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Aftermath

By on November 8, 2012 in The Blogs

How are the birthers taking their defeat? I  wrote already about Orly Taitz reconsidering her options. Many of the “usual suspects” haven’t published since the election, but here are some reactions from the Bad and the Ugly lists.

Canada Free Press

Not just a birther site, the Canada Free Press expresses a markedly gloomy outlook in an article by Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh that begins:

Our Constitutional Republic died a peaceful death on November 6, 2012. Having reached the point of no return in a comatose state after years of progressive and illegal immigration assaults, the fabric of conservative society is now completely unraveled and Uncle Sam’s America is no more.

More interesting and perhaps more troubling is the invocation of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in an article by Doug Hagemann, “Turning a political decision into your spiritual mandate.” Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor and founder of the Confessing Church in Germany, a group that denied the authority of the Nazi state over the churches in Germany. Their manifesto, the Barmen Declaration, seems perhaps mild by today’s standards, but was certainly heroic in its time (note that Lutherans are called the Evangelical Church in Germany). Author Hagemann, however, didn’t mentioned Barmen, but rather focused on the capitulation of much of the church in Germany to the Nazis. While I know Bonhoeffer from his books: Letters and Papers from Prison and The Cost of Discipleship, most know him for his participation in a plot to assassinate Hitler for which he was imprisoned and executed. Even though the article says (at the very end), “Make no mistake – this is obviously not a call for violence, but a call for leadership to every Christian living in the United States,” and I would hold up Bonhoeffer as a man worthy of study and emulation, still the invocation of him in the present and the comparison of the United States to the Nazis is troubling.

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Congratulations to Patrick McKinnion: 4 years flogging the birthers

By on August 22, 2012 in The Blogs, The Obots

I enjoyed listening to the interview (audio not available) last night on Reality Check Radio on the occasion of Patrick McKinnion’s 4th anniversary blogging about the birthers at Bad Fiction.  Patrick is an engaging personality with a sharp wit and a deep knowledge of the characters of the birther movement. I think that emphasis on individual birthers and their society (which Patrick calls Birtherstan) is what makes his blog stand out.

Patrick usually posts on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. You can always find your way to his blog under the “Good” list at the bottom of the page.

Birther headlines

By on June 13, 2012 in Birthers, The Blogs

My attention was called today to a birther aggregation web site, Birther Headlines. This attractive, convenient and fast-loading site fronts content from the major birther web logs. While it describes itself as “All Eligibility News Blogs In One Place,” it might more accurately say “All Anti-Eligibility News Blogs In One Place” since it only covers sites that take the negative position on Obama’s eligibility.

It’s a pretty comprehensive compilation.

A little funny about Jack Cashill

By on March 2, 2012 in The Blogs

You really ought to go over the Loren Collins’ blog, Barackryphal and check out this article about Jack Cashill. It’s of special interest because the “Lysander Spooner Law School” is the web site of our former troll Kenneth Olsen.

Uncoordinated moves

By on February 14, 2012 in Mario Apuzzo, The Blogs

Reality Check Radio logoFollowing on the heels of this blog’s move to new hosting, Reality Check Radio has also moved to new digs at  WordPress.com, and its most recent article (as is a recent one by me) is about Mario Apuzzo. RC’s article is Mario: Time to Putz up or shut up, and it makes the modest suggestion that Mario Apuzzo offer to represent Charles Tisdale in his appeal of a loss in the Virginia District Court of a case challenging Obama’s eligibility. It would be a perfect venue for Mr. Apuzzo to argue his two-citizen parent theory because the judge used a definition of natural born citizen as part of the rational for dismissing the case!

Here’s what Apuzzo said about Tisdale v. Obama:

This decision consists of an Order of 2 and ½ pages, a good part of which addresses the standard to be applied on a motion to dismiss and for the pro se plaintiff to qualify as a pauper. Woodman fails to tell us that the court cited Wong Kim Ark to support its statement: “It is well settled that those born in the United States are considered natural born citizens.” Again, Wong’s holding is not about a “natural born Citizen” so I have no idea how the court finds what is says to be “well settled.” Tisdale did not engage in any reasoned and thoughtful legal and historical analysis of the “natural born Citizen” issue. Furthermore, none of the other cases cited by the Tisdale court support its position that a “natural born Citizen” includes a child born in the United States, regardless of the citizenship of his or her parents.

Even if Tisdale lacked standing to bring the suit in the first place, the Circuit Court of Appeals will have to say whether or not the District court was in error when it dismissed on those grounds, before it dismisses on other grounds. We’ll just have to wait and see if Mr. Apuzzo (and the other Birther leadership) will leave Mr. Tisdale twisting in the wind, or whether he will get some professional help.

We also have a debate upcoming on Reality Check Radio between Scott Erlandson (for the Birthers) and Frank Arduini (for the anti-Birthers). This is going to be a real formal debate with real rules. The date is next Tuesday, February 21, at 9:00 PM Eastern Standard (US) time.

The new Reality Check Radio link is in the Good section at the bottom of the page.

Bearding the Apuzzo

By on February 13, 2012 in Mario Apuzzo, The Blogs

"The Mouth of Truth" sculptureIf you go back through all the articles on this blog, you will see a quite a few under the category of Mario Apuzzo, 45 of them at last count. Generally my writing doesn’t treat Mr. Apuzzo very kindly: some articles are critical, some are insulting and some downright taunting. While I try to be accurate in my criticism, I needn’t bother out of fear that he will show up and call me on it. He’s not going to undertake any substantive argument here because if he did, he would be exposed as a hack by me and other commenters, some of whom are attorneys, apparently much better ones than he is.

The last time Apuzzo showed up here in comments (798 comments here between February of 2009 and December of 2010) he lost badly and lost his temper too. Birther attorneys only look good in closed friendly environments where they control the context and the discussion. Birther attorneys have to show up in one neutral battleground eventually, the courts, and there they invariably lose. Still, Birthers in the main don’t read court rulings, allowing the Birther attorneys to explain “what really happened” and why “the court was wrong” and still control the context and dismiss the loss.

On the other hand, Apuzzo has said some unkind things about me on his blog. I went over there once and tried to argue a point. I made what I considered a winning comment, but it never saw the light of day.

If Apuzzo ever showed up again here, I’m pretty sure that he will be maligned and insulted – but he won’t be muzzled and he won’t win the argument.

If it’s not obvious from recent articles, I’m pretty hacked off by arrogant claims of winning on birther blogs that censor opposing comments. The practice disgusts me.

The picture above is an Italian landmark, La Bocca della Verità (the “Mouth of Truth” in English). Apuzzo uses the image of this landmark on his blog for some reason which I have been unable to figure out.

This blog’s tag line, Fishing for gold coins in a bucket of mud, comes from a motion to dismiss in Kerchner v Obama, by  Acting United States Attorney Ralph J. Marra, Jr. Marra, referring to Apuzzo’s Second Amended Complaint in Kerchner, said:

“Rule 8(a) requires parties to make their pleadings straightforward, so that judges and adverse parties need not try to fish a gold coin from a bucket of mud.” United States ex rel. Garst v. Lockheed-Martin Corp., 328 F.3d 374, 378 (7th Cir. 2003), quoted in Parker v. Learn The Skills Corp., No. 03-6936, 2004 WL 2384993, *1 (E.D. Pa. Oct. 25, 2004) (dismissing complaint without prejudice because it was lengthy in its factual allegations of wrongful conduct and lacked clarity).

In this case, Plaintiffs’ second amended complaint utterly fails to conform to the notice pleading requirements of Rule 8(a). The second amended complaint is 87 pages long, consisting of 387 paragraphs of allegations, a 30-paragraph prayer for relief, and 43 single-spaced endnotes, some of which are quite lengthy. See Dkt. Entry 3. Plaintiffs plead a host of needless detail, the relevancy of which is not clear, and to which Defendants cannot respond because it is drawn from various internet webpages and sundry outside sources.

Kerchner v. Obama was dismissed, albeit for other defects.

Controlled drip

By on February 13, 2012 in Ballot Challenges, Charles Kerchner, Citizenship, Mario Apuzzo, The Blogs

Cartoon showing frustrated man trying to fix a leaky faucetI mentioned The Steady Drip blog in a previous article about a possible appeal of the Georgia ballot challenge loss from Carl Swensson: Carl Swensson: Appeal ready on Monday. (Nothing today, Monday, on the appeal that I’ve been able to find, by the  way.)

Since my article, there has been some activity at The Steady Drip to the Swensson article including the addition of a “comment” by conservative birther document analysis debunker, and author John Woodman. I put “comment” in quotation marks because this is not a comment in the usual sense of the term, but text added to the article. In this form, one cannot tell whether the comment is what Woodman actually said, or if it is all that he said.

In any case, the published Woodman “comment” didn’t go into any detail, but referred readers to his blog for an argument saying Minor v. Happersett wasn’t a “binding precedent” and that the birthers were mistaken to dismiss US v. Wong.

What followed was a rebuttal by, in turn, by Carl Swensson, Mario Apuzzo, Carl Swensson (again), Charles (I presume Kerchner) and Douglas Vogt. I won’t  go into detail except to say that they were the typical things those folks say and that it’s pretty much bunk.

At the conclusion of those comments is:

There is a lesson for you here John.  Don’t attempt to get inaccurate, sloppily vetted material posted on The Steady Drip.  It will backfire on you just like Obama’s Karma is creeping up on him.

In fact, John didn’t post any material of any substance except a link to his blog.

Any time I write an article about the definition of natural born citizen, I always get a lot of comments. My recent article Donofrio’s “dirty little secret” on that topic has 155 responses after 2 days. The Steady Drip has zero actual comments (the others are part of the article). Is that because no one has left comments? No, I left two myself that haven’t appeared.

John, the lesson to be learned here is not to post on blogs with heavily censored content. They will dump all manner of garbage on you, and then muzzle you when you try to respond.

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