Oh, For Goodness Sake

Birthers’ Newest Great White Hope

US Army Lt. Col. Terry Lakin, an active duty officer, intends to disobey a legal order to deploy to Afghanistan, because he decided a year and a half ago that his Commander in Chief was not his Commander in Chief. Sounds familiar. Capt. Connie Rhodes is in Iraq, where she did not want to go for that reason. Major Stefan Cook is out of a job with a DoD contractor, because he did not want to go to Afghanistan for the same reason. Both Rhodes v. MacDonald and Cook v. Good were tremendous losses for the Birther movement and hurt Obama not a whit. Hey! Let’s do it again.

A right wing entity, American Patriot Foundation, through its project, Americans for Accountability, has provided Lakin’s cause with a professionally designed web site, the domain for which was registered on March 23, 2010, that has no resemblance to the usual unholy messes you see online in Birfistan, and started a legal defense fund for him, which claims donations are somehow tax-deductible.

Since the Army would provide defense counsel for a court-martial, perhaps there is a civil lawsuit in his future. The American Patriot Foundation promises to provide Lakin with a “top flight” defense team; poor Orly, they must be leaving her out. So far, though, this is a press event. No lawsuit has been filed. The tactic is to force his own court-martial, which he expects will give him the elusive STANDING to effect DISCOVERY of the President’s birth certificate.

The contact person on Lakin’s press release is the daughter of Birther lawyer John D. Hemenway, who is the registered agent of American Patriot Foundation. Hemenway got into a tangle with Phil Berg last December over the Birther case Hollister v. Soetoro, which lost in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia last week, with a sanction of Hemenway upheld. A former official in the Bush administration, his daughter in law, Margaret Hemenway, is a contributing editor for Family Security Matters.

The American Patriot Foundation issued a report in 2009: Clearing the Smoke on Obama’s Eligibility: An Intelligence Investigator’s June 10 Report.

What I don’t see is how the Lakin matter goes beyond his refusal to follow a direct order from his military superiors, regardless of who is president. Unless there is something else going on here that I am missing, that cuts Lakin off at the court-martial. Lakin’s reasons probably won’t interest the panel. It’s the act of disobedience he will be tried for. Did he or didn’t he refuse to follow orders? He is saying himself that is his intention and, if he does it, his reasons don’t really matter.

The eligibility issue has no relevance to the expected court-martial charge of disobedience, and civilian courts, if a lawsuit followed, don’t like to interfere with military discipline, as we saw in Cook v. Good. Lakin would be entitled to discovery of the evidence the government has concerning his refusal to follow orders, but he won’t be able to demand new evidence, such as the President’s birth certificate.

With the exception of age, residency and natural born citizenship, standards which are met pre-election, legitimized by the Electoral College, sworn by the Supreme Court, and confirmed by Congress, the Constitution gives no right to any individual, not Lt. Col. Terry Lakin, not anybody else, to demand proof of the President’s eligibility for that office, which is one of the reasons why Birther cases go down so predictably.

On Lakin’s web site, there is a page called The Hard Facts, which presumably is what he intends to base his defense on. Unfortunately for him, all of it has been, not only debunked, but dragged through courtroom after courtroom already, without prompting DISCOVERY. So this is another waste of time and resources. Again, this is where it all leads.