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JONATHAN
HOFFMAN |
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Read more by Jonathan
Previous columns: Voting by Mail, an Invitation to Fraud Street Protests in the New Millennium A Great Darkness Fell on the Land An Open Letter to Fellow Libertarians and Non-Aligned Voters Intergenerational Corporate Welfare
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American Show Trials Many people have said that Iraqis are not sophisticated or advanced enough to live in a free society, nor do they understand their responsibilities therein. I, for one, am reticent to throw stones, now that it is undeniable that I live in a glass house. I am thinking specifically of the breakdown of the court system. The term “court” harkens back to the days of royalty, when the king would send members of his court around to see that local conflicts, or violations of the king’s law, were resolved in accordance to the wishes of the king. Nowadays, in this country, where the individual is sovereign, conflicts are resolved by judges, or directly by the people in the form of juries. In order for this system to work, the people have to understand a few basic notions like “rule of law”, “impartiality”, “evidence”, and “equal protection under the law”. These are not fancy-pants legal terms like you saw in the credit card contract that you signed – that stuff is for lawyers. This is the basic stuff that is supposed to make you more sophisticated than the Iraqis. Martha Stewart was accused of insider trading. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) investigated the case, and found no evidence of a crime. So, end of story, right? Well, no, this was a high profile case that was extensively covered in the media. Nobody wanted to look stupid, or walk away empty handed. Fortunately for the prosecutors, Stewart naively thought that she could get through the thing quickly if she just co-operated and freely answered all their questions. So it was a simple matter of going through transcripts, emails, and other records until you find enough inconsistencies to charge her with lying to an FBI special agent (an act that would win accolades in some circles), perjury, and obstructing justice, or whatever. Getting the conviction was easy. The jurors were, in general, prejudice toward Stewart, and cared little for the law. When asked how he arrived at the verdict, one of Stewart’s jurors said, “I did it for the little guy.” Stop, go directly to Iraq, do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars. More recently, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald found himself in a tough spot. His investigation into who “leaked the identity of a CIA agent,” showed that Valerie Plame had not performed any “covert” work for over ten years, and was quite free about telling people that she was an employee of the CIA. He also learned from Bob Novak that he heard about Valerie Plame’s employment from Richard Armitage, one of the State Department’s Bush haters. Nobody from Bush or Cheney’s staff had anything to do with it. Being a Special Prosecutor was his fifteen minutes of fame, and he could not let the crowd down. After all, he was a protégé of Chuck Schumer – he had to hand him a trophy. What was he to do? Well, he did have all kinds of transcripts, emails, and records from which he could find some evidence of lying to a grand jury, perjury, and obstruction of justice. So, at the end of the investigation, he announce that there was no evidence of a crime having been committed regarding Valerie Plame, Joe Wilson, Dick Cheney, George Bush – but Louis Libby was being indicted for, well, you know the drill. It wasn’t much of a case, but he didn’t need one really. The jury pool in Washington, D.C. was five to one Democrat over Republican. All he had to do was talk about the evils of the Bush administration during the closing arguments and rest assured that enough of the jury would “do it for the little guy.” Politically motivated show trials are not worthy of this country, and sometimes, neither are we.
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"Politically motivated show trials are not worthy of this country, and sometimes, neither are we." |
