I initially thought that Orly Taitz was the biggest strike against the credibility of the birther cause. After all, we're talking about a woman who studied law at an online degree mill and has been sued 34 times for medical malpractice. But no--her partner, Philip Berg, who is supposedly a Democrat, has some credibility issues that, in my view, dwarf even those of Taitz. We already know that Berg was a truther--something which by itself should blow apart his credibility. But oh, the things that have come up since he became a birther.
For starters, when Berg initially announced he was suing to get Obama thrown off the ballot, he seemed to have forgotten one important detail.
Mr. Berg has posted documents on his Web site, ObamaCrimes.com, he says back up his claims. But he said he doesn't know where they originated.
Believe it or not, that's not the best part. Berg was on the business end of one of the most severe smackdowns ever handed down to a lawyer.
According to The Legal Intelligencer, in 2001 Berg was retained to represent a contractor being sued by several pension funds for missing pension fund contributions. Berg didn't even respond, and a court issued a summary $5,300 judgment for the pension funds. A few months later, the pension funds won an additional $4,700 judgment to recover fees for the work they had to do to respond when Berg finally tried to get the judgment thrown out.
In late 2004, the contractor sued Berg for malpractice in Pennsylvania state court. Only then did Berg bother to actually respond to the original pension fund suit, claiming that the pension fund was making a fraudulent claim. That suit was shifted to federal court, and Berg's attempt to collect damages was thrown out. The pension fund then filed for sanctions, and Berg again failed to respond. The judge, already ticked off, said Berg's claim of fraud was "inadequately pled, not grounded in fact, time-barred, and utterly irrelevant to the pending malpractice action against him." He then ordered Berg to pay over $10,000 in legal fees and complete six hours of ethics courses (courses he must have slept through, given his behavior in the birther suits). He also recommended that the Pennsylvania Bar Association investigate Berg's conduct. Read the full decision here.
So in other words, one of the leaders of the birther cause is a conspiracy theorist and an attorney who has been proven to be asleep at the switch. Reminds me of the fact that the "he's a Muslim" canard was started by a vexatious litigant, an anti-Semite and a fugitive. In other words--the birthers have even less credibility than their claims.
(cross-posted at The Christian Dem Home Journal)