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.