Dear Lord, Where Do They Find These People?

According to Rep. Tom McClintock, there simply is no such thing as white-collar crime.

At a town hall meeting in El Dorado Hills, California on Tuesday, a constituent asked McClintock for his “stance on Wall Street criminal practices.” The congressman responded, “Well first of all, for a criminal practice there has to be a gun. It’s pretty simple.”

I think we know what’s simple, and it isn’t the Congressman’s intriguing theory of what it takes to constitute criminal behavior.

Every day, it seems we meet a new officeholding whack-a-doodle.

This week it was Lee Bright calling Lindsey Graham a “community organizer for the Muslims.” Last week, Steve King explained that for every young immigrant who was a valedictorian, there were a hundred others with “calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.” Before him, Paul Broun insisted that evolution and climate change were “lies from the mouth of hell.” Rand Paul insists that  black people have no trouble voting–and that despite his opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act and any and all measures to lift people from poverty, he’s all for equality. And of course, almost every week there’s some new insanity from Louie Gohmert, who Charles Pierce memorably called “perhaps the dumbest mammal to enter a legislative chamber since Caligula’s horse.”

There’s a new one just about every day. Michelle Bachmann hasn’t even taken her crazy eyes into retirement yet, and literally dozens of her fellow Republican Congresscritters are contending for her title of  “least securely tethered to reality.”

It would be funny if it weren’t so terrifying.

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I’m as Ethical as Scalia is NOT a Persuasive Argument

A couple of days ago, the Sierra Club, Citizens Action Coalition, Spencer County Citizens for Quality of Life and Save the Valley [update: the organization was Valley Watch, not Save the Valley] filed a petition asking Indiana Supreme Court Justice Mark Massa to recuse himself from hearing a case that will determine the viability of the controversial Rockport coal gasification facility. (I’ve written before about this boondoggle, birthed by political insiders and totally contrary to the free market principles to which the Daniels Administration paid so much verbal homage.)

Not even 20 hours after the petition was filed, Massa issued a ruling denying it. Clearly, the ruling had been written well beforehand–the lawyers who crafted the brief could have saved their (written) breath.

The argument for recusal rested on the long and intimate relationship between Massa and Mark Lubbers, whose personal fortunes are closely tied to the results of the lawsuit, and upon Massa’s friendship with and service to then-governor Mitch Daniels, who rammed the deal through over the qualms of both Republican and Democratic legislators. As columnist Charles Pierce wrote yesterday in his Esquire blog, “Massa couldn’t be more tied into the people who want to build the plant if he came to work every morning in one of those NASCAR firesuits festooned with logos.”

Massa’s ruling relied heavily on Cheney v. United States District Court, the infamous case in which Justice Scalia refused to recuse himself from a pending case despite the fact that he had gone duck hunting with the Vice-President–a named party— while the case was pending. Massa neglected to note that the Indiana Supreme Court, unlike the US Supreme Court, is governed by one of those pesky codes of ethics. (Can we spell “appearance of impropriety”?)

At least he didn’t defend himself by pointing out that Clarence Thomas sits on cases in which his wife has an interest, while he and Lubbers are just best buds. (Actually, relying on Scalia or Thomas for ethical guidance makes me think of that old adage about fish rotting from the head. But I digress.)

In a particularly disingenuous passage, Judge Massa wrote:

“I have a friend who works for General Motors; must I recuse if GM is a party to a case before our court?” he wrote. “All of us on this Court have many friends who are lawyers, some of whom appear before us, including several to whom I am closer and see more regularly than Mr. Lubbers. If mere friendship with these lawyers were enough to trigger disqualification, my colleagues and I would rarely sit as an intact court of five.”

Well Judge, if you had a friend who worked for General Motors, that would be a lot different than having a friend whose continued, highly lucrative employment depends upon a favorable verdict– a friend who got you your first political job 30 years ago, a friend with whom you have subsequently shared many meals and social occasions, a friend who was one of the very few invitees asked to speak at the robing ceremony when you were sworn in as Judge.

I’m disappointed, but not surprised. This is the man who, as a candidate for Marion County Prosecutor, ran an ad asserting that his opponent was unfit for the office because in his private practice he had represented a criminal defendant. (I know several Republican lawyers who had supported Massa until that ad ran, but based on its intellectual dishonesty, instead voted for Terry Curry.)

Massa evidently couldn’t see an appearance of impropriety if it bit him.

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How Long Can This Continue?

The State, a newspaper in South Carolina, reports that Senator Lindsay Graham–the very right-wing South Carolina Senator who is coming up for re-election–has attracted a primary opponent. Because, you know, Graham is insufficiently insane.

State Sen. Lee Bright announced his candidacy Tuesday for the GOP nomination for the U.S. Senate, calling incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham “a community organizer for the Muslim Brotherhood.”

“During the (congressional) recess, when I would hope that he would be around folks in South Carolina, getting their feelings on so many issues that affect their lives, he has instead chosen to take his time to be a community organizer for the Muslim Brotherhood and that concerns me,” Bright told supporters in a conference call. “He needs to spend more time listening to what the brothers in South Carolina have to say.”

Increasingly, I feel as though I have fallen down the Rabbit Hole with Alice, or I’m living in one of those science fiction books I used to read, where the protagonist goes to sleep only to wake up in an alternate universe.

Mr. (not very) Bright uses all the dog whistle words: community organizer. Muslim. Next thing you know, he’ll be accusing Graham of having been civil to the President (although he’d be hard pressed to find an example of Graham actually voting for something the President proposed. At this point, if President Obama suggested we endorse the sun continuing to rise in the east, most Republicans would call the very idea “socialism” and oppose it.)

I know we Americans have gone through periods of hysteria and bigotry and self-destructive behaviors before. We just didn’t have the internet and Facebook and blogs to rub our faces in every paranoid utterance, every display of aggressive ignorance and racial animus. I want to believe that this, too, shall pass…..

But I’d feel so much better if someone could assure me that we will come to the end of this cycle of crazy before the harm done becomes irreparable.

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Fight the Culture War on Your Own Nickel, Greg

I thought I’d share a letter that Bill Groth and I wrote to the editor of the Star, published today (at least in the electronic version), for the benefit of the growing number of people who no longer read that publication.

_____________________

To the Editor:

Attorney General Greg Zeller recently had a letter in The Indianapolis Star defending his decision to file yet another friend-of-the-court brief in the U.S. Supreme Court—this time, in a case from New York challenging the conduct of legislative prayer.

Whether one agrees or disagrees with the Attorney General’s position on the merits, his entirely voluntary participation in this case raises an issue that troubles us as attorneys and as taxpayers. Simply stated, Attorney General Zeller has shown an unseemly proclivity to weigh in—ostensibly on behalf of all Hoosiers—on so-called “culture war” issues entirely unrelated to Indiana. This time, it’s public prayer;  a few months ago, it was opposition to federal recognition of same-sex marriages performed in states where such marriages are legal.

These forays into matters not involving Indiana or its citizens may play well with the Republican party’s religiously conservative base, but they do not serve the interests of the broader Indiana community. Indiana was not a party to those cases, and it was entirely unnecessary to take a side in matters about which Hoosiers remain sharply divided.

Zeller defended his culture war activism by noting his office “routinely” files friend-of-court briefs.  This is precisely what concerns us.  Just as courts exercise judicial restraint and refrain from deciding issues not squarely before them, we believe that Attorney General Zeller should show similar restraint by not volunteering Indiana as a partisan “culture warrior” in cases to which the state is not a party.  He claims no tax money is involved in the preparation of these briefs, because his staff researches and writes them. That staff, of course, is paid with Hoosiers’ tax dollars.

If lawyers in the office have enough spare time to work on numerous legal matters not germane to state business, it would seem the office is overstaffed.

Attorney General Zeller denies he is advocating any personal position and is only seeking “finality” on this and other controversial issues.  But as any lawyer can attest, and the Attorney General surely knows, issues of this sort are never “final.”  It is hard to escape the conclusion that Attorney General Zeller is using his public office to advocate for his personal religious views—views that are highly divisive in an increasingly pluralistic society. Such use of an elected office is improper, and it should stop.

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Maybe “Allah” Would Have Been Okay

File under: Just kill me now.

A couple–evidently unmarried–went to court because they couldn’t agree on which of their last names to give their baby. Granted, this does not seem to bode well for future family amity, and does seem to call into question the parents’ common sense.

But they would seem to be paragons of rational behavior in comparison with Judge Lu Ann Ballew, who ordered the parents of 7-month-old Messiah DeShawn Martin to change the baby’s name to Martin DeShawn McCullough.

Why this order? What conceivable business does a Judge have interfering with a parent’s right to name a baby? Glad you asked.

“The word Messiah is a title and it’s a title that has only been earned by one person and that one person is Jesus Christ,” Ballew said.

Ballew even ruled that the parents had to go back and change the baby’s name on the birth certificate.

Now, I note that this throwback to a time when members of the nobility could name the children of the peasants who worked their land (and sample a bride’s ‘favors’ before turning her back to the bridegroom) does not appear to be a genuine Judge; she is identified in the news reports as a Child Support Magistrate. She has, however, been allowed to exercise judicial authority, despite the fact that she has quite obviously never encountered the Constitution, Rule of Law principles, or the 21st Century.

The baby’s stunned mother is quoted as saying, “I didn’t think a judge could make me change my baby’s name because of her religious beliefs.”

Of course, in the world inhabited by sane people, she can’t.

Now, granted, a kid named “Messiah” is going to have some dicey moments. But he should be able to grow up and blame his parents for his problems like everybody else.

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