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If anyone was hoping that this birther movement was dead and gone even after wingnut and discredited birther in chief Orly Taitz has has been fined $20,000 for a frivolous suit in Georgia, it seems Taitz is not going away quietly and she's got some wingnut judge in Georgia doing his best to help her stir up trouble in the upcoming presidential election as well.

Rachel Maddow spoke to Georgia Democratic Party Chairman Mike Berlon about the continued effort to keep President Obama off of the ballot in the upcoming presidential race and whether anyone ought to take those threats seriously.

Here's more on the judge's ruling -- Georgia judge orders Obama to appear in court for hearing on attempt to keep him off ballot:

A judge has ordered President Barack Obama to appear in court in Atlanta for a hearing on a complaint that says Obama isn't a natural-born citizen and can't be president.

It's one of many such lawsuits that have been filed across the country, so far without success. A Georgia resident made the complaint, which is intended to keep Obama's name off the state's ballot in the March presidential primary.

An Obama campaign aide says any attempt to involve the president personally will fail and such complaints around the country have no merit.

The hearing is set for Thursday before an administrative judge. Deputy Chief Judge Michael Malihi on Friday denied a motion by the president's lawyer to quash a subpoena that requires Obama to show up.

As The Huffington Post noted, it's unlikely we're going to see President Obama showing up in court any time soon -- Obama Birther Case In Georgia Unlikely To Bring The President, Despite Judge's Order:

The White House appears prepared to ignore a recent ruling by Georgia Deputy Chief Judge Michael Malihi that would require President Obama to attend a birther hearing in Fulton County, Ga., on Thursday.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney outlined Barack Obama's weekly agenda on Monday, noting that the president is scheduled to hit Las Vegas, Denver and Detroit on Thursday in a whirlwind tour to talk middle class job creation.

That's not likely to sit well with Malihi, who last week rejected an effort by Obama's legal team to quash a subpoena that would require president appear in court that day. The complaint, like many others of its kind, claims Obama isn't a natural-born citizen and therefore can't be president.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports on Malihi's decision to deny the administration's efforts to counter the subpoena: [...]

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Time for your weekly podcast with The Professional Left, otherwise known as our own Driftglass and Bluegal.

Links for this podcast:

Blue Gal (for once) on David Effing Brooks.

Lawrence O'Donnell throws Orly Taitz off his show

You can listen to the archives at The Professional Left Podcast. Have a great weekend and enjoy the podcast everyone.

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Lawrence... Lawrence... Lawrence... if you invite a crazy person on the air as you admitted here, what else did you expect you'd get from her? Lawrence O'Donnell invited birther queen Orly Taitz on The Last Word to see if she would finally admit that President Obama was born in the United States now that he's released the long form birth certificate, and she was non-responsive and just started talking about her next conspiracy theory.

O'Donnell finally had enough of her and threw her off the air. The media really needs to decide that this crazy person's fifteen minutes of fame are up. We've got more important things to discuss, like getting Americans back to work.

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John King knew he was going to be criticized for bringing in Birther queen Orly Taitz during a segment which began with talking about whether or not Gov. Jan Brewer is going to sign Arizona's Birther law which just made its way through their state legislature.

Here's the damage control from King at the end of the segment from the criticism he knew he had coming:

KING: I'm going to end the conversation now. People are entitled to go to your Web site and I hope we can talk again. But I'm going to end this conversation tonight right now.

Listen, I sit in meetings for those of you at home and I'm going to pick this up and read it all.

For those at home who says, you know, you crazy jerk, why are you even going down this road? I'm going down this road because our job is not just to cover things that we know to be true. It's our job is to cover things that people are talking about in politics. And to try, to try to have rational conversations about why people believe what they believe, even if our reporting suggests what they believe is not true.

And we will continue to do that. I can assure you, we will never be perfect, but we try to do it in a respectful way.

There's nothing "respectful" about spending at least half of the 12 minutes of a segment of your show allowing some discredited Birther nut like Taitz to rant and rave and spew conspiracy theories that you know aren't true. Well, at least someone on CNN admitted what we already knew was true: Facts don't matter much in their reporting. If some wingnut politician or political figure says something, they must cover it in the name of being "fair and balanced."

King went on to ask if the White House is somehow more worried about the Birther nonsense than they're letting on and if they're trying to "at least use a subtle message to rebut this." Yeah, that's it, John. They're speaking to the Birthers in coded messages that the rest of us somehow missed.

Transcript of the portion via CNN below the fold.

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It's so good to see Michele Bachmann wants to keep her wingnut credentials in tact. As if she wasn't crazy enough on her own, she decided to appear with Orly Taitz for a teabagger luncheon. Isn't that special?

Orly Taitz And Michele Bachmann Appear At Lunch Together:

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) posed for a picture with Birther leader and California secretary of state candidate Orly Taitz at a tea party lunch event in California Friday, Taitz tells TPM.

Taitz and Bachmann both spoke at a lunch sponsored by the Tea Party Patriots, Taitz said in an email. But Birtherism did not come up at the event, according to Taitz.

"Michelle Bachmann spoke at the lunch, however she did not talk about eligibility, but rather general status of economy, politics and elections," Taitz says. "I spoke at the lunch, however I did not speak about ongoing legal actions involving Obama's use of ss number 042-68-4425, which was assigned to another individual, I also did not talk about Obama's refusal to unseal his original birth certificate, currently sealed in HI or any other issues of Obama' illegitimacy to presidency which are raised in the pleadings. I talked only about my candidacy for the position of the Secretary of State of CA."

Apparently being batsh**t crazy has an appeal in Bachmann's district. This on the heels as Keith noted of Hawaii finally having enough of Taitz and her ilk.

'Birther' measure signed into law:

Gov. Linda Lingle yesterday signed into law the so-called "birther" bill that is intended to limit the number of requests for President Obama's Hawai'i birth certificate.

Hawai'i state officials receive dozens of requests for Obama's birth certificate each month from people who believe he is not a natural-born U.S. citizen and thus not eligible to be president.

The new law, Act 100, allows state agencies a limited exemption from Freedom of Information requirements when duplicative requests for information are made by the same person. Although the law covers all agencies, the measure targets people who repeatedly request a copy of Obama's Hawai'i birth certificate.

The requests are being made to the state Department of Health, which keeps the birth certificates.

In testimony before the Legislature in February, DOH Director Dr. Chiyome Fukino said her department receives about 50 e-mail inquiries a month for Obama's birth certificate, primarily from the same four to six people.

"The time and state resources it takes to respond to these often convoluted inquiries are considerable," she testified.

Fukino has repeatedly vouched for the authenticity of Obama's birth certificate.

State law limits access to birth certificates to those who have "direct and tangible interest." This would include the person named in the record, the spouse, parent, descendant or personal representative; someone involved in marital, parental or death litigation; and official agency or organization representatives, including the health director.

Sadly given the make up of Bachmann's extremely red Congressional district, this will probably do nothing but endear her to the voters there. It always amazes me that a state with enough sense to elect Al Franken even if it was narrowly has a district that is so screwed up that they keep reelecting a woman who is nothing more than a shallow flame thrower and not much better than Glenn Beck with her rhetoric.

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Poor old crazy birther Orly Taitz just can't get any respect. Dylan Ratigan treats her with the disdain she deserves in this segment where she's asked to react to the ruling against her. And it looks like the judge has had a belly-full of her as well.

Judge ready to slap Orly Taitz with $10,000 fine:

Orly Taitz, one of the leaders of the Birther movement, may have finally crossed one too many lines. The courts will, after all, overlook the occasional frivolous lawsuit, even when filed by an attorney who can't get basic procedural issues right -- just the cost of doing business. But even a federal judge has a breaking point, and Clay Land appears to have reached his.

Earlier this week, Land dismissed a suit that Taitz had brought on behalf of Army Capt. Connie Rhodes, a surgeon who claimed that she couldn't follow her orders to deploy to Iraq because she's not sure President Obama is eligible, under the Constitution, to hold his current position. At the time, Land warned Taitz that if she filed any more "similarly frivolous ... actions in this Court" she'd face sanctions.

Taitz, of course, didn't seem to listen. Instead, she filed an angry motion asking Land to reconsider his decision and stay Rhodes' deployment. Apparently unaware of that old saying about catching more flies with honey than with vinegar (not true, incidentally, but that's an issue for another time), Taitz essentially accused the judge of committing treason. And, referring to the U.S. District Court on which Land serves, she wrote, "there is increasing evidence that the United States District Courts in the 11th Circuit are subject to political pressure, external control, and, mostly (sic) likely, subservience to the same illegitimate chain of command which Plaintiff has previously protested in this case, except that the de facto President is not even nominally the Commander-in-Chief of the Article III Judiciary."

For some reason, Land wasn't especially happy about this.

In an order issued Friday, Land denied Taitz's request and announced that he was considering making good on his threat of sanctions. He ordered the attorney-slash-dentist "to show cause why the Court should not impose a monetary penalty of $10,000.00 upon Plaintiff’s counsel for her misconduct," and gave her 14 days to do so.

Land also took a swipe at Taitz's performance as an attorney, writing at one point that "competent counsel would have understood" one part of the law that was at issue. The implication was obvious.

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Countdown's Worst Persons for Sept. 8, 2009 with winner Sean Hannity. Runners up Orly Taitz and Michelle Bachmann.

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The more I see of Orly Taitz and others of the so-called "Birthers" on television the more depressed I get with cable news. Sean Hannity at Fox may have started this but now this sick woman is cropping up on CNN, MSNBC and even The Colbert Report.

From The Colbert Report:

Stephen thanks Orly Taitz for being one of the few people willing to compare the Obama administration to Nazi Germany.

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Dobbs fill-in Kitty Pilgrim brought on Obama birther crazies Orly Taitz and Alan Keyes to discuss the legitimacy of President Obama's birth certificate, because apparently the producers of Dobbs show thought the two of them somehow had something meaningful to add to that conversation. Little wonder after watching Dobbs' piece the other night where he was claiming "new questions are being raised about Obama's citizenship". Who better to trot in there than the Queen Bee of the birthers Orly Taitz for a follow up? And for an double dose of the crazy, Alan Keyes to boot.

To Pilgrim's credit, she did do a pretty good job of thoroughly debunking the birth certificate conspiracy theory before the guests were allowed to weigh in, and she and their two sane guests, John Avlon and Errol Lewis, stopped Taitz from talking over everyone as she was attempting to do for the entire segment.

Pilgrim quoted a number sources including FactCheck.org's article The truth about Obama's birth certificate which should have laid this nonsense to rest:

FactCheck.org staffers have now seen, touched, examined and photographed the original birth certificate. We conclude that it meets all of the requirements from the State Department for proving U.S. citizenship. Claims that the document lacks a raised seal or a signature are false. We have posted high-resolution photographs of the document as "supporting documents" to this article. Our conclusion: Obama was born in the U.S.A. just as he has always said.

Of course that wasn't good enough for Taitz or Keyes who blathered on as though they didn't hear a word Pilgrim just said.

Despite Pilgrim's debunking of the rumor on tonight's show, I've got to wonder if Dobbs will follow suit when he returns given he was on his radio show as recently as July 15th saying that Obama needs to produce a birth certificate. From Media Matters.

Transcript below the fold.

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