Home ›

Orly Taitz

Printer-friendly version Send to friend

Birther State Reps and Orly Taitz Throw Tantrum at NH Ballot Law Commission Hearing (VIDEO)

Submitted by Josh Glasstetter on November 28, 2011 - 6:29pm
In a mostly overlooked episode earlier this month, the so-called “Birther Queen” Orly Taitz appeared before the New Hampshire Ballot Law Commission to call for the removal of President Obama from the state’s presidential ballot. Taitz, the Soviet-born lawyer-dentist-real estate agent, has been on a multi-year mission to prove Obama is secretly Kenyan, and no amount of evidence will dissuade her. But she’s not alone – nine members of the NH state house signed on to her complaint.
 
It came as no surprise to see Taitz embarrassing herself in yet another venue, but I found it remarkable that there are still elected officials willing to lend their names to her effort. Then I watched the video of Taitz’s presentation and the angry antics of the state representatives supporting her, and it made more sense – they’re no better than Taitz.
 
Here’s Taitz talking about Obama’s real Hawaiian birth certificate: “This is not even a good forgery… I have three kids. They could’ve done a better job.”

 

After berating the commission and telling them how to do their jobs, Taitz announced, “I have here a number of state representatives who support me.” Indeed she does, including Rep. Harry Accornero (R-Laconia), who references the “overwhelming” evidence against Obama being a natural born citizen: 

 

When the complaint was unanimously dismissed, audience members shouted “traitors” and Rep. Accornero went ballistic and stormed out while calling out to the commission: “Why don’t you rip up the Constitution and throw it out?” “You all should be accused of treason, and we’ll get people to do that,” he jeered. Shortly after, Rep. Susan DeLemus (R-Strafford) repeatedly berated Assistant Attorney General Matt Mavrogeorge: 

Afterwards, Mavrogeorge and Assistant Secretary of State Karen Ladd locked themselves in an office “out of fear for their safety due to the aggressive behavior of the crowd that included several legislators.” Later, Attorney General Michael Delaney said, “No state employee should find himself in this situation, and I am asking the General Court to take whatever steps it deems appropriate concerning the standards of conduct exhibited by these elected officials.”

Stay tuned for updates on the legislators. Thanks go to Granite State Progress for releasing this incredibly revealing footage of NH state representatives behaving badly.
PFAW
Filed under:

Tea Party Nation Goes Birther

Submitted by Brian Tashman on July 8, 2011 - 8:50am

Judson Phillips of Tea Party Nation is taking a stand for the Birther movement, months after President Barack Obama released his long-form birth certificate to quash discredited claims that he was born outside of the U.S. Naturally, conspiracy theorists were not satisfied by evidence, and the president of one of the country’s leading tea party groups still doubts the President Obama’s citizenship. In a column sent to Tea Party Nation members praising Orly Taitz, the fanatical birther activist who has floated armed rebellion against Obama is now embarking on yet another lawsuit based on research from the birther website World Net Daily. Phillips writes that Taitz should receive an award from the American Bar Association for her campaign to prove that Obama isn’t eligible to serve as president, suggesting she may “deserve a place among the great lawyers of this country”:

Orly Taitz has waged an almost one-woman war on the eligibility issue. She is absolutely convinced that Barack Obama is not legally qualified to be President. She had endured insults, threats, some from Judges, fines and every roadblock the Obama regime could throw her way. Had she been as tenacious on a similar issue with George W. Bush, she would be the toast of the legal community.

Orly probably does not want an ABA award, but she may be getting closer to something of great importance to her. It is the “holy grail” of the eligibility movement.

Orly Taitz may be about to get the original, type written birth certificate of Barack Obama.

…

If Obama was really born in Hawaii and everything is as advertised, his lawyers can simply let the birth certificate be provided to Orly Taitz and that will end the matter. Given the history of the Obama regime and his defense of his birth certificate, even though he has released a forged birth certificate, that is unlikely.

…

Some conservatives derisively dismiss anyone who supports the eligibility issue as a “birther.” There certainly is enough evidence out there to raise questions. The significance of the eligibility issue is what happens if we are right. If Obama was never eligible to serve as President, everything he did is void. Two Supreme Court Justices, gone. A host of Federal Judges, gone. Every bill he signed, gone. Obamacare, gone.

What are the chances of this happening? Who knows? The bigger question is, given the potential reward of undoing everything Obama has done, why any conservative dismisses the eligibility issues, as “birtherism” is simply beyond belief.

If Orly Taitz wins, she will deserve a place among the great lawyers of this country, who fought incredible odds to win justice. The left wing American Bar Association will never give her an award for this. But I’m willing to bet she’s not saving any space on her wall for an ABA award either.

PFAW
Filed under:

Tea Party Tries to Clean Up Its Act, Orly Tatiz Dropped From CA Event

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on April 14, 2010 - 9:30am

It looks like Tea Party activists are starting to get a little more savvy about the image they portray and trying to counter the movement's growing reputation as the natural home for cranks, as Orly Taitz has been dropped from a Tax Day Tea Party in California at which several GOP candidates are scheduled to speak: 

Several California Republican political candidates, including Senate hopeful Carly Fiorina, were scheduled to share the stage this week with one of the leaders of the "birther" movement that claims President Obama was not born in this country and is thus ineligible for his elected office.

Orly Taitz, an Orange County attorney who has gone to court many times to try to disqualify Obama, was invited to speak Thursday at a Tax Day Tea Party rally in Pleasanton, Calif., that is expected to draw thousands of people. Late Tuesday, organizers said that they had rescinded Taitz's invitation after questions were raised about her presence by candidates who had been contacted by The Times.

Bridget Melson, founder and president of the Pleasanton Tea Party, said the organization had been "getting calls from candidates like crazy."

"It's not worth it," she said. "She's too controversial. This is not what the tea party is about at this point."

While spokespersons for Carly Fiorina, Chuck DeVore, and John Dennis all strongly blasted Tatiz and her Birtherism, not everyone speaking at the event shared such views: 

"I certainly don't have enough information to decide that," said Tom Del Beccaro, vice chair of the California Republican Party. "I've never seen yay or nay either way, so how could I know?"

And a consultant to San Ramon Mayor Abram Wilson, a candidate for state Assembly who is speaking Thursday, declined to say where Wilson believed Obama was born.

"Given the things going on in our state right now, the last thing I am thinking about is where Barack Obama was born," consultant Jason Roe quoted Wilson as saying.

PFAW
Filed under:

Taitz Tries to Toss Drake From Birther Lawsuit

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on September 9, 2009 - 12:49pm

Josh Gerstein reports on yesterday's federal court hearing on Orly Taitz's Birther lawsuit challenging President Barack Obama's eligibility to be president, noting that "the ball didn't move much."

But he does point to an interesting development between Taitz and two of the plaintiffs she was representing, Markham Robinson and Wiley Drake.

It seems that Robinson and Drake decided that they would rather be represented by Gary Kreep, of "Defend Glenn Beck" fame, and mailed documents to Tatiz informing her of their decision.  But Taitz refused to sign the documents and instead tried to get them dismissed from the case [PDF]:

In July 2009, Plaintiffs Robinson and Drake decided that they would prefer to be represented by Gary G. Kreep in this matter instead of their counsel at the time, Dr. Orly Taitz (“Taitz” or “Counsel”). Robinson and Drake had Kreep prepare a Request for Approval of Substitution of Attorney and an Order on Request for Approval of Substitution of Attorney. On July 24, 2009, these documents were mailed to Taitz for her signature. Upon receipt of these documents, on July 30, 2009, Taitz sent an email to Kreep, Robinson, and Drake indicating that she had learned from prior experience that she did not work well with Kreep and suggesting that, instead of Plaintiffs remaining in the case with Kreep as their new counsel, Plaintiffs should voluntarily dismiss themselves from the case and refile separately should they so wish. Taitz refused to sign the Substitution of Attorney documents.

On August 1, 2009, Taitz filed a Notice of Voluntary Dismissal of Plaintiffs Robinson and Drake pursuant to FED. R. CIV. P. 41(a). The Notice stated that Plaintiffs Robinson and Drake “ask this Court to take Notice of and Approve their withdrawal from this action and voluntary dismissal of their names from the list of Plaintiffs, without prejudice to their refiling their claims at some future date in any court of competent jurisdiction, state or federal.” Notice at 3.

Plaintiffs Robinson and Drake have both submitted declarations that they did not consent to being voluntarily dismissed from the case and that Taitz filed the Notice of Voluntary Dismissal against their wishes.

Judge David Carter vacated Taitz's attempt to toss Robinson and Drake from the case and allowed them to switch their representation over to Kreep.

PFAW
Filed under:

Birthers Gone Wild

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on August 4, 2009 - 10:59am

I suppose I am obligated to post the video of Orly Taitz's appearance on MSNBC yesterday, so here it is:

I don't feel this clip provided any new information to the issue - other than providing further evidence that Taitz is insane despite her insistence that she is not, in fact, crazy. 

In fact, the insistence by the Birthers that they are not crazy seems to be a their new defense, as that was exactly the point that Wiley Drake made last week:

Obama's supporters "want to brand anyone who questions him as a nut, and they're not. Alan Keyes is not a nut. I'm not," Drake said.

Which brings me to this good piece by David Weigel reporting that Taitz's antics and recklessness is causing a rift in the Birther movement among those who see her as undermining their efforts and which contains this interesting nugget: 

The “Kenyan birth certificate” has made skeptics out of people like Leahy and Kreep. Two of Taitz’s original plaintiffs, Wiley Drake and Markham Robinson, both associates of Alan Keyes during his presidential campaign, were removed from her latest filing after seeking new representation.

Has Taitz really become too crazy for the likes of Wiley Drake, a man who admits to praying to God to kill President Obama? That is quite an accomplishment.

On a semi-related note, I think it is also worth pointing out that Chuck Norris now seems to be throwing in with the Birthers as well, doing so by claiming that while he doesn't have any reason to doubt Obama's claims to citizenship, his refusal to release the document the Birthers are demanding is raising questions:

Isn't categorically satisfying constitutional requirements for a president, or answering the First Amendment grievances of hundreds of thousands of Americans, or ending a national debate or healing a country's divisions enough "direct and tangible interest"?

Mr. President, as more and more people realize that you are refusing to release your original birth certificate, further questions will fuel the fires of debate or at least hinder the embers from ever being snuffed out. Questions like, "Does it really contain the Hawaiian physician's name?" Or "Does it disclose something other than his birth place that he wishes others not to see?"

...

So again I ask, why don't you simply request, release and give permission to make public your original birth certificate?

Let's not forget that Norris was among Mike Huckabee's biggest and most visible supporters. That, coupled with the fact that Huckabee is scheduled to headline a right-wing conference next month being hosted by three bona fide Birthers leads me to wonder just what Huckabee's views are on this issue, considering that several of the people he has chosen to associate and surround himself with are deeply enmeshed in the Birther conspiracy movement.

PFAW
Filed under:

Obama's America: "A Cross Between Stalinist USSR and Nazi Germany"

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on July 31, 2009 - 2:59pm

By now, everyone realizes that Orly Taitz is the "Queen of the Birthers" and, more importantly, a verifiable nutcase.  Everyone that is except for people like Lou Dobbs, Janet Porter, and all of the others who have latched onto her conspiracy theories.

And while Taitz has been saying crazy things since she launched this crusade, the recent attention she has been receiving seems to have emboldened her to really let loose, leading to profiles like this one by Max Blumenthal in which she proclaims that President Obama is worse than Stalin, ought to be in prison, and rapidly turning America into Nazi Germany: 

Almost as soon as Orly Taitz answered her cellphone, before I could even ask a single question, the leader of the movement determined to disprove President Obama’s American citizenship breathlessly told me the president was “connected” to 39 bogus Social Security numbers, including one for a deceased person born in 1890. “If Obama is not stopped, we will be in Nazi Germany!” Taitz, who has a thick Russian accent, shrieked. “Forgery is a criminal matter and he committed it. Obama should be in the Big House, not the White House!”

Since Taitz’s “birther” campaign began, in the summer of 2008, during the late stages of the Democratic primaries, the dentist, lawyer, and mother of three has begun winning friends in high places. Taitz told me excitedly that since she opened her Facebook account, she has had to hire a staff of five to process the thousands of friend requests she receives each week.

Among those requesting her online friendship, Taitz said, are House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA), Rep. Mary Bono (R-CA), and Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele. She has even received a request, she said, from someone saying they are Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “I personally checked [the request] and determined that it came from his office,” Taitz said.

Among Taitz’s “biggest supporters,” she said, is CNN anchor Lou Dobbs. “I did Lou’s radio show for half an hour and he was very understanding,” she told me. “He became a supporter and since then he became a supporter of the whole [Obama eligibility] issue.” Indeed, during the July 15 broadcast of Dobbs’ radio show, he praised Taitz’s work, suggested Obama might be “undocumented,” and demanded the president “show the documents” to prove he was born in the United States.

When I spoke to Taitz, she had just finished taping an interview with The Colbert Report. By her own count, she has been interviewed by no fewer than 170 news outlets around the world. While she’s grateful for the exposure, the scrutiny of the media seems to have her in a persistent state of heightened exasperation.

“This is Nazi Germany! These are brownshirts in action!” Taitz exclaimed when asked about recent segments by Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann, and Jon Stewart mocking her campaign and questioning her credibility. “Anybody who does not take Obama’s word at face value will be harassed by brownshirts like Rachel Maddow.”

Taitz’s apparent view of present-day American life through the lens of World War II Europe may be due in part to her upbringing in the Soviet republic of Moldova and then in Israel, where she lived until she immigrated to the U.S. in 1987. Now a resident of Buena Park, California, Taitz said she feared Obama would transform her adopted country into a totalitarian state as soon as he stepped onto the national stage. Reading online discussions about Obama’s supposed plan to create a “civilian national security force” aroused Taitz’s early alarm.

“I realized that Obama was another Stalin—it’s a cross between Stalinist USSR and Nazi Germany,” she said.

Interestingly, while Tatiz is reportedly hiring staff, other Birthers are closing up shop because they can't get any financial support, as Alan Keyes, himself a Birther, laments today in WorldNetDaily:

I read with sadness but no surprise WND's article about the demise of The Obama File [run by Parker Shannon], "an extensive depot of information questioning Barack Obama's eligibility to hold the office of president."

...

The juxtaposition of prayerful good wishes and indolent support highlights one of the saddest realities of our time ... many of those who work today to defeat the overthrow of our God-given liberty are perishing from the material indifference of those who benefit from and approve of their work.

This partly reflects a successful strategy being implemented by the forces working to achieve the overthrow of liberty. Faced with facts and reasoning they cannot refute, they resort to ad hominem attacks. Chief among these is the accusation that greed motivates the people who try to share facts and arguments the manipulative media systematically ignore. (Ironically greed is, of course, among the chief motives of those who staff the corporate media outlets.) Meanwhile, the people being accused, people like Parker Shannon, me and others I hear from practically every day, inexorably slide toward bankruptcy.

Did you notice how Keyes managed to include himself among those defenders of liberty who find themselves sliding toward bankruptcy?

Hmmm, it looks like all the money he was bringing in through his complicated ties to the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps must have dried up.

PFAW
Filed under:

Alan Colmes Talks To Wingers So You Don't Have To

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on July 15, 2009 - 9:52am

I have to say that Alan Colmes’ decision to leave his position on “Hannity and Colmes” is just about the best thing to ever happen … at least for me personally. And the reason is because he now has time to dedicate to interviewing fringe right wing figures on his radio program, much to my delight.

Take, for instance, this two-fer he pulled off yesterday where he interviewed Norma McCorvey (AKA, Jane Roe) to discuss her arrest during Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearing and Orly Taitz to discuss her representation of U.S. Army Maj. Stefan Frederick Cook, who is contesting his deployment to Afghanistan on the grounds that Barack Obama is ineligible to hold the office of President.

The Taitz interview is pretty much what you would expect: an exercise in insanity. Taitz flat-out dismissed Colmes' attempts to explain that Obama’s birth certificate has been made public and calls the people at Factcheck.org a “bunch of yahoos” for trying to explain as much.  Then, when Colmes asked her why she disliked the term “birther,” she replied by asking him if he likes the term “moron” because that is what she calls those who buy into Obama’s lies about his eligibility. She then said that all the name-calling is “retarded” … and that the judges who have thrown out her cases are “idiots" before alleging that there has been “one hundred times more fraud committed by Obama than [Richard] Nixon”:

That was crazy enough, but Colmes’ interview with McCorvey is unlike anything I have ever heard.

In it, she explained that she fell asleep during Sen. Al Franken’s remarks (because he was soooooo boooooring) during the opening of Sotomayor’s hearings and then work up and decided to just disrupt the proceedings so she could get her point across. Amazingly, McCorvey doesn’t even seem to know what state Franken represents (she says he’s from Michigan and calls him a “pirate” for stealing all those votes from poor Norm Coleman) and, more amazingly, doesn’t even seem to know Sotomayor’s name, calling her “Sotomotor” even after Colmes’ properly pronounced her name.

She then went on to assert that she had to protest because Sotomayor supports reproductive choice and when Colmes pointed out that very little is actually known about Sotomayor’s views on the issue and cites a case in which she ruled on procedural grounds against a challenge to President Bush’s Mexico City Policy, McCorvey said that was several years ago and that “she’s changed” since then. When Colmes asked her what evidence she has that Sotomayor has “changed,” she asserted that it’s obvious that she has changed because “she’s lived in liberal New York for all these years.”

Eventually, she admitted that she would oppose anyone that Obama nominated and, as Colmes valiantly tried to get her to provide some evidence that Sotomayor had “changed,” McCorvey just continued to insist that she had … until she reached the point where she was proclaiming that she wouldn’t be surprised if Sotomayor had Obama’s blood running through her veins – literally.

You absolutely have to listen to this:

God bless you, Alan Colmes.

PFAW
Filed under:

The Birth of the Birthers

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on June 19, 2009 - 10:14am

Spencer Kornhaber of the OC Weekly has done us all a great service by taking on the unenviable task of trying to understand the motivations and history of the "Birther" movement by producing this lengthy and excellent profile of Orly Taitz, the dentist who has become one of the key figures in starting conspiracy theories about Barack Obama's eligibility to be President of the United States.

The piece is excellent as it covers her ties to people like Wiley Drake and Alan Keyes and explains how she ended up getting sued by others in the Birther movement who accuse her of being an Obama plant out to discredit their efforts.  The piece is rather long, so I'm just going to excerpt a few sections and urge you to read the whole thing:

There’s a term some use for people like Taitz, and she doesn’t like it. It’s “birther”—or, if you want to be really mean, “birfer.” (The controversy was born on the Internet, so naturally the Internet gave it a goofy name.) While rumors about Obama’s background and citizenship simmered throughout the 2008 presidential campaign, after Election Day, those rumors coalesced into a near-religion for a group of true believers. To Taitz and the unknown number of people who agree with her, Barack Obama isn’t president and probably wasn’t even born in the U.S. Taitz, a Laguna Niguel dentist with a law degree from an online academy, has been awarded a few creative variations on the birther term: “The Queen Bee of Birferstan” is probably the best.

“That’s demeaning,” Taitz says. “I don’t call anybody names.”

This isn’t quite true. She calls Obama a “usurper” and an “arrogant jerk from Africa and Indonesia.” She called a judge an “idiot.” And she calls anyone who stands in her way an “Obama thug.” Taitz has built a sizable following on her blog; in the comments for each post at orlytaitzesq.com, you can read a few more names for people whom Taitz doesn’t like: “traitors,” “Muslims,” “terrorists.”

In the past eight months, Taitz’s face has become one of the most recognizable of what its adherents prefer to call the “eligibility” movement, and her actions have been some of the most controversial. Her end goal is simple—to remove Obama from office—but her methods have sometimes put her at odds with other anti-Obama activists. And that’s not to mention the legion of Obama supporters who have assembled evidence claiming that Taitz is, at best, a liar and, at worst, treasonous.

Ask about Taitz’s motivations, and she’ll tell you about her background. She immigrated to the United States from Israel in 1987; before Israel, she lived in what was then the Soviet Socialist Republic of Moldavia. She says it’s her upbringing that initially caused her to be suspicious of Obama. “I was just like any other mom; I didn’t do anything different from any other mother,” she says, her accent turning mother into muddah. “And it’s just during this last election, I became really concerned because I came from a communist country. I saw the things that Obama is saying that really did not make sense and that concerned me. One, of course, that had to do with the all-civilian army. And I saw footage of children dressed in uniforms, saluting Obama and doing drills. That reminded me of young communists.”

(Unsure what she’s referring to? Google “Obama civilian army” and “Obama children drills.” That’ll bring up the appropriate World Net Daily articles and FOX News clips.)

The mistrust turned into something stronger when Taitz received an e-mail claiming there was evidence that Obama wasn’t born in America. “At first, I thought it was a hoax,” she says. “I didn’t believe it.” But then, in October, she filled out the “contact” form on the California Secretary of State website, asking if the secretary verifies the eligibility of presidential candidates. The response was no. “I was shocked,” Taitz says.

She fired off a round of letters to the editors of local newspapers, arguing that Obama didn’t meet the constitutional requirements to be president. The only one to publish her words was the Westminster Herald. But that was enough. Someone read the letter in the newspaper and called Taitz at her dental office to invite her to speak at an upcoming meeting of the California Coalition for Immigration Reform in Garden Grove, the far-right anti-immigrant group whose projects include a boycott of Mexico. There, she told the story of her own legal immigration to the United States, and afterward, she was approached by Buena Park radio pastor Wiley Drake (recently in the news because he publicly admitted to praying for Obama’s death). After chatting a little about immigration, the conversation turned to Obama’s birth certificate. Drake invited Taitz onto his radio show. On the air, the two discussed what they thought of the Usurper, and then Drake asked, “Well, what can we do?”

Taitz’s answer: “We can sue.”

 

PFAW
Filed under:
Syndicate content