Big Lizards:Blog:Entry “Lunatic "Indictments" of Dick Cheney and Alberto Gonzales Rejected by Judge”

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December 2, 2008

Lunatic "Indictments" of Dick Cheney and Alberto Gonzales Rejected by Judge

Hatched by Dafydd

In an unsurprising but still satisfying development in the latest sad chapter of criminalizing political differences, the bizarre and unbalanced floccillations of defeated Texas DA Juan Guerra have been rebuked and nullified:

A judge dismissed indictments against Vice President Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Monday and told the southern Texas prosecutor who brought the case to exercise caution as his term in office ends.

Willacy County District Attorney Juan Angel Guerra had accused Cheney and the other defendants of responsibility for prisoner abuse. The judge's order ended two weeks of sometimes-bizarre court proceedings.

Guerra is leaving office at the end of the month after soundly losing in his March primary election.

All of the indictments brought by Guerra's heavily manipulated grand jury were quashed; the reasons varied, but they all amounted to gross imbecility in pursuit of personal or partisan advantage.

Vice President Dick Cheney, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, The GEO Group (which privately operates federal prisons in Texas under U.S. government contracts), and state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr. had been indicted for abusing prisoners or allowing them to be abused. Gonzales was singled out because he halted a federal investigation that was going nowhere; Cheney was added ostensibly because he invested in the Vanguard Group, which in turn invested in GEO (I believe we all know why he was really indicted). These bills were all dismissed because Guerra was replacing grand jurors with alternates (possibly more pliant) without properly substituting them... I suppose he simply told the actual jurors to shut up and had the alternates vote in their place.

In addition, two state judges, a state prosecutor, and a district clerk were indicted for investigating Guerra's earlier antics; these indictments were dismissed because it turned out that in addition to being the prosecutor, Guerra was also the alleged victim and the lone witness. Evidently, this constitutes some slight conflict of interest under Texas law.

So one attempt to criminalize policy differences has collapsed utterly, while another -- the indictment of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay for money laundering, of all things -- limps to its nigh inevitable conclusion, not with the bang of a gavel but the whimper of a charge simply allowed to lapse.

Has anyone else noticed how the DeLay case dropped off the elite-media radar the moment it served its purpose of forcing him out of Congress? It's almost as if that were all they ever intended.

I just did a Google News search on "Tom DeLay" + "Ronnie Earle". The latter, you will recall, is the thoroughly discredited Travis County District Attorney; his vendetta against DeLay stems ultimately from the latter's successful drive to break the Democratic gerrymander that had kept the congressional delegation of Texas strongly Democratic -- even as the state had become very reliably Republican. Earle, a Democrat, was evidently furious that his party lost its electoral advantage, allowing the citizens of Texas actually to vote for the delegation they wanted, rather than the delegation that the Democrats allowed them.

The Google search turned up one (1) hit: An article by someone writing for the Texas Observor, "a nonpartisan watchdog [organization] that has filed ethics complaints against TRMPAC, Justice Alan Waldrop, and Bill Ceverha"... in other words, by a leftist house organ for the Austin-based Democratic Party in Texas. And even this piece of, ah, journalism concludes that the only way DeLay could be convicted is if (they hope, they hope!) Jack Abramoff drops some hitherto unrevealed bombshell. This is the Hail Mary of all judicial Hail Marys: Maybe DeLay committed some other crime of which we were previously unaware -- and he gets nailed for that! Hey, it could happen.

Criminalizing normal political differences has been a specialty of the Left for better than three decades; during the campaign, the Obama mob drummed up votes by talking about "war-crimes trials" and impeachments for all of the top Bush-administration officials... though they appear to have backed away from these threats since he was elected. Just as they believe that "the personal is political," they likewise believe that "the political is judicial": They think nothing of either prosecuting someone for taking the wrong side of a political dispute or else shopping around for a leftist judge to force some "progressive" policy onto the masses (unrestricted abortion, same-sex marriage, property-tax hikes, gun control) that the democratic branches of government find themselves unable to enact legitimately.

Logically, one would guess that having now captured both the legislative and executive branches of the federal government, the Democrats would be content to exert their power within the framework the Framers intended -- by voting for it. But I doubt it; I begin to believe the Left actually prefers enacting its agenda judicially (and punishing its political opponents with prison sentences): Judicial power is more easily controlled (it's not messy, like a vote), it has a longer reach, and best of all, it gives Progressives the joy of thwarting the will of the very polity they pretend to represent.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, December 2, 2008, at the time of 6:59 PM

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Comments

The following hissed in response by: BlueNight

There are three types of people: logical (rare), physically focused, and emotional. These correspond nicely to the roles of the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches of government: the Legislature sets up the laws, the Executive enforces them, and the Judicial weigh individual cases against those laws. (Yes, they're supposed to choose rationally, but laws are the enforced "shoulds" and "shouldn'ts" of society, and as such are emotionally focused.)

Liberals are (for the most part) emotionally focused. They are really good at marketing their message; their policies are neither rational nor based in reality; they state things in terms of necessity and goals. Heck, their newest leader is somebody who simply made them feel good!

So it is no wonder to me that they want to judge everybody.

The above hissed in response by: BlueNight at December 2, 2008 10:13 PM

The following hissed in response by: Karmi

Ronnie Earle, Dan Rather and his longtime liberal activist daughter, Robin Rather, Bill Burkett and the Killian documents, etc. all linked together like 'peas-in-same-pod'. Nothing to report on there, of course, even if they are all a bunch of Texas Fascists/Communists.

The above hissed in response by: Karmi at December 3, 2008 12:46 PM

The following hissed in response by: Don

What, you mean DeLay hasn't done the 'perp walk' yet?!!!!

I thought that Ronnie 'Ham Sandwich' Earle had sent the Hammer away in 2006 already! Hammy is named for his notorious boast that he could get a grand jury to indict a "ham sandwich" if he wanted, and indeed he has specialized in unlikely indictments over the years.

DA Juan Guerra appears to have gone him one better since then, being prosecutor, sole witness, AND victim all in one.

Such indictments remind one of company prospectuses from the South Sea Bubble era of global commerce. One company raised money on "An Enterprise of Great Advantage, None to Know What it Is", which appears to be Guerra's approach to evidence.

The above hissed in response by: Don at December 15, 2008 1:46 PM