Posted on 11/30/2010 11:42:20 PM PST by rxsid
"Lakin not allowed witnesses, documents, explanation at court-martial Dec. 14!
Lakin Family Attempts to Avoid Confrontation Ignored by Obama
Letters obtained by The Gazette reveal the extent to which a decorated Army officer and his brother struggled to resolve concerns over the Presidents eligibility prior to the officer being court-martialed.
The Lakins are long-time Greeley residents. Three Lakin brothers; Dr. Greg Lakin, Capt. Gary Lakin USCG and Lt. Col. Terrance Lakin graduated from University High School in 1977, 1980 and 1983 respectively. The brothers' parents still live in Greeley and have a long history of supporting humanitarian causes in the area.
Lt. Col. Lakin is currently scheduled to be court-martialed Dec. 14 for disobeying orders to deploy after exhausting numerous attempts to resolve issues regarding the Presidents eligibility to be Commander-in-Chief. The specific issue involved is the Constitutional requirement that the President be a natural born citizen.
Dr. Greg Lakin has previously been a member of the Greeley Police Department and was a prosecutor in Hawaii. Greg, who was interviewed on the Peter Boyles radio show on Nov. 9, said Lakin, mulled over this for a long period of time before he made his decision to refuse to deploy to Afghanistan. He strongly disputed the contention that his brother was a coward for deploying, noting Terry had already served in both Bosnia and Afghanistan.
...
In an interview with the Gazette, Dr. Lakin shared copies of letters he and his brother sent to the President and Hawaiian Governor Linda Lingle asking for a resolution of this issue. Greg said the letters were written with a very humble spirit in an attempt to seek information verifying Barack Obamas birthplace.
...
Lt. Col. Lakin sent a letter to the President prior to being charged saying, as part of the deployment orders, he was required to submit his long form birth certificate and he was glad to obey this order, and will provide a certified copy of my original birth certificate with common, standard identifiers, including the name of an attending physician and a hospital. He said he attempted through my chain of command for many months to get answers to the relentless questions surrounding your eligibility, but was informed that I lack standing. I also sought answers, unsuccessfully, through my Congressional delegation. He went on to explain the reason for his request had nothing to do with personal differences. Please assure the American people that you are indeed constitutionally eligible to serve as Commander-in-Chief and thereby may lawfully direct service members into harm's way. I will be proud to deploy to Afghanistan to further serve my country and my fellow soldiers, but want to do so with the knowledge and peace of mind that this important provision of our Constitution is respected and obeyed.
Dr. Lakin, in his first letter to the president prior to his brothers arraignment, implored Obama to put the matter to rest stressing his brother tried to resolve the matter through proper channels but was rebuffed. Approximately 20 months ago while continuing to serve in the Army he attempted to seek clarification regarding your birth certificate through proper military channels. Lt. Col. Lakin filed his requests through the normal chain of command (as the military advised) but continued to meet with frustration as the Army was unable to provide any clarification with regard to your place of birth. He believes this raises a Constitutional issue, a Constitution which he has sworn to uphold. He stresses that his brother would gladly deploy in an instant once his questions have been answered, saying Terry remains ready and willing to continue to serve his country in areas of conflict - as he has done in Afghanistan and Bosnia. I believe that upon meeting with my idealistic and principled brother you would find him professional, compassionate and worth helping. Dr. Lakin even suggested a way to defuse the situation saying that a meeting with him or our family, whether you chose to do this in private or public setting, would likely defuse this matter.
He also sent a letter to Hawaiian Governor Linda Lingle who he met several times while he was a prosecuting attorney in Maui County. He told her that a short meeting or phone with him or family (whether done privately or publicly - your choice), would completely defuse this matter.
...
Dr. Lakin sent another letter to the President after the initial court-martial date was set. In the letter Greg told the president he was a supporter who was pleased to see him elected in 2008. He reiterated that Terry made this decision only after other options had been exhausted. It is a shame that no one above him in the military ranks and no one in Congress, who represents him, could address his concerns so that he could have avoided the prospect of such an enormous penalty for staying faithful to the oath he swore as an officer. He went on to say that Col. Lakin was far from alone in his concerns saying, Many others in uniform share this concern and have conveyed their support to my brother.
Showing he understands the divisiveness the issue has caused, he told the President, We should use all means necessary to avoid an escalated controversy this fall when his court-martial is scheduled. There is much strife and tension in this nation now and this would not be healthy or productive. Emphasizing the desire to find a resolution of the eligibility issue once and for all so the matter could be put to rest, Lakin said, My family stands ready to provide any further information you might need and to offer our assistance to try to broker any compromise or negotiation that might be acceptable to all parties. We are deeply distressed over this situation, and do not believe that Terry deserves to be imprisoned simply for seeking assurances that he is following legal orders.
Greg stated that he has not received any response to his letters and is concerned the Army will simply take the easy way out by avoiding the issue and simply lock up his brother. He said based on his experience as a prosecutor in situations like this where there is no case law, Judges go in with a pre-determined idea how they are going to decide it and take case law and policy statements to say whatever they want. There is no magic law that supports either position.
Greg said if his brother is not allowed to present evidence on his behalf and is convicted he would be forced to leave his practice to advocate for his brother saying, My reluctant but determined response would be to forego my busy medical practice treating drug addicts and elderly patients to organize a public outcry for Americas new military political prisoner.
As the issue drags on, more members of the media appear to be mentioning the issue. Conan OBrien joked about the President being ineligible in one of his monologues. Rush Limbaugh, who has previously made comments regarding Obamas birth certificate, said last week, We have an imposter for all intents and purposes serving in the White House.
Saturday Night Live has also mentioned the issue with an opening skit having Sen. Harry Reid asking the President to produce his birth certificate. ABC News Jake Tapper questioned White House Security Advisor David Axelrods statement that the President has released his birth certificate asking specifically about the long form containing the name and signature of the attending physician."
From: http://www.greeleygazette.com/press/?p=6890
>Under the scenario presented , if a soldier killed someone the military would hold that person guilty of murder as the orders were unlawful even if the soldier did not know so.
I’m not sure that is the case. Does a soldier need orders to validate his upholding of the Constitution? {As shown the Constitution itself guarantees protection against invasion.}
Certainly he would be condemned if he defended his actions on “following orders” because the orders are invalid, but what if he defended based on the Constitution itself? {This is, in part, why I chose this scenario... there is a rational Constitutional defense for soldiers taking the action completely separate from the orders themselves.}
>Any order given by obama is unlawful and should not be obeyed.
Agreed.
>After world war II we put to death soldiers who were just obeying orders, because we considered those orders unlawful
How can obeying the highest lawful authority in the United States, the Constitution, be unlawful?
That is to say, would those orders be legitimate? If not, then why are Obamas orders legitimate?
Outstanding-gedanken-experiment ping!
However, I'd say a closer analogy would be to question the validity of the orders if there were *unConstitutional*, which is the kind Obama is issuing. In fact, where is the Left with its "illegal war" chant, because Congress never declared war on Iraq?
Yes, it would be a closer analogy; but it would not be isolating the variable that is in question.
Wasn’t there a guy who actually did that - did present himself as having a position he didn’t really have? I don’t know how he did it or how they found it out and had him removed. Do you remember that? It was within the last year.
The Article 92 elements are clear that orders given beyond the authority of the person who gave them are not lawful. So neither you (in that scenario) nor Obama (in our current demise) could give lawful orders if you had no legitimate position giving you the authority to give those orders.
The anti-birthers will probably say it is only equivalent to ask whether the orders to move (which would be given by your subordinate) would be lawful if you gave orders to deploy, in that scenario. I don’t see that it makes any difference whether we’re talking about your order to deploy or the subordinate’s order to move. Either way what invalidates the lawfulness of the order is not the issue of criminality but the issue of authority. An order is not lawful - regardless of how non-criminal or Constitutional it is - if it is given by someone acting beyond their authority.
If you acted beyond your authority to order deployment, then there was no valid order for your subordinates to implement and their orders to implement deployment would be beyond their authority to give.
Does that make sense?
In Lakin’s case, the authority to “use appropriate force” in response to 9-11 and terrorism was specifically given by Congress to “the President” only. Anybody else implementing the use of force is acting beyond their authority if they don’t have the orders of a valid, Constitution-compliant “President”.
Lind’s argument is that the military can be authorized by Congress to give orders independent of “the President” so Lakin’s orders don’t depend on “the President”. Whether any orders through the chain of command are truly independent of “the President” can be debated, but in Lakin’s case it is irrelevant because the specific orders Lakin received were in support of combat operations that Congress specifically allowed only “the President” to use. Without “the President” deciding to use force in Afghanistan, any brigade commander implementing the use of force is acting beyond their authority.
That’s my understanding. Is there anything I’m overlooking on this?
Very good scenario. Thanks for posting it.
Good counterpoint.
Conceded.
Another point is that Lind uses “lawful” to mean anything that must be obeyed. Until you know that the person doesn’t hold the position he claims to have, the orders he gives must be obeyed because of the de facto officer doctrine. But the orders were NEVER “lawful”, according to the definitions included in the elements of Article 92.
Lind worms her way around that in her judgment by totally ignoring the elements of Article 92 when saying what constitutes a “lawful order”, even though she does mention the “beyond their authority” language. In effect she says orders are not lawful if given by someone acting beyond their authority, but they have to be obeyed anyway because of the de facto officer doctrine, and anything that has to be obeyed is lawful, so it’s lawful after all.
Chasing tails. Not lawful but lawful all at the same time, if you believe her convoluted spin.
They’re going to convict a man of violating Article 92 by ignoring what ARticle 92 actually says. Blatant violation of due process.
“How can obeying the highest lawful authority in the United States, the Constitution, be unlawful?”
When those in power do not accept or obey the Constitution!
I doubt that there is a single person in congress or the Supreme Court that does not know that obama is not eligible to be President. And they all are willing to stand by and allow Lakin to serve prison time for something he is not guilty of. “Absolute power corrupts absolutely”
>Not lawful but lawful all at the same time, if you believe her convoluted spin.
That is exactly what happens when you have people who have swallowed hook-line-sinker-rod-and-reel the philosophy of relativism; the wholesale rejection of the Law of Non-Contradiction which states: no statement may be simultaneously both True and False.
>Theyre going to convict a man of violating Article 92 by ignoring what ARticle 92 actually says. Blatant violation of due process.
*sigh* - It looks that way.
If the unit accepted you as legitimate then I see no reason why the men wouldn’t obey your orders. The top Generals in the Pentagon have accepted Zero as being legitimate, so to them his orders are legitimate.
The current choice for legislative candidates is lawyers who cannot earn a comfortable living working in the Courts and we see the corruption that has resulted from them. Perhaps there is something about needing more combat veterans in our government positions.
The criminals in this situation are the senior members of both parties in the Congress and Senate. They have accepted as their goal, establishing a NWO and having the United Nations as the center of authority.
I cannot comprehend how someone with free personal liberty would voluntarily become a slave. This bureaucratic collectivist one-world government has been the dream of many since the inception of the League of Nations and world peace. When the League of Nations collapsed the United Nations was proposed in 1945 as the replacement. The Charter of the United Nations in no way, shape or form grants individuals the liberty they have under the US Constitution.
“If we do not follow the dictates of our inner moral compass and stand up for human life, then his lawlessness will threaten the peace and democracy of the emerging new world order we now see, this long dreamed-of vision we’ve all worked toward for so long.” — President George Bush (January 1991)
“[The New World Order] cannot happen without U.S. participation, as we are the most significant single component. Yes, there will be a New World Order, and it will force the United States to change it’s perceptions.” — Henry Kissinger, World Affairs Council Press Conference,
Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel , April 19th 1994
“How I Learned to Love the New World Order” -article by Sen. Joseph R. Biden, Jr. in the Wall Street Journal (April 1992)
“We shall have World Government, whether or not we like it. The only question is whether World Government will be achieved by conquest or consent.” — Statement made before the United States Senate on Feb. 7, 1950 by James Paul Warburg
“All of us will ultimately be judged on the effort we have contributed to building a NEW WORLD ORDER.”—Robert Kennedy, former U.S. Attorney-General, 1967.
“Fundamental Bible-believing people do not have the right to indoctrinate their children in their religious beliefs because we, the state, are preparing them for the year 2000, when America will be part of a one-world global society and their children will not fit in.” —Nebraska State Senator Peter Hoagland, speaking on radio in 1983.
“When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of freedom to Americans...” “And so a lot of people say there’s too much personal freedom. When personal freedom’s being abused, you have to move to limit it. That’s what we did in the announcement I made last weekend on the Housing Projects, about how we’re going to have weapon sweeps and more things like that to try to make the people feel safer in their communities”—President Bill Clinton 3-22-94, MTV’s “Enough is Enough”
Does TSA come to your mind when you read this?
“We can’t be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans..”—
Bill Clinton USA Today—3-11-93, page 2a
“We are not going to achieve a new world order without paying for it in blood as well as in words and money.” — Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., in Foreign Affairs (July/August 1995)
I’m sure some will call me a nutcase or worse for posting this but all of it is verifiable.
>If the unit accepted you as legitimate then I see no reason why the men wouldnt obey your orders.
>The top Generals in the Pentagon have accepted Zero as being legitimate, so to them his orders are legitimate.
The question is not that of obedience but that of *lawfulness*.
Consider this State Statute: http://www.conwaygreene.com/nmsu/lpext.dll/nmsa1978/9c0/f2c0/f478/f4a0?fn=document-frame.htm&f=templates&2.0 [NMSA 30-7-2.4 Unlawful carrying of a firearm on university premises; notice; penalty.]
If people obey it makes no impact on its lawfulness, but the State Constitution does; the State Constitution says this:
Art II, Sec. 6. [Right to bear arms.]
No law shall abridge the right of the citizen to keep and bear
arms for security and defense, for lawful hunting and
recreational use and for other lawful purposes, but nothing
herein shall be held to permit the carrying of concealed weapons.
No municipality or county shall regulate, in any way, an incident
of the right to keep and bear arms.
So then, if I were to open-carry my .45 Glock around the University Campus would I be a lawbreaker?
If I would be, then why? [The constitution prohibits laws abridging my use of arm “for security and defense.”]
Not being a lawyer I don’t feel capable of arguing for or against it. I do know there is laws for some that others can ignore. Rep. Charlie Rangell comes to mind. He get’s humiliated where you and I would be serving hard time.
Obama is a key component of the plan for a New World Order.
What SANE, INFORMED person can forget the agonizing, outrageous delay for the “Commander and Thief’s” surge decision?? Months of waiting .. dozens of heartbreaking, needless deaths of our brave troops .. and all political, all arrogance “I won” power and control, to appease his wacko lib base (many of whom could be on this thread).
_______________________________________________________
To surge or not to surge:
Obama’s delay on Afghan decision divides U.S. lawmakers
Published: Sunday, October 25, 2009
###
Excerpt:
Top lawmakers sparred Sunday over the timing of President Barack Obama’s decision on how to move ahead in Afghanistan, with Republicans urging a quick move to boost troop levels and Democrats counseling patience.
*snip*
Republicans said Obama must sign off soon on a recommendation from the top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, to substantially increase the number of American troops there by as many as 40,000 or more. Democrats warned against a hasty decision on any increase.
http://www.cleveland.com/world/index.ssf/2009/10/to_surge_or_not_to_surge_obama.html
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
*snip*
Mr. Obama formally ends a 92-day review of the war in Afghanistan Tuesday night with a nationally broadcast address in which he will lay out his revamped strategy from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. He began rolling out his decision Sunday night, informing key administration officials, military advisers and foreign allies in a series of private meetings and phone calls that stretched into Monday.
*snip*
Speaking to “Early Show” co-anchor Harry Smith Tuesday morning, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs defended the months-long process of deliberation Mr. Obama took to make his final decision.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/12/01/politics/main5846260.shtml
____________________________________________________
IT WAS CLEARLY HIS DECISION AS CIC, and HIS alone, it was the deployment in which Ltc Lakin was included, and the world had to hold its breath until this cretin was damn ready!
Soooo......what you are saying is that everytime a soldier, sailor, airman or marine refuses to deploy, or refuses to obey a lawful order, all they have to do is request that the president of the united states prove where he was born, how he was raised, and must show up at his or her court martial???? If you believe this, you are an idiot, and not worthy of further intelligent discussion...go back to DU, where the truly insane hang out...
see my previous post, and head on over the DU, where you belong, troll
sorry buddy...........you make far too much sense.. you do not belong on this emotion riddled thread... :)
Lakin timeline of concern of CinCs Constitutional eligibility:
OCT/NOV/DEC 2008
October was looking at volunteering to deploy with my old unit that was deploying to Iraq. Started to learn more about the issues and concerns. Stopped my efforts to volunteer to deploy.
JAN/FEB/MAR 2009
Sought out opinions from supervisors, friends and family.
Called Legal Assistance at Aberdeen Proving Grounds. They returned my call. I discussed with some staff member. He stated he needed to research a little and would call me back. I called at least 1-2x/per week for about 3 weeks with leaving messages on voice mail or not getting an answer.
Proceeded to submit an Article 138 through my Company Commander against BHO. This was submitted at the end of March 2009.
Received official reply 11 June 2009 from Company Commander. In conversing with him, he said I had the right to submit Congressional complaints.
APR
24 April submitted question to Sens Alexander and Corker, and Congressman Wamp.
MAY/JUNE/JUL 2009
Sought further advice from friends.
June Received email response from Senator Alexanders staffer. Conversed with Congressman Wamps staffer (Steele) several times. Steele submitted complaint to Office of Military Legislative Affairs.
JUL 2009
Change of jobs to work at the Pentagon
AUG/SEP/OCT/NOV
Continued to dialogue with friends, leaders, supervisors regarding my concerns and seeking advice.
NOV 20, 2009
Submitted Art. 138 against GEN Casey, Army Chief of Staff.
http://www.safeguardourconstitution.com/images/stories/documents/apf03-lakintimelineofconcern.pdf
Sometimes, I'm less forgiving.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.