Oh, For Goodness Sake

Lakin’s Lawyer Lies

LTC Terrence Lakin, who is refusing to follow deployment orders to Afghanistan until President Obama proves to Lakin’s satisfaction that he is the legitimate commander in chief of the armed forces, appeared on Anderson Cooper last night. Why? If you don’t want to incriminate yourself by answering questions, why waste everybody’s time going on interviews? If you’ve already announced your crime to the world yourself, what’s to incriminate?

For what it’s worth, which is nothing, here it is:

As Doc Conspiracy said, “Lakin himself came across as sincere but clueless. Somebody else is pulling his strings.”

That is about all that can be said about Lakin and this interview.

The slimy GOP op Paul Rolf Jensen, who is representing Lakin on behalf of the American Patriot Foundation, with his three months of military law experience, as a clerk 30 years ago, was more than willing to speak, but when he did, he lied, citing HRS § 338-17.8 Certificates for children born out of State:

In the state of Hawaii there’s a statute that allows anyone born outside the state of Hawaii, including in a foreign country, to obtain a Hawaiian birth certificate, at any age, by going back and filling out a form.

Doc Conspiracy:

That law does not allow “anyone” to obtain a Hawaiian birth certificate. It is limited to applicants who can prove to the director that “the legal parents of such individual while living without the Territory or State of Hawaii had declared the Territory or State of Hawaii as their legal residence for at least one year immediately preceding the birth or adoption of such child.” So he lied. He said “anyone” but of the billions of people in the world, it only applies to a handful of Hawaii residents who give birth to children out of state. I am not talking about whether or not the statute fits President Obama. I am simply saying that he lied about the statute. He is a lawyer and he waved a piece of paper in his hand representing it as a copy of the statute. It is not reasonable to believe that he was mistaken. He lied.

Now someone might argue that while technically false, since Stanley Ann Dunham was indeed a resident of Hawaii for a year prior to President Obama’s birth that the law applied anyway and that the lie was harmless. Not so. The law HRS 338-17.8 was not passed until 1982. President Obama’s birth registration was filed August 8, 1961. A registration could not have been filed in 1961 under this (or any) Hawaiian statute. Not only did Lakin’s attorney lie, but he tried to trick the viewer into thinking the statute he cited was relevant.

Janice Okubo, the communications director for the Hawaii Department of Health told Dave Weigel last July:

Okubo, who said that she gets weekly questions from Obama ‘Birthers’ that are “more like threats,” explained that the certificate of live birth reproduced by Obama’s campaign should have debunked the conspiracy theories. “If you were born in Bali, for example,” Okubo explained, “you could get a certificate from the state of Hawaii saying you were in Bali. You could not get a certificate saying you were born in Honolulu. The state has to verify a fact like that for it to appear on the certificate. But it’s become very clear that it doesn’t matter what I say. The people who are questioning this bring up all these implausible scenarios. What if the physician lied? What if the state lied? It’s just become an urban legend at this point.”

Should licensed attorneys be citing urban legends to justify their clients’ actions? And if they do, to what end do they do it, if not to mislead the public? The aim is to disqualify an election and nullify the votes of almost 70 million Americans like me. Let’s face it, the choice of Paul Rolf Jensen as Lakin’s lawyer isn’t based on Jensen’s months in military law; it’s based on his years of tricky-dickedness for the GOP.