There were a lot of classic moments in U.S. District Judge Clay Land's order hitting Birther lawyer Orly Taitz with a $20,000 sanction. But there was one that stood out above all the rest, in part because it's disturbing, in part because it sums up much of the Birther movement and in part because it was just funny.
At one point in his ruling, Land -- explaining why President Obama's eligibility for his post, or lack thereof, is not a matter for the courts -- writes:
One can readily see the wisdom of entrusting the elected representatives of the people with the ultimate decision as to whether a President should be removed from office rather than litigating the issue in our courts. Although counsel’s present concern is the location of the President’s birth, it does not take much imagination to extend the theory to his birthday .... If he refused to admit publicly that he is older than the constitutional minimum age of thirty-five, should Ms. Taitz be allowed to file a lawsuit and have a court order him to produce his birth certificate? Or perhaps an eccentric citizen has become convinced that the President is an alien from Mars, and the courts should order DNA testing to enforce the Constitution.
Land isn't kidding about that last part, apparently. In a footnote attached to that argument, he writes:
The Court does not make this observation simply as a rhetorical device for emphasis; the Court has actually received correspondence assailing its previous order in which the sender, who, incidentally, challenged the undersigned to a “round of fisticuffs on the Courthouse Square,” asserted that the President is not human.
The story doesn't even end there. The person who wanted to fight Land apparently e-mailed Taitz herself to brag about it -- and Taitz posted the e-mail to her blog.
"I have challanged Judge Land to a round of “Fist a Cuff’s” in the Couthouse Square, via E-mail... I told him that I might possibly beat some sense into him," the e-mailer wrote Taitz. "The man has insulted Me,U and 1/2 the Citizenry of the United States, by tossing ur case and calling it 'Frivolous'....No such thing as a Stupid Question, and I want to know who or what this thing in the Whitehouse is... I will let u know what Judge Land’s response is..."
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