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Legally, a woman can’t be elected president
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Most people believe not only that the 19th Amendment permitted women the right to vote but that since women serve in Congress, the courts and other offices of government, the office of president of the United States has been de-genderized.
Not true. This important legal question exists now and has not been constitutionally addressed. The language and syntax of the 19th Amendment merely removed the barriers that prevented women from voting. It did not identify women to be qualified to become elected president.
The language is clear. The 19th Amendment says: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”
We cannot read into the amendment something that is not there. Now, had the amendment said, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote or hold public office shall not be denied,” it would have accomplished what the feminists think took place.
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Today’s feminists believe the election process is an evolutionary process, legalized by common practice and that someday a woman will be president. They are convinced that since women have run for the office, the male-gendered presidential office has been neutered .
Not so. They will be challenged, and a Supreme Court ruling on the language will be necessary. At the very least a constitutional amendment to change the language will be required.
Well, to be honest, if you read the Constitution:
The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice-President chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows:
note the “He” I’ve made bold in that text
Perhaps she could just get Bill to be her VP, and step down once it actually gets to the Supreme Court. After all, Amendment XXII says:
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No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President, when this Article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.
It doesn’t say anything about succeeding to the office if not elected.
I’ve never really understood the race issues in the USA, so I’m just getting this from reading the Constitution, but something similar could be said about Obama being black. After all, Amendment XIII doesn’t mention race, just slavery, and Amendment XV, just like the above case, only mentions voting. If somebody seriously considers the fact that Hillary is female to be a disqualifier, then surely another idiot will show up and say the same about race.
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The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
But honestly, if the USA really wants to be the laughing stock of the rest of the world, a court case about this would do just fine…
Nader Announces Run for President
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Ralph Nader on Sunday announced a fresh bid for the White House, criticizing the top contenders as too close to big business and dismissing the possibility that his third-party candidacy could tip the election to Republicans.
Cartoons
Conservative doctors to unmarried women: If you’re having sex, you *should* die of cervical cancer
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I suppose this was inevitable, but the growing movement of doctors and pharmacists who decide that you’re not worthy of medical treatment if you’re female and engaging in sexual behavior they disapprove of has reached the point where some doctors are refusing to perform Pap smears on unmarried women. I guess you probably don’t really need one if you’re a virgin, because they’re looking for cervical cancer, which is linked to HPV, which is sexually transmitted. For the people who think unwanted pregnancy and STDs are just the proper punishment for unmarried, sexually active women, it follows that death from cervical cancer should go on the “punishments for sluts” list.
’Theory of Pie’
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‘When a ‘conservative’ or libertarian sees someone about to slice up a nice juicy lookin’ pie they immediately become concerned that there won’t be enough pie for them to have a piece. The ‘conservative’ immediately calls upon government to seize the pie by passing confiscatory pie taxes and then using tax law give the pie to him, the Libertarian asserts that there must be a ‘Free Market for Pie’ not subject to any regulation whatsoever. He plans to ‘corner the market’ in pie and never be without pie again.
The progressive scratches his head wondering at the behavior of the ‘conservative’ and libertarian’s actions and sets about planning to make more pie. He has a good recipe form his mom and figures he can easily make plenty of pie for everyone.
Can Apple Patent the Pinch? Experts Say It’s Possible
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Is pinching proprietary? We may find out in the coming months as many companies, inspired by the success of Apple’s iPhone, release their own multitouch-enabled laptops, smartphones and tablets. In doing so, these companies — including RIM, Nokia and Synaptics — may run afoul of multitouch patent applications recently filed by Apple.
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If Apple’s patent applications are successful, other manufacturers may have no choice but to implement multitouch gestures of their own. The upshot: You might pinch to zoom on your phone, swirl your finger around to zoom on your notebook, and triple-tap to zoom on the web-browsing remote control in your home theater.
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Cut-off cancer patient to get $9M
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A woman who had her medical coverage canceled as she was undergoing treatment for breast cancer has been awarded more than $9 million in a case against one of California’s largest health insurers.
Patsy Bates, 52, a hairdresser from Lakewood, had been left with more than $129,000 in unpaid medical bills when Health Net Inc. canceled her policy in 2004.
On Friday, arbitration judge Sam Cianchetti ordered Health Net to repay that amount while providing $8.4 million in punitive damages and $750,000 for emotional distress.
“It’s hard to imagine a situation more trying than the one Bates has had to endure,” Cianchetti wrote in the decision. “The rug was pulled out from underneath, and that occurred at a time when she is diagnosed with breast cancer, one of the leading causes of death for women.”
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Geen hoge kijkcijfers voor Deep Throat
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Hoe omstreden ook, de pornofilm Deep Throat die de omroepen BNN en VPRO zaterdagavond uitzond, heeft niet geleid tot extreem hoge aantallen kijkers.
907.000 Mensen keken naar de uit 1972 daterende rolprent, zo bleek zondag uit cijfers van de Stichting KijkOnderzoek.
En ik durf te wedden dat als het SGP, CDA en ChristenUnie gewoon de mond hadden gehouden, was dat nog niet de helft geweest.
*If* the U.S. wants to be the laughing stock of the world? Didn’t eight years of George W. Bush accomplish that quite nicely already?
/American
//Not proud of that fact
I honestly doubt that that simply because the constitution reads “he” instead of “he/she,” that a court ruling would be necessary to affirm that a woman could be president–it is proper English to use the word “he” in that grammatical context, not “she” or “he/she,” both of which are inventions of the twentieth century feminist movement. This does make sense, however, since society in the late eighteenth century was very male-centric.
Article II, Section I also says:
“No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five years, and been fourteen Years a resident within the United States.”
No mention of gender there.
As for a Bill and Hillary swap, the 12th Amendment says:
“But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.”
So that couldn’t happen.
As for race, there’s no constitutional requirement that the President be a white male. The only qualifications are as I’ve noted above.
The qualifications for senator also include the pronoun he, so I guess Hillary’s not a senator either.
John McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone, but the zone was US territory when he was born, so he still qualifies as a natural born citizen. If Obama had been born before 1959 in Hawaii, but after Hawaii became a US territory, he would still qualify as anatrual born citizen. People born in Puerto Rico, American Simoa, US embassy and cousulute property, or US military bases outside the US still qualify as natural born citizen.
Whoever wrote this article should do some checking before they put this crap out.
Good point made by “bup.” Statutes/constitutions/treaties etc use the word “he” with the meaning of he/she. This is first year law school stuff. Just look at the criminal codes of your state, it probably uses the word “he” when referring to someone committing a crime. Does this mean that women can’t be convicted of a crime?
As far as the issue with John McCain goes, it doesn’t matter where he was born. As long as both of his parents are United States Citizens, then he is a United States Citizen.
The masculine form he has traditionally been the singular gender neutral pronoun for the english language.
Of course Art 2, sec 3 also requires – The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two persons, of whom one at least shall not lie an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves. – Therefore the Hillary/Bill scenario could not happpen unless Bill moved back to Arkansas.
As for a Bill and Hillary swap, the 12th Amendment says:
“But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.”
Well, if you want to nitpick…it doesn’t say that Bill would be ineligible to the office of President. Just that he would be ineligible to be elected president.
Unfortunately, the criteria for eligibility for running for President is not that the person be a US citizen, but that he or she be born in the US. THis means that my two daughters, adopted as infants from Guatemala, who have grown up in the US as US citizens since the age of 6 months, are not eligible to run for President. This certainly isn’t fair. For a year there we thought Arnold Schwarzeneger was trying to change this requirement to allow himself to run (not a run I would support)–at least that would have made it possible for me to tell my daughters that some day they too could grow up to be the President, but unfortunately I can’t make that claim.
The phrase in the Constitution is “natural-born Citizen”; being born to two American citizens is sufficient for that, regardless of location, as is being born anywhere that’s considered American soil. You may even be mistaken that your daughters, as naturalized citizens, are ineligible. A law passed in 2000 promises them immediate citizenship; the courts will have to decide which of the two categories that falls into.
The summary on the US Immigration Services site boils it down pretty well:
Let’s try that link again:
http://www.uscis.gov/citizenship
That just means that the New York Electors can’t vote for both Hillary and Bill. Electors in other states could. New York Electors could vote for Hillary and some arbitrary individual who wasn’t a resident of New York. Electors have voted for people who weren’t candidates before, notably in 1960 when southern Democratic Electors refused to vote for Kennedy. Ralph Nader has run with different VP candidates in different states. It would be unpleasant, though, if the race were close enough that such a vote resulted in a Hillary presidency with a Republican Vice President.
It’s Article 2, section 1, actually and that paragraph has been replaced by Amendment 12 which, happily enough, has essentially the same language in its first sentence.
It wouldn’t result in a Republican Vice Presidency. At worst, it would be result in no majority in the VP vote, which means the Senate, currently 50-49 + Lieberman and likely to tip further towards the Democrats in November, would choose between the top vote-getters.
Wrong. Technically, the Constitution does require a male to hold the office of President. Here are the relevant passages of article two of the Constitution.
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“The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice-President chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows:”
“No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.”
“The President shall, at stated Times, receive for his Services, a Compensation, which shall neither be increased nor diminished during the Period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that Period any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them.
Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:”
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Notice the explicit use of “he” and “his” in the passages of article two of the Constitution. Also, notice the explicit use of “person” in the same article. Therefore, it stands to reason that if they meant that a man or woman could become president they would have used “person” instead of “he” and “his” in article two of the Constitution.