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"So is there any mechanism (Either the court or the bar) for sanctioning the attorneys responsible for taking these ludicrous arguments to the court?"
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11 allows for sanctions of an attorney who submitts a motion that contains mistatements or other problematic elements.
11(b) (2) and (3) require "that to the best of the person's knowledge, information, and belief, formed after an inquiry reasonable under the circumstances:
(2) the claims, defenses, and other legal contentions are warranted by existing law or by a nonfrivolous argument for extending, modifying, or reversing existing law or for establishing new law;
(3) the factual contentions have evidentiary support or, if specifically so identified, will likely have evidentiary support after a reasonable opportunity for further investigation or discovery."
So you could make the argument that if they knowingly put forward a pile of crap, the judge could sanction them. The chance of this happening is somewhere between "slim" and "none." I would suggest however that people trying this argument again might be in big trouble.
