During the past week, several outwardly unrelated stories have emerged showing how pressure from the Bush administration could be shaping the judicial system in such a way that Americans’ fabled "day in court" may not be the epitome of neutrality it’s cracked up to be.
First, there was Pentagon official Charles Stimson’s attack on the pro bono lawyers defending Guantanamo detainees, previously detailed by MissLaura and outlined briefly in a BBC story this morning:
In his original interview last week for Federal News Radio, Mr Stimson listed a number of major firms who he said should be boycotted for their work at Guantanamo.
He also suggested that some firms might have been receiving money from elsewhere to represent clients, and should explain themselves.
The BBC story focuses on Stimson’s mea culpa, in which he claims that his charges "did not reflect his core beliefs" and that "he did not intend to question the lawyer’s integrity." Um ... okay. Implications of being a terrorist enabler on the Al Qaeda payroll sure wouldn’t come across to me as questioning my integrity.
Moving on, we encounter what mcjoan last night called "The Case of the Disappearing U.S. Attorneys," in which the good folks at TPMmuckraker dig up a pattern of the Bush administration firing a slew of U.S. prosecutors in the past five weeks – and using a loophole in the Patriot Act to replace them with interim appointees who can avoid Senate hearings. Nice.
Third, we have the jury selection process in the Libby trial, which opened yesterday. According to Time, potential anti-Bush jurors are being excluded:
Fitzgerald complained that defense attorneys Theodore Wells and William Jeffress were turning jury selection into "an open-ended Rorschach test into how you feel about the Bush administration, Vice President Cheney" the Iraq war and various reporters. "They're trying the case" in jury selection, he argued.
But Walton ruled the defense lawyers have a right to know if "somebody has a very negative attitude to the Bush administration."
In other words, the jury is looking more and more like it’s going to be pulled from the ever-shrinking Fox News pool of the misinformed.
The only good news is that the reality of the new Democratic majority in Congress has forced Bush to pull four of his judicial nominees who were so far out on the right wing that they couldn’t get past a Republican Congress.
But then, who needs to stack the one branch subject to Congressional approval when you can put the squeeze on the defense, the prosecution and the jury?