The Washington Post raises interesting questions about who would become speaker -- and potentially president in the unlikely deaths of both President Bush and Vice President Cheney -- under a secret list of individuals as "Speaker Pro Tem".

But that is not the interesting part to me.

Perhaps the biggest question, some lawyers say, is whether a House speaker -- full time or pro tempore -- can assume and keep the presidency under any circumstance. A statute, not the Constitution, lists the speaker's place in the line succession.

A case can be made that no one in Congress qualifies as an "officer" eligible to assume the presidency under Article II of the Constitution, said Neil Kinkopf, a professor of law at Georgia State University. The question may never be settled, he said, because the Supreme Court would take it up only if a speaker became president and someone challenged the action in court.

My guess? This would constitute a political question with which the courts would be unlikely to involve themselves. And given that speaker (and President Pro Tem of the Senate) are boh constitutionally ordained offices, I'd have to argue that they do qualify as "officers" for purposes of the succession.

But if they don't, would any individual occupying a statutorily created position as a cainet secretary qualify?