25th Amendment, Section 4 - Updated

Below, in its entirety, is the email which I just sent to Vice President Joe Biden:

Mr. Vice President:

Although I supported the election of President Obama in 2008, and although I was sympathetic to the cause of the Libyan rebels, I believed (and still believe) that the President's decision to commit US military personnel, assets, and US tax dollars in support of the rebels without the prior authorization of Congress, given that Libya has never and did not then represent even a remote danger to the security of the United States, was a blatantly unconstitutional act for which the President should have been held accountable via the legal constitutional processes.

Today we are reading that President Obama has now, on his own authority, decided to commit some 100 US combat personnel to Uganda in order to assist in combat against something called "The Lord's Resistance Army." In this case, it seems, the President did at least take the step of notifying Speaker Boehner of his decision, although in the copy of that letter which I have read online, the President is clearly not requesting congressional authorization, merely once again asserting his supposed (and I believe unconstitutional) authority to commit US troops, assets, and dollars in his capacity as Commander-in-Chief and Chief Executive as, when, and how he sees fit to do so.

Mr. Vice President, it surely cannot have escaped you, members of the Cabinet, or other leading government officials that the United States currently is, and has been for some considerable time, in a state of unprecedented crisis here at home. Millions of ordinary Americans from across the political spectrum are angry, even outraged, and I believe rightly so, over the poor performance of our economy in general, the lack of jobs in particular, the ongoing lack of any responsibility being placed on the shoulders of those persons and institutions which caused the present financial crisis, and our two major, seemingly interminable wars in the Middle East which a majority of Americans clearly no longer support.

I do not believe that even his detractors would claim that President Obama is not a highly intelligent, well-educated man, which is why this latest step (the commitment of American forces to a conflict in Uganda, which few Americans have even heard about, and which clearly represents no threat whatsoever to the security of the United States), given the other circumstances mentioned above, causes me to have serious doubts about the President's mental/emotional stability and capacity to continue to govern.

Although I believe that important constitutional issues are involved, we are now at the point at which I, and I suspect a great many other Americans, are less concerned with them than with the President's fitness, from a medical standpoint, to remain in office.

Therefore, Mr. Vice President, I earnestly hope that you and members of the Cabinet will give serious consideration to the possibility that the President may indeed be ill, that his illness (if he is so diagnosed) may well be preventing him from competently discharging the duties of his office, and that you will consider invoking the Twenty-fifth Amendment, Section 4, of the Constitution of the United States to remove, even if only temporarily, the President from office at least until the matter can be sorted out by competent medical personnel and both Houses of Congress, assuming that the President would not agree that he is no longer able to function competently.

I believe that at this point the course I have suggested, Mr. Vice President, would be best for the Democratic Party, for the United States, and for the American people.

Respectfully,

Robert Schiele

And the response was:


Dear Friend,


Thank you for your message. On behalf of Vice President Biden, we appreciate hearing from you. The President has promised the most transparent administration in history, and we are committed to listening to and responding to you. In order to better handle the millions of electronic messages we are receiving and respond more quickly, we have implemented a new contact form on our website:


http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact-vp/ Please note that this web form has replaced vicepresident@whitehouse.gov.


That email address is no longer monitored, so we encourage you to resubmit your message through the link above. Thank you for using the web form and helping us improve communications with you. 


Sincerely,


The Office of The Vice President

Or, as Rosanne Rosannadanna used to say on Saturday Night Live: "It just goes to show you that it's always something."