Some of this is true. I wish none of it was:
United States Attorney General Michael Mukasey in addressing the American Bar Association annual meeting on Tuesday August 12. 2008 about the illegal hiring of politically motivated Justice Department officials stated:
"Not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime…”
As I sat there in the back of the room, with my mouth hanging open, my JuicyFruit gum about to drop onto my lap, my mind could only manage to conceive of one question, “But, for the Department of Justice, then what the hell is?”
I wisely managed to leave the room while I tried to decide if I should laugh or cry. Our system of justice that I have always valued so highly, no longer is about anything more than money making, political cronyism and petty vendettas.
Speeding cameras set up in Arizona, not for safety, since tickets from that don’t count against a driver’s record; people could take them to court on the legality of that. It’s just to make money.
Citizens being wiretapped and secretly watched by street mounted cameras.
A government giving itself free reign to violate the law at will. This was the stuff of bad novels only ten years before. I can only hope that all this is all just something out of a bad novel.
I went to a nearby bar and started drinking as much gin and vodka as possible in the vain hopes of killing off whatever brain cells contained the statements I'd just heard. It obviously didn't work. I looked up from my third gin, as the room started to pleasantly sway and noticed to my horror, on my right hand side - an attorney I knew. Not just any attorney, but a constitutional specialist. The meeting had been full of them and here I was now sitting elbow to elbow with the kind of lawyer that is just above a personal injury accident attorney. His kind are what the prop comedians are to the world of standup comics.
Worse still he had spotted me and had acknowledged my existence. As I looked around, I realized the room was full of them - in every shape and size, but all dressed in the expensive suits that they seem to think justify their exorbitant fees and lack of zeal in working for their clients. Constitutional lawyers, these are the ones waiting for their big day before the Supreme Court. It's their World Series; their Superbowl. Win or lose there and you're doubled or tripled your income. People, who don't know any better and are desperate for legal knowledge are impressed. Impressed people are willing to part with loads of money and willing to accept the usually meager outcome.
Lawyers. A room full of them, all drinking as fast and furiously as they possibly can.
As a group, lawyers are the only creatures on the planet capable of consuming more that 100% of their body mass in alcohol and still pretend to be coherent. It comes from a lifetime of practice. They spend their sober waking hours spewing out statements that make no sense what-so-ever, but manage to make it all sound so over anybody else’s head that no one dares question what they are saying. It's nearly impossible to tell when they're just babbling because they are drunk; it all sounds the same.
It’s an unfair generalization to imply that most of them behave like this. It truly is every single one of them. There are simply degrees and speeds at which they drink and babble.
Another hour passed and I found my self seated at a table with half a dozen of them. The waitresses came by reluctantly to clear the empty glasses, cart in more single malt scotch and fend off unwanted flirtations from men they might have taken for a friend’s senile grandfather.
I raised my courage and asked, “Do any of you understand the meaning of what we just heard tonight? Does this mean that nobody is guilty of anything? People are now allowed to commit crimes at will, without fear of prosecution?” (All right, as hammered as I was at this point I was not able to be this elegant in my question, but this is what I meant and since they had long ago surpassed me in converting the blood in their veins to an alcoholic mixture, they understood.)
“No, no, that only applies to circumventing the rules laid out for hiring of U.S. prosecutors as applied to the Department by this current administration. Since those hired did not par se violate the laws themselves, they are not capable or party to the inconsistencies of the practitioners,” one of them said (again not exact works, but what he said didn’t make any sense either). They all seemed to nod in agreement as more scotch arrived as if by incantation.
I decided to go for broke; I no longer cared what their opinion of me was. They all looked down on me anyway. I wasn’t one of them; I was just part of the unwashed non-elite laymen; a hanger on really. I was being treated like the simple brother, who is only allowed at the table during the holidays and mostly kept quiet, unless the conversation became boring. Then I’m used to making them laugh with my naïve views of the world.
I mumbled something about the war on drugs and the failure of the government to solve the problem. This set off laughter. Finally, one of the least inebriated ones said to me, “Look the government has no real interest in solving the problem. There’s too much money to be made and power to be gained by continuing it as an endless process.”
“But what about the lives destroyed and the social costs?” I asked but already knew I was going to be on the losing side of this argument.
“It’s just part of the collateral damage. The public needs to be kept in fear of the dangers of doing anything different than putting a few people behind bars and cleaning out the occasional causalities. Mostly, the politicians stay in power, prison systems keep employing people and the public feels safer that something is being done.”
“So the money and power is all it’s about? A person’s life doesn’t count for much anymore, does it?” I bitterly intoned.
All the lawyers laughed again. I really was that childlike in my beliefs.
