Posted on 04/13/2011 10:01:24 AM PDT by maggiesnotebook
Bill O'Reilly tried to separate "fact from myth," and put "internet propaganda" to rest. Most of the dialog was about Obama and his legitimacy for natural-born status, but at the end he states Michelle Obama's law license is inactive - which is true, but is not nearly the whole story. Her license is inactive, and it was voluntary, but her choices were not choices you or I might want to face. It appears that she chose to go inactive because she was facing some disciplinary action. We know this because we have a screen shot of the disciplinary record under which she went inactive, and we have an indepth study of the "Rules" under which she went inactive. There is a "Rule" under discipline, and there is a "Rule" that is voluntary and not binding to discipline. If she wants to reactivate her law license, she must appear for a hearing having to do with the Disciplinary action. That is not true for a simple Inactive status. Then there is this: the year Barack was elected to the U.S. Senate from Illinois, someone started deleting, adding, changing, and retitling official "Rules." The truth may have been disguised a bit, but if you examine the convoluted history of the "Rules," you can clearly see she is inactive under discipline. Please note Rule 756. See the "Rules" below.
Quoting Bill O'Reilly:
Item: Michelle Obama lost her law license.False. She currently has an inactive law license.
Michelle went inactive - all the way through the process - under a disciplinary Rule. Here are the details:
The record keeper in Illinois for attorney registration, fees and oversight is the Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission (ARDC) of the Supreme Court of Illinois.
Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs found the ARDC form online about December 2008, with Michelle’s maiden name, Robinson, dated 1993. The form clearly says it is a “disciplinary record.”
The record keeper in Illinois for attorney registration, fees and oversight is the Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission (ARDC) of the Supreme Court of Illinois.
There is speculation that the only way Michelle could choose to go inactive was to use a “disciplinary” form. Think about that for a minute. Do you really think a group of attorneys would put their name on a “disciplinary” form, with Rules hanging out there, explaining what that status means, when they have not been disciplined? Do you really think a proper form would not be available?
ARDC is governed by a set of rules. Michelle Obama eventually became inactive through Rule 771, April 1, 2004, approximately 11 years after the First Lady went inactive in 1993, and the same year Barack Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate. Rule 771 was changed. Some serious “reorganizing” of the rules happened. She was inactive first under the Code of Professional Responsibility, later retitled Finality of Orders and Effective Date of Discipline, then renumbered and titled Rules of Professional Conduct. Why would anyone voluntarily go inactive under any of those specifications?
Rule 771 became Rule 770 which did not exist before April 1, 2004. Rule 771 was originally titled Code of Professional Responsibility Rule 771 was retitled Finality of Orders and Effective Date of Discipline Rule 770 was born and was titled Rules of Professional Conduct Rule 770 covered disbarment, suspension, censure, reprimand
It appears that the Finality of Orders and Effective Date of Discipline was separated from Types of Discipline.
Rule 756 became effective February 1, 1973. This rule is titled Registration and Fees. Rule 756 is the vehicle for becoming voluntarily inactive, for whatever reason you want to do so, unless you have reason to be considered under Rule 753 – review and hearings.
Note that if you were “voluntarily inactive” pursuant to former Rule 770 see Rule 756(7), you must make a “petition for restoration” under Rule 759, and your petition must be reviewed by the Administrator – I assume because Rule 770 covers only disbarment, suspension, censure, reprimand. The Administrator decides to consent to the application or refer it to the Hearing Board. If you go inactive under 771 770, you cannot become active again without hierarchal consideration. That is not the case for normal restoration procedure.
Rule 759 pertains to those attorneys inactive due to “disability” or “hearing and review” (Rule 753). Rule 759 says that if an attorney is restored to active status under Rule 759, which is not the normal route to restoration, any “disciplinary proceedings pending against the attorney may be resumed.
Rule 753 “hearing and review” appears to be the first step before disciplinary action.
Lynn Stuter, another writer, did some great work on Michelle’s legal standing. The ARDC sent records at her request. They sent Rule 770, which did not exist in 1993. The page said that 770 was “Reserved” – and – it had no text attached to it.
Both 771 and 770 dealt with professional responsibility and professional conduct. Neither dealt with voluntarily going inactive, simply because an attorney chooses to do so. That would be under Rule 756.
I’m not an attorney. I cannot make a conclusive statement about this, but I can consider what I and others have found, and make an educated guess. My guess is that Michelle Robinson Obama gave up her license rather than go through some type of investigative review which might become public. And if this is not the case, then what? Why not Rule 756?
See the ARDC disciplinary form for Michelle at Pamela Geller’s Atlas Shrugs. One of Pam's readers contributed the link to the ARDC rules. Read the transcript of the entire O'Reilly video at Fox Nation.
More news and opinion at Maggie's Notebook.
Send it to bill and see if there is any integrity within his staff and his own reporting of the facts. He should correct and make his reporting fully balanced. Unless, of course, he is afraid of possible consequences.
It seems there are practical limits to the Fair and Balanced policy.
BOR, pinhead or patriot? I vote pinhead!
Did B. Hussein 0bama pass the bar exam? Did he ever practice law?
Once again; ‘Staff research’ fails O’Reilly. (Does he know how to use a computer? Google?) Drop him a line and let him know. I do; often; and will again. Needless to say; nothing has changed is his ‘half-baked’ prounncements of fac. Most often, htey are wrong when it comes to ‘cover’ for Obama, of course.
sfl
I did that this morning. In fact, I try to get info to him routinely, but doubt that he ever sees it.
It appears he did, but I think Pam Geller found that his records were scrubbed before this came out about Michelle. The ARDC records were not available the last time I checked.
PING!
I did send an email this morning, but doubt it will make a difference. I’m betting, though, they will look into the data, because it is all laid out for them.
The leprechaun is too much of an Obama ass-kisser to ever correct it....facts or no facts.
Ted Baxter
Treehouse Foods knows the answer.
O’Reilly choses his battles very slectively. If he covered WWII he would be reporting on a bakery fire in Paris while Americans were under attack at Bastogne.
You either fail to understand what this "screen shot" is, or you intentionally mischaracterize it, or you too closely follows Gellar's lead who apparently does intentionally mischaracterize it.
It's not a "disciplinary form", it's an attorney's registration and disciplinary record SEARCH. What does the search find for disciplinary records - NONE, NADA, ZIP. And, why do they call it that? Because the name of the organization that manages these things in IL is called the Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission.
Every attorney that has been licensed in the state of Illinois for the last 70 or so years has a form that would look EXACTLY like that, if you searched their name. Don't take my word for it. Here's the form for Chief Justice of the 7th Circuit, Richard Posner. What does it look like? Well lookie there, it looks EXACTLY like the "disciplinary" record for Michelle Obama.
If there were any disciplinary proceedings against Obama, even if they were dismissed, they would STILL show on that form. If they were alternatively discharged without a formal hearing, like a surrender in lieu of hearing, it would show "DISCHARGED". It would look like this, which is for an IL who was suspended to do disciplinary proceedings.
As for you blather about "someone changing the rules when Obama became Senator", is so stupid, it AGAIN makes my head hurt. No one changed the rules for Obama. EVERY YEAR, virtually every state in the Union makes amendments to their bar rules. EVERY YEAR.
There are PLENTY of things to criticize both Barack and Michelle Obama over, but intellectually vacant babbling like this isn't one of those reasons.
Hey, again don't take my word for it. The well-studied and reliably CONSERVATIVE attorneys over at Volokh Conspiracy put this to bed more than a year ago.
It is amazing that Beck has such a crack research staff and O’Blowme has two monkeys playing with them selves.
I suspect that zero and his crew enjoy sowing this kind of confusion. It can keep us from doing anything effective.
(Not that they created this one - we seem to be doing it ourselves).
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