‘Alice in Wonderland’
Orly Taitz, 49

It’s not unusual at public meetings of, say, a local city council to find a common species known as the political gadfly. These persistent critics, tolerated as attention-seeking eccentrics, don’t allow the absence of coherency or logic to keep them from speaking. Often claiming expertise they do not possess or seeing evil machinations that do not exist, these gadflies cling to their feverish suspicions. 

Orly Taitz, a southern California lawyer who has led the national “birther” movement, is a political gadfly writ large, except for one crucial difference: She found a large, national audience.

Dubbed the “birther queen” – and worse –  in the blogosphere, she’s a champion of those who question the citizenship of President Obama and, therefore, the legitimacy of his presidency.

Taitz, a former swimsuit model born in the Soviet Union, lived in Israel and Romania before setting up a dentistry practice in Orange County. Along the way, she picked up a law degree from an online school.

Tirelessly, inexplicably, Taitz has filed dozens of lawsuits and made numerous claims in the media alleging that Obama has not only lied about his citizenship but has masterminded a deception on a scale that has seldom, if ever, been seen before. In the process, she has become a hero to the antigovernment Patriot movement and last year even joined We the People, a leading tax-protest group that is a key part of that movement.

Taitz has called for an insurrection to remove the president. Last summer, she released a document she claimed was Obama’s Kenyan birth certificate. It was quickly proven a fraud. She has claimed that Obama has as many as 25 Social Security numbers. She has aligned herself with others who claim Obama has ties to radical jihadists, is a closeted gay man, and may be a ruthless murderer.

Taitz has been so roundly discredited, even the rabid right-wing attack dog Ann Coulter has called her a crank. As one judge wrote in dismissing one of Taitz’s lawsuits: “Unlike Alice in Wonderland, simply saying something is so does not make it so.”