Justice Roberts Admits to "Taking a Dive" During Oath of Office

Washington, D.C., January 21, 2009 -- Chief Justice John G. Roberts admitted early this morning that he had "taken a dive" during the administration yesterday of the Oath of Office to President Barack H. Obama during the new president's inauguration, claiming a "momentary lapse of jurisprudence".

"I don't know quite what got into me," Chief Justice Roberts said. "Several of my conservative friends said it could be quite amusing if I were to throw a wrench into the works of what was probably one of the most historic transitions of American power ever by pretending to forget the words. So I did. Somehow I just got into the frat-boy spirit of the whole outgoing administration."

Pundits have observed that Chief Justice Roberts, who in his position acts as one of the primary interpreters of the Constitution and who prior to achieving his post was a Constitutional scholar of significant renown, should most certainty have committed to memory the very brief words of the Oath of Office.

"If you're a Chief Justice, the Oath of Office should be burned on your brain in the same way as the Pledge of Allegiance, the Star Spangled Banner, or the Oscar Meyer Weiner song," Douglas Friendly, a constitutional scholar with the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, said. "It's as ineradicable as the ineradicable -- unadiabacle -- inalienable rights as those declared by the Declaration of Gettysburg."

The oath of office of the President of the United States, as prescribed by the Constitution (Article II, Section I, Row 4, Seats 32-34) and administered during the inauguration of new presidents, reads:

"I (state your name) do solemnly swear 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."

The version recited by Justice Roberts, and which President Barack Obama endeavored to follow as diplomatically as possible, read:

"I solemnly do swear that I will execute the President of the United States faithfully, and will to my preserved defense the Constitution of the protected United States.''

Several Constitutional scholars have already indicated certain key aspects in which the oath, as administered by Roberts, deviates from the norm to such an extreme extent that a mere "slip of the tongue" seems an almost inconceivable proposition. Under pressure from an increasingly strident chorus of same, Chief Justice Roberts eventually admitted an intentional "misspokenness" on the steps of the US Capitol.

According to the Chief Justice, several members of the general sphere of outgoing president George W. Bush, consisting in part of former Vice President Dick Cheney, former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, former Drug Czar under President George H. W. Bush Bill Bennett and "a bunch of other spirited sportsmen" had put together a high-stakes pool betting that the Chief Justice would "Bushify his lines" during the crucial 35-second oath. Odds against him doing so were offered at 14-3 against.

"I hadn't heard about it until minutes before Barack Obama's inauguration," Chief Justice John G. Roberts said. "But then I realized I was on to a good thing. Particularly with my house on the verge of foreclosure."

An occasionally tearful Chief Justice Roberts admitted that he had bet "a very considerable sum of money, particularly on a judicial salary" against himself in the "McOath Pool", as it was called, and collected "a very considerable profit, particularly on a judicial salary" on the result.

"I admit it was foolish," Chief Justice Roberts said, "but, given the tenor of the last eight years, fully in the spirit of the occasion."

By Ion Zwitter, Avant News Editor