WND Readers Not Taking Rejection of Birther Case Well
So, remember that Georgia birther case that WorldNetDaily's Joseph Farah declared was the first time any birther evidence had been examined by a court of law (even though it wasn't)? The judge has handed down a ruling -- and the birthers aren't happy.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that the judge rejected the arguments of birther lawyers such as Orly Taitz that Obama should be removed from the Georgia presidential ballot.
WND, meanwhile, had its own alternate-universe interpretation of the ruling. A Feb. 3 article by Unruh complains that the judge "cited a little-known determination by an Indiana judge" to back up his dismissal of the case. In fact, that determination is "little-known" to Unruh because, as we detailed last year, WND has studiously ignored its existence.
It's telling that Unruh not only fails to link to that Indiana court case -- which determined that "persons born within the borders of the United States are "natural born Citizens" for Article II, Section 1 purposes, regardless of the citizenship of their parents" -- he fails to link to the Georgia judge's ruling (h/t Obama Conspiracy). That's too bad, because thte judge exposes the incompetence of Taitz and her fellow lawyers and witnesses.
The Court finds the testimony of the witnesses, as well as the exhibits tendered, to be of little, if any, probative value, and thus wholly insufficient to support Plaintiffs' allegations. Ms. Taitz attempted to solicit expert testimony from several of the witnesses without qualifying or tendering the witnesses as experts. See Stephens v. State, 219 Ga. App. 881 (1996) (the unqualified testimony of the witness was not competent evidence). For example, two of Plaintiffs' witnesses testified that Mr. Obama's birth in birth records, forged documents or document manipulation. Another witness testified that she has concluded that the social security number Mr. Obama uses is fraudulent; however, her investigatory methods and her sources of information were not properly presented, and she was never qualified or tendered as an expert in social security fraud, or fraud investigations in general. Accordingly, the Court cannot make an objective threshold determination of these witnesses' testimony without adequate knowledge of their qualifications. See Knudsen v. Duffee-Freeman, Inc., 95 Ga. App. 872 (1957) (for the testimony of an expert witness to be received, his or her qualifications as such must be first proved).
None of the testifying witnesses provided persuasive testimony. Moreover, the Court finds that none of the written submissions tendered by Plaintiffs have probative value. Given the unsatisfactory evidence presented by the Plaintiffs, the Court concludes that Plaintiffs' claims are not persuasive.
Unruh spends more space discussing the judge's criticism of Obama's lawyer for refusing to take part in the hearing than he does the fact that the judge found Taitz to be incompetent and her witnesses -- who included WND-promoted birthers like Douglas Vogt -- to be of indeterminate expertise.
Unruh also ignored the fact that Taitz did not have a defense mounted against her -- and she still lost.
Meanwhile, WND's readers aren't taking this ruling very well -- the comment thread on Unruh's article surpassed 800 comments as of this writing. And there's been at least one death threat so far, by this man:
WND, to its credit, did remove Bishop's threat fairly quickly. Still, what is it with the death threats on the ConWeb this week?
Updated: Saturday, February 4, 2012 12:23 AM EST