More of the year in review, all pointing to why 2008 presents such a critical question for the future of this country as the land of liberty, and a beacon of hope for people all over the world, requires a refresher course, perhaps, on why US Attorneys are today more under the thumb of "central Justice" and the effect on federal prosecutions throughout the country. It should serve to underscore how important it is to keep people like Richard Nixon and his acolytes (the current president and, particularly his vice president, being two of them) away from the White House.
For several years, almost since I first bought a PDA, I have carried this around, written in 1940, but right on point in 2007. It is well worth reading in the context of the attempt to destroy the Justice Department on the ground, which is incontrovertible as a matter of law, that the president has the power to do so. We, too, have the power to rid ourselves of someone who does so and a political party that allows him to do so.
The speaker, Attorney General Robert Jackson, later served on the United States Supreme Court and, most famously, as the chief American prosecutor at the Nuremberg war crimes trial, in which he probably did as much for advertising the best parts of the Anglo-American system of justice as anyone has. (The United States "district attorneys" he is referring to are what today are called "United States Attorneys").
It is a short piece, quite worth reading as a whole. If you are not yet willing to click on the link, the following is intended to whet your appetite:
There is a most important reason why the prosecutor should have, as nearly as possible, a detached and impartial view of all groups in his community. Law enforcement is not automatic. It isn’t blind. One of the greatest difficulties of the position of prosecutor is that he must pick his cases, because no prosecutor can even investigate all of the cases in which he receives complaints. If the Department of Justice were to make even a pretense of reaching every probable violation of federal law, ten times its present staff would be inadequate. We know that no local police force can strictly enforce the traffic laws, or it would arrest half the driving population on any given morning. What every prosecutor is practically required to do is to select the cases for prosecution and to select those in which the offense is the most flagrant, the public harm the greatest, and the proof the most certain.
If the prosecutor is obliged to choose his cases, it follows that he can choose his defendants. Therein is the most dangerous power of the prosecutor: that he will pick people that he thinks he should get, rather than pick cases that need to be prosecuted....It is here that law enforcement becomes personal, and the real crime becomes that of being unpopular with the predominant or governing group, being attached to the wrong political views, or being personally obnoxious to or in the way of the prosecutor himself.
In times of fear or hysteria political, racial, religious, social, and economic groups, often from the best of motives, cry for the scalps of individuals or groups because they do not like their views. Particularly do we need to be dispassionate and courageous in those cases which deal with so-called "subversive activities." ... Those who are in office are apt to regard as "subversive" the activities of any of those who would bring about a change of administration. Some of our soundest constitutional doctrines were once punished as subversive. We must not forget that it was not so long ago that both the term "Republican" and the term "Democrat" were epithets with sinister meaning to denote persons of radical tendencies that were "subversive" of the order of things then dominant.
- Think of that. Robert Jackson. (I think federal buildings should be named after Justice Jackson, before they are named for Ronald Reagan, no?)