Once the integrity of Judges in their court would be likely to throw out such prosecutions. Since “law and order” in order to retain their positions, Judges must obtain approval of police organizations, the source of most prosecutorial misconduct; tacit approval of public prosecutors, and even approval of firefighter associations (for gawds sake). The probability of a level, evenhanded contest is entirely non-existant, a stacked and marked deck if ever there was one.

In 1983 I was a Town Councilman in a small town that was offered a place in the “interlocal drug fund agreement” by the county sheriff, who was organizing all local law enforcement agencies to share information and share the wealth from confiscations. We were asked to sign up our little police department, and agreement was considered routine.

Due to some flukes of timing and personnel on our 5-man council, I managed to get the three votes to at least delay our joining for a couple of months while we tried to negotiate less Draconian enforcement and point out the conflict of interest in police profiting from their own confiscations.

One vote on my side was a Councilman who was furious and sputtering at the deputy who made the presentation, since he had recently been acquitted on a drugs-for-supply charge on grounds of entrapment. (single man, female undercover cop goes home with him from the local bar and asks for drugs to get her in the mood – everyone in town was on his side)

But finally we 3 could not stand against the tide. First we made headlines by not rubber-stamping the agreement and joining. You know what people said to us and about us without needing to hear it from me.

Then the local preachers started to speak against us on Sundays.

Two of us were teachers. First the principals, then the entire school board, turned up at council meetings to ask us hostile questions.

I was asked to repeat, again and again, my position that the consumers who made a market for drugs were a bigger problem than those who supplied the drugs. I pointed out that if you magically killed all the suppliers tonight, they would be replaced tomorrow, but that if everybody got educated about the unwisdom of using most drugs and simply stopped taking them that the suppliers would have to find honest work.

Not quite incidentally, one Councilman kept demanding in a snide and hostile way that I repeat this. He later complained to the press and police that my doper friends were tormenting him with late-night phone calls and slashed tires, and had burgled his house (stealing a .22 pistol).

Still later, he gave a description of the late-night prowler who had shot and killed his wife. That description sounded so much like me that the Mayor (ex-cop from nearby city, who was responsible for calling in the undercover gal who entrapped the other Councilman) asked “Milt, are you trying to tell us that Tom did this?” No. But still . . .

As things turned out, the harassment was bogus and he had shot her himself, hoping to collect a million in insurance (really). And she was living with him as his wife, but was really his brother’s daughter, brought in from another state so she could get her life together away from the big city after too much drugs and prostitution. It sounds like soap opera, and would sound even more so if there were space here for all the details, but it is all on the record. I kid you not. The police never really believed his reports, Milt Begley confessed, and died in jail.

This is the guy who most strongly supported the WOSD, and who won the fight in council.

He tried to retract the confession and went to trial. Convicted, he left the courtroom only after saying that he still blamed me and another teacher for the whole thing and saying how much he hated our guts.

But the law stands, and that little town is still part of the interlocal drug fund agreement, as far as I know. I left.

My thanks, Ian, for an outstanding essay that exposes the wider tapestry of America’s loss of liberty, and ties so many threads together. Both tasks are badly needed in this forget-it-in-a-minute culture.

If you can’t see the evidence against you, if you can’t be told where it was received from, how can you possibly defend yourself? The answer is simple – you can’t. There’s no need to write a long discourse on this – any nation which does this sort of thing no longer has a justice system, it only has a legal system.

To this I would add – accusations made where the only defense requires the defendant prove their innocence by proving something that never happened – eliminating the presumption of innocence.

As well as accusations coming from lies which removes the right to remain silent and reduces or eliminates the requirement that prosecution actually prove their charge beyond a reasonable doubt – an accusation becomes the convicting evidence of guilt.

A mere legal system indeed. Your post would be well set to stone – excellently written

It is imperative that the GOP be be defeated roundly in 2008. Otherwise, it’s a ‘done deal’. There is but one thing standing between Democracy and dictatorship. The rule of law.

Oklahoma kiddo, I maintain that we cannot afford to wait for the elections, because there is a reasonable chance that the Bush Neocons will find a way to declare martial law and cancel the elections.

Note that I am not claiming to know for sure whether Bush will declare martial law and cancel elections, only that there is a reasonable possibility.

But if one agrees that there is a reasonable possibility (in roughly the sense of “reasonable doubt”) that Bush will cancel elections, and given Bush’s crimes to date, it would be very negligent not to impeach Gonzales, Cheney and Bush immediately, in order to prevent that from happening. There is much to gain from impeachment, and very little to lose.

Compare: if Clinton had hinted that he might decide to pull a Monica affair again in a month or two, and maybe that he had the right to do so, I suspect he would almost certainly have been convicted in the Senate.

My dog now wants to get fed and so he sticks his nose under my forearm and lifts it off the keyboard preventing me from typi

Mine does that too. When we’re on the road in the van she’ll actually do that nudge thing when I’m driving.

When I lived in L.A. about 20 years ago I had a dog was so offended when I went online that she would go out through her dogdoor and sulk in the back yard. In summer. In Reseda. At 100° F.

While she was out there one day I wrote about it on a gay BBS called The Oracle. Someone commented, “I have a lover like that.”

OK, back to serious stuff.

OT – John Conyers said today that if he get 3 more congress critters “I’ll move to impeach”. Story up at Daily Kos -
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/7/21/192812/090

Stop my pounding heart!

Oh! When the frogs come marching in…

And ‘Remember the Maine’ led directly to the Phillipine ~insurrection~ … est. 250,000 terrists offed, even if some of ‘em were women and children. The start of Empire?

Prisoners: US has 5% of world population and 25% of prisoners overall. More than China, more than … a buncha countries put together. What’s wrong with this picture?!

Oklahoma kiddo @ 73

My six year old cousin, Desiree has a cell phone and tells me, “kiddo, I couldn’t live without it”. (My gawd. I think.) And being the smarty pants she is, she follows this up by telling me “it’s just like you and your computers”. Keep in mind though, that this little girl already knows how to solve for two variables. I’m going to teach her ‘Cramer’s Rule next’.

Yikes! I live with two like this. Best of luck my friend.

we raised 2 like that. thank heavens we remain best of friends. i’m ashamed at the mess of a world we’re leaving for them to clean up, and just survive in. but i’m glad they’ll be right in the midst of the gang who try to put it all to rights. same goes for your little ones, fellas. thank you for nurturing your brand of lil’ rascals. i just know they’ll grow up to make you proud.
Now let’s continue to dig deep to do what we can in the meantime. *whew*

My dog now wants to get fed and so he sticks his nose under my forearm and lifts it off the keyboard preventing me from typi

One of my cats sits on my right fore arm to keep me from typing. Also sits on whatever piece of paper I need for whatever I’m doing.

Thats how it happens.