Last Birther Case Scheduled to be Executed on March 16th.

H/T to Bob at the Fogbow for this one. The last active Birther case is now dead-listed at the Supreme Court and will be dismissed at conference on March 16th.

Here is the docket for the case:

The case is Robert C. Laity v State of New York, et. al.  It is an appeal filed by long time Birther Robert Laity, a New York state resident, of his case against the state and 2016 presidential candidates Ted Cruz and Bobby Jindal.  Both Cruz and the New York Attorney General’s office have filed waivers to respond and as we know from previous Birther cases at SCOTUS that means the case is dead as a door nail and will appear on the denied list on Monday, March 19.

Laity’s case is the last Birther case from the 2016 election cycle that was still technically breathing in any court system. All the previous Birther cases previous election cycles in 2008 and 2012 have long since died.

Laity has some particularly crazy notions. He believes that Barack Obama could still be prosecuted, convicted and executed under the UCMJ. Yep, he is that crazy. Laity is a coward when it comes to arguing his position however. He hides behind Sharon Rondeau’s comment moderation at the Post & Email and blocks anyone on Twitter who dares point out his ideas are nonsense.

In his current petition Laity couldn’t resist taking one last shot at President Obama. He claimed that Obama too was ineligible. He even gets in a shout out to Joe Arpaio and the Cold Case Posse.

His Birth certificate has been proven to be forged, in any event. This
assertion is public knowledge substantiated by the former Sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, Joseph Arpaio, Cold Case Posse which released the findings of at least two independent forensic document examiners.

Laity also had filed a Birther case during the 2012 election cycle against Barack Obama and the state of NY. It too was denied all the way up.

Laity’s first try in SCOTUS was in 2008. He filed some sort of case against James Peak, Secretary of Veterans Affairs under George W. Bush. I don’t have any details on this case but it might be related to a much older case where Laity was officially reprimanded in 1991  for using profanity while he was an employee of the Department of Veterans Affairs.

You can read a description of the 1993 case here:

Laity v. Department of Veterans Affairs

A H/T to W. Kevin Vicklund for finding the details on this one.

Update 4/30/2018: As mentioned in the comments below Laity filed a Petition for Rehearing on 4/6/2018. It was scheduled for conference on Friday 4/27/2018. It was shown as denied on the order list published this morning.  The case docket is usually updated within a day or two.

Bob at the Fogbow forum noted this is the first time since August 2008 when Phil Berg filed a lawsuit to attempt to postpone the Democratic Convention that there has not been an active Birther case in a court somewhere. However, I expect some of the usual suspects to return in 2020 with lawsuits against potential candidates like Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Kamala Harris.

Update 5/3/2018: The SCOTUS docket for Laity v NY State, et. al. has been updated to include the denial of the Petition for Rehearing:

Could someone please post a link to this article for Sharon Rondeau at the Post & Mail? The  great journalist seems incapable of doing a simple SCOTUS Docket search without help.

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The Post & Email Lies about Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller

Since the Post & Email blog editor Sharon Rondeau has a phony comment policy at her fake news site I thought I would comment from time to time about some the idiocy she publishes there and the ridiculous comments that she approves.

One of Sharon’s heroes is Tennessee resident Walter Fitzpatrick III, the former Navy Lt. CMDR who has the distinction of being convicted of crimes as both a member of the military and as a civilian.

Sharon and her band of clueless commenters can always be counted on to connect the dots even when the dots exist only in what passes for brains at the P&E. That’s what she and Fitzpatrick are doing in regards to Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

In a recent article Rondeau questioned why Mueller was named as Special Counsel. In a  series of articles on Mueller she quoted her special bud from Tennessee Walter Fitzpatrick who thinks that Robert Mueller was personally responsible for the fact that he and his pal Darren Huff went to prison for threatening to take over Madisonville, TN back in 2010. At the time Mueller was the Director of the FBI you see.

Yep, that is the connection. It is all because the FBI was justifiably concerned about right wing nut jobs like Darren Huff boasting that they were going to “take over” Madisonville after Fitzpatrick was jailed in April 2010 for trying to arrest the grand jury foreman Gary Pettway. Fitzpatrick claimed Pettway was serving as foreperson illegally and also would not allow the grand jury to vote on Fitzpatrick’s petition to arrest President Obama for treason.

The FBI had been alerted by a bank teller back in Huff’s hometown in Georgia. Huff bragged to the teller that he and some other militia members were going to take over Madisonville and get Walt out of jail. The FBI coordinated with Tennessee state and local law enforcement authorities to make sure this promised takeover didn’t happen. Huff was arrested and charged with carrying weapons across state lines for purposes of causing civil unrest.

The rest of the article is a dredging up of every right wing complaint about Mueller that Rondeau can find using Google. What Rondeau doesn’t tell you is that both Fitzpatrick and Huff were convicted by juries of their peers and that they really are criminals. They aren’t innocent victims of Robert Mueller or anyone in law enforcement. They made their own messes. It wasn’t the first time for Walter either.

Fitzpatrick has a long history of not working and playing well with others. He graduated near the bottom of his class at the US Naval Academy in 1975. While serving as XO aboard the Destroyer USS Mars in 1989 Fitzpatrick was left in charge of the ship while Captain Mike Nordeen attended his bother’s funeral in Washington, DC. His brother. William Nordeen was a Naval attaché with the American embassy in Greece. William Nordeen was killed when his armor plated sedan was hit by a remotely detonated car bomb next to his vehicle. The Marxist group 17 November claimed responsibility for the assassination.

Some time after the funeral an audit was initiated into Fitzpatrick’s administration of the USS Mars Morale, Welfare, and Recreation Fund for which he as the XO was responsible.  Among other things money from the fund had been used to pay travel expenses for officers’ wives to attend Nordeen’s brother’s funeral.

Eventually, Fitzpatrick was charged and convicted at a court martial of one charge, an Article 92 violation in that he was derelict in the performance of duties as the person in charge of the MWR, was derelict in the performance of those duties in that he willfully failed to follow proper procedures for the accounting and expenditure of Morale, Welfare and Recreation funds on board USS MARS (AFS 1), as it was his duty to duty to do. The willful part later was downgraded to negligently in a review.

Walt was offered a non judicial punishment under Article 15 (Captain’s Mast) but Walt being the hard headed moron that he is refused to accept it. Walt’s punishment was an official letter of reprimand and he was eventually beached. After being passed up three times for promotion he was forced to retire from the Navy.

That is a brief explanation of how Fitzpatrick’s Naval career ended. For a much more detailed account I recommend reading blogger nbc’s post about the Fitzpatrick court martial at the Fogbow forum. nbc took the time to find the official records and review them. Fitzpatrick claims someone forged his signature on a letter acknowledging that he received the letter of reprimand. Whether or not this is true really had no effect on how Fitzpatrick’s Naval career was going to end.

Fitzpatrick’s court martial and disgraceful end of his Navy career seem to launch Fitzpatrick on a destructive path in life. Blogger Patrick McKinion at his now dormant Bad Fiction blog documented his many run ins with the law while he resided in Kitsap, WA: Doing the Walter Fitzpatrick Rap. Note that several complaints for spousal abuse show up in his records.

Now back to Special Counsel Mueller …

Mueller is just the latest in a long line of government officials, judges, grand jury forepersons, and law enforcement personnel at all levels whom Fitzpatrick with his deluded mindset blames for his abject failure of a life. Sharon Rondeau seems to have anointed herself as Walt’s official cheerleader.

In an article Rondeau published at her blog but not written by her Mueller’s investigation into Russia and events surrounding the 2016 election is called a “with hunt”. The author of course is just parroting what the Liar-in-Chief Trump has said.

Let’s look at the facts:

• Mueller, a Republican,  was appointed as Special Counsel by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, a Republican appointed by Donald Trump.
• Mueller had been appointed as Director of the FBI by Republican President George W. Bush and is considered by most sane people to have done a good job running the agency in the post 911 era.
• So far the Mueller investigation has gotten indictments against nineteen people and three companies including three guilty pleas.
• He uncovered a well financed Russian operation run inside the US to use hundreds of people to interfere with the 2016 election on behalf of Donald Trump.
• He found that the former campaign director for the Trump for president organization Paul Manafort and former deputy director Rick Gates were acting as unregistered agents for a foreign country and engaged in laundering millions of dollars overseas to avoid paying US taxes.

That’s some witch hunt!

It’s hilarious that Rondeau would hold up the criminal and loser Walter Fitzpatrick as a hero while trashing Mueller. Mueller was a war hero, a successful US Attorney, Director of the FBI, and is now running an efficient and critical investigation that is exposing crime at the highest levels of government.

Fitzpatrick on the other hand has been convicted twice for menacing local officials because of his wrong headed belief that he can take over his local grand jury and use it to push his personal fantasy charge that President Obama committed treason.

Rondeau and Fitzpatrick are free to comment in rebuttal of anything I have written here. However, she is a coward who hides behind comment moderation at her blog. The last thing she wants let slip into her Birther cocoon are facts.

Mike Zullo’s Credentials Revisited

I don’t exactly relish writing another article on former Cold Case Posse lead Mike Zullo. However, at the Post & Email Sharon Rondeau continues to pimp Zullo’s discredited investigation almost non-stop and Zullo is defaming the “Obots” again.

Mike Zullo, who claimed the investigation into President Obama’s birth certificate had ended over a year ago, just can’t drop it either. He made a series of appearances recently on Carl Gallups’ little weekly radio show Freedom Friday on WEBY in Milton, Florida and came up with a bunch of wacky new theories.

Zullo held a final “press conference” on December 15, 2016 before the recently defeated convicted criminal Sheriff Joe Arpaio left office. I put “press conference” in quotes because it wasn’t a press conference. Zullo and Arpaio took no questions. The stated reason was that the Phoenix media had not taken the Cold Case Posse investigation seriously and had not been fair to Zullo.

I covered this fake press conference in a post last year: Mike Zullo Admits the Obots Were Correct All Along What was noteworthy about the December 15, 2016 event was that Zullo abandoned almost everything he had trotted out at two earlier press conferences in 2012. Zullo had found another forensic laboratory in Italy who would take his money and do some sort of analysis on something. We don’t know if Zullo was turned down by  every single forensic lab in the US before going to Italy or if they just kicked in a free pizza and a box of cannoli.

The new theory Zullo trotted out via a poorly produced, fuzzy video from Mark Gillar was that the Obama LFBC had been made by copying parts of the birth certificate of Johann Ah’Nee over to the Obama certificate. AH’Nee was also born at Kapi’olani Hospital a couple of weeks later than Barack Obama in 1961. The evil Obots quickly showed the theory was nonsense and that even on the fuzzy video the supposed “nine points of forgery” didn’t match. See my article Overlay of Obama and Ah’Nee Birth Certificates Shows the Latest Cold Case Posse Forgery Theory Is Nonsense

Ah’Nee coincidentally had provided her birth certificate to Jerome Corsi through Miki Booth the Japanese American Birther Princess from Oklahoma and friend of Ah’Nee. Corsi published a photo of the Ah’Nee certificate was published at WND September 11, 2011 to supposedly show what a “real” Hawaii. WND hid the name and the certificate number. A number of people pointed out that the certificate immediately blew up some of the favorite Birther talking points including the one that the name of the hospital (Kapiolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital) was not what the hospital was called in 1961. The name of the hospital on the WND certificate matched perfectly.

Other information was gleaned from the WND certificate. Some clever folks like John Woodman noticed that redacted fields could be read off the photo of the back of the certificate by using photo editing software by using a mirror image filter and cranking up the contrast. Woodman figured out the name of the certificate holder was Johanna Ah’Nee (although he did not publish her name) and that the certificate number was 696 lower than Obama’s (09945 vs 10641) even though Ah’Nee’s certificate was filed over two weeks later.

Almost immediately WND replaced the images in the article with ones that redacted more information including the name of the hospital and the bleed through of the front of the certificate to the back.

Zullo in 2016 expected us to believe that the very certificate that someone used to forge Obama’s LFBC just happened to be the one that fell into the hands of Jerome Corsi and WND just four months after the release of the Obama LFBC on April 27, 2011. Yep, out of hundreds the people who were born at Kapolani in 1961 Miki Booth just happened to be friends with THE one.

Last month private citizen Mike Zullo produced not one but at least two entirely new theories. Yeah, that’s right this was one year after the end of the Cold Case Posse investigation (and the Cold Case Posse itself) and over five years after it started. Here was Zullo expecting us to believe that he had new relevant evidence after working full time on this for five years.

The new big news from Zullo last month was that Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office informant and con man Dennis Montgomery had figured out that the CIA (under George W. Bush at the time mind you) had hacked into the Hawaii Department of Health database in 2008 and planted the information that was used to generate the certificate of live birth that the Obama campaign.

Following that appearance some folks at the Fogbow noted that the COLB that the Obama campaign published in 2008 was actually issued in the summer of 2007. Zullo’s response the following week was that Montgomery had discovered the CIA had previously been hacking into the Hawaii DoH. How convenient and flexible Zullo’s stories are!

Zullo also claimed that the two different cell phone images of one of the certified copies of the LFBC taken by NBC reporter Savannah Guthrie at the White House on April 27, 2011 were not of the same document. Zullo had apparently made the discovery himself that letters in box 11, the father’s birthplace were different. The text in that box is “Kenya, East Africa”.

One of Guthrie’s photos is a close up image of the part of the LFBC that had the seal and the other was a wider shot that showed the entire certificate. Zullo claimed that the alignment of the letters in “East Africa” was different in the two photos. The analysis was ridiculous. It was really amateur hour stuff.  Also, the idea of explaining a photo analysis on the radio was also comedy from the get go. Gallups had posted Zullo’s photos on his Facebook page earlier that day.

Just to check I looked at Box 11 from four images. I cropped the same section with box 11 from the Guthrie close up image, the Guthrie wide image, the White House LFBC PDF and the Scott Applewhite AP JPG image. I rotated and scaled the cropped sections to line up from top to bottom.When I scaled up the images I maintained the pixels instead of using the default smoothing algorithm.

From top to bottom: Guthrie closeup photo, Guthrie wide photo, White House LFBC PDF, Applewhite AP JPG

Obviously the AP photo has the highest resolution and the Guthrie wide photo has the lowest. Zullo’s proof that the two Guthrie photos can’t be of the same document hinges on the differences in the vertical position of the letters like the “E” in “East” and the “Af” in Africa.

There is a simple explanation for letters shifting position. Notice that in the Guthrie wide photo the resolution is so poor the “E” is only five pixels high. Each pixel can only be one color. The color and brightness of a pixel are the average of the color and brightness over the entire pixel. If the image is off one pixel the letter would vertically shift 20% of its height.

Add to this all of these images have gone through some one or more compression algorithms. This can also affect letter position. To test this I imported the same box from the White House LFBC PDF into GIMP at two different resolutions. The top image is imported at 300 pixels per inch and the lower one is 100 pixels per inch.

Notice that in the lower resolution image the offsets of the “E” and “a” are completely gone and only the vertical offset of the “A” in “Africa” remains.

Box 11 White House LFBC at 300 ppi (top) and 100 ppi (bottom)

 

 

 

 

 

 

The analysis of the Guthrie photos by Zullo is amateur at best and dishonest at worst.If anything what these images show is that all these photos come from the same original source.

Now let’s  finally get to the point of the article. Of course, Sharon Rondeau told us about all this wonderful news in an article at the Post & Email. Every time Zullo speaks it seems to be worthy of a Rondeau article. Our good friend and a person who actually is an expert in vital records, Doctor Conspiracy, left a comment on Rondeau’s article.

I know Mr. Zullo desperately wants to find something wrong with Obama’s birth certificate, but I would have thought that after so many misfires, he would get the message that he’s wasting his time. Zullo is not an trained investigator, he is not a forensic expert, and he is not competent to do the work he is trying to do. It’s obvious from his consistent failure.

In this instance, he falls for an optical illusion. If you rotate the close-up Guthrie photo so that the lines are horizontal, then it is obvious that the “frica” are aligned the same. It’s only when viewed at an angle that the eye tries to interpolate the image and makes the “f” appear higher.

An qualified and unbiased expert wouldn’t have made such an elementary mistake. Also a rational person would realize that Obama releasing several different versions of his birth certificate on the same day (or even making multiples in the first place) defies reason. When something is patently absurd on its face, then it’s not true.

Rondeau was not amused:

Sharon Rondeau
Tuesday, January 2, 2018 at 9:44 AM
What you have posted is a bald-faced lie. Zullo’s training and credentials are a matter of public record, and the excuse you make for the “optical illusion” of the “Guthrie photo” is completely unacceptable in the world of real, paper documents. Would any authorities accept that explanation in the presentation of your own paper birth certificate?

Because the Obama birth certificate image is a forgery, there is no “rational” explanation for its many anomalies. You and several others here appear to have a deep, vested interest in continuing this ridiculous charade.

This is a final warning to all commenters: Anyone posting knowingly false information will be banned permanently. While intellectually-honest discourse in search of the truth is encouraged, flagrant dishonesty is not.

https://www.thepostemail.com/about/

Rondeau for probably the 10,000th time confuses the fact that an image of a certified copy of a birth certificate is not the same as the certified copy. If Obama had to submit a birth certificate it would not be a cell phone image taken by a reporter. He would use a certified copy. He has several of them.

What about Zullo’s training and credentials? Public record? She conveniently forgets to link to that public record. Did that include training to identify a forged document?

As I have documented before here Zullo has a habit of padding his resume or letting others do it for him. See my article CCP Chief Deputy Clown Zullo Engages in Hilarious Resume Padding

Rondeau’s comment set off a discussion as to whether Zullo was really a detective when he worked as a policeman in Demarest, New Jersey for a tiny borough police force in the 1980’s. There is no public record available for Zullo’s time on the force there. The borough web site lists the police force as consisting of a chief, three sergeants, nine patrolmen, eight special police, and twelve crossing guards. There are no detectives.

Zullo does claim to have been a detective. In 2012 he gave an interview to Pete Papaherakles at something called the American Free Press:

“I worked as a detective in Bergen County, N.J. for five years,” said Zullo. “This is across the river from New York City, an area that includes over a million people, with 70 police departments. In addition to street crime, the area has a high degree of mob crime and white-collar crime. After that, I worked for seven years as an investigative detective with legal firms and with my own firm. Since 2005 I have been working with Sheriff Arpaio in Maricopa County as an investigator. That’s over 20 years of investigative work.”

Last year Sharon Rondeau apparently was directed to a retired Phoenix, AZ policeman named Steve Soha who knew Zullo back in Demarest and was a patrolman in a nearby  borough.

On Tuesday, retired Phoenix Police Department Lieutenant Steve Soha provided The Post & Email with a glimpse into his work with Zullo over a five-year period in the 1980s, after which they remained in touch through the present day. Soha is a former New Jersey police officer, decorated combat Marine veteran, and 20-year veteran of the Phoenix PD, retiring in 2015.

Soha related that between 1980 and 1985, Zullo was a police officer in Demarest, NJ, while he was an officer in nearby Haworth. “They were adjoining towns. We would work together on quite a few things, actually,” Soha told us. “When it started out, we were the only ones on duty on the night shift. I was the only police officer on duty in Haworth, and he was the only one in Demarest. We backed each other up. If he got a call, I would assist him, and vice-versa.

…

“As we got a little bit more experience, Michael was promoted to the Detective Bureau. We worked a couple of cases together, as the bad guys didn’t stop at the town borders. Michael and I worked a lot on investigations. I was not in the Detective Bureau, but I was conducting investigations in my town, and Michael and I worked together there.”

When we asked about any significant events which stood out in his mind from the time period, Soha responded, “There was a burglar that was really tearing up all the towns in northern New Jersey. Michael and I worked on that together, which trickled into New York City. Then there were a couple of armed robberies that were happening, and because of an informant that Michael developed, he and I worked on and solved that case and ended up arresting two people. It was a pretty high-profile case, because these guys were carrying out violent armed robberies not just in our towns, but also in larger communities. Because of Michael’s investigative experience and developing a confidential informant, we solved that case.”

Those two accounts don’t really jive since it would mean Zullo was immediately promoted into the “detective bureau” upon employment. As I said before Demarest has neither detectives nor a detective bureau and has more crossing guards than patrolman. Demarest even 20 years later averaged only about a crime per month. There is no record of a single case of forgery in Demarest that I could find.

All this detective nonsense doesn’t matter. The bottom line is that Zullo has no training in computer or document forensics. He isn’t qualified to have led an investigation into something he can never have access. We know what the two forensic analysts he hired never had access to any original document to examine and we don’t know what they actually said about whatever they examined.

Mike Zullo could clear up all these questions by releasing what his actual experience and training are with documentation and by releasing copies of Reed Hayes’ and FORLAB’s reports. To date he has refused to do so.

Now that Joe Arpaio is running for Jeff Flake’s Senate seat and pushing the birth certificate BS again maybe Zullo will get the major media attention he has craved for so long. Be careful what you wish for Mike. Be very careful.

The crazy cast of characters at the Post & Email

This is the third part in my series of articles on Birther blog The Post & Email. (See The Post & Email–Fake news site and Birtherism’s last bastion–Part 1 and The Post & Email–Fake news site and Birtherism’s last bastion–Part 2 Sharon Rondeau.)

In this article I will cover some of the crazy regular commenters on articles there. Most of them are Birthers we know from their postings elsewhere and from them filing Birther lawsuits in either the 2008 or of the 2012 election cycle.

These include people like Cody Robert Judy from Utah and Robert Laity from New York. I am sure they are attracted to the P&E because every time they file something or the courts reject their idiotic lawsuits Sharon Rondeau writes an obligatory article about it. Rondeau has also allowed them to write guest articles about their wrongheaded opinions on the definition of natural born citizen and their lawsuits.

Laity may be one of the more radical Birthers. He pushes the theory that Barack Obama was subject to the articles of the Uniform Code of Military Justice since he was Commander in Chief and can therefore be prosecuted under the UCMJ for usurping the presidency during time of was and should therefore be executed. Laity must be retired and therefore has a lot of time on his hands to think up such utter nonsense.

Laity claims to have an honorary “juris doctorate” and calls himself an expert on the meaning of natural born citizen. He must have ordered a degree from a place that advertised in the back of a magazine.

Blogger NBC wrote one of the best refutations of Laity’s argument on the UCMJ in an article in 2014:

Educating the Confused – Robert Laity and Spying

Robert Laity: Obama has usurped the Presidency of the United States during time of War. That makes Obama a Spy under the Uniformed Code of Military Justice at Section 906,Article 106. Also see: 18USC,Part 1,Chapter 115,Sec.2381.

In order to determine if Laity is correct, we have to look at Article 106 of the UCMJ. It requires the following elements to be true:

1) That the accused was found in, about, or in and about a certain place, vessel, or aircraft within the control or jurisdiction of an armed force of the United States, or a shipyard, manufacturing or industrial plant, or other place or institution engaged in work in aid of the prosecution of the war by the United States, or elsewhere;

(2) That the accused was lurking, acting clandestinely or under false pretenses;

(3) That the accused was collecting or attempting to collect certain information;

(4) That the accused did so with the intent to convey this information to the enemy; and

(5) That this was done in time of war.

Let’s start with (5). Since Laity approvingly has mentioned US v Averette, let’s see how the Court defined ‘in time of war’ and what its ruling was

In 1970, the Court of Military Appeals held that civilian employees of the military overseas could not be subjected to court-martial (United States v. Averette, 19 U.S.C.M.A 363)[, unless in times of war.]

and

the U.S. Court of Military Appeals adopted a strict construction of the phrase “in time of war” finding that the phrase referred only to a congressionally declared war. Since the Vietnamese conflict was not a congressionally declared war, Averette’s trial by court-martial was declared unconstitutional.

US v Averette does not provide any foundation for Laity’s claims that UCMJ 106 applies to our President. Of course, non of the other elements apply either, showing how poorly developed Laity’s arguments really are.

Laity has tried to ‘argue’:

6. Obama has no lawfully granted security clearance

As to the need for a security clearance, see EXECUTIVE ORDER #12968 and the following:

“The president is the one who established the security clearance system by executive order,” said Steven Aftergood, a national security and intelligence specialist with the Federation of American Scientists. “Therefore it is nonsensical to speak of clearances higher than what the president has. As head of the executive branch and commander in chief of the armed forces, there is no information in government that could be denied to the president for security reasons if he determined he needed access to that information.”

…

(More at the link)

Laity won’t listen and has ignored the fact that dozens and dozens of courts have rejected the notion Barack Obama was not eligible to be President. Laity hasn’t given up now that Obama has served two full terms. He thinks Obama can still be arrested. Laity may be an idiot but he is a persistent idiot.

Then there is Cody Robert Judy. Judy, Judy, Judy… (Google Goober Pyle if you don’t get it.)

Where should I start? Judy considered himself a candidate for president in 2008 and 2012 merely because he filed with the Federal Election Commission as a candidate. He wasn’t on the ballot in any state, even his home state of Utah. He never registered as a write in candidate either. To my knowledge he ever received a single vote in either election. Yet, that didn’t stop Judy from filing a lawsuit against Obama (aka Barry Soetoro), the DNC,  and Organizing for America, and several Democratic officials for millions in damages because he claims he was harmed by Obama since he was not a natural born citizen. Judy cites the usual Birther drivel about Minor v Happersett and de Vattel in his complaint. (He threw in Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi as defendants for good measure.

Judy’s writings are best described as word salads, i. e., lots of words thrown together in no particular order. His blog posts are more of the same. He commented quite a while at Obamaconspiracy.org but he was eventually banned. Judy immediately blocks anyone on Facebook or Twitter who is critical of him.

The federal district court in Utah allowed Judy to file in forma pauperis (IFP). When none of the defendants replied (he failed to properly serve all of them) Judy filed for a default judgment. Not only did Judy not get the default judgment the court dismissed his case as frivolous.

Judy appealed to the 10th circuit and the dismissal in district was upheld. He then filed with the US Supreme Court. Judy assumed his IFP status carried over to SCOTUS but the court denied him IFP status and said he would have to go through the process of applying to receive IFP status. Judy either never applied or never received permission to file IFP so his appeal was closed.

In 2017 Judy filed a motion to demand that the 10th Circuit reopen his case based on “new evidence”. His “new evidence” was Mike Zullo’s December 2016 press conference on the Cold Case Posse investigation into Obama’s birth certificate. You may recall that was the “press conference” where the press was not allowed to ask any questions.

The 10th Circuit of course denied Judy’s motion since his case had found to be frivolous and nothing Zullo had presented had anything to do with the merits of his case.

Judy then filed an emergency petition to Justice Gorsuch to request that he force the Tenth Circuit to reopen his case. Judy missed the small detail that Justice Sotomayor and not Justice Gorsuch is assigned to handle emergency petitions for the Tenth Circuit. The clerks at SCOTUS returned Judy’s petition and it was never filed.

Judy seems to live a somewhat miserable existence. He wrote on Facebook that he was kick out of his apartment and had to spend several nights in his meat truck at a KOA campground (Judy is apparently a meat salesman).

Delusion and poverty are not new to Judy. In 1993 he rushed the stage at the BYU Marriott Center where President Hunter was conducting a fireside chat before 17,000 people. “Judy rushed the stage of a multi-stake fireside at the Marriott Center. Judy carried a briefcase and waved a cellular phone that had been taped to look like a bomb. There was a brief exchange of words with President Hunter until police were able to take Judy into custody.”¹

Judy ultimately pleaded guilty to charges of aggravated burglary, assault and escape after fleeing the state mental hospital in the days after his arrest. He was incarcerated in the Utah State prison until he was released on parole in 1999. Judy’s wife divorced him after the incident. ²

Judy was released on parole in 1999 and had to serve six years probation. He seems to have latched on to running for president as a non-candidate and filing lawsuits as a way to put meaning into and otherwise worthless life.

At the Post & Email Sharon Rondeau never brings up the fact that Judy terrorized 17,000 people in a packed arena nor his criminal background. He is praised for continuing to file hopeless motions in the various courts. Of course Rondeau seems to be drawn to criminals like a moth to light bulb at night. I will cover her other favorite criminal Walter Fitzpatrick in a future installment.

¹  http://universe.byu.edu/1999/08/02/cody-judy-leaves-prison-on-parole/

²  https://www.deseretnews.com/article/371141/CODY-JUDY-WANTS-KIDS-TO-VISIT-HIM-IN-PRISON.html

RIP Henry Wayland Blake, aka “Hermitian”

Henry “Hermitian” Blake 1940-2017

Most of you who have followed the Birthers will recall a prolific commenter who went by the handle Hermitian. He commented here, at Obama Conspiracy Theories, John Woodman’s, at NBC’s blog, and in the comments on Jerome Corsi’s Birther book at Amazon. I happened to run across his obituary today. Henry passed away in March. He was an engineer by trade. Hermitian was 77 and had worked at the Oak Ridge, Tennessee uranium separation facility  before retiring.

To put it succinctly Hermitian was the classic Birther troll. He thought he was smarter than all the Obots. He tried to poke holes in the Xerox workflow theory at NBC’s blog and here. He failed. Hermie liked to play word games. Hermie would never admit he was wrong even when it was demonstrated clearly he was. For example, he claimed that the AP JPEG photo of the handout copy of the LFBC released on April 27, 2011 could not have been a photo because photography was not allowed at the press gaggle where the copies were handed out that morning. I contacted Mr. Applewhite who was the WH photographer for AP on that day. Mr. Applewhite not only confirmed this fact he even told me the make and model of the camera that he used.  Hermitian refused to admit he was wrong even then. All he had to do get his ban lifted was admit he was wrong on that one simple assertion but he couldn’t bring himself to do that.

Henry also filed an affidavit in Orly’s Taitz’s case in Mississippi in which he claimed to provide proof that the PDF copy of the Obama LFBC filed by the defendants in that case was a forgery. Taitz submitted his affidavit as one of her exhibits. Henry offered to testify but the case was dismissed and never reached the evidentiary stage. Of course Blake would have never testified since he wasn’t an expert.

In the obituary Blake’s son writes that he loved to watch Fox News and argue with the commentators while watching. Sounds like something out of a Simpson’s episode doesn’t it? He was also a New York Yankee fan but I won’t hold that against him.

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

The Post & Email–Fake news site and Birtherism’s last bastion–Part 2 Sharon Rondeau

(This is the second in a multi-part series of articles about the Birther blog The Post & Email)

In the first part of this series I wrote about the beginning of the Post & Email and its mysterious founder John Bugnolo (aka John Charlton). After a mere six months Bugnolo turned the control of the Post & Email blog over to a resident of Stafford Springs, CT named Sharon Rondeau.

Rondeau apparently had been involved early on with the P&E. She authored articles as early as the fall of 2009 when Charlton was still running things. As I wrote in Part 1 she was listed as an officer on corporation documents filed in Wyoming beginning in March 2010 when Bugnolo was still the owner.  After Bugnolo was removed as the owner Sharon’s husband Gerard was added as an officer of the Post & Email. I have never seen any articles Gerard authored on the blog.

She tells us a bit about her background on the About Us page at the P&E:

Mrs. Rondeau is a natural born American Citizen* who began researching the eligibility of Barack Hussein Obama during the 2008 election cycle. She has been operating The Post & Email since April 2010 following Mr. Charlton’s departure.  She earned a B.A. from Eastern Connecticut State University in 1986 summa cum laude and worked in the areas of transcription, writing, office skills instruction and word processing for 15 years.

Her ten-year career at a Hartford, CT insurance company ended abruptly in February 2001 after she was permanently injured from a rear-end car accident.

As The Post & Email’s editor, Ms. Rondeau writes daily reports focusing on government corruption; reviews and publishes editorials from syndicated and guest writers; and screens citizen submissions for quality, accuracy, and adherence to the high standards of the newspaper.

Sharon is also an accomplished harpist with more than 28 years of experience performing in a wide variety of venues including solo, small ensemble and orchestral.  In 1998 she released her CD, “Celtic Reflections,” and in 2009, her collection “Easy Scottish Harp Music” was published by Mel Bay.

*[Both Charlton and Rondeau seem to think it is important to say they are natural born citizens as if that somehow makes them better than other people. It’s possible that Sharon added this to Bugnolo-Charlton’s biography on her own.]

I looked into Mrs. Rondeau’s background to attempt to find any connection with John Bugnolo (Charlton). Neither Charlton nor Rondeau showed up on Birther websites before the Post & Email WordPress blog began.

I found that Sharon Rondeau was born in Massachusetts. She is a very accomplished musician. She was a professional harpist for years. She comes from a family with a strong music background. She was one of four daughters of the late Edward and Pearl Hanjian. Edward “Coach” Hanjian was a music director for several years at Fitchburg, MA High School and took the marching band to the Tournament of Roses Parade in 1962 . It was the first high school from Massachusetts ever to march in that event. Mr. Hanjian was a decorated veteran from  World War II and served in the Army Air Corps. In 1962 he moved his family to take a similar position as band director at Conrad High School in West Hartford. CT. He worked there for 25 years until retirement in 1987. Mr. Hanjian passed away in 2011. Pearl Hanjian lived another five years and passed away last year. Fitchburg is near Westminster, MA where Bugnolo lives but Sharon would have been quite young when her family moved to Connecticut.

Ms. Rondeau has two sisters who have had noteworthy careers in music. Her sister Susan Hanjian also lives in Connecticut and was named the music educator of the year in the state in 2016. Her older sister Marcia Hanjian plays the viola and is an instructor for both viola and violin. She has played in several orchestras in Connecticut and even toured internationally with orchestras.

The point for bringing up Sharon’s family is to note that she comes from a talented, well educated family and that makes it even more bizarre that she became a Birther and conservative rabble rouser taking on the causes of truly strange characters like LCDR Walter Fitzpatrick in Tennessee. I looked at her sister Susan’s social media pages and let’s just say she is pretty far away from Sharon’s political views. Another sister is registered with the Democratic party.

The extent of Sharon’s disability is not known. The disability apparently was not severe enough to interrupt Rondeau’s career as a harpist. She played harp professionally from the time of her accident in 2001 until recently. I recall several years ago talking with a harpist who played at a Christmas party to which I was invited. After the party I marveled at how this small lady was able to crate up the harp and roll it out to her van. I had offered to help but she said she had a system and had done it many times. I can’t imagine what an effort it took for a disabled person to do that.

[Update: A reader pointed out that Rondeau has a YouTube channel that that has several videos of her playing the harp. For example:

Her disability is not readily apparent in this video nor any of the ones on her channel that I watched. (By the way, what’s with the wires sticking out of the electrical box in the ceiling?)]

She apparently has a disabled family member living at home, possibly an adult child who receives government benefits including SNAP payments (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or the the program formerly known as Food Stamps). That leads me to…

The SNAP SNAFU:

In October 2013 Rondeau posted the following article during the time Republicans caused a government shutdown by refusing to raise the debt limit:

CONTRADICTORY REPORTS LEAVE QUESTIONS ABOUT FOOD ALLOTMENTS DURING SHUTDOWN

Rondeau’s article was odd for several reasons. First, why did an arch-conservative like Rondeau care about people receiving “food stamps” enough to write a full article about it? Of course she never passed up an opportunity to include a snide remark or two about President Obama:

Obama’s approach to poverty has been to “redistribute the wealth” and raise the national minimum wage, invest more money in public education, and repair “crumbling infrastructure.”

Obama has been called “the Food Stamp president” because of a reported 93.38% increase in SNAP benefits from 2001 to 2009, although in the eight years of Bush’s two terms, Food Stamp use rose 63%.  From January 2009 to April 2013, SNAP recipients increased by 16,000,000.

Obama’s political leanings really had nothing to do with the point of the article but sometimes Rondeau can’t help herself. She continued:

A SNAP recipient in Connecticut received the following letter explaining the reduction in benefits for November 1:

Sharon’s concern for this Connecticut SNAP recipient’s plight was quite touching. The state sent the letter to inform the recipient that their monthly benefit was being reduced because a temporary increase that had been part of Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 was ending soon. I make two points. First, this is typical for what passes for news at the P&E. Second, it is always Obama’s fault at the P&E.

Sharon had redacted the recipients name and address. However she didn’t redact the postal bar code in the address. A clever member of the Fogbow forum decoded the bar code to identify the address of the recipient. Bill Bryan aka Foggy the owner of The Fogbow forum let Sharon know her secret was out:

From: Bill Bryan
Subject: We published that you’re the Food Stamp Birther Blogger

Message Body:
Such an honest newspaperwoman! When you wrote: “A SNAP recipient in Connecticut received the following letter explaining the reduction in benefits for November 1″ you forgot to redact the bar code above the address, which is rather easily decoded. The address is:

6 Orcuttville Road, Stafford Springs, CT

That’s your address, sweetie. You’re calling President Obama “the Food Stamp President”? Then that makes you “The Food Stamp Birther Blogger”.
And it means that YOU were the subject of part of one of your “newspaper” stories without disclosing it. Got journalistic ethics? (No, you don’t.)
For now, we’re not publishing the foreclosure, though it’s public record.
http://img546.imageshack.us/img546/5245/rondeauy.png
On the bright side, we’re publishing the truth about you, while you continue to publish nothing but lies about me.
–
This mail is sent via contact form on The Post & Email http://www.thepostemail.com

Foggy’s email prompted a response in the form of an article in which she acknowledged that was her address but she claimed she wasn’t the SNAP recipient:

Bryan is apparently responding to the article published on October 16, 2013 regarding whether or not the SNAP program would be in operation on November 1 had the government shutdown continued through that date.
**
Bryan’s reasoning and conclusion about the recipient of food stamps at the address is faulty. Sharon Rondeau is not a recipient of any government benefits, but there is a disabled family member who is.
Bryan is correct that the property is in foreclosure. This writer is not embarrassed to say so, nor will she be blackmailed over it.

I am not sure how Bryan’s letter could be interpreted as blackmail. What he said was true and Rondeau was guilty of poor journalism by failing to identify that the letter was addressed to a family member. She justified this by claiming she was not the actual recipient. However, she was benefiting directly from the SNAP program because the family member is a dependent. She was on the receiving end of what she described as President Obama’s “redistributing the wealth.” That is a serious omission from the article.

Butterfly Bilderberg, a member at the Fogbow, wrote this cordial open letter to Sharon Rondeau. To my knowledge she never responded:

Dear Sharon,

I enjoy the good fortune of coming from a loving and financially secure family, from parents who taught me empathy and passed to me and my brothers the spirit of noblesse oblige. I was blessed, genetically, with an intellect that my parents nurtured and shaped, and I was able to use it to propel myself into a career that has always provided for me and my children, and then some.

Every year since I joined the workforce when I was 22 years old I have been able to share my earnings with those who need a hand up the economic ladder, both through my tax dollars and charitable giving. I can honestly say that I have never resented paying taxes, or that my taxes provide a safety net (as fragile as it is) for those who need it. I feel truly honored that I can assist others. That includes you and your family. That is what we, as a society, do — we take care of one another. If that makes me a “progressive” — a term that you use derogatively — then I proudly wear that label.

You can be grateful that you live in a society where others gladly contribute to the less fortunate. Or you can be bitter. Your choice. I know which one I choose.

Merry Christmas and here’s hoping that you continue to share in the bounty in the coming new year.

I will end this article by saying a few complimentary things about Sharon Rondeau. I think she is a passionate blogger and has a right to write whatever she wants and hold the beliefs she wants. I thinks she is one of the more articulate Birthers I have heard on Birther radio programs. She has on a few occasions corrected obvious misstatements when they were pointed out to her. She has let through some critical comments although her moderation of comments isn’t even handed and she let’s Birthers get away with saying vile racist things. It’s too bad that someone who grew up in an apparently wonderful family and had parents who provided her with a good education decided to buy in to the Republican hate memes and become an eternal advocate of the racist Birther movement.

Next time in Part 3 I will introduce some of the odd characters whom Sharon supports and who occasionally write guest posts at the P&E.

You can read Part 1 in this series here.

Guilty!

Phoenix NewTimes

There is breaking news this afternoon in the criminal contempt case of former Maricopa County Arizona Sheriff Jose Arpaio. He was found guilty by federal District Judge Susan Bolton. Bolton issued the ruling today.

The criminal contempt charges were the result of Arpaio  willfully disobeying a 2011 order from Judge Murray Snow in the Melendres v Arpaio civil case. The order forbade the MCSO from stopping people without cause based on mere appearance in an attempt to round up undocumented aliens. Snow found that Arpaio had ignored his order and referred him for criminal contempt prosecution by the US Justice Department. The case was randomly assigned to Judge Bolton. Since the charges were for misdemeanor contempt Arpaio was not entitled to a jury trial.

This is from Judge Snow’s order in 2011:

MCSO and all of its officers are hereby enjoined from detaining any person based only on knowledge or reasonable belief, without more, that the person is unlawfully present within the United States, because as a matter of law such knowledge does not amount to reasonable belief that the person either violated or conspired to violate the Arizona smuggling statute, or any other state or federal law.

Arpaio’s attorneys had argued that Snow’s order was confusing and that Arpaio had not meant to violate it. Judge Bolton disagreed:

The Court concludes that Judge Snow’s order was clear and definite. This conclusion does not require looking beyond the plain words of the order, but even considering the relief sought by the plaintiffs in Melendres, the conduct Defendant and the MCSO had been accused of, and what Judge Snow was seeking to prevent, there is no doubt that the order prohibited the MCSO from conducting detentions in violation of plaintiffs’ constitutional rights. The Melendres plaintiffs complained that MCSO violated their constitutional rights by detaining them without state charges solely for violating civil immigration law and Judge Snow’s order expressly prohibited the MCSO from continuing that conduct.…

It is clear that Defendant had knowledge of the Order. Mr. Casey testified that on December 23, 2011 he made a phone call to Defendant informing him that Judge Snow had issued an order regarding the Melendres plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment and that a preliminary injunction had been issued. . . . . The evidence also shows that Mr. MacIntyre, an MCSO employee, lawyer and frequent legal advisor to Defendant, read a portion of the preliminary injunction aloud twice to Defendant and others at an MCSO Executive Cabinet meeting in January 2012.

A few weeks ago former Cold Case Posse lead Mike Zullo and his friend Carl Gallups tried to make the same argument that the order was not clear. Zullo appeared on Gallups “Freedom Friday” radio show on July 7 to discuss the contempt trial. Sharon Rondeau an ardent supporter of both Arpaio and Zullo wrote:

Both Gallups and Zullo said that Arpaio’s previous actions to enforce immigration laws were a manifestation of a conflict between state and federal statutes.  Moreover, Zullo said that some of the prosecution’s witnesses, in his view, aided Arpaio’s cause to prove himself innocent of the charge.

“My understanding is the witnesses called by the DOJ to testify against Arpaio actually helped Arpaio,” Zullo said.  “Not one of those witnesses ever said that Arpaio told them to disregard that order…”

At issue is whether or not Arpaio willfully violated Snow’s order.  “When this thing finally gets adjudicated…then we’re going to make arrangements to have his attorney on your show…” Zullo told Gallups.

That Zullo and Gallups got everything about the case completely wrong should come as no surprise. It’s what they do. (Apologies to GEICO)

We look forward to hearing Arpaio’s attorneys discuss the conviction.

Bolton said the order was “crystal clear” and directly addressed the contention that Arpaio had delegated compliance of the order to his subordinates:

Defendant argues that he has not willfully violated the preliminary injunction order because he delegated enforcement of the order to his subordinates. (Ex. 3A, 478:23-479:2, 482:22-25; Ex. 3F 2527:5-10.) However, willful ignorance of a court order  which a person has knowledge of and a duty to fulfill does not excuse non-compliance therewith. United States v. Hoffman , 13 F.2d 269, 277 (N.D. Ill. 1925), aff’d , 13 F.2d 278 (7th Cir. 1926), and aff’d sub nom. Westbrook v. United States, 13 F.2d 280 (7th Cir. 1926)

…

The evidence shows a flagrant disregard for Judge Snow’s order. Credible Judge Snow’s order. Credible testimony shows that Defendant knew of the order and what the order meant in regards to the MCSO’s policy of detaining persons who did not  have state charges for turnover to ICE for civil immigration violations. Despite this knowledge, Defendant broadcast to the world and to his subordinates that he would and they should continue “what he had always been doing.” The Court concludes that there is no doubt that Defendant knew or should have known that his conduct violated the preliminary injunction order. Greyhound, 508 F.2d at 541. The Court finds Defendant’s violation of the order willful.

Bolton scheduled Arpaio’s sentencing for October 5, 2017 at 10:00 AM MST. The full text of the Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law attached here:

Bolton Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law

Arpaio said he would appeal the conviction and again ask for a jury trial.