On what grounds is it "ridiculous"? The cited article quotes a professor of constitutional law, your linked article is from a random blogger (who seems remarkably confident about what he "thinks" would happen if it were ever challenged in court). At first glance, both interpretations seem plausible.
1) If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, 2) or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then 3) the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified
1) Did not happen, Obama was chosen (President Elect) weeks ago. 2) Did not happen, Obama was at no point refused the Presidency between his election and his inauguration. Consequently 3) did not happen.
Anyway, if Obama was not president because he had not been sworn in then nobody else was for the same reason, and if you follow the argument in the blog then you get to "the {XYZ Position} shall act as President". Acting as president is not being president anymore than acting as a Spaniard makes you a Spaniard.
Also, if you read "Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following oath. . . ” without any surrounding context then it's vague. There is no office of President-Elect, Barack Obama has no office, so it could read:
Before he [The President] enter on the Execution of his Office...
As in, someone has to be President before being able to take oath and execute the office of President. Similar (in my layman's terms) to how ex-presidents retain the title of President without executing the office of president.
But if Secretary Rice was not President from noon to 12:01, then who was?
If you guys had a constitution written in Haskell you could have a "maybe nobody" president and it could be lazily-evaluated so this question would never be explored until it was really needed.
The cited article quotes a professor of constitutional law
Fallacy of "proof by appeal to authority" alert.
"If you guys had a constitution written in Haskell you could have a "maybe nobody" president and it could be lazily-evaluated so this question would never be explored until it was really needed."
Wow, you just seamlessly combined constitutional law geekery with computer science geekery in a way that actually made sense. I wonder if this has ever been accomplished before now.
I also wonder what President Obama himself makes of all this, given that he IS a constitutional law scholar. This is a good reason to give the man his Blackberry back, so he can directly weigh in on important questions like this.
Typically they all submit their resignation effective at the end of the term. If the new president wants them to stay on, he'll ask them to do so ahead of time - I'm not sure if they have to be confirmed again, though... Since we haven't heard of that happening, I'm guessing not.
On what grounds is it "ridiculous"? The cited article quotes a professor of constitutional law, your linked article is from a random blogger (who seems remarkably confident about what he "thinks" would happen if it were ever challenged in court). At first glance, both interpretations seem plausible.