Free Republic

Of course this kind of stuff happens. Speaking from experience, war is an intrinsically dehumanizing thing. That is a significant aspect of its nature. What’s different now, as with all of our quasi-imperial entanglements, is that the public has no significant investment in the cause.

In WWII, body part trophies and desecration were common knowledge; there are plenty of photographs and records of it. It’s just that the public was totally mobilized and had a whole-hearted embrace of the cause. Our wars now are sideshows in which the majority of the public has no investment. It’s not that things like this are surprising; they just remind people without an investment in it that war is icky (not an infantryman’s description, to be sure).

But there’s also no way to stop that type of reaction, no matter how much we may want to complain about it. It’s an inevitable consequence of engaging in faraway wars that degenerate into the equivalent of bloody police actions. The right answer for policymakers is to finally get it through their enormously thick skulls that public support for these types of wars always diminishes with time. The public will always turn on these types of wars as they linger on and on.

There’s only so much you can do with someone else’s country. Figure out what that is, be ruthlessly realistic to yourself about it, and figure out one or two very specific, achievable things you intend to accomplish. Do that and leave. And if you can’t think of one or two very specific, achievable things, that’s reality telling you to not get involved in the first place.

Plerase note that at no time have I suggested anyone regard LTC Lakin with contempt and rough him up.

In terms of military valor and service, Colonel Roberts is the better of either of us. Your belittling of him based on your own personal prejudices speaks very poorly of you.

You do realize that the commanding officer who brought Lakin up on charges was a Congressional Medal of Honor winner? Do you believe Colonel Roberts has no understanding of or appreciation for the Oath of a Military Officer?

I don't know if you were around when this was discussed as it happened. But current and ex-military took no pleasure in Lakin’s predicament. We generally felt sorry for his family. But to virtually a man it was understood that his oath doesn't allow him to do what you claim and that he must face the consequences accordingly. Said consequences were clear and accurately predicted by those with legal experience. Military officers adjudicated and applied them in accordance with proper statutory authority.

No chip on my shoulder at all. I served all my officers very honorably, even visited the widow of one who died in the aforementioned combat to pass on a final thought from her husband. As for current superiors, I haven't had one in quite some time as I run my own practice.

Your tone was clearly and deliberately patronizing to enlisted personnel, who are not only brave, selfless and dedicated, but who understand quite well the obligations incumbent upon all members of the armed forces. Officers worthy of their position understand that.

As for your statement about questioning those who have not proved themselves legally authorized to command, Lakin’s particular interpretation of that was judged by his fellow military officers. They found it wanting,

“You sound like you are enlisted, if you are serving your country at all.

Clearly you do not understand the Officer’s Oath, and you do not understand this case, nor have been following it enough to understand the details.”

Excuse me.

“You sound like you are enlisted...”

And how, pray tell, are we ignorant peasants who do the vast majority of the bleeding for our country supposed to sound? Do we use “ain't” and “aw, shucks” and scratch our privates as we chew on a blade of grass while pulling up our ill-fitting, unstylish trousers?

As an enlisted person in my youth, who fought for his country, has permanent injuries to show for it, and took over directing an action from dead officers, all I can say is cram it where the sun don't shine.

Why don't you tend to worshiping your little Vattel idol and drop any pretense that someone who would utter the ignorant sentence cited above has any insight into anything to do with either honor or the military?

“Let me guess: You're a lawyer?”

I told you that. No guesswork was required.

“I know it because you are full of sh*t.”

I attempted a civil explanation of a legal result that by your own admission you do not understand. You response clarifies that you have no actual desire to understand.

“Really? I don't know precisely what evidence she presented but any court that wouldn't accept someone like Mara Zebest as an expert on Adobe Software needs to be dissolved.

Some things are just obvious when presented too, whether they are presented by someone who has devoted his life to something, or by his secretary. So when the secretary shows enlargements of characters that were all supposed to have been produced by the same typewriter key that obviously were not, it seems absurd to me to reject out of hand what the secretary has shown.”

This is a common fallacy. Many people may have extensive experience in certain areas. That does not make them an expert for all questions. I've gotten much more “expertise” in this question myself late in my career as fate wound up steering me into certain aspects of safety and environmental law defending businesses.

Liberal environmental groups routinely do exactly what Orly is doing. It's a mistake that comes in either of two primary flavors: (1) representing run-of-the-mill people with axes to grind as “experts,” and (2) finding sympathetic people with meaningful backgrounds in one field who they lure over the line into another field. I have found they tend to do this for two reasons as well. First, not being versed in technical matters, they tend to be gullible. That is, it's not so much deliberate misrepresentation (although you occasionally get that)as that they honestly don't know the diffference. Second, they believe so wholeheartedly in their cause they can't objectively evaluate the case they are trying to make.

You would think they'd learn (and again, a few do), but when one believes so completely in a cause, I've observed it continues to cloud their augment. They respond exactly as Orly does. To them, it's not that they prepared a poor case and presented it poorly. It's that I and the uncaring businesses I represent are evil, corrupt Republican SOBs, the judges have all been bought off, etc.

Sound familiar? It's not that attorneys like me deliberately want to mock your beliefs. It's just that we've seen this pattern so many times, from both sides. I've been subjected to all the insults by the other side, and I've had to drop clients who have the same failing. They can't give up their belief about what the facts and the law ought to be instead of facing what they are. Thus, there's nothing I can do for them, and I'm not just going to take their money for nothing.

Given her poor skills, her constant lack of professionalism in court, and the hopeless nature of the briefs she writes, I find Orly unethical in the extreme, particularly in the way she solicits money from the gullible on a pipe dream. Far from being “Lady Liberty” she is the very worst type of lawyer—an incompetent ambulance chaser. And if that offends you, I'm sorry, but every ambulance chaser has a line of BS about how nobly they are serving some cause.

In this case, Mara Zebest is not a forensic digital image analyst. The act of scanning a document into a PDF introduces digital alterations into it, so she is certainly correct that the image has digital alterations. That's a point any novice computer user could verify. But those alterations don't mean either the image or the underlying document are forgeries. She does nothing to demonstrate that they are, because, not being a forensic digital image or document analysts, she presumably doesn't know how they go about doing that. Her experience with Adobe is irrelevant to the court. In particular, her conclusion that she believes the certificate image in question was created on Photoshop means nothing. Her “belief” is irrelevant given that the PDF data identifies the actual program used to create the PDF, and it ain't Adobe. And that Obama released a copy of the document that the state of Hawaii stands behind. The full faith and credit clause trumps the idle musings of an Adobe professional straying well outside her field of expertise.

“The entire legal community can’t be wrong while a few non-lawyers have it right. The answer is right in front of you. It’s the simple answer, not the complicated, contorted arguments of Taitz, Apuzzo and Donogrio. The Chief Justice would not have sworn in someone who is not eligible.

Wong Kim Ark, Ankeny and Malihi decisions are unbeatable. It’s time to accept the courts have decided based on the correct interpretation of the Constitution and the Law. The decision in Wong points to the 14th amendment: there are only two kinds of citizen in the US - natural-born and naturalized. A person who is born here is a natural-born citizen and eligible to be President. Simple. Straight-forward. Direct. No contorted explanations meant to exclude people who might not have been considered citizens before the 14th amendment. No analysis of pdf’s and halos or stamp, stamp, stamp. No cherry-picking of books, articles, or dissenting side of SC opinions.

Barack Obama is a natural born citizen because he was born in Honolulu on Aug 4, 1961. Stipulated to by the plaintiffs in Georgia. It’s time to accept he’s eligible to be the President, that he IS the President. He might even get re-elected. Instead of spending any more energy on incorrect legal interpretations that fail every time, it’s probably time to support Obama’s opponent in the election and get him out of the White House the old-fashioned way: beat him at the ballot box.”

Alas, to the conspiratorial mindset, any and all things are possible. It's fixation is not on objective assessment, but on what it psychologically needs to be true; any intrusion by reality is dismissed as biased, misinformed, sinister, etc. It's a very old pattern in human history. At least this one isn't actually spilling blood, even if it is doing some damage to the conservative cause.

But you're solution is dead on. If people want Obama out of the White House, they need to stop bedwetting and cringing from make believe monsters and volunteer to work their precinct to get the vote out for the Republican nominee in November. That's the actual Constitutional option.

“As I said above, “the law” is not what people on an internet forum say it is; the law is— by definition— what the courts say it is. No court will ever hold that someone born in the United States to parents lawfully here (whether as citizens or legal aliens) is not a natural born citizen unless their parents were foreign diplomats. You can take that to the bank.”

That is correct.

“And as for Orly's expert witnesses, I'm wondering who challenged their expertise.”

No one has to challenge their expertise. The burden to establish that they qualify as experts lies with the attorney calling them. The standards by which that burden is met are typically jurisdiction-specific. In this case, Orly made no attempt to establish that her witnesses were experts. Based on past performance, I would suspect that is because she doesn't understand that she has to. In any event, having dealt with this issue numerous times myself, I can say it is unlikely any court would accept the experience of the witnesses proffered as meeting an expert standard.

No one said anything about a living, breathing Constitution.

Imbibe: to receive into the mind and retain (imbibe moral principles)

If you did not imbibe a love for this country and its principles while growing up, I feel sorry for you. But it would explain some things on this thread.

Still hard to top someone begging us to be terrified of his daughter, though.

If you're surrounded by people who would vote for someone who promised to send half of America's assets to another country, I suppose that's your problem. But you should work on developing a wider range of associates.

And yeah, the Founding Father's weren't children. They knew all kinds of idiots would run for office. That's why they created contending centers of power within the government. But they also were well aware that if people lost all common sense, no set of rules would save them.

Well, I'm not retired yet, but I've been contemplating it more after a huge spate of work the last six months.

I respect your feelings on this matter, but the reason more lawyers don't take it up is because it doesn't really offer any opportunities for success. The issue of standing is all but insurmountable in most cases. As long as Hawaii says Obama was born there, the full faith and credit clause requires other states to accept that. And the interpretation of law as cribbed by the Georgia judge from Arkeny is accepted as a given in the profession. You simply aren't going to find many, if any, judges willing to entertain the two-citizen parent theory. And there's no way the Supreme Court will buy it.

Whatever one may personally believe, those are the cards dealt. Believe me, if this case was viable, there would be a number of high profile attorneys seeking fame from it. That there aren't says it all.

“This sucks, bigtime.

Now what happens to the petition that Orly Taitz was granted by Judge Malihi to supoena records from Hawaii?”

There is no such thing. It was a figment of Orly's imagination. She doesn't understand legal process.

It’s no enough to ask the lawyer if he/she thinks her witnesses are experts. There is a specific legal process for establishing expertise in each jurisdiction, generally strengthened in the last thirty years due to valid conservative concerns about “junk science.”

It’s obvious from their resumes the witnesses offered by Orly would not have met the required standard.

“Let me repeat.

My daughter has an American BC and has foreign citizenship at birth. She is legally entitled to have two passports, serve in a foreign military, and then run for president of the United States.

My daughter can stand in front of the American people and promise to send half of our assets to another country if elected while waving her foreign passport on election day, and be qualified as a natural born citizen in the USA.”

So what?

If your daughter grows up here and imbibes a love for this country, she will have the chance to communicate that to voters and act upon those beliefs, if elected. What's wrong with that?

If she chooses to promise to send half of America's assets to another country, she would be a nitwit and her chance of winning the election nil. So your point is moot.

Eligible and electable are two different things. The first is an artifact of birth. The second is a question of convictions that must be successfully demonstrated to at least half the people.

I'm not frightened of your daughter, and I wish her well.

“I’m embarrassed for them. Uphold the Constitution. Sure.”

They have. And comparing writings, it’s obvious they respect the Constitution far more than you.

Four words for you: Take a Deep Breath.

“Uh... you just made a significant point. See if you can figure out what point you just made in your post. CLUE: it’s not the point you were trying to make.”

It’s a in joke to one of the rational folks on this issue who is aware of Orly’s inability to actually frame or state a valid legal case for anything.

One can legitimately lose a case when the opposition fails to show up. You simply have to demonstrate breathtaking incompetence and foolishness in presenting your side.

Why are so many “so-called” conservatives so hostile to their own country? We do not have a dictator, and he will leave office in January of 2013 if enough malcontents get off their dead rears and actually work for a change.

No one’s happy that a candidate doesn't have to prove his eligibility. The sane world simply recognizes that he has proven it. You can either lapse into self-pitying delusion about that, or you can work to defeat him in an actual election.

It's not a test of his character. It's a test of ours.