Orly Taitz: Lawyer, Dentist, Birther

Washington Post: Despite a Full Workload, Taitz Will Not Be Deterred from Hobby of Challenging Obama's Presidency

(Washingtonpost.com)  This story was written by Liza Mundy.

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The dental office of Orly Taitz, DDS, Esq., is in a low-slung complex in a quiet planned community in Orange County, alongside an assortment of small businesses and solo practitioners. The practice, Appealing Dentistry, is busy this morning. In the waiting room are a woman with no dental insurance and a boy with three cavities, and the phone is ringing off the hook with dentists eager to fill a job opening.

"Crowns, bridges, veneers, root canals -- you need to be able to do root canals and molars," the receptionist is telling one caller. And now here is Taitz herself, a bit late, entering in a flurry of energy and apologies to consult with a colleague, then suggesting to a reporter that they go somewhere to chat. Despite many pressing concerns on the dentistry front, Taitz is eager to talk about her crusade to prove that the president of the United States is an impostor.

Emerging into the dry Southern California sunshine, Taitz -- dentist, lawyer, wife of a software executive, mother of three and a leading proponent of the so-called birther campaign against President Obama -- walks briskly past her law office, which is conveniently beside the dental practice. Inside the law office is a modest conference room with a table, eight chairs, a couple of abstract paintings and a houseplant. It is here that Taitz dreams of deposing the U.S. president, proving that he is a citizen not of this country but of Kenya, maybe, or possibly Indonesia, perhaps even -- who knows? -- that he is secretly controlled by Saudi Arabia.

"My children are so excited . . . that the president of the United States will have to appear in Mom's office in Rancho Santa Margarita," says Taitz, whose English is richly Russian-accented; she grew up in the former Soviet republic of Moldova.

And if the conference room proves too small to accommodate the presidential entourage and she has to travel to Washington to question the man she refers to as a "usurper," that's okay. Taitz will fly pretty much anywhere to make her argument. The ends of the Earth, one senses, would not be too far away.

It's a lot to take on, but she has help; assisting with her legal filings is Charles E. Lincoln III, a disbarred lawyer and self-described "anarchist." Leaving the office, Lincoln gets in the back seat and Taitz maneuvers her Lexus through the tidy "Real Housewives"-type landscape to a bakery with outdoor seating. For five hours she will discuss her legal crusade, eventually moving to lunch at T.G.I. Friday's.

Problem is, dentists keep interrupting her narrative. They have found her cellphone number. And they are desperate. The economy is that bad. "Can you please call the office?" she begs one of them. To another: "Could you fax me?" And "I'm in the middle of something," she says, answering another call, not unkindly.

Surreal as her multi-tasking effort may seem, Taitz is a serious player in the apparently unsinkable birther movement, or, as its proponents prefer to call it, the movement to question Obama's "eligibility" to hold office. She herself objects to the term "birther," arguing in a court document that it is "pejorative."

Taitz has drafted voluminous court pleadings, filing at least five Obama-related cases; a hearing on a California case took place yesterday. In addition to making appearances on radio and television, she blogs and travels the country speaking. She has drummed up supporters at a gun show; joined "tea party" demonstrations against taxation; shouted at, and been shouted at by, MSNBC hosts.

All of which is not to say that her effort is going well. In September, U.S. District Judge Clay D. Land dismissed a Georgia case that Taitz brought on behalf of a military doctor, Connie Rhodes, which held that Rhodes should be spared deployment to Iraq because Obama is not constitutionally qualified to be commander in chief. More than just rejecting it, he excoriated it.

"Unlike in Alice in Wonderland, simply saying something is so does not make it so," Land wrote scathingly in his order dismissing the action. Singling out Taitz for criticism, he accused her of using the legal system to further a political agenda.

Taitz, breathtakingly, reacted by accusing the judge of treason and comparing herself to Nelson Mandela. She fired off a response that suggested the judge was bowing to "political pressure" and "external control." Land promptly issued another order requiring Taitz to tell him why he should not fine her $10,000 as a sanction for her misconduct. Today, a copy of that order lies on the floor of her car.

Ultimately, she would withdraw as Rhodes's counsel but continue to seethe.

"That's the most ridiculous argument that I've ever heard," she says of Land's comment that Obama's political opponents had ample opportunity to challenge his birth record. "Nobody has seen proper documents. Period."

Another breathtaking statement, or rather misstatement. After initially trying to ignore the controversy, Obama's staff has indeed provided an official record showing that the president was born in Hawaii. The document is a computer-generated official certification of live birth attesting to the fact that Barack Hussein Obama II was born on Aug. 4, 1961, in Honolulu. The director of Hawaii's Department of Health also has stated, rather wearily, that she has viewed the underlying vital records and that they are valid.

But never mind! The myth of ineligibility has embedded itself in the consciousness of determined adversaries, chief among them Taitz, who in her allegation-filled but congenial interview explains why she wants Obama to surrender the vital records that underlie the computer-generated document. She has developed a scenario whereby Obama's American mother gave birth in Kenya, his father's native country, then persuaded bureaucrats to falsify his records and ease him back into this country. She also conjectures that he may be a citizen of Indonesia, where Obama lived for a time after his mother remarried.

Taitz is pinning her hopes on the California case, this one on behalf of a slew of plaintiffs, some of them former members of the military -- a central thread running through her filings is the idea that soldiers owe no allegiance to an illegitimate commander -- and assorted fulminators and fringe players, including Wiley Drake, a pastor who has said that he prays for Obama's death. Drake and another plaintiff have now hired a new lawyer, because alliances within the movement are a fractious thing. Taitz -- who says that it's "wrong" to pray for the president's death -- is also in a legal tussle with Philip Berg, a Pennsylvania lawyer whom, some observers say, she has edged aside to become the most visible face of the movement.

If that's true, it's easy to see how it might have happened. If you were the producer of an opinionated news show and wanted to book a birther, whom would you choose? A nondescript Pennsylvanian or an excitable Moldovan American lawyer-dentist described by Lincoln, her assistant, as a "fierce blonde" reminiscent of the warrior goddess Athena? Easy call! Today Taitz, 49, is wearing white high-heeled slingbacks; bare legs; a white skirt; black and white shirt; enormous eyelashes; and her characteristic air of charming but ferocious tenacity, part Meg Ryan, part Madame Defarge.

"He is lying about his identity, he is hiding his whole identity, this is dangerous!" says Taitz, looking eagerly toward a judicial ruling on the U.S. government's motion to dismiss the California case. She is hopeful that this judge will let her go ahead.

[liberty1225]

No one on this blog, or any other, seems to be able to provide rebuttal for the historical definition of "natural born citizen."

The major concern is whether Barack Obama is a "natural born" citizen, not just a US citizen. Natural born, as defined by our Founders in the Federalist Papers and Vattel's the Law of Nations (http://www.constitution.org/vattel/vattel.htm), is someone born of TWO United States Citizens:
"natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens" - Emerich de Vattel, 1758. Book I, chapter 19, § 212. Of the citizens and natives, the Law of Nations.

From factcheck.org: "In other words, at the time of his birth, Barack Obama Jr. was both a U.S. citizen (by virtue of being born in Hawaii) and a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies (or the UKC) by virtue of being born to a father who was a citizen of the UKC." [www.factcheck.org]

Factcheck.org itself, with historical ties to Obama through the Annenberg Foundation, thus admits that he is not a natural born citizen as defined by our Founders, and thus not eligible to be POTUS.

This issue is not about race or political party. It's about the Constitution and obeying the law of the Land. We DO have a Constitutional crisis on our hands, and I expect anyone concerned about our liberties to help lead the legal charge against the Usurper.

[HJBird]

Why would anyone be opposed to people wanting to see more information about who Barack Obama is? Is someone going to be hurt if we see his Certificate of Live Birth (the original one)? Is some great disaster going to happen if we see his Occidental College admission and financial aid records? Is someone's civil rights at risk if we see his Harvard College records?

I think that those who attack Orly and who use the term "birthers" to smear people with such interest are afraid of where this curiosity may lead. They don't seem to have a lot of confidence in Obama and worry about light being shed on his background.

[blackmonrikker]

No one is opposed to seeing information about Barack Obama, IF BARACK OBAMA AGREES TO IT. The privacy laws of this country are keeping Orly Taitz from seeing Barack Obama's records. In the broadest sense those privacy laws protect every citizen, including presidents, so if Barack Obama wants to keep his records private that is HIS PREROGATIVE.

And if the term "birther" is perjorative, it is due entirely to the history of ineptitude by the birther principles. The entire birther story was supposed to be a Republican October Surprise in 2008. Phil Berg filed his complaint too early. Berg also filed a Canadian birth certificate for Barack Obama signed by Dudley Doright. Orly Taitz has been repeatedly deceived by fake Kenyan birth certificates designed to make her look foolish. Both Berg and Taitz have a long history of court challenges in which the presiding judge describes their cases as "frivolous". In no instance has either lawyer come close to meeting standards of evidence in this country. Rather, both lawyers insist that innuendo, rumor, and insubstantial lies be accepted as evidence.

Why should any judge pay them the slightest moments attention?

[HJBird]

Liz Mundy writes - <i>"natural born citizen" -- the constitutional requirement for a U.S. president -- means, generally speaking, born on American soil</i>

Liz, please site the legal documents and rulings you have to back up this statement.

If you visit these websites you will find the correct legal definition of natural born citizen complete with links to legal references and Supreme Court cases.

Leo Donofrio (http://naturalborncitizen.wordpress.com/)

Mario Appuzo (http://puzo1.blogspot.com/)

Teo Bear (http://www.birthers.org/OPED/eds.html)

The Federalist Blog (http://federalistblog.us/2008/11/natural-born_citizen_defined.html)

[blackmonrikker]

WHY WONT THIS WOMAN GO AWAY!!!

http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/178/story/866356.html?storylink=omni_popular

"....This just keeps getting more bizarre, but it has stopped being funny. It?s time for judicial authorities ? the U.S. attorney with jurisdiction over this region, perhaps the State Bar of Georgia ? to look into Taitz?s waste of federal court time and taxpayer money in filings that have sunk to a level the term ?frivolous? unjustly dignifies. "

Actually, it HASN'T stopped being funny. Taitz is the biggest Obot out there, in that her ineptitude furthers the president's liberal agenda.

[sniffles19]

It is nice to see some coverage of the eligibility issue on CBS. Would like to see this story on the evening news. This should be taken seriously. It is a matter of upholding the law of the land, it is not a "hobby". Do I think the President is holding the office illegally? Don't know, probably not, but that is precisely the issue. We know very little about this man. The media has clearly fallen down on their responsibility of covering this and other stories that could reveal the questionable background of Mr. Obama.

[mtngoat61]

Regarding that computer generated printed out certification of live birth, I guess this article's writer has never heard of the term "garbage in - garbage out". If the information provided to the birth registration office via a mail-mail in form was bogus and false, the the computer generated print out will show false information. Garbage in - Garbage out! Not a single contemporaneous, independent witness to the birth or medical attendant type person has come forward to say they were there and can corroborate that Obama was born in Hawaii, because he was not. His birth was falsely registered as having occuring there but he physically was not born there. All people in the news media do is way a print out of a digital online image of a computer generated form and take it as the gospel truth. Where are the investigative journalist. Why are they not digging for the underlying contemporaneous evidence to support a birth in Hawaii. Why? Because they know there is none. They know in their hearts that Obama was not born in Hawaii and cannot prove with any contemporaneous evidence that he was. Garbage in- Garbage out! That digital image is worthless once this gets into a court of law on the merits of the charges against Obama. Obama's birth record in the database in Hawaii is a fraud perpetrated by Obama's maternal grandmother to fraudulently gain her grandson U.S. citizenship. Simple as that. Garbage in, garbage out!

M Publius Goat

[youcanbet]

NOT first black president. First 6% black president coupled with
50% white and 44% arab. Do a little research. Why do you think he bowed down to the Saudi king when they met? This racism thing is getting nowhere, although zerobama used it to usurp the presidency and continues to use it to try and save his butt.

[blackmonrikker]

Youcanbet,

It's comments like these that make birthers look like complete morons.

[Jane-101]

It's not Dr. Taitz who is asking but over 200 plaintiffs (most of them military, both active and retired). The military has to answer directly to the commander-in-chief. They put themselves in harms way at the swipe of a president's pen. If they have any doubt whatsoever whether a president is ineligible, they have a right to know. I just find it rather odd that our president signed an executive order the day after his inauguration to seal his archival records. He created a Catch-22 for those asking. No one can answer the questions because no one can open the records. As far as Dr. Taitz, she grew up in Communist Russia and knows full well what can become of America. Many young people don't remember the cold war. I'm only 40 but can remember people so oppressed in East Germany that they were shot to death attempting to cross barbed wire and the Berlin Wall. Freedom meant that much to them. Dr. Taitz remembers her family huddling around a radio trying to find radio stations that had not been scrambled by the Communist government; just trying to hear a bit of truth. I admire Orly Taitz' courage to represent Americans who simply want an answer. If the records prove there are no problems, then so be it.

[blackmonrikker]

Actually, it IS Dr. Taitz who is asking. Orly Taitz actively campaigns for clients interested in the eligibility issue. Her website is full of queries for people whose ideas about Barack Obama dovetail with her own or, more importantly, people who feel they have an axe to grind with the president.

Connie Rhodes is one such client. Rhodes earned her medical degree at the expense of the military, but when the time came to deploy to Iraq she wanted out. Taitz roped her in and filed yet another inane eligibility lawsuit. Judge Land, A REPUBLICAN Bush appointee, saw through Orly's game and rejected her premise as "Alice in Wonderland" fantasy. We Orly sought reconsideration (without Rhodes' consent), Land slapped that down too and demanded to know why he shouldn't sanction Taitz.

Rhodes subsequently renounced Taitz (under duress, according to Taitz). But Rhodes also threatened to file a bar complaint against Taitz for incompetence.

Was that under duress, too?

[MagnusXs]

This was a fairly good article until Obama's fake Certification of Live Birth was mentioned as proof of his US birth. From there it was an embarrassment for the author and CBS.

[blackmonrikker]

Orly's cowardly supporters leave it to a Russion to attempt to undermine the presumption of innocence in this country. Most of her supporters know her attempts are futile, but they cheer her on anyway. They know that her scattergun accusations have no chance of being supported by any competent U.S. judge. Indeed, she has been slapped down by every judge so far, at will continue to be.

I would expect such behavior from a Soviet citizen unfamiliar with American legal principles. I am disappointed in Americans who, through cowardice and impotence, use this woman to give voice to their own prejudices. When she loses they simply cry about judicial corruption for a few days, then get back to lying about Obama's citizenship. It's a thinly veiled attempt to point out "he's different than us."

Fortunately, he is.

[etraveler13]

What an idiotic statement. Orly Taitz is a nationalized US Citizen, a doctor and a lawyer, passing her bar in California, the toughest exam in the country. 10 years legal experience to boot. You sound like a racist, that is, against those of Russian decent? Amazing. The fact that she is relentless, is a trait to be admired, the fact that millions support her, seems lost to you, so we all know what side your on, that is one of keeping America in the dark. All anyone wants is for the President to Prove he is qualified to be president. One might reply, why is he not immediately forthcoming with that evidence...Perhaps he has something to hide.

[blackmonrikker]

Orly Taitz obtained her citizenship via MARRIAGE, not by any egalitarian concern for American principles. She has no clue about America, as every judge she argues in front of attests.

In America, citizens are PRESUMED INNOCENT. It is the ACCUSER (or prosecution) that must PROVE GUILT.

Orly proceeds from the assumption that Obama is guilty of some crime and then asks U.S. Courts to FORCE Obama to provide proof of his guilt.

This tactic is ENTIRELY Stalinesque.

American citizens who support Orly would open the gates to a bastardization of American law simply because they dislike a black president.

Fortunately, every judge has smirked at Orly to date. It's just disappointing that Orly's American supporters can't see the REAL issues at stake here...or choose not to.