Thursday, January 29, 2009

Lawsuit Filed: Hillary Clinton Ineligible for Sec. of State Position

WASHINGTON (AP) — A conservative watchdog group filed a lawsuit Thursday arguing that Hillary Rodham Clinton cannot legally serve as secretary of state, even though she was sworn in last week.

The suit is based on an obscure section of the Constitution on compensation for public officials, the emoluments clause. The clause says no member of Congress can be appointed to a government post if that job's pay was increased during the lawmaker's current term.

Clinton was serving in Congress when the secretary of state's salary was raised to its current level of $191,300. So that Clinton could take the post, Congress last month lowered the salary to $186,600, the level when she began her second Senate term. A similar tactic has been used so that several other members of Congress from both parties could serve in the Cabinet.

Judicial Watch, which has pursued several suits against Clinton and other officials over the years, argues there can be no exceptions to the clause.

The group says that Hillary Clinton is "constitutionally ineligible" to be secretary of state until 2013, when her second Senate term would expire. She resigned from the Senate to take the Cabinet post.

Judicial Watch filed the suit on behalf of State Department employee David Rodearmel. It says Rodearmel would violate the oath he took as a foreign service officer in 1991 to "support and defend" and "bear true faith and allegiance" to the Constitution by working for Clinton.

A State Department spokesman declined to respond to the case.

Update: President Obama froze salaries of cabinet members in order to dodge this lawsuit... not (as Obama claimed) as a measure to control spending as one can easily see by the $1 Trillion porkapalooza government growth bill.

-red

2 Comments:

Blogger mystere's moonbat slayer club said...

I'll bet that Jane Chastain of World Net Daily has some choice words about this. I've known her personally for a number of years, and if she's said anything about this, she'll have some choice ripe words on this.

1:32 PM  
Blogger RD said...

I'll keep an eye out for it, thank you and please stop by anytime... and keep slayin' 'em.
-red

10:37 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home