Evidence on the Wikipedia!
On March 6, the attorney for the Democratic Party of Mississippi filed a Motion to Dismiss in the case of Orly Taitz v. Democrat (sic) Party of Mississippi, Secretary of State of Mississippi. Special Assistant Attorney General Justin L. Matheny behalf of the Secretary of State had previously moved to dismiss, but Democrat attorney Samuel L. Begley went one step further, requesting sanctions against Taitz.
In reference to Taitz, Begley wrote: “The Plaintiff’s allegations are absolutely ridiculous. The President was born in the State of Hawaii and thus is a natural born citizen of the United States.”
Begley argues that Orly Taitz does not have standing to bring the action because she is not a qualified elector in Mississippi (Taitz is a resident of California). To have standing, a plaintiff’s right to vote must be implicated, which excludes Taitz. Begley presents a very long list of “birther” lawsuits that have been dismissed, singling out precedents such as Hollander v. McCain, Drake v. Obama and Berg v. Obama to show that Taitz lacks standing.
Begley further argues that Barack Obama is eligible to run for President, citing the Indiana case of Ankeny v. Governor of Indiana. As evidence, the URL to the White House copy of the long form birth certificate is given.
Begley then argues that neither the Democratic Party, nor the Secretary of State is required to make eligibility requirements for candidates for President, citing Keyes v. Bowen in California. He further asserts that state courts do not have jurisdiction in such matters, again citing the appellate decision in Bowen.
Irregularities in the Taitz filing, such as being filed after the deadline are in and of themself sufficient to require dismissal, says Begley.
Finally Begley requests the court to sanction Taitz in the form of attorney’s fees and costs, citing her prolific filings across the country, and noting previous sanctions in the Rhodes case in Georgia federal court.
For her part, Orly Taitz has written the Attorney General of Mississippi [link to Taitz web site] demanding:
Due to the above conflict of interest I demand that you and your office recuse yourselves from representing the Secretary of State of Mississippi.
Taitz further demands that the AG withdraw their “frivolous” motion to dismiss.
I learned something interesting, that there is a Wikipedia entry for Orly Taitz detailing her crusade. I went over and added Mississippi.
Will this be the 100th birther loss? Stay tuned.
Update:
I see that Orly Taitz has a Motion for Summary Judgment on her web site dated March 5, but it doesn’t appear on the court docket yet.
I wouldn’t bank on sanctions. Birfers in general–and Taitz in particular–are veritable Houdinis in escaping sanctions.
In truth, she should be fined in every single action that she initiates for bringing to court nonsense that is not evidence. A licensed attorney should know better, and I’m sure that Taitz does know better; but, she persists with her
dog-and-ponydonkey-and-german shepherd shows which are nothing more than smear attempts.Nor will a piddling $10-20k fine discourage her. A more substantial $150k (with multipliers every time she files for “reconsideration.”) assessment might get her attention.
Orly Taitz’ article on Wikipedia is crap: her year of birth is given as 1962, while we can be sure it is 1960 (1960 is the year given in the court cases against her for speeding), the information about her living in Romania has been scrubbed, and they continue to link to her pest-infected website.
Of course, the irony of it all is that she did her best to keep it about her court cases and now the article is used in a court case to demand sanctions against her.
According to Mississippi court rules no one except a Mississippi approved lawyer can be sanctioned unless it can be proven that they knew the case was frivolous. So, Orly’s earlier cases are used to prove that she knew this suit was frivolous.
So, will Orly now demand the article be deleted?
The requests for reimbursement of defense costs seem to be an entirely reasonable request to me. I think all of these frivolous cases should be subject to that condition.
Orly is also still facing likely sanctions in HI too – whenever that finally finishes and gets addressed.
I hope both the Court and the Defense in the HI case are paying attention to Orly’s latest unprofessional incitements and threats that she has made and will take that behavior into account.
Orly deserves to be subjected to the harshest sanction penalties available. Her repeated conduct is beyond the pale and should not continue to be given any leeway at all.
Note that the article has been updated to include Orly’s demand that the Attorney General of Mississippi recuse himself from defending the Secretary of State.
WP:SOFIXIT
I thought Doc was going to bring up my all-time favorite Orly/Wikipedia connection — that in Keyes vs. Bowen, she cites Wikipedia.
Of course, now I’ve seen much, much worse from her, but that was my first exposure to her legal jeenyuss, so it will always have a special place in my heart.
As her losses mount, sanctions will become more likely. Courts genuinely don’t like to sanction someone for trying to have “their day in court.” However, when it becomes clear the person is a serial litigant, all bets are off. I would be willing to bet she gets sanctioned in one of her next 5. And once one court hits her up, I think it will become far more common thereafter.
I’ve just started reading the State’s motion to dismiss, and it starts off neatly shutting down Taitz, both for being too late and citing the rather interesting law in Mississippi as to who shall be on the ballot.
The AG also provides an affidavit and evidence that the Secretary of State was never served with the complaint.
Such a beautiful map of Mississippi … such a hideous photo of Taitz 😯
If a photo has Orly in it, it will always be hideous. Despicable on the inside, repulsive on the outside.
Doc, your Wikipedia update has been scrubbed.
This all looks very strange from over the pond – in the UK we have possibly 3 legal systems (England & Wales, Scotland, Europe) but Scottish and English law are reasonably compatible and you have to work really hard to get into the European court system. In the USA, I guess you have 51 legal systems, one per state plus the federal system. So the opportunities for Taitzoid mayhem are much more pronounced. As you say, courts generally don’t like to deny access, but it has been known for English courts to declare nuisance-mongers as “vexatious litigants” (I think that’s the technical term) which makes it much more difficult for them to bring more actions, and it sounds like you have similar possibilities in the US.
But in all of these Taitz clown shows, it seems each state’s legal system starts from scratch. Is there anything a state legal system can do to say quickly “look, we know you’re a moron, this is an idiotic repeat of your clown show from several other states, dismissed with extreme prejudice, and if you dare show your face again with this nonsense, wasting everybody’s time and making the courts look like a playground for fools, we’ll bleed you dry, bitch”?
I guess the system doesn’t really have these mechanisms because how often has this sort of nonsense been tried? The Taitzisoi certainly have staying power, bringing their big shoes and Theatre of the Screaming Absurd to state after state, court after court, never understanding that they will never win while there is a sliver of sanity in the legal system.
I’ve just looked at Taitz’s Motion to Dismiss, which shows her usual frothing mouthed lunacy.
Is it legal and proper for her to tell such outrageous lies in a document presented to a court? She has been told by courts around the country that she is talking rubbish yet she continues to peddle her untruths. I would have thought that this egregious mendacity should be cause for immediate sanctions, of the “how dare you insult the courts with this tissue of nonsense?”
She tries to tell the court that the Maricopa Clown Posse merits attention.l Security numbers as though that’s a qualification for office.
Do judges usually react more favorably when plaintiffs inform them that their colleagues are corrupt? I suspect not…
Some Wikipedia editors can be overzealous in interpreting rules literally, while ignoring their intent and they can simply reject things rather than making them better.
I tried again.
The issue is the use of a court document as a primary source, as opposed to a newspaper source (none of which covered the Mississippi case to my knowledge). The Wikipedia, through its policies, becomes little more than a summary of newspapers because you can basically get ANYTHING into the Wikipedia that a newspaper says, even though it’s easily demonstrable as false, but not the reverse.
Generally, say, if a court case has something about someone in it, you can’t use the case as a source for that fact, particularly about a living person. The policy is
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:BLPPRIMARY
However, I didn’t use it for the purpose of saying about Taitz, but only that the case was filed and what the name of the judge was.
A few points here:
1) citing Wikipedia. Lawyers should not do that, for the obvious reason that it is ongoing, and text may get changed or even deleted. Extenuating circumstances would be to avoid having to list hundreds of law suits filed by pro ses and crappy lawyers. That was done in Illinois. But Mr Begley is quoting a list of his own AND referring to the article that was quoted in Illinois. Overkill+both lists contain errors.
The link to the Orly Taitz article is silly: because of BLP concerns, no article about Orly Taitz will ever be truthful, because journalists are dependent on what Orly says herself. In 2008, she told everybody that she was born in 1960 and had lived in Romania. Now, she is telling everybody she was born in 1962 (except when a few months ago, on her website, she nostalgically linked to one of the first newspaper articles about herself). Some investigative journalist needs to do some real research (checking out her father and his links to Avigdor Lieberman) and then perhaps half of that will grudgingly be included.
2) some interesting facts about Orly Taitz that you always wanted to know but were always afraid to ask:
http://www.trueknowledge.com/q/facts_about__orly_taitz
http://askville.amazon.com/Orly-Taitz-relationship-military/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=55758670
3) I see someone tried to help out Dr C at Wikipedia. Of course, Scribd is not a reliable source, but perhaps it serves the purpose of dismissing Dr K’s concern that the case may not be about Obama…
Orly filed suit against 2 defendants in this MS challenge; the MS Secretary of State and the MS Democratic Party. The state’s AG’s office, representing the SoS, filed a Motion to Dismiss a couple days prior to the MTD mentioned in Docs article, the one filed by the Democratic Party’s counsel. The AG’s did not ask for sanctions or mention Orly’s crusade of harassment, but did cite a similar list of procedural reasons to dismiss the challenge. Orly filed an Opposition to AG’s MTD, and Begley had not seen it when he wrote his MTD in which he requested sanctions. Orly’s latest filing is loaded with insults and accusations of corruption and crimes, it is a vomitous rant of birther blather – apparently written to impress her blog audience with how much of a bad-ass she is to these “corrupt Obots”
rather then to make a legal argument – it contains no legal citations or footnotes.
That document has now been received by the Judge, the AG, and the Democratic Party’s counsel. The defendants’ and court’s reaction to being openly accused by her in that legal filing of “high treason” and corruption and told that they deserve life in prison or “the gallows” if they do not submit to her demands…. should be interesting. If MS Supreme Court Judge Coleman decides to, he can really $$$pank Orly’s bony behind.