Someone, and I will not name names, wrote me this very pissy e-mail about how since I’d started writing about politics, I’d gotten a lot more conservative.
That’s not true. I’ve gotten a lot more indifferent. As a senior political science student, I do research that leads me to believe every damn day that both parties are completely insane and neither one of them really deserves the attention that the average American gives them… because in order to fix the parties, what really needs to happen is that the average American needs to start giving the Democrats and the Republicans more attention than they know what to do with.
Because believe me when I say that constituents intent on content are like kryptonite to Congress. Say that three times fast. I’m on a roll today.
There are members of both parties that would sell their mother for Jack Abramoff to take them to Scotland… and a good bit of them are trying to sell their mothers right now because Jack Abramoff did. If you haven’t gotten a chance before now, start reading Vanity Fair. It’s a little biased to the left, but even if you’re a right-wing conservative, you’ll still have plenty to chew on. My personal favorite was the roughly five page article that started with the President denying that he’d ever met Abramoff, and five (count ‘em, five) pictures that state otherwise.
For all you yellow dog democrats out there, are you following the story of William Jefferson? I know you’d like to think that the Republicans are the axis (or “asses”) of evil, but Jefferson is a Democrat accused of orchestrating a corruption scheme- demanding cash and prizes for negotiating African business deals. Now, I’m not a lawyer, but I think they’ve got some pretty convincing evidence:
The investigation became public on Aug. 3 when FBI agents raided Jefferson’s homes in New Orleans and Northeast Washington, where they found about $90,000 in cash in his freezer, law enforcement sources have said.
In the freezer? If you’re going to claim innocence, you for damn sure don’t hide shit in the freezer. This story will get weirder before it gets better. Law enforcement officials are lucky all they found was money. There could have been a severed head.
And if the two parties weren’t causing enough trouble, let me play a lawyer on TV…
My first love is constitutional law. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that the Feds have the right to enter congressional offices and loot around. It doesn’t even have a sentence from which you can extrapolate the right to fuck up their program.
I was just about to say something very naive, like “when the founding fathers were writing the Constitution, they probably never dreamed this would be an issue…” Then I realized I’d only be saying it because it sounded good, not because it’s true. Half the Constitution was written by taking the right people and getting them too sloshed to move right before they were supposed to vote.
Surely the Framers figured out that something like this was bound to happen. So what we have now is a truckload of evidence and no way to use it… a lot like the OJ case, actually… (And confidentially to the pretentious fuckwit who told me to cite more recent cases because it made me look like a rookie, THIS is going to be the next huge precedent in Fourth Amendment violations. ) The problem is not that there’s too little evidence, it was that it was obtained in an illegal search and seizure. Whether or not they had warrants, Justice does not have the right to wrestle Congress to the mat during Saturday Night Smackdown. If you remember nothing else from this web site, remember this- one branch of power does not have the authority to make any other branch his or her bitch.
I’ve been spending some time reading my old blog, “Clever Title Goes Here,” and it’s the easiest way for me to see myself as a different person, often losing all the context around something, even forgetting the people I was with at the time. It’s what hits a home run for me every single time. I am batting a thousand at recording my own life, and I cannot tell you how valuable it is to me. I am only in charge of what I’m putting out there, not what I’m receiving. That means I can’t count on you to like my writing, it would just be nice. I’ve had imposter syndrome for a long time, but I realized two things. The first is that if I’d gone into journalism when I was young, I’d still be there. I know this because I can sneeze a thousand words, and it only takes a little bit longer than that to type them. I am connected to Mark Twain on a deeply spiritual level…… “I’m sorry this is long, but I didn’t have time to make it shorter.” I am a Stephen King kind of bitch. I start writing and who knows which way I’ll go, and I’m as fascinated by the way I think even more than everyone else because my eyes get opened quickly when I am no attacking it with a red pen. It’s so long ago I don’t care.
Today, though, I have a “guest blogger.” He doesn’t even know it. His name is Dr. Ken Wall, and he taught me Constitutional Law in 2006. I posted one of the lectures on my old blog and it fascinated me today. Mostly because I thought they were lost for good and Ken was one of the best teachers I’ve ever had. Since this is an hour lecture, you might want to bookmark this page because he’s worth the read.
When I’m in my classes, I type every word the professor says. Last week’s lecture in Foundations of Law was incredible, and I thought you might want to read it.
The Myth of Moral Justice
We need laws
Think of the legal system as an unloaded gun.
We need law. If there wasn’t law, people would come up with their own set of rules. We all have our own internal rules… laws that we live by. Very few of us are completely spontaneous because we need guidelines. We like the laws to be enforced and we enforce the laws ourselves. But we don’t want them enforced to the point where we get pulled over for doing 4 miles over the speed limit.
When you get married you inventory the situation. You move into the place that’s bigger, and then you find out that there are loaded revolvers in drawers, under the bed, etc. You don’t like loaded guns in the house. We all like to get along with our partners, but through no fault of our own, we make them mad, and all of the sudden there are GUNS IN THE HOUSE. The government is like an unloaded gun- I want it there, and I don’t want to be afraid to use it.
The problem is what do we really want out of the legal system?
I’ve not actually been sued or sued anyone. But I know if I were sued or if I was being sued what I would want is to win, but that’s an unfair thing to say because we don’t always deserve to win. What do we really need? To be heard. You want fairness, you want juries that are fair. You want fairness until you are the one that’s disadvantaged.
What are we looking for from the system?
Consistency
Justice
Fairness
No bias or prejudice
Facts
Truth
The bottom line
Remedies for grievances
Equal treatment
A soul?
What if every time you went to court, the judge said a different thing? Is it fair to make someone tear down a $35,000 garage because it’s two feet over into your property? Do you want your opponent to come in and say “hello, Uncle Fred” to the judge? Do we want the law to be feeling?
One of the major problems with law is what people want from the law is not what the law is set up to provide.
Falsehood 1
The law is in the business of seeking out the truth. It’s in the business of seeking out the facts. I’m driving along the street and there’s a 35mph zone. I’m doing 40. The light goes yellow, then red, and since I’m in Texas, I just go through. As I get through the intersection, a little boy steps in front of the car. I hit him and do serious damage. I’m going to be sued. One of the big questions is going to be how fast I was driving and what was the color of the light. Those are important facts that the court needs to determine to make their decision. This little kid wasn’t paying attention, might not even know his colors yet. There’s only me and my passenger, who is dependent upon me for her college education and everything she needs in life. Passenger corroborates the story. The other two people on the street say he was going slow. The young lady says, “I’m not sure. One of the lights was green.”
What color was the light? It was green. All the evidence says it was green. It was really red, but there is no way for the court to prove otherwise.
What is the law really trying to do? Find out the facts based on the evidence presented. It can be very confusing. We keep out more than we let in. We often keep out evidence that is highly relevant because of hearsay or copies instead of originals.
What if we changed the facts just a little bit and another car as the kid is laying there in the street and I’ve pulled on ahead to check my tires and see the kid “awww, man!” I go back and the mother is screaming. Another guy runs almost instantaneously through the light and runs over the kid again. The testimony in my lawsuit is that it was green and because I’m a nice citizen I testify for the kid in the other case because he got sued. The facts are different even though the truth is identical. Although the truth is the same, when the facts are decided by the court, it’s usually not the same.
Falsehood #2: The courts are here to do what is fair and what is right; Justice equals just, fairness, or morality
They’re enforcing the standards of the community. They want to come to the bottom line. Move it, tear it down, or leave it alone. In some cases the law does what is fair, but it’s an extra. Even ignorance of the law is no excuse.
Another example would be that there are people with certain expertise. Let’s say I’m an art expert that knows Old Masters. My little old lady next door neighbor is having financial difficulties. I’m over there sympathizing with her and say, “you could sell some stuff and make some money.” “All I really have is some old stuff that my parents brought over to the old country.” It turns out to be a Cezanne and a Rembrandt. They are dirty and need cleaning. The moral thing to do would be to tell her that she’s rich. But you tell her, “the paintings are okay, but no one will buy a picture of a fat lady. I’ll tell you what. What was your bill the last two months? I’ll pay your bill if you’ll give me the three paintings and we’ll call it even. We sign a contract. You read in the paper that I’ve just bought Galveston island. LOL cannot sue to get her paintings back. She accepted the offer, I’m not a merchant so it doesn’t have to be in writing. There’s a legal term called tough noogies.
Falsehood III: Negotiated pleas and settlements based on falsehoods are not allowed.
I don’t want to know how many times you’ve been arrested and pled guilty, but it does happen. It used to be and is still in a few jurisdictions that for whatever reason the head prosecutor won’t allow plea bargaining for criminal cases. Some other guy who looked like me was in a jurisdiction that didn’t allow plea bargains and I couldn’t make any agreements on charges, etc. Between 90 and 98 percent of cases are plea bargained. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that if every case went to trial that if you got arrested you wouldn’t go to court for thirty years.
Deals are made. Defendant pleas guilty. “Has any agreement not in writing been made concerning these charges? The judge will gavel down guilty. When you work out certain deals on civil cases, although maybe not quite as bad, the attorneys will decide how to work it out. We’ve all got dirt on our spouses that work in our favor. House of cards, house of lies.
I hope that I never knowingly took someone to trial that I thought was innocent. (He’s a prosecutor.) I don’t think I ever used the shotgun method- take every statute involving criminality and just load ‘em into the gun and start shooting. Charge ‘em with 100 different things because SOMETHING has to stick.
Falsehood IV: A lawyer that fastidiously maintains all the ethical requirements of his/her profession is a fair and honest lawyer.
It doesn’t mean that justice will be done if you follow all the rules. One of the codes of ethics says that you can’t knowingly present false evidence to the court and try to pass it off as truth. So I’m defense counsel, the question I NEVER ask is “Are you guilty?”
Now I know because I’ve seen the bank video that he’s guilty, but I don’t want to know so that I can always say, “I didn’t know because I didn’t ask the question. The video could have been manufactured. The witnesses could have been lying. I had to believe my client.”
Falsehood V: The reasonable person test is a good method of determining what one should do in differing circumstances.
I’m driving along talking on the phone putting on my makeup drinking a Slurpee. Would they be doing all those things? Probably, but is it reasonable? Today driving and talking on the cell phone is reasonable because that’s what most people do. There have been some tests that talking and especially dialing the phone is more dangerous than driving at .08 BAC.
Was it reasonable for the black man charged with raping the white woman to run? Generally, running is an admission of guilt. In the 30’s, no matter how innocent he was, it was reasonable for the black man to run. A black man that would have stayed would have been shot and the girl’s father brought down as some sort of hero even if no rape had occurred. (To Kill a Mockingbird)
If the community believes that the legal system is there to do what is just and to discover the truth, then the adversarial system of justice may not achieve a legitimate sense of the truth.
There’s a guy in NYC who was depressed and homeless. Decided to commit suicide by jumping in front of a subway train. Train missed him. Suffered severe shock. Wasn’t pushed. JUMPED. Sued the city of New York and was awarded over 3 million dollars. Tried to commit suicide and got MORE money from the city.
In this case, with these facts, should the city have put up a barrier to keep the guy from jumping?
In the next lesson, we’ll go over ways to fix the problems with the legal system. A lot of the problem is the way the law is set up in and of itself. It’s hard to get people to change. You’ve got to look at an opinion that just goes stupid to see what changes need to be made.
Stories That Are All True 