Comments on: Dear GOP: Please Do Make Sure That Your Next Vice-Presidential Candidate Can Pass a Fifth-Grade Geography Test

By: martyfink

martyfink — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 17:27:10 +0000

It is the Sineurabia code of those who want to benight us with global feudalism, who yearn to whitewash and canonize the nazi pope, who see business, especially finance, as evil, who hate books and the Yehuds, Yovans and Parsis who write them. They could not even countenance a Kenyan pope or a Mormon president, but keep promoting Islamic candidates for public office and call theirs a religion of peace. On September 16, 1920, Italian terrorists blew up Wall Street. They set the precedent for 9/11 and they like it.

By: Andrew Guenin

Andrew Guenin — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 04:25:34 +0000

Just like Obama thought that there were 60 states in the United states.

By: David

David — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 02:57:49 +0000

This story was apparently a hoax.

Not clear; the story doesn’t seem to have been retracted by Fox. The claim that it was the hoaxster who was the source, has. Oy.

By: David Palmer

David Palmer — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 02:40:28 +0000

This story was apparently a hoax.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/arts/television/13hoax.html

By: Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate

Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 04:59:54 +0000

Kalimac,

I’m not saying that what you describe is not the wisest way for a POTUS/VP to operate. What I am saying is that this is nowhere close to what Biden actually said. I pulled the enitre quote from the debate. You are creating penumbra and emanations that bear no resemblance to what was said.

Consider this. Say the VP ignores the President’s wishes and “goes rogue”. What’s the mechanism for firing him?

Exactly.

It’s a quirky office. The VP can, as you say, do what the President allows and encourages. Or not.

By: Steve Moss

Steve Moss — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 04:10:52 +0000

Kalimac at 300: Howabout pullingt something out of Zanzibar’s argument in post 298 and explaining to me why it is wrong? So far as I can determine, he is dead on correct. Declaring him flat incorrect does not make him so.

If Palin is an idiot (a point I do not agree with), Biden is even more so. And unlike the anonymous gossip being used to attach Palin, Biden convicts himself out of his own mouth.

By: Steve Moss

Steve Moss — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 04:08:52 +0000

If Palin is an idiot (a point I do not agree with), Biden is even more so. And unlike the anonymous gossip being used to attach Palin, Biden convicts himself out of his own mouth.

By: Kalimac

Kalimac — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 03:24:59 +0000

Oh man, oh man, oh man. You need a lesson in constitutional law that is far longer than anything I could give you, especially as you’re not clued in to anything that Biden said. He has 35 years experience in watching Vice Presidents and he does know what he’s talking about: what he says resonates with everything I’ve read on the office from constitutional scholars.

The main point is that – all these different things you say the VP can do? The VP can do whatever the President allows and encourages. But it’s not the 12th Amendment that makes the two work comfortably together: in fact political considerations meant that for the next century and a half they were more often than not at odds. The result was that Presidents did not trust their VPs, and gave them nothing to do. THAT is why Garner said the office was worth nothing.

The Cheney-Palin theory that the VP has some kind of inherent control over Congress is in support of the new and dangerous theory of the “unitary executive,” by which the executive branch has superiority over the others: obvious constitutional nonsense.

I’ve explained most of this three times now: I really am not sure how to respond to such flat incorrectness.

By: Mary Dell

Mary Dell — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 01:22:24 +0000

To be fair, it’s not like she can see Africa from her house.

By: Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate

Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 00:33:02 +0000

I’m not so much defending Palin as calling BS that what Biden says was “sagacious”.

The truth is that the role of the VP is undefined. There’s not a bit in the Constitution about what Biden described as the main role: “to support the President”. That’s not sage, that’s blather.

Sure, the VP _can_ support the president, and since the 12th amendment tied the POTUS and VP together, that is largely what has happened in practice. But that is not _required_. Preside over the Senate. Break ties. Step in when the President dies or is removed. That’s it. The job is spectacularly undefined. That’s why John Garner said it wasn’t worth a “bucket of warm piss”. If anything, Palin is more correct in that the job description is pretty flexible. Just because a bunch of Senators told Agnew to take a leap doesn’t mean that the VP can’t work with Congress. Or he can stay in an undisclosed location. Or he can go to state funerals. He can play hopscotch all day at the Naval Observatory and still be lining up to his constitutional role.

Finally, Biden didn’t remotely make the points you attribute to him. What he said was doctrinaire, rigid, and wrong. It was not sage, no matter how badly you wish it to be.