You think some of those who deny Obama’s eligibility sound a little crazy?
Seems to be an accurate perception. From The Oregonian (via OregonLive.com):
A Springfield blogger is accused of threatening the life, limbs and lower alimentary canal of a Secret Service agent.
James T. Cuneo, 43, was indicted Thursday on charges of making a series of threats against Special Agent Ronald Brown in the course of his official duties.
This was strange turnabout for Brown, whose job in the agency’s Presidential Protection Division is mainly to thwart threats against the commander in chief. For the first time in his 15-year career, Brown wrote in federal court papers, someone was repeatedly harassing him.
There’s a difference between a dog on a bone and a psychotic; some of the Obama denialists appear to have blurred the difference. Cuneo’s complaint appears to revolve around the same issue that set off Texas Darlin’ and a few dozen others. Cuneo escalated the thing; let’s hope no others do the same.
On Oct. 16, Brown and Springfield police detectives dropped in on Cuneo to chat about threats he had allegedly made about Google executives on his Internet blog: walkndude.wordpress.com. (WordPress has taken the site offline for violation of its terms of service.)
“Cuneo was extremely belligerent, refused to answer questions and became increasingly threatening,” Brown wrote in an arrest affidavit. “We left the driveway of Cuneo’s residence without further incident.”
Cuneo then began to phone the Secret Service office in Portland, threatening Brown and others, the government alleges. “Cuneo,” Brown wrote, “seems to think that we are aiding and abetting the ‘illegal U.S. President’ and that he and others need to arrest us for not doing our job.”
Brown says Cuneo phoned him in January and, with a colorful series of expletives, threatened him with physical harm, including execution by hanging, electric chair or firing squad. Those threats — and Cuneo’s history of violence — concerned federal officials, according to Brown’s affidavit.
Time to get back to real issues. 2010 is around the corner, 2012 is not much farther.
And, by the way, a federal judge in the District of Columbia issued an order dismissing one of the many nuisance suits filed by the denialists (styled Hollister v. Soetoro) , stating clearly that the suits are nuisances and asking for a showing of why sanctions under Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure should not be applied. In short, the judge has ruled that the case against Obama’s eligibility is so rank and utterly without substance that any lawyer of average intelligence and sound mind should know better than to trouble a court with it. I think this is from the court’s order:
Because it appears that the complaint in this case may have been presented for an improper purpose such as to harass; and that the interpleader claims and other legal contentions of the plaintiff are not warranted by existing law or by non-frivolous arguments for extending, modifying or reversing existing law or for establishing new law, the accompanying order of dismissal requires Mr. Hemenway [the attorney of record] to show cause why he has not violated Rules 11 (b) (1) and 11 (b) (2) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and why he should not be required to pay reasonable attorneys fees and other expenses to counsel for the defendants.
Crazier fringes of the anti-Obama guild claim that a letter from Obama’s attorneys asking that the suit be dropped is “threatening.” It’s not threatening to tell the schoolyard bully to straighten up. How much ozone have these people depleted?
Update: Yes to Democracy also carries news on the March 24 action by Judge Robertson. When do the denialists finally wake up, smell the coffee, smell the stale beer cans, pinch themselves, take a shower and get on with life? So, to sum up: A judge in Washington, D.C., has dismissed the suit and called the bluff of the plaintiffs and stealth plaintiffs; Huffington Post revealed the financial stake of WorldNet Daily in continuing to finance the suits, and in pushing the suits improperly; and a federal prosecutor won an indictment of a blogger who started rumbling about taking violent action in favor of the Birthers, and who failed to heed warnings to tone down his vitriol. Have the birthers figured it out yet?
Tip of the old scrub brush to Micah.
Resources:
- Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, from LII at Cornell University; Wikipedia on FRCP generally; a lengthier explanation at The Journal of the Legal Profession (which I’ve never heard of before)
- Real Democracy, on the dismissal of the Hemenway/Berg suit
- The Peoples Forum, “The Berg Smackdown”
- Yes to Democracy, with links to the order and other commentary
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 