People v. State

It’s a small and select group, inclusion in which is determined in part by the sufficient but not necessary criteria of reciprocity. I’m finally adding to it the practical blawgosphere’s favorite son, Marco John Randazza, for a couple reasons.

For one, I’ve never detected from him a whiff of the fondness for circle-jerking and (yes, of course, constitutionally-protected, thank God and Marco) internet-mobbing that characterizes to a greater or lesser extent many of his fans. Everybody loves him, but I’ve never known him to suck up to anybody. As Scott Greenfield writes: “As much as we’ve become friends over the years, I have no doubt that he would be the first to rip my lungs out were I to take a position that he disagreed with.” That’s actually a bit hyperbolic. Again, in contrast to some of his admirers, and despite his well-deserved reputation as a mean motor scooter and caustic foul-mouthed blogger, he’s generally, in my limited experience anyway, positively civil to those who show up in the comments on his blog to disagree with him, and honestly engages them on the merits. When I jumped at the opportunity to razz him here for something one of his co-bloggers wrote, he showed up to make sure I had the straight story, but didn’t take offense.

Ken White wrote in his tribute to Randazza:

Now, Marc’s not perfect. Not everyone agrees with some of his clients or his work for them. And he says “fuck” a bit much for someone who isn’t, technically, a David Mamet character. And now and then when he goes on a rant about religion and indulges in the “Jewish space zombie” rhetoric it irks the living shit out of me (but I don’t dive for the fainting couch, because I figure Jesus will be OK and I will too).

It may be highly presumptuous of me, but I suspect that Marco, as a proud son of Sicily, is not as sure of his atheism as he pretends to be. (No atheist can be, since atheism happens to be a false and irrational belief.) But I share his zeal for that other part of the First Amendment, the Establishment Clause, albeit probably for a different reason than his, to-wit: I don’t want to see this godless nation of ours invoking God, even “ceremonially.” That’s false advertising, which incidentally is not protected by the First Amendment.

As other bloggers have admitted, I confess to maybe being just a tad jealous of Marco. He obviously loves what he does, and he is doing God’s work. I’m in awe of the success and reputation he’s achieved since being admitted to practice law in 2002. In an alternate universe, a universe where things worked out the way they were supposed to, I would have been setting the world on fire right about then, just a few years after my own admission to the practice of law in 1999. Yet even so, and in spite of all those who’ve told me I’m ugly,

there is something still that will always be mine, and when I go to God’s presence, there I will doff it and sweep the heavenly pavement with a gesture: something I’ll take unstained out of this world… my panache.

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