As Jason Linkins at HuffPo points out, when it comes to covering the crazies in the "birther" movement, David Weigel of the Washington Independent "has been straight killin' this story."
Here's Weigel, describing a trio of legal idiots who are arguing this lost cause and needless waste of judicial resources:
One of the more amusing quirks of the “birther” movement is the quality of the legal minds in whom Obama birth certificate obsessives are placing their trust — and their occasional donations. Phil Berg, the original “birther” lawyer, has been forced to pay out sanctions for legal malpractice. Orly Taitz, famously, got her law degree from an online correspondence school. And it turns out that Charles Lincoln, who has been assisting Taitz — he provided judges with amended complaints in Keyes et al v. Obama et al last week and he showed up at the last hearing on the case— has been disbarred in California, as well as Florida and Texas.
From the May 2004 issue of the California Bar Journal, which reported on the matter:
In 2000, Lincoln was convicted in Texas on a federal charge of falsely representing his Social Security number, a felony. As a result, he gave up his license to practice in the state.
Originally charged with five felonies, the case resulted from Lincoln applying for a checking account using a false Social Security number.
In a second matter, he was disbarred from U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas after a federal judge requested an investigation of Lincoln because two of his clients had a falsified receipt. The receipt purported to be from the federal court clerk and represented funds the clients had given Lincoln. The clients believed Lincoln was depositing their money in an escrow account related to their case.
Two days before a hearing by the federal court’s admissions committee, Lincoln went to his clients’ home, instructed them not to tell the judge that he gave them the receipt, which he asked them not to produce, and he gave the clients a cashier’s check for $6,000. He did not appear at the hearing.
In a previous lawsuit, the same judge determined that Lincoln was involved in discovery abuse and filed duplicative motions. The judge issued sanctions and dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice.
At the July 12 hearing on the Keyes complaint, Lincoln identified himself as a “law clerk.” The eyewitness report of that hearing is worth reading, since it contradicts with Taitz’s original, hilarious report of a judge who took her seriously. Actually, Judge David Carter spent a lot of time trying to get Taitz to stop wasting the court’s time with antics such as reading her complaint into the record.
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