UPDATE: The Army captain who challenged President Obama's birth certificate in court is renouncing her former lawyer, Orly Taitz. Capt. Connie Rhodes wrote to the judge her in case that she did not authorize the emergency request for stay of deployment that Taitz filed on her behalf.
"I did not authorize it and do not wish to proceed," Rhodes wrote. "Ms. Taitz never requested my permission nor did I give it." She added that she plans to file a bar complaint against Taitz herself for "her reprehensible and unprofessional actions."
Taitz told Talking Points Memo she thinks the letter is a forgery.
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U.S. District Court Judge Clay Land has thrown out a complaint questioning the president's birth from an Army captain fighting deployment to Iraq and gave a warning to her lawyer, birther maven Orly Taitz.
Land also put attorney Orly Taitz, who represents Capt. Connie Rhodes and is a leader in the national "birther" movement, on notice by stating that she could face sanctions if she ever files a similar "frivolous" lawsuit in his court.
"(Rhodes) has presented no credible evidence and has made no reliable factual allegations to support her unsubstantiated, conclusory allegations and conjecture that President Obama is ineligible to serve as president of the United States," Land states in his order. "Instead, she uses her complaint as a platform for spouting political rhetoric, such as her claims that the president is 'an illegal usurper, an unlawful pretender, [and] an unqualified imposter.'"
In an interview with Talking Points Memo, Taitz said she would keep fighting if Rhodes wanted to, despite the judge's threat. "Listen, Nelson Mandela stayed in prison for years in order to get to the truth and justice," she said.
In his order, the judge noted that Rhodes had objected only to deployment to Iraq under President Obama, not to serving in the military generally.
Rhodes is not the first soldier to object to overseas deployment on the grounds that Obama is not a legitimate president. Stefan Frederick Cook, a reserve soldier who volunteered for an active duty tour, argued that he should not have to go to Afghanistan for similar reasons to Rhodes. The army revoked his deployment orders.