Duty Calls

The usual Sunday offering will not be available this weekend as I am off to Heber Springs to attend a wedding.

Talk among yourself.

My Sunday Feeling

The Birthers are downright apoplectic over the latest setback. As was reported here last Thursday, a Federal Judge in California granted the Government's Motion to Dismiss. You can find the case in last week's post on the subject. The lead attorney for the Birthers is a dentist/lawyer/real estate agent named Orly Taitz. Predictably, she has her own website which you can access here: http://www.orlytaitzesq.com/ .



If you will examine the response by Dr. Taitz Esquire to the post I Am Very Angry you will read that evidently she attempted to sue the President as an individual. I deduce this by her statement "I am not obligated to serve the US Attorney as I sued Obama as an individual for fraud that he committed as an individual." Evidently, and without going through the docket, the Department of Justice stepped in and substituted the United States as the Defendant instead of the named Defendants in their individual capacity.



As Rocky the Flying Squirrel used to say, "That trick never works."



First of all, the Birthers and other crackpot litigants have a unique conception of both what a filing fee will get you and what constitutes "fraud." The last time I was personally set upon by nutbar Pro Se Plaintiffs was around Y2K. They filed suit against me and other members of a Board I served on. Our lawyer-who was basically me-filed a Motion to Dismiss for various reasons. Our Motion was sent back to us by the Plaintiff stamped "Refused for Fraud."



I was curious about this, having never had a pleading refused for fraud or for any other reason and so I went to that well known repository of all things nuts-the Internet-to find out what was happening in the land of tin foil hats. Turns out there is a theory-concocted out of whole cloth-that the payment of a filing fee is a contract between the Plaintiff and the Court that means Plaintiff is immune from dispositive motions and gets a trial on the merits of any claim.



Secondly, "fraud" is a pretty expansive cause of action for these folks and basically means "anything Defendant did that we don't like." In the case that just got dismissed the fraud allegedly perpetrated by Obama is that he was not eligible to be President because he was born in Kenya.



Anyway, what I suspect happened was that the tried to get a Default Judgment entered against Obama when he didn't file an Answer within thirty days. The flaw with this theory-or one of them anyway-is that the United States gets sixty days to respond. If I have seen this stunt tried once I have seen it a hundred times.



The argument goes like this: I sued Obama not in his capacity as President but as an individual. Therefore the United States wrongfully substituted and (in this case) I am entitled to my Default Judgment because he didn't answer timely.



The defense probably went something like this: The lawsuit seeks to remove not only Barack Obama as President but most of the Cabinet. How could this suit against him not be in his official capacity as President since there is no other capacity in which he can so serve?



Ah, but to the Birthers and their ilk repose trust in what I call the "magic word" theory of law. If I say I am suing Obama as an individual then that is dispositive of the issue of his capacity. Which is, of course, ridiculous. And the Government soon resorted to the arsenal of technical defenses at its disposal, jurisdictional defenses, failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted, and Boy This Is Stupid. And there's nothing the nutbar litigant hates worse than a successful technical defense. Because then he doesn't get to go to Court and tell The Truth.



If you will go back to the Taitz's website you will note the usual reaction from the Birthers. The judge that ruled against them took a bribe. The judge was somehow "gotten to." The judge should be impeached. The judge lied to them at the start of the case by saying they would get a trial on the merits which I do not for a moment believe actually happened.



Everything but " Hey, these theories aren't working. Maybe we should cool it for awhile before I got sanctioned again." Or "Maybe I should just stick to dentistry."



But we all know this will never happen. Because it's all a conspiracy.



And there will always be those that are committed to The Truth. No matter what the facts are.

Crazytown Gets A Civics Lesson

US District Judge David Carter dismissed the Complaint brought on behalf of crackpot 3rd Party candidate Alan Keyes and others in which they sought a Declaratory Judgment that Barack Obama is not qualified to be President by the alleged reason of his foreign birth. They also asked the Court to, basically, declare the election of 2008 void.

In a masterful 30 page opinion the Judge basically said two important things. The first thing is that the Plaintiffs did not have standing to sue because they could not establish that they had been personally harmed by the election of an allegedly "unqualified" candidate. The Court pointed out that while Mr. Obama received over 90 million votes, Mr. Keyes received the electoral equivalent of the number of people in the Courtroom for oral argument. The harm to the Plaintiffs being entirely speculative, they did not have standing to sue.

Secondly, by waiting until after President Obama had taken the Oath of Office to file their cockamamie lawsuit, the Plaintiffs shot themselves in the foot. Once Obama took the Oath he was the President, the Court ruled. And as President of the United States he could only be removed by impeachment or due to disability. The Courts have no power under the Constitution to void an election or remove a President.

Undoubtedly these fools will appeal. But this is a very powerful Opinion that will be cited in future cases concerning the issue of standing and separation of powers.

So some good did come out of this. I guess.

Hit the link for the story in Salon where you can read the Opinion in full: http://www.salon.com/news/politics/birthers/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2009/10/29/taitz_dismissal

My Sunday Feeling

After you hit 21, the only birthdays that really matter are the ones that end in zero. At least that's what one of the Miracle League dads opined yesterday. I don't know about that. 53 was a pretty big one. I had outlived my own dad by then which is not something every body with bad genes gets to do. At least not in Arkansas.



But 54 was pretty low key. NV had her kids so dinner with the grands took precedence over birthday celebrations. Which was fine with me. I knew that I would be pretty tired after running around with the ML kids all day. So sitting in my chair with a drink watching football sounded pretty good to me anyway. After all, I'm not getting any younger.



Birthday greetings have evolved over time. While I only got 3 paper cards this year, I got over a hundred e-mails, text messages and Facebook notifications commemorating this event. One of the birthday e-mails was from a local car dealer. Imagine how warm and gooshy that one made me feel.



Birthdays are far more important to little kids and being wished a Happy Birthday by a kid in a wheelchair or by a child that communicates by signing is especially poignant for some reason. Maybe it is because their complete and utter vulnerability is never far from one's mind. Birthdays are part of a finite time line. Some of these children will not make it to 54. They just won't. It's hard-it's impossible actually-not to count your blessings when you spend the day with these kids.



One of the kids was talking to NV about her dog. " Dad got her for me when my mother died. So I guess she would 3 years old by now." Afterwards NV said to me, " If I ever complain about anything ever again, just slap me."



Well, I won't do that. I don't hit girls. And I have a public record of having very little use for men who do. As in zero. But I understand the larger sentiment. And I agree with it.



Besides, there are worse ways to spend a beautiful Autumn day in Arkansas than hanging around playing baseball all day. Playing golf comes to mind. I got hugs all day from the good looking women that help out down there. And you thought my service to the Miracle League was entirely high minded. Shame on you. I got hearty handshakes from the men along with copious references to my advanced age and feeble mind. And that's as it should be.



Adult birthdays can be milked for at least a couple of weeks. It's a busy world and people got stuff to do. Time doesn't stand still just because yesterday means I lived longer than some folks would have wagered back in my twenties. I've got plenty of free lunches and dinners coming my way. Woo-hoo!



Spending your birthday under a clear blue sky with friends that you like and kids that you love is not a bad way to go about it.



Besides, just like NV says. I got no complaints. None at all.

My Sunday Feeling

Between writing a review for the paper, doing homecoming at Catholic High, the Race for the Cure and Miracle League, and other things that are none of your business, I have no time for you this Sunday.

Later.

What Camel? What Needle?

Dallas area televangelist Kenneth Copeland made an appearance at one of the Big Box churches last Sunday. For the uninitiated, Copeland is one of the more successful of the Prosperity Gospel hucksters whose ranks have thinned with the recent passing of Rev. Ike. According to the account in the local paper, " If you have enough faith to move mountains, Copeland suggested, God can give you the desires of your heart: vigorous health, limitless wealth, unending happiness and eternal life..."

None of which Jesus says in my Bible.

And God knows he can speak with authority about limitless wealth. He has an 18,000 foot "parsonage', he owns a cattle ranch, he has a fleet of luxury vehicles and his own jet airplane. He also has the Senate Finance Committee and the IRS after his ass along with some other of his ilk. The account in Sunday's paper says that he has pretty much stiffed the Committee in its requests for answers to it's questions and so we may assume that Subpoenas will soon issue forth like manna from...oh, never mind.

I am conflicted when it comes to these TV preachers. On the one hand, I don't view them particularly as ministers. You never see them marry or bury. You don't see them holding an elderly person's hand in the nursing home. You don't see them talking down someone who is on the brink of despair. Nope. Can't make any money hanging around hospitals unless you are a doctor or a runner for a lawyer.

Do I view televangelists as criminals? Crooks, yes. Criminals, not so much. It is not illegal to ask people for money. And as long as you don't misrepresent where the money is going it is not illegal. And as far as I can see, Copeland pretty much makes it clear that the money is not going to fund a school in Honduras. It's going to his ministry. Which means it is going to him.

And I don't worry so much about upper middle class types in West Little Rock giving Kenneth Copeland a "love offering" as the paper reports they did. In tasteful buckets adorned with the church's logo. If they are stupid enough to waste their money in this fashion so be it. But I worry about the more vulnerable among us who don't really need to be donating precious resources to a man who by all accounts is already fantastically wealthy.

And Copeland should too. But this would require a sense of shame. And any man that flies into town on a private jet to invoke the Gospel in order to induce knuckleheads to give him buckets full of money is not likely to suffer over much from that condition.

Is this a great country or what?

My Sunday Feeling

My friend George put up a post on Facebook earlier this week. I grew up with George. Played ball with him. We are two different people but we get along despite our differences. One of the differences is that George evidently listens to Rush Limbaugh because his post sounded an awful lot like some of the nonsense that Limbaugh puts out to the faithful on Twitter.

Anyway, George's post was to the effect of " Why is President Obama questioning the finest military minds of our era while our soldiers are dying?" The reason I suspect this post has its origin in a Limbaugh tweet is that you have to assume at least 3 things to ground the question in any sort of reality. Which is SOP for Limbaugh. Let's talk about them. Or I'll talk about them. You can read it if you like.

1) President Obama is meddling. Of course, this is not true. Pursuant to the Constitution, he is the Commander-in-Chief. And Presidents have long clashed with the military.

2) Generals David Patraeus and Stanley McChrystal are the finest military minds of our era. These two gentleman are certainly fine soldiers, patriots and military leaders. But these sorts of decisions are best left to history and not in the fog of war. In any event, that sort of hyperbole is best reserved for that day when George S. Patton and Omar Bradley return from the dead and take over the Command.

3) Which leads you-or causes you to stumble toward- the conclusion that this is why soldiers are dying in the field. Of course, this is not true. Soldiers would be dying in the field even if Obama blindly signed off on every recommendation from the brass.

But the folks that follow Limbaugh are not deconstructionists. They are, after all, dittoheads.

So I asked George if he thought soldiers wouldn't be dying in the field if Obama agreed with McChrystal. I also told him that I was reading a book by James MacPherson called "Lincoln at War-Abraham Lincoln as Commander-in-Chief and how, in the Foreword, MacPherson wrote that Lincoln understood that that military action cannot be considered in a vacuum. Military decisions cannot be divorced from politics. Politics make the policy and policy drives the decisions.

George merely disagreed. But one of his friends responded to our entirely civil conversation by calling me a "dickweed" and saying that Obama was basically ruining the country and he urged me to buy guns, gold and ammo.

Now this was just one guy popping off. But I haven't heard so much paranoid and apocalyptic discourse since Y2K when the phones and computers were supposed to crash at midnight New Year's Day and it was predicted that welfare cheats from the Delta were going to invade Huntsville.

A friend of mine is of the opinion that a quarter of the electorate is insane. I don't know about that but to suggest that President Obama shouldn't be questioning the advice from his military subordinates suggests a basic political and historical illiteracy-remember Sarah Palin suggesting that sharp questioning from reporters violated her 1st Amendment rights to free speech?-that I find disturbing.

Maybe I'm making too much of this. After all, a recent editorial piece by conservative columnist David Brooks cited statistics that tended to show that the influence of Limbaugh and Glenn Beck in actually affecting the vote was highly overrated. I sure hope so. Not so much because I disagree with their point of view-which I do-but that they are irresponsible.

All I know is that I am glad that Abraham Lincoln didn't have to arrive at his gut wrenching decisions about military matters in the age of Twitter and the 24/7 news cycle where people shout at Congressmen and references to Obama as a "nazi" are taken at face value.