After the inaguration the new president went to the Capitol's "Presidents Room" and actually signed the documents appointing his cabinet.

I think once a guy gives his word that he's really a U.S. citizen he can do whatever he wants.

Struck me as odd too..

... concur with "the President shall nominate", bothersome is that confirmation hearings began before the One was sworn in...

... it would seem pretty straight forward... but then again I only swore to uphold the Constitution (not what nine men in black dresses or a bunch of congress critters say) and resort to force if necessary... twice... so what do I know.

Does the constitution say when Congress shall confirm the nominees? If not then maybe individuals who haven't been nominated could be confirmed and then after they have been confirmed they could be nominated and hired as soon as the President is sworn in. I know this is backwards but if you're going to nitpick the wording then turnabout is fair play.

Another interesting constitutional question:

Was the "do-over" of the oath of office necessary?

I submit that it was not.

Disagree, Bill. Please read the Constitution.

Article 2, section 1, USC( excerpt ):
Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Since when has our Consitution been a restriction on a modern politician?

yeah, but also says natural born Kris.

If the president can nominate, would that mean that Bush could have picked his folks?

Does any of it matter? When was the last time any of them really preserved, protected or defended it? It's a fairly narrow list of powers granted to them that they have warped into a fairly limited number of things untouchable by them...what different would a few words out of order make?

Flight-Er-Doc in the first comment is correct. As the cameras followed Obama into the Presidents Office off the Rotundra, the commentators explained that his first business as president was to sign all the docs to make his cabinet nominations official. Done.

Flight-Er-Doc in the first comment is correct. As the cameras followed Obama into the Presidents Office off the Rotundra, the commentators explained that his first business as president was to sign all the docs to make his cabinet nominations official. Done.

If the oath of office he took the first time wasn't official, then no.

Especially when you consider that Hillary Clinton was sworn in as SecState 2 hours and 6 minutes *BEFORE* Barack Obama took the "official" oath of office.

I'm curious as to whether this was discussed by those who are up in arms about it now when George W. Bush did it 8 years ago.

http://www.learnersonline.com/weekly/archive2K/week47/index.htm

I'm curious as to whether this was discussed by those who are up in arms about it now when George W. Bush did it 8 years ago.

No, it wasn't discussed by the same people. In fact, it wasn't discussed by the other side, either, because they were too distracted by their own chants of "selected, not elected".

I don't think anyone seriously doubts that a president-elect can nominate his cabinet.

I find the question mildly interesting if his nominees can take the oath before the president, but it's just academic at this point: Obama is president, and Clinton is SecState, and that's that.

First, I'm a conservative and did not vote for Obama.
However, that said, all these arguments about whether this or that was legal because of the screwed up oath is trivial to the point of ridiculousness.
I liken it to having to redo a blood test ordered by a doctor because the lab's requisition rules said to order the test as "glucose, blood" instead of the term "blood glucose". The result is the same regardless of how it's ordered and the intent of the order is clear in either case.

If I had a receptionist in the lab send you back to the doctor's office to get a new lab request because of the above, would you blame the lab or the doctor?

For those that would say the oath of office is different, I would ask, why and what difference does it make in the long (or even short) run?

"If the oath of office he took the first time wasn't official, then no."

The 20th Amendment expressly says that the term of the president begins at noon on Jan. 20th. Not clear exactly how that meshes with the provision that he must recite the oath "before he enter on the Execution of his Office" as required by Article II.

The question is whether not taking the oath, or reciting the oath incorrectly, would cause the person not to actually be "president." If we want to get hypertechnical, which apparently some do, many presidents in the past did not recite the oath correctly. It does not provide for the person to insert his name in there. They all recite it as "I, George W. Bush, do solemnely swear..." or "I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear..." The constitutional text for the oath says only "I do solemnly swear...".

And what is the significance of him putting "faithfully" in the wrong place? Whether he says "faithfully execute" or "execute faithfully", grammatically the meaning is the same. It's silly to say that the legal consequence of putting the word "faithfully" in the wrong place means the person is not actually the President.

The 20th Amendment expressly says that the term of the president begins at noon on Jan. 20th. Not clear exactly how that meshes with the provision that he must recite the oath "before he enter on the Execution of his Office" as required by Article II.

Clearly there is a tension between Article II and the 20th Amendment.

To my thinking, both are necessary: You can't take the oath before Noon on the 20th, it would be invalid because of the 20th, but if you don't take the oath as required by Article II, aren't president either. And by not taking the oath, I mean actually not taking it, not just a simple flub.

It would be interesting to hear some lawyers hash that one out, but like I said before, it has no real World application to the current President. He's president, period.