Alan Keyes

Wiley Drake has played a central role in keeping the Birther conspiracy alive, as he and his running mate, Alan Keyes, are among the few members of the movement who can claim "standing" in the various lawsuits filed by Orly Taitz by alleging that they were directly harmed by the fact that Barack Obama is ineligible to be President of the United States.

So despite the fact that Hawaii's health director released a statement yesterday attesting that she has personally seen President Obama's birth certificate in the Health Department's archives, it comes as no surprise that Drake remains unmoved:

Hawaiian officials have again attested to the veracity of President Barack Obama's birth certificate, but Pastor Wiley Drake of the Buena Park Southern Baptist Church is not convinced.

Nor does he believe it will affect the lawsuit he is a party to in Orange County Superior Court, challenging Obama's eligibility to hold the nation's highest office.

"We've been there, done that before," Drake said of Hawaiian authorities. "They've sworn to the validity of it before, then they've backed off, so we don't know what they're doing."

You know else is unsurprising?  That fact that Drake insists that he is not, in fact, "a nut": 

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.

If praying to God to kill Barack Obama does not qualify someone as a "nut" then I don't know what does.

The emerging convention wisdom among the Religious Right and conservative commentators regarding Sarah Palin's abrupt decision to resign before the end of her sole term as Governor seems to be that she was hounded out of office by Democrats, bloggers, and mean people who criticized her.

Gary Bauer says "she was tired of being harassed" but that her decision is "a move that could end up serving her very well."

Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America decried the "dirty politics" that forced Palin out, saying no other politician in "public life has ever had her children and family so maligned and attacked so brutally, explicitly, and disrespectfully" but likewise believes that Palin will "find a way back into national politics, and she'll be a formidable force when she does."

Matthew Continetti of The Weekly Standard, who has a book called "The Persecution of Sarah Palin" coming out next year, just wrote an article for the next issue in which he explains that she has been "trapped" in the Governor's office and has now been set free. Continetti explains that, in her short time in office, Palin has been so successful that not only did not need to run again, but that she didn't even have to finish out her first term and that she had finally become fed-up with the incessant attacks:

As the months passed, Palin arrived at the conclusion that she didn't want a second term as Alaska's governor. She had achieved what she had set out to do, so why bother with one more lame-duck legislative session in 2010? "I know that we've accomplished more in our two years in office than most governors could hope to accomplish in two terms," Palin said. "And that's because I hired the right people." For Palin to remain shuttling between Juneau, Anchorage, and Wasilla would waste both her and her constituents' time. And "I cannot waste time," she said. "I cannot waste resources."

...

Why is Palin leaving? At this writing, there is no reason to doubt her stated position: Her enemies' concerted efforts to tear her down have caused her family financial stress and distracted her from her duties as governor. Since she returned to Alaska in November 2008, she has been hemmed in. Ethics complaints, insults, invective, undue attention, and legal bills have been all-consuming. "I can't fight for what's right when I'm shackled to the governor's seat," Palin said. For the last seven months the governor's office has been a ward. A trap. She is breaking free.

...

Unable or unwilling to grasp her true accomplishments and character, the media shoehorned Palin into a ready-made caricature of the know-nothing Christian PTA mom who enters politics because of "those damned lib'ruls." The reality is far different. Palin is a savvy and charismatic politician whose career has been filled with courageous stands against entrenched authority. Ideological or partisan attachments do not concern her. She has her flaws--who doesn't?--but they should be measured against her strengths. Instead the media ignored the positives and colluded with Palin's adversaries to reduce her to a cartoon.

Oddly, the only one who doesn't seem to be buying into the "Palin-as-vicitm" explanation is Alan Keyes, who accuses her of dereliction of duty and "bad statesmanship":

In her speech, Sarah Palin refers to a "recent trip to Kosovo and Landstuhl, to visit our wounded soldiers overseas" and "what we can all learn from our selfless troops ... they're bold, they don't give up and they take a stand …" Here words are an apt reminder of what the faithful performance of duty requires. Soldiers take a stand in the very teeth of enemy fire, even though it means certain death or grievous wounds. There is a word for soldiers who quit their posts because the enemy is shooting at them. It is not intended as a compliment, especially when it's their own bad judgment that has put them in the way of enemy fire in the first place.

Sarah Palin calls to mind our wounded soldiers in the very moment when she fails to follow their heroic example. In the process, she acknowledges that, thanks to the provision of Alaska's taxpayers, she has successfully evaded the cost-free political attacks allowed by "the ethics law I championed." She won! Had Custer won the battle at Little Big Horn, I doubt that anyone would have questioned the money expended for the guns and bullets required to do so. He had a duty to defend his command, especially after his own mistakes exposed it to danger.

Of course, resignation would have been in order once he acknowledged and took responsibility for those mistakes. But Sarah Palin has done no such thing. She claims Alaska is being damaged by the attacks against her, but that the fault lies entirely with the bad motives and actions of others. She says her tenure as governor has been successful; her judgments and actions sound; her record all for the good of the state and its people. But if this is true, it makes no sense to deprive the state of the governor duly elected by the people simply because bad folks attack her. In that case, resigning simply lets the (political) assassins finish their work. How can letting the duly elected governor be taken out in this way be consistent with her sworn duty to defend the state?

If she is without fault or blame, then Palin's explanation makes no sense except as a clear dereliction of duty. She swore faithfully to perform the duties of her office. She claims to have done so. Others have abused the law to attack her. She successfully defended against them. If, as she contends, she has simply been performing her duties, her defense of herself is in fact simply a defense of her office, in the literal sense. To preserve that office with integrity is one of her duties as governor. By resigning, she fails in the performance of that duty. She encourages the "politics of personal destruction" in much the same way that allowing terrorists to succeed encourages further acts of terrorism. This cannot be good for Alaska, and it does not keep faith with the people who elected her. They rightly expected her to defend the integrity of the office, which obviously means standing firm against those who attack its occupant without good reason.

If her stated explanation makes no sense, we are forced to look for an alternative that does. Absent that, we are forced to conclude that her decision to resign is, like championing the law used to harass her, just another example of her bad statesmanship.

You know something bizarre is underway when the only person on the Right who is making any sort of sense is Alan Keyes.

• Who would have ever guessed than an Answers in Genesis special “State of the Nation” program entitled "The Collapse of Christian America" would be so boring?  Not me, which is why I made the mistake of watching it.
• John Hagee says God will judge America for pressuring Israel.
• The Census Bureau tries to set Rep. Michelle Bachmann straight.
• Rob Schenck calls on Gov. Mark Sanford to resign.
• Alan Keyes blasts Republicans who are outraged by Sanford's actions, saying they are no better and "by their silence and inaction on Obama's eligibility for the presidency, have forsworn their oath to uphold and defend the Constitution."
• Gary Bauer on "when gays attack."
• Alveda King proves once again that any and every news story can serve as a hook for a press release decrying abortion.
• Rep. Randy Forbes has been awarded the Distinguished Christian Statesman Award.
• Basically, the Right's opposition to Sonia Sotomayor seems to stem primarily from bitterness over the defeat of Robert Bork.

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.”

The Randall Terry press conference we covered last week was actually the lead-in to an anti-abortion leadership training seminar that he conducted over the weekend featuring Alan Keyes and Norma McCorvey for some fifty people from around the country at which Terry announced the formation of a new organization to be known as Operation Rescue Insurrecta Nex, as the Washington Times reports:

Randall Terry, one of the best-known abortion opponents in the U.S., launched a new version of Operation Rescue this weekend, calling on activists from across the country to press on despite bad publicity over the May 31 slaying of abortion doctor George Tiller.

Forty-five people from 16 cities met at the Crystal City Doubletree hotel Saturday for a hastily arranged "emergency pro-life training conference" to recruit more foot soldiers in the battle against abortion.

"The freeing moment will come when you decide to take a bullet for this movement," Mr. Terry said in a small ballroom watched over by one security guard. "Then you can't be bullied and intimidated into silence anymore."

Mr. Terry has renamed his movement Operation Rescue Insurrecta Nex - the latter two words meaning 'insurrection against death' in Latin - and is trolling for new affiliates.

"My mission is to raise up a new generation," he said, "to recruit them, train them and unleash them."

He brushes off criticism that activists like him created a climate that goaded the suspect in Dr. Tiller's slaying into action.

"You can't work with me if you can't say abortion is murder and child-killers are murderers," he said. "You've got to be prepared to take the heat over those words. The true terrorists are those who reach into a woman's womb and kill her child."

His opponents "refuse to admit that abortion is the cauldron from which evil flows," he added. "George Tiller reaped what he sowed. He was a murderer."

...

"We're looking for heroes," he said. "Somebody who'll do the right thing in the face of hostility from enemies and misunderstanding by friends.

"Most pro-life people don't want to end abortion. They just want it to go away. They are being delusional. This battle will require enormous sacrifice, bad press and hostility.

"Do we really think we can waltz into hell and take away this crown jewel of Satan without the brawl to end all brawls?"

• Is it true that some Republicans are getting tired of the militants at the Club for Growth?
• Mike Huckabee: Poet.
• Governor Rick Perry finally declares "I'm not in favor of Texas seceding."
• Michael Steele seemingly doesn't know how to deal with efforts by some RNC members to label the Democrats as "socialists" ... and apparently has even less of an idea of how to sell opposition to marriage equality to the younger generation.
• Sean Hannity told Alan Keyes he would have gladly bailed him out of jail had Keyes needed to money.
• Seriously, what on earth is Rep. Michelle Bachmann doing on a Worldview Radio program, along with Gary Cass, no less?
• Tony Perkins, Richard Land, and Bishop Harry Jackson are unveiling something called The Call2Fall, which is "is a public commitment for Christians to set aside some time on July 5, 2009 to pray for the healing of our nation. The day after Americans celebrate their 'independence,' they will pray for 'dependence' upon God."
• Speaking of Perkins, for $2 the Family Research Council will mail you a copy of their document "Comparing the Lifestyles of Homosexual Couples to Married Couples":

The evidence is overwhelming that homosexual and lesbian "committed" relationships are not the equivalent of marriage. In addition, there is little evidence that homosexuals and lesbians truly desire to commit themselves to the kind of monogamous relationships as signified by marriage. What remains, then, is the disturbing possibility that behind the demands for "gay marriage" lurks an agenda of undermining the very nature of the institution of marriage.

• As predicted, Alan Keyes went ahead and got himself arrested at Notre Dame once again, while Rick Scarborough did not.  And for those with too much time on their hands, you can watch the whole thing live via webcast.
• Sen. John Cornyn says that Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison will probably resign her seat sometime this fall in order to focus on her gubernatorial campaign, allowing Gov. Rick Perry to name a Republican replacement.
• Robert Knight's latest column reads like a greatest hits of current right-wing obsessions: Carrie Prejean, hate crimes legislation, the DHS report, and the Fairness Doctrine are all mentioned.
• The Family Research Council "needs your help now to expose and defeat a deceptive new effort by the Left to impose the entire homosexual agenda on America in a single legislative stroke!"
• Finally, did you know that John Lennon sold his soul to the Devil?  It's true - WorldNetDaily says so!

Just when it seemed like the fringe right-wing protesting at Notre Dame couldn't get any more ridiculous, we come to find out that some anonymous donor has now handed Rick Scarborough a thousand dollars so that he could join the fray as well:

Today a gentleman entered my office and donated the $1,000 needed to pay for my trip to South Bend, IN to join Alan Keyes and Randall Terry in protest of Obama's commencement speech on Sunday at Notre Dame. This came after much prayer seeking God's direction and financial provision concerning whether or not I was to say yes to their request to join them and many others facing potential arrest tomorrow for standing for life on the Notre Dame campus.

...

I will be arriving in South Bend Thursday to join them. It is my privilege to stand for truth and with courageous men and women, going to jail if called upon, to bring awareness to our nation that this madness must stop. Please be in prayer as we choose to take our stand for the sanctity of life.

Now, it was at least understandable that Keyes and Terry would target Notre Dame with protests claiming that the Catholic University is violating Catholic teachings by inviting President Obama to speak, because both men are Catholic.

But Scarborough is a Baptist, so what exactly warrants his participation in these protests? 

The whole "controversy" here is that a Catholic University had invited a pro-choice president to address its graduating class ... and it is predominantly right-wing Catholics who are upset about it (while most other Catholics hadn't even heard about it and those that had largely support it.)

Scarborough seems to be going to just protest Obama's pro-choice views ... but why he needed a $1000 to fly from Texas to Indiana to do that is beyond me because he probably could have saved himself considerable time and money if he had just gone and protested at Arizona State University where Obama spoke last night.

Last week Alan Keyes got himself arrested for trespassing at the University of Notre Dame during a protest regarding President Obama’s upcoming commencement speech. After he was released from jail, he vowed to return to the campus and reportedly plans to get himself arrested once again.

Why all the grandstanding and hullabaloo, you ask?  Because, says Keyes, this planned speech by Obama is as grave a threat to the Catholic Church as any it has ever faced, including the sexual abuse scandals that rocked it a few years back:

Former Republican presidential candidate Alan Keyes, who ran against Obama for the U.S. Senate seat in Illinois in 2004, also criticized the university's decision to honor Obama.

"The invitation was in and of itself a scandalous action," Keyes told FOXNews.com. Keyes announced that he is planning to go to Notre Dame this weekend and be arrested if necessary for protesting Obama's appearance.

"Scandal, as you know, induces others to sin," he said. "This is as great a crisis for the Catholic church as the crisis that occurred some years back with the abuse."

On a related note, now all of those Notre Dame students who don't want to be in the audience when Obama speaks will have an alternative event to attend - a prayer rally with militant anti-choice activist Frank Pavone:

Notre Dame students who don't want to attend a graduation ceremony involving pro-abortion President Barack Obama put together alternate plans. Today, they announced that Father Frank Pavone, the director of Priests for Life, will lead prayer at a pro-life prayer vigil.

The Class of 2009 Vigil for Life will be celebrated at Sunday's commencement ceremony at the same time as the graduation event.

“In standing with these students, I am standing with the true spirit of Notre Dame: a pro-life spirit, in harmony with human reason and Catholic Faith," Father Pavone told LifeNews.com on Monday.

"The scandal that has been generated does not represent what Notre Dame is all about," Pavone added. "It represents a radical betrayal of what Notre Dame is all about."

...

Pavone told LifeNews.com he thinks pro-life students should exercise their right not to attend the graduation ceremony, where President Obama will give the commencement address and receive an honorary degree.

"One final response to this scandal is fully in the control of each graduating senior: don't show up. Don't participate in an event which will only serve to obscure rather than highlight the Church’s pro-life teaching and the true spirit of Notre Dame," Pavone continued.

"The seniors who do this are manifesting the real meaning of commencement: they are carrying out the witness to truth and service that their hard-earned degrees have prepared them to give in the world," he added.