Posted on 12/18/2003 2:02:32 AM PST by Main Street
PONTEFICATIONS
THE MAN WHO SHOT PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN in March 1981 will be able to take unsupervised outings from the psychiatric facility where he was sent after being found not guilty by reason of insanity.
This ruling by U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman has caused widespread outrage. It will cause more when Americans learn that this highly-partisan judge was himself involved in an attempt to “assassinate” President Reagan politically.
Prior to his 1994 appointment to the Federal bench by President Bill Clinton, Paul L. Friedman in 1987-1988 was one of five Associate Independent Counsels assisting Lefty Lawrence Walsh’s political witch-hunt undertaken to cripple or destroy the Reagan Administration that history remembers as Iran-Contra.
Given his past as a partisan Reagan persecutor, Judge Friedman should have recused himself from deciding whether to release John W. Hinckley, Jr., 48, whose bullets came within inches of killing the same President that Friedman tried to bring down.
Instead, Friedman this week sent a message to America’s mentally unstable residents now being whipped by Democratic propaganda into hatred against current President George W. Bush that one can shoot a Republican President and not only escape the death penalty but also gain fame and regain freedom after doing so.
Perhaps Judge Friedman empathizes with madmen because he himself is a loony Leftist.
After being elevated from a private lawyer to one of the nation’s highest judgeships, Friedman became a member of the “Magnificent Seven,” as the first seven Clinton D.C. appointees modestly called themselves.
This cabal of Lefty judges quickly took to having monthly secret meetings as a group. “It’s not only in bad taste, it certainly has the appearance of impropriety,” one courthouse officer told the Washington Times. “It’s hard to imagine any rationale for these meetings.”
The stench from these judges later mingled with that of Clinton corruption and scandal cases that arrived at this court’s door. Such cases by custom had been assigned randomly by computer or drawing lots. But Democrat-appointed Chief U.S. District Judge Norma Holloway Johnson intervened and, in violation of all ethical standards, herself assigned Clinton-related cases entirely to Clinton-appointed, politically-friendly judges.
Clintonoid Judge Paul L. Friedman eagerly accepted the case of Democratic fundraiser Charlie Yah Lin Trie and threw out many charges against him. Trie later pled guilty after a federal appeals court overturned Friedman’s ruling.
Friedman’s involvement in this case, wrote Associated Press reporter Pete Yost of what expert observers thought, raised “an appearance problem at least” of “whether there has been impartial administration of justice.”
But Judge Friedman’s ideological reign of impropriety was only beginning. He gave only a feather-light slap on the wrist to Pauline Kanchanalak despite her illegal funneling of nearly $700,000 in illegal foreign contributions into Democratic coffers. He meted out even less punishment to Maria Hsia for her criminal role in Al Gore’s brown bag corrupt fundraising in 1996 at a Los Angeles Buddhist Temple. By arbitrarily dismissing virtually all charges against Hsia, Friedman made it almost impossible for prosecutors to plea bargain for her testimony against Clinton or Gore.
But while Judge Friedman found nothing wrong with Democrats raking in millions of foreign dollars in “soft money,” he in 1995 came down like a ton of bricks against Republican fundraising by Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich’s political action committee GOPAC.
“Can a judge be swayed by promises of future advancement, even to the Supreme Court if they rule correctly?” asked one commentator sardonically after observing Friedman’s rulings helpful to President Clinton and Vice President Gore.
Since then Judge Friedman has upheld the Internal Revenue Service selective removal of tax exempt status from a church that criticized then-President Bill Clinton. He has ordered Vice President Dick Cheney to turn over thousands of pages of documents from his confidential Energy Task Force for Democrat exploitation. He has continued to be one of America’s most relentlessly Democrat-friendly judges.
And now Judge Friedman has unleashed in Washington, D.C., only blocks from the White House, a man who nearly assassinated one Republican President and has shown recurrent evidence of lying to psychiatrists and retaining his obsessions.
One urban legend about American Presidents is the “Curse of Tecumseh,” the Shawnee Chief who after defeat in the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811 purportedly prophesied that the general who beat him, William Henry Harrison, would become President but would die in office. Harrison, in fact, died of illness a month after taking his presidential oath after being elected in 1840.
This curse, according to its expanded legend, means that every person elected President in a year ending in Zero will die in office. After Harrison, the president elected in 1860, Abraham Lincoln, would be assassinated. Ditto for the 1880 winner James Garfield and 1900 winner William McKinley.
Elected in 1920, Warren G. Harding would die in office of illness, as would the 1940 victor Franklin D. Roosevelt.
After his election in 1960 John F. Kennedy would die by an assassin’s bullet in Dallas, as nearly did 1980 winner Ronald Reagan.
Reagan beat Tecumseh’s Curse, narrowly living out his term. But after surviving Hinckley’s bullets, he seemed transformed, as if born again.
And now the would-be assassin who shot him is being unleashed only blocks away from the White House in which resides President George W. Bush, elected in 2000, a year ending in Zero.
Democrats have already tried to destroy this presidency, not only with their voodoo politics of invoking irrational hatred but also with their use of parliamentary gimmicks to prevent President Bush from using the powers the voters constitutionally gave him – including the power to appoint Federal judges.
In Judge Paul L. Friedman, we have the perfect ideological example of why and how Democrats rule – not just make rulings, but rule the nation – from the bench. In an earlier time we were “a government of laws and not men.”
But nowadays men in black robes arrogantly and arbitrarily declare the law to be whatever madhouse-opening thing they wish. The Democrats have loosed insanity and lawlessness upon our world, and wherever they rule no human being is safe.
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Mr. Ponte hosts a national radio talk show Saturdays 6-9 PM Eastern Time (3-6 PM Pacific Time) and Sundays 9 PM-Midnight Eastern Time (6-9 PM Pacific Time) on the Liberty Broadcasting network (formerly TalkAmerica). Internet Audio worldwide is at LibertyBroadcasting .com. The show’s live call-in number is (888) 822-8255. A professional speaker, he is a former Roving Editor for Reader’s Digest.
Friedman is no doubt a complete dough-head, but I really, really doubt that the judge's decision came as a result of being a Reagan-hating Clinton appointee.
Yes, that is just the point. The hospital should not be used as a means of delivering a lifetime sentence the courts did not allow. The hospital and the doctors are there to treat Hinckley until it is safe to release him.
I also agree with you that there should be a harsher penalty for regicide regardless of the sanity or insanity of the accused. That is,attempting to assasinate the President would result in a death sentence or a lifetime incarceration depending on the findings of a court and jury. In the meantime, the federal prosecutors IMHO are trying to use the hospital as means to keeping Hinckley locked up after losing the criminal case to an insanity defence.
I once read the Hinckley case quite carefully. There is no question that Hinckley had a serious mental disorder. Even the defence psychiatrists came up with four serious personality disorders and the prosecution psychiatrists came up with a variety of psychotic conditions. In actual fact, I believe Hinckley suffered from "erotomania" or "Clerambault's sydrome" where the afflicted person believes that he is in love with a prominent person. These individuals are notoriously unstable and prone to repeated attempts to contact or impress the loved person. One way to think of people with erotomania is that it is a defence against a more serious psychotic condition.
A simple diagnosis was insufficient to make a case for an insanity defence even at that time. Unfortunately, Congress had passed a legal test at the time that simply said to establish insanity one had to prove that the individual by virtue of the mental disorder lacked a substantial capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of his act. Of course, with this vague rule, the jury simply decided he was "nuts" and confined him to the hospital. Little did they comtemplate that the hospital and doctors would treat Mr. Hinckley sufficient for at least a partial recovery.
I don't think the judge erred for the above reasons. I also don't think he acted on a personal or political basis but simply followed the law as it is written. The law does not permit an indefinite confinement for a mental disorder except in cases of danger to oneself or others.
Is the problem really with the law, or with the judge and jury?It seems to me that being obsessed with Jodie Foster doesn't automatically preclude an appreciation that shooting the President is wrong.
It is all a matter of opinion. You are right in that simply having "erotomania" or being in love with Jodi Foster does not preclude conforming one's conduct to the requirements of the law. This issue is usually decided by a Judge and Jury: it is possible they are wrong but that is the system.
From my perspective, Congress and State Legislatures fail to make the decision to confine some people indefinitely on the basis of their potential criminal activity. The law, the prison personnel and many politicians hate indeterminate sentences and see them as unconstitutional; however, once they face a problem such as Hinkley they then try to use a mental ward to assuage the problem and their conscience.
In many states, including Minnesota, the M'Naghten test is the test for sanity. Here, the question is whether one "knows the what they are doing or does not know what they are doing is wrong." This is strictly a cognitive test and has many critics but if it had been applied to Hinckley IMHO he would have been in the criminal justice system forever. I also think the prosecution in this case lacked sound judgement --they had an opportunity to plea bargain (Hinckley wanted it) but they refused. The prosecution must have believed they could defeat an insantity defence--of course, they didn't.
I may be wrong but doesn't trying to assassinate the President constitute being a danger to others? President Reagan wasn't the only one shot that day as Hinckley fired on him. We all know about the injuries of James Brady, but at least one Secret Service agent was struck and others were narrowly missed. I am not a firearms expert by any means nor a psychologist, but I find it incredible that someone suffering from a "mania" and using an unfamiliar weapon could do the damage Hinckley did in the window of opportunity he had. Operating a handgun takes focus and control especially when aiming on a moving target. IF Hinckley was affected by a maniacal episode during the shooting he would have had no focus or control because he was out of his mind. IF he had focus and control in relation to his weapon and target then he was "in his right mind" and aware of exactly what he was doing therefore NOT incapable of discerning the rightness or wrongness of his actions.
Well, in my opinion, anyone, ANYONE who shoots a President, should never, NEVER be free ever again, sane or insane.
My God, this should have been a no brainer. By releasing him, it sends the message that "Hey, you can shoot the President of the United States and not spend the rest of your life in jail". Could be lot's of kooks are thinking about this.
Leave it to a liberal scum radical judge. Deep down inside his little brain, part of him was delirious with joy because he could get back at Reagan, even a little.
"The Stench From The Bench Is Making Me Clench!!" M.S.
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