Fidelity to an Adverb

Steve Calabresi:

I...think that President Obama became President by operation of the 20th Amendment at noon even before the first oath-taking was botched. I do think President Obama's first obligation as president was that he "shall" i.e. "must" take the correctly worded oath before entering on the execution of his office. The President failed to live up to that obligation until he retook the oath correctly the next day. He thus technically failed to live up to one of his core obligations as President (through no fault of his own) and could in theory, technically, be impeached for that dereliction of duty. It goes without saying that it would be a gross abuse of the House of Representative's prosecutorial discretion to impeach Obama in this context.

Obama "became President" by operation of the clock, but could not "enter into the execution of his office" until taking the oath. Hmmm.

I had to reread this post to make sure it wasn't a joke (Calabresi is in part responding to Jack Balkin's satirical post here.) But no -- he's...serious.

Okay, so here's a simple question: Just what would it mean to "be President" without having the power to "execute the office"?

[Here's another: Just who has executive power in the interim?]

Whatever the answer, I'm certainly happy Calabresi is so willing to repose in the House the prosecutorial discretion to impeach Obama on the basis of an immaterially misplaced adverb. 'Cause if there's one thing we can all count on, it's the sound discretion of the House of Representatives.

UPDATE: On reflection, Calabresi's post may be the stupidest fucking thing I've ever seen written by a law professor blogger, ever. And I'm including Steve Calabresi.