Give Us Liberty

Oathgate Revisited

THE ARTICLE II RED-HERRING

by Jane Menta

Chief Justice Roberts "reswears" in Obama, in the Oval Office.

(Dec. 11, 2009) — Who can forget Barack Hussein Obama’s slightly mutilated inaugural oath January 20, 2009? Fault assignment and explanations and review of the actual wording, have been analyzed ad nauseum. Some argue that it was Chief Justice Robert’s fault and even point to his history of epilepsy (which Wikipedia expounds on extensively) . Some believe Obama interrupted Roberts which tripped things up.

An example of this analysis comes from Wikipedia columnist Jeffrey Toobin:

Through intermediaries, Roberts and Obama had agreed how to divide the thirty-five-word oath for the swearing in. Obama was first supposed to repeat the clause “I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear.” But, when Obama heard Roberts begin to speak, he interrupted Roberts before he said “do solemnly swear.” This apparently flustered the Chief Justice, who then made a mistake in the next line, inserting the word “faithfully” out of order. Obama smiled, apparently recognizing the error, then tried to follow along. Roberts then garbled another word in the next passage.”

Reactions were invariably critical of Roberts, but even one Obama supporter astutely noted in a Washington Post complaint, “Whether through design or an amazing lack of preparation, Justice Roberts’s behavior was a disgrace.”

All the chatter is not the matter: It is what Obama said, not Chief Justice Roberts, that is of importance. Look instead, at that to which Obama swore.

“I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear… that I will execute… the office of president of the United States faithfully… and will to the best of my ability… preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. So help me God.”

Was this invalid?

Article II section i of the United States Constitution contains the simple presidential oath recited by every president since George Washington in 1789.

“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.”

Premised upon the obvious truism “If it aint broke, don’t fix it”, Obama’s flubbed oath ostensibly “requiring” a retake, implied, in fact encouraged the idea that the original oath was contestable.

Democrat Chris Wallace even said: “We’re wondering here whether or not Barack Obama in fact is the president of the United States. They had a kind of garbled oath. It’s just conceivable that this will end up going to the courts.”

The White House justified a retake of the oath based on what White House Council Greg Craig called, “an abundance of caution.”

Was his First Oath “contestable”? Obama did swear he would “execute” the office of president.

“We decided that because it was so much fun …,” Obama joked to reporters who followed press secretary Robert Gibbs into the room. No TV camera crews or news photographers were allowed in. Obama did not use a bible when swearing the retake oath. Wikipedia also mentions that “reporters were present” at the Second Oath however there is no reference to who these reporters were, nor their attributable commentary, editorial, or report.

To listen to an purported audio file of the “reswearing in cerimony”, which occured at States at 19:35 EST, January 21, 2009 (00:35 UTC, January 22, 2009) , click this link (Transcript and Ogg Vorbis sound file, c/o Wikipedia).

Who were these unnamed reporters? Why aren’t any of them pictured? Why were no non-government documentarians allowed to record such a historic event for external analysis?

Because there is no official attribution from the White House, no documented chain of possession, nothing to indicate this recording as official property of the US Government, Wikimedia commons debated the inclusion of the grainy Second Oath in Wikipedia. The recording has no designation as being official, and may have been surreptitiously recorded or even counterfeit. What may have gone unnoticed by many is that while the First Oath was meticulously analyzed for every nuance, intonation, hesitation and inflection, the Second Oath was never officially presented for any analysis whatsoever. Even the transcript of the second oath was never published in the Congressional Record, or in the Federal Register.

Trying to track down the Holy Grail of the *Official* Second Oath is dizzying. Upon request by this citizen journalist, it is not available through the United States Supreme Court. SCOTUS states that it is also not required to abide Freedom of Information Requests because it is “not a federal agency”. The transcript is not made available through Justice Robert’s office. The Supreme Court information office directed the search to the White House. The White House operator deflected inquiry stating that requests for the transcript must be made to the Department of Justice. The Department of Justice stated such requests must go through the Attorney General and instructed search to the Federal Register. The Federal Register does not contain the transcript for the Second Oath. The Attorney General directed the search to the White House Management and Budget Office or the National Archives FOIA Officers, neither of which responded to FOIA requests for an official version of the Second Oath.

There has never been made available an *official* public video tape of the Second Oath, only the grainy recording of unknown attribution. There has never been any more official media offering than several photographs. However, this may change, as do so many pieces of information on the net.

CNN’s analysis of the two oaths invited readers to, “Compare first and second attempts” however though the First Oath was shown with a video, no transcript or video or audio is made available for the Second Oath until recently.

By Wednesday morning, January 21, 2009, Obama had sworn to execute the office of the president, and by Wednesday evening, Obama had sworn, by unofficial source, the Presidential Oath in Article II Section 1 of the US Constitution.

Rewind: What about Roberts and Obama?

Roberts was the first Supreme Court Justice to swear in a president who voted against him (in 2005). And Roberts was the first Supreme Court Justice to swear in any single president in a single term, twice. Roberts and Obama were criticized for not flawlessly repeating the oath written in Article II Section 1 of the United States Constitution, and the Second Oath ostensibly was meant to avert criticism of the one-word diversion from the oath as set-forth in the Constitution.

The Article II Red Herring (“Look at *this *Article II concern, not *that*one…”)

Such apparent meticulous attention to Article II Section 1 of the Constitution provides cynical and stark contrast to what was really going on in the months prior to the inauguration oath taken by Barack Hussein Obama. As time-honed experience tells us, “We” should always be looking at the hand the Obama people are not pointing at. Obama visited with Justice Roberts specifically in his private chambers in a meeting closed to the public on January 14, 2009. Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden also met with the other Supreme Court members, in the Court’s ceremonial West Conference Room, just before his inauguration.

Obama and Biden, without the plaintiffs present, met with the very justices who were deciding a case which exacted that Barack Hussein Obama was a British Citizen at birth and thus ineligible to be president by, none other than, Article II Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution. The case filed by Orly Taitz, which appeared, and then mysteriously after the Roberts-Obama meeting, *disappeared* from the Supreme Court dockets. Further, Roberts and the other eight justices had already held two ‘Distribution for Conferences’ on the Donofrio and Wrotnoski cases on Obama’s citizenship ineligibility.

For the first time in 16 years, a President-elect (Obama) and Vice President-elect (Biden) paid a pre-inaugural visit to the Supreme Court. Interestingly, Obama supporter Jeffrey Toobin’s analysis tries to avert attention from this pre-inauguration closed-door face-to-face meeting, when he writes that “Through intermediaries” the flow and pattern of the oath recitation was agreed to between Roberts and Obama. However, all evidence shows that Roberts and Obama themselves, two Harvard graduates with exquisite seasoned speaking abilities and didactic timing capabilities, decided the exact flow of their historic interchange, not “through intermediaries”.

Pictured: Defendant President Elect Barack Obama and Vice President Elect Joe Biden meet with Supreme Court Justices January 14, 2009, while several pending presidential eligibility cases were before the Court. Justice Alito chose to be absent. (c/o Change.gov)

All evidence points to highly unethical and untoward and impeachable behavior and breach of fiduciary duty and treason by both Roberts and Obama and other Supreme Court justices, meeting while a case was pending absent the presence of plaintiffs. The probability is high that the “flub of oath” was anything but a mistake and that the secretive Second Oath had only to do with constructing a feigned, artificial nod to the absolute requirements of and respect for Article II Section 1 of the Constitution. The publicized meeting between Roberts and Obama January 14, 2009, was a slap in the face of judicial balance.

The Citizen Journalist asks the questions the media will not touch

Where is the Official White House recognition of what was said during the Second Oath? The Inaugural Oath is a verbal contract with America, and of critical import, and We The People deserve to know in official printed testimony format, not a grainy smuggled non-attributed version exactly what was spoken. We deserve to know why the Supreme Court has so cynically faulted at its post, and faltered at its obligations to the American people and The Constitution. In light of the sum total breach of fiduciary obligations to America, the diversionary Article II Red Herring “fishy” unofficial Second Oath does not inspire any confidence in the fiduciary obligation of either the Supreme Court or of Mr. Obama, to the Constitution. At this point all we can see is that Mr. Obama is indeed working to “execute” the office of the president. According to the dictionary, the verb “execute” has the following meanings:

Main Entry: *ex·e·cute*

Pronunciation: \ˈek-si-ˌkyüt\

Function: *verb*

Inflected Form(s): *ex·e·cut·ed*; *ex·e·cut·ing*

Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French *executer,* from
*execucion*execution

Date: 14th century

*transitive verb*

1: to carry out fully: put completely into effect
2: to do what is provided or required by
3: to put to death especially in compliance with a legal sentence
4: to make or produce (as a work of art) especially by carrying out a
design

For more information on Obama’s “inauguration” certimony, click this link.