Law & Justice: October 2008 Archives
The conviction on corruption charges does little more than emphasize what has been apparent for many years: Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens is an embarrassment to the United States, to Alaska, and to the Republican Party. I'd say he's an embarrassment to the Senate, but he probably fits right in.
The verdict, coming barely a week before Election Day, increased Stevens' difficulty in winning what already was a difficult race against Democratic challenger Mark Begich. Democrats hope to seize the once reliably Republican seat as part of their bid for a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.Stevens, 84, was convicted of all the felony charges he faced of lying about free home renovations and other gifts from a wealthy oil contractor.
Because this kind of corruption is so often overlooked in our government, I'm sure Stevens is shocked to be facing jail time for these bribes.
Chris Dodd should be worried, and I'd be pleased if this investigation is the first of many.
Two teens in the Netherlands have been convicted of stealing virtual property. First such case I've heard of.
A Dutch court has convicted two youths of theft for stealing virtual items in a computer game and sentenced them to community service.Only a handful of such cases have been heard in the world, and they have reached varying conclusions about the legal status of "virtual goods."
The Leeuwarden District Court says the culprits, 15 and 14 years old, coerced a 13-year-old boy into transferring a "virtual amulet and a virtual mask" from the online adventure game RuneScape to their game accounts.
"These virtual goods are goods (under Dutch law), so this is theft," the court said Tuesday in a summary of its ruling.
How would such a case play out in America?
Thinking about the election in a few weeks has really highlighted just how chaotic our Supreme Court Justice appointment process is. I think the intention of the Founding Fathers was to make the Supreme Court less responsive to political pressure by giving the justices lifelong appointments, but this has had at least one very strange consequence: Supreme Court judicial philosophy is chaotic in the sense that it's future has very little relationship to its present.
Voters have short attention spans. Decisions on whom to vote for are often made in the last few weeks before an election and are based on policy preferences that take into account little more than the past year... maybe less. This short time frame is fine for electing officials who serve two-, four-, or even six-year terms, but should e.g. the state of the war in Afghanistan really have a strong influence on a capital punishment case 30 years from now? Should the financial crisis influence abortion law? Should preference for one energy independence plan over another affect free speech law?
When our immediate political concerns are juxtaposed with the kinds of cases the next Supreme Court justices will probably be deciding over the coming decades, the chaotic nature of the system is revealed. If voters support Barack Obama because he wants to pull our troops out of Iraq, they might also get stuck with mandatory "equal pay" for women when he puts Hillary Clinton on the Supreme Court. Or, flip it: voting for John McCain because he was right on the surge doesn't necessarily mean that you'll agree when his appointee overturns Roe v. Wade.
It doesn't make sense for matters that are so unrelated to be tied together politically. I'm not sure I've got a better system in mind, but I bet we can come up with something. Here are some options, but each has problems of its own:
- Shorter terms. Back when the Constitution was written lifespans were much less anyway, so why not limit justices to a single 20-year term?
- Elect justices directly.
- Elect justices regionally. The states in each circuit get to elect one justice together.
I think I like the first the best, what about you?
Instead of yet another press conference, how about some executives, lobbyists, bureaucrats, Congressmen, and Senators in handcuffs? I bet the market would respond well to that. This is exactly the type of scenario that cries out for a special independent prosecutor, and I think investigations need to start while emotions are still running high.
I don't know about you, but I want to see some perp-walks. i want to see Chris Dodd and Barney Frank in orange jumpsuits answering questions under oath. I want to see executives from Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Countrywide, AIG, and all the others dragged out of their mansions and arraigned without bail.
These characters played it fast and loose for decades, and I'm inclined to believe that their trials, convictions, and sentences should be handled similarly.
For the first time in 13 years the Juice is not loose. In the years since his acquittal OJ Simpson has basically convinced everyone of his guilt, and everyone (but him) seems willing to accept that this trial is society's second chance to get the verdict right. Not sure if that's "justice", but it feels like it.
What happened? O.J. happened. He has been bitten by the very source of his support at the beginning, and the reason he could afford those lawyers and sway those jurors: his celebrity.We kept watching O.J. He revealed himself to be who prosecutors said he was.
A civil jury found him responsible for the murders. Simpson said he would spend the rest of his life searching for the "real killers" and has made no effort to do so. ...
Recently, Simpson wrote a book called "If I Did It," in which he tells the world how he could have killed his ex-wife and her friend hypothetically, of course. (The book was eventually published by Ronald Goldman's family.)
These are not the actions of an innocent man. If the world thought you had killed two people, including your ex-spouse, and you hadn't done it ... well, come on. In a thousand years, you would never write a book about how you might have done it.
The charges and punishment he's facing will probably be disproportionate to his recent actions, but will certainly be justified based on his past. Of course, our justice system is supposed to preclude this sort of double jeopardy, and OJ will probably make a convincing appeal.
What do you think should happen?
