Byron York, reacting to the news that Obama was administered the oath a second time:
The AP reports that Roberts re-administered the oath to Obama at the White House this evening, in the presence of some reporters but with no press cameras in the room. (There was, apparently, a White House photographer there to record the event.) It all went smoothly.
Meanwhile, in the span of a few minutes, I’ve gotten a number of emails informing me that Obama only took a second oath to head off criticism from people like…me. “Reasonable people believed that a—holes like you and your ilk would make the oath an issue and out of an abundance of caution, to head off a—holes like you, they re-did it,” wrote one correspondent.
Think what you like.
Here is what I think, Byron. I don’t think it was necessary at all. But I am not Obama’s lawyer, Greg Craig, who just so happened to also be Clinton’s lawyer during the impeachment hearings. Here you are discussing that little bit in 1998:
PHIL PONCE: Byron York, how about that? What is the logical connection between looking at a land deal that happened years ago to the charges the President is facing now?
BYRON YORK, American Spectator: Well, it takes a couple of steps to get there. One of the things Starr has been investigating is whether Webster Hubbell, a former high-ranking official in the Justice Department, was paid off to not cooperate with Kenneth Starr in testimony about the Whitewater deal. One of the people who arranged for Hubbell to receive large amounts of money, hundreds of thousands of dollars, was Vernon Jordan. And one of the things that connects these two cases is that Jordan is allegedly involved in helping to arrange a lawyer and an affidavit from Monica Lewinsky, and so the allegation goes, tried to arrange for her to change her story and deny ever having any sort of sex with the President.
PHIL PONCE: So you’re saying in this case there’s a question of a pattern of misbehavior on the part of “a” person?
BYRON YORK: That is one reason Starr is going after it, and the other reason Starr is going after it is that this woman, Linda Tripp, simply came to him. Linda Tripp has some history with Kenneth Starr. She had worked as a secretary in the office of White House counsel. She knew and admired Vincent Foster and was the last person at the White House to see him alive. As such, she testified before the grand jury about this. She has talked to Starr’s people quite a bit about the Foster case. So she knew Starr; she trusted Starr; she went to Starr. At that point he had credible allegations in front of him, and what was he to do?
In 2004, years after Clinton had been out of office, with a TON of other things going on, what were you writing about? Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. Still:
Winning the government shutdown battle was the turning point in Clinton’s recovery from his devastating loss of Congress in 1994. The president was so happy that that very night, November 15, he began his dalliance with Monica Lewinsky.
From the very beginning, Lewinsky has said that was when she and the president first fooled around. But Clinton always denied it. In his testimony before independent counsel Kenneth Starr’s grand jury, he claimed that the affair began in 1996. The White House legal rebuttal to the Starr Report made the same assertion.
Considering you work for the very same magazine as Jonah Goldberg (Liberal Fascism), Lisa Schiffren (Obama’s birth is a communist plot!), and Andy McCarthy (Obama’s not an American!!!oneoneleven!!), I think your email correspondent had it exactly right. Obama took the oath a second time PRECISELY because of “a-holes like you.”
cleek
i’m surprised he had the balls to print that 100% accurate criticism, even if he won’t admit it’s true.
Punchy
This is such a non-story that I’m beginning to think that the only real way to get it off the news is to impeach Obama and throw Biden down into Gitmo. Have McConnell and Limbaugh run the country until 2012.
I also find it funny that even you, the webhost and poster, is not allowed more than 1 or 2 consecutive exclamation points without the Big Red X of Death appearing. The shitty software fucks us all, eh?
GSD
York is a douche-platter.
-GSD
sgwhiteinfla
The one thing that shines through about President Obama is that he realizes how much image matters. I am sure others were probably advising him against even engaging such ass hats as York and Chris Williams but he knows that heading them off at the pass hurts them a lot more than it will ever hurt him. What I would love is if Obama would sign an executive order banning the "Fairness Doctrine" which no Democrat is supporting but every "conservative pundit" brings up as a boogyman. Talk about stabbing the wingnuts in the heart. The RedStaters might lose half their traffic within 24 hours of such a move.
ronin122
On the mark as usual. I fail to understand why it matters SO much to have the one word in the right place. Somehow I doubt the people who wrote that bit in the Constitution really gave a shit about it, plus the interpretation of what was it the 20th Amendment. It was precisely to shut up those dipshits who’d whine for four years about this (not that they won’t find things to whine of anyway but at least now they’re forced to dig deeper).
Still waiting for the "omgz what about all those bills he signed before the second oath(two !s and ?s alternating)" when the easy rectification is to resign the bills (takes what, 2 minutes?). Definitely fitting is the tag "I read these morons so you don’t have to"
NonyNony
When I heard NPR STILL going on about the stupid flubbed oath "story" last night on my drive home I knew this was going to become the "zombie story that would. not. die." for the rest of the Obama presidency. NPR even did their now usual schtick of telling everyone that this was a non-story, even as they spent more than 5 minutes talking about it.
So despite knowing that this was all completely unnecessary from a Constitutional point of view, I’m glad that Obama just called Roberts in and re-did the oath. If the idiots on the right are going to complain about stuff, let them complain about things that don’t even have a shred of credibility. Like Rush telling everyone that only "Banana Republics" would do things like insist that the agencies of the executive branch follow the Freedom of Information Act.
The Grand Panjandrum
Good grief. Aren’t they satisfied with the Simple Fact that Obama is already on his second term and cannot now run for re-election? Or maybe he really Did Not take the oath again because no camera’s we allowed into the room so how do we know this wasn’t just faked? Or maybe, everything done in the last 24 hours needs a do over because "he really wasn’t President."
Any other reasonable guesses as to why Obama isn’t really the President? Is the purpose of this exercise to spawn an entire new group of Truthers?
Reverend Dennis
York’s insights regarding the oath are uninformed by the fact that George Washington didn’t take the oath of office until seven weeks after he became president. I haven’t read anyone questioning the legitimacy of Washington’s presidency.
If these people knew anything other than the chorus of voices inside their own heads they wouldn’t be able to write this shit.
D-Chance.
NO BIBLE!
Ah-HA (three exclamation points here)
:)
Media Browski
Shorter Byron York:
Angry libruls are saying wingnuts would pursue idiotic litigation based on a fanciful interpretation of the Constitution and I can’t deny that was my plan.
MattF
And Roberts administered the oath in a non-Selectric font so it was obviously a forgery and therefore ipso facto a posteriori invalid.
Zifnab
Nonsense. Wingnuts would never fall for such liberal trickery. They’d be all over that executive order in an attempt to prove the Kerning was off.
robertdsc
On a positive note, with Obama’s huge popularity, I do hope that his term leads people to learn more about the Presidency and about government in general. It’s a good opportunity to get folks involved in the history and tradition of the office.
Xenos
@The Grand Panjandrum:
Stop it! You are giving them ideas and arguments that they are to stupid to figure out for themselves!
TheHatOnMyCat
When the president does it, that means it is not illegal.
Obama became president at noon. The first oath was said minutes later.
The end.
Reverend Dennis
@Xenos:
They’re hoping that he’ll take the oath again in public so that they can impeach him him for violating the 22nd Amendment. It’s all part of their clever plan.
Potted Plant
York lost any credibility with me when he wrote a book ("The Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy") with a subtitle describing how various entities "tried to bring down a president." The book was about the 2004 election, and I never thought that voting against an incumbent was equivalent to trying to "bring down a president" (which, of course, is exactly what York et al. tried to do with Clinton).
Not My Fault
I think Obama was stupid re-run the oath. Oh not Let’s-invade-Iraq stupid. More on the lines of trying-to-ride-a-segway-without-turning-it-on stupid.
Someone on Fox made a joke about the oath and that was it. All the rest of the "controversy" was self-important bloggers on the intertubes. By addressing this foolishness in any way all he has done is to validate said bloggers in their own minds.
This morning, all across the nation, the most brain dead portion of the population (folks who post to blogs) is saying to it’s (collective) self: "See. I was right."
No good can come from this.
JL
In order to prevent silly lawsuits, Obama re-took the oath of office. Of course Byron wouldn’t file a silly lawsuit, he would just encourage others to do so.
zzyzx
@sgwhiteinfla: I think a better plan would be to exchange that ban for something we actually want. I like the idea of having the right terrified over something that we don’t care about. It gives us a powerful bargaining chip.
zzyzx
@ronin122: Basically, the people who care about that sort of thing tend to believe in magic words. They think if they can find a comma or a capital letter in a weird place that it invalidates the obvious intent of the law. No judge will ever back them up on their theories – which of course they blame on the gold fringes on the flags in the courthouse which have a bad symbolism – but they think they’ve cracked the secret code and they’ll keep trying over and over again until they win.
I’m "looking forward" to the endless lawsuits against any bill Obama signs because he’s a usurper…
On the other hand, I’m glad that these obsessive, creative people who have time to do research are wasting their time on irrelevant issues rather than ones that might have a chance of winning.
LA Confidential Pantload
Bullshit. Until I see a Vault Copy of a video showing him taking the oath, he’s not President in my book.
Nylund
I just went to a stand up comedy show in Texas and many comics were still telling Monica/Clinton jokes. Even in 2009, jokes about stained dresses and knee pads still get the most laughs in Texas.
I have no doubt that the wingnuts would spend years pointing out the oath thing if Obama hadn’t redone it.
Brick Oven Bill
That second swearing in pleases me, I bet it cost something, like, five hundred bucks.
Here’s $205 million.
Joshua Norton
What normal people care about:
-Illegal wiretaps
-Suspension of Habeus Corpus
-War Crimes
-The merger of Church and State
-Contempt of court
-Perjury
-Violations of Posse Comitatus
What the 23%er’s care about
-The semantics of the oath of office.
Apparently the magic Presidential spells don’t work unless they’re said exactly right.
On the one hand, it is a way to shut-up freeptard social outcasts who fixate on inconsequential absurdities. On the other, they will keep finding shit to gripe about, once they are paid attention. Now they will want O to re-do all of those crazy good documents he inked yesterday. You wait.
canuckistani
I’m grateful that Obama took the time to shut off the flow of stupid that I’d have to listen to for the next four years. This one anyway, I’m sure there’s another flood of stupid ready to overtop the dam.
Svensker
TBogg discovers the REAL reason the oath was botched: Roberts KNEW that Obama was not a US citizen and was a) nervous about it; and b) his true American self REVOLTED at his part in the DECEPTION halfway through the oath, causing him to stumble. Or, in the words of the writer, Roberts "spectacularly challenged the meaning of his own existence."
former capitalist
Who gives a rat’s effing fat ass, York, other than you and a bunch of simpletons with nothing better to do than torehash meaningless BS, from what,like 15 years ago? Andrew Jackson killed Vernon Jordan. Now you know.The secret is out. Now,do us all a favor and go away. Forever.
And Linda Tripp? Icky poo.
KRK
I surely can’t be the only person here whose first thought upon reading the title of this post was that John was calling us out (again) for a soon-to-be-specified offense.
lou
I saw some moronic right whiner on CNN this a.m. poo-pooing the second oath taking because supposedly cameras weren’t allowed. Except someone took a photo. And reporters were in the room. So I can’t even understand their logic.
comrade rawshark
I assume we’ve all seen the greatest radio station based sitcom since WKRP*, NewsRadio.
In one eisode Jimmy James is thinking of selling the station and has until midnight to accept or decline an offer. He asks the employees to give him a reason to decline it. Matthew, the idiot, changes the clock so it’s past midnight and Jimmy misses the deadline and now can’t sell the station. Jimmy’s response:
‘Matthew, the midnight deadline is just a guide, I’m dealing with a corporation not magical fairies.’
I’m just reminded of this scene listening to oath controversies. Don’t know why.
*last time I mentioned WKRP on this blog John went and posted some WKRP youtubes, will it happen again? We can only hope.
Michael
I hear that he did it later in private as the real oath just so he could put his hand on an itty bitty Koran in his pocket.
Its a big secret though.
Corner Stone
@LA Confidential Pantload
And I’m pretty sure at the end of the 2nd oath Obama said, "Thanks Whitey."
Joshua Norton
and instead of "so help me God" he most likely said "Expecto Patronum"
Tony J
Kidding, right? Ten seconds after such an order was announced RedState would crash under the weight of blogposts claiming this as a great victory in their losing battle to actually matter.
"ZOMG! Dood! I totally forced Hussein to back down! Where’s my RedStateStrikeForceLeader tabs? I need to address the troops!"
thomas
calling york an a$$hole denigrates a$$holes
stop it!
AnneLaurie
How come none of the fReichtard nitpickers are whining about Chief Justice John "Opus Dei in the Oval Office" Roberts fvcking up in the first place?
Yeah, yeah, I know — IOKIYAR uber alles!
Gravenstone
@Brick Oven Bill:
Hey BOB, do us all a favor – eat shit, then belch (to savor the flavor).
Caramon
THIS Byron York?
TheHatOnMyCat
What does that work out to? About $0.04 per viewer?
Bargain.