There are two schools of thought on that question.
Taitz has been filing lawsuits against President Obama for a little over 4 years now. I observed back in June of 2009 that Orly Taitz had misrepresented when an attempt was made to serve President Obama in the case of Keyes v. Obama. In this case, Orly relied on an inept volunteer who served a male mail clerk somewhere, and claimed that Obama was served in his personal capacity on January 20 (Inauguration Day) when in fact when the actual affidavit was filed, the date was February 10. In fact, I made several comments on the blog that year that the clock was ticking and that her case would be dismissed for missing the deadline to serve the complaint. And in fact, she did miss the deadline, but Judge Carter allowed more time and personally ordered Taitz and the US Attorney to work out the service then and there.
A 5th grader, even though not a law school graduate, should be smart enough to learn from a mistake. Apparently not in the case of Taitz. Once again, in the case of Grinols v. Electoral College, she tried to serve President Obama in his personal capacity, and when he didn’t respond, she moved for a default judgment. But in fact, it was the same story as in Keyes repeated 4 years later. Taitz told the Court in a January 3 hearing that President Obama had been served in his personal capacity, when in fact service was attempted the following day, and that service again was through the US Government, and not in Obama’s personal capacity. Her motion for default was, of course, dismissed along with another tutorial on the rules of service. Until a plaintiff is served, the Court has no jurisdiction.
I will not belabor the point with other examples of Taitz’ repeated legal errors.
So we are left with two alternative theories:
- Orly Taitz is not smarter than a 5th grader, and that the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure are hopelessly beyond her grasp, even when meticulously explained to her in simple terms by a judge.
- Orly Taitz makes mistakes in her legal process in order that her cases be dismissed for technical reasons, to avoid her losing on the merits. By filing cases and never losing1, she can maintain the fiction on her web site that she is fighting Obama, when in fact she has no case.
1Technically, Taitz did lose one case on the merits, Farrar v. Obama in Georgia. On appeal before the Superior Court in Georgia, Obama attorney Michael Jablonski argued that service had not been effected on President Obama in that case either.
Orly responds to a comment on her blog about her “subpoena” “service:”
dr_taitz@yahoo dot com
March 12th, 2013 @ 4:39 am
they are not willing to sign and not willing to call someone else.
If you are so smart, wy don’t you do it and show me how many signed for you.
Instead of talking and telling others what to do, why don’t you get off the coach and go to your congressman and sentor’s office and serve them and e-mail me the subpoenas signed by the representatives
> Orly Taitz is not smarter than a 5th grader
IMO a moot discussion as there are probably many things she can do better than a 5th grader – intelligence or smartness aren’t absolute scales.
> Orly Taitz makes mistakes in her legal process in order that her cases be dismissed for technical reasons, to avoid her losing on the merits. By filing cases and never losing1, she can maintain the fiction on her web site that she is fighting Obama, when in fact she has no case.
My point exactly. The fiction that she “would win if only heard on the merits” is what keeps her dimwit followers entertained and “true to the cause”.
Apart from the anti-Orly birthers’ own conspiracy theory that Orly deliberately fails in order to derail birtherism (because she’s secretly working for Obama, right), that’s the only explanation why not just Orly, but all other birther lawyers involved in eligibility cases (Van Irion and Klayman) make the same “mistakes” over and over again.
Not properly serving the defendant(s) is their standard MO, but no real lawyer planning to win such “historic cases” would botch them so epically.
That’s like believing a premier league player scoring 2 own goals in every game is in no way connected to any bribery, or that an NFL team sending their farm team to the Superbowl means they really really want to win this.
I already pointed this out on a previous thread, Orly Cries Wolf, but here again I present the “fifth grade” lesson on how to serve a president in his personal capacity:
“Sources familiar with the White House legal strategy said Starr contacted the presidents personal attorney, David Kendall, by phone to tell him the subpoena had been issued and that the subpoena was delivered to Kendalls office shortly afterward.”
http://articles.cnn.com/1998-07-26/politics/clinton.subpoena_1_subpoena-clinton-and-lewinsky-grand-jurors?_s=PM:ALLPOLITICS
*****
There, naturally, was argument about the constitutionality (see below, Bruce Fein’s letter to the editor, for example), but not about the process of how to actually serve the man.
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/07/28/opinion/l-clinton-subpoena-usurps-congress-107921.html
Sorry, but I don’t believe that she has the attention span to make deliberate mistakes. The truth is she doesn’t read the rules. This might to a large extent also be because she doesn’t understand them. And that taps into my theory that she had someone else take her law exams, which isn’t difficult with online courses. Also, she has a few times tried to have a hearing on the merits, including round 1 in Judge England’s court.
As far as I know, one cannot take the CA BAR exam online.
lol — that’s it, i’m finally convinced. svetlana’s really andy kaufman’s long-lost daughter.
Service is a complicated matter. When Obama was a candidate, Orly was serving him as a candidate. However, Obama is also the President. Therefore, service is a tricky matter because she has to serve Obama in a personal capacity. However, since Obama is the President, it very very difficult to serve Obama a candidate because as the President, Obama has special protection that an ordinary citizen simply cannot penatrate.
In my opinion, I find SERVICE a really nonsensical issue the courts and Obots intentionally use to dismiss the case. In his personal capacity, Obama has been served 7 ways to Sunday.
her intelligence is not the issue, it’s her foul mouth laden with nasty insults against our president that disturbs me the most, all she does is spout hate, she lives for hate!
If Orly really wanted to perfect service upon Obama, she should have had her supporters attend one of many of Obama’s rallies and when Obama approached to shake hands, he’s handed the suit, all caught on camera of course along with sworn affidavits that Obama was served. However, the person effecting service might be arrested.
I think Orly’s mistakes are mostly due to her mental illness. She suffers from narcissistic personality disorder and delusions (and other things too, but those are the two characteristics that I think cause her the most problems). Her narcissism leads her to believe that she’s always right and her delusions lead her to believe that everyone who does not believe she is always right is part of the big Obama conspiracy to destroy freedom and, not incidentally, Orly Taitz.
The problem is that Taitz’s repeated legal errors and her repeated ethics violations have cost her next to nothing. She’s like a meth addict who gets her supply for free. Nothing is going to stop her or make her change her ways until she starts getting hit with huge sanctions and defamation lawsuits from her dozens (hundreds?) of victims.
I can understand the reluctance of her victims wanting to get into a costly legal battle with Taitz, but I don’t understand why the courts keep giving her a pass. Of course, I also don’t understand what the purpose of the California Bar is, but then I’m not a lawyer.
Interesting analysis, Doc.
At first, on reading it, I voted for No. 2…she does the failures deliberately, so that she can hurl the blame elsewhere, appear to her claques as a martyr and a victim, and continue to raise money and gain attention.
Then I read some of the comments here, particularly the one from “Thinker,” and now I’m not so sure…maybe she is dumber than a 5th grader, and is completely full of herself, absolutely convinced she is right, and nobody is smarter than she is.
Could she be both? The Hegelian view?
I can hear Paul Simon singing “There must be 50 ways to serve Obama.”
Perhaps she could hire Santa to slip it down the chimney.
Serving the President in his personal capacity is really not that hard. Didn’t Apuzzo, Irion and Klayman do it?
Is it because this type of outlandish behavior/outright stupidity is so unusual or is it because it’s commonplace?
I have often wondered if it was all an act. There are times when I have leaned toward number 2, because it is the only rational conclusion if you assume that she is doing it as a con. However, I have personally dealt with this woman, through emails and seen enough video of her of her to believe that she is genuinely sincere about her attempts to remove the president. I have sometimes had my doubts as to whether she believes that she has any legal basis to remove the president, but she clearly has a visceral hatred for the President. I remember one video in particular where she was talking about the SS# and she smugly looked to the camera and said “I got him”. Well, of course she didn’t have him and never will.
There are some failures that look staged. For example, in another case where her demand for default was rejected because of, surprise surprise, lack of service, instead of completing service properly, she filed a motion for reconsideration. That is one of the dumbest legal moves I have ever seen and surely she will seek to appeal the denial of that motion for default. No rational lawyer would ever do that, hell, no rational person would ever do it.
But the question is whether we are making a mistake by measuring her on this basis? Can we come to the conclusion that she is losing on purpose simply because we reject the possibility that anyone could be that bad a lawyer?
What I have witnessed is an extremely narcissistic approach to her attempts at litigation. I genuinely believe that she thinks her cause is so just and right that Court should ignore minor details such as service, personal jurisdiction, standing and subject matter jurisdiction. One of the things I am most offended about in the birther movement is how willing they are to trample the Constitution in the guise of “saving” it. But I also believe that she intentionally pushes the envelope and wants to be hit with heavy sanctions, fines and possibly imprisonment. She wants to be martyred in some way.
One of the great embarrassments to those in the birther movement, for those who can still be embarrassed, is their failure to predict the future. An overweight man, with a heart condition dies of a heart attack and birthers coin a new phrase, Breitbarted. Breitbart was no friend to Obama, but he hated the birthers. They now point to his death as what the regime will do to those who challenge it, but what has happened to Corsi, Klaymann, Arpaio, Zullo or Taitz? Nothing. Has “marshal” law been declared yet? No. have people been hauled off to FEMA camps? No. If the President was 1/10 as evil as he is portrayed, the birther movement would have been shut down years ago. The fact that nothing bad has happened to anyone is proof that they are wrong about the President. So Orly will push until she is disbarred or in prison just so she can say it happened because she dared to challenge the eligibility of the President. And as much as I wish that judges would take a firmer approach with her, I like to be able to the point to the lack of negative consequences as proof of her stupidity.
I realize this is long winded, and I apologize for that. But I guess the point is that I think that she really is that bad, but has benefited from her own incompetence.
John, when I was practicing criminal law, I was asked often how I could justify defending guilty people. It is a common question. One of the answers that I gave was that the only way to protect innocent people from being convicted was to make sure that the police and the DA attorney did their jobs correctly–every time. When we allow people to convicted based on tainted evidence or procedure, it makes it that much easier to convict someone who is innocent.
I realize that birthers think things like service of the complaint are nonsensical, but they aren’t and the rules are there to protect people, even if they have done wrong, in order to prevent abusive proceedings. And that is true regardless of how “important” you think the “cause” is, or how much “historic significance” the litigation has. And that is true regardless of the defendant is, even if it is the President of the United States.
Notwithstanding your comments, the President has not been served, as was outlined quite well by Judge Englund. Orly wants YOU to believe that because he or his attorneys had notice of the lawsuit that it is sufficient to effectuate service. It isn’t.
As Judge Englund has pointed out, a court does not have personal jurisdiction over a party unless that party has been properly brought into the case. In other words, the Court is powerless to act unless and until a party has been properly served. Do we really want to soften that criteria? Gee, it is not like anyone would abuse that or anything. We take every measure possible to make the fight fair, regardless of the issues, regardless of the parties. It should not be any other way.
Why should birther cases be exempt from the requirements that every other case in the US and in history has to meet, John?
Would it be as nonsensical to you if YOU were the defendant who had not been properly served?
Been watching a lot of cheap lawyer movies, have you John?
You know John, IANAL but after reading Judge Englund’s denial of the TRO and his subsequent explanation on HOW service should be done, I think I could serve the President. Can you explain to me how/why Orly, who has had this explained to her by no less than 2 Judges and possibly more, is still unable to follow simple rules and affect service? Doesn’t that make you wonder about all the rest of her case, considering she cannot even understand the basic rules of court? Brings her interpretation of her so-called “evidence” into question, doesn’t it? Maybe you should hire your own lawyer John, someone who can possibly get your “trial” that you’ve been dying for.
It should be noted that the rules allow her to attempt voluntary service via mail; if the defendant does not accept service by mail, then the defendant has to bear the cost of future efforts to serve him in person. Where allowed, this is the usual and preferred method of service because defendants generally accept the service by mail and it saves the expense of hiring a process server. I don’t think Taitz has even tried this. If she had tried it, it would have at least shown some good faith effort at service and would give her some justification for saying the defendant was avoiding service.
I am torn between the two choices–not smarter than a fifth grader or purposeful error. I think it is some of both. I think she demonstrates a general contempt for the law and an unwillingness to learn how to practice law; if she wanted to learn, she might show smarts at or above the 5th grade level–but how will we ever know? As for the latter option, she certainly gets a lot of mileage on her errors; she and her followers are wedded to the notion that our Courts are at odds with the will of the People, and each rejection from the Courts just fuels this. I think it is safe to say that she banks on the fact that her followers are not smarter than fifth graders. (Apologies to fifth graders, many of whom are much much smarter).
She could always hire an attorney who knows about service.
I mean after 4 years that would be the sensible thing to do.
But then again we are talking about Orly- not sensible.
Orly hates the idea of sharing credit with any attorney.
—
Any competent paralegal would be sufficient.
Schrödinger’s cat.
I think Orly is smart in some ways. However, I also think she has a mental illness.
Or she could give the process server company she used the correct instructions. If she was confused, all she need do is ask. The company is in DC so they likely have some experience.
John, what does it tell you when Orly cannot get service correct even when using professionals?
There is a third alternative: she could not care less. It has never been about winning. Worse, it has never been a question of what her supporters think she is doing. For Orly, every case is just an opportunity to besmirch the President.
As I said in the Grinols thread, I doubt that Orly ever told the process server company that Obama needed to be served in his personal capacity. It is the attorney’s responsibility to tell the process server if there are special considerations.
I tell you what, John. I will file a lawsuit against you for negligence because every time I read one of your notes my head explodes. I won’t bother to serve you, but I will post a note about the lawsuit here. When you fail to file an Answer, I will make a motion for a default judgment against you.
When you object that you were never served, I will point out to the court that you have said that service is a “nonsensical issue.”
Does that work for you?
Hi Orly!
I had thought it was her narcissism and her obsession. The problem with that is the case with her tenants where apparently she also botched service. That may be a simple result of her impatience or need to fly through anything without considering details or using any sort of process. It is like the way she drives, which I have little doubt caused her various car issues.
If it wasn’t, every President could expect to spend their entire term defending themselves against thousands of partisan-driven, frivolous lawsuits, differing only by each righteously postured accuser’s variant of what he or she insists constitutes a disqualifying, impeachable, or eligibility-denying circumstance, accompanied by their own goal-post moving, Constitution-violating, and deliberately unsatisfiable, extra-legal demands for how the President must react to their (and anyone’s) scurrilous conclusory allegations.
And many of those other technical legal requirements that spoil your imaginary courtroom lynchings, exist to a large degree because, your lunatic heroine Orly Taitz’s lackluster record not-withstanding, society can’t count on incompetence alone to limit the damage eccentric citizens can cause by abusing our court system.
In short, service has to be minimally complicated because in insane worlds like that of of Birtherism, groundless accusations are so simple.
I hate to say it, but this is probably the first decent thing john has ever said. I’ve worked on a case where we actually did something very similar. We served a subpoena on a public official who was speaking at a public event. As he was walking out the door through the media, our process server handed him the subpoena, and he handed it off to an aid, not even looking at it. When he tried to claim he never touched the documents, we just played the news clips. Personal service perfected.
Of course, with the campaign over, there are far fewer opportunities where Obama is pressing the flesh directly with masses. But still, it would probably be the most intelligent thing Orly has ever attempted….and that doesn’t say very much.
I can always tell, just by the number of comments, whether there is a birfer in the thread; the higher the number, the greater the likelihood of birferism, and as that number increases, the greater the likelihood that that birfer is john.
The idea that Orly might be deliberately sabotaging her own case is intriguing, but at the end of the day I don’t buy it.
1. Orly is not in this for PayPal donations. She can’t possibly be making enough in donations to compensate her for anything near the amount of time she has spent working on her birther cases.
2. On the other hand, she is in it for the attention. However, I believe that she really is after the Holy Grail. She fantasizes about being hailed as the great “civil rights attorney” who brought down Barack Obama.
3. What I have seen in her work is a woeful inattention to detail. She routinely misspells names and words. She attaches illegible photocopies of documents to her filings. She sent her Summons and Complaint in the Grinols case to a process server, but she apparently failed to tell the process server that Obama had to be served in his personal capacity. She misses deadlines. She doesn’t bother to learn the rules of the court.
4. Her lack of understanding about the law is appalling. She does not comprehend the rules of evidence. She does not know how to qualify expert witnesses. She believes that a default judgment would entitle her to whatever she wants.
The bottom line is that Orly does in fact sabotage her own cases, but I believe it is due to her laziness and ineptness rather than intent.
I’m with Paul P.
And to be clear, do we agree that Option 1 implies that Orly is a True Believer, and really actually believes BHO to be illegitimately serving; and Option 2 implies she knows BHO is eligible, but she is pretending to be a Believer anyway?
Option 2 could be sub-divided:
2a) She fails intentionally to prolong her jihad for political reasons, and
2b) She doesn’t give a tinker’s damn about the politics, and is in it for the fame, influence and/or cash.
What do we know for certain (relatively)?
1. Orly is a racist. The language about BHO being unqualified to “clean the toilets” or “pick tomatoes” is all the evidence I need.
2. Orly being only and purely interested in the cash seems unlikely.
3. She is, in ways large and small, a crappy lawyer.
4. It is difficult to say whether she believes in Birfoonery utterly, some, or not at all.
The one theory that accommodates all these facts is this:
She loathes the President. Her plan is and always was to attack him in as public and as prolonged a way as possible.
Failing has prolonged her smear campaign. Filing motions and whatnot again and again in moot cases, filing for reconsideration (IANAL, so please bear with my vagueness) without any new arguments or evidence, seems too deranged to be in earnest. So she stays on her surfboard, avoiding getting in real trouble or doing anything that would stop the crazy train.
She just doesn’t care. She lives to smear Obama. She doesn’t use spell check because it doesn’t matter. She doesn’t try to do better lawyering, because it isn’t necessary. She doesn’t catch on to mockery because it means attention. She scrounges cash because why not? It just helps finance the vendetta.
A single-minded obsession with defaming the President explains Orly’s project. And I don’t think it’s merely “political” either, as in influencing an election. I honestly wonder if she’d toast herself with a cold bottle of Perrier-Jouët if her lies provoked an assassination.
I think she enjoys the “importance,” but I doubt it’s the point.
That’s what I point out to people, Yoda…when defense lawyers defend horrible people, they are NOT protecting the defendant…they are safeguarding the process, to make sure the trial is NOT a lynching.
The problem isn’t that Orly’s incompetent, although we know that she is. The problem is that the original premise is flawed from the very beginning. It wouldn’t matter how skillful the attorney may be, a flawed and easily dismissed idea isn’t going to gain formal traction in any legal venue. The American judicial system, though sometimes itself flawed, it too well conceived to let an obvious false idea to gain ground under any circumstances.
Yabbut Orly doesn’t care if her ideas gain any ground in court. Because she isn’t using the court as a legal system, she is using it as a megaphone.
I think “she is using the court as a megaphone” is probably the most accurate and succinct description I’ve ever seen about Orly.
Agreed.
Fourthed.
Only, courts should not be used that way. Taking away Orly’s license (though I am sure there is something fishy about it) will not help much. Declaring her a vexatious litigant will help. And while she obviously is not in it for the money, Judge Land-like sanctions will probably mean she becomes just one more RWNJ blogger.
Of course, I know I am dreaming. “Any Day Now.”
Maybe I’m extrapolating too much from my previous knowledge of crank behaviour.
The ones I’m familiar with, however deluded they were, were the exact opposite – they eagerly sucked up anything a court ever said, or opponent’s counsel ever said, as if it were some magic formula or spell to guarantee success. One symptom is the obsession with certain words, like writing “certified evidence and legal inspection” whenever they refer to a document they’d like to see entered as evidence, simply because opponent’s counsel did this once and succeeded (so they assume this will allow them to enter anything, even hearsay, into evidence).
Therefore I assume that Orly, if she’s really so desperate to win, would try to pick as many clues by the judge as she possibly can. However, she does the opposite.
(Maybe it’s really not comparable since Orly is a lawyer whereas the cranks I know are all laymen, but I stand by my claim that Orly screws up on purpose.)
And with her, it is always “deja vu all over again.:
In this case, Orly’s client actually thought she was a client and not just part of Orly’s megaphone.
Sometimes Orly does that. For example, after others filed quo warranto lawsuits, she filed one. When her lawsuit in Mississippi was removed to federal court by defendants, Orly picked up on the idea and removed her case to federal court (even though only defendants can do that). Taitz filed affidavits from Joe Arpaio, even thought they were just copies she printed from the Internet in other cases.
She will pick up bits of jargon and use them, without understanding.
I agree with this statement and the one Thomas wrote earlier on this thread…she absolutely hates Obama. She lacks knowledge of the law, understanding of the English language, and comprehension of courtroom procedure.
She has a vast ego, an unyielding hatred of Obama, and a firm belief that she is right, and should not be argued with. She is “better” than everyone. If she was allowed to “feeen-ish,” she could convince everyone through the sheer force of her arguments, she believes.
She’s not only a narcissist, she’s an obsessive.
So my question is…what brought her to the obsession with Obama’s birth certificate?
I think the issue is more about her immaturity. She acts like a spoiled teenager not getting her way. She must be a real bitch to live with. What I have learned is that ANYONE can tie up ANYTHING in court at ANYTIME – it still amazes me. Orly is a sore loser who has found this niche. I can’t wait for all of it to end one day and poor Orly will most likely go into a deep deep depression – too bad.
The right-wing pro-Israel faction comprised some of the very first birth certificate deniers. I think this the current from which Taitz comes. Just 9 days after Obama’s original birth certificate appeared on the Daily KOS web site in June of 2008, Israel Insider was calling it a fake and repeating a false rumor that Obama’s African grandmother had disappeared.
I suspect that is her original motivation into diving down the Birther hole of madness too…
…But she has definitely gone completely bat-sh*t insane in the process…
…and as others have pointed out, is a lazy, obsessive, fame-whoring narcissist to boot…
All it all, the combination of her massive behavioral problems result in one endlessly incompetent calamitous cluster-F… after another…
And Obama still took 69% of the Jewish vote in November.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/07/jewish-voter-exit-polls_n_2084008.html
My Jewish friends all understand that right-wing “support” for Israel is largely bogus. It is driven by a belief that the country of Israel has to survive in order to fulfill Biblical prophecy. But when the rapture comes, the Jews are on their own.
There are exceptions, of course. Jewish neocons such as Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer are vehemently anti-Obama, but they clearly are in the minority.
Rickey: But when the rapture comes, the Jews are on their own.
only if the Jews took Jesus as their savior would they be included – this would HARDLY be the road the majority of Jews would take
——
When my elderly mother (long time Democrat) moved to Israel, she was relentlessly bombarded with the most ugly emails from American Republicans, trying to scare her and every American elderly person there that a vote for Obama was a vote for the next holocaust. They really played up a video made by Kaddafi wherein he called Obama a brother. When I went to visit her, I noticed that the only American broadcast available there is Faux News. I was mortified. Thereafter, fear mongers like Glenn Beck also relentlessly warned Israelis that everyone in America absolutely hates them, except him and people like him. He even tried to exacerbate the existing tensions there between Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews, claiming the latter–particularly non-Orthodox Jews in America–were essentially illegitimate and equivalent to jihadists. The fact is, if you really talk to Israelis about Bush v. Obama when it comes to security, they didn’t like Bush (who expedited the vote in Gaza ensuring Hamas’ election) and have to acknowledge that Obama is much better–I will always be grateful for Obama putting that Iron Dome over my mother’s head.
Clearly, Orly is part of that meme. Fortunately, in the recent Israeli elections, there’s been a lot of push back against the right. In America, well, just look at Congress–while there are plenty of Jewish congressmen, there is only one (in history?) who is Republican…
Misha has been AWOL on this thread so it seems only right to include his opinion on the matter.
That was my point when I said that they would be “on their own.” Anyone who believes that there will a rapture also believes that the Jews will be left behind.
—-
Politics sure does make strange bedfellows. I am not as concerned with the right-wing-Christian rapture plans as I am with their plans for Armeggedon….
Unfortunately, the two seem to go hand-in-hand…