Obama retakes oath of office after Roberts flub

CNN used the word 'flub' to describe Roberts' rendition of the presidential oath. Good word - I am adopting it.

Epic flub it was, and especially for a Chief Justice. I would like to think that the highest justice of the land would know the oath to which our president is bound... but I guess not.

Or maybe this has finally drilled those words into his head.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Obama retook his oath of office Wednesday after Chief Justice John Roberts flubbed while delivering it at Tuesday's inauguration.
President Barack Obama takes the oath of office -- his second in two days -- in the White House on Wednesday.

President Barack Obama takes the oath of office -- his second in two days -- in the White House on Wednesday.

The second oath -- also administered by Roberts -- took place at 7:35 p.m. Wednesday in the White House's Map Room. Roberts asked Obama whether he was ready.

"I am, and we're going to do it very slowly," Obama replied.

The do-over was aimed at dispelling any confusion that might arise from Tuesday's take -- in which "faithfully" was said out of sequence -- and erase any question that Obama is legally the president.



In a congressional luncheon after Tuesday's swearing-in, Roberts and Obama exchanged words, and the chief justice appeared to tell the president, "It was my fault."

Before Wednesday's second oath at the White House, Obama, waiting on a couch, joked that "we decided it was so much fun ... "

Though a Bible was used in Tuesday's oath, one was not used for Wednesday's.

After a flawless recitation, Roberts smiled and said, "Congratulations again."
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"Thank you, sir," the president replied. After a smattering of applause, Obama quipped that "the bad news for the [press] pool is there's 12 more balls."

And yes media talking heads -- who during the ceremony said that it was 'only a formality' -- yes, the oath is much more than a formality (you idiots.) How can you say the oath of office is only a formality?

Listening to you empty-media-heads is what lead people astray in the 2000 election, when you said the best qualification of a president was to be that guy you'd like to have a beer with in the neighborhood bar. NO! The qualifications of a president include a sharp intelligence, a grasp of history, a good knowledge of foreign affairs, humility, ethics, compassion, dedication to the people of this nation and dedication to the Constitution. Beer is NOWHERE in the picture.

As for the importance of the oath of office: this is where our president swears to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic. Well, at least Joe Biden swore to defend it from all enemies foreign and domestic, which is the traditional oath. It appears to have been modified a bit for the president, which I don't understand... but I believe that Constitutional lawyer President Obama will defend our Constitution and over-rule the previous attacks that have been waged against it by our 43rd president. Bush and Cheney proved to be a grave domestic threat to our Constitution. So yes, I'd say the oath - those words - are pretty damn important.

Now if only there were consequences for the way the oath was violated by the last administration.

The oath

Justice Roberts! Good grief! All you had to do was read the oath so that Barack could repeat it back, sentence by sentence! (In other words -- you hardly had any lines - and you got to take your notes on stage! How could you muff that?)

I don't know, may be he was nervous... Obama covered graciously, they got through it.

Next time we hold auditions for Chief Justice, might want to ask he or she to read this the presidential oath of office as part of the congressional audition.

SCOTUS: 1st Amendment double standard

I was reading USA today for a quick update on the recent controversial rulings handed down yesterday; most especially the two that affect the First Amendment (free speech.)

First, I noticed that they cut into the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law by deciding to allow big corporations and special interest groups to flood the television airwaves with massive ad campaigns just before the 2008 election.

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts said, and I quote: "Where the First Amendment implicated, the tie goes to the speaker, not the censor."

USA Today:

Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for a 5-4 Supreme Court majority, provided an answer Monday that changes the rules of the nation's tawdry political game. "Where the First Amendment is implicated," he said, "the tie goes to the speaker, not the censor."

In other words, free speech, particularly political speech, is so important that it must be protected, even when there's a huge downside. Money spent on a political message, whether by an individual or an interest group, is free speech.

Really.

Now - onto the next decision, where the court, in a 5-4 vote decided that high school senior Joseph Frederick, who was suspended for unfurling a giant sign in 2002 as the Olympic torch passed by (the now famous 'Bong Hits 4 Jesus' sign,) was not entitled to his own right to free speech, and apparently... the right of the school to censor him over-ruled the right of the speaker:

In Monday's ruling, all nine justices clearly sympathized with the harried principal. They agreed she could take the banner down. But on the core question of whether she violated the student's free speech rights by suspending him, the court split 5-4. The majority held that he merited no First Amendment protection because the banner was an obvious invitation to illegal drug use, which school rules banned.

While there is something comic about the nation's highest court conducting a high-minded textual analysis of the "bong hits" banner, the effects of this ruling aren't amusing. In the schools where it will be put into practice, the interpretations are likely to be as varied as the explanations for the banner's meaning. The decision is an invitation for school officials to ban or punish any student speech they can reasonably interpret as promoting illegal drug use or perhaps other activities. Some of the justices who supported the ruling seemed to realize the dangerous latitude that it gives schools, noting that the ruling shouldn't be construed to limit comment on "any political or social issue," such as the war on drugs or medicinal marijuana.

Since a landmark 1969 ruling that permited students to wear armbands protesting the Vietnam war, the high court has repeatedly held that students don't shed their free-speech rights at the schoolhouse door, within certain limits: They can't be clearly disruptive or obviously lewd and inappropriate. Monday's ruling adds a new, open-ended limit.

Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, correctly notes that illegal drug use is a scourge in the nation's schools. But the danger he sees in the "bong hits" banner seems wildly overblown. As Justice John Paul Stevens said in his dissenting opinion, "The notion that the message on this banner would actually persuade either the average student or even the dumbest one to change his or her behavior is most implausible."

USA Today seemed to notice the same incongruity that I immediately noticed between these two cases:

Roberts' restrictive view of free speech in the bong hits case contrasts with the court's far more permissive action Monday in the campaign finance case discussed in the editorial above this one. In that dispute, the chief justice broke a 4-4 tie by ruling that in free speech cases, ties should go to the speaker. If only he had shown the same solicitude for students' free-speech rights as for those of moneyed interests that asked the court to increase the size of their megaphones.

Ah, that pesky double standard.

Nice going, Judge Roberts. In the course of one day you have managed to prove to everyone, without a shadow of a doubt, that you have one set of standards for big corporations -- ie MONEY INTERESTS -- and an entirely different standard for us 'little people.' That would be right in line with your conservative 'values' no doubt. Unfortunately, it has very little to do with justice or the rule of law.