April 06, 2008
Political violence
That's what you call it when a 63-year-old woman with no criminal history, charged with a nonviolent offense, is dragged off to jail in handcuffs after a 6 a.m. raid on her home by gun-waving federal cops because a Republican U.S. Attorney is hunting Democratic scalps.
The law gives prosecutors and police enormous powers to ruin the lives of innocent people, and virtually complete immunity for doing so. Decent prosecutors and cops use those powers with due regard to their destructive force. Prosecutors chosen by Karl Rove don't.
January 20, 2009. I'm not sure whether the U.S. attorneys in the case can be convicted of obstruction of justice. But I'm sure they can be terrified and humiliated. Alas, our side mostly doesn't play the game that way.
Mostly, that is. Payback's a bitch. And if Republicans know they can keep pulling this crap without having to fear retaliation, then they're going to keep pulling it.
If Sue Schmitz can be subjected to the violence of arrest so prosecutors can ask her whether she did enough work to earn her salary from a junior college, then John ("I didn't mean to say 'Osama' ") Ashcroft can surely be treated the same way to find out whether he actually earned the eight-figure payday he was handed, on a no-bid basis, by one of the U.S. Attorneys who served under him, as a corporate monitor. How much does Ashcroft actually know about orthopedic implant devices?
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