House Republicans' reading of the US Constitution was interrupted Thursday by a woman who shouted “except Obama, except Obama” to the venerable document's words on a US citizen's eligibility to be president.
Just as Representative Frank Pallone, a Democrat, was reading “no person, except a natural-born citizen, or a citizen of the United States” is eligible for the presidency, a woman in the visitor's gallery yelled out that it did not apply to President Barack Obama.
Representative Mike Simpson, a Republican who was presiding over the House, banged the gavel and halted the proceedings, warning that such action from members of the public was a violation of House rules. The woman was quickly removed by Capitol police.
Lawmakers took turns reciting each verse and article of the document. Republicans in charge of the chamber rattled it off with missionary zeal, as if in a school civics class. Democrats pitched in, but with seemingly less ardor.
Historians said it was the first time the 222-year-old governing document had been read in its entirety on the House floor.
So-called “birthers” claim Obama is ineligible to be president because they say there is no proof he was born in the United States, with many of the skeptics questioning whether he was actually born in Kenya - his father's home country.
The Obama campaign issued a certificate of live birth in 2008, an official document from Hawaii showing the president's birth date, city and name, along with his parents' names and races. The certificate does not list the name of the hospital where he was born or the physician who delivered him, information collected by the state as part of its vital records. Hawaii's health director said last year and in 2008 that she had seen and verified Obama's original vital records.
Republicans and their tea party allies, who campaigned during the past election on the need for Washington to stop flouting limits on the powers of the federal government as defined by the Constitution, said the reading of the Constitution gave proof to their dedication to the nation's original principles. Democrats viewed the proceedings with more suspicion.
Before the reading began, Democrats questioned the Republican decision not to read sections of the 222-year-old governing document that were later amended, such as the Article I, Section 2
clause that classified slaves as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of congressional apportionment and taxation.
“It's a consequence of who we are,” Representative Jesse Jackson, Jumior, a Democrat and son of civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, said in reference to the three-fifth's clause and its deletion from the reading.
The entire reading of the seven articles and 27 amendments of the Constitution took about an hour and a half. -
Sapa-AP