Does Obama pee in a cup?

Factual Questions
1

Does the President of the United States have to submit to drug testing? The law to test federal employees has been around since early Reagan. The Presidency is a federal job. So is being a congressman or senator. I smoke marijuana and believe it should be legal, but their forebearers enacted these laws, and they are part of the laws. Obama was a late 70’s teen. I myself am 6 years younger than Obama and recently celebrated 25 years of marijuana use.

If the President (not Obama necessarily) was caught or was proven to smoke marijuana, is this grounds for impeachment?

As an aside, does anyone think that impeachment is a stupid word for this definition. The word has a fruit in it, but there is nothing peachy about the term.

I am not saying that Obama smokes dope. He doesn’t 99.999% sure. He did spend our money like a crackhead on the bailout.

President, VP, SZupreme court justice, any appalete justices and congressman including senators drug tested?

2

  1. Of course he doesn’t. Come on, those rules don’t apply to Presidents and Congresspeople. The rules never do.

  2. Even if he did, Obama’s position as President of the United States is something that is determined by the rules laid out in the Constitution. Some federal drug testing law cannot overrule the Constitution, which says quite specifically how it is determined who the President should be, and according to those rules it’s Barack Obama.

He would therefore have to be impeached by Congress, who can make up pretty much anything they want as grounds for impeachment, so they don’t need to wait for a drug test.

3

He could just pardon himself (maybe) if he got busted.

4

Those two sentences are perfect together.

5

I believe the rules for presidency are constituionally defined, and the constituion of the US does not contain references to marijuana. It would require an amendment to the constitution to require that a president be drug-free.

Whether or not a drug-using president would sit well with the electorate, of course, is another matter.

6

How about citing some actual facts, given that this is GQ? For one thing, the president is required by law to do all sorts of stuff that isn’t in the Constitution. An example is reimbursing the government for the cost of food served at the White House residence.

As for drug testing, the rule applies to employees of the federal civil service, not elected officials or political appointees.

Specifically, Executive Order 12564, issues by Reagan pursuant to 5 USC § 7301, provides that:

…and so on and so forth.

7

Impeachment is the more technical term for what most people call peach cobbler.

I’m pretty sure.

8

The president is requried to do things, but…

If the president refused, what would happen? Nothing, you can pass law after law saying he has to do things, but if he doesn’t there’s very little you can do. In fact the only thing you can do is impeach him and remove him from office.

If you look back to when some states tried to pass a law for term limits, the US Supreme Court said, “No.” You can’t add on additonal requirements. When states tried to prevent convicted felons from being Senators and Representatives, again the SCOTUS said, “No.”

So while in some states convicted felons can’t vote for themselves, they can, in all states run and be elected as Senator. Of course the US Senate or House can simply refuse to seat that elected person.

As for the example:

reimbursing the government for the cost of food served at the White House residence.

This may be so, but what if the president refuses. What’s gonna happen? Nothing. Does he stop being president? No of course not. I suppose you could try to bring civil or even criminal charges against him, but it won’t stop him from being president.

Even Andrew Jackson’s famous “The Supreme Court made that rule, not let THEM enforce it” shows there’s little one can do.

Theodore Roosevelt want to send the US fleet on a show of strength when he built up the navy. Congress refused to give him money for this, calling it wasteful. Roosevelt just ordered them to go anyway. Halfway around the world the fleet ran out of money. Then what could the US Cnngress do? They could leave the fleet where it was stranded or allow the money to be appropriated, which they did.

In Congress it’s a bit different, just a bit. The US Constitution give both houses the power to set rules for its members. So either house could pass a “rule” requiring drug testing and then refuse to seat a member who didn’t pass the test. Of course they can’t stop anyone from being elected, but they can refuse to seat that person

The only thing I can think of off hand the President HAS to do, according to the US Constitution is give a state of the union address. Though I’m sure there are a few other things in there I can’t think of at the top of the moment.

9

I don’t understand what point you’re trying to make. He “stops being president” when he is impeached and convicted for violating federal law. Obviously this has nothing to do with eligibility to become president, because you have to be president already in order to violate that law. Just like you have to actually be a federal employee before you get fired by the federal government for smoking a bowl.

10

Okay, that makes me think of a question that started bugging me a few years ago. The Constitution states that the President may not be involuntarily removed from office except upon impeachment by the HoR and conviction by the Senate.

But does the Constitution mandate that the penalty upon conviction must be forfeiture of the office? Could a disapproving Congress/Senate impeach and convict a President, and follow up with say, a stern letter of Reprimand?

I know it seems silly to even contemplate it. And I’ll concede that such a course of events would be very damaging to the dignity of the office of the President, as well as the dignity of the Congress, Senate, Supreme Court, and even the Constitution. But is it possible for it to happen?

11

I was taught in high school American history class that technically the President does not receive a paycheck from the federal government. Instead, he or his agents regularly sue the government, which regularly settles the suit with a payment. This is a formality but there was some reason (which I was expected to remember, alas) why it is done this way. Sorry I don’t have anything more specific; high school was a long time ago (more than a tenth of the way back to the creation of the United States).

That being said, I wonder if it’s possible that the President is not an employee?

12

I really doubt that the president has to sue the government to get paid, especially as the idea that he’s paid is enshrined in the Constitution. Were you actually told this by your high school teacher or was this something other students said?

Article 2, Section 1: “The President shall, at stated Times, receive for his Services, a Compensation, which shall neither be increased nor diminished during the Period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that Period any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them.”

13

He beg, stole and borrowed to buy one little, inexpensive item?

14

Impeachment is a political process, not a legal one, and “grounds” for impeachment are functionally whatever Congress decides they are. It is highly unlikely, however, that a President would be impeached for smoking dope. As a matter of fact, I don’t think it’s technically even illegal to smoke it. It’s illegal to possess it or sell it, but not illegal to test positive for it in a piss test.

The first bailout happned under Bush, and the spending was done by Congress. Presidents can’t spend money. That power belongs to Congress.

Also, the bailouts worked. You’re welcome.

15

POTUS and the Congress *as elected officials are and have always been excepted from many of the regular federal public service personnel management provisions(). Similarly at the state level the Governors and members of the Statehouses. Really I find no moral objection with that in and of itself.

(*The fate of members of SCOTUS on this would probably be delegated by the relevant laws to the Rules that SCOTUS itself approves for the Federal Judiciary, and I would not be at all surprised if The Nine are also “more equal” than the rest of the Federal Bench)

There was even a SCOTUS decision on a Georgia case in the 90s that IIRC found, by near unanimity, that a state could not make submitting to a drug test a condition for assuming and holding a legislative seat, failing evidence either that there’s a widespread drug use problem in the Statehouse or that the post of legislator was a safety-sensitive position (such as policeman).

You should not override the will of the voters over a mere HR management issue – and that’s what drug testing is: the hired employee’s test requirement may be mandatory but** the penalty for failing or for refusing to cooperate is not a criminal accusation**, it’s administrative sanctions including up to rejection of application or dismissal from post (on preview: or, what Diogenes said). Drug possession remains illegal for elected officials at all levels, and evidence thereof could be used against them, but there is no basis in law to condition their holding of the post to sumitting to the test.
[opinion]As a society and workforce we were such wimps about Doing Someting in the Drug War, the way we let our so-called leaders go along with extending drug testing beyong people in safety-sensitive positions to making it a requirement for everybody in public service, and imposing the same requirement on government’s private-sector contractors, thus essentially legitimizing universal drug testing as a standard business practice. But who’s going to be the Hero who says his organization does not need to follow “Drug Free Workplace” guidelines? [/opinion]

16

What I remember is that the teacher told us this. I think maybe she said that it was considered common for him to be paid in the ordinary way. Certainly it was not the case that his getting paid was ever in jeopardy, only that there was made to be different or special in this fashion. I did a little web searching and did not find anything like this. I don’t know, maybe the whole thing is just leaking and noisy brain cells. It was a pretty long time ago, and it’s not like I remembered most of the other things she taught us.

17

I’ve always wondered where teachers get bizarre ideas like that. I think some of them just get something slightly wrong once, then repeat it six times a day for years and years, and through no malicious intent it morphs into something of such staggering wrongness that you wonder how they remember to breathe.

Anyhoo, maybe your teacher was confused because some early presidents had to sometimes “remind” the Congress to pass supplementary appropriations bills that included their salary. (Congress never forgets their own salary, naturally.) Nowadays, the president’s paychecks are regularly sent out via direct deposit, same as every gubbermint lackey. He also gets a W2.

18

Well, there is a lot of stuff that HS teachers say…it is, often, a bunch of hare brained nonsense.
We had an econ teacher, who would say some of the wildest stuff. Like an idiot, I believed him; even worse, I repeated it as fact, and got busted.
As for POTUS to get paid, doesn’t the GAO hand it (check/stub) over to the White House?
Best wishes,
hh

19

In the private sector (I’m thinking Big Four accountancies - which do work on contract for the US Gov), drug testing is (IME) a total no-go. They are huge international organizations trying to comply with the norms of locales, but wouldn’t want to just drug test Americans - that would look like a prejudicial hiring/retention practice.

And, I’d add, that most/all of the Federal agencies have “thresholds” for drug consumption (prior to employment, that is); some are more liberal than others.

Frankly, I understand why you would want most Federal employees to be tested. When I was contracted to the government for about 5 years, I was routinely called in at wacky hours to perform work. Even the secretaries occasionally got roused from their “off hours.” Had any of us shown up tripping on acid with a doobie hanging from our lips, we probably wouldn’t have performed very well.

20

Elected officials are not “federal employees.” Firing them under any circumstance is difficult and complicated. Their staffers and appointees are another matter entirely. Whether or not the big boys submit to urinalysis is largely up to them, and I can’t imagine a drug-using elected official peeing in a cup under any circumstance.