On the top 25 issues of the day, Obama’s position appears to be on the correct side of public opinion on 14: the bank tax, repealing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, campaign finance, the credit card bill, D.C. voting rights, fair pay, financial regulation, gays in the military, hate crimes, the jobs bill, mortgage relief, PAYGO, SCHIP, and Sotomayor. It would appear to be on the wrong side of public opinion on five issues: the GM/Chrysler bailout, Guantanamo Bay, health care, the extension of the TARP program, and terrorist trials. On the other six issues, the polling is probably too ambiguous to render a clear verdict.

Sen. Dick Shelby (R-Ala.), a snarling, bloodthirsty Cheneyite neo-con, abruptly ended his attempt to force the Obama administration to approve two pork projects for his home state after being called out for taking the nominees “hostage” by New York’s center-right New York Daily News on Sunday.

Even so, it is unclear whether the administration will eventually capitulate and award the projects to Alabama.

The projects include a facility to build Air Force aerial refueling tankers and a new FBI Terrorist Device Analytical Center.

The story burbled to the surface last week when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s office announced that Shelby had put a blanket hold on 70 Obama nominees, including a Defense Department position overseeing deployments to Afghanistan.

The story popped up again on Friday when White House spokesman Robert Gibbs chided Shelby for placing his political need to bring home the bacon over the interests of the nation:

“If you needed one example of what’s wrong with this town, it might be that one senator can hold up 70 qualified individuals to make government better because he didn’t get his earmarks.”

Imagine for a moment the bloody hell that would have been raised by Fox News, right-wing radio and Beltway pundits of all stripes if a Democratic senator had put a blanket hold on 70 Bush nominees for security-related positions.

Despite the mentions by Reid’s office and Gibb, Shelby’s blanket hold barely made headlines. One exception was the New York Daily News, in an editorial on Sunday titled, “Abuse of process: Sen. Shelby holds 70 nominees hostage to Alabama pork “:

Shelby’s fit of pique would be bad enough if it stemmed from some principled disagreement over a nominee or two or three. But he doesn’t actually care about the nominees or the jobs. Shelby is in a snit because he’s afraid a $35 billion Pentagon order for aerial refueling tankers might go to Boeing – rather than to a firm that has promised to build the tankers in his state. He’s also miffed, according to his staff, that a proposed FBI facility might not get built in Alabama.

Senators have long used holds as behind-the-scenes bargaining tactics; members can ask party leaders to bottle up a nominee or measure until they are placated. But nobody can recall a hold this sweeping, or one provoked by such selfishness.

This is Richard Shelby: So bent on bringing home the bacon, he’s willing to starve the rest of us.

In fact, Shelby is still holding a few hostages:

Moving forward, [Shelby spokesman Jonathan Graffeo] said Shelby has placed holds on the following nominees: Terry Yonkers, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force; Frank Kendall, Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics; and Erin Conaton, Under Secretary of the Air Force. Graffeo said the holds will continue until the Obama administration agrees to reexamine the air refueling tanker contract and improvised explosive device lab that led to Shelby’s controversial wider holds.

Graffeo denied Shelby had bowed to the criticism but rather declared victory for the senator, alleging that the holds had merely been meant to get the president’s attention.

Comedian Marc Maron, reacting to the recent Supreme Court decision

— Sarah Palin, in an interview on Fox News Sunday, on whether she’ll consider running for president in 2012.

Andrew Breitbart

The profiteers who organized the tea bagger convention last weekend must have backed off their plan to ban the media from covering events in Nashville last weekend. C-SPAN was there, as were reporters from supposedly liberal sources like the New York Times. In fact, one report said there were 150 credentialed reporters to cover the 600 attendees — or one reporter for every four baggers.

But when it comes to coverage of the biggest kerfuffle of the event — a verbal brawl between Andrew Breitbart, a blogger who once referred to himself as Matt Drudge’s “bitch,” and WingNutDaily editor Joseph Farah, a leading proponent in the 1990s of the conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton murdered Vince Foster — the action took place outside the event and would have been fair game to reporters even if there’d been a media blackout in the hall.

What sparked the contretemps was Farah’s use of his address Friday night to relaunch the tired and often-disproved claim that Pres. Obama was not born in the United States. The made-up controversy over Obama’s birth certificate has become a non-issue among right-wingers who are sufficiently sentient to understand that even if Obama were disqualified, it would be his vice president, Joe Biden, would become president — not his 2008 GOP rival, John McCain (who, by the way, really was born in the foreign nation of Panama).

In his address to his fellow baggers in Nashville — after a few minutes of hard-selling his books — he told a lame joke that ended with this punchline:

FARAH: we recently took a guy with no birth certificate, no brains and put him in the White House and now half the country is looking for work.

Then he launched into a rambling 10-minute screed about the birth certificate:

FARAH: You know, I have a dream. And my dream is that if Barack Obama even seeks re-election as president in 2012 that he won’t be able to go to any city, any town, any hamlet in America without seeing signs that ask “Where’s the Birth Certificate?”

It’s a simple question, and it has not been answered, despite what Bill O’Reilly will tell you. The rest of the media, they think it’s ridiculous, which makes me certain it’s one of the most important questions we can be asking…

But the media and the politicians, they keep pretending it’s all been settled. “You know, it’s all been proved.” I say if it’s been settled, show us the birth certificate. Simple.

(For video and transcript of Farah’s rebooting of the birther movement, click here.)

One of the reporters on hand for Farah’s speech was the Washington Independent’s David Weigel, who wrote later that conservative political types in the back of the room were heard “grumbling audibly” about Farah’s re-introduction of birtherism into tea bag movement. Among the most vocal was Breitbart, who has been in the news a lot lately because he is or was the employer of James O’Keefe, the alleged felonious prankster who was caught attempting to tamper with phones in a federal building in New Orleans. (It is unclear what, if anything, Breitbart paid O’Keefe to do and whether he knew what O’Keefe intended to commit a felony.)

Later in the evening, Weigel found Breitbart outside the hall being interviewed by Chelsea Schilling, an employee of Farah’s WorldNetDaily. Weigel later wrote that Schilling was holding a voice recorder in plain sight apparently to make it plain that Breitbart was speaking on the record:

“It’s self-indulgent, it’s narcissistic, it’s a losing issue,” Breitbart told Schilling. “It’s a losing situation. If you don’t have the frigging evidence … raising the question? You can do that to Republicans all day long. You have to disprove that you’re a racist! Forcing them to disprove something is a nightmare.”

“Wouldn’t you say,” asked Schilling, “in this case, that Farah is asking Obama to prove something rather than his disprove it?”

Breitbart rejected the premise. “When has a president ever been asked to prove his citizenship?”

Later, Weigel found Farah in the crowd and asked him if the convention’s organizers had approved his attempt to relaunch birtherism:

“They asked me to speak,” said Farah. “They didn’t ask me, ‘What do you want to speak about?’ No, this operates like a free and open society, not like the kind of Marxist society you would apparently like to be a journalist for.”

When Weigel told Farah that his birther reboot had been negatively received in the crowd, particularly by Breitbart, Farah spotted Breitbart in the crowd and stalked over to him and said:

“Andrew is my friend … He has the right to disagree, and he has the right to say anything to a socialist newspaper that he wants. And if he wants to criticize his friend to you, and he’s dumb enough to do that..”

Breitbart raised his eyebrows. “I’m dumb to do what?”

“Criticize your friend to this socialist newspaper.”

“I was talking to her,” said Breitbart, pointing to Schilling. “I was talking to you. And I was saying that I disagreed on the birther stuff… She was asking me if I thought it was was [sic] to bring it up, and I said, no. “

Breitbart schooled Farah on the use of the birth certificate controversy in politics, according to Weigel, saying it was “an argument for the primaries that did not take hold.” He argued that reintroducing birtherism now while there were substantive issues on the table would be distracting and make the tea bag movement look foolish. “[It’s] not a winning issue,” Breitbart said.

The argument then devolved into a sort of “uh-huh,” “hunh-uh” exchange during which Breitbart quickly found himself swinging at Farah’s conspiracist tar baby:

Farah said, “It is a winning issue!” to which Brietbart replied, “It’s not a winning issue,” to which Farah said, “It is!”

Breitbart is correct, of course. In the GOP primary election for the Illinois U.S. Senate seat last Tuesday, for example, a prominent birther, Andy Martin, came in fifth in a six-person race — and the four tea party candidates collectively only received 36 percent of the vote and were trounced by establishment candidate, whom Martin had publicly accused of being secretly gay and, worse, a “liberal.”

As their exchange continued, Breibart steamed as Farah grew more obtuse and condescending.

“Prove it!,” Breitbart said.

“Prove what?” Farah answered.

Breitbart: “Prove your case.”

“I should prove, what, a birth certificate that may or may not exist?” said Farah.

At that point, Farah played the “journalism card” — which is rich considering that he is a propagandist without a shred of credibility.

“You don’t even understand the fundamental tenets of what journalism is about, Andrew,” Farah said. “It’s not about proving things. It’s about asking questions and seeking truth.” (But aren’t “proving things” and “seeking truth” roughly the same pursuit?)

With tempers boiling Farah said, “I know you’re not a journalist, so that’s fine. But don’t diminish people who’ve been doing this for 35 years.”

“So you’re going to go on record saying that I’m not a journalist?” Breitbart said.

“Are you?” Farah answered, “I’ve never heard you claim to be. Are you?”

“I’ll let it be answered by you.”

“Well, I knew Drudge didn’t consider himself a journalist,” said Farah, “so I assumed that you were. … I don’t know, I’m not trying to insult you.”

“You did,” Breitbart answered.

Poor Breitbart. Just as Farah continued to promote the charge that Clinton killed Vince Foster even after three federal investigations, including one by no less an amoral right-wing ideologue than Ken Starr, had ruled the death a suicide, Farah is not likely to let go of the birth certificate controversy, even though the matter has been litigated all the way up to the Republican-controlled U.S. Supreme Court.

Breitbart must know he is on the losing side on this one. He also knows that, short of a sex scandal involving Sarah Palin and a dead boy or a live girl, few things can do more damage to the tea bagger movement in the eyes of normal Americans and independent voters than reviving the quest to prove the unprovable: that Barack Obama was not born in Honolulu.

Rough transcript follows

The profiteers who organized the Tea Bagger convention in Nashville last week were hoping to begin adding a veneer of respectability to their movement, which has been characterized so far by the visuals of its adherents showing up at rallies with tea bags stapled to their hats, carrying racist signs and/or loaded weapons.

The organizers sabotaged themselves, however, by inviting, first, Tom Tancredo, the former congressman and GOP presidential candidate, to speak during the opening night event, and then Joseph Farah, founder and editor of WorldNetDaily, to speak the next night after the steak and lobster dinner.

Tancredo, who has had ties to a South Carolina neo-Confederate group, used his time to call for the return of requiring that prospective voters to take Jim Crow-era civics literacy tests — even though it’s doubtful that the tea baggers themselves could pass such tests.

When Farah took to the podium the next night, he went into a lengthy presentation meant to stiffen the spines of tea baggers who have strayed from the birther cause. Political types in the room were dumbfounded. The matter of the president’s birth certificate had been thoroughly vetted — by the Clinton and McCain campaigns, we can be assured, by reporters of all persuasions and in court. It was litigated all the way up to the GOP-controlled U.S. Supreme Court — a court, as recent history shows, that is not averse to overturning presidential elections.

In his speech, Farah returned to the birther demand that Pres. Obama produce a hard copy of his birth certificate — apparently finding unacceptable the state of Hawaii’s policy of releasing what they refer to as “certificates of live births” — even though these documents are, well, “birth certificates” that have been used by millions of Hawaiians, including Pres. Obama, to obtain driver’s licenses, passports and other legal documents.

Farah also misquoted a DailyKos/Research 2000 poll — which he failed to name as his source, for obvious reasons — saying, “… 33 percent of Californians either believe Obama was born outside the country or have doubts about his alleged Hawaiian birth. Nationwide it’s closer to 50 percent. Even significant numbers of Democrats have their doubts.”

The Kos poll was nationwide, not just California. (If he’s referring to another recent poll that found that 10 million Californians believe such nonsense, this Californian hasn’t heard of it and could not find it in a quick google.) More importantly, the Kos poll surveyed only Republicans, not All Americans, and, finally, the Kos poll found that just 4 percent of Democrats believe the president is foreign-born — which is close to the margin of error and hardly “significant.”

Perhaps the most bizarre aspect of his speech was Farah’s breaking of tea bagger taboo with a long, laborious comparison of Pres. Obama and Jesus Christ. Although he began with a joke he credited to Rush Limbaugh comparing Obama with God because neither of them had a birth certificate, Farah began listing chapters of the New Testament that he said proved Jesus’ lineage back to Adam, Abraham and King David. The gospel-writers included this information about Jesus, Farah said, in order to prove that “[He] was in the position to claim the throne of David because he was the physical descendant through the line of Joseph. And he was also eligible through the line of Mary, his biological mother, because she had no brothers and because she married within the tribe of Judah. All these little nitpicky details had to be established, and they were.”

If you believe in the virgin birth, you also must believe that Jesus was not biologically related to Joseph. If you believe the creation story in Genesis, all humans can trace their lineage back to Adam — even Pres. Obama. Similarly, aren’t all Jews supposed to be descended from Father Abraham? And, at least in the Southern Baptist Church where this sinner learned the rules 40 years ago, God’s choice of Jesus to rule the world was all the lineage He needed.

Of course, facts don’t matter to propagandists like Farah. While it may be true that he is not a “noted homosexual” as a prankster at Wikipedia repeatedly claimed, he is one of the right-wing conspiracists who rose to fame in the 1990s fanning the flames of Clinton derangement. For example, he went on promoting the cruel and bizarre fantasy that then-First Lady Hillary Clinton had her friend and colleague Vince Foster killed long after three federal investigations — including two by Republican independent counsels, first Robert Fiske and then Ken Starr — had pronounced Foster’s death a suicide.

The made-up controversy over Obama’s birth certificate has become a non-issue among right wingers who are sufficiently sentient to understand that even if Obama were disqualified, it would be his vice president, Joe Biden, who would become president — not, as tea baggers seem to believe, his 2008 GOP rival, John McCain (who, by the way, really was born in the foreign nation of Panama) and their beloved Sarah Palin.

Rough Transcript:

FARAH: You know, I have a dream. And my dream is that if Barack Obama even seeks re-election as president in 2012 that he won’t be able to go to any city, any town, any hamlet in America without seeing signs that ask “Where’s the Birth Certificate?”

It’s a simple question, and it has not been answered, despite what Bill O’Reilly will tell you. The rest of the media, they think it’s ridiculous, which makes me certain it’s one of the most important questions we can be asking.

[Crowd hoots and cheers.]

It really hits the target. You know polls now show — in California last week — a poll done in California — 33 percent of Californians either believe Obama was born outside the country or have doubts about this alleged Hawaiian birth. Nationwide it’s closer to 50 percent. Even significant numbers of Democrats have their doubts.

But the media and the politicians, they keep pretending it’s all been settled. “You know, it’s all been proved.” I say if it’s been settled, show us the birth certificate. Simple.

Just this week you probably saw Barack Obama’s appearance at the National Prayer Breakfast. And he said, “Don’t question my faith and don’t question my citizenship. Now why should his citizenship be a matter of faith?

[Laughter from the crowd]

Are we supposed — we’re not supposed to see the evidence? Now some people think I’m obsessed about this issue. [Laughter] I admit it. I’m obsessed with the Constitution.

[Crowd howls in approval, applaud.]

I think every American should be. I think every office-holder who takes an oath to uphold it should be. I think every journalist who practices the profession under the Constitution’s protections should be. Does the Constitution mean what it says? Does it actually limit what the Congress and the federal government can do?

I had an interview today with National Public Radio. [Crowd groans.] Oh, no, no. The lady was — lovely lady interviewed me, and it was going pretty well, and I mentioned the Constitution, and then she said, “Well, you know, but the Constitution is a living document — [Crowd: NO!] — and that’s why we have the Supreme Court to explain to us peons what it really means. And so I said to her, “You know, if you believe that, Nichelle, I’d like to play poker with you under “living rules.” High stakes poker under living rules.

[Laughter, applause.]

But what about this Constitution? Can it — can Congress constitutionally require Americans to buy medical insurance?

[Crowd: NO!]

Does Obama have the constitutional power to appoint unaccountable czars to rule over virtually every aspect of our lives?

[Crowd: NO!]

Does Congress have the power to kill or prohbit freedom of speech of talk-radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh?

[Crowd: NO!]

Do we have a right to bear arms or not?

[Crowd: Yes!]

You passed the test! So what’s wrong with being obsessed about upholding the Constitution? Without it, America ceases to be America. Some people …

[Applause.]

Some people say it’s not important where Barack Obama was born. Some think the Constitution is just an archaic old document, or worse it’s a “living document,” one that changes meaning over time. And to those people I say, “There’s a process for amending the Constitution.

[Applause.]

But it’s the basis for all our laws. It’s the glue that holds us together, that binds us as a people, as a nation state, and we abrogate it and abuse it our great peril. I take seriously its eligibility requirements for presidents. I admit it. You know, Rush Limbaugh had a funny line when he asked, What do God and Barack Obama have in common?” And his answer is, “Neither one of them has a birth certificate.”

[Laughter.]

It’s a funny line, but as with all humor, it contains only some truth. And let me preface this by saying I’m a Christian, and I make no apologies about that. I’m a follower of Jesus Christ.

[Applause, hoots from audience.]

And I recognize that there are people of many faiths here with us today and in this movement, but I want to share with you briefly how the most important birth in history — that of Jesus of Nazareth — was so well-documented. Unlike Barack Obama’s. Jesus established himself as the Messiah and saviour of the world by providing not one but two separate and distinct geneological records. One going back all the way to Adam and another tracing his kingly lineage back to Abraham.

So, even if there were no birth certificates maintained 2,000 year ago in ancient Israel, there’s no doubt about where he was born, when and his parentage. Jesus recognized those qualifications were essential to establishing his right to his earthly throne as King of the Jews.

In fact, look at your Bibles. The first 17 verses of Matthew are devoted to His geneology through the line of Mary. The next nine verses including the first verse of the second chapter are devoted to who, what, where, when and why of his birth! The rest of the second chapter is devoted to the actions of Joseph and Mary in protecting the young Jesus from efforts to put him to death. Likewise, the first 15 verses of the third chapter of Luke are devoted to Jesus’ geneology — this time through the line of Joseph, his adoptive father.

Now WHY?! Why all the geneological details? Because they were critical. Jesus was in the position to claim the throne of David because he was the physical descendant through the line of Joseph. And he was also eligible through the line of Mary, his biological mother, because she had no brothers and because she married within the tribe of Judah. All these little nitpicky details had to be established, and they were.

Tracing one’s lineage back to the time of Adam was quite an ordeal even 2,000 years ago, it would have been far more challenging than simply producing a simple piece of paper, a document, every American is forced to produce at various points in his life, to play in the Little League, to compete in high school sports, to get a driver’s license, to get a passport, to enter the Military service and so on.

But Jesus did that. His disciples thought it was important enough to include in their gospels. That’s because God didn’t want there to be any doubt about Jesus’ eligibility or qualification to be the King of Kings.

There’s a lesson in this story for Barack Obama. His nativity story is much less known. The people have many questions about it. There are many inconstitencies in the official story. No one has been permitted to see the one document that might shed light on his claim to the presidency as a natural born citizen. Instead, we’re asked to accept on faith that he is.

We’re asked to believe that a subsitute document providing none of the grainy [?] corroborating details and eyewitness testimony we find on genuine birth certificates — is all we really need…

San Francisco Chronicle:

Campbell told KPCC’s Patt Morrison Friday afternoon that he thought the ad is “exceptionally nasty.”

“But what makes it a news story is that it’s so awful, so over the top, that it actually helps me,” Campbell told the SoCal public radio host. “The result is the greatest day of contributions on line at Campbell.org. in the entire campaign.”

As we’ve told you before, Teacher Tom the mild-mannered professor doesn’t like smacking down opponents. Way back when — nearly a month ago now — when Tom was running for Guv, he would refuse to say his opponents names when saying something even minorly critical of them.

“An attack ad is kind of unfortunate,” Campbell said. “You just don’t expect to be attacked in such a truly bizarre way, and you don’t expect it to help you.”

“It turned into quite a successful campaign ad for me,” he said.

TANCREDO: “And then, something really odd happened, mostly because I think that we do not have a civics literacy test before people can vote in this country. People who could not even spell the word “vote,” or say it in English, put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House, name is Barack Hussein Obama.”

The racist rant by Tancredo — who was last seen in November storming off the set during an interview on MSNBC after DailyKos’ Markos Moulistas called him out as Vietnam War draft dodger — was described as “creepy” by former Bush speech writer David Frum — and prompted Keith Olbermann to praise Tancredo (in the video embedded here) for “stripping away” the “cloak of hatred” from the tea bagger movment.

The literacy tests, which were used primarily in Southern precincts to prevent African-Americans from voting, were outlawed as part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

But Tancredo’s call for reinstating the tests, which had the purported purpose of confirming that voters understood how state and federal governments functioned, prompts the question: Could the tea baggers themselves pass the test — and could Tancredo.

Here is how it worked in Alabama and most states during the Jim Crow era:

In the rural counties where most folk lived, you had to go down to the courthouse to register. The Registrars Office was only open two or three days each month for a couple of hours, usually in the morning or afternoon. You had to take off work — with or without your employer’s permission — to register. And if a white employer gave such permission, or failed to fire Black who tried to vote, he could be driven out of business by economic retaliation from the Citizens Council.

On the occasional registration day, the county Sheriff and his deputies made it their business to hang around the courthouse to discourage “undesirables” from trying to register. This meant that Black women and men had to run a gauntlet of intimidation, insults, threats, and sometimes arrest on phony charges, just to get to the Registration Office. Once in the Registrars Office they faced hatred, harassment, and humiliation from clerks and officials.

The Alabama Application Form and oaths you had to take were four pages long. It was designed to intimidate and threaten. You had to swear that your answers to every single question were true under penalty of perjury. And you knew that the information you entered on the form would be passed on to the Citizens Council and KKK.

The test was organized into Part A and Part B:

In “Part A” the applicant was given a selection of the Constitution to read aloud. The registrar could assign you a long complex section filled with legalese and convoluted sentences, or he could tell you to read a simple one or two sentence section. The Registrar marked each word he thought you mispronounced. In some cases you had to orally interpret the section to the registrar’s satisfaction. You then had to either copy out by hand a section of the Constitution, or write it down from dictation as the registrar spoke (mumbled) it. White applicants usually were allowed to copy, Black applicants usually had to take dictation. The Registrar then judged whether you were able to “read and write,” or if you were “illiterate.”

In Parts “B” and “C,” you had to answer two different sets of four written questions each. Part “B” was 4 questions based on the excerpt you had written down. Part “C” consisted of 4 “general knowledge” questions about state and national government.

The tests were graded in secret. Even if a black person got the answers right for every question, the registrar could still declare him or her to be “unqualified” to vote. Based on Tom Tancredo’s record, the testing system he has in mind would be similarly rigged.

Below are 16 sample questions from Parts A & B, circa 1964. (Click here to see questions with answers):

“B” Questions

Prospective voters would be required to answer four questions like these:

1. What body can try impeachments of the president of the United States? ________

2. Check the applicable definition of “responsibility”:
– A duty
– A speech
– A failure

3. Name the attorney general of the United States. ________

4. Women may now serve on juries in Alabama state courts. [True/False]

5. Can the president of the United States be impeached? [Yes/No]

6. Check the applicable definition for “representative”:
- Agreement between states
- Person chosen to act for others
- Good character

7. FBI stands for ________.

8. Each county in Alabama may decide by whether or not it will have legalized sale [sic] of alcoholic beverages. [True/False]

9. Can the president of the United States be removed from office for conviction of bribery? [Yes/No]

10. Check the applicable definition for “treaty”:
- Agreement between nations
- A tax
- A written oration

11. Name the man who is nationally known for heading the Federal Bureau of Investigation for many years. ________

12. What officer is designated by the Constitution to be the president of the Senate of the United States? ________

13. Can you be imprisoned under Alabama law for a debt? [Yes/No]

14. In addition to becoming a U.S. citizen by birth, a person may become a citizen by:
- Immigration
- Naturalization
- Voting

15. Name one person by name or title who is part of the judicial branch of government in Alabama. ________

16. The first sentence of the United States Constitution is called the Preamble. [True/False]

“C” Questions

Prospective voters would be required to answer four questions like these:

1. If a person charged with treason denies his guilt, how many persons must testify against him before he can be convicted? ________

2. At what time of day on January 20 each four years does the term of the president of the United States end? ________

3. If the president does not wish to sign a bill, how many days is he allowed in which to return it to Congress for reconsideration? ________

4. If a bill is passed by Congress and the president refuses to sign it and does not send it back to Congress in session within the specific period of time, is the bill defeated or does it become law? ________

5. If a person seeks to search your home, what kind of paper must he have before you are compelled to allow him to do so? ________

6. If the United States wishes to purchase land for an arsenal and have exclusive legislative authority over it, consent is required from ________.

7. Prior to the adoption of the United States Constitution, the organization of states was known as the ________.

8. Tribunals are ________.

9. Can the state coin money with the consent of Congress? [Yes/No]

10. Name one area of authority over state militia reserved exclusively to the states. ________

11. The power of granting patents, that is, the securing to inventors the exclusive right to their discoveries, is given to the Congress for the purpose of ________.

12. The only legal tender which may be authorized by states for payment of debts is ________.

13. In what year did the Congress gain the right to prohibit the migration of persons to the states? ________

14. Who is the commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States? ________

15. Which of the Parts above, of the United States Constitution deals with the federal government’s authority to call the state militia into federal service? ________

16. The president is forbidden to exercise his authority of pardon in cases of ________.