Donald Trump’s No Good, Very Bad Day In Court

President Trump lost another court decision regarding his border wall on Friday. Actually, the decision regarding the wall was only one of five court decisions that the president lost that day, but the ruling against the use of presidential emergency powers to get around congressional opposition is a singularly important one for the rule of law and the Constitution.

In West Texas, U.S. District Judge David Briones, a Clinton appointee, ruled that Donald Trump’s attempt to reprogram money appropriated by Congress for other purposes toward building a border wall was “unlawful.” Briones wrote that the 2019 omnibus spending bill specifically allocated $1.375 billion for border fencing and limited construction to the “Rio Grande Valley sector” of Texas.

“The Congressional language in the [bill] reveals Congress’s intent to limit the border barrier funding,” Briones wrote, adding “the plain text of the CAA [Consolidated Appropriations Act] restricts the amount and location of funding for border barrier construction,” prohibiting the president from diverting money earmarked for military construction and counterdrug operations to the wall.

Stuart Gerson, a former DOJ official from the first Bush Administration applauded the ruling, telling Politico, “As someone who served in government under a Republican administration, I never imagined a Republican president would attempt to expand executive power this far by overriding the appropriations power that belongs to Congress.”

“I hope today’s ruling will prompt Republicans in Washington to recommit to the checks and balances that have defined our Republic and protected our freedom,” Gerson added.

In reality, the fight to preserve congressional budgetary authority is not over. The next step for Judge Briones is to allow both sides to argue the scope of an injunction against using the reprogrammed funds and the Trump Administration is certain to appeal. In July, the Supreme Court dismissed a similar injunction but did not rule on the merits of a separate case challenging Trump’s wall construction.

Elsewhere, three separate federal courts ruled against the Trump Administration’s “public charge” rule that makes it more difficult for immigrants who might need public assistance to get green cards. Judges in New York, California, and Washington issued injunctions that stopped the Department of Homeland Security from enforcing the rule.

In Washington, U.S. District Judge Rosanna Malouf Peterson, an Obama appointee, ruled that the government had "not cited any statute, legislative history, or other resource that supports the interpretation that Congress has delegated to DHS the authority to expand the definition of who is inadmissible as a public charge or to define what benefits undermine, rather than to promote, the stated goal of achieving self-sufficiency." Two other judges, both appointed by Bill Clinton, issued similar rulings.

Acting Director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services Ken Cuccinelli argued in a statement that the rule, which exempted immigrants who have been granted asylum, lawful permanent residents and refugees, merely enforced current immigration law.

"The public charge regulation defines this law to ensure those seeking to come or stay in the U.S. can successfully support themselves financially and will not rely on public benefits as they seek opportunity here,” Cuccinelli said.

Friday’s injunctions were based on the likelihood that the plaintiffs suing the government would prevail but did not issue final decisions in the cases. As with the case regarding Donald Trump’s emergency authority, the final ruling is likely to be appealed to the Supreme Court.

Finally, the president also lost an appeal to overturn a decision requiring that he comply with a House subpoena to provide his tax documents. The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled two to one that the president must turn over eight years of accounting documents. Judges appointed by Obama and Clinton comprised the majority while a Trump appointee dissented.

"We detect no inherent constitutional flaw in laws requiring presidents to publicly disclose certain financial information. And that is enough," the ruling stated.

Even though the five rulings fell along party lines, the evidence that activist judges ruled against Donald Trump out of tribal allegiances is slim in two of the three cases. The sole exception is the immigration cases, which hinge on Section 212(a)(4) of the Immigration and Naturalization Act The INA states that “any alien who…  is likely at any time to become a public charge is inadmissible.” As the Immigrant Legal Resource Center explains, the new policy reinterprets the vague language of the law to change the standard from “assessing whether an applicant is likely to become primarily dependent [emphasis theirs] on the government for income support” to redefine a “public charge as a person who receives any number of public benefits [emphasis mine] for more than an aggregate of 12 months over any 36-month period of time.” This is a vastly more restrictive policy, but it would seem to be within the bounds of bureaucratic rulemaking.

When it comes to congressional subpoenas, however, the Administration seems to be in the wrong. Neomi Rao, the dissenting Trump-appointed judge, wrote, “The Constitution and our historical practice draw a consistent line between the legislative and judicial powers of Congress. The majority crosses this boundary for the first time by upholding this subpoena investigating the illegal conduct of the President under the legislative power.”

However, the Supreme Court ruled in 1927 that Congress’ power to investigate is implicit. A majority held, “In actual legislative practice power to secure needed information by such means has long been treated as an attribute of the power to legislate. It was so regarded in the British Parliament and in the Colonial legislatures before the American Revolution; and a like view has prevailed and been carried into effect in both houses of Congress and in most of the state legislatures.” Republicans had no problem with congressional investigations into the IRS, Solyndra, and Fast and Furious.

But it is President Trump’s attempt to use a national emergency to subvert the express will of Congress that is the Administration’s most egregious example of poor legal reasoning. As Republicans were fond of pointing out during the Obama years, the Constitution explicitly gives the power of the purse to the House of Representatives, which declined to give the president the money that he requested for his wall. Congress’s decision to reject the president’s request does not constitute a national emergency, especially when the situation has been ongoing for decades, including two years of the current Administration in which the current president rejected three deals for wall funding.

The national emergency not only defies the Constitution and common sense, it also defies the National Emergencies Act, which does not give the president unlimited power. Even if the emergency was genuine, Trump’s actions go beyond the limited power delegated by Congress, such as the stipulation that the emergency “requires use of the armed forces.”

A final ruling striking down Donald Trump’s abuse of national emergency authority would not only be a good thing, it is vital to the constitutional balance of powers. If all the president has to do to bend Congress to his will is to find some dubious grounds to declare an emergency then Congress becomes extraneous and unnecessary. We will have moved from a constitutional republic to rule by presidential decree.

“Today’s ruling vindicates the Founders’ wisdom and confirms that the president is not a king and that he cannot override Congress’s power to decide how to appropriate funds,” Kristy Parker, a plaintiff’s attorney with Protect Democracy said of the ruling on the border wall.

Here’s hoping that the constitutionalists on the Supreme Court see it the same way.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Can America be saved?

During the Obama Administration, a frequent rallying cry among conservatives has been the need to “take our country back.” The Obama era has brought the fundamental change that the future president promised in 2008, but has left many Americans feeling that the country is on the wrong track.

Much of the focus on restoring America is centered on restoring Republicans –constitutional conservatives in particular – to the White House. Winning the election of 2016, however, will prove much easier than reversing American decline. Many of the problems faced by the United States are in reality merely symptoms of deeper problems that may well prove impossible to fix, even with committed conservative Republicans in control of both houses of Congress and the presidency.

The national debt

The most obvious of long term problems is the mounting federal debt. The debt, which has been increasing for years under both Republicans and Democrats, almost doubled under President Obama and now stands at more than $18 trillion. If this were not bad enough, the figure is incomplete because it does not include unfunded liabilities for items such as entitlement programs and federal pensions. The true debt is more than $100 trillion according to Forbes, an amount that the government will almost certainly never be able to repay.

Republicans under John Boehner deserve credit for attacking this problem, but their efforts have been woefully inadequate, due in no small part to President Obama. The sequester led to the first real cuts in the federal budget since the 1950s. At this point, federal spending has declined for three consecutive years for the first time since the 1920s, but while the deficit has been reduced, it has not been eliminated. The federal debt continues to increase, albeit at a slower rate.

Federal borrowing has also been aided by historically low interest rates over the past decade, but this cannot be expected to continue indefinitely. Currently, interest payments make up seven percent of the federal budget according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. As the debt continues to grow and interest rates rise, payments on interest will crowd out other budget items. At some point, Americans will have to choose between national defense and entitlements.

The destruction of the family

Hidden behind many symptoms of American decline is the decline of the family. Statistics show that half a century ago, almost all children were born to intact families. Divorce was uncommon and most kids grew up with two parents. Today, almost half of first babies are born to unmarried mothers. Two things caused the change: birth control and the welfare programs of the Great Society.

Birth control eliminated the big reason that women had for abstaining from sex until marriage. The increased availability of sex outside of marriage eliminated a big reason for men to get married. Accordingly, marriage rates have dropped since birth control became widely available.

Complementary to birth control was the fact that, if a woman did get pregnant outside of marriage, the government would now subsidize the costs of raising children for single parents. Men need no longer feel the pressure to marry a woman that they had “knocked up.” Dad wasn’t needed because Uncle Sam would fill the void.

The problem is that a government check is not as effective a parent as an actual, flesh and blood father. Studies have shown that children of single-parent households are more at risk for juvenile delinquency and drug abuse than their peers and are more likely to live in poverty. They also tend to have more children outside of marriage, requiring more government financial assistance, in a vicious cycle that perpetuates itself and that will be harder and harder to break.

Executive usurpation of Congress

A less obvious threat to the future of the United States is the damage that President Obama has done to the balance of power between the presidency and Congress. After the 2010 elections, President Obama learned that he could bypass Congress to enact difficult-to-pass items of legislation through the administrative rulemaking process of executive agencies. Net neutrality and new carbon regulations by the Environmental Protection Agency are two examples of this.

When the Republicans took control of the House and then the Senate, Obama increasingly relied on Executive Orders and administrative rulemaking to advance his agenda. A well-known example is the president’s 2012 directive on immigration. Two more recent examples are the agreement with Iran, which Obama refuses to call a treaty because that would require ratification by the Senate, and this week’s revelation, reported by Maggie Gallagher in The Pulse, that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission unilaterally criminalized workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The law, as written, does not include sexual orientation as a protected class.

Republicans have made attempts to rein in the president, but, all too often, these attempts fall victim to Democratic filibusters or the president’s veto pen. The Constitution is inadequate to deal with a president who has no respect for the rule of law. This was noted by framer John Adams who said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

It is unlikely that future presidents will not remember President Obama’s success at circumventing Congress with executive actions. It will be very tempting for Obama’s successors to adopt the same strategy of legislation by “a pen and a phone.”

The failure of the courts

Closely related to President Obama’s usurpation of congressional authority is the failure of the courts to adequately provide a check to unconstitutional laws and executive regulations. The appointment of liberal judicial activists for decades has eviscerated the judicial branch as a check to Congress and the president. The problem is not limited to the Supreme Court, but includes federal and state courts around the country, as evidenced by the plethora of state judicial decisions striking down definition of marriage of laws.

Likewise, the problem is not new. There have been many bad Supreme Court decisions throughout our history, notably the Dred Scott decision of 1857, but the idea of justices creating law rather than interpreting it stems back at least 80 years to the New Deal. In Wickard v. Filburn (1942), the Court ruled that the interstate commerce clause could be interpreted to mean that Congress could regulate commerce within a state, the opposite of what the Constitution says. Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) created the heretofore unknown “right to privacy” that led to other bad decisions such as Roe v. Wade (1973).

These earlier bad decisions are the direct lineage of more recent bad decisions like King v. Burwell (2015), in which a majority ruled that an “Exchange established by the State” can also mean “exchange set up by the federal government,” NFIB v. Sebelius (2012), where the Court ruled that Congress can tax people for not doing things it wants them to do, and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), where a majority found that the dignity of homosexuals required the justices take defining marriage out of the hands of the states and place it into their own hands, the will of the people and the Constitution be damned. As Justice Scalia lamented in his King v. Burwell dissent, a judicial philosophy that allows judges to make “interpretive distortions… ignores the American people’s decision to give Congress ‘all legislative Powers’ enumerated in the Constitution.”

A constitutional republic requires the rule of law to exist. When judges rewrite laws based on their own desires, the rule of law is in peril. Judicial activism is a problem, but judicial restraint in the face of unconstitutional laws is just as threatening.

America’s core problems are deeply rooted in decades of progressive policies and social tinkering as well as a changing culture. The left has been very successful at shifting culture away from the liberty-focused, hardworking culture of our forefathers to an attitude of dependence on government. Top down policy changes cannot correct cultural issues. Conservatives must focus on changing the culture of America from the grass roots as well.

No one can say for sure how long America will continue to struggle along under the weight of these four possibly insurmountable obstacles. It might take decades for them to take their toll on the country. We might follow in the footsteps of Europe’s social democracies with a generation or more of stagnation and decline.

Or, just the opposite, our core problems might never run their full course. Outside influences – from ISIS to Iran to China – might hasten our decline since weakness is an invitation to adversaries. As Lenin said, “Probe with a bayonet: if you meet steel, stop. If you meet mush, then push.”

Read the full article on Examiner.com

Poll: Democrats ready to jettison courts

A stunning new poll released today by Rasmussen found that a relative majority of Democrats believe that President Obama should be able to ignore federal courts. The February 20 poll comes as the Obama Administration faces a host of legal obstacles which include a federal judge’s injunction against the president’s executive immigration amnesty and a high-profile challenge to the Affordable Care Act, “Obamacare,” in the Supreme Court.

Rasmussen reports that nearly half of Democrats, 43 percent, “believe the president should have the right to ignore the courts.” This was a plurality, also called a relative majority, since only 35 percent of Democrats opposed having President Obama ignore the courts.

Democrats were starkly out of step with the rest of the country on the issue. Among likely U.S. voters, only 26 percent wanted the president to ignore the courts. Sixty percent felt that the president should listen to and abide by court rulings. Not surprisingly, 81 percent of Republicans felt that Mr. Obama should listen to the courts.

The poll further found that 52 percent believe that legal challenges and judicial review of laws help to protect the rights of U.S. citizens. By an almost two-to-one margin (59 to 31 percent), voters believe that preserving the Constitution’s checks-and-balances is more important than having the government operate more efficiently.

In recent years, President Obama has been rebuked by the courts for executive overreach on several occasions. Two of the highest profile cases decided against the president include a court’s rejection of his recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board and the decision that the Obamacare mandate that private employers provide contraceptive and abortifacient drugs was a violation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

Read the full article on Examiner.com

Court rebukes Obama for recess appointments

A federal appeals court ruled yesterday that President Obama unconstitutionally exceeded his executive authority when he made three recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board last January. As Examiner reported at the time, the president made the recess appointments in spite of the fact that the senate, which confirms presidential appointments, was still conducting pro forma sessions and was not in recess.

According to Article II section 2 clause 3 of the Constitution, the president has the power to fill vacancies that occur while the Senate is in recess. These recess appointments escape the immediate need to be confirmed by the Senate, but expire at the end of the next session of Congress. However, Article I section 5 clause 4 states that neither house of Congress can adjourn for more than three days without the consent of the other. This is done by passing a resolution in both the House and the Senate. In the case of Obama’s appointments, there is no disagreement that Congress was not formally recessed since neither the House nor the Senate had passed a resolution to end the session.

The case was prompted by a lawsuit by Noel Canning, a Pepsi Cola bottling company, according to National Public Radio. The NLRB with its new Obama appointees ruled against the company in a union dispute. The company then sued on the grounds that the Obama appointees were illegal and that without them the NLRB lacked a quorum and could not legally decide the case.

The court ruled on two points. On the first, the Washington Post describes that the three judge panel unanimously decided that a recess under the Constitution means that the Senate must be between sessions and not simply on a break. The court noted that the senate, not the president, decides when it is in recess. The court also ruled on what type of vacancies could be filled by recess appointments. In a stunning limitation of presidential power, two judges held that recess appointments were limited to vacancies that arise during a recess. All three judges were appointed by Republican presidents.

For now, the ruling applies only to the Noel Canning case, but there were many other rulings issued by the NLRB that included Obama’s appointments. These cases could be opened to legal challenges as well under the new precedent. Currently the precedent applies only to the D.C. court of appeals.

The ruling was condemned by the White House and the NLRB. “The decision is novel and unprecedented, and it contradicts 150 years of practice by Democratic and Republican administrations,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said Friday in the Washington Post. “We respectfully but strongly disagree with the ruling.” Carney did not say whether the president would appeal the decision.

In a statement on the NLRB website, the board’s chairman, Mark Pearce, said, “The Board respectfully disagrees with today’s decision and believes that the President’s position in the matter will ultimately be upheld. It should be noted that this order applies to only one specific case, Noel Canning, and that similar questions have been raised in more than a dozen cases pending in other courts of appeals.” The board apparently intends to continue business as usual even though any decisions made are likely to be challenged by the loser.

The decision also calls into question the appointment of Richard Cordray, the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Cordray was installed via a recess appointment at the same time as the three members of the NLRB.

During his first term, President Obama lost a series of legal challenges to his unilateral executive actions. Although his administration triumphed when the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare’s individual mandate, Obama lost many other lower profile cases. The Supreme Court upheld most of Arizona’s immigration law in spite of a Justice Department lawsuit. The Obama Administration was held in contempt for its ban on deep water oil drilling and for failing to issue permits to oil companies according to Examiner. The Environmental Protection Agency also suffered a number of legal defeats under Obama for exceeding its authority to regulate carbon and cross-state air pollution under the Clean Air Act. As previously covered by Examiner, several courts have also ruled that Obamacare’s abortion and contraception mandates are unconstitutional burdens on religious freedom. Obama’s unilateral decision to halt deportation of illegal aliens who entered the U.S. as children may also have unconstitutionally bypassed Congress.

Nevertheless, it seems that Obama’s strategy of using executive action when he cannot get Congress to act will continue into his second term. Earlier this month he signed 23 Executive Orders dealing with gun control. According to the Wall St. Journal, the president may also be considering more executive action on environmental issues as well. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Ca.) recently told supporters, “There doesn't have to be a bill. I'm telling you right now, EPA has the authority in the transportation sector, the electricity sector, and the industrial sector under the Clean Air Act” to enact anti-carbon regulations without congressional approval.”

President Obama’s strategy represents a test for the American system of separation of powers. While executive action might move the president’s agenda forward in the short term, as this week’s ruling shows the courts might eventually dismantle much of his legacy because it was enacted via illegal shortcuts.

Originally published on Examiner:

http://www.examiner.com/article/court-rebukes-obama-for-unconstitutional-recess-appointments?cid=db_articles

More legal trouble for Obamacare

President Obama has suffered another setback in court. A federal judge in Colorado recently ruled that the Department of Health and Human Services mandate that all insurance policies cover contraceptive and abortifacient drugs placed an illegal burden on freedom of religion.

Judge John Kane’s ruling was narrow, currently applying only to Hercules Industries according to Talking Points Memo. The company filed suit against the mandate claiming that it violated the Catholic beliefs of its owner. Judge Kane agreed and granted an injunction that prevented enforcement of the mandate against Hercules until courts could rule on the merits of the case. Judge Kane was an appointee of Democratic President Jimmy Carter.

There are also other lawsuits challenging the mandate that could benefit from the precedent set by Kane’s ruling. According to the Catholic News Agency, at least 43 Catholic groups have filed suit against the HHS mandate. Atlanta Archbishop Wilton Gregory told the Georgia Bulletin that Georgia dioceses are not a part of the litigation, but are working to support it. He called on Catholics to “pray for its success and support the initiatives that are intended to protect our religious freedom.”

Judge Kane based his ruling on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993. This law requires that any “substantial burden” placed on religious beliefs having a “compelling government interest” and be the “least restrictive means” of advancing that interest. Judge Kane found that the HHS contraceptive mandate placed a “substantial burden” on Hercules’ First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion.

The Hercules case will not provide a silver bullet to slay Obamacare. A court may rule that the HHS mandate is illegal, but it is unlikely to throw out the entire law. A Supreme Court ruling in June established the constitutionality of the law by granting Congress an immense new taxing power.

Kane’s injunction does set the stage for a landmark ruling on freedom of religion, however. If a court subsequently rules in favor of Hercules it could strike down the mandate entirely. Either way, the ruling is likely to be appealed by the losing party and could eventually find its way to the Supreme Court.

In the end, the election may render the challenges against the mandate moot. If Mitt Romney becomes president, he has stated that his first act would be to issue an Executive Order that would stop the implementation of Obamacare. If Republicans win control of the senate, a repeal of Obamacare would be certain to pass both houses of congress.

Read this article on Examiner.com

http://www.examiner.com/article/obamacare-contraception-mandate-faces-legal-setback

What to expect from the Obama birth certificate hearing

Earlier this month, a Georgia judge set the stage for a confrontation between President Obama and attorneys representing the birther movement. In the case, David Weldon, a Georgia citizen, had filed a complaint questioning the legality of Obama’s placement on the ballot due to their belief that he is allegedly not a “natural born citizen.” A Georgia judge refused a request by Obama’s lawyers to dismiss the case and set January 26 as the date for a hearing.

As illustrated by the comments on a recent Examiner.com article, many birthers believe that this case will result in the dismissal of President Obama and the rescission of all the legislation and executive orders of the past three years. They should disabuse themselves of such foolish notions.

Article II of the Constitution makes only three requirements for eligibility of a president. First, a president must be a “natural born citizen.” Second, he must be 35 years old. Lastly, he must have been a resident of the U.S. for 14 years.

The Constitution does not define what a “natural born citizen” is, but the evidence is that Barack Obama is one. Although he had released a short form birth certificate in 2008, in 2011 Obama released his long form birth certificate that shows that he was born in Honolulu, Hawaii on August 4, 1961. Hawaii became America’s 50^th state on August 21, 1959. Therefore, Barack Obama is a “natural born citizen” by virtue of the fact that he was born in the United States and “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” (14^th amendment).

There is other circumstantial evidence to support the information on the birth certificate as well. Obama’s birth announcement was in not one but two Honolulu newspapers in 1961, the Sunday Advertiser and the Star Bulletin. A Honolulu obstetrician actually remembers discussing the birth of Obama according to Snopes. The combination of a Stanley giving birth (Obama’s mother’s name), the first black student at the University of Hawaii, and the “musical name” of Barack Hussein Obama apparently made the birth memorable.

On the other hand, the evidence against the birthers is mounting. Several purported Kenyan birth certificates have been proven forgeries. Likewise, claims that Occidental College records showed that Obama, a.k.a. Barry Soetoro, was awarded a scholarship for foreign students was revealed to be an email hoax. Occidental has not released his records at all. A claim that Obama’s grandmother said that he was born in Kenya is taken wildly out of context. The full transcript makes it clear that she said that Barack Obama was born in the U.S.

Obama is also a natural born citizen because his mother was a U.S. citizen. In the Wong Kim Ark case (1898) the Supreme Court ruled that the only native-born children excluded from citizenship were those born to foreign diplomats, born on foreign public ships, born to enemy forces engaged in hostile occupation of enemy territory, or to Indian tribes which were excluded from U.S. jurisdiction.

Birthers argue that, because Obama’s father was a Kenyan citizen and British subject, Barack Obama is a British citizen under the British Nationality Act of 1948. According to FactCheck.org, Obama did indeed hold dual citizenship as a child. After Kenyan independence, however, the Kenyan Constitution prohibited dual citizenship. Dual citizens lose their Kenyan citizenship at age 23 unless they renounce their non-Kenyan citizenship and take an oath of allegiance to Kenya. Obama never did so.

Dual citizenship does not affect Obama’s status as a natural born U.S. citizen. In Afroyin v. Rusk (1967) the Supreme Court ruled that “"Congress has no power under the Constitution to divest a person of his United States citizenship absent his voluntary renunciation thereof." Again, in Vance v. Terraza (1980), the Court ruled that citizenship must be surrendered voluntarily. Barack Obama has never renounced his U.S. citizenship.

Even if Barack Obama were not a natural born citizen, there is no legal remedy for his removal from office at this point. If such a fact were determined prior to the 2008 election, or ideally before his election to the Illinois legislature and the U.S. Senate, he could have been kept off the ballot, but the Constitution makes no provision for removing a president from office because he is ineligible.

According to the Constitution, there are only two ways to remove a president from office. The first and most obvious way is to have him lose his re-election attempt. The second method is impeachment, which is addressed in Article II Section 4.

Grounds for impeachment and removal from office include “Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” Being ineligible to hold office is, perhaps ironically, not grounds for impeachment. This is especially true in light of the fact that Obama has no personal knowledge of his birthplace. No one can remember the time and place of their birth.

Even to allege fraud on the part of the president, which is arguably not a “high crime and misdemeanor,” prosecutors would have to prove that Obama had the intent to deceive, not with regard to his radical agenda, but with regard to his birth certificate. Obama can plausibly make the claim that he thought that he was born in Hawaii because his parents told him so and gave him a Hawaiian birth certificate.

Further, in the impeachment process the House of Representatives makes the original finding of guilt, but the Senate has to vote to remove the official from office. Given that the Democrats control the Senate, can anyone seriously believe that they would vote to remove a president of their own party on such as flimsy basis? By the time the Republicans gain control of the Senate, Barack Obama will hopefully be out of office as well.

The Constitution does not give the judiciary the power to remove any elected official from public office. It would therefore be unconstitutional for a judge to exceed his authority and remove President Obama from office. This is a good thing. It would set a terrible precedent for an unelected judge to overrule the will of the people and their electoral college.

Even if President Obama were impeached and removed from office, it would not erase the damage of the past three years. People who believe that all of the Obama-era legislation and executive orders would magically disappear are deluding themselves.

Article I Section 7 of the Constitution stipulates that “if any Bill shall not be returned [vetoed] by the President within ten Days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be a Law” unless Congress adjourns before the ten days is up. The president does not have to sign a bill for it to become law. Even if President Obama is not eligible, the members of Congress who voted for legislation such as the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and the Dodd-Frank financial reform were eligible to hold office and voted to pass legislation that was legally binding. These bills would have become law even without Obama’s signature.

When the hearing is held in an Atlanta courthouse on January 26, the judge’s hands will be tied. The only question that he is legally entitled to decide is whether Barack Obama is eligible to appear on the ballot for Georgia’s 2012 presidential election. When Obama’s lawyers present the president’s Hawaiian birth certificate, the judge will rule in their favor.

Read this article on Examiner.com:
http://www.examiner.com/conservative-in-atlanta/what-to-expect-from-the-obama-birth-certificate-hearing