With the whole world watching, Chief
Justice Roberts garbled up Obama's oath of office
yesterday--deliberately, some say,
since the new president must speak his piece precisely,
and Roberts made that quite impossible
(unless Obama had decided to ignore his clumsy
prompts, and do it right entirely on his
own).
"I'm relatively certain they re-administered the oath out of
view of the masses to make it all
legit," writes a friend. "I say he screwed it up on
purpose." That could be, although, if so, it
would be a pretty brazen move.
I'd say that Roberts didn't do it consciously, but that his
screw-up was a stark bit of unconscious interference with
Obama's swearing-in. Roberts is, of course, a flaming Bush
Republican--
and, as such, intent on (further) disenfranchising the very
citizens who voted, or tried to vote,
for Obama/Biden.
For example, Roberts has been on (what we might call) the Klan
side of every Supreme
Court decision that pertains to voting rights since he was placed
on that almighty body.
He voted to uphold the Indiana photo ID law, having made some
idiotic arguments defending
it in open court.
The stated purpose of the law was to halt in-person "voter
fraud" in Indiana. Replying to
the point that there was not a single case of such fraud ever
having been discovered in that
state, Roberts noted that such lack of evidence was no surprise,
since "voter fraud" is, by
its very nature, secret, and therefore leaves no traces. (Cf.
Rumsfeld's Law: "Absence of
evidence is not evidence of absence.") And upon hearing that
ID-less Indiana voters have
to cast provisional ballots, and then travel to the county seat
to get them counted, Roberts
said that that was not a hardship, since county seats in Indiana
aren't so far away.
And the Roberts Court has recently decided
to take up a lawsuit arguing that there's no
longer any need for Section 5 of the Voting
Rights Act--a move whereby the Court
Such moves make very clear that our Chief
Justice is a faithful servant of, and true believer
in, his ever-shrinking party and its racist
base. Thus is he operating squarely in the
un-American tradition of the Court that
gave us Bush v. Gore. (He's also following in the
footsteps on his predecessor William
Rehnquist, who made his bones as an anti-democratic
activist way back in the early Sixties,
when, as a lawyer for the GOP, he roamed the precincts
of South Phoenix on Election Day, trying to
block minority votes.)
In short, Roberts personifies that spirit
of fanatical elitism whereby the Bush Regime, and
its bad works, were forced on all the rest
of us. Small wonder, then, that Roberts couldn't make
his tongue behave as he stood out there
yesterday, half-trying to suppress his rage sufficiently
to swear Obama in. And so he screwed it up,
because his heart just wasn't in what he was
saying--just like Bush, whose tongue
broke down whenever he was forced to sound a
note of altruism or idealism or
inclusiveness, or any other alien notion.
And this won't be the last time that we
hear the voice of Bush (or Cheney) piping up in
unexpected places. Much depends on whether
our new president will be polite, and let
it resonate, or whether he will shut it
down at last, and try instead to say--and do--
what's right.
MCM
CNN: Roberts 'screwed up'
oath of office
Mike Sheehan and David Edwards
Published:
Tuesday January 20, 2009
But today, it was a bungle of supreme
proportion.
According to the Constitution, the oath is specified as
follows: "I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the
Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my
Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United
States." Modern tradition has added "so help me God" to
the end of the oath.
John Roberts, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, had the
honor today of administering the oath to Barack Obama with a Bible
used by Abraham Lincoln.
But instead of a smooth delivery, Chief Justice Roberts
interrupted Obama early and then switched the order of some of the
words, slipping up the new president and causing him to hesitate at
one point.
ROBERTS: Are you prepared to take the oath,
Senator?
OBAMA: I am.
ROBERTS: I, Barack Hussein
Obama...
OBAMA: I, Barack--
ROBERTS: ...do solemnly swear...
OBAMA: I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly
swear...
ROBERTS: ...that I will execute the office
of president to the United States faithfully...
OBAMA: ...that I will execute...
[pause]
ROBERTS: ...faithfully the office of
president of the United States...
OBAMA: ...the office of president of the
United States faithfully...
ROBERTS: ...and will, to best of my
ability...
OBAMA: ...and will to [the] best of my
ability...
ROBERTS: ...preserve, protect and defend
the Constitution of the United States.
OBAMA: ...preserve, protect and defend the
Constitution of the United States.
ROBERTS: So help you God?
OBAMA: So help me God.
ROBERTS: Congratulations, Mr.
President.
CNN's Wolf Blitzer later commented that
Roberts "had one job to do today and he sort of screwed
up."
By law, Obama became president at noon Eastern, regardless of the
ceremonial oath of office. But that didn't stop some from speculating
and others from kidding.
Chris Wallace of FOX News wondered if, due to the fumbled oath, Obama
really was president.
Martin Bosworth of the
Boztopia blog quipped, "When you
think about how Clarence Thomas tried to derail the changeover by
having the Court hear the birth
certificate case, you have to
wonder."
Mark Sherman of The Associated Press
later reported that Roberts, shaking
hands with the new president before a special luncheon in the Capitol,
"chatted briefly with Obama and appeared to say that the mistake
was his fault, not Obama's."
This video is from CNN's Newsroom, broadcast Jan. 20, 2009.
Download video via
RawReplay.com