Saturday Morning Confusion. # 133

Here it is Saturday Morning and I'm in my normal state of confusion. I sit here on this long weekend holiday wondering what the hell the world is coming to!

I have always hated the way kids now dress in "gangsta" clothes with their pants around their ass and underwear hiked up half a foot higher.

Why a bunch of middle class suburban white kids want to emulate ghetto black kids is beyond me but the city elders in Atlanta have apparently had enough and passed a city ordinance banning "gangsta" clothing because it makes it too easy to hid drugs and weapons in the clothing.

This harkens back to the 30's and 40's when zoot-suits were banned for the same reason. (I would ban them too, but on the grounds of good taste if nothing else.)

Now, along the same sort of line, but something that has greater implications for most of middle-class America.

I talked about how the police are an institution unto themselves and seem to be able to operate with impunity and total disregard for the very laws they are sworn to uphold. Well we have just as big a problem D.A.'s and Assistant D.A.'s in most areas.

Not only are these people prosecuting offenders with an eye to winning a conviction whether there is evidence of guilt or not, they have now sunk to a new low of exaggerating or even fabricating charges and evidence for the purpose of career advancement or political gain.

Two recent examples of this are first of all the case of Conrad Black and how how was supposedly looting the coffers of a Chicago newspaper out of millions of dollars when in fact he was for the most part following normally accepted business practises.

On top of that, most of what he was charged with happened in Canada, where there was no question of it's legality, but they decided to twist some American laws to gain an indictment and then a conviction.

(There were fourteen or so charges they threw against the wall to see what would stick. Three of them did.)

This was all done for purely political reasons (It's open season on businessmen after the Enron and WorldCom scandals so this time let's get a Canadian businessman) and because of this ol' Conrad might be spending quite a few years in the slammer.

What's even worse is that they confiscated thirty or forty million dollars of his own money to make it more difficult for him to pay his lawyers. These are dirty tricks to the max, especially since the eventual money concerned (and under appeal) amounted to some 2-3 million.

Then there is the case of Michael Vick and his trial by media for being involved in dogfighting. This is an excerpt from Barbara Amiel about that trial. (By the way, Barbara is the wife of Conrad Black!)

The fact of dogfighting is not really this issue here but rather how the US prosecutors handled it. They made political hay out of it to the point of being ridiculous.

Three other accused copped ples bargains because they were not celebrities and they all pointed the finger at Vick. (And gave him the finger!)

Prosecutors then hovered with new indictments if Vick himself didn't agree with a plea bargain.

Whether of not you have feelings about dog-fighting, and personally I think it vile, watching the pit bull tactics of American Justice makes dogfighting look sedate. Vick gave in.

"This has already cost him hundreds of thousand in lawyers' fees," said one legal commentator. "A trial would cost him millions!"

It takes a hero or a madman to fight the US Department of Justice, and Vick's lawyers were neither. I can't blame them.

A gambling conviction would have outlawed him from the NFL for life. Just as bad, the superseding indictment was expected to contain RICO charges. (Racketeering and Corrupt Organizations Act.)

That's a killer. RICO sentences are up to 20 years per charge and damages can be tripled.

Theoretically designed to prevent organized crime, RICO is now used for just about everything but.

"The real purpose of invoking the RICO statutes," writes William L Anderson, adjunct scholar of the Ludwis von Mises Institure, "is to employ a legal weapon so powerful that few people can avoid being crushed by it!"

As Anderson points out, a RICO charge can freeze an accused's assets pre-trial, leaving him no money for a proper defence.

Within a week, Vick pleaded guilty to one charge in exchange for fingering other people.

That this approach to justice is an outrage seems a matter of indifference to Americans!

So my friends, the long and short of it seems to be that you can get screwed over coming and going in the American justice system.

It's not only the cops you have to watch out for it's the prosecutors as well............. and then your own lawyer......... that he doesn't just take your money and plead you out.

Bet you won't see that on "Law and Order!"

Your "litigious" scribe;
Allan W Janssen

Allan W Janssen is the author of The Plain Truth About God at http://www.god-101.com/