Michael Savage calls for invocation of the 25th Amendment

Continuing in his Stalinist methods, Savage is calling for a board of doctors to meet and certify that Barack Obama is delusional and psychotic and remove the elected President from office.

The closest the Constitution gets to that is the 25th amendment

http://constitution.findlaw.com/amendment25.html

The amendment was passed in 1965 following the assasination of John F Kennedy. When JFK was declared dead, Lyndon Johnson became President. There was no process to replace the Vice President, meaning that if LBJ died before the next election, the line of succession would be followed.

The framers of the Constitution could not anticipate every possible scenario. William Harrison was shot by an assassin but lingered on for 80 days. People realized JFK could have been injured instead of killed, leaving it unclear what powers LBJ did or didn’t have. Rumors persist to this day that JFK didn’t actually die, but was on life support in a Dallas hospital.

So the 25th Amendment was added to deal with the problem of a President who became unable to run the country. It creates the notion of an “acting” President and a process to remove the President from office that is initiated within the Executive branch, not involving inpeachment or accusations of criminal acts.

So Savage has a plan! Round up a group of doctors to say he is nuts, and Obama can be hauled off to Siberia! (By “he is nuts” – that means Barack Obama, not Michael Savage)

So how does the actual process work? It was actually invoked when Ronald Reagan was shot and going into surgery. George HW Bush was Acting President briefly.

Setting aside impeachment, death or resignation, the operative concept is the “inability to discharge the powers and duties” described first in Section 3 – which is a voluntary declaration where the president declares he is temporarily unable to perform the duties and the VP is acting President until the President announces he can resume the duties. As soon as the President says “I’m OK” again, the acting presidency ends.

Section 4 is the involuntary removal from office. The process begins by the Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet agreeing that the President has a problem. So Joe Biden has to initiate the process. If he and the cabinet agree, then Joe Biden becomes Acting President – yay! What next?

When Barack Obama formally declares, “no, I’m fine!”, he starts a clock running. He doesn’t have to prove he’s OK. Sending the letter is proof that he isn’t in a coma.

Once the President says “No, I’m OK – really!”, the VP and cabinet can raise the stakes and declare “no, really, you’re not OK!”. They have four days to start Round Two. If they vote again to proceed, Congress then has 2 days to get to DC to decide the fate of the President. They have 21 days to vote to remove the President – requiring a 2/3 majority in both Houses of Congress. That would require 67 Senators to vote for removal. With 54 Republicans, assuming they are unified in their desire to start a civil war with the cities burning to the ground, 13 Democratic Senators would also have to vote to remove Obama. Now who is delusional?

Note nothing in the process requires any misconduct by the President or any poof or rebuttal of his competence. The assumption is the Cabinet are in the best position to know if the President is staring at the ceiling looking at space alien spiders telling him what to do.

If the VP and Cabinet don’t initiate Round 2 within 4 days, or Congress does not vote for removal within 21 days, the VP is no longer Acting President. Presumably, the VP could immediately start the process again, so long as the Cabinet continues to agree every 25 days to keep the VP as Acting President.