Posted on 11/18/2009 4:23:10 PM PST by SeekAndFind
In fairness to The One, I don’t understand why America’s prosecutor-in-chief can’t express confidence in convicting a guy whom his own DOJ is trying. When Nixon called Manson guilty 40 years ago, he was meddling in a state trial without having seen the evidence. Not so here, but oh well. This is indeed a gift to the defense, although aside from giving the court an extra procedural headache to dispose of, it won’t matter ultimately. No judge is going to free the mastermind of 9/11 on a technicality and no president is going to let the mastermind of 9/11 walk free even if one did. It’s a show trial, root, stem, and branch. Jonah Goldberg:
Every day it appears more and more that the White House wants it both ways. They want to claim that this is a fair trial but also an act of venegeance. The terrorists will be treated as if they might be innocent — key to a fair trial — but at the end of the day they’ll get their comeuppance. If KSM & Co. get off on a technicality, don’t worry, they’ll still be locked up, but when they’re convicted the White House will claim it was always a fair process. They’ll get a fair trial from an impartial jury in New York, but it’s “fitting” and “poetic justice” that the jury will be drawn from the community that was viciously attacked on 9/11. Fair but vengeul, honest but foreordained, instructive to the world but really just about the law: the rhetoric from the White House and the Democrats isn’t persuasive to those who listen closely and certainly won’t be persuasive to foreigners Obama is determined to impress.
Just so. Goldberg followed this with another smart post about how bending over backwards to convict KSM will lead courts to set precedents that’ll actually undermine civil liberties, to which I’d simply add that it ain’t just courts who’ll be massaging their principles to arrive at the predetermined result. How else to explain noted death-penalty opponent Eric Holder saying today that he intends to seek death for KSM? That’s a political concession to vengeance and a reprisal for an act of war … to be carried out in a civilian courtroom.
Below the “prejudging” clip, you’ll find a guy known for blaming others for his every last political difficulty asserting, with all apparent seriousness, that the decision to try KSM in civilian court was made entirely by Holder based on a close consultation of the law. (More on that in the next post.) Really, champ? Knowing that the foreign-policy credibility of the Democratic Party for years to come rests on getting a conviction here, you rubberstamped a decision made by someone who thought it’d be super keen to pardon Marc Rich? What could go wrong? Click the image to watch.
As a lawyer, O knows damn well what he is doing. It could all have been done intentionally. Just imagine KSM walking out of the courtroom a free terrorist giving America the bird.
What Obama did allows KSM to fight for a mistrial because he can say that both Obama and Eric Holder have already tainted the trial by pre-judging the case.
This is going to be a circus with a lot of America-hating lawyers gunning for fame coming out to defend KSM ( like Lynne Stewart, who aided Sheik Abdel Rahman ( the mastermind of the 1993 WTC terror attack ) ).
I also have a strong feeling that one of the ulterior motives is to put Bush/Cheney on trial for “torture” ( which KSM can now use as part of his defense ).
IMO, the trial will go nowhere. They’ve already made some kind of deal that KSM will pead guilty and will not be executed.
0bama’s just looking out for his homies...
The other big question is this -— given the obsession with DIVERSITY and the desire to appear “fair” to muslims, will there be a quota for Islamic jurors ? How do you screen against one who is sympathetic to Al Qaeda?( they can always lie and give you the “right” answers that might satisfy but fool the screeners ).
God help us from this Socialist moron and the corrupt US Congress.
“When Nixon called Manson guilty 40 years ago, he was meddling in a state trial without having seen the evidence”
I never had much of a problem with what Nixon did. Theoretically at least, there is a difference between state and federal jurisdiction. And though Nixon had a lot of power, the trial was the state’s business and he had no direct influence over it. There’s the Bully Pulpit, and people listen when the prez talks, but they also listen when Bill O’Reilly or Billy Sunday talk. The difference, I guess, is that the president is The Man, but that only brings us back to the fact that Nixon was a federal Man and states have their own Man.
Obama, contrarywise, is intimately involved in the case. He ultimately made the call to try him, and his boys will do the trying. Totally different. It’s not so much that prosecutors and prosecutors’ bosses shouldn’t be sure of a conviction before they prosecute. But in the very least they should pretend criminal cases aren’t foregone conclusions. And in this case, it definitely shouldn’t be a foregone conclusion, since KSM has been deprived of every civil right I can think of. Of course, this is not your average criminal case. It’s a make-believe criminal case, wherein we treat the defendant different than all other defendants so that we can make it look real to people in the Middle East, or something.
I have a feeling he coasted through law school with the assistance of sycophants, the way he always has.
From the beginning, I've been confused at O's image as opposed to what he really is. I never even thought he was eloquent, just had a speech-delivery style that a lot of people seemed to find hypnotic.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
More Obamateur Hour [Andy McCarthy]
In a meeting with the press in China, President Obama said that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would be “convicted” and had “the death penalty applied to him” . . . and then said he wasn’t “pre-judging” the case. He made the second statement after it was pointed out to him — by NBC’s Chuck Todd — that the first statement would be taken as the president’s interfering in the trial process. Obama said that wasn’t his intention. I’m sure it wasn’t — he’s trying to contain the political damage caused by his decision — but that won’t matter. He has given the defense its first motion that the executive branch, indeed the president himself, is tainting the jury pool. Nice work.
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OTcwYmFmMGFkMDliMmY5ZDY0MDdjMzZkZDRmNzYwZTI=
Game, set, match.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.