07-23-2019, 10:48 AM
Kaimana - It would be like if someone kidnapped the President and forced him to end the US and turn over power to another country.
Well it would be more like if current and past congressmen, cabinet members, department heads, supreme court justices, and other government and business leaders occupied all the governmental offices, let the president travel about, ran the country in the meanwhile without any armed opposition, wrote and ratified a constitution, got a score of nations to recognize them as legitimate over the next few years, put down some armed resistance, then put the president on house arrest and had them abdicate. A little different, but yeah...
As for the treaty of annexation, as was pointed out then and now, the U.S. Constitution does not specify the process for acquiring territory and the Supreme Court does not take up "political questions" such as this (although a a couple Justices have opined off the record over the years in support of the joint resolution "process"). As such, the legal status of the action is strictly a matter of opinion, over which the debate still continues.
Or more succinctly, it's really not that simple.
Well it would be more like if current and past congressmen, cabinet members, department heads, supreme court justices, and other government and business leaders occupied all the governmental offices, let the president travel about, ran the country in the meanwhile without any armed opposition, wrote and ratified a constitution, got a score of nations to recognize them as legitimate over the next few years, put down some armed resistance, then put the president on house arrest and had them abdicate. A little different, but yeah...
As for the treaty of annexation, as was pointed out then and now, the U.S. Constitution does not specify the process for acquiring territory and the Supreme Court does not take up "political questions" such as this (although a a couple Justices have opined off the record over the years in support of the joint resolution "process"). As such, the legal status of the action is strictly a matter of opinion, over which the debate still continues.
Or more succinctly, it's really not that simple.