It was Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s version of a wardrobe malfunction. He flubbed the 35-word oath and learned why his predecessor Chief Justice William Rehnquist always read the oath for accuracy. Now, there is a debate as to whether the oath is constitutionally valid and the possibility that Obama should take the oath again out of an abundance of caution. Today I did this segment on NPR’s Talk of the Nation. I will also be discussing this tonight on MSNBC Countdown.
The words of the oath are placed in quotations in the Constitution and are therefore to be taken with precision. Roberts was anything but precise. He moved the adverb, which Obama appears to have caught to his credit.
This is the problem of trying to to without notes.
The oath is supposed to read: “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and will to best of my ability preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
Instead, Roberts said the words: “that I will execute the office of President to the United States faithfully,” putting “faithfully” at the end of the phrase, and substituting the word “to” for “of.”
The easiest solution is to simply retake the oath, which was done by Calvin Coolidge and Chester Arthur. For an article discussing the issue, click here.
For the clip, click here.
rafflaw –
Yeah, I knew if there was any discrepancy they would be all over it. It’s funny (and a little sad) but I distrust these neocons so much that it was the first thing I thought when the oath was flubbed.
“They may try to exploit that …” I thought to myself.
How about old Limbaugh hoping that ‘the new president fails’? Just what I would have expected from him. He’s going to have to go back on the oxycontin to deal with all this. I guess he can call Sarah Palin’s in-laws if he gets the itch …
rachael maddow needs to be ashamed of herself for not telling the truth about this so called 15 year old. He was the Son of an Al Queda terrorist!
Jill & rafflaw:
Nice try. Isn’t it amazing how everybody in Prison was framed. See below, but I know, I know, this means you have to BELIEVE YOUR FELLOW citizens over a son of an Al Queda member:
Prosecutors called FBI agent Robert Fuller to help counter a defense effort to exclude statements by Khadr, a Toronto native who was 15 when he was captured in Afghanistan and is now 22.
The defense says incriminating statements by Khadr, the son of an Al Qaeda operative who was killed by Pakistani forces in 2003, were obtained through coercion and torture, but Fuller and other prosecution witnesses say the defendant willingly spoke to interrogators without pressure.
Fuller testified that he never saw Khadr subjected to sleep deprivation or shackled in “stress positions,” and that the defendant never complained to him about being kept in isolation or threatened.
“We treated him no differently than we would anybody back in the states,” Fuller said. “We treated him with respect just like we would anyone else.”
Do you both have a white flag outside your house? You should so when America gets attacked again by these same people, they will know you were a “friendly”…..
Mojo,
You are right that it is better safe than sorry. Especially when Fox News was already all over the neocon spin that Obama may not be President, before the the Oath part two.
Unca –
No problem with the question, it’s a valid one, but the ceremony is, to many, anything but meaningless …
Unca:
Art. II, Sec. 1 of the Constitution provides that the President serves a four year term. It also specifies that “[b]efore he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
That would seem to imply that prior to taking office for his second term he must take the Oath again. I believe that is how a court would construe the language.
I have a question, if a sitting president is re-elected, would it be legal for the president to skip taking the oath again?
It would seem to me that the first oath would still be in force, so the second inaugural is nothing more than meaningless ceremony.
I know this wouldn’t apply to members of Congress or the Senate, since every two years a new Congress is conveined, so re-taking the oath would be necessary.
But But PattyC “summahs” near the Chief Justice.
P.S. One can not determine Jawad’s guilt or innocence until the young man is given a fair and proper trial (can you say, “due process”?)
Regarding the Roberts flub:
If my team hits a home run and the batter runs the bases; if there is even a shred of doubt about whether or not he touched home plate you send that batter back out on the field and TOUCH HOME PLATE.
That’s how little I trust the outgoing whack-jobs. Don’t give them any possible edge to question this new President’s validity of power.
In keeping with the sports analogy, better ‘safe’ than sorry …
Perhaps this small snafu will allow these two men to become friends; or at least enhance their professional respect for each other since Obama did not vote for Robert’s confirmation and I would be surprised if Robert’s voted for Obama.
Regardless, such minor messiness allows us all to learn just a bit more about our constitution and prompts additional and productive civics discussions.
MSNBC troll,
Just one correction about your claim that Rachel Maddow failed to mention that Jawad killed a soldier with a grenade. Unfortunately, the chief military prosecutor at Gitmo seems to think that there was little or no evidence of the crime that this youngster was tortured over. So MSNBC,the next time you are trolling about, try the using the facts. I know that would mean that you would have to actually read something other than a Fox news transcript.
Neil B 😉
I and my SO, a vascular surgeon, are both Harvard-trained physicians, living and, now, also practicing in the great State of Maine-my birthplace and ancestral home.
John Roberts’ Congressional hearings took place in 2005.
His ‘recent’ seizure episode at St. George, for which he has since been prescribed anti-seizure medication, took place in 2007.
As usual, Jill does not know what she is talking about and apparently neither do you!
Here’s what one of our soldiers has to say about this boy:
s request to suspend it for 120 days.
“Suffice to say, Jawad’s chief prosecutor at Guantanamo — the Bronze-Star-recipient Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld, who since 9/11 has served in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia and Africa — became so repelled by the treatment to which Jawad was subjected, by the fact that virutally all of the evidence against him was severely coerced, and by the fact that there is “no credible evidence” to justify his detention, that he first demanded that Jawad be released, then, when Bush officials refused, unsuccessfully demanded to be relieved of his duty to prosecute, and then finally resigned. He has now become one of the key witnesses in Jawad’s habeas proceeding, and you can (and should) read Lt. Col. Vandeveld’s Sworn Declaration in Support of Jawad’s Habeas Petition here. In Paragraph 2, he writes:
To underscore how dubious and unreliable is the evidence against Jawad, how far away he is from a “hard-core terrorist,” and how outrageous is his ongoing detention, Lt. Col. Vandeveld very poignantly wrote:
Had I returned to Afghanistan or Iraq, and had I encountered Mohammed Jawad in either of those hostile lands, where two of my friends have been killed in action and one of my very best friends in the world had been terribly wounded, I have no doubt at all — none — that Mr. Jawad would pose no threat whatsoever to me, his former prosecutor and now-repentant persecuter. Six years is long enough for a boy of sixteen to serve in virtual solitary confinement, in a distant land, for reasons he may never fully understand.
Worst of all, Lt. Col. Vandeveld explains that he began to realize the grave injustice of prosecuting Jawad as he discovered long-concealed evidence proving just how brutal and continuous the abuse of Jawad has been, and how virtually all of the evidence against him was suspect at best and almost certainly was unreliably coerced.
In Afghanistan, Jawad was severely beaten, drugged, and threatened with death for both himself and his family if he refused to confess to the grenade incident. That occurred just weeks after the incident where two Afghan detainees, including a completely innocent 22-year-old Afghan cab driver, were beaten to death — murdered — while detained and interrogated by U.S. troops in Bagram. The confession Jawad “signed” (with his fingerprint, since he can’t write his name) became the centerpiece of the Bush administration’s case against him, and yet, it was written in a language Jawad did not speak or read, and was given to him after several days of beatings, druggings and threats — all while he was likely 15 or 16 years old.
In December, 2003, when he was (at most) 18 years old, Jawad — according to Guantanamo prison logs — attempted to kill himself. In 2004, he was subjected to the so-called “frequent flier” program, where, in a two-week period alone, he was moved to a new cell 112 times — an average of every 3 hours, in order to ensure he was sleep deprived and disoriented. Over the six years at Guantanamo, Jawad was repeatedly subjected to extreme cold, bright lights, and various stress positions. He was often kept in solitary confinement or in “linguistic confinement,” isolated from anyone who spoke his only language (Pashto). As recently as May of 2008, while Jawad was at Guantanamo, he was beaten so badly by guards that, weeks later, he still had extreme bruises on his arms, knees, shoulders, forehead and ribs.” (from Glenn Greenwald’s column of today)
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Hey Turley did ya see the “NSA Security Person” Olbermann had on tonight? He thinks the FBI & the NSA are spying on him. He also pointed out he had volunteered for the Obama campaign and had presented a letter that “he assumed made it to the desk of President Obama” pointing out spying issues at the NSA!
Olbermann looked like a total FOOL for having this guy on! Send thanks for Olberamnn for us; we just lost another 100,000 viwers and now salaries may get cut.
DID YA NOTICE TONIGHT RACHAEL MADDOW WHINED ABOUT THE 15 YEAR OLD BEING HELD AT GITMO………SHE NEVER TOLD HER SMALL AUDIENCE THIS 15 YEAR OLD KILLED AN AMERICAN SOLDIER WITH A GRENADE DID SHE???
YOU PEOPLE JUST DESPISE OUR SOLDIERS AND IT SHOWS ON KEITH OLBERMANN AND RACHAEL MADDOW AND THEIR GUESTS AND WHAT THEY SAY AT MSNBC BEFORE THE SHOW!
Patty C, because of his position we little people have learned a lot about Justice Roberts’ medical issues, like his seizures for which he surely takes some medication. He had one “at his vacation home on Hupper Island” Maine (presumably, where he is sometimes your neighbor? Man, that Internet sure is something ….) In any case, he flubbed the words first, attn. blaster.
BTW it’s all moot now anyway! Our Constitutional “crisis” has been resolved: Obama retook the Oath of office today readministered by John Roberts. Heh, they said an abundance of precaution (considering the wingnuts among the rabble and in halls of power …)
But again, where did some folks hear about the mysterious “written version” they suspected or claimed Obama signed in pen? It looks doubtful now, no one mentioned it. I’d like to think there’s a signed Oath so we’d have the image to celebrate. I wanted to make a tee shirt from it.
PS: If McCain had been elected, would someone press a claim that being born in the Canal Zone wasn’t really natural born? (BTW what does “natural born” really mean anyway, it doesn’t say WFW “born inside the borders of the USA.”)
Mespo,
I just saw that story that Obama retook the Oath. Now we really have a Democratic President.
The Washington Post is reporting that twice is the charm as President Obama rounded up that silver-tongued orator, CJ Roberts, for “Swearing In –The Sequel” at the White House.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2009/01/21/obama_takes_his_oath_of_office.html?wprss=44
After pondering Chief Justice Roberts’ portrait, and in particular, that broad grin, I must ask myself, does he know something we don’t?
Jill 1, January 21, 2009 at 10:46 am
‘And Chief Justice Roberts was so well medicated at his Congressional hearing! (He looked liked he’d taken a bolus of downers!) Given the climate, I’d retake the oath.’
———
Just what is supposed to be meant by this remark…???
The Chief Justice is a summer neighbor of ours and I can assure you, Jill, you know NOTHING of his personal OR medical history.
Just for peace of mind, our newly elected President should probably take the oath again-before another step of any significance is taken.