Birther aborted

[BT]

Military jury: Prison, dismissal for Army birther
By JESSICA GRESKO, Associated Press Jessica Gresko, Associated Press 1 hr 37 mins ago

FORT MEADE, Md. ? An Army doctor who disobeyed orders to deploy to Afghanistan because he questioned President Barack Obama's eligibility to be commander in chief was sentenced by a jury Thursday to six months in a military prison and will be dismissed from the Army.

The military jury spent nearly five hours deliberating punishment for Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin on Thursday after three days of court martial proceedings at Fort Meade, outside Baltimore, Md.

Lakin was convicted of disobeying orders ? he had pleaded guilty to that count ? and missing a flight that would have gotten him to his eventual deployment. An army commander, Maj. Gen. Karl Horst, still has to approve the sentence returned by the jury and has the option to reduce it. Lakin could then appeal.

In online videos posted on YouTube, Lakin aligned himself with the so-called "birther" movement that questions whether Obama is a natural-born citizen, as the Constitution requires for presidents, and said he was inviting his own court martial.

But Lakin said Wednesday that despite his questions about Obama's eligibility for office, he was wrong not to follow Army orders. He acknowledged that the Army was the wrong place to raise his concerns about Obama, asked to keep his job and said he was now willing to deploy.

"I don't want it to end this way," Lakin told the jury Wednesday under questioning from his lawyer. "I want to continue to serve."

Military prosecutors disagreed. On Thursday morning, a military prosecutor asked the jury to sentence Lakin to at least two years in a military prison and to dismiss him from the service. It was a sentence he "invited and he earned," military prosecutor Capt. Philip J. O'Beirne told the jury.

The prosecutor said Lakin had other options such as resigning or asking not to be deployed if he had issues with his orders. Instead, he used his deployment earlier this year as a political ploy, O'Beirne said, going to great lengths to create a "spectacle" by informing people of what he was doing.

"He knew exactly what he was doing and he did it anyway," O'Beirne told the jury, asking members to send a message with their sentence and telling them they could "write the headline" that appears in papers about Lakin.

But Lakin's defense attorney, Neal Puckett, asked the jury to be lenient, calling Lakin's case unique. He described the 17-year veteran as giving, compassionate and patriotic but also naive in trusting the poor advice of a previous civilian lawyer. He called Lakin the "victim of an obsession," referring to questions about Obama's eligibility, and said he made "one bad decision on one day of his career."

Puckett asked the jury to consider Lakin's wife and three children at Christmas and said he should be allowed to stay in the Army because of his value as a doctor.

"Make him work off his debt to the Army," Puckett said, suggesting Lakin could be sent on multiple deployments.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101216/ap_on_re_us/us_army_birther_24/print

[kimba1]

did anyone check if previous president could pass the requirements of the birther movement?

I`m think john adams would flunk it.

 is thier archive storage of presidential birth certificates.should we be asking for nixons birth certificate?

[bsb]

"a military prosecutor asked the jury to sentence Lakin to at least two years in a military prison"

He should have gotten all of the 2 years or more.

bsb

[Amianthus]

I`m think john adams would flunk it.

"No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President;"

John Adams was born before the adoption of the Constitution.

[Xavier_Onassis]

None of the first presidents were born in the United States: they were subjects of the British crown. Alexander Hamilton, who was born in Nevis, a Caribbean Island, was deemed ineligible to be president.

The Constitution meant anyone born in territory that BECAME a part of the US was eligible.

[kimba1]

I`m wondering did all the presidents afterward provided physical proof?

[Xavier_Onassis]

I doubt that most presidents presented birth certificates. Before 1900, children were born at home, and baptismal certificates were all that were available.

[Plane]

"one bad decision on one day of his career."

Yes well , the price of bad decisions like this can be quite high , people who accept comissions need to accept the burden of responsibility .

A bad decision of this sort could kill a man or a squad or a regiment or if it really engendered mutiny ,it could break the nation.

I don't think this guy is quite that serious , the corts martial ought to give him punishment in purportion to the damage done.
The actual damage done not the limitless potential damage that didn't .

[bsb]

That's one way to look at it, plane. I take a different view. You can get away with quite a bit in the service as long as you play by a certain few major rules. Deploying to a combat zone when ordered to is one of those major rules you have to play by. The Army isn't some elite northeastern prep school where a philosophy like, "the boy, or girl, is more important then the rule", can be applied. Combat is combat. It isn't like anything else. That has to be made clear, and kept clear.

Of a different nature, but then again not really because he broke a major rule, was the case of Lt. William Calley. For being the ring leader of a massacre of 500 Vietnamese civilians he was sentenced, then pardoned by the commander in chief at the time, Richard M. Nixon. He should have been put in front of a firing squad.

If you make it clear that you have to obey a certain set of rules when serving during time of war, you don't end up with events like Abu Ghraib. If you don't make it clear, you do. The US military stopped making it clear at least as far back as Vietnam, and they have paid dearly for it.

bsb

[Plane]

    I was never comissioned, the enlisted are held to a high standard , but not as much as officers.

   However I wonder , where and when were greater penalties applied to officers than enlisted?