People v. State

From Jonathan Turley: Reid: Torture Might Have Been Illegal But Still “Right” Thing To Do

In a recorded interview, Reid says this: “Something everyone has to weigh is this, we’re a nation of laws and no one can dispute that, but I think what we have to, the hurdle we have to get over is whether we want to go after people like Cheney.” And then this: “There are a lot of decisions that are made that are right that may not be absolutely totally within the framework of law.”

Reid’s latter assertion is certainly true — the written law manufactured by legislators like Reid has only an occasional and accidental relationship to right and wrong. (That’s why the jury’s right to nullify unjust laws or the unjust application of just laws, long eviscerated by judicial fiat, is such an indispensable bulwark against tyranny.) But notice the kind of people Reid wants to exempt from the requirements of the government’s laws. He’s not thinking of people like you and me, who never consented to the laws by which Reid and his ilk presume to govern us. No, he has in mind “people like Cheney.” Like Nancy Pelosi. Like … well, like Harry Reid. You can smell what he really thinks: “we make the law and are the law; the laws don’t apply to us in quite the same way that they apply to the governed.”

To the contrary, those who have made themselves responsible for the written law should, if anyone should, face the hazard of trying to persuade a jury that applying the law in their case would be unjust. They should be more accountable, not less accountable, than the governed.

To be fair to Reid, though, he is not the first to let fly with such thoughts. Who was it who said, in another famous interview, “I don’t break laws, I make laws. I’m the Lawmaker.”

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