Passing the Bar

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann is a graduate of that famous law school, The Coburn School of Law at Oral Roberts University.
by Charlie Leck

I find it strange that Congresswoman Michele Bachman has raised questions about Barack Obama and his law degree from Harvard. She never made clear why she doubted he could have done such a thing, but there was some kind of reference to the word “luck.” Obviously, if I can’t find the statement, I can’t nail down what she was getting at. I’ll keep searching, but if any of you remember this whole dialogue and can help me find it – well – please do!

The Congresswoman got her undergraduate degree from Winona State University in Minnesota. She began studying there in ’78. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in political science and English.

President Obama began college at Occidental and ended up at Columbia University in Manhattan. From Columbia he went on to Harvard Law School and became the head of the Harvard Law Review in his senior year.

Congresswoman Bachman went on to Coburn School of Law at Oral Roberts University. Her’s was the last graduating class from that law school. It was closed down in ’86 after it lost its accreditation. The general skinny is that it was teaching too much religion and not enough law (but, in all honesty, I can’t source or document that). Then, it is said, she went on to William and Mary and got a LLD degree in tax law in ’88.

Barack Obama passed the bar examination shortly after leaving Harvard. So far, we can find no record that the Congresswoman has ever taken the bar examination (and, if she did take it, whether she ever gave it back). We’re trying to look into that here in Minnesota. It’s not an important matter because one can work for the IRS without having taken the bar exam (that’s a fact). And, that is what the Congresswoman did for a couple of years.

10:00 A.M. Addition to this blog!
A member of the MN Bar Assoc did confirm for me this morning that Michele Bachmann did pass her MN bar examination in 1986 and was then admitted to practice in MN. She is no longer authorized to practice law here but that
could well be that she has simply not continuted to pay dues while she is serving in Congress.

Let me retract my comments about her being a nut-case. I was actually trying to be funny (I shouldn’t do that). Instead I’m going to substitute the word “enigma.” Michele Bachmann is an enigma.

I’m pouring over information about her so that I can better explain her. I’ll do my damnedest to document, source and reference everything, but that isn’t going to be easy. However, I do know that some very good reporters are now trying to put together an accurate biographical background story about her.

I wonder if anyone has yet asked her to come up with a birth certificate to prove beyond reasonable doubt that she was born in Waterloo, Iowa. I think it would be silly to ask for anything like that. No one would really do such a thing, would they?

My first recollection of the name Michele Bachmann came in connection with something just crazy – sorry, but it was just that – really crazy (see below)!

MinnPost, a first rate on-line news source up here in Minnesota, did a story some time ago about some of the kind of weird or enigmatic things she’s done. My favorite, of course, is this one…

The bushes
Early in her state Senate career Bachmann was caught spying on a pro-gay-rights rally by hiding behind bushes. This incident occurred after she was profiled in the Star Tribune and photographed vacuuming in heels (see LaFave's letter to the newspaper above).

If you want to read the entire 2006 MinnPost story you can find it here!

I want to say something positive about Congresswoman Bachmann. If she’ll be serious and use some caution in what she says (as she advised Chris Wallace to do after he asked if she was “a flake”), she can be a very powerful candidate. She shouldn’t be lumped in with the former Alaska governor. She’s brighter and quicker than that. She recently admitted that she occasionally misspeaks and admitted that she needed to be more careful. All that being said, I don’t think she can do that – that is, be serious and use some caution. She is not psychologically built that way and she’ll just keep misfiring and shooting herself in the foot.

Tomorrow I’ll have more about some of the Congresswoman’s most recent “misstatements.” Some of them are serious and very erroneous. Once these misstatements are planted in her followers' minds, it's very difficult to correct or erase them.

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