Thursday, January 11, 2007
Rabinowitz is back
Dorothy Rabinowitz, the only investigative reporter in America, has finally weighed in on Kidnapper Nifong's witch hunt.
Mr. Nifong is no anomaly--merely a product of the political times, a prosecutor who has absorbed all the clues about the sanctified status now accorded charges involving rape, child sex-abuse and accusations of racism. Which has in turn ensured their transformation into weapons of unequalled power. Like others before him, the DA quickly grasped the career possibilities open to him with such a case and proceeded accordingly--denouncing racism, and the rape and assault of a helpless black woman, and the Duke athletes guilty of these crimes in every media interview available to him (and they were many).
For all the public shock and fury over his behavior, there is little that is new or strange about Mr. Nifong. We have seen the likes of this district attorney, uninterested in proofs of innocence, willing to suppress any he found, many times in the busy army of prosecutors claiming to have found evidence of rampant child abuse in nursery schools and other child-care centers around the country in the 1980s and throughout most of the '90s. They built case after headline-making case charging the mass molestation of small children, and managed to convict scores of innocent Americans on the basis of testimony no rational mind could credit. Law officers who regularly violated requirements of due process in their effort to obtain a conviction, they grasped the special advantage that was theirs: that for a prosecutor dealing with molestation, and wearing the mantle of avenger, there was no such thing as excess, no limits to what could be said of the accused. In court, rules could be bent, any charges presented, and nonexistent medical evidence proclaimed as proof positive of the accusation.
Rabinowitz, all on her own with no media support, broke the spell of the previous witch hunt. This time around, the cable channels have been on the side of the angels (albeit slowly and reluctantly), so the work of Rabinowitz wasn't so desperately needed.
What we really need is a complete overhaul of our court system. We won't get it, though; our criminally insane political class still operates under the bizarre delusion that our court system is "the best in the world", and the even more bizarre delusion that the legislature and executive have no power over the courts.
We will get the overhaul when the Caliphate is complete. Count on it. ¶ 8:17 AM
Mr. Nifong is no anomaly--merely a product of the political times, a prosecutor who has absorbed all the clues about the sanctified status now accorded charges involving rape, child sex-abuse and accusations of racism. Which has in turn ensured their transformation into weapons of unequalled power. Like others before him, the DA quickly grasped the career possibilities open to him with such a case and proceeded accordingly--denouncing racism, and the rape and assault of a helpless black woman, and the Duke athletes guilty of these crimes in every media interview available to him (and they were many).
For all the public shock and fury over his behavior, there is little that is new or strange about Mr. Nifong. We have seen the likes of this district attorney, uninterested in proofs of innocence, willing to suppress any he found, many times in the busy army of prosecutors claiming to have found evidence of rampant child abuse in nursery schools and other child-care centers around the country in the 1980s and throughout most of the '90s. They built case after headline-making case charging the mass molestation of small children, and managed to convict scores of innocent Americans on the basis of testimony no rational mind could credit. Law officers who regularly violated requirements of due process in their effort to obtain a conviction, they grasped the special advantage that was theirs: that for a prosecutor dealing with molestation, and wearing the mantle of avenger, there was no such thing as excess, no limits to what could be said of the accused. In court, rules could be bent, any charges presented, and nonexistent medical evidence proclaimed as proof positive of the accusation.
Rabinowitz, all on her own with no media support, broke the spell of the previous witch hunt. This time around, the cable channels have been on the side of the angels (albeit slowly and reluctantly), so the work of Rabinowitz wasn't so desperately needed.
What we really need is a complete overhaul of our court system. We won't get it, though; our criminally insane political class still operates under the bizarre delusion that our court system is "the best in the world", and the even more bizarre delusion that the legislature and executive have no power over the courts.
We will get the overhaul when the Caliphate is complete. Count on it. ¶ 8:17 AM
