The Criminal Justice System?

Back in the day the cynical guys in the blue uniforms used to say: ” It isn’t a system; there is no justice; but it’s certainly criminal.” Is that ever true today on the Federal level.

Steve Bates of Yellow Doggerel Democrat pointed out a Larisa Alexandrovna article at the Huffingtonpost, It’s official, Alabama is the Soviet Union… which covered the delivery of subpoenas to a group of Alabama legislators, mostly Democratic, while they were in session at the state capitol. It’s a corruption probe of the state’s community college system. A news flash for the Feds: everybody in the state knows the system operates based on corruption and cronyism, and has for years, so why the current interest? It hasn’t gotten noticeably worse, and you can still get an education, so why look at it now?

She also mentions some of the antics of the Feds in Mississippi, which look a lot like selective prosecution.

We may as well include Don Siegelman in the Alabama coverage, and Ben Kuehne in Miami.

Outside the South you have the notable case of Eliot Spitzer. It becomes notable by comparison to what didn’t happen to Rush Limbaugh on the “money laundering” charge, and David Vitter on the patronizing a “lady of negotiable virtue”.

Every election year the politicians push for crime sweeps on “vice”. better known as victimless crimes to some of us. Yes, the laws exist, and yes, we took an oath to enforce the laws, but when you have a backlog of cases that have victims, and the politicians aren’t supplying the resources you need to track the active cases, it’s really hard to work up any enthusiasm for hassling street people and “urban entrepreneurs”, who are often willing to “assist in your inquiries” into crimes that injured people. It might make the politicians feel good, but it is totally ineffective and seriously annoyed many local judges.

Unlike most people, I have a pretty good idea of the cost of the Spitzer case, and I am totally PO’ed about it. That money and those resources could have cleared my burglary backlog, and made a significant dent in the robberies. There are a lot of crimes that aren’t cleared because the investigators don’t have the resources to gather the evidence for a court case, not because they don’t know who committed the crimes.

This is a high stakes election year, with a totally corrupt Department of Justice. Of course, these prosecutions are political, what do you expect of a group of lawyers who ignore the Constitution and are going to be confined to the US for the rest of their lives, for fear of a war crimes trial if they travel to foreign countries. Anyone hired by the Hedgemony has to be suspect, and will need to be investigated and vetted, after some competent non-partisan people are hired to run things. This is the reality for every agency of the Federal government, and it isn’t going to be a quick and easy fix.