In a decision that broke with every other judge to consider the issue, including at least one judge who effectively fined birther queen Orly Taiz $20,000 for pressing the absurd claim that President Obama is not a citizen eligible to serve as president, a Georgia administrative law judge sided Taitz and several of her clients’ in an effort to force President Obama to testify in a birther case:In a surprising ruling Friday, a Georgia state administrative judge declined to quash a subpoena directing Obama to attend a hearing Thursday at the Fulton County courthouse on a challenge to strike him from the Georgia ballot this fall on claims he is not a U.S. citizen. [...]
Lawyers for those pursuing the challenges recently issued a subpoena for Obama to attend the upcoming hearing. Obama’s legal team filed a motion to quash the subpoena, but [Deputy Chief Judge Michael] Malihi declined. In his order, Malihi noted that Obama’s legal team had argued that no president should be compelled to attend a court hearing.
“This may be correct,” Malihi wrote. “But [Obama] has failed to enlighten the court with any legal authority.”
Obama’s court filings fail to show why his attendance would be “unreasonable or oppressive” or why his testimony would be “irrelevant, immaterial or cumulative,” the judge wrote.
The arrogance of Malihi’s decision is astounding. If he needs legal authority showing that the president cannot be simply commanded to present himself in court on a very specific date, he might start with the Supreme Court of the United States, which strongly implied in Clinton v. Jones that a court cannot “compel the attendance of the President at any specific time or place.” Likewise, if he needs proof that summoning the president of the United States to testify on a frivolous issue would be “cumulative” of existing evidence, he might consider discovering something called “Google.”
It doesn't matter if this particular case won't amount to anything. What it DOES do is put a judge on record of going along with this.
We learned in 2000 and 2004 the lengths to which the Republicans will go to "win" an election -- from mass disenfranchisement via ID laws and stiffing poor neighborhoods on voting machines, to inventing imaginary terrorist threats to justify "counting" votes in secret. Right now there are two likely Republican nominees -- a guy born on third base and thinks he hit a triple and one of the most corrupt Washington insiders of our time. And today we find out that confidence in the economy is at its highest level in nearly four years...which means that as hamstrung as the President has been by Congressions Republicans, what he HAS been able to get through has had an effect.
All this is a potential Republican nightmare, all while Callista is no doubt already formulating her plans to replace the bedding in the family quarters of the White House, lest she have to put her magic yellow helmet head on pillows that a black family used. For if economic conditions continue to improve, however slowly, Republicans may have no choice but to resort again to voter suppression, and more ominously, to "birther" lawsuits designed to keep the President off the ballot in important states, if they want to "win" in 2012. So keep your eyes open for hedging on the birther issue from both Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney -- or their surrogates. Because it may end up being all they have in their arsenal.
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