Birther Backfire

For the last few days, birthers far and wide have been tickled pink by the tale of one Stefan Frederick Cook, a major in the Army Reserve who received orders to go to Afghanistan. Rather than comply, Cook sued the Army, claiming his orders were illegal because the commander-in-chief is not eligible to be president. His attorney is Orly Taitz, the California dentist-turned-birther-lawyer who is in trouble with the state bar association for a whole host of unethical practices, including soliciting clients, improper communication with judges, threatening violence, and so on.

After Cook sued, the Army withdrew the orders, whereupon Taitz ran to WorldNetDaily (where else?) and declared victory:

"We won! We won before we even arrived," she said with excitement. "It means that the military has nothing to show for Obama. It means that the military has directly responded by saying Obama is illegitimate - and they cannot fight it. Therefore, they are revoking the order!"

Um, no. It actually means the Army realized that sending a publicly insubordinate officer to a war zone is not a good idea. Rather than run the risk of said officer spreading sedition through the ranks, they took the smart route.

But it now looks like there is far more to Cook's story than was first apparent. On February 1, 2009, he contacted Taitz to sign up for her (now dismissed) class-action lawsuit challenging President Obama's citizenship status. He is also a frequent blogger on the Free Republic website under the user name "roaddog727" - specifically, he posted one item, titled "WHITE PAPER, Obama's Eligibility to be President of the United States," on March 25.

Why are those dates important? Because on May 8, three months after signing onto Taitz's lawsuit and six weeks after posting his blog entry, Cook volunteered for a yearlong tour in Afghanistan beginning on July 15.

That's right, he asked for orders from a chain of command he does not recognize as lawful.

After his requested orders were issued on June 9, as a volunteer reservist he could have asked for their revocation at any time - but he didn't. Instead, he waited until just one week before his deployment date to file suit on July 8.

In a nutshell, this stinks to high heaven. It has all the hallmarks of a hoax, and a particularly messy one at that. It sure looks like Cook asked for the posting only because he wanted to use it as a vehicle to propel his birther claims onto front pages across the nation. (It is as yet unknown what role, if any, Taitz played in his decision to sue the Army.) But the plan exploded in his face, with bad consequences.

You see, Cook's civilian job is at a Pentagon contractor called Simtech. Not surprisingly, the Defense Department took a very dim view of someone who abuses the reservist system as part of a blatant political stunt and yanked his security clearance, thus barring him from DOD facilities. Since he was unable to do his job due to his own willful actions, Simtech fired him. So he has now lost his job, and by this point is probably wishing he had never heard of Taitz.

The Army Reserve will probably take an equally dim view of his actions. I see a court-martial in Cook's future, and a malpractice lawsuit in Taitz's.