With all due respect Mr. Leghorn, as a long time lurker (infrequent poster), it seems to me that Balak is a "birther" pretending to be an "anti-birther." The website he lists on his page is supposedly dedicated to "misinformation" and the only thing on it is an essay "The Disinformationlist". Strangely the date the essay was posted coincides closely with the date he joined this forum.

Also, when she tells her other "client" to DEMAND a default, she was most CERTAINLY practicing law without a license. Watch it, and see if you don't think so too. If I were on that committee, I would have ended it and ejected them, at that point.

I noticed that as well. Well-planned trolling has outed itself.

You do know about the rules of evidence? As well as the burden of proof? Evidence is in fact 'pre-weighed' all the time.

This is what is the craziest! Even if they are correct that "it" is a forgery, what the "it" is, is an Internet image, not the certified copy. Geez, Lu-eez. Ya think even those moronic Birthers who believe these "experts" would figure that out.

Unauthenticated documents and hearsay do not get into the record to weigh against anything.

Everything... everything they present is unauthenticated documents and hearsay, sometimes double and triple hearsay.

SLQ: "I am truly confused about your second paragraph, but it is irrelevant to the subject at hand. If that were the case, Congress would take impeachment action, and it is doubtful he would run for re-election, so any ballot issue would be moot. Such a candidate would have no chance of winning an election. It's an absurd hypothetical. This hearing board has no authority to entertain speculative garbage."

I am not aware of any Garbage Exception which operates to automatically detect Garbage Suits. The Garbage tag is usually attached after either a hearing or some other gatekeeping function. With that in mind, this panel should have either accepted the garbage, then properly labled it as garbage after judicially sniffing it, or if they pre-weighed the garbage before the hearing, so announced in open court that it was garbage and they did not intend to hear it.

No, you don't pre-weigh the evidence. But you do determine if is it admissible, i.e. relevant, properly authenticated, etc. In a trial, this is usually done via motions in limine, and it is all hammered out before evidence is ever heard by a jury. If it is ruled not admissible, it is not ever heard by the jury. In your hypothetical, the 10 people have personal knowledge of what they saw, and if they are deemed competent to testify, and the probative value outweighs the prejudicial effect, they can probably testify as to what they saw (provided there is not another objection, which is sustained). The fingerprints would be subject to a Daubert or Frye hearing, which examines whether the method used is generally accepted in the scientific community. So the fingerprints would probably be in. The girlfriend also has personal knowledge, so presuming she is competent, etc., she could probably testify. A custodian of records from the liquor store would probably have to authenticate the receipt, and their process for ensuring the time stamp is accurate. Either the defense attorney or prosecutor would have the opportunity to challenge each of these prior to trial.

The hearing officers made these determinations during the hearing, and ruled the evidence inadmissible, using the rules of evidence. They had the full record before them, so could determine that Orly didn't have proper experts and hadn't authenticated her records.

So what is your point?

Edited for clarity.

Not to nitpcik but there is a neat little function built into forums called the "Quote" button, that way you're not manually copying and pasting the text you're replying to into a reply. The forum will do that for you.

Are the ten people's testimonies, the red dye, the fingerprint, the receipt and the girlfriend's alibi admissible evidence? You seem to be missing that important distinction, as well as these proceedings not being a court. Orly provided virtually no admissible evidence. Her documents were not authenticated, her flights of fancy about 1890 and false SSNs are nothing but hypotheticals, and her testimony about her illegal use of e-Verify, while possibly admissible, is of no use in determining whether President Obama should stay on the ballot. She has the burden of proof but she failed to meet it. She labours under the misapprehension that all she has to do is to create some doubt in people's minds by sliming him, but she is wrong in this as she is in so many other things.

The quote function is your friend.

They did examine the evidence before the hearing, as they stated, and listened to some of her testimony, and announced that it was garbage. So we agree, no?

Actually, they went one better than that. The female member, when it was moved that Orly's "evidence" be admitted to the record, objected to its admission, stating that she'd reviewed it all, that it was not evidence of anything and was merely (not exact words) but unauthenticated documents and hearsay, and she did not want it "admitted" to the record until they had heard more about it.

So while she had reviewed it, and properly so, and had "pre-weighed" it, as you stated, and also properly so, she still was willing to hear more about it before either admitting or discarding it as exactly what she stated it was, which it is.

Isn't this what they did?

Thanks. I just didn't want to copy voluminous sections of previous info.

Hell, she was practicing law from the second the challenger turned the mic over to her, to let her witness whatever she was going to witness. No questions or anything, she just started on her usual spiel.

IANAL, but I'm pretty sure that witnesses generally don't get to pontificate of their own accord.

But Orly did not offer up anything remotely resembling evidence. Just because she calls it evidence does not make it so. Her accusations that Obama uses a fake SSN are not supported by factual evidence. In fact, the evidence would almost definitely disprove her accusation if presented. It sounds like you think Orly should have won because she presented speculation and unfounded accusations but the other side presented nothing.

Look, if I went to court and claimed you impersonated me, and I offered Intternet posts and e-mails without being able to prove you wrote and sent the emails and you did in fact impersonate me, would you think it is fair for you to lose because you did not get a lawyer and pay to go to New Jersey to answer absurd accusations from someone who has no evidence because you have never done those things?
She doesn't deserve a hearing at all but got one because it was required to give her one. But she had no evidence of anything except the crimes she committed, and most of what she presented is not relevant even if her exhibits meant what she says they do.

Balak, I'm not being snarky here. I'm not following your reasoning and I'm trying to figure out what one of us is missing here.

All of the lawyers posting on this thread today are in agreement that for documents to be entered as "evidence" they must be both authenticated and relevant to the inquiry at hand. As Maine and others have asked, what documents did Orly attempt to enter that were both authenticated documents and relevant to a challenge to President Obama's placement on the Indiana primary ballot?

See, I'd agree with Balak if the birthers had presented, say I don't know, immigration records showing that President Obama only returned to America oh, say 5 years ago and had lived in Indonesia since he was six, even though he claimed to have been a state legislator in Illinois during that time. (I'll leave the improbability of that happening at the Presidential level, though candidates do get bounced for failing to meet residency requirements at lower levels). Those immigration records, if obtained and properly authenticated would make a compelling case. If the commission had said at the outset, "you're birthers we don't have to listen to any stinking evidence," I would then agree that such a thing would be a travesty*. But they didn't do such a thing. A member asked a question about a citation to a law that would require a valid SSN to be eligible for the Presidency.

As far as I know, it is not up to the Ballot Commission to investigate every random claim that a nutjob makes as it pertains to the President's life. For all I know, maybe Bill Ayers did write Dreams of my Father. If that unbelievably stupid Internet rumor is true, well that might call greatly into question much of Obama's story of who he is and certainly call into question his character. But whether Bill Ayers wrote the book or not is completely irrelevant to the Ballot Commission, just like the SSN. The burden is on Orly to do the investigating. To come up with evidence that the President is ineligible to be placed on the ballot. That she addresses the burden by defecating her word salads of illegally obtained documents and other things that aren't evidence (let alone authenticated evidence) is her failing. There's a reason she has repeatedly lost to an empty chair.

*But it likely wouldn't go that way because if Dr. Orly Taitz Esquire had actual evidence rather than various unauthenticated and irrelevant materials cobbled together as part of a nonsensical narrative, she could go to the media and win there regardless of whether a ballot commission acted as petty tyrants or not.

Except that she is but one of the four panelists, which indicates 3 of the 4 did not read through it in any depth. This acts to permit one judge to testify about the facts and evidence, or lack thereof, for the benefit of the other 3 judges. The other 3 people are there to perform that function, not to have it done for them in this manner. This probably violates a rule or two, at least in spirit.

Of course it is. But Balak is being deliberately obtuse.

FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY:

http://bleachandlight.blogspot.com/2012 ... diana.html

I have not done anything like an edit yet, much less a listen-along. Probably tomorrow I'll fill in the question marks. Quote anything you like.

Ah. That screeching I just heard was Balak moving the goalposts for what constitutes a fair hearing.

I am putting Balak on ignore and I advise others do so as well. This argument seems to be about whether there should even be rules of admissibility at all. There are and they were properly applied.

I'm just pointing this out to save him any wasted time posting things expecting a response from me. The last batch of responses is so completely disconnected from the reality of evidentiary rules that frankly I don't see why to shit up this thread further with what looks to me like desperate attempts to distract from Orly's incompetence.

I have no idea why this poster might do this, but whatever the reason, it has rapidly gone from merely ill-informed to actively perverse.

You rock!

That one panel member states she read the documents does not indicate the other three did not. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Only in Orlyworld would your contention be true of necessity. Here in the real world, people can do things (such as read zibits and determine them to be garbage on a shitty stick) without having to shout from the rooftops that they have done so.