Video: Mark Kessler rants on YouTube

The police chief of a tiny borough in Pennsylvania’s coal country, who also heads a militia formed to oppose any new federal gun control measures, has been suspended for 30 days after he posted a series of profanity-laced videos to YouTube in which he angrily fires several automatic weapons and uses the word  “libtards” in reference to liberals.

The Gilberton Borough Council voted 5-1 during an executive session last night to suspend Mark Kessler, saying he did not have permission to use the weapons he fired in the videos, The Patriot-News reported. The council did not suspend him because of the content of his videos. “It was just the misuse of borough property,” Gilberton Mayor Mary Lou Hannon said. ( continue to full post… )

It seems there’s room for WorldNetDaily (WND) to have one more obsession related to President Obama’s birth certificate, though this time it has little to do with Obama himself.

This week, WND announced its plans to appeal a federal judge’s decision to dismiss its $250 million lawsuit against Esquire magazine. At issue is a satirical piece executive editor Mark Warren wrote that claimed, quite comically, that WND editor-in-chief Joseph Farah was pulping the first print run of Jerome Corsi’s Where’s the Birth Certificate? The case that Barack Obama is not Eligible to be President. The book, which WND had trumpeted as the definitive work on the question of Obama’s provenance, was about to go on sale when Obama released his long-form birth certificate last year – a fact that, for most, ended the “birther” debate. ( continue to full post… )

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., this week dismissed a lawsuit that WorldNetDaily (WND) Editor-in-Chief Joseph Farah filed against Esquire over a satirical article the magazine posted online claiming that Farah had recalled 20,000 copies of Jerome Corsi’s “birther” book.

The article, tagged as “humor,” said that WND was pulping Corsi’s Where’s The Birth Certificate? The Case that Barack Obama is not Eligible to be President. The book was about to go on sale when Obama released his long-form birth certificate, in effect making Farah, WND, Corsi and the title of Corsi’s book look ridiculous. WND’s complaint accused Esquire, reporter Mark Warren and parent company Hearst Communications Inc. of defaming WND and demanded nearly $250 million in damages.

This week, U.S. District Judge Rosemary M. Collyer saw otherwise, ruling that Esquire’s article was protected under the First Amendment as satirical expression related to a matter of public interest. ( continue to full post… )

Orly Taitz is not happy. For the past several years, the California-based swimsuit model-turned-lawyer has poured her heart and soul into an endless series of lawsuits alleging that President Obama is not a U.S. citizen and is therefore ineligible for office. Now, she says, Jerome Corsi – the devoted birther and conspiracy-monger who authored last year’s ill-timed Where’s the Birth Certificate? – is ruining everything.

“JEROME CORSI IS DESTROYING THE CASE ON WHICH I WORKED FOR 4 YEARS 24/7/365,” reads a headline posted Sunday on Taitz’ website. “HE IS GRATUITOUSLY MAKING UP AN AMERICAN FATHER FOR OBAMA.”

Actually, what Corsi is doing is a little lazier than that. Perhaps realizing that the “birther” fad is winding down despite the release, last November, of his e-book Where’s the REAL Birth Certificate, the relentless right-wing attack dog has tentatively embraced someone else’s alternative theory of Obama’s provenance. In a recent article for WorldNetDaily, Corsi suggested that a new documentary makes a “compelling case” that the president’s real father was not Kenyan-born Barack Obama Sr. at all. ( continue to full post… )

An Alaska man who is challenging President Barack Obama’s eligibility for office on the grounds that the president is a “mulatto” based his complaint on an argument common to the neo-Confederate and antigovernment “sovereign citizen” movements, Hatewatch has learned.

In a complaint filed Tuesday with the Alaska Division of Elections, Gordon Warren Epperly of Juneau argued that Obama isn’t eligible for office because, as a person of mixed-race descent, he is not a “natural-born citizen” of the United States. ( continue to full post… )

Adding an extra layer of surreality to the already farcical Georgia proceedings regarding President Obama’s constitutional eligibility for office, neither the defendant nor his counsel appeared at this morning’s hearing before an administrative law judge.

Yesterday, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp refused a last-minute request by the president’s attorney to cancel the hearing. Arguing that the administrative judge, Michael Malihi, has “exercised no control whatsoever over this proceeding,” Obama lawyer Michael Jablonski asked Kemp to “bring an end to this baseless, costly and unproductive hearing” before it further debased his office and the reputation of Georgia.

Kemp declined, writing that “if you and your client choose to suspend your participation in the … proceedings, please understand that you do so at your own peril.” ( continue to full post… )

A Georgia administrative law judge has left in place a subpoena directing President Obama to appear at a hearing on Thursday regarding a “birther” complaint challenging the president’s eligibility for office.

Deputy Chief Judge Michael Malihi issued his decision Friday, writing that the president’s legal team “failed to enlighten the court with any legal authority” to back up its argument that no U.S. president should be compelled to attend a court hearing. They also failed to prove that attending the hearing would be “unreasonable and oppressive” and that the president’s testimony would be “irrelevant, immaterial or cumulative,” he wrote.

Orly Taitz, who filed one of the complaints and has for years led the farcical battle to prove that the president is constitutionally unqualified for office, called Malihi’s decision a “major victory.” ( continue to full post… )

The birther movement, which has bedeviled President Obama since well before his inauguration with questions about his citizenship, is celebrating something of a watershed moment as it prepares to have a day in court.

Earlier this month, Deputy Chief Judge Michael Malihi in Georgia’s Office of State Administrative Hearings denied a motion from the Obama campaign to dismiss four complaints seeking to remove the president’s name from the state’s Democratic primary ballot in March. The decision ultimately cleared the way for a procedural hearing on the challenges.

“I can’t believe this,” Orly Taitz, an attorney who filed one of the complaints, exclaimed on her blog. “[Obama] will have to stand trial to prove his eligibility for office.” ( continue to full post… )