The Judge was on O'Reilly tonight and Bill mopped the floor with His Honor's excessively full head of hair.
I saw the Judge on tv tonight too. I am glad to read his views in print now. I think he is wrong on a number of points:
1. It is laughable for any Judge to complain about another part of government usurping the powers of Congress to legislate. Had judges not done this for the last 70 year, then what he is complaining about would look far more outrageous. So even if he is right on this point, he only has his fellow judges to blame.
2. About there being no precident for a lawyer to be prosecuted for breaking prison rules, sorry but the fact that prior to 9-11 attorneys were treated differently than the rest of us was wrong not a reason to continue that special treatment. Certainly attorneys for terriorist should not be treated differently than the rest of us if as visitors we broke prison rules. We don't want these guys communicating with their followers even more than we don't want mafia guys running their organizations from prison.
3. There is no first ammendment issue here. She was allowed to speak. Just like anyone who choose to speak she risked breaking tort or criminal law when she spoke. The first ammendment does not free you from slander case law nor does it free you to conspire to commit terriorist acts or murder.
4. I am sympathetic concerning the issue of convicting her on lying to the US government. I certainly have problems with two parties having a discussion, the government agent lies and the private citizen response with a lie and the citizen is then guilty of a crime.
I guess it will come down to whether or not listening in on attorneys and clients meetings in prison is ok or not. I would guess that prison officials might be allowed to do so IF no information about appeal strategy etc were communicated to the prosecutor. This is sort of a catch 22. If a third party is able to hear an attorney client meeting, then the priviledge is void. Thus if they knew they were being taped, which apparently they did, it was not a priviledge conversation?
wow, I will need to stay up and watch when it replays .. the Judge usually is on the mark. We may in the end agree to disagree.
"The Judge was on O'Reilly tonight and Bill mopped the floor with His Honor's excessively full head of hair."
The Judge usually makes some good points and is prepared. I have to agree with you though, O'Reilly was better prepared with the facts and circumstances and won the debate.
I suspect this opinion piece was written before his conversation with Bill and in hindsight the Judge would probably like to change a few things. LOL