THE CURMUDGEON CHRONICLE #209

THE CURMUDGEON CHRONICLE ©

AN IRREVERENT VIEW


Time Line: July 3, 2007
Date Line: Flemington New Jersey

We are 231 years old come July 4th, but not a lot different in many of our ways than we were in 1776. We still have a love/hate relationship with France and are still troubled by the fear of a Hispanic hegemony. Even though we are separated from Britain politically, we like almost everything about the British except the way they name comfort foods. The passage of 231 years has not changed our repugnance when offered “Toad in the Hole” for lunch. We rarely fight duels with sharp weapons these days, but the blood shed on Wall Street makes up for that deficiency.

The Founding Fathers left us a legacy that includes freedoms and guarantees. They left us a system of checks and balances and a concept of judicial oversight on the activities of the Executive and Legislature. Unfortunately they trusted in the fairness of men and thereby unwittingly spawned a system that can be used to subvert the freedoms and guarantees they intended us to have. When I was a child I learned the Pledge of Allegiance. I never forgot that we are promised “….liberty and justice for all”.

What I did not understand then is that justice is not an absolute term: it is defined by the person in power. One man’s idea of justice (and who is entitled to it) is not the same as another’s. Americans have learned that the right to justice is a cancelable franchise with changing boundaries depending on whose conduct is being evaluated.

As a child I believed the President of the United States was an exalted personage who thought about my welfare like a father. I was born when Herbert Hoover was in office, but was too young to know him. FDR was the only President I knew and he had fixed what was broken in our country and made sure that my father had a job.

I knew the Presidency was the fount of wisdom and fairness just as well as I knew that my Public School was six blocks from home. The current President of the United States is a different kind of cat.

He has just given the country a July 4th birthday present in the form of a commuted sentence for Mr. Lewis Libby. Libby was convicted of the felonies of obstruction of justice and perjury. There is little doubt that he lied to protect the Vice-President and perhaps the President as well.

For those crimes Libby was fined and given a prison sentence of 30 months after a finding of guilt in a jury trial presided over by a Republican Judge. Libby asked to be kept out of jail pending the determination of his appeal. The Court refused and an Appellate Court, (largely Republican appointees) agreed and refused to overrule the lower court’s decision. The President of the United States commuted Libby’s sentence and eliminated the prison term in its entirety.

There have been other “obstruction of justice” cases in recent memory. Martha Stewart served time for a nonsensical set of circumstances; the Watergate witch hunt led to the incarceration of Ms. MacDougal for not testifying in the manner that Ken Starr required in order to fry Bill Clinton; reporters were imprisoned for failure to reveal their sources. There were no pardons or sentence commutations.

Contrast the Libby affair with the case of two border patrol Agents now serving 11 and 12 year sentences for doing their job. This administration’s Attorney General granted immunity to a drug smuggler in order to manufacture testimony for their conviction. That case has intimidated the border patrol and may serve to help illegals enter the country. The illegals work for a pittance and the employers who break the law by hiring them are not prosecuted.

Those few examples demonstrate what “justice” can become under the control of men who are not the kind of President conceived by the Founding Fathers.

Libby is guilty of putting loyalty to his boss before loyalty to his country. In that regard he is no different than the Mafioso who abides by Omerta and he should serve his sentence like any other convicted felon.

Bush and Cheney are protected by the institutions they have damaged and yet they have served a purpose. If ever America had an object lesson and a reason to say “Never again”, this is it.

I hope that on the birthday following the election of a new President we see a return to law fairly and evenly applied. Only then can justice begin to flower, but until then we must object as forcefully as we can, at every new affront to what the Founders promised their descendants.

Howard Stamer