U.S. District Judge Clay Land just dismissed the latest suit by lawyer and “Birther” movement head Orly Taitz. Taitz was down in Georgia representing a captain in the Army who didn’t want to serve in Iraq and sued to be allowed to stay in the U.S. because Barack Obama didn’t have the legal right to order her into harm’s way. The argument being, of course, that the commander-in-chief is secretly not American. Though Land, of course, takes the time in his decision to patiently explain the legal concerns of a court ruling over this particular type of military matter, he also devotes a few paragraphs to some old-fashioned ass-handing. For example:
Plaintiff’s challenge to her deployment order is frivolous. She has presented no credible evidence and has made no reliable factual allegations to support her unsubstantiated, conclusory allegations and conjecture that President Obama is ineligible to serve as President of the United States. Instead, she uses her Complaint as a platform for spouting political rhetoric, such as her claims that the President is “an illegal usurper, an unlawful pretender, [and] an unqualified imposter.” She continues with bare, conclusory allegations that the President is “an alien, possibly even an unnaturalized or even an unadmitted illegal alien … without so much as lawful residency in the United States.” Then, implying that the President is either a wandering nomad or a prolific identity fraud crook, she alleges that the President “might have used as many as 149 addresses and 39 social security numbers prior to assuming the office of President.”
In further support of her claim, Plaintiff relies upon “the general opinion in the rest of the world” that “Barack Hussein Obama has, in essence, slipped through the guardrails to become President.” Moreover, as though the “general opinion in the rest of the world” were not enough, Plaintiff alleges in her Complaint that according to an “AOL poll 85% of Americans believe that Obama was not vetted, needs to be vetted and his vital records need to be produced.” Finally, in a remarkable shifting of the traditional legal burden of proof, Plaintiff unashamedly alleges that Defendant has the burden to prove his “natural born” status. Thus, Plaintiff’s counsel, who champions herself as a defender of liberty and freedom, seeks to use the power of the judiciary to compel a citizen, albeit the President of the United States, to “prove his innocence” to “charges” that are based upon conjecture and speculation. Any middle school civics student would readily recognize the irony of abandoning fundamental principles upon which our Country was founded in order to purportedly “protect and preserve” those very principles.
“Plaintiff’s complaint is not plausible on its face,” Land concludes. “Unlike in Alice in Wonderland, simply saying something is so does not make it so.
Connie Rhodes vs. Thomas D. McDonald [US Courts via Awl]
