Topic: WorldNetDaily
When you don't care about reporting all the facts -- as WorldNetDaily has repeatedly demonstrated it doesn't when it comes to birther lawyer Orly Taitz -- you come off as a lazy, biased hack. And that's exactly what Bob Unruh looks like in a May 11 WND article promoting a lawsuit against one of Taitz's opponents for secretary of state.
Unruh's first bit of lazy hackery in his article is to bury the connection between the filer of the lawsuit, Pamela Barnett, and Taitz. Unruh describes Barnett as "a lead plaintiff in the case Barnett v. Obama that sought a court ruling that Obama does not qualify to be president under the Constitution's demand for the president to be a 'natural born citizen.'" Unruh adds, "Some of the plaintiffs in the case were represented by Taitz, an attorney and dentist who has spearheaded several of the high-profile cases against Obama. Other plaintiffs were represented by Gary Kreep of the United States Justice Foundation."
What Unruh never states: Taitz represented Barnett in the case. Kreep, as we've noted, represented only two plaintiffs, Wiley Drake and Markham Robinson, who were originally represented by Taitz but switched to Kreep because they believed Taitz was "in over her head."
Unruh also curiously mentions another connection between the two: Barnett is apparently managing Taitz's campaign for secretary of state. This raises serious conflict-of-interest questions -- namely, whether Barnett is acting under Taitz's orders in filing the lawsuit -- but because Unruh is a lazy hack, that question goes unexplored.
Unruh's second bit of lazy hackery is ignoring evidence that the Barnett/Taitz lawsuit is without merit.
The lawsuit claims that Damon Dunn, who's competing with Taitz for the Republican nomination for California secretary of state, is not qualifed to run because he was registered as a Democrat less than a year before running as a Republican, which state law prohibits. We'll let the OC Weekly explain:
Dunn freely admits to being a "recovering non-voter" who made his voice heard at the polls for the first time in last May's special election on ballot measures. He has said that he registered shortly prior to that election--as a Republican.
That checks out. OC voter registration records show Dunn registered as a Republican on March 17, 2009. He then voted absentee in the May 19 election.
But a Sacramento Bee article from November of last year says that Dunn previously registered as a Democrat. Taitz has seized upon that information, claiming that Dunn was technically a Democrat until he registered as a Republican last year, and thus fails the test of not being affiliated with another party within a year of filing to run.
Taitz, though, hasn't checked her facts. According to database records, Dunn registered as a Democrat in Jacksonville, Florida on May 12, 1999. Dunn spokesman Hector Barajas says this happened while he was playing football for the Jacksonville Jaguars and was snagged by a DMV "motor voter" registration drive.
Dunn's Florida registration is now expired, according to Angelia Wiggins of the Duval County Registrar of Voters. According to Florida law, she says, if the registrar's mail to your registered address begins bouncing back, as it did for Dunn, your registration becomes inactive. If you then fail to vote in two consecutive federal elections, your registration expires. That's what happened to Dunn, leading his Democratic registration in Florida to become void on June 16, 2005.
Unless Dunn was registered elsewhere between then and now--and Taitz has presented no evidence that he was--Dunn should be fine, legally.
That OC Weekly article was posted on May 8 -- three days before Unruh's article. Unruh could have included this information in this article, but he didn't. Instead, all he does is quote a Dunn spokesman saying about Taitz, You're looking at someone who's really trying to get her name in the paper."
And in Unruh, we are looking at someone who's a lazy, biased hack. There's really no other way to describe it.
