I take back what I wrote about Charles Nesson the Harvard Law School professor whose, ah, unconventional defense of Joel Tennenbaum in the recent copyright infringement case brought by the major record labels earned my scorn. Say what you like about Professor Nesson, he’s brilliant in his own way, and his heart is in the right place. I wish he would get over the Necker Cube, but that’s another story.
No, the worst lawyer ever is not Professor Nesson, it’s Orly Taitz, the so-called queen bee of the Birthers.
I won’t bore you with the details of her quest to prove that President Obama is a Kenyan, or an Indonesian, or whatever, but I do want to predict that Taitz is about to be the recipient of a major-league judicial smackdown. Taitz has been representing Connie Rhodes, a captain in the Army who sued the government to prevent her deployment to Iraq on the grounds that the President is not a citizen, and that accordingly, she might be subject to beheading if she is sent overseas. (Taitz specifically referred to the possibility of beheading in court–more charitably, her argument is that if the President’s orders aren’t legal, then soldiers are not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions).
Judge Clay Land, of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia, was having none of it. Here is an excerpt from his order denying Rhodes’s motion for a TRO and dismissing her case; you can read the whole thing here:
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.” Acknowledging the existence of a document that shows the President was born in Hawaii, Plaintiff alleges that the document “cannot be verified as genuine, and should be presumed fraudulent.” 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.
The judge then warned her that further frivolous filings would meet with sanctions.
Not surprisingly, Taitz did not take the hint. Today, she filed another paper that basically called the judge a corrupt traitor:
Plaintiff avers that there is increasing evidence that the United States District Courts in the 11th Circuit are subject to political pressure, external control, and, mostly likely, subservience to the same illegitimate chain of command which Plaintiff has previously protested in this case, except that the de facto President is not even nominally the Commander-in-Chief of the Article III Judiciary.
Plaintiff submits that to advocate a breach of constitutional oaths to uphold the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, is in fact a very practical form of “adhering” to those enemies, foreign and domestic, and thus is tantamount to treason, as Defined in Article III, Section 3, even when pronounced in Court. The People of the United States deserve better service and loyalty from the most powerful, and only life- tenured, officers of their government.
My prediction: the judge will not want to make a martyr of Taitz, so she won’t be imprisoned or fined for contempt. My guess is that the judge will refer her to the California bar for disciplinary proceedings. Let’s hope she’s disbarred. She’s exhibit A for tightening the standards for admission to the bar. I’m embarrassed for my profession on account of her.
TedF
Apparently an Ohio attorney has had enough Orly (for all your legal, dental, and shelter-related needs) Taitz to last a lifetime. He or she–can’t tell by the first name–filed a formal complaint. Gotta love it.
Well, Judge Land has had quite enough. Most lawyers who have been smacked down this hard would know when it is time to shut up. But not our Ms. Taitz, who has quite the martyr complex going.
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p>Not only did she file a Motion for Reconsideration which fails to cite a single case supporting her position that reconsideration is warranted, but she proceeds to say, in so many words, that this judge himself is part of the alleged traitorous conspiracy.
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p>In response, Judge Land (who was a Republican state legislature and a Bush 43 appointee) ruled
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p>Since there is now an open case before the California Bar, you can bet that the pleadings and orders will find their way to the file.
You really cannot make this stuff up. As I predicted, the judge sanctioned Ms. Taitz to the tune of $20,000. She appealed to the Eleventh Circuit, which affirmed the sanction. She then filed an emergency application with Justice Thomas to stay the sanction, which he of course denied.
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p>All in a day’s work, more or less, for the woman I’ve called the Worst Lawyer Ever. But now I think Ms. Taitz has outdone herself. Unable to comprehend how Justice Thomas could have summarily denied her application, she has filed a motion with the Chief Justice asserting that the order that appeared on the docket denying her application was “not authorized” (i.e., that it had been forged by a nefarious clerk) and asking for permission to visit the Supreme Court with forensic experts and computer experts to verify the authenticity of the order and also to verify the authenticity of the Justices’ signatures on the denial of an earlier application for a stay she had made in another of her many cases. This takes the conspiracy theory to a whole new level.
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p>The best part is the comments from her followers on her blog announcing her filing:
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p>What can one say?
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p>TedF