The odds are 11-1 the jury in the federal case in North Carolina trying John Edwards for campaign law violations will convict. There might be a holdout. That’s why I set odds at 11-1. Edwards has been portrayed as such a despicable human being — politician and husband — that the jury is likely to be unsympathetic to his legalistic defense.
But I also think that if there is a conviction, the odds are that there will be a reversal based on the trial judge's ruling yesterday. She kept out of the trial the testimony of a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission that in his opinion Edwards did NOT violate federal election laws by not declaring donations from admirers that went to shield his tawdry affair. The judge ruled that this testimony could not be heard by the jury because the witness might have based his testimony on facts the jury doesn’t have.
If there is any better man, lawyer, appellate advocate, federal judge, law school educator and dean than Louis H. Pollak, who died last week, I don’t know him, and might never find him. Acclaimed nationally as civil-rights advocate, law professor and judge, Lou made being a lawyer a class act.
I met Pollak as a graduate student at Yale Law School in 1956. When I submitted my doctorate thesis to three Yale law professors for approval, he was one (chosen because of his civil rights reputation; if he liked it, it was good), along with Fred Rodell (the best writer about legal subjects then, and one of my favorite professors); and Richard Donnelly, who taught criminal law, my favorite subject and with whom I'd written a law review article. Candidates requested three professors to be readers for the faculty, then never discussed the subject later, as that would have been unseemly. I learned they had approved my thesis and granted me my Juris Doctorate after I had left Yale Law School and was a prosecutor trying a case in federal court in Kentucky. It was published by Columbia University Press.
Adam Liptak’s article in Sunday’s New York Times, “Are Oral Arguments Worth Arguing About?” reminded me of an interesting and revealing experience I had years ago when I argued a case before the Supreme Court. Liptak’s point was that “it is the rare oral argument that wins or loses a case.” Results derive from the merits of the case, not the skill of the advocates, one expert told Liptak; indeed, the briefs play a greater role.
If the Supreme Court doesn't reject Affordable Healthcare we are lost as a nation. Not rejecting it would indicate that the highest judicial branch in our land has been overtaken by political ideology that actively seeks to shred the Constitution as it clamors to force bigger and bigger government upon Americans.
One of the burdens a columnist must bear is being insulted by those who disapprove, as one James Taranto disapproved of my recent column “Supreme Court on Trial.” Taranto's angry comments about my column ran in The Wall Street Journal’s online edition and were limited to calling my column staggeringly dumb, an attempt by me to make President Obama (whom Taranto presumably thinks is dumb as well) look smart by comparison, and so forth. Taranto does not answer any of the points I made, so I must infer, and note that his invective without reasoning illustrates why armies of women and Hispanics are supporting President Obama and Democrats.
Republicans, rightists and some who make the Journal opinion page their home have an attitude of contempt, derision and anger toward those with differing views. Stay tuned for an upcoming column that elaborates about this "Republican disease" that leads them to demonize, and at times hate, a succession of Democratic presidents and leaders whom in their contempt for democratic values they do not accept as legitimate.
Somewhere in the quest to believe, special agent Fox Mulder, aka David Duchovny, ad-libbed a line on "The X Files" about what they called The Elders. Interestingly enough there is since a group of globalists who have actually crowned themselves “The Elders,” but maybe they were busy running for president and missed "The X Files." Duchovny’s line creatively subverted Eisenhower’s great parting shot at the treacherous world he was leaving behind. Duchovny’s phrase was something like “the military-industrial-ENTERTAINMENT” complex.
It pretty much hit the nail on the head, and he might have added “military-industrial-entertainment-educational” complex. In a word, it is not just the newspapers and TV reporters who are embedded with the invading army. It is the entire professional culture of entertainment. The cooperation of secondary or sub-institutions with industry and military has long guided the geist and life force of America and the world. But ever since I saw Suzanne Collins’s great work, "The Hunger Games," on the big screen last weekend, I see it everywhere; the new set for "The Voice," whatever that is; Lou Dobbs's commentary on Fox; the purely partisan Supreme Court. (And could we see their Law Boards, please? Especially the one who doesn’t talk.) Our fate — the fate of my children — is in their hands.
After an unprecedented attack by President Obama on the U.S. Supreme Court, a federal judge asked the Justice Department to give a written explanation of its opinion of what the president was conveying to the justices as they decide the fate of ObamaCare. It appears that the judicial system is defending itself as a co-equal branch of the United States government.
This is absolutely appropriate since the president seems to feel that unelected judges have no right to interfere with the legislative and executive process. At least when they are his executive and legislative processes. This is but one of the many radical changes that the president wants to bring about to our nation. He basically wants the judicial system to be a rubber stamp for his ideological agenda. It will certainly be educational as well as fascinating to see who wins this mammoth struggle, and the implications will be significant for the future identity of our nation.
In my most recent column, “Supreme Court scandals,” I suggested that America endures a partisan Republican and ideologically extreme Supreme Court majority that has run amok, embodies the hypocrisy of a delegitimized conservative movement and has become an enabling force for the most corrupted of the 1 percent. From the shamelessly unprincipled Mitt Romney to the shameful and unprincipled pandering to Romney by Ron Paul, who like Romney is now a man without a conscience, we are witnessing the end of conservatism as a credible intellectual force in American public life.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) nomination power play under the guise of a created emergency on the federal bench is both absurd and dangerous.
The truth is that Reid is setting up a constitutional crisis over the Easter congressional district work period allowing President Obama to “recess”-appoint a bevy of judges and others without the advice and consent of the Senate.
The Constitution does not require that the Senate approve the president’s choices for the judiciary, and in fact, the Senate is supposed to be anything but a rubber stamp. These permanent appointments to the federal bench are supposed to be thoroughly vetted, and the Senate has a responsibility to only approve those who meet the highest standards.
Last week I wrote about the ironic comments of Chief Justice John Roberts that Supreme Court justices be left to decide whether they have a conflict of interest to disqualify their sitting in judgment in a particular case.
The New York Times joined the current debate over Supreme Court recusal practices, editorializing that the court should subject itself to the same ethical rules already applicable to all other federal judges and for the justices to increase the transparency of their recusal decisions. The justices’ personal vigilance and judgment may well be correct; but if it is so, why not let the public see it?
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