Craziness scale from least crazy to most crazy: Weird, crazy, insane, psycho, birther

[ck4829]

Having been stymied at every turn by the courts, by elected officials and by the facts, the "Birthers" -- those people who believe Barack Obama is not eligible for the presidency -- are now getting even more creative. In the movement's latest big action, a group in Georgia formed a "citizen grand jury" and "indicted" Obama on charges including fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud.

This is no April Fool's joke; the people behind it are deadly serious. Georgia resident Carl Swensson, who took the lead in forming the "grand jury," has even been aping a prosecutor's language in discussing his actions, saying he can't discuss the indictment in detail because of the possibility Obama will be prosecuted. And he's sent the indictment to the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia and the state attorney general, among others.

Swensson claims the authority to do this under a rather novel interpretation of the Magna Carta, the 13th century document laying out the rights of British nobles. It appears Swensson based his legal reasoning on the arguments of a tax denier named William Thornton. (As Jason Zengerle wrote in the latest New York Times Magazine, tax deniers are a whole other subset of conspiracy theorists, who rely on similarly creative and frivolous arguments in an attempt to get out of paying federal income taxes. They're almost always unsuccessful.)

Swensson and Thornton rely upon the 61st clause of the Magna Carta for their arguments, saying it's valid precedent under common law. This clause allowed the English barons to form a 25-man council from among their membership that was charged with enforcing the document. If these barons decided that the king was violating their rights, the clause empowered them to engage in what was essentially an armed rebellion until the king was forced to submit, and kept them from being executed for treason afterwards.

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2009/04/01/birthers/index.html

[MadHound]

1. Has anybody bothered to inform this idiot that the Magna Carta only has precedence in Britain?

We broke ties with that country a bit over two hundred years ago, and while the Magna Carta is an inspiration, in part, for our Constitution, it by no means holds any legal sway or power over anything in this country.

But hey, perhaps this is a good thing. Having idiots like this waste their time on something that is rather stupid, but relatively harmless keeps them from getting into other mischief that could be much more dangerous:shrug:

[YOY]

2. That is what caught me hardest as well.

That is some severe WTFage.

[MadHound]

3. Next stop, they're going to start citing the legal code of Hammurabi

Idiots, desperate idiots.