Guest Editorial
BY LARRY KLAYMAN | DECEMBER 12, 2012
The good virgin's birther case
No, I’m not writing about a sequel to the Steve Carell comedy flick “The 40 Year Old Virgin,” or about the even more low-class holiday issue of Playboy magazine. Believe it or not, this column is about a case I filed in Montgomery, Ala., over the eligibility of Barack Hussein Obama, which was just decided at the lower circuit court level by the Honorable Eugene W. Reese, a liberal Democrat judge. The way this suit was handled by the court is not funny. It is symptomatic not just of the way the judiciary has thus far tried to dodge and deep-six the seriousness of Obama’s ineligibility to be president, but the current state of our highly politicized judiciary in general.
Our complaint, filed on behalf of presidential candidate Virgil H. Goode Jr. and Alabama citizen Hugh McInnish, seeking to force Alabama Secretary of State Beth Chapman to verify that Obama was eligible to be placed on the state’s presidential ballot – after she told our clients that she would not – was filed Oct. 12, 2012, with enough time for the court to rule that the state had an affirmative duty to determine – given the sworn affidavits from Sheriff Joe Arpaio, his investigator Mike Zullo and renowned investigative reporter and author Jerome Corsi – whether or not Obama is a natural born citizen as is required by the U.S. Constitution. As set forth under oath in these affidavits, there is credible evidence, which was incorporated into the complaint and a simultaneously filed motion for summary judgment, that Obama’s claimed long-form birth certificate, produced by the White House years after the issue of his place of birth was first raised by none other than his 2008 presidential primary opponent Hillary Clinton, is altered, forged and fraudulent. Thus, Judge Reese had plenty of time before the Nov. 6 presidential election to order the Alabama secretary of state to do her job and fulfill her oath of office under not just the Alabama Constitution but the U.S. Constitution. Indeed, while Alabama statutes are silent about this, analogous law in most states requires that election and ballot challenges are to be given expedited treatment, for obvious reasons.
Under Alabama law, it is clear that the secretary of state has an affirmative duty to verify the eligibility of those seeking office. An Alabama attorney general’s opinion provides, “If the Secretary of State has knowledge gained from an official source arising from the performance of duties prescribed by law, that a candidate has not met a certifying qualification … the Secretary of State should not certify the candidate” [Attorney General's Opinion No. 1998-200]. The attorney general’s opinion is not binding case precedent. Nevertheless, it constitutes an admission by Alabama’s chief law-enforcement officer on behalf of the state that if the secretary of state has knowledge gained from an official source about a candidate’s eligibility, then she “should not” certify the candidate. This should have proven very persuasive before Judge Reese.
Certainly investigative findings that Obama’s birth certificate is likely altered, forged and fraudulent, contained in the sworn affidavits of Sheriff Arpaio and his investigators, come from an official government source. Thus, Secretary of State Beth Chapman had an affirmative duty to determine Obama’s eligibility to be president. It did not take rocket science, therefore, for Judge Reese, given the attorney’s general’s opinion, to order that this be done quickly, before the Nov. 6 presidential election.
However, rather than deliberating expeditiously on the pleadings before him, Reese dragged his heels, eventually noticing up a hearing for a total of only 15 minutes on this case of great national importance, for Dec. 6, 2012, exactly one month after the November presidential election. He then “graciously” gave each side only seven and a half minutes to argue. Based on this delay, any reasonable person would have to conclude that it was simply a pro forma hearing for the court to say it gave the parties an opportunity to be heard, albeit one month after the election. It was clear that the handwriting was on the wall. Since I have co-counsel in Montgomery, I then filed a motion to appear at this “meaningless” 15-minute hearing by telephone, to save money for the clients, as they have a limited budget. The judge never responded to my motion, and as a result my co-counsel argued our case for seven and a half minutes!
During the hearing, Judge Reese asked no questions about the facts and the law. He sat there like an Egyptian sphinx and stated merely that he had read the briefs. And, about one hour after the parties left the courtroom, the court issued its “well-reasoned” decision. It simply read, incredulously, that the defendant’s motion to dismiss “is GRANTED.”
But Judge Reese’s judgment did make one bold finding. In the caption of the judgment, he changes the name of my client, a presidential candidate, to “Goode Virgin H. Jr.” Even if, in jest, the judge’s “blonde” secretary is the culprit, his lack of concern for our clients’ and the people of Alabama’s rights to an honest presidential election cannot be seen as a joke. Given the stakes of having Obama re-elected as president without so much as the secretary of state being ordered to do her duty to first confirm his eligibility to run for the highest office in the land is a constitutional tragedy. Regrettably, similar scenarios have thus far played out in dozens of eligibility cases in other states, but never to my knowledge with the cavalier indifference to the rule of law and defiant if not insulting display by the liberal Democrat Judge Reese.
As I have written many times before in this weekly column, I am saddened and fearful that the state of our judiciary, which largely protects establishment interests over the rights of “We the People,” has so deteriorated that we no longer have any branch of government that will hear our grievances. We are 236 years removed from 1776, but the situation we find ourselves in today remains unchanged. As our French allies during the Revolutionary War would put it, “The more things change the more they remain the same.”
And now, to not only the Alabama Supreme Court – whose chief justice thankfully will soon be the courageous Ten Commandments judge, Roy Moore – but to the barricades as well!
Larry Klayman is a former Justice Department prosecutor and the founder of Judicial Watch and Freedom Watch. His latest book is "Whores: Why and How I Came to Fight the Establishment."
