Harvard-Educated Lawyer Ignorant of the Law

[Rommey]

First lady Michelle Obama appears to have violated Illinois law -- when she engaged in political discussion at a polling place!

The drama began after Mrs. Obama stopped off at the Martin Luther King Center on the south side of Chicago to cast an early vote.

"She was telling me how important it was to vote to keep her husband's agenda going," [Dennis] Campbell said.

According to a pool reporter from the CHICAGO SUN-TIMES at the scene, the conversation took place INSIDE the voting center, not far from the booths.

A top Ilinois State Board of Elections official tells the DRUDGE REPORT that Mrs. Obama -- a Harvard-educated lawyer -- may have simply been ignorant of the law and thus violated it unintentionally.

"You kind of have to drop the standard for the first lady, right?" the official explained late Thursday. "I mean, she's pretty well liked and probably doesn't know what she's doing." Sure...the rules are for everyone else...


link

 

[ImnoMensa]

First lady Michelle Obama appears to have violated Illinois law -- when she engaged in political discussion at a polling place!

The drama began after Mrs. Obama stopped off at the Martin Luther King Center on the south side of Chicago to cast an early vote.

"She was telling me how important it was to vote to keep her husband's agenda going," [Dennis] Campbell said.

According to a pool reporter from the CHICAGO SUN-TIMES at the scene, the conversation took place INSIDE the voting center, not far from the booths.

A top Ilinois State Board of Elections official tells the DRUDGE REPORT that Mrs. Obama -- a Harvard-educated lawyer -- may have simply been ignorant of the law and thus violated it unintentionally.

"You kind of have to drop the standard for the first lady, right?" the official explained late Thursday. "I mean, she's pretty well liked and probably doesn't know what she's doing." Sure...the rules are for everyone else...


link

Someone probably came up and asked her a question and she answered it without thinking of her location.

A Judge at the polling place should have come forward and told them to move it outside.Knowing it was Michelle Obama (And who wouldn't recognise that broad expanse) they should have been watching closely.

Although I dont like her I can understand this happening, and call it a simple mistake.

 

[twinoaks207]

Someone probably came up and asked her a question and she answered it without thinking of her location.

A Judge at the polling place should have come forward and told them to move it outside.Knowing it was Michelle Obama (And who wouldn't recognise that broad expanse) they should have been watching closely.

Although I dont like her I can understand this happening, and call it a simple mistake.

Any political wife knows ALL about the rules & regs for polling places in a venure where her husband has run for office of any sort. That so-called law degree doesn't have anything to do with it, either. Those kinds of things are discussed and reiterated many, many times in any campaign meeting or discussion where decisions are made about which volunteers are going to be at the various polling places. No way, would she have not been in on at least two or three of those kinds of meetings/discussions.

She would have definitely known about it and deliberately, blatantly ignored it, figuring she could do whatever she wanted as First Lady.

 

[chernmax]

I'm pretty sure any polling place Michelle Obama is registered to vote at were all voting for Obama anyway...

And remember black panthers can ask questions too!

 

[aps45819]

"You kind of have to drop the standard for the first lady, right?" the official explained late Thursday. "I mean, she's pretty well liked and probably doesn't know what she's doing." Sure...the rules are for everyone else...


link

according to her husband's Justice Dept, the rules only apply to white people

 

[NCalif]

First lady Michelle Obama appears to have violated Illinois law -- when she engaged in political discussion at a polling place

It doesn't matter, Michelle is no longer licensed. She was forced to surrender it but you don't get to hear about that in the press, let alone why. I guess the press is too busy covering the Palin clothing scandal.

I don't believe Obama is licensed either. Anyone know why?

 

[ImnoMensa]

First lady Michelle Obama appears to have violated Illinois law -- when she engaged in political discussion at a polling place

It doesn't matter, Michelle is no longer licensed. She was forced to surrender it but you don't get to hear about that in the press, let alone why. I guess the press is too busy covering the Palin clothing scandal.

I don't believe Obama is licensed either. Anyone know why?

Maybe they were just too poor to pay the dues of the Bar Association.

The Presidency doesn't pay very much you know.

 

[Lenny]

It doesn't matter, Michelle is no longer licensed.

I don't believe Obama is licensed either.

Can you point us to those links? I know that Barry lied about being know by any other name when he applied for his Illinois bar membership but don't believe anyone did anything about that fact.

If you want to trust in Snopes.com

Then there's the question of "Just how old is that witch?" if she was really licensed in 1899!

 

[NCalif]

Can you point us to those links?

Sure

WTF? MICHELLE OBAMA ON "COURT ORDERED INACTIVE STATUS" - Atlas Shrugs

 

[philibusters]

Sure

WTF? MICHELLE OBAMA ON "COURT ORDERED INACTIVE STATUS" - Atlas Shrugs

The only thing remotely suspicious about the link is that it says "court ordered inactive status". Take away the term court ordered and nothing looks out of the ordinary. Lawyers who don't practice law often choose to go to inactive status. Practicing law costs about $600 of fees and requires you to maintain legal malpractice insurance which runs in the thousands per year. You also have to do continuing education credits which runs in the hundreds to thousands and takes 2 or so days of your year (most states require 12 to 15 hours of in person education classes).

The snoopes site I think explains the term court ordered, saying that previous to 1999 a court was required to order the person status to inactive---but you can probably call the Illinois bar if you are really curious.

 

[NCalif]

I don't know if I believe Snopes anymore. Does Snopes say Obama is a Christian?

"The summary is, I believe, that Michelle Obama's inactive status came from Rule 771, which was renumbered Rule 770, some years after she went inactive. There appears to have been no Rule 770 at the time of her going inactive - so why would the ARDC have referred to either Rule 770 or 771 in conjunction to Michelle. If she just decided to go voluntarily inactive, and if there was no disciplinary action, or possible disciplinary action, Rule 756 would have been referenced.

To be clear, this record was removed from the ARDC website after Atlas Shrugs found it and captured it in December 2008. The removal is not a coincidence, in my opinion.

.. Michelle Obama is clearly inactive pursuant to Rule 770 or 771 - which involves discipline - not merely requesting to go inactive. "RADARSITE: Michelle Obama's Law License that Isn't! Disciplined? New Information

 

[NCalif]

"According to bloggers Johnny Alamo and James4America, Michelle “voluntarily” gave up her law license in 1993, just five years after she got the license; Barack “voluntarily retired” from law practice in 2007. The left-leaning Snopes.com denies that Michelle had “voluntarily surrendered” her law license, and insists both Michelle and Barack had merely put their law license on “inactive” status. Snopes, however, does not explain what’s the difference between Michelle’s “voluntarily inactive” and Barack’s “voluntarily retired.”

Nor does Snopes inform its readers that Michelle Obama was ordered by the court to put her law license on inactive status. An earlier version of the ARDC webpage on her (https://www.iardc.org/ldetail.asp?id=847688734) said this about Michelle: “No malpractice report required as attorney is on court ordered inactive status.” Here’s a screen shot of the web page at the time of Chelsea Shilling’s WorldNetDaily article of August 4, 2009:
Barack & Michelle Gave UpÂ#LawÂ#License | Fellowship of the Minds

By the time I accessed the same webpage yesterday, September 15, 2010, the sentence “No malpractice report required as attorney is on court ordered inactive status” had disappeared. A day later, that webpage (https://www.iardc.org/ldetail.asp?id=847688734) is scrubbed of all information on Michelle Obama. See my update, “Illinois Supreme Court Coverup For Obamas.”

 

[philibusters]

I don't know if I believe Snopes anymore. Does Snopes say Obama is a Christian?

"The summary is, I believe, that Michelle Obama's inactive status came from Rule 771, which was renumbered Rule 770, some years after she went inactive. There appears to have been no Rule 770 at the time of her going inactive - so why would the ARDC have referred to either Rule 770 or 771 in conjunction to Michelle. If she just decided to go voluntarily inactive, and if there was no disciplinary action, or possible disciplinary action, Rule 756 would have been referenced.

To be clear, this record was removed from the ARDC website after Atlas Shrugs found it and captured it in December 2008. The removal is not a coincidence, in my opinion.

.. Michelle Obama is clearly inactive pursuant to Rule 770 or 771 - which involves discipline - not merely requesting to go inactive. "RADARSITE: Michelle Obama's Law License that Isn't! Disciplined? New Information

I looked at the Illinois Supreme Court Rules. I don't know those rules well, but Rule 770 should not have been referenced if it was truly a voluntary decision. That said, somebody just wrote the blog and said they wrote to the Illinois ARDC and thats how it was explained to them. Thus the issue is whether Ms. Suter is a trustworthy source.

You bolded that Michelle is clearly inactive pursuant to Rule 770 but how do we know that?

 

[Rommey]

You guys are missing the point that she went to Harvard and got her education in the legal profession. She was admitted to the bar. Therefore she was a Harvard-educated Lawyer.

She broke the law and it gets sluffed off as she didn't know she did anything wrong. Ignorance of the law is no excuse.

For supposedly highly educated people, the President and his wife are pretty careless and lackadaisical when it comes to the law and its intricacies.

 

[NCalif]

For supposedly highly educated people, the President and his wife are pretty careless and lackadaisical when it comes to the law and its intricacies.

Supposedly is right. They are prime examples of the half-baked intellectuals Yuri was talking about.

 

[philibusters]

You guys are missing the point that she went to Harvard and got her education in the legal profession. She was admitted to the bar. Therefore she was a Harvard-educated Lawyer.

She broke the law and it gets sluffed off as she didn't know she did anything wrong. Ignorance of the law is no excuse.

For supposedly highly educated people, the President and his wife are pretty careless and lackadaisical when it comes to the law and its intricacies.

I guarantee you that you are not going to learn about Illinois Election Law while at Harvard. First off election is not a main course in law school curriculum--Contracts, Property, Torts, Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure Evidence, Civil Procedure, Constitutional Law, Corporations/Business Associoations, and Wills & Trusts are your basic courses. Those courses take 2 of the three years of law school. The other year you choose electives and they range the gamit from Copyright law, Bankruptcy, Securities, Sports Law, Food and Drug Law, to Election Law with lots of other choices. Most law students don't take election law.

Second unless you an election law lawyer, merely being a lawyer will not make it likely you would know that particular law. All lawyers should know the fundamentals of the courses I listed as fundamental courses in the law school cirriculum and a great deal about what type of law they specialize in, but other than that, they won't know the law off the top of their heads better than you or I.