Sunday, March 13, 2005
Business as usual
I'll bet Congress will take advantage of the killings involving judges, to skip the whole question of cleaning up bad judges.
Sort of a misplaced application of martyrdom.
From what I can gather, Lefkow in Chicago (whose relatives were killed) is a tough judge, exactly the kind we want to keep and honor.
Less certain about Barnes in Atlanta, but sounds like he was also a hard and fair judge.
The real irony is that Barnes was killed partly by bad judges. Yes, in a moral sense Nichols is solely responsible, but practically it's necessary to treat all defendants like wolverines or tornados: forces of nature that can rip you apart at any second.
Because bad judges at the Supreme level decided to put the "presumed innocence" of wolverines ahead of lives, Hurricane Nichols was able to do tremendous damage. A simple pair of handcuffs would have saved four lives. That's not speculation, it's fact. So I'm betting that Congress will welcome this excuse to step gingerly around the whole question.
Looks like they'll skip the other little frills and furbelows like border control and Social Security as well, to clear the decks for the Crucial Questions Of The Millenium: juiced-up baseball players, excess yapping by bloggers, and (gravest of all) the Tragedy of Candy Cigarettes. ¶ 7:33 PM
Sort of a misplaced application of martyrdom.
From what I can gather, Lefkow in Chicago (whose relatives were killed) is a tough judge, exactly the kind we want to keep and honor.
Less certain about Barnes in Atlanta, but sounds like he was also a hard and fair judge.
The real irony is that Barnes was killed partly by bad judges. Yes, in a moral sense Nichols is solely responsible, but practically it's necessary to treat all defendants like wolverines or tornados: forces of nature that can rip you apart at any second.
Because bad judges at the Supreme level decided to put the "presumed innocence" of wolverines ahead of lives, Hurricane Nichols was able to do tremendous damage. A simple pair of handcuffs would have saved four lives. That's not speculation, it's fact. So I'm betting that Congress will welcome this excuse to step gingerly around the whole question.
Looks like they'll skip the other little frills and furbelows like border control and Social Security as well, to clear the decks for the Crucial Questions Of The Millenium: juiced-up baseball players, excess yapping by bloggers, and (gravest of all) the Tragedy of Candy Cigarettes. ¶ 7:33 PM
