OC Register
Posted on | November 7, 2009 | 7 Comments
Orly Taitz: natural-born litigator
O.C. attorney has gained a national following for challenging Obama’s citizenship.
By MARTIN WISCKOL
The Orange County Register
When you see Orly Taitz deliver her impassioned, Eastern European-accented arguments on Fox News or CNN or YouTube, you’re getting just the first hint of the outsized features of her life.
She was born in the USSR, then lived in Israel and Romania before getting married and immigrating to the U.S. The mother and former swimsuit model established a successful dentistry business with two Orange County offices – then, in her spare time, studied law and passed the state bar.
Her growing national notoriety is the result of her long-shot legal efforts to have Barack Obama removed as president, claiming that he is not a natural-born citizen. While the rumor had previously percolated on the political fringes of the Internet with a couple of failed lawsuits, Taitz’s relentless filings and colorful personality have raised the visibility of the claim and led to her being dubbed “Queen of the Birthers.”
She has presented the courts with two documents that say Obama was born in Kenya. She’s yet to get any of her suits to trial, but some experts have opined outside the courtroom that the documents are forgeries. One, for example, bears the phrase “Republic of Kenya” – and is dated eight months before Kenya became a republic.
Taitz is undeterred.
“He may have been born in Indonesia,” she says. “Even if he was born here, he’s not a natural-born citizen because at least one of his parents wasn’t a U.S. citizen.”
Historically, people born in the United States are presumed to be a natural-born citizens, said Ronald Rotunda, a constitutional law professor at Chapman School of Law. That would include someone who, as Obama represents himself, was born on U.S. soil to an American mother, regardless of the father’s nationality.
However, the Constitution is not explicit in defining the term, and the Supreme Court has never ruled on the issue.
Critics say that Taitz revels in these ambiguous margins – in the shadows of a doubt – and uses them as the foundation of her arguments.
“Unlike Alice in Wonderland, simply saying something is so does not make it so,” U.S. District Judge Clay D. Land wrote in his dismissal of one of Taitz’s suits. He subsequently fined Taitz $20,000 for filing frivolous motions and insulting the court.
She says Land ruled against her because he’s been pressured by the Obama “regime,” whose tentacles she believes reach far and wide to stifle constitutional rights where it sees a threat.
She calls Obama a dictator. She says he may have ties to radical Islam. She thinks he’s received financial support from the Saudi royal family and from Palestinians. She suggests that FEMA camps may have been prepared to detain dissidents.
“What I’m seeing is this whole campaign of attacks on dissidents, of people that go against the administration,” she said.
Mainstream Democrats and Republicans alike roll their eyes at these assertions, laughing off Taitz’ claims as a conspiracy theorists’ carefully arranged hodgepodge of fact and hearsay, of documents and forgeries, of exaggeration and innuendo. Then there are those who say Taitz lacks even the facts of a good conspiracy theory.
“This stuff is ludicrous,” said Raphael Sonenshein, who teaches political science at Cal State Fullerton. “She’s just being ludicrous and making stuff up and getting on television for other people to hear, many of whom will believe it because they hate the government.”
Taitz waves off such criticism.
“If none of this is true, why won’t Obama just release his records?” she said.
USSR and the U.S.ATaitz, now 49, was born in the Soviet-controlled Moldova in 1960, to two science teachers. She grew up skeptical and disdainful of the government there.
“There were very few attorneys,” she recalled. “And I believe the main reason was because it was pointless, absolutely pointless to go to court and try to uphold the constitutional rights of citizens against the regime. Everything was predesigned, pre-decided for you. And people who tried to go against the regime ended up in gulag. I had a great-uncle who was in gulag, who was sentenced for 10 years.”
She now lives in Laguna Niguel, is married to a Latvian-born U.S. citizen and has three children. She moved to the U.S. in 1987 and became a citizen herself in 1992.
She earned a law degree from William Howard Taft University, a correspondence school based in a Santa Ana office park, which is not accredited by the American Bar Association. She passed the California bar in 2002. She is in the process of consolidating her Mission Viejo dental and law offices into her Rancho Santa Margarita office.
If her view of Obama’s government sometimes echoes her take on the Soviet government in the 1960s, she says it’s with good reason.
“I came from a totalitarian regime, so those kinds of things I’m sensitive to,” she said. “I think I can see it more because I grew up with it. People who grew up here don’t see it so much.”
She says she first heard questions about Obama’s birthplace last year, and responded by asking the California Secretary of State’s Office how they verified the candidates’ birthplaces. As Secretary of State spokeswoman Nicole Winger told the Register, the office has no authority to verify presidential candidates’ qualifications.
That sent Taitz off and running. She’s filed at least five lawsuits so far, most of which have been dismissed without reaching trial. Her best hope now is with a suit pending in Santa Ana’s federal court, where Judge David O. Carter is preparing a ruling on whether or not he’ll let the case go to trial.
A key argument in the motion to dismiss the case is that a president’s qualifications and removal from office are political rather than judicial. The U.S. attorney, representing Obama, argues that the Constitution assigns such issues to Congress rather than the courts. That was part of the legal reasoning Land cited in his dismissal, and is central to the motion to dismiss now being considered by Carter.
The Annenberg Public Policy Institute has posted online photos of Obama’s certificate of live birth and a birth announcement in the Honolulu Advertiser published nine days after Obama’s birth, as well as a report of its examination of the documents and determination that they were authentic.
Additionally, Hawaii state Health Director Chiyome Fukino has said, “I have seen the original vital records maintained on file by the Hawaii State Department of Health verifying Barack Hussein Obama was born in Hawaii and is a natural-born American citizen.”
However, Taitz and her fellow skeptics – who have been dubbed “birthers,” a terms she finds derogatory – want to see the original birth certificate, issued at the time of birth. Why, they persistently ask, has that document never been made public?
Should Taitz ever get her case to trial, the burden of proof will be on her to prove that Obama is not a natural-born citizen – not on Obama to prove that he is.
A legion of fansWhen Taitz marched down the hallway toward the courtroom in Santa Ana on Sept. 8, about 100 supporters filling the corridor applauded enthusiastically. The court subsequently put controls in place for Taitz hearings so no more people would be allowed in the corridor than could fit in the courtroom itself.
Perusal of blogs and online readers’ comments about Taitz turns up hundreds more Taitz fans. But her antics and legal errors – she has repeatedly had filings returned for technical corrections – don’t go unnoticed.
Two of her 44 clients in the Santa Ana lawsuit – including Buena Park Pastor Wiley Drake, who has admitted praying for Obama’s death – have dropped her and taken a new attorney. That attorney, Gary Kreep, has been criticized by Taitz in open court, although her requests to remove him from the case have been unsuccessful.
“I don’t think she’s as competent as some of the other lawyers involved with this, but no one has the tenacity that she does,” said supporter John Sutherland, an avid political blogger from Portland, Maine. “What she’s doing is keeping the topic on the open fire. She’s fighting the good fight.”
Her legal efforts are funded mostly out of her own pocket, although she does solicit donations on her Web site.
A July poll by Pew showed that 80 percent of those surveyed had heard something about the challenge of Obama’s birthplace. In an interview with the Register, Taitz extrapolated that to mean that “80 percent of Americans want to see Obama’s birth certificate.”
In fact, the Pew poll found the 41 percent of those who’d heard of the issue thought the media was spending too much time on it, while 28 percent said the media was spending too little time.
As for those who think it’s Taitz who is spending too much time on it, she’s not offering any indication of letting up.
“Like Gandhi said, first they ignore you, then they ridicule you,” Taitz said. “Then they fight you, then you win. If Judge Carter dismisses the case, we’ll appeal and keep filing and bringing new cases until we get a resolution.”
Contact the writer: 714-285-2867 or mwisckol@ocregister.com
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7 Responses to “OC Register”
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November 7th, 2009 @ 10:51 am
Orly is more of an American patriot than any member of Congress!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Roger Beckham
12th Generation AMERICAN
November 7th, 2009 @ 11:59 am
“Unlike Alice in Wonderland, simply saying something is so does not make it so,” U.S. District Judge Clay D. Land wrote in his dismissal…
That is one thing I do agree with Land on. Just because Obama says he was born here, does not make it so. LET’S SEE THE PROOF !!! RELEASE THE LONG FORM !!!
November 7th, 2009 @ 1:46 pm
I sent this email to the O.C. register reporter that wrote the article about
Obama & Orly Taitz Lawsuits
——————————————–
I read your story on the Obama eligibility lawsuit filed by a Orly Taitz
It is very unfortunate for America that so many people criticize Orly
Taitz while it is in writing in the U.S. Constitution it was even argued
in court in the 1800’s and determined @ that time that
a [ ” Natural Born Citizen ” is a child , born on U.S. soil, to parents
not owing allegiance to any other country ] , now some key words
parents = plural = more than one = two
allegiance to any other country = No multiple citizenships , etc, etc
Therefore Obama is not a Natural Born Citizen & Obama is guilty of
Treason !!!!!!——————————————————————————–
As a reporter I would think that you would be able to understand
especially statements that are in writing !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
November 7th, 2009 @ 3:52 pm
Oc Register is hostile-
I mean really orly you allow or chase after publicity threats indiscriminately. This ia a lousy article, Michael savage did much better in the long New Yorker article.
The CA Bar meeting inviting you? Why don’t you go there like lady gadiva naked on horseback – because standing up to these liberal twits will exhaust you before a massive liberal attack. It will be like a growling racoon before a billion driver ants.
You do not always–in your apparent wont for publicity wise in your choice of venues. Don’t waste vital energy confronting a hostile group of lawyers because you have Martyr proclivities.
You are defiant and stalwart and these are laudible traits but so foolish sometimes in miss emphasis of vital effort. Make no mistake we are all for you and your exhaustive legal submissions but you at times create a hostile environmnet for yourself or at least encourage one.
Your are a throughbred–and a handsome woman- and there is a pretty precise track to run on as a lawyer–straight track and curved track but all a path in the arena of confrontation.
Even a lawyer posting confuses native born with natural born and I will tell you this after a long view of this matter: many don’t give a tinkers damn that he is non dejure–the oath ment nothing if it is taken by a usurper liar who should be punished in the extreme for what he has done– they only care that he was elected and like so many things in american jurisprudence and political life, when truth comes up against vested interest the result is rationalization AND OBAMA IS A VESTED INTEREST.
Funny how Sandy (Burglar) Burger just walked into the archives and stole vital documents that could have hurt Bill and Hillary–just stuffed em in his pants. He was arrested and convicted and Bubba pardoned him–amazing country huh? They do what they want and don’t care one wit for the law as written.
Maybe we ought to send Sandy Burglar into the archives to retrieve the docuemnts necessary to be proof positive that barry COCKROACH Soetoro stole the presdiency and lied all along the way both prior, during the oath administration and afterward. Did a cloud burst of realization pour upon the obtuse american collective brain when his first order was to lock up his documents and then arrange for Holder to swallow the key.
Also, my fierce feminine warrior, Holder YES! serves at Obama’s pleasure and yes that is the law, so i was wrong in a prior posting saying he is OUR AG, no he is not–he is Obama’s AG–BUT even though appointed he took the same oath as Obama yo mama– thus complicit and culpable in this entire american fiasco or the roasting of the american soul by a corrupt liar incendiary who will bring this country down–this fifth columnist bastard infilTRAITOR, if he is not stopped–and the court system will not stop him ORLY try as you might they will stone wall you–learn from Carter–he was inundated with legal material==\first standing, then jurisdiction and NEVER discovery.
Some of your writings, your stance in the legal documents you submit clearly state your case and position–and Obama cannot come up from under the dirty rock of suspicion- first exec order to lock info up in archives, then proceeds to spend almost $2mm on a legal firm whose ex employee suddenly turns up on carter’s staff– these are arrogant jokesters spitting in the people’s collective face.
They have the process locked up and all oblivious repeat OBLIVIOUS to two new governors or over four million protestors in DC with that moron Gibbs making tasteless and stupid jokes about it all. these are controlled and bought power hungry jerks up there—clear english and righteous dialogue flows off their back–they don’t care and are telling you in effect to go F,,, yourself, leave us alone and drop dead.
The exhaustive effort you are putting in for clariciation and redress is falling on deaf ears–NOT the ears of those that revere you and your efforts to be sure, but on the ears of those that think you are a pain in the ass gadfl and they will soon go after your law license–has to come orly unless you come up with something spectacular to stop them in their tracks. The have wrath of God money in unlimited supply ( arab oil money), and you my dear are gooing out of pocket and gently soliciting contributions. Carter knew Kreep was turned and he would not entertain severance.
Kreeps argument was off handed and in the venacular–he even used the word SCHMUCK–an eccentric bought and sold positing a weak argument at best, a valedictory parthian shot and the check is in the mail. Sold out, berg? Sold out. Sinclair, tied to berg ipso facto tied to Hillary– her sireen nastiness. Biting at the bit Miss Plaiusible denial, Queen of deNILE, a lady who likes manly women around her and to think she coveted being an astronaut.
There are sharp teeth and hot predator breath near Obama’s neck. It is remotely even theoretically possible that your main troubles extend from her influence mainly because you are persuing a lively path away from her main road intensions–that being destroying Obama anyway she can so she can hold that office. remember they fought for 22 months until we all were ready to vomit over this joke of american campaigning or vested interests in conflict–the people be damned as usual.
be wiser in your selection of venues becauswe you have many enemies seeking to set you up to rediclule and hostile attacks–surprised you do not have a very glib spokes man or woman to help shield you– you seem always to want to go it alone. I know you do because a wise advisor would have helped you to avoid some of the embarrasing cul de sacs you end up in Orly.
Klayman or hurwitz would be good folk.
Wish you well and am watching it all. I do not think the legal path you aredoggedly on will produce pay dirt in this climate. the pressure–call it political if you will has to be direct on Obama and Holder–unrelenting pressure- a sustained vigil, and there after action of some sort–which will precede a civil war–Obama has to be broken, bedcause whole he is like a metal giant with the arabs supplying the steel for his matasticizing growth-
take care you do not end up crushed beneath his steel foot.
The metal giant may have to have its legs cut off– the first stage message and if that does not work ( remember Obama’s father had his legs cut off), then the head must fall.
Good luck–a few typos–tried to check em–but….
MP
November 7th, 2009 @ 7:23 pm
Dr. Taitz, Martin Pinsky has it right. Go after the limbs first. Then concentrate on taking out the heart and other organs and the body will die. Also, it may be better if you have a spokesperson to talk to the media, as well as limiting the amount of interviews you give, so you can concentrate on legal matters. Mainly because your message has already gone viral, and you could bring others in to perpetuate the message, possibly in one or more separate secure websites. Other possibile ideas to help your cause: bake sales/car washes around the country, DVD sales of your interviews, contact Tea Party/9-12/other organizations for their support, contact churches/synagogues for their support. I hope that this helps you. God Bless what you are doing and God Bless You!
November 7th, 2009 @ 8:38 pm
would you like to help materialize those ideas? I need volunteers. if you want and can help, call me at 949-683-5411
November 7th, 2009 @ 9:20 pm
can you forward to me Michael Savage article? I am not familiar with Klayman or Hurwitz- can you call them? I don’t limit myself to legal actions. I will be speaking at the protest in NY, in front of FOX, at the Continental Congress in Chicago, at the Coalition for the immigration reform, at bible groups, women’s groups, conservative groups, lawyers groups. I am only human, i do as much as i can, considering that I have a family and a job