Tancredo: Begin Impeachment Proceedings Against Obama Now, Not After Another Obama Victory!

By Nicholas Stix

Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO, ret.) is an American hero. He has for years courageously supported deporting the 30 million or so illegal invaders from America, restricting legal immigration, opposing affirmative action, and as a sweet bonus, isn’t an anti-Semite. In 2008, I hoped to be able to vote for him for president. Alas, though he ran, it was not to be.

Tancredo says (see below) that we shouldn’t wait to begin impeachment proceedings against (the John Doe calling himself) “Barack Obama.” He believes that through initiating impeachment proceedings, “Obama’s” congressional opponents could publicly make the case as to his unfitness to serve, such that if the impeachment should fail to expel him from office, at least he would be rendered unfit in the eyes of the electorate, in the coming election.

I believe that impeachment is not the proper means to use against someone whose very existence in the White House is a crime.

If a sitting president is impeached, and survives the Senate vote on whether to remove him from office, he then has a legal right to finish his term as president, and even to run for re-election, if he is only in his first term. But Obama has no such right.

Impeachment is the remedy for a president’s having committed high crimes and misdemeanors while in office. While “Obama” has certainly committed such offenses, many of which Tancredo enumerates, he previously committed crimes which preclude his being in office.

He violated federal election law, by running for President under an alias. As far as I have been able to determine, the man’s legal name is Barry Soetoro. He cannot undo his crime, by retroactively changing his name, and remaining in office, at least not under our legal system.

He has violated the U.S. Constitution’s requirement that a candidate for the presidency be a citizen of the United States of America. “Obama” is a citizen of at least three different countries.

He is a citizen of Kenya, via his father. (“Obama” the younger, whose proper legal surname at birth would have been Dunham, due to the invalid status of his parents’ marriage, was born a subject of the British Empire, but when Kenya was granted independence two years later, the son automatically became a citizen of Kenya.)

He is also a citizen of Indonesia, due to having been adopted as a child, while living in that nation, by his Indonesian stepfather, Loelo Soetoro, who also changed the boy’s legal name.

And he is a citizen of the United States of America, through having been born, presumably in Hawaii, to an American mother.

In order to fulfill the “natural born citizen” provision, “Obama” would have had to officially renounce his Kenyan and Indonesian citizenship, prior to filing to be a candidate. He cannot retroactively do this, at least not under our Constitutional order.

Additionally, he is, and will always be ineligible for the presidency, under the Constitution’s “natural born citizen” provision, which also requires that anyone running for president be the child of two American parents. “Obama’s” father never took the oath to become an American citizen.

There are many theories abroad that claim that the “long form” Hawaiian birth certificate “Obama” finally provided last year is a forgery, and that he has used multiple social security numbers, even while serving in the U.S. Senate. I take no position on said theories. Neither do I consign them to the lunatic fringe, nor do I affirm their truth. I just don’t know.

But it is not necessary to determine the truth of said charges.

I also do not know what the proper means is to rid the White House of this scourge. I only know that the American people are not obliged to extend him any legal courtesies or procedures, whether impeachment or permitting him to stand for re-election.

His status in the White House is akin to that of a burglar. One does not sue a burglar to leave one’s premises, or put the matter to the neighbors for a vote.

That man threw the nation into a constitutional crisis, at least as early as his first Democratic caucus vote in 2008.

The best thing would be for the U.S. Supreme Court to order him to leave the White House, but if that body has so far not acted, it is unlikely to do so now.

As for Tom Tancredo’s argument that “Obama” seeks to become dictator, I have said just that since Inauguration Day, 2008.

What to do? In earlier drafts of this column, I argued that it is wrong to initiate impeachment proceedings against someone who was never eligible to run for office, in the first place, and thus concluded that Tancredo was wrong. Upon further study, however, I despair of any institution doing its duty to remove that man from office, based on his ineligibility. Thus, every legal means, including drawing up articles of impeachment, must be used.

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Our Choice: Impeachment or Dictatorship
Exclusive: Tom Tancredo urges House to begin proceedings against Obama ASAP
by Tom Tancredo
March 9, 2012
World Net Daily

Tom Tancredo is the founder of the Rocky Mountain Foundation, and founder and co-chairman of Team America PAC. He is also a former five-term congressman and presidential candidate. Tancredo is the author of In Mortal Danger: The Battle for America's Border and Security.

Almost every week brings a new reason for the United States House of Representatives to bring impeachment charges against President Obama. The question of the day is not why he should be impeached, but why it hasn’t already been done.

This week it was Secretary of Defense Panetta’s declaration before the Senate Armed Services Committee that he and President Obama look not to the Congress for authorization to bomb Syria, but to NATO and the United Nations. This led to Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., introducing an official resolution calling for impeachment, should Obama take offensive action based on Panetta’s policy statement, because it would violate the Constitution.

Well, really, folks: Is Obama’s disregard of the Constitution really news? No. He has done it so many times, it doesn’t make news anymore. Democrats approve it and Republicans in Congress appear to accept it – not all Republicans, of course, but far too many.

The list of Obama’s constitutional violations is growing by the day and ought to be the topic of not only nightly news commentary but citizens’ town-hall meetings and protest rallies.

President Obama can only be emboldened by the lack of impeachment proceedings. His violations typically arouse a short-lived tempest among some conservatives, yet impeachment is not generally advocated by his critics as a realistic recourse. That must change.

That Obama can be voted out of office in eight months is not a reason to hold back on impeachment. Formal impeachment proceedings in the House of Representatives would help alert the nation’s 120 million likely voters that more is at stake in Obama’s power grabs than Syrian human rights and contraception subsidies for college students.

The grounds for House impeachment proceedings have been laid by Obama’s own actions. A list of his unconstitutional and illegal actions would embarrass any honest public official and makes Nixon’s Watergate cover-up look like a college fraternity house panty raid.

Obama’s policy on the use of military force abroad raises grave issues – both policy issues and constitutional issues. When Defense Secretary Panetta tells a Senate committee he will rely on NATO and the U.N. for “permission” for use of military force, that is an affront to and direct assault on the Constitution.

Those Panetta statements propelled Rep. Jones to introduce a House resolution stipulating that any use of military force by the president without an act of Congress, except to repel a direct attack on the United States, is an impeachable offense under the Constitution.

But this is only the latest Obama assault on the Constitution. There are many other examples of Obama’s disregard for constitutional limitations to his power.
Obama violated the Constitution with his “recess appointments” while the Senate was not in recess. It is up to the Senate to decide when it is in recess, not the president. That distinction between executive and legislative authority is what the Separation of Powers doctrine is all about.

Obama is an obvious participant and co-conspirator in Eric Holder’s approval and later cover-up of the illegal “Fast and Furious” gun-walking program. Unlike the Watergate case, people have actually died as a result of this illegal program.

Obama undoubtedly has knowledge of and has approved Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano’s project to require Border Patrol management to falsify apprehension numbers on the southwest border. This is a clear violation of Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution, which requires the federal government to protect the country against foreign invasion.

The president’s open refusal to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act is a violation of Article III, Section 1 of the Constitution, which does not authorize the president to choose which laws to “faithfully execute.” The oath taken by a new president on Inauguration Day does not say, “… to defend the Constitution of the United States… to the best of my ability, except when I disagree with it.”

Did the president violate the law when he instructed Labor Secretary Solis to negotiate agreements with foreign governments to expand the “labor rights” of illegal aliens?

The precedent of Clinton’s impeachment over his perjury in the Monica Lewinsky case established the principle that the legal definition of “high crimes and misdemeanors” is what Congress wants them to mean. Have Obama’s actions met the constitutional standard for impeachment? Absolutely, yes.

Unless the House of Representatives acts to begin impeachment proceedings against this bold usurper, we are headed for dictatorship. Either the Constitution limits the president’s powers, or it does not. If it does, Obama must be impeached for his actions. If not, then a dictatorship is not only inevitable, it will be upon us soon.