The fine was for a frivolous motion, not for the entire case. The motion was her Motion to Reconsider, in which she made a lot of absurd accusations about the judge. Her defense might be to somehow prove her statements true (yeah right), but they have nothing to do with Obama.
Sorry mlo, but that simply is not a good read of the Judge’s text. He is clearly telling her the case is, in his opinion, frivolous because she should have known nobody would take it seriously and any reasonable judge would escape via abstention. This has everything to do with his clearly biased and shallow understanding of the “so-called birther movement,” as he so derisively puts it.
As for Orly’s basis for wanting the judge to recuse himself, he claims her sole motive was unhappiness with the judgment, but he spent considerable time dismissing her arguments and actions as politically rather than legally motivated. In other words, he was seeing all her actions through the lens of a strong political bias. That gets right down to why recusal is available in the first place. There comes a time when you know the other person is not really hearing anything you are saying. There needs to be a way around that. If Judge Land’s factual observations are correct concerning section 144 criteria for recusal, then Orly did make a number of technical errors, but those in themselves would not be sufficient to warrant such a strong punitive act. Lawyers make mistakes all the time. If the case is amicable, all is forgiven. Seriously. But a 20K stinger comes from another place.
And Judge Land’s observations concerning expedited decision-making is such good spin. “Decision-making is better when there’s less time and more pressure, so I’m right to be giving you the bum’s rush.” Huh? Why? Because some other judge made a nice quote out of it. Not because this or any other court has actually done a scientific analysis of the relationship between perceived urgency and the quality of decision-making. I used to work for a nuke outfit. Those guys did the homework. The Judge, with all due respect, is flat wrong on this one. Urgency is a key factor in Degrading the quality of decisions, with rare exception, because it bites to be human. Would we were all machines, but it isn’t so.
Finally, I do not get how the judge can make the assertion that even if Obama is not rightfully the Commander in Chief, a soldier’s constitutional rights are not infringed by compulsory obedience to a potential imposter. That is just insane. Sorry. That’s how I see it. There is no constitutionally explicit “right to disobey” the person immediately above you in the chain of command, other than your oath of faithfulness to uphold and defend the US Constitution! If you believe the person giving the command is illegitimate under the terms of the Constitution, of course you have, not only the right, but the duty under that oath to challenge those orders. Otherwise we get right back to Nuremburg, “I was just following orders.” American freedom works because individual citizens bring their own mind and resources to the table and pool them for the good of the nation without surrendering the right to think for themselves. That’s where all the creativity, the power for self-correction comes from. It’s a good thing. The judge is simply wrong here.