GunControlKills.com in LoUiSiAna

per Article 1, Section 6:

No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been increased during such time; and no Person holding any Office under the United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office.

What this means is that a member of Congress cannot take an appointment for which the pay has gone up during the time he/she held office in Congress. Since the pay for the Secretary of State has gone up in the last year that would appear to preclude Hillary from getting appointed.

And even if the pay were reduced, by a strict reading of the text (which may or may not even matter to the powers that be these days given how little respect there is out here for what the Constitution actually says) that still wouldn’t be enough.

Hillary may want to be Secretary of State, but it doesn’t look like she can be.

Update I: More from Volokh, an email from Constitutional Law expert Prof. Michael Stokes Paulsen

Thanks for alerting me to this fascinating (and fun) issue! I’ve played in this particular sandbox before [as to Lloyd Bentsen], and am amused to see it return in slightly different form.

So, “Is Hillary Clinton Unconstitutional?” In a word, Yes — or, to be more precise, a Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would be unconstitutional.

The Emoluments Clause of Article I, section 6 provides “No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been encreased during such time.” As I understand it, President Bush’s executive order from earlier this year “encreased” the “Emoluments” (salary) of the office of Secretary of State. Last I checked, Hillary Clinton was an elected Senator from New York at the time. Were she to be appointed to the civil Office of Secretary of State, she would be being appointed to an office for which “the Emoluments whereof shall have been encreased” during the time for which she was elected to serve as Senator. The plain language of the Emoluments Clause would thus appear to bar her appointment … if the Constitution is taken seriously (which it more than occasionally isn’t on these matters, of course).

http://belowthebeltway.com/2008/11/23/is-hillary-ineligible-to-be-secretary-of-state/

http://news.aol.com/political-machine/2008/11/24/hillary-ineligible-for-cabinet-post/42