"I think there's enough substance on this panel, I mean how many topics can you handle," Pamela Geller, the blogger for Atlas Shrugged, shot back. "Inappropriate. really."

"We are not a birther site," the moderator, from Breitbart.com, told Taitz before she was shushed by the crowd. She left the room shortly after.

Here's the video, by Salon's Alex Seitz-Wald:

Continue Reading...

Berg, most notable for filing the first-ever birther lawsuit against President Obama in 2008, appeared opposite Taitz before the court after a federal judge in California declined to dismiss Berg's complaint (and threatened sanctions against Taitz).

During the hearing, Berg accused Taitz of acting "with malice," saying: "They've decided that they're going to get rid of me politically in a certain case. To do that they're decided to get rid of me by taking down my paralegal."

From Courthouse News:

Taitz, usually the plaintiff in unsuccessful challenges to the legitimacy of Obama's presidency, faces a civil suit alleging that she and her organization, Defend Our Freedoms Foundation, defamed attorney Philip Berg and his paralegal, Lisa Liberi.

Berg and Liberi say Taitz found Liberi's personal information, including her Social Security number, and then mass-emailed the information and published it online.

Continue Reading...

Continue Reading...

In her race for the GOP nomination for California secretary of state, Birther Queen Taitz, a dentist/attorney whose pet cause is filing frivolous lawsuits challenging the president's natural-born status, received 372,490 votes.

In his race to unseat Democratic US Senator Barbara Boxer, Kaus, a longtime blogger whose pet cause is hating unions and immigrants, received 94,298 votes.

Both, sadly, lost by wide margins. (Though Taitz received more votes than Republican Senate candidates Tom Campbell and Chuck DeVore.)

(Credit Dave Weigel for first deciding to compare the vote totals of our favorite insurgent politicians.)

Continue Reading...

I did think twice about that one, however, because if California currently operated under such rules, I would have had the pleasure of seeing the name of Orly Taitz on my ballot. The Queen Bee of the Birthers is running for secretary of state on the Republican side, but only Republicans get to to vote in the Republican primary.

My state is so awesome. Orly Taitz, who does a better imitation of a legitimately crazy person that most raving psychopaths, is running for office and may even win a primary. I can't say I'm too shocked: After all, I live in a state currently governed by a man most famous for playing a killer robot from the future.

Continue Reading...

Taitz' opponent has apparently barely even campaigned, just relying on the fact that he's running against a crazy person to win the nomination. (Taitz, meanwhile, has filed a number of suits against him, attempting to get him off the ballot because he was once a registered Democrat.) But that might not be enough.

Politico, god bless them, found a professional "strategist" to get our hopes up about a Taitz victory:

But longtime California GOP strategist Allan Hoffenblum, who publishes the California Target Book, says a Taitz victory is entirely possible. “It will be a complete embarrassment if she wins, but these things can happen,” he said.

It is a down-ballot race in a midterm primary election, so, really, anything can happen.

Continue Reading...

The Tea Party Patriots invited both of them to speak at a lunch in California on Friday. Taitz claims Birtherism didn't come up, but that's literally the only thing she talks about, so I'm not sure if I believe her. Like, this is how she claimed that she didn't talk about Birtherism:

"I spoke at the lunch, however I did not speak about ongoing legal actions involving Obama's use of ss number 042-68-4425, which was assigned to another individual, I also did not talk about Obama's refusal to unseal his original birth certificate, currently sealed in HI or any other issues of Obama' illegitimacy to presidency which are raised in the pleadings. I talked only about my candidacy for the position of the Secretary of State of CA."

Continue Reading...

They never really went away, actually -- in all likelihood, unfortunately, they never will -- but the people who believe President Obama doesn't meet the Constitution's eligibility requirements for his office have at least faded from the news lately. Now, some are working to change that, and they have a new figurehead to rally behind.

Last week, the American Patriot Foundation announced that Army Lt. Col Terrence Lakin, a flight surgeon, has decided that he'll refuse to obey any and all orders because of his concerns over the circumstances of Obama's birth and birth certificate.

"I am today compelled to make the distasteful choice to invite my own court martial, in pursuit of the truth about the president's eligibility under the constitution to hold office," Lakin said in a release. (He's also spoken in a YouTube video about his decision; it can be viewed at the bottom of this post.)

Lakin isn't the first member of the military to become a Birther cause celebre. The case that brought the now-infamous Orly Taitz her first real mainstream media attention involved another one.

Continue Reading...

As you might imagine, she hasn't exactly rushed to pay up.

Now, the 30 days Taitz was given to pay the sanction have elapsed, and Land has directed the U.S. Attorney's office to collect. But she's remaining as stubborn as ever. Asked by the Ledger-Enquirer, a paper in Georgia -- where Land sits -- whether she intended to pay, Taitz said, "Absolutely not," and added, "If judges start punishing attorneys, then we end up in a totalitarian regime. This can’t go on.”

Continue Reading...

Taitz had another setback on Wednesday. She's been promoting the idea of a protest against Fox News and Bill O'Reilly on her Web site for some time now, hoping -- and promising -- for a large crowd to demonstrate against O'Reilly's having dismissed Birthers' concerns and having called Taitz herself a "nut."

Continue Reading...

From a post -- titled "What doesn't break us, makes us stronger" -- on Taitz's blog, in which she mentions a certain media outlet by name:

Clearly it is not the end of the road. We will continue. I need some time to study this order and provide full answer point by point. I will not give a full analysis of judge Carter’s orders at the moment. Today I was inundated with phone calls from different media outlets ... One interview I remebered. It was with Jessica Rosenthal from FOX radio. She asked me, when will I give up? I asked her in turn: “Jessica, when do you give up on the Constitution of this country? When do you give up on your constitutional rights for redress of grievances, for your right not to be defrauded by the government, not be treated as a slave?”

While I will not address the legal aspects of the order today, I will address a couple of issues relating to me personally, as I can see a concerted effort to assassinate my character similar to what was done to Sarah Palin, when she joined McCain, when within a day McCain-Palin ticket was 12 points ahead of Obama. What did Chicago combine do? They assassinated her character. So I have to address some of those issues, because it appears that the media has named me a leader of this movement. I am the only attorney, who brought legal actions from plaintiffs with real standing. I brought actions from active duty military and state representatives. My opposition see me as a threat. What was done? Some puppets were used to defame me, slander me, write garbage letters to judge Carter .... I hoped that this judge had more integrity of character, I guess I was wrong.

Another point – Judge Carter state in court and in his order that I told people to call him This is not true. Who told it to judge Carter? His new clerk, fresh out of Perkins Coie, law firm, that represented Obama, in some 100 cases? ....

Citizens seem to have no voice, they have no standing to bring any legal actions in face of any fraud. They only have standing to pay taxes and pay for the judges, clerks, congress and senate who never address any issues. They should have no concerns about an inhabitant of the White house sporting 39 social security numbers, some are the social security numbers of the deceased. How long will it take for those citizens to revolt? Washington Post has written that 8 out of 10 Americans know about this issue. According to AOL-it’s 85%. This number is growing. How long will those people be silent? 4,5 million marched on Washington DC on September the 12th. How many will march next time around, when so many loose their jobs (half a million jobs every month officially) and probably double that number unofficially. When they loose their homes at a rate higher then the rate during great depression. When they become numb from hatred against this fraudulent usurper in the White House, corrupt politicians and corrupt judges. Who will stop them? A few snooty remarks on MSM and on the faithful to regime lap dog blogs like Politijab, Salon or Politico? When people loose their voice, when they are livid from the arrogance shown by the ruling elite, they simply revolt

Continue Reading...

The ruling, which can be read in PDF form here, is pretty striking. Taitz's followers had always thought of Carter as the judge most sympathetic to their claims, and though they'll undoubtedly turn on him now, the Clinton appointee's order shows how important he thought it to give the Birthers' claims a fair hearing -- not because he's anything approaching a Birther himself, but because he takes his job seriously. Though the opinion is ultimately devastating to Taitz's legal arguments, and Carter did take the rather unusual step of directly addressing the attorney's conduct, it's also respectful, thoughtful and serious.

Continue Reading...

The Birthers have been somewhat disillusioned with O'Reilly and some of his colleagues before -- there's the lack of investigative journalism done by the network that would prove, once and for all, that President Obama was in fact born in Antarctica, for instance. And O'Reilly previously mentioned the fact that Obama has already released proof of his birth in Hawaii; they weren't happy about that. But calling Taitz a "nut"? My God, it's like that whole "Fair and Balanced" thing isn't really true!

Continue Reading...

In a post on her blog, headlined, "How mcuh criminal activity do they need to cover up, for them to attack me so viciously," Taitz wrote:

Continue Reading...

At one point in his ruling, Land -- explaining why President Obama's eligibility for his post, or lack thereof, is not a matter for the courts -- writes:

One can readily see the wisdom of entrusting the elected representatives of the people with the ultimate decision as to whether a President should be removed from office rather than litigating the issue in our courts. Although counsel’s present concern is the location of the President’s birth, it does not take much imagination to extend the theory to his birthday .... If he refused to admit publicly that he is older than the constitutional minimum age of thirty-five, should Ms. Taitz be allowed to file a lawsuit and have a court order him to produce his birth certificate? Or perhaps an eccentric citizen has become convinced that the President is an alien from Mars, and the courts should order DNA testing to enforce the Constitution.

Continue Reading...

To that end, on Tuesday morning Land issued a lengthy order addressing Taitz's conduct and imposing a $20,000 sanction on her as punishment for her having repeatedly filed frivolous actions and motions.

The order, which can be downloaded in PDF form here, clocks in at 43 pages and is brutal, to say the least. Land clearly anticipates an appeal, and wants to lay out his case for imposing as large a sanction as he did in order to make the facts plain and a decision easy for the appeals court. It seems, too, that he might have done this with further sanctions against Taitz in mind; he forwarded his ruling to the bar in California, where Taitz is licensed to practice.

Continue Reading...

In a letter to Judge Clay Land, Rhodes wrote:

I became aware on last night's local news that a Motion to Stay my deployment had been entered on my behalf. I did not authorize this motion to be filed. I thank you for hearing my case and respect [the ruling dismissing it.] It is evident that the original filing ... was full of political conjecture which was not my interest ....

With that I said (sic), please withdraw the Motion to Stay that Ms. Taitz filed this past Thursday. I did not authorize it and do not wish to proceed. Ms. Taitz never requested my permission nor did I give it ....

Furthermore, I do not wish for Ms. Taitz to file any future motions or represent me in any way in this court. It is my plan to file a complaint with the California State Bar due to her reprehensible and unprofessional actions.

Continue Reading...

Earlier this week, Land dismissed a suit that Taitz had brought on behalf of Army Capt. Connie Rhodes, a surgeon who claimed that she couldn't follow her orders to deploy to Iraq because she's not sure President Obama is eligible, under the Constitution, to hold his current position. At the time, Land warned Taitz that if she filed any more "similarly frivolous ... actions in this Court" she'd face sanctions.

Continue Reading...

Taitz had, to her credit, come up with a pretty creative strategy. The Birther lawsuits have, thus far, run up against the problem of "standing" -- any plaintiff suing in U.S. courts must show that they have a specific injury at issue; you can't just sue over something that doesn't affect you directly. And courts have held before that the average voter doesn't have standing to sue over something like the eligibility of a presidential candidate. So Taitz has been finding members of the military who claim they're concerned that they might be following illegal orders because Obama's isn't really the president, and filing lawsuits on their behalf. (The merits of this strategy are still questionable at best, but it is at least creative.)  In this case, she was representing U.S. Army Capt. Connie Rhodes, a surgeon who was fighting deployment to Iraq -- the suit was dismissed in federal court in Texas, so she brought it again in Georgia.

Continue Reading...

You can't stop Orly Taitz, you can only hope to contain her.

Yes, the de facto leader of the Birthers is back -- and she's brought along a second forgery (visible above) that purports to be President Obama's real birth certificate, proving once and for all that he was born in Kenya and is ineligible to be president.

As was also the case with the first forged birth certificate that Taitz tried, unsuccessfully, to introduce into a lawsuit in which she's representing Alan Keyes and several other plaintiffs, this new document is a pretty obvious hoax.

Continue Reading...