review of Solicitor General Kagan’s statements, it doesn’t appear that she ever said anything of the sort.

Shall we compare butterdezillion’s misrepresentations with what Solicitor General Kagan actually said?

This is from General Kagan’s argument in Citizens United:

“[T]he government’s view is that although 441b does cover full-length books, that there would be quite good as-applied challenge to any attempt to apply 441b in that context.
And I should say that the FEC has never applied 441b in that context. So for 60 years a book has never been at issue.” She added, in response to Justice Scalia’s question about the overbreadth doctrine: “I don’t think that it would be substantially overbroad, Justice Scalia, if I tell you that the FEC has never applied this statute to a book. To say that it doesn’t apply to books is to take off, you know, essentially nothing.” She later replied to a Justice Alito question by observing: “[W]hat we’re saying is that there has never been an enforcement action for books. Nobody has ever suggested — nobody in Congress, nobody in the administrative apparatus has ever suggested that books pose any kind of corruption problem, so I think that there would be a good as-applied challenge with respect to that.” She later reiterated that the “only statute that is involved in this case does not cover books. . . . 441b . . . does cover books, except that I have just said that there would be a good as-applied challenge and that there has been no administrative practice of ever applying it to the books.”

At her confirmation hearing, General Kagan discussed the same point with Senators Hatch and Feinstein. In an exchange with Senator Hatch, she said: “Senator Hatch, what we did in the Citizens United case was to defend the statute as it was written, which applied to all electioneering materials, with the single exception of books, which we told the court were not the kind of classic electioneering materials that posed the concerns that Congress had found to be posed by all electioneering materials of a kind of classic kind. Books are different. Books — you know, nobody uses books in order to campaign. . . . [T]he argument was that they were covered by the language of the statute but that a good constitutional challenge, as-applied constitutional challenge, could be made to it because the purposes that Congress had in enacting the statute, which were purposes of preventing corruption, would not easily have — have — have applied to books but would have applied to all the materials that people typically use in campaigns.” She told Senator Feinstein, “We said that the act ought not to be applied. It had never been applied to books. We thought it never would be applied to books. And to the extent that anybody ever tried to apply it to books, what I argued in the court was that there would be a good constitutional challenge to that because the corrupting potential of books is different from the corrupting potential of the more typical kinds of independent expenditures.”

When did Solicitor General ever say, as butterdezillion alleges, “that government can ban books because it wouldn’t be enforced anyway.” So far as I can tell, never. Books weren’t covered by the part of the law at issue in Citizens United. She indicated that the part of the law that did cover books had never actually been applied to books and suggested that it would probably be struck down as unconstitutional if it were. That seems almost the opposite of saying that “government can ban books.” And it certainly doesn’t suggest that she views the constitutionality of a law “as irrelevant because the law wouldn’t be enforced anyway,” to quote butterdezillion.

But the governor of Hawaii isn’t a native Pacific Islander, she is Jewish, and a Republican who endorsed and campaigned for John McCain.

two manchurian candidates — the perfect election sting by CIA and foreign financed / controlled national party committees (see the Logan Act).

Moynihan was correct, the CIA should have been abolished years ago.

http://www.carnegieendowment.org
In his memoir, Present at the Creation, former Secretary of State Dean Acheson expressed his misgivings about the creation of the CIA in 1947. “I had the gravest forebodings about this organization and warned the President that as set up neither he, the National Security Council, nor anyone else would be in a position to know what it was doing or to control it.” In 1991 and again in 1995, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan introduced bills to abolish the CIA and assign its functions to the State Department, which is what Acheson and his predecessor, George Marshall, had advocated. But Moynihan’s proposal was treated as evidence of his eccentricity rather than of his wisdom and never came to a vote.

What is the active senior officer (e.g. Lakin) to do as an army officer attempting to prevent an undocumented worker serving as POTUS/CINC?

Case or Controversy Clause of Article III of the United States Constitution (found in Art. III, Section 2, Clause 1) — the CM of LTC Lakin.

“What is the active senior officer (e.g. Lakin) to do as an army officer attempting to prevent an undocumented worker serving as POTUS/CINC?

Case or Controversy Clause of Article III of the United States Constitution (found in Art. III, Section 2, Clause 1) — the CM of LTC Lakin.”

He has two choices: he can serve his nation honorably like General David Petraeus and about a million and a half active duty men and women are currently doing or he can end up court martialed, reduced in rank or separated from military service to make a dubious point like Lieutenant Colonel Lakin is about to experience.

It is the job of the Courts and the Congress to determine presidential eligibility. As has already been pointed out, the Constitution provides NO role for the military in that process. In fact, the Uniform Code of Military Justice expressly prohibits actions like Lakin has taken under the doctrines of lawfulness of orders and de facto officer.

“Lakin is a senior officer, by definition seperate and apart from non-policy junior officer and all enlisted ranks and lower pay grades. We commission and pay him to enforce the political policy of the US Constitution. Flag ranks and non-military politicans can attempt to fire him but certainly not CM or otherwise arrest him for enforcing his oath of office defending the constitution. And this certainly this is not an alternative court martial of Billy Mitchell style insubordination.”

The Uniform Code of Military Justice makes no distinctions between senior officers, junior officers or enlisted personnel with regard to the regulations concerning lawfulness of orders and de facto officer.
But we’ll all soon know for certain who is right and who is wrong in their interpretations of what is required under the UCMJ.

NBC,

O-5s do incredibly important work. In the Marine Corps, for example, battalion commanders are O-5s. But to suggest that an O-5 isn’t a “non-policy” officer is laughable. Let’s return to the example of the Marine infantry battalion commander. He reports to a regimental commander, who reports to a division CG, who reports to a MEF CG, who reports to a combatant commander. How much policy do you suppose is made at the battalion level?

– if Lakin survives this CM threat due to his O-5 senior officer status as a vested policy / constitutional enforcement office, we will see more O-5 marines or whatever service begin to be aware and soon begin exercise their constitutional litmus testing policy enforcement role.

Joey, you don’t seem to be grasping what I’m saying.

You said, “No court and no legislative authority has found Obama to be ineligible to be president of the United States therefore he IS Commander-in-Chief and his orders are lawfull until a court or the Congress rules otherwise.”

Where in the elements does it say that an order is lawful unless a court or Congress says it isn’t?

Let’s let the document speak for itself. As even you quoted, “A general order or regulation is lawful unless it is contrary to the Constitution, the laws of the United States, or lawful superior orders or for some other reason is beyond the authority of the official issuing it. See the discussion of lawfulness in paragraph 14c(2)(a). ”

Where in that are you getting Congress and a judge? The standard is the Constitution itself. No judge has addressed whether Lakin’s orders are contrary to the Constitution. That is precisely what Lakin is trying to get a judge to do. Why is the military hell-bent on keeping the proper procedure for determining the lawfulness of the orders from happening?

And no judge has even taken the preliminary step of looking at Obama’s birth certificate. There is no person on this planet who can say how old Obama is in the eyes of the law. In the eyes of the law nothing is known about the facts of Obama’s birth. All that exists legally is claims which have never been sufficiently substantiated to count as prima facie evidence. Please don’t repeat the false statement that judges have ruled that Obama is eligible or that by their silence they have affirmed his eligibility. According to Hawaii law NOTHING is legally known about Obama’s birth unless and until the birth certificate is presented as evidence to a judicial or administrative person or body. THAT HAS NEVER HAPPENED. Do you understand that?

A judge can say whatever they want – the most common thing being, “Nobody has standing to get an answer regarding Obama’s eligibility” – but according to Hawaii law that birth certificate means NOTHING in a legal sense until it is presented as evidence to a judicial or administrative person or body and the probative value is determined. Congress is neither judicial nor adminsitrative, so even if Pelosi had seen the BC – which neither she nor any democrat even ASKED to see – she is not legally able to determine the probative value or the facts of Obama’s birth.

The BC is the legal equivalent of Monopoly money until that step is taken, and Obama has spent a LOT of money to make sure that step CAN’T be taken. Do you understand that Hawaii law says Obama’s amended BC is the legal equivalent of Monopoly money and can never be anything more than that unless and until it is presented as evidence to a judicial or administrative person or body? This is critical. There is no sense going on until that fact is acknowledged.

The 20th Amendment gives Obama a deadline. The steps necessary for him to “qualify” had to be completed by January 20, 2009. They were not. That is a hard, cold fact. Having failed to qualify by Jan 20th, Obama was prohibited by the 20th Amendment from taking office. His inauguration was illegal – contrary to the Constitution.

Even if the whole world ignores that fact, the military cannot ignore it if they want to charge someone with disobeying a LAWFUL order. That adjective is critical. Those elements never say what happens if a person disobeys an UNLAWFUL order. The lawfulness of the order doesn’t depend on a vote, a certification, or an oath. It depends on whether the order matches what is in the Constitution. If Obama is not eligible to be president and/or “failed to qualify” by January 20, 2009 the Constitution forbids him from being the president and CIC. Period.

Constitutionally speaking, only Joe Biden could give a general order for continued combat operations in Afghanistan, until a qualifying president can be chosen.

Wrap your mind around THAT.

This country is never more than one generation away from extinction. Any generation which fails to guard the freedoms we have can drop the baton and destroy this nation forever. It is no trifle when dead men vote. It is no trifle when people who are so drunk or stoned they can’t possibly make a sober judgment vote. It is no trifle when people dumbed down by a communist educational system vote. It is no trifle when the media and law enforcement hide crimes in order to protect the politician they like. These are all critical threats to America’s continued existence. The power of these people to destroy America is more real and imminent than anything Iran is developing right now.

We’ve been lulled into thinking that America is a given. It’s not. Our ignorance, apathy, and willingness to be bought off by corrupt politicians’ pork can kill this nation. If our law enforcement is allowed to go the way of Mexico or Iran, then this nation ceases to exist. If we fall asleep at the wheel we die. People HAVE to realize that and take the risk to this nation seriously.

Viking, the Constitution forbids a president-elect from taking the oath of office if he/she “fails to qualify” by inauguration day. Obama’s inauguration was illegal. If I went and crowned you king it wouldn’t make you legally king, because I don’t have the authority to crown you king. In such a case, I could swear up and down, repeatedly, that you are king because I crowned you king – but it wouldn’t make a bit of difference because my crowning of you has no legal merit.

The 20th Amendment of the Constitution FORBIDS Obama from taking office because he never legally qualified by Jan 20, 2009 – since in the eyes of the law his age, parentage, and birth place (the qualifications to be eligible for office) are LEGALLY UNDETERMINED. They can’t be legally determined until his amended birth certificate is presented to a judicial or administrative person or body, and we know that has never happened.

So you can say his inauguration makes him president, but an illegal inauguration is no more legally binding than me crowning you king.

Butterdezillion,
I grasp exactly what you are saying. However you are showing no understanding of the de facto officer doctrine.
“The de facto officer doctrine confers validity upon acts performed by a person acting under the color of official title even though it is later discovered that the legality of that person’s appointment or election to office is deficient. Norton v. Shelby County, 118 U.S. 425, 440 (1886). “The de facto doctrine springs from the fear of the chaos that would result from multiple and repetitious suits challenging every action taken by every official whose claim to office could be open to question, and seeks to protect the public by insuring the orderly functioning of the government despite technical defects in title to office.” 63A Am. Jur. 2d, Public Officers and Employees § 578, pp. 1080-1081 (1984).”

In context, the following excerpt from an actual court decision brought by another member of the US military, Captain Pamela Barnett (in Barnett et. al. v Obama et. al.)
should explain it to you (YET AGAIN):
“There may very well be a legitimate role for the judiciary to interpret whether the natural born citizen requirement has been satisfied in the case of a presidential CANDIDATE WHO HAS NOT ALREADY WON ELECTION AND TAKEN OFFICE. However, on the day that President Obama took the presidential oath and was sworn in, HE BECAME PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. Any removal of him from the presidency must be accomplished through the Constitution’s mechanisms for the removal of a President, either through impeachment or the succession process set forth in the Twenty-Fifth Amendment.
Plaintiffs attempt to subvert this grant of power to Congress by convincing the Court that it should disregard the constitutional procedures in place for the removal of a sitting president. The process for removal of a sitting president–REMOVAL FOR ANY REASON–is within the province of Congress, not the courts.”—US District Court Judge David O. Carter in dismissing “Captain Pamela Barnett, et. al. v Barack H. Obama, et. al.,” October 29, 2009

DWight and Joey, if Lakin is going to be charged with disobeying an UNLAWFUL ORDER that he is required to obey anyway because of the de facto doctrine, then that is what he needs to be charged with. That’s not the charge that was made. He was charged with an Article 92 offense – disobeying a LAWFUL order.

If Obama can’t give orders without being “contrary to the Constitution”, then the military has to charge Lakin with something besides Article 92. As long as they’ve got an Article 92 charge against him they have to allow him what he needs in order to defend himself against THAT CHARGE.

Lakin’s orders were in response to Obama’s order for more troops to deploy to Afghanistan. The only person who can authorize the use of force, according to the resolution passed after 9-11, is the president. The Constitution does not allow a person to take the oath of office if they have not “qualified” by Jan 20th. Obama’s oath of office was therefore unconstitutional, since even to THIS DAY the facts of his birth have never been legally determined. His presidency and anything he does as he pretends to be president are “contrary to the Constitution” and thus unlawful. The orders Lakin received from his CO was never authorized by a valid president – the only person who could authorize them – and are also therefore unlawful.

The lawfulness of the orders absolutely depends on whether a Constitutional president authorized this use of force. The only reason we even need discovery to prove that Obama is not a Constitutional president is to verify that the HDOH’s confirmation of Obama’s BC being amended was accurate. As long as that is accurate, we KNOW that Obama “failed to qualify” because TO THIS DAY his age, parents, and place of birth are still not legally determined.

If the military wants to charge Lakin with breaking the de facto doctrine they need to charge him with that. They need to say that even though Obama can’t lawfully be president under the Constitution, his orders have to be obeyed anyway because he is the de facto president.

Is that what the military is going to say?

Unless they change the charge they have to deal with the issue of whether Lakin did what they accuse him of: disobeying a LAWFUL order.

Everything you’ve offered is your “personal opinion”, Joey. Read these words of the 20th Amendment: “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…”

Basic reading comprehension says that a President-elect can still “fail to qualify”. How would that happen? To be the President-elect he/she would already have to have met the electoral vote requirement. What are the qualifications that someone still has to meet if they’ve already received the necessary electoral votes (which is the only thing Congress “certifies” – the tally of the final electoral vote)? What is your “opinion”? What does the Constitution say are the necessary qualifications for a POTUS and VP, beyond simply being elected?

How can someone FAIL to qualify by Jan 20th? The facts of his birth are the same on Jan 20th as they were on Nov 8th or Dec 15th. So what could change between Dec 15th and Jan 20th that would make him “qualify” – or, if left undone would result in a President-elect that “failed to qualify”?

I’ll add here that Dwight corrected me to make sure I comprehended the significance of the term “Vice President ELECT”. I appreciate the correction. It was not Dwight’s OPINION that VP elect means (in this case) Joe Biden. That is a factual matter. I was wrong when I said Dick Cheney. Words have meanings. There is no way that Dick Cheney would have been called a “vice president elect” on January 19, 2009.

So you tell me. What do the words “if the President elect shall have failed to qualify” mean?

Butterdezillion, where in the Constitution does it say that because some citizens say that a person who has enough electoral college votes and been sworn in is ineligible that makes them ineligible? The Twelvth Amendment to the Constitution states that “the President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes (of the Electoral College) shall then be counted.
The person having the greatest Number of votes for President, SHALL BE THE PRESIDENT…” In 2009, that person was Barack Hussein Obama II.
The Twentieth Amendment to the Constitution states that the term of the President and Vice President shall begin at Noon on January 20th. Barack Obama’s term began at noon on January 20th.

There has been no finding of ineligiblity by any authorized body; no court finding of ineligibility, no congressional finding of ineligibility, no grand jury finding of ineligibility.

The time to determine eligibility is before a candidate’s name is placed on the ballot. It is the responsibility of the Chief Election offier in each state to make sure that only eligibile candidates appear on a state’s ballot. That official is the Secretary of State in most states. If that cannot be accomplished then the time to determine eligibility is before counting an ineligible candidate’s electoral college votes and certifying the winner as the president. The law of the land allows any one Senator and any one Representative to submit written challenges to the Certification of any state’s electoral college votes. If the President of the Senate receives two written challenges, both Houses of Congress must immediately investigate the reasons for those challenges. If that cannot be accomplished, the last time to determine eligibility is before Inauguration Day and the administration of the Oath of Office. Once the Oath of Office is administered, the person to whom it was administered is the duly elected President of the United States.

See http://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_inau.html for historical background on the fact that an oath does not make a person the president. Quote:

“So, then, the gap is a time when there is a powerless president. The passage of time marks the start of the office, but the oath marks the start of the powers of the office.”

If the President-elect “fails to qualify” by the time the term starts, he/she is not allowed to receive the powers of the office – as stated in the 20th Amendment. In that case, the VP-elect is to receive the powers of the office until a president who qualified can be chosen. That’s what the 20th Amendment says.

I stand corrected in that Obama IS the president, thus explaining the phrase “shall be President” that you mentioned, Joey. But according to the 20th Amendment he is not Constitutionally able to have the POWERS of the office because he has “failed to qualify” by Jan 20, 2009. That would include the power to issue lawful orders as the CIC, issue executive orders, sign bills, establish foreign policy, appoint SCOTUS justices or “czars”, etc. He is a president who is Constitutionally unable to do anything presidential.

The history on that site shows that what you would call “my opinion” has some history to back it up. But before we go on, I will wait to hear your explanation for how a President-elect could “fail to qualify” by Jan 20th.

Joey, I didn’t ask how a CANDIDATE can “fail to qualify” because that’s not what the 20th Amendment says. It says that a PRESIDENT-ELECT can “fail to qualify”. That means they can still fail to qualify even AFTER they already have the electoral votes certified (which is when they become the President-elect). So clearly “qualifying” means something besides just having the electoral votes.

It also can’t be because they haven’t yet taken the oath of office because the oath of office has been taken AFTER January 20th multiple times, as the site I linked to mentioned, without meaning that a new, qualified president had to be chosen. They still became the president on Jan 20th at noon but until they met the other Constitutional requirements (one of which is the oath of office) they couldn’t assume the POWERS of the presidency.

The President-elect has until Jan 20th to “qualify”. If he hasn’t done it by then, it’s too late. He can’t assume the powers of the presidency even though he has the TITLE of president from noon on Jan 20th until a QUALIFIED president is chosen to replace him. The Vice President-Elect is to be given those powers in the interim, and Congress is authorized to decide how his replacement is to be chosen.

So how can a President-elect “fail to qualify” before Jan 20th?

You need to answer that question before we can go on.

Joey,

It looks like there are actually three relevant reports: H.R. Rep. No. 72-345 (1932),
S. Rep. No. 72-26 (1932), and H.R. Rep. No. 72-633 (1932). I gather that the third is the conference report. I’ll try to track down all three over the weekend.

My understanding is that the President-Elect “qualifies” by staying alive during the time between the certification of the Electoral College vote and taking the Oath of Office on Inauguration Day.
I did find some back up for my position:
Section 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 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.”

The Twentieth Amendment also sought to resolve some ambiguity in the Constitution regarding what to do in a hypothetical scenario in which the winner of a presidential election dies before his inauguration day, or in which no candidate wins the presidency prior to the beginning of the term. (No such scenario has ever occurred in real life, before or after the passage of the Twentieth Amendment.)
http://www.shmoop.com/constitution/20th-amendment.html

In any event, has any judicial or legislative body ever ruled that Barack Hussein Obama “failed to qualify?”
Did Vice President-Elect Biden ever assume the presidency until the president-elect “qualified?”
Has Barack Obama assumed the office and the powers of the presidency since noon on January 20, 2009?
Wasn’t Inauguration Day the “time fixed” for the beginning of Obama’s term and he didn’t he indeed assume the office?
It looks to me like your point is moot a year and a half into Obama’s term.

Also, Joey, I’m not even going to address the arguments you’ve made until you explain how a President-elect could “fail to qualify” by Jan 20th, as the 20th Amendment describes. That issue is critical.

Dwight, thank you in advance for checking up on the background of the language used in the 20th Amendment. It was when I was trying to find that info on the net that I came across the site which differentiated between when a person becomes the president and when they receive the POWERS of the presidency. At this point I don’t have access to the documents you do, so I look forward to hearing the legislative background behind Congress proposing this amendment and what they said it meant.

BD:

Back in your post #61 you stated that your father’s “teacher told the whole school how thankful they should be that no matter how crazy (or uncrazy) our president might be, he could never invade another country without the Senate first deciding by 2/3 majority to issue a Declaration of War. Our Constitution says so.”

Article 1, §8 of the Constitution say that “The Congress [meaning the House and the Senate] shall have Power . . . To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Caputres on Land and Water[.]” Because no supermajority requirement is stated, the declaration of war can pass by a simple majority vote in both houses of Congress. You apparently have confused the war-making power with the treaty-making power (Article 2, §2), which states that the President “shall have the Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur[.]“

1% Silver Nitrate, thanks for the correction. I just quoted what my dad said. His teacher must have had it wrong.

When was the last time the US actually made a declaration of war? Seems like a simple majority of the Senate should be able to come up with a declaration of war if there’s serious reason to engage in combat.

The legal documentation that the Congress has is the public statements of officials of the Hawaii Department of Health. None of those statements has ever been invalidated in a Court of Law. Therefore they stand as authentification until proven otherwise.

A President-Elect could not have qualified either by dying before Inauguration Day or by winning the popular vote but having his or her electoral votes challenged and not certified and that challenge and lack of certification not being resolved in Congress by Inauguration Day.

The House of Representatives already passed a non-binding resolution and that non-binding resolution was entered into the Congressional Record on July 27, 2009. The whole point of the resolution was Representative Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii’s way of forcing Republicans to take a stand on Obama’s birthplace.

As I’m sure that you are aware, the Senate also had passed a non-binding resolution declaring John McCain to be a natural born citizen despite his birth in Panama to two American citizen parents.

I’m interested in your opinion on what legal steps do you think can be taken to remove a president who hasn’t qualified from office. After Inauguration Day is there another alternative other than impeachment, trial and conviction in the Senate?

Hey there DS. Thanks for all your input here.
In my humble opinion under de facto officer, whoever’s Electoral College votes are certified by Congress with the outgoing Vice President presiding and whoever is sworn in on Inauguration Day IS the duly elected President of the United States n0 matter what. If it is later discovered that they weren’t old enough or that they were really born in Latvia, the way to correct that situation is by impeachment by the House, trial by the Senate and conviction on a vote of 67 Senators.
The Constitution does not give the Judiciary the power to remove a sitting president whether that person has qualified for the office or not. The Judiciary can however provide the evidence that Congress needs to impeach and remove that person for high crimes and misdemeanors.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

Oops, I forgot to add the link:
http://www.michiganlawreview.org/articles/the-justiciability-of-eligibility-may-courts-decide-who-can-be-president

Why can’t I post?

Okay. We’ll see if this lets me post.

Joey, the 20th Amendment gives 3 scenarios: 1) Pres-elect dies before term starts (which you mentioned), 2) Pres-elect isn’t chosen before term starts (which you mentioned), and 3) Pres-elect fails to qualify before term starts.

I asked you about #3 and you said #1 & #2 is how #3 could happen. #3 is a separate item. It is different than what was already said in #1 and #2.

“Failing to qualify” is another item on the list. It is different than the other 2 already listed. What does “fail to qualify” mean that is different from #1 or #2? How could a living President-elect (already certified by Congress as the winner of the election) fail to qualify before Jan 20th?

If a president tries to do an act that the Constitution forbids, who is responsible to decide that it is unconstitutional? Can Congress ever rightfully have that job? Whose job is it to decide how the Constitution applies to a particular situation?

Because if the president-elect fails to qualify, the Constitution (20th Amendment) forbids him from exercising the powers of the presidency. If he would try to act as president, someone would have to decide how the 20th Amendment applies to the sitution. Who has that job?

If the Electoral Count Act gives Congress the job of determining whether the president-elect has “failed to qualify” I do strongly question its Constitutionality.

But somebody would certainly be able to bring a suit against Congress because they failed to honor Hawaii’s law regarding how the probative value of an amended BC is to be determined, violating the “Full Faith” clause in Article IV, Section 1 of the Constitution. According to HRS 338-17, the facts of Obama’s birth cannot be legally determined without the BC itself being presented as evidence to a judicial or administrative person or body. Because Congress did not follow that proper procedure in order to find the facts pertinent to Obama’s eligibility, they violated the Constitution and could be sued for doing so.

This would also be a case where SCOTUS would have original jurisdiction because the US is a party to the controversy and the issue involves the Constitution.

Again, I would think Lt Col Lakin would have standing to sue in this way.

But Joey, don’t forget that I am still waiting for you to explain how a President-elect could “fail to qualify” before Jan 20th. The article you linked to (and thanks for that link, BTW) seems to treat it as exactly the issue we’re dealing with on Obama – the issue of whether he has been determined to be the right age, be a natural born US citizen, and been a resident the required amount of time. The question about the 20th Amendment that the author has is who is authorized by the Constitution to determine that.

Thank you for the correction, Dwight. The cases I mentioned would have to go through the lower courts before reaching SCOTUS then.

I welcome correction. That’s why I ask questions. I appreciate it when my questions are answered. That’s what conversation is, and that’s how we keep each other accountable.

That’s why I’m still waiting for an explanation of how a President-elect can “fail to qualify” before Jan 20th. Until we’re accurate in our understanding of that, our other conclusions will be flawed.

Joey, that still counts as scenario #2. Why say the President-elect “fails to qualify” (meaning hasn’t been chosen yet) when you’ve already listed the scenario that the President-elect hasn’t been chosen on time?

This is the 2nd time you’ve used Scenario #1 or #2 as the explanation for #3. That doesn’t work. Whether you call the person the President-elect or not, the fact is they have to “qualify” before assuming the presidential powers – and qualifying is something other than being chosen/declared the winner by Congress OR staying alive until Jan 20.

What does it mean to “qualify” – as distinct from scenarios #1 and #2?

Joey, you’re still using Scenario #2 to try to explain Scenario #3. Scenario #2 includes ANY REASON that a President-elect would not have been chosen by Jan 20th.

You are correct that if court cases were still pending as of Jan 20th then the winner of the election should not be certified by Jan 20th and the 20th Amendment provision of the VP-elect assuming presidential duties and powers until there is a qualifying President should kick in. (Never mind that court cases WERE still pending on Jan 20, 2009…. and yet Congress still certified the winner. In 2000 SCOTUS realized the importance of timeliness and decided Bush v Gore before there was a Constitutional crisis. They didn’t have the guts to do that in 2008, which puts us in the mess we’re in right now.)

BUT that would still be Scenario #2. Scenario #3 is something different from that, or else why include it as a different instance?

Without using either #1 or #2 as a duplicate of #3, how would a President-elect “fail to qualify” by January 20th?

Also, could Joe Biden have been the VP-elect if Obama was not the Pres-elect? If there were lawsuits pending over whether Obama/Biden actually won the election, then how could Biden “qualify” if Obama didn’t? As far as the electoral votes go, the fate of the 2 are inseparable because they are one ticket. We made a vote for one ticket – either Obama/Biden or McCain/Palin (or other Pres/VP tickets). It had been that way for almost 100 years (since 1840) when the 20th Amendment was ratified in 1933.

And yet the 20th Amendment has a different procedure altogether for if they BOTH “fail to qualify”. Sure seems like “qualifying” is something that one person on the ticket might do even if the other doesn’t – which wouldn’t be the case if “qualifying” was about the electoral vote, certification, or a contested electoral certification.

So the question still stands: How could a President-elect “fail to qualify” by Jan 20th?

Particularly, how could a President elect “fail to qualify” by Jan 20th even though the Vice President elect qualified by Jan 20th?

If a president tries to do an act that the Constitution forbids, who is responsible to decide that it is unconstitutional? Can Congress ever rightfully have that job? Whose job is it to decide how the Constitution applies to a particular situation?

Because if the president-elect fails to qualify, the Constitution (20th Amendment) forbids him from exercising the powers of the presidency. If he would try to act as president, someone would have to decide how the 20th Amendment applies to the sitution. Who has that job?
—-
If a president tries to do an act that the Constitution forbids, who is responsible to decide that it is unconstitutional? Can Congress ever rightfully have that job? Whose job is it to decide how the Constitution applies to a particular situation?

Because if the president-elect fails to qualify, the Constitution (20th Amendment) forbids him from exercising the powers of the presidency. If he would try to act as president, someone would have to decide how the 20th Amendment applies to the sitution. Who has that job?
—
Its called “checks and balances”. Congress can defund and write new laws to counter unconstitutional acts of presidents and actions of the president can be litigated and reversed by the Supreme Court. Presidents can also be impeached and removed from office for committing unconstitutional acts.

If a president-elect fails to qualify, they can’t become president. If a person becomes president, then they obviously qualified. It looks to me as if four events can take place to signal the disqualification of a president-elect: (1) The Vice President-Elect becomes the President; (2) Congress appoints an Acting President because neither the President-Elect nor the Vice President-Elect qualify; (3) There is no Oath of Office taken by the President-Elect at Noon on January 20th; (4) There is no certification of the President-Elect’s Electoral Votes at a Joint Session of Congress.

Anybody with standing can challenge a president’s action as unconstitutional. For example a group of six US Senators challenged Bill Clinton’s first use of the line-item veto. Senator Robert Byrd led the group of six senators and a federal judge agreed that the line item veto was unconstitutional. The Clinton administration’s appeal of that decision went to the Supreme Court and the Court upheld the lower court’s ruling. The Line Item veto was unconstitutional. That law could not be struck down until Clinton actually used it.

The 20th Amendment looks at both the President-Elect and the Vice President-Elect not qualifying by Election Day. Section 3 states: “…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.”

Thanks for the response, Joey. So any Congressman or Senator could file a suit against Obama, saying that his use of the presidential powers is unconstitutional – as long as their work was somehow hindered by the illegal actions of a president who cannot have the presidential powers?

Did the filing Senators all have to vote for the measure that was vetoed?

What if Senators filed suit against Obama for nominating a SCOTUS justice when the president is forbidden by the 20th Amendment to have the presidential powers? Would the Senators have standing? Would they have standing as soon as the justice was nominated?

Regarding the Twentieth Amendment, let me begin with the obvious: it has nothing to do with LTC Lakin. No matter how the Twentieth Amendment is interpreted, it does not provide LTC Lakin with any defense to the violation of lawful orders, dereliction of duty, and missing movement charges that he faces.

That said, I hope our gracious host, Phil “My Liege” Cave, will permit me to share my research concerning the Twentieth Amendment. I spent yesterday afternoon looking at the Amendment’s congressional history. (I didn’t look at the history of any state’s ratification process.)

While similar Amendments had been introduced in Congress a number of times before, the version of what would go on to be ratified as the Twentieth Amendment was proposed by Congress during the 1st Session of the 72d Congress in 1932, when Democrats controlled the House and Republicans controlled the Senate.

The “if the President-elect shall have failed to qualify” language was inserted into the proposed Amendment by the House Committee on Election of President, Vice President, and Representatives in Congress. This language was part of a larger amendment to the Senate-passed proposed constitutional amendment (Senate Joint Resolution 14), The House committee’s amendment was designed to avoid the interregnum problem. The House Committee basically attempted to cover any reason why there might be a vacancy in the Office of the President and provide an answer to the question of who would exercise the powers of the presidency under that contingency. The House also sought to make clear that in relevant cases, the Vice President wouldn’t become President, but would rather exercise the powers of the presidency until the President-elect was able to fill the office. Finally, the House also wanted to clear up an ambiguity in the Twelfth Amendment by specifying that the Vice President-elect, rather than the Vice President from the previous administration, would be the one to exercise the powers of the presidency.

Because the amendment to the proposed Amendment was designed to avoid the possibility of an interregnum, it addressed a number of scenarios. Here’s one identified by the House Committee Report, which casts some light on the “failed to qualify” language: “Congress is given power to provide for the case where neither a President nor a Vice President has qualified before the time fixed for the beginning of the term, whether the failure of both to qualify is occasioned by the death of both, by the failure of the House to choose a President, if the right of choice devolves upon them, and or by any other cause–these contingencies are not covered by any provisions in the Constitution.” H.R. Rep. No. 345 at 2 (1932).

When the proposed Amendment (as amended) was on the House floor, Congressman Joseph L. Cable (R-Ohio), argued:

The framers of our Constitution and the Congress that wrote the twelfth amendment left defects or inadequate machinery for the selection of the President. Let me call attention to this fact: If a President elect should die, if he should become disqualified, and likewise the Vice President, the United States of America would be without a President and Vice President. . . .

But if the President elect and the Vice President elect should both die or become disabled or found disqualified before March 4 our country would be without a President. Dire results would follow. [end quote] 75 Cong. Rec. 3831 (1932).

The House passed the proposed Amendment as amended. When it went back to the Senate, the Senate called for a conference committee. (The main point of contention between the Senate and the House appeared to be whether to limit the time that the States had to ratify the proposed Amendment.) When the Amendment was reported out by the Conference Committee, the House Managers attached a statement that included the following:

Under the corresponding provision of the House amendment (the first clause of the second sentence of section 3) the Vice President elect acts as President not only when the House has failed to choose a President before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, but also in any case where, at that time, the President has failed to qualify for any reason.” H.R. Rep. No. 633 at 3 (1932).

Again, keep in mind that Congress’s key motivation in proposing what would become Section 3 of the Twentieth Amendment was to provide an answer to the question “who acts as President” in any scenario in which the question might arise. Based on all of that, if you could go back in time and ask a member of the 72d Congress whether he or she thought that Section 3 of the Twentieth Amendment would apply in a case where the President-elect was only 33 years old, I think the answer would be yes. I think in that scenario, the framers of the Twentieth Amendment would envision that, assuming the Vice President was constitutionally eligible to serve as President, the Vice President-elect would serve as acting President until the President-elect turned 35. I think that Member of Congress would give a similar answer if the President-elect was a natural born citizen, was older than 35, but didn’t yet meet the 14 years’ residency requirement.

If you asked that Member of Congress what would happen if the President-elect were a 1930s version of Arnold Schwarzenegger — a non-native born citizen — I think that Member of Congress would say that the Vice President-elect would serve as acting President for the President-elect’s entire term.

But if you asked that Member of Congress whether the Twentieth Amendment was designed to require a President-elect to go through any particular process to demonstrate that he was at least 35, had lived in the United States for 14 years, and was a natural born citizen, I think that Member of Congress would look at you funny and say, “Of course not.” And if you asked that Member of Congress whether the Twentieth Amendment gave a court the power to rule, after the President-elect had been sworn is as President, that the President-elect isn’t empowered to execute the authority of the Presidency until the President proves to the court that he’s at least 35 years old, has lived in the U.S. for 14 years, and is a natural born citizen, that Member of Congress would probably wonder about both your literacy and/or your sanity before saying no and quickly ending the conversation.

There is absolutely nothing in the Twentieth Amendment’s legislative history to suggest that its framers intended to establish any qualification procedure that a President-elect must satisfy before becoming President. And there is certainly nothing to suggest that the Amendment’s framers intended Section 3 to have any effect after the inauguration.

For anyone who wants to argue to the contrary, here’s my challenge to you. The Twentieth Amendment took effect on October 15, 1933. Please show me what qualification procedures were imposed before President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s second inauguration in 1937. Certainly the Members of the House and Senate who proposed and voted on the Twentieth Amendment would have been familiar with what that Amendment required. In fact, the man who was sworn in as Vice President (for a second time) on January 20, 1937 was the Speaker of the House of Representatives when the Twentieth Amendment was proposed. Did anyone require that some New York official and some Texas official present vault copies of birth certificates for FDR and John Nance Garner before the 1937 inauguration? If not, how could any comparable requirement exist in 2009?

Final thought for the morning: according to butterdezillion, Nancy Pelosi is the acting President.

butterdezillion argues — with no apparent supporting authority — that the framers of teh Twentieth Amendment unwittingly enacted a procedural requirement for a President-elect qualification process that no one realized until 2009. Because President Obama didn’t go through this previously unknown qualification process, she argues that he can’t exercise the powers of the presidency, despite his inauguration. But if there was such a requirement for the President-elect, there was also such a requirement for the Vice President-elect. And, of course, Vice President Biden didn’t go through that procedure either, since no one thought he had to. So, under BD’s theory, there was a failure to qualify by both the President and the Vice President. The Twentieth Amendment provides that Congress can by law providewwho will act as President when neither aPresident-elect nor a Vice President-elect has qualified. Congress has passed such a statute. 3 U.S.C. 19. And under that statute, if neither President Obama nor Vice President Biden qualified for office, the Speaker of the House would act as President.

So if butterdezillion is right in her interpretation of the Twentieth Amendment (she isn’t), then Nancy Pelosi would act as President until either President Obama or Vice President Biden demonstrated (to whom I’m not sure) that he is constitutionally eligible to serve as President.

Butterdezillion writes: “Thanks for the response, Joey. So any Congressman or Senator could file a suit against Obama, saying that his use of the presidential powers is unconstitutional – as long as their work was somehow hindered by the illegal actions of a president who cannot have the presidential powers?

Did the filing Senators all have to vote for the measure that was vetoed?

What if Senators filed suit against Obama for nominating a SCOTUS justice when the president is forbidden by the 20th Amendment to have the presidential powers? Would the Senators have standing? Would they have standing as soon as the justice was nominated?”
—
Yes, any member of Congress can file suit against AN ACTION of the president that utilizes presidential power. The president him or herself cannot be sued for acting in their official capacity.
For example, relevant to this website and this thread, any member of Congress could sue Obama for illegally ordering an increase in US forces to Afghanistan including sending LtC Lakin there. However, since Congress implicitly authorizes the actions of the president through legislation and appropriations, it is hard to make the case that Obama is illegally exercising presidential power. Obama won the p0pular vote, won the Electoral College vote, had his electoral votes certified without objection and was sworn in. He is the president.
The primary tool of Congress to block unconstitutional acts by a president is impeachment.
Congressional lawsuits against the executive branch utilize members of Congress who voted against that particular measure but there is nothing in the law requiring that to be the case. The first question a judge is likely to ask a plaintiff is “why are you suing when you voted in favor of…?”

If a president was impeached and convicted and shortly afterwards issued military orders, who would have the right to contest the Constitutionality of his orders since he was not Constitutionally authorized to have those presidential powers at that time (even though he was elected, inaugurated, etc but could not have the powers on OTHER Constitutional grounds, e.g. that he was Constitutionally disqualified)? On what grounds could they sue, who would they sue, and in what court would they file suit?

Dwight, if Joe Biden’s birth facts are officially legally undetermined then I would agree with what you said (except that I never said there was a PROCEDURE for certifying a Pres or VP elect qualifying).

Seems to me the problem is that there is NOT a procedure. Seems to me that since the 20th Amendment doesn’t define a procedure and doesn’t authorize anybody to enact laws regarding the procedure, that the 20th Amendment leaves it to SCOTUS – that if there was a question of whether the Pres elect or VP elect had failed to qualify, SCOTUS would have to interpret and enforce the 20th Amendment’s provisions – since they are the ones authorized to resolve issues that arise from the Constitution or the laws, both in questions of law (interpretation of laws/Constitution) and fact (finding the facts of a particular case).

Both of which (interpretation of law and finding of facts) are essential to determining Constititutional eligibility and NEITHER of which are Congress authorized to do. Nathan Deal has asked to see Obama’s birth certificate. Without Obama’s permission he cannot find facts. Nobody in Congress was authorized to see Obama’s documents, nor are they authorized to decide the meaning of the Constitution, so how could they ever determine presidential eligibility?

The fact of the matter is that according to US law, Obama is not even supposed to be able to receive a paycheck – even as US Senator – without showing very specific documentation of his citizenship. With his amended BC he could not even prove that he is a US citizen, as required to be a US Senator. The only way he’s gotten around that is because THE LAW HAS NOT BEEN FOLLOWED.

Joey presented the idea that if the electoral vote was tangled up in lawsuits the President elect could have “failed to qualify” because there was uncertainty about the legality of the electoral vote. We STILL have lawsuits regarding Obama’s eligibility and the legality of the electoral vote, so in that sense Joe Biden would still be potentially disqualified as well.

I’ve never said that because I don’t think that Congress can decide whether Pres and VP candidates are Constitutionally qualified because we don’t have a clear SCOTUS ruling on the meaning of “natural born citizen”. Congress would be out-of-bounds in trying to rule on what that term means – as they were out of bounds in saying that John McCain is a “natural born citizen”.

The boundaries placed on legislative interference in the interpretation of the Constitution is probably why the Constitution only gives Congress authority to determine eligibility and other election issues for CONGRESS, but not for the judicial or executive branches. They are separate. That’s part of the separation of powers and balance of powers.

The interpretation of the Constitution is purposely assigned to the judiciary and not the legislative branch. And Hawaii law also recognizes that the legislative branch is not to be trusted with those decisions because those decisions MUST be protected from political manipulation, as much as possible. That’s why according to HRS 338-17 only “a judicial or administrative person or body” is allowed to determine whether an amended BC is probative, and only when the BC is “presented as evidence” (which implies a legal procedure, for which the official or body is legally accountable).

But all this is getting ahead of ourselves. We still haven’t established a way that a President elect would “fail to qualify” before Jan 20th when a Vice President elect does qualify.

My apologies to butterdezillion for my erroneous assumption that her reference to “vot[ing] for one ticket . . . since 1840″ was a mistaken reference to the presidential/vice presidential ticket system that the Twelfth Amendment was designed to accommodate. BD has been gracious enough to concede error when I called her out on a couple of other points and I, in kind, hereby acknowledge my error.

That said, I’m still not sure her statement is accurate, since as Justice Scalia discussed in a recent concurring opinion in John Doe No. 1 v. Reed, the Australian secret ballot wasn’t used in the United States before 1888. It isn’t apparent to me whether during the previous era of voting — often (and probably usually) without any official ballot form — it would have been possible to vote for a presidential candidate from one party and a vice presidential candidate from another. It strikes me as at least theoretically possible that in any given state, the winners of the presidential and vice presidential electoral votes could have come from different parties. Does anyone know?

And Dwight, the question of WHEN a disqualification was to be found out is another thing that shows the corruption of our courts. I can’t remember which court case it was, but standing was denied because the Constitution wouldn’t be broken until AFTER Obama’s illegal term started. But then you’re arguing now (and I believe at least one judge has also said) that once the term has started the 20th Amendment doesn’t apply.

IOW you’re darned if you question before Jan 20th and you’re darned if you question Jan 20th or later.

Seems to me that the checker-pants lawyers and the crooked judges have just erased the 20th Amendment by judicial coup, using the issue of “standing”.

Anyway, thank you for clarifying that a President-elect can “fail to qualify” by failing to meet the age, residency, and natural born citizenship status required for someone to be president. At least we’ve got that established then.

Now the question is who has the burden of proof – someone else to prove that the Pres-elect is NOT qualified (which nobody can do without the guy’s permission), or the Pres-elect to prove that he is.

The language of the Amendment is this: “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….”

What are the subjects (nouns)? What are the predicates (verbs)?

When it comes to receiving a paycheck from the federal government, who (according to law) has the burden of proof? Does the employer have to prove that the person is NOT a US citizen (note that it’s impossible to prove a negative…) or does the employee have to prove that they ARE a US citizen?

If FDR and Eisenhower have non-amended BC’s their birth facts are legally established on their BC’s. I don’t know if their BC’s were checked or not. In their cases there was no reason to believe that they were not qualified.

There WAS reason to question whether McCain was qualified so he presented his birth certificate. It was only when Obama decided to fight the lawsuits rather than simply show his BC that the questions of his eligibility became serious in my mind and in the minds of many others.

And now we find out that Obama’s BC is amended and thus has no more legal value than Monopoly money until a specific procedure is followed to determine the legal value of his BC. His birth facts are as legally undocumented as if he had no birth certificate at all.

WE KNOW HE FAILED TO QUALIFY. We know that he CHOSE to fail to qualify because any one of the 50+ lawsuits would have provided an opportunity for him to do the procedure required in order for him to legally establish his birth facts. Instead he chose to fight – BEFORE THE ELECTION, when everybody says we were all supposed to be resolving these questions. The fact of the matter is NOBODY COULD resolve these issues without his permission, AND HE REFUSED.

If FDR or Eisenhower had secret stories about their BC nobody knew it. WITH OBAMA, WE ALL KNEW HE WAS HIDING SOMETHING. It was up to him to “qualify” by Jan 20th. He very deliberately and very publicly offered a forged document (while stealing the identity/BC# of somebody else) rather than allow anybody to even see his genuine BC, much less go through the legal procedure required to legally establish his birth facts.

Huge, huge difference.

I’m sure I’ll regret asking, but I haven’t traveled far enough down the birth rabbit hole to know why butterdezillion continues to assert that President Obama’s birth certificate was amended. I thought that the birthers’ whole schtick was that they hadn’t seen his birth certificate. If not, why do they think they know it’s been amended. Does anyone know what that claim is about?

Dwight, the 20th Amendment also doesn’t say a person has to prove that the Pres-elect failed to qualify.

The president elect, having failed to qualify…. The word “qualify” is used as a prepositional phrase modifying a verb there.

Subject: president-elect
Verb: having failed (past tense)……….. (failed what?) to qualify.

Who is the actor there? What is the action? Does it matter that the only person who is legally ABLE to do that verb is Obama himself? Everyone else is actively prohibited from doing it (with the exception of the Secretaries of State before Obama was placed on the ballot – but Fukino illegally hid until early November of 2009 the Administrative Rules which showed that to be the case).

If a question arises regarding the Constitution, the judiciary is supposed to resolve it. Did Obama fail to qualify? That can only be known by a finding of fact and interpretation of the Constitution. The courts refuse.

You and I can go around till the cows come home, but the Constitution says that if there are controversies that arise regarding the laws or Constitution, the judiciary is supposed to resolve them – by finding of fact and interpretation of laws and Constitution. The judiciary refuses. They refused before the election. They refused after the popular vote and before the electoral vote. They refused after the electoral vote. They refused after the certification of the vote. They refused before the inauguration. They refused after the inauguration.

Does that pose any problem for you?

Your comment is awaiting moderation.
OK. Maybe the link is causing problems. I’ll have them as non-links and try again.

Have you read my blog, Dwight? butterdezillion.wordpress.com . The main post is butterdezillion.wordpress.com/2010/01/11/red-flags-in-hawaii-2/

At this point I could list about a half-dozen laws that Chiyome Fukino has broken in order to cover for Obama. Right now the OIP is (supposedly) investigating the HDOH for the illegal destruction of permanent records – including the original birth index list, the index to foreign births, and the birth certificate of the little girl whose BC# Obama stole to put on the Factcheck COLB (a record that the HDOH, Punchbowl Cemetery, and the VA have all similarly erased from their records – and yes, I have proof that she was on their records before I requested the records they now say they don’t have).

I had requested an investigation earlier for other crimes committed – including misprision of felony – and was told by the Ombudsman’s Office that they could not even investigate because they cannot investigate crimes.

And the fact of the matter is that HAWAII LAW DOES NOT ALLOW CHIYOME FUKINO TO DETERMINE THE FACTS OF OBAMA’S BIRTH. By law, the most she could say (without Obama first going through a procedure to legally establish the facts of his birth) is that there is a CLAIM that Obama was born in Hawaii. And if you look closely at her statement – from which she COULD NOT STRAY EVEN ONE WORD – that is EXACTLY what she said.

Furthermore, if you read my blog you will see that the HDOH has in 2 different ways indirectly confirmed that the Factcheck COLB is a forgery. If Fukino is trustworthy why didn’t she report that to law enforcement and why didn’t they arrest Obama right there and then? If Fukino is trustworthy why does she – to this day – have on the HDOH website that Obama posted his COLB (and linking to Factcheck) when Fukino herself knows that is a forgery?

These are serious questions. I hope you will give them serious consideration.

I was willing to give the HDOH the benefit of the doubt. I started my requests to them because I wanted to hear from their own mouths the confirmations that what they seemed to have said in their public statements is what they actually stand by. It was when I saw the steaming piles of corruption and lies emanating from that entire bureaucracy that I realized – for good – that Obama is not eligible and they have always known that.

Be sure you read the part where I asked Okubo directly whether she would have reported the Factcheck COLB as a forgery if she knew that it was. She said that state law forbids her from revealing ANYTHING that is on a BC (the implication being that she could not even tell law enforcement if Obama’s posted COLB was a forgery). If state law forbids Okubo, it also forbids Fukino. So why did either of them make any statements at all about what is claimed on Obama’s BC?

Oops. The Ombudsman’s Office is (supposedly) investigating the HDOH for the illegal destruction of records, not the OIP. The OIP says only the Ombudsman’s Office or AG’s office can do that. I copied the AG on all my communications with the Ombudsman’s Office.

IYou said, “In President-elect Obama’s case, there was no failure to qualify because he was a natural born citizen, having been born in Hawaii, he was older than 34 and he had lived in the United States for more than 14 years. Because he hadn’t failed to qualify, he was sworn in as President.”

How do you know what age Obama is? That has never been legally determined. Neither has his birthplace or the names of his parents.

Can someone with a legally undetermined age qualify as president?

Joey, if Obama “failed to qualify” by Jan 20th then the Constitution forbids him from having the presidential powers. That would include the power to make orders as CIC.

The only way that could not be relevant to Lt Col Lakin is if Lakin’s brigade commanders have the authority to increase the number of troops to Afghanistan and deploy those troops and the personnel to support OEF without an order from a valid CIC. Is that what you’re claiming?

Dwight, what I hear you saying is that if the same military which is on the hacker lists for The Post & Email decides they want to screw the Constitution they have the power to do so, no questions allowed to be asked.

That makes me feel real great about now.

I’m sure it makes our troops who have sworn on their sacred honor to defend the US and its Constitution from foreign and domestic enemies feel real great too. A real morale builder.

The guys and gals who are putting their lives on the line deserve better than this. It makes me sick to see how Obama, with the help of all his minions, is pissing on the sacred honor of people whose shoes they aren’t worthy to shine.

By law, Obama couldn’t even get a federal paycheck for cleaning toilets right now because he hasn’t done the paperwork. How the hell should he be allowed to issue military orders without the proper paperwork?

butterdezillion 07.11.10 at 17:02
Joey, if Obama “failed to qualify” by Jan 20th then the Constitution forbids him from having the presidential powers. That would include the power to make orders as CIC.

The only way that could not be relevant to Lt Col Lakin is if Lakin’s brigade commanders have the authority to increase the number of troops to Afghanistan and deploy those troops and the personnel to support OEF without an order from a valid CIC. Is that what you’re claiming?
—
But we know that Obama DID qualify because he has been the President of the United States for a year and a half now.

LtC Lakin is charged with disobeying the direct orders of his commanding officers not with disobeying Obama’s orders. Obama didn’t order Lakin to get on such and such a plane at such and such a time at such and such an airport.
What the prosecution will push is that if over a million men and women in uniform have followed the orders of their direct superior officers, what makes Lakin any different?

Joey, you said, “Courts have ruled that Obama is eligible and that he is the President of the United States legitimately.”

They have ruled that he is the president but they have never ruled on his eligibility. Never. They have denied standing for the issue to be addressed.

But if you look at the 20th Amendment, it doesn’t specifically say that the President-elect, having failed to qualify, shall not be the president. It says that the VP-elect shall act as president until a president qualifies.

A president-elect becomes the president simply because it’s noon on January 20th. Even after that is done that president can be denied the presidential powers until they meet the Constitutional requirements for exercising presidential powers. Taking the oath of office is one requirement. And qualifying is another.

If Obama’s birth facts were legally determined and we found that Obama is 20 years old, would the 20th Amendment allow him to exercise the powers of the presidency?

As a lawyer, I’m wary of legal statements not followed by citations. Butterdezillion asserts, without any supporting reference, that “the particular mode of documentation is very specific for anybody who is to receive a federal paycheck. Birth certificate and 2 other forms of legal documentation. That law has never been followed for Congress, Pres, or VP – even though they are not exempt according to the law.”

Does anyone know to what law butterdezillion is referring? Is there such a law? I work for the federal government and wasn’t required to show a birth certificate. And I’m sure of that because I don’t have a copy of my birth certificate.

Do I read butterdezillion correctly in post 171 to indicate that all those times she wrote about an amended birth certificate, she actually meant an amended certification of live birth? I though using the term “birth certificate” to refer to the certification of live birth was a birther no-no.

I’m very familiar with the birther mythology attacking the certification of live birth — a mythology that’s been thoroughly debunked at obamaconspiracy.org. I thought that when butterdezillion was referring to an amended birth certificate she meant an amended birth certificate. My mistake for interpreting her words according to their plane meaning.

The federal government does E-verify, I believe. So you wouldn’t have had to show your BC necessarily.

But they don’t do E-verify or require documents for elected officials, according to the article at http://www.sonorannews.com/archives/2010/100602/frntpg_ObamaSSN.html , because they (supposedly) have their documentation handled by SOS’s before they can be placed on the ballot. I can tell you that this is absolutely not true. My SOS basically said they have to take a politician at his word, can’t ask for documentation.

There are other documents that could be used for it besides a birth certificate. The I-9 Form has to be completed. The description of the documents to be provided are at http://www.uscis.gov/files/form/i-9.pdf

If anybody had done an E-verify on Obama’s birth certificate it would have come back saying he is undocumented. Of course he’s got several dozen Social Security numbers with his name so maybe they would see that he was EXTRA QUALIFIED because he’s got SS#’s from a bunch of different states – including the main SS# he uses, which is from Connecticut.

Your comment is awaiting moderation.
OK, I’ll take out the links.

The federal government does E-verify, I believe. So you wouldn’t have had to show your BC necessarily.

But they don’t do E-verify or require documents for elected officials, according to the article at sonorannews.com/archives/2010/100602/frntpg_ObamaSSN.html , because they (supposedly) have their documentation handled by SOS’s before they can be placed on the ballot. I can tell you that this is absolutely not true. My SOS basically said they have to take a politician at his word, can’t ask for documentation.

There are other documents that could be used for it besides a birth certificate. The I-9 Form has to be completed. The description of the documents to be provided are at uscis.gov/files/form/i-9.pdf

If anybody had done an E-verify on Obama’s birth certificate it would have come back saying he is undocumented. Of course he’s got several dozen Social Security numbers with his name so maybe they would see that he was EXTRA QUALIFIED because he’s got SS#’s from a bunch of different states – including the main SS# he uses, which is from Connecticut.

.

I know of no distinction between a COLB and a birth certificate, since as far as I can tell from HDOH responses (which doesn’t say much actually) the Certification of Live Birth is what their Administrative Rules refer to as an “Abbreviated Birth Certificate”.

The actual birth certificate that Hawaii has is amended, according to multiple responses to Hawaii’s FOIA (UIPA) requests. From what the HDOH said in their UIPA responses it was amended in 2006 when Obama was considering a run for the presidency and he was charged a fee for the amendment – which means that the amendment was not required because a hospital, doctor, or office worker made a mistake. Not a typo, for instance.
For the BC to be classified as amended it had to have been a major administrative amendment – affecting the basic integrity of the entire claim.

Which is why amended BC’s do not qualify as prima facie evidence and why a judicial or administrative person or body has to evaluate the claims and evidence in an official proceeding in order to determine whether the BC has any legal merit.

Of course, I only know this now because after weeks of hounding the HDOH and Lt Governor’s offices, the HDOH Administrative Rules were finally posted online in early November of 2009 – after being illegally removed from public access while the Obama eligibility questions were raging.

The COLB that Obama posted online is a forgery. The HDOH has indirectly confirmed that by

1) making a statutory admission that Obama’s BC is amended – which must be noted on any BC the HDOH prints for him. Since Factcheck doesn’t note the amendment it is known to be a forgery. And

2) confirming that the BC# has always been given by the HDOH on the “date filed”. Obama’s was “filed” 3 days before the Nordyke twins (which actually shows that Obama was NOT born at Kapiolani, since Kapiolani submitted their BC’s on Fridays, not Tuesdays) but has a BC# 2 higher (later) than theirs.

The COLB that my elected officials relied on – Factcheck – is confirmed as a forgery. By failing to tell the public that his campaign site posted what he knew to be a forgery, Obama violated (at the least) the Federal False Information Act, which forbids someone from deceiving Congress by what they say or fail to say.

That should get him in deep trouble. But as I’ve been saying, nobody in law enforcement will investigate.

The actual authentic birth certificate has note of the amendment. It also almost certainly has a 2006 certificate number, which is why they had to steal the BC# of a (I am almost certain) little girl who was born on Aug 4 and died on Aug 5, had her death announced in both papers, and was buried in the VA cemetery in Hawaii.

The cemetery now denies that they have any records on her, even though I’ve got screenshots showing that they did as of about a week before they answered my request. The VA also denies any record of her, even though I’ve also got screenshots showing that she was on their records. And the HDOH denies that they have a BC for her, even though her death was reported to the papers almost certainly by the hospital where she was born and died and they would have been legally required to file a BC for her. She would also need a BC to document that she was the daughter of a military man in order to be buried in the VA cemetery.

This is the kind of crap I’m experiencing from the VA, cemetery, and the HDOH. I’ve got the proof that they’re trying to delete this little girl’s BC from the record. And did I tell you that the original birth index which would most likely contain the BC#’s no longer exists even though it is required to be retained permanently?

These people are shredding everything in sight, and I can’t find any law enforcement people who give a rip.

Does that concern you at all?

The best that Hawaii has for documentation on Obama can never be any more legally significant than Monopoly money until it is presented as evidence to a judicial or administrative person or body.

So Joey, if the Indiana court hasn’t looked at Obama’s actual BC they can’t say when or where Obama was born, or to whom.

Did they look at Obama’s actual BC?

Dwight, if they don’t present a BC they have to present a passport or equivalent, which is SUPPOSED to have its claims backed up by a BC. I stand corrected (by my own self, since I was the one who came up with the document I was looking for anyway) on the amount and kind of documentation required; there are several other combinations which would suffice as well. But if I’m not mistaken the documents in Set One are considered enough because they are backed up by further legal-quality documentation such as a valid BC.

Of course, we know that Obama’s passport file was breached 3 different times by the company headed by the guy who Obama then rewarded with a position as National Security Advisor – John Brennan.

My SOS is John Gayle. I don’t know if I spoke with him directly or someone from his office, but he said that the voters, through the reporting of the media, are supposed to vet the candidates. I asked how they could do that if nobody can see the documents that alone would answer the questions. He said the media would never let a politician get away with lying.

I gagged. These are the morons our national security depends upon?

And as Linda Bentley pointed out in her article, Roger Calero made it on the ballot for president even though he’s clearly not eligible.

When I pointed out on my blog that the HDOH Administrative Rules would have allowed a SOS to request and receive Obama’s BC in order to provide the service of putting his name on the ballot, I was immediately shot down because the SOS could only ask for it if their state law DEMANDED that they specifically request to see the BC.

why Donofrio and Wrotnowski couldn’t hold their SOS’s accountable for allowing Calero on the ballot even though they are required by state law to determine eligibility before placing the names on the ballot. As long as the law didn’t require every single move the SOS made she could do as she darn well pleased and say that she THOUGHT that looking at Calero’s bellybutton would tell her he was eligible to run for president. Because that’s such a competent, logical, legal, and earnest way to determine eligibility.

It’s a sad, sad joke that after 9-11, perpetrated by some foreign terrorists who were registered US voters, we play bickering lawyer-type nitpicking over such serious issues. This nation is suicidal if we allow this to continue.

When did Obama have an I-9 filled out for him? What documents did he use?

Oh – and speaking of passports, did you realize that a judge has told the DOJ that they had to release the passport records for Ann Dunham and Lolo Soetoro by June 30th – and that wonderful, law-abiding DOJ has once again refused to produce the documents they are legally required to produce?

Lawlessness.

That’s why this isn’t about Obama at all, but about the corrupt tentacles that are everywhere in government, media, and law enforcement.

So now BD is relying on hearsay not even necessarily from her Secretary of State (whose name, if she’s from Nebraska, she misspelled), but from “him directly or someone from his office.” Yeah, real credible.

Doc Conspiracy has actually looked at and repudiated butterdezillion’s guano-crazy claims that President Obama’s birth certificate has been amended.

See here:

http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2010/02/green-flags-in-hawaii/

and here:

http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2010/02/butterdezillion-strikes-back/

I gave Doc Conspiracy and his cohorts about 17 different legal documents which supported my claim. I asked for legal documents which would refute the ones I had. Nada.

I had statements from OIP Attorney Linden Joesting, the OIP’s booklet on UIPA, the actual UIPA law, OIP Opinion Letters, legal explanations of FOIA’s Glomar exceptions , OIP Director Takase’s communications to me, Terri K’s requests for clarification, my own UIPA requests…

Dr. Con gave nothing in return.

He did, however, tell me more about what is required on birth certificates, which is his field of expertise so I was thankful for that. He agreed that the HDOH was not answering me truthfully regarding what is on their complete birth certificates.

Gosh this sounds like parody, but I don’t think she means it to be: “I called my SOS office. It was a guy on the phone. My SOS’s office told me those things.”

So how would somebody “fail to qualify”? If they don’t have to prove their qualifications, and if whether they are actually qualified doesn’t matter and nobody has the ability to check their qualifications…. how could anybody ever “fail to qualify”?

Seems to me the only way would be if the President-elect stood on a street corner waving a sheet of paper saying, “I’m really not eligible. I am a communist hell-bent on destroying this nation.”

Even that probably wouldn’t be enough.

If Fidel Castro was elected to be president, how would he ever “fail to qualify”? There would be no way to legally prove he wasn’t qualified because only he could release the records which would prove it one way or another.

So my question still stands: How could a president-elect “fail to qualify” by Jan 20th? Only if he turned himself in?