Posted on 12/15/2010 5:49:58 AM PST by libstripper
When Lt. Col. Terry Lakin, MD walks out of the chamber where he has faced a court-martial this week, he will emerge -- regardless of the verdict -- a towering American hero.
Nothing like the stupendous display which he has mounted -- of principled, sustained self-sacrifice and fearless defiance -- has been seen in decades on the American political stage. Together with the peril of actual battlefield engagement, it ranks alongside the greatest courageous stances even of the American Revolution itself. Patrick Henry, Nathan Hale: those kinds of stances.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
I will definitely says prayers for him and his family. He did a good thing by simply asking for proof before following orders which may or may not be legal.
This is the kind of courage -- after the crawling, burrowing, light-averse invertebrates of the political landscape have long since slithered away and vanished -- that gets statues of a man built in public squares. This kind of courage gets folk songs and laureate poems written for a man, and they will be written for him. This kind of courage guarantees -- even a hundred years from now -- that parents will still be proud to give their little boys names like Terrence Lakin Jones.
These are times as vital as at the founding of our nation in witness thereof a small but increasing cadre of American heroes is stepping forward today. Their names and their character will, if they are successful and America is not destroyed by the inexorable march of Marxism, become legendary in our history.
And we can rest assured that the entire military is watching this spectacle (and don't think Obama is unaware of that fact).
Obama is a snake...as one of the commenters at source says, "Barack Hussein Obama is a grotesque political freak."
Excellent article.
Governor Palin, if you’re reading this: as your first act in 2013 I hope as CinC you will exonerate Lt Col Lakin and accord him full military honors.
Bachmann and co: this man deserves the Congressional Medal. He has put his liberty and sacred honor on the line for the sake of the Constitution of your United States.
I would agree that Lt. Col Lakin is a hero like all our armed forces members are heros. I don't consider him a hero for refusing an order just because Obama is in the White House.
Until such time as the courts decide Obama is not qualified to be Prez, he is the CIC. If we allow individual soldiers to determine whether they will obey an order because they don't think the current Prez is legitimate, then we have to excuse those who refused to obey orders because they thought Bush was an illegitimate Prez. (According to them, he was selected rather than elected.)
Lakin didn’t refuse an order because he ‘thinks Obama isn’t legitimate’.
Lakin pushed for proof of legitimacy to prove the legitimacy of the orders he had received.
This is the difference between a shop refusing to serve you because you’re black, and a shop refusing to serve you because you’re trying to pay with monopoly money.
So you think this is perfectly acceptable for every soldier to do this every time an order is given just because they feel like it? If not, what criteria do you use to determine when it is acceptable? Why are your criteria better than someone else's might be (i.e. the liberal guy who joined to get the free college education, but doesn't actually want to serve)?
This is opening a great, big, fat, juicy can of worms. This kind of thing has already been pulled by the left because of their disagreement with Bush and with the wars. If this guy gets excused, we are going to get even more of it, and we won't really have a leg to stand on when we object.
Doesn’t Palin have a son stationed in the AF-Pak or Irag theater? She should be concerned an usurper CIC is in charge of her son.
*snip*
The genesis of these doubts:
the failure and probable inability of said Barack Hussein Obama — he of the reclusive records, wagging forefinger, and sibilant esses — to release for public delectation a valid Hawaii birth certificate.
Despite a lengthy series of gas-lighting blandishments on the part of a cadre of partisan sycophants in government and media that such documentation has been shown and that it has long been time to move on, it is an inarguable fact that no such birth certificate has ever seen the light of day.
The wan attempts to substitute such signal evidence of citizenship (a simple document, which millions of Americans routinely must produce) — the so called “certification of live birth,” issued in 1961 by the State of Hawaii — is a smokescreen, and a wispy one.
This is all the more outrageous in view of the fact that John McCain, scion of a family of naval officers — if he were any more American, he’d be a bald eagle — was made the subject of consideration by the august U.S. Senate, which felt it had to take up and pass judgment on the satisfactoriness of McCain’s own natal bona fides.
Yet no reciprocal imprimatur was made of His Oneness — not by the marshmallow press, not by the Senate, not by the voters, not by the various boards of election, not by any statutes — which don’t exist to begin with — to enforce natural-bornness, and certainly not by the inscrutably reticent Mr. McCain himself, who threw that fight as surely as would any over-the-hill boxer who knows his legs aren’t what they used to be and who needs cafeteria money and a hotel room for the week.
In fact, there is more than a certified, long-form birth certificate — a lot more — about Barack “Barry Soetoro” Hussein Obama that no one outside the hermetic world of sworn-to-silence hospital personnel, state vital records workers, and college bursar-level functionaries has ever seen.
A partial list would include, in addition, Neolani kindergarten records, the Obama-Dunham marriage license, the Obama-Dunham divorce records, the Soetoro-Dunham marriage license, Soetoro adoption records, the Punahou School application and records, Noelami Elementary School records, the Soetoro-Dunham divorce records, consistent selective service registration info, SAT scores, LSAT scores, Occidental College records, financial aid records, passports, Columbia University records, putative Columbia thesis on “Soviet Nuclear Disarmament,” Harvard University records, Harvard Law Review records, any writings as president of the Harvard Law Review beyond one tough anti-fetus fragment, Illinois bar records, certificates of baptism or adoption, medical records, Illinois State Senate records from 1997-2004, Illinois State Senate schedule, law practice client list while at Davis, Miner, Barnhill and Gallard, University of Chicago scholarly articles, and more.
Oh, but we do have a document from the Fransiskus Assisi School in Jakarta, a Catholic institution, which shows him enrolled as Barry Soetoro — as a Muslim and an Indonesian.
I stated at the outset is that Lakin’s stature is assured despite the verdict. Here’s why.
The charges are (i) that he missed his deployment flight and (ii) conduct unbecoming an officer. He has, in the early stages of his trial, been denied discovery and the presentation of witnesses, evidence, or argument in defense of his position.
That position necessarily goes to the heart of whether Obama should hold the White House keys. Conviction on the charges seems inescapable.
The military court is not likely to risk uncovering an inconvenient truth about the acting president if there be one. Were Lakin to be exonerated — which seems all but impossible — then the tribunal would be staring in the face the propriety of all things Obama — a task far too sensitive for it. And the question of his provenance would fairly beg itself into being before the court could adjourn.
And on the other hand, if Lakin is convicted, well, society will be no closer to probing the mystery of the guarded origins and persona of the Commander-in-Thief. This will make doubly urgent Lakin’s reach for the grail of truth and the case for others to take up his cause.
Among all the comfortable, set-for-life politicos, officials, appointees, careerists, officeholders, aides-de-camp, campaigners, supporters, friends, and hangers-on in and during the Obama era, there has not been a single high-level, principled resignation. No stand in protest of what, if Obama’s position is the usurpation it could be, is the most devious high crime ever perpetrated by and against American government.
Lakin’s honorable course is a rebuke to today’s so-called leaders, who, cowering in suspense, would not all taken together approach the equal of this man.
Terry Lakin is putting at risk his own life, his own fortune, and his own sacred honor. He has invited his own court-martial, scorn, possible conviction, and disapprobation; loss of rank, position, and pension; loss of the future; danger to family and impoverishment; and possible hard jail time at Leavenworth.
All this for the exalted goal of fealty to a Constitution his every step of the way towards protecting which is blocked by the government that administered the oath he took, and which oath he must contravene only to be able to honor it in the extreme. The greatness of battlefield valor stands elsewhere; this is bravery of another order.
This is the kind of courage — after the crawling, burrowing, light-averse invertebrates of the political landscape have long since slithered away and vanished — that gets statues of a man built in public squares.
This kind of courage gets folk songs and laureate poems written for a man, and they will be written for this one. This kind of courage guarantees — even a hundred years from now — that parents will still be proud to give their little boys names like Terrence Lakin Jones.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/12/crucible_of_a_hero.html
Hear, hear and amen. God bless and protect Ltc Lakin
and his family. This chapter will be remembered.
Courage by weaseling out of a scheduled deployment.
My prayers go to the flight surgeon who had to take Lakin's place in Afghanistan. I'll reserve my pity for Lakin.
From WND today
Lakin guilty on 3 counts
Army doctor still fighting most serious charge
——————————————————————————————Posted: December 15, 2010
11:50 am Eastern
###
*snip*
The court-martial panel this morning started deliberating the last count, a charge he missed his flight to report for duty.
Lakin yesterday pleaded guilty to four counts related to disobeying orders, but one count was subsequently dismissed by Lind at the request of Lakin’s counsel, Neal Puckett. Lakin stands convicted of two counts of failing to obey orders to meet with his commanding officer and one count of failing to report as ordered to Fort Campbell, Ky., to join the 101st Airborne Division prior to the unit’s deployment to Afghanistan.
*snip*
Retired Navy Lt. Commander Charles Kerchner, the plaintiff in an eligibility suit recently rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court, doubts that justice will be done in Lakin’s court martial.
“They have not allowed him discovery and exculpatory evidence, which the Constitution affords all of us,” said Kerchner. “I don’t know what legal rabbit [the defense is] going to pull out of a hat but they’re obviously planning something.”
*snip*
Lakin’s brother, Dr. Greg Lakin, was more upbeat about Puckett’s defense strategy.
“[Puckett] wants to focus on the big issue here,” Greg Lakin told WND. According to Lakin, Puckett chose to concede the smaller matters in order to direct the court martial panel’s attention on the “missing movement” charge, which is most closely linked to Obama’s personal authority because it ties directly to the order to deploy to Iraq as part of Obama’s surge strategy.
“The president has taken full credit for the Afghanistan deployment, he signed the order,” said Greg Lakin. “Terry will have a chance to say his piece during the sentencing portion of the trial.”
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=239805
__________________________________________________________
Dr. Kate .. from yesterday’s proceedings
~~~~~~~~~~~~
*snip*
Because Judge Lind denied LTC Lakin’s right to discovery and evidence, the only possible outcome for LTC Lakin on the second charge–disobeying orders–was to plead guilty. Essentially he would lose this argument because he was denied the right to discovery, with each charge carrying a two year prison term.
Judge Lind carefully went through each of the second group charges, painstakingly asking each time whether LTC Lakin understood the ramifications of disobeying these orders. Lakin described the anguish involved in his decision, yet accepted responsibility for his final course of action.
On balance, this discussion between the Judge and LTC Lakin revealed Lakin’s extensive efforts to alert his Chain of Command as to his concerns, and the failure of the Chain of Command to address them.
This is the reason he invited his own Court Martial–it may be one of the only ways to reveal Obama’s problems on proving his eligibility for office.
The second charge had its components ‘collapsed’, and when sentenced, LTC Lakin could face a maximum of 18 months in prison. NO SENTENCING DECISION HAS BEEN MADE.
Missing Movement
“Missing movement” is a military term of art describing the movement of troops aboard a military aircraft, a ship, or other event where unit of soldiers moves into the war theater.
To this charge, LTC Lakin pleaded ‘not guilty’, and asked for a jury to hear the case. A jury was assembled consisting of initially ten senior officers; through questioning, two were excluded.
For this charge, Lakin is accused of missing a commercial airline flight from Baltimore to Ft. Campell. As attorney Neal Puckett pointed out, however, Lakin could have traveled to Ft Campell in any manner he chose.
Prosecution witness after witness divulged to Attorney Puckett that no one gave Lakin a direct order to take a commercial airline flight to his next duty position, as his orders allowed him to travel in any manner to Ft. Campell.
Additional injury to the government’s case was to come, as it was revealed in cross examination that the actual deployment of troops was going to occur three-four months after Lakin was called to Ft. Campbell. Thus, LTC Lakin did not ‘miss movement’
Painstakingly asking each of the six prosecution witnesses as to the schedule, timing, deployment, and general practice of deploying troops to a war theater, Attorney Puckett demolished the ‘missing movement’ charge.
The Government Introduces Obama’s Ineligibility
Recall that the government would rather bury LTC Lakin on a bunch of piled on charges than address the issue of Obama’s ineligibility. In what can be termed as a little ‘divine intervention’ the fifth government witness actually stated the reason why LTC Lakin refused his orders–Obama’s eligibility.
You should have seen the prosecution shut that lady down right away! “next”…
Comment:
32 Responses to “Standing with Lt. Col. Terry Lakin”
By far THE BEST article on the trial I have read yet. You beat Maureen Dowd HANDS DOWN! Your factual and fairly detailed recounting of events puts a completely different spin on this from all the other articles I have read.
It was astonishing to read that dismembering the prosecution turned on such simple facts. Wow.
Still, LTC Lakin is in a bad position. Why Judge Lind is not challenged more directly and persistently on the stupidity of her prior rulings is something I don’t get. Regardless, they are the experts and we get to follow the bouncing ball.
http://drkatesview.wordpress.com/2010/12/14/standing-with-lt-col-terry-lakin/#more-4919
Flashback: Cort Wrotnowski, involved with Leo Donofrio in one of the first BHO eligibility cases.
Good for Puckett .. he’s giving all in his power he can to this defense.
Update from CAAFlog
###
1345: Closing arguments have been completed.
According to Colonel Sullivan, the defense did not argue for a full acquittal on the missing movement charge, but instead contended that LTC Lakin is guilty only of the lesser included offense of failure to go to his appointed place of duty, in violation of Article 86.
The maximum punishment for the LIO is one month versus two years for missing movment by design under Article 87.
The members, after a brief deliberation, returned to the court to make four requests, seeking:
1) evidence concerning the dates of the accused’s pre-deployment leave;
2) the leave form;
3) the date on which the accused’s replacement reported to the unit; and
4) a definition of the term “required” as used in the Article 87 spec.
The court is on recess and will reconvene at 1400.
http://www.caaflog.com/2010/12/15/united-states-v-lakin-liveblog-iii/
Trial looks bad for Lakin, but looks good to ‘birthers’
By Leo Shane III
Stars and Stripes
Published: December 15, 2010
###
http://www.stripes.com/news/trial-looks-bad-for-lakin-but-looks-good-to-birthers-1.128865
*snip*
“This isn’t a failure. Any news is better than no news,” said Charles Kerchner Jr., a retired Naval Reserve commander who identifies himself as a “constitutionalist” instead of a birther.
“If we’d have given up, no one would be talking about this now. The truth always wins. The truth is going to be found out.”
*snip*
Prosecutors told the military jury on Wednesday that the case was a simple one that has nothing to do with the president. Lakin disobeyed orders, they said, and he refused to go to Afghanistan with his unit.
“We are here because the accused did not act like a soldier,” said Capt. Angel Overgaard. “He did not perform his duty. [His men] are at FOB Bostic in Afghanistan, and here is the accused.”
Final deliberations and sentencing for Lakin were expected to wrap up Wednesday afternoon.
Governor Palin, if you’re reading this: as your first act in 2013 I hope as CinC you will exonerate Lt Col Lakin and accord him full military honors.
Bachmann and co: this man deserves the Congressional Medal. He has put his liberty and sacred honor on the line for the sake of the Constitution of your United States."
Hear hear!
*snip*
Lakin, who serves as a flight surgeon, told the military jury he had gone to a chapel to do some soul-searching and felt he had no choice but to disobey orders.
“I believe there is a valid question that needs to be asked and answered,” he said, referring to Obama’s eligibility to be president.
*snip*
Several said they had heard of the term, and all but one said they had at least heard of the case of a military doctor refusing to deploy because he questioned the president’s eligibility for office.
Lakin’s parents and his two brothers along with other supporters audibly scoffed when one of the potential jurors said based on the evidence that Obama was eligible to be president.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-20025740-504083.html
Apparently Track Palin completed his tour in Iraq, sometime this year. However, while he was over there, she SHOULD have been concerned that her son's "Commander in Chief" was Barry the usurper.
Sweep it under the rug...nothing to see here. Move along. Buy another gadget. Watch another episode of Dancing with the Stars.
Bottom line. Hallelujah. May it be so.
This says it all about the state of affairs in this country and why it's in such a S@#$ hole.
Evidence? What freakin evidence? Would that be the .jpeg image found on the WWW? Or the fact that he was born owing allegiance to a foreign government?
Stunning how many sheeple there are out there.
It is remarkable that within a week of Tiger Woods crashing his Escalade, the MSM mediots found every woman with whom Tiger had an affair in the past few years, with photos, text messages, recorded phone calls and other data.
The same mediots even knew his wife used a Wedge from Tiger’s golf bag to break the windows in his Escalade, and they knew which wedge.
Everyday, they gave America more updates on Tiger’s Sex-Rehab stay, his wife’s plans for divorce and of course the tournaments and dates he would play after his Rehab.
Obama has been in office for close to two years, and the same press mediots still can’t find any of his childhood friends or neighbors, or locate any of Obama’s college papers, grades or how this ‘poor’ lad paid for a Harvard Education.
Nor could they find which country issued his Visa to travel to Pakistan in the 1980’s.
They continue to ignore Obama’s connections with George $oreA$$, and Obama’s election funding from the phoney non profits controlled by George $oreA$$.
They have unsuccessful in finding Michelle Obama’s Princeton Thesis on racism.
Yet many of the public still trusts the same mediots and MSM to give them the whole truth each day, 24/7.
TRULY REMARKABLE!!!
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