Mike at Crime & Federalism, who’s been a supporter of John Regan aka Strike Lawyer, now writes, in connection with the release of the West Memphis 3:
The conviction remains a total outrage, although I’ll wager the young men who were wrongfully convicted are pleased that their lawyers didn’t go on strike.
I commented in response:
Scott Greenfield, in the course of trying to kick the ass of John Regan (aka Strike Lawyer, fka Atticus), opines:
Nuthouses are full of people who believe they are saviors, if only they can nail themselves to a cross. . . .
None is the gravest injustice ever, except perhaps the Holocaust.
In the same post Greenfield references an exchange he had in 2009 with Regan, then commenting under the handle “John R.,” on Greenfield’s blog. Coincidentally, back in 2009 I wrote a post here describing an earlier exchange between Greenfield and the same “John R.” on Greenfield’s blog.
I’ve had a blogroll in the past, but got rid of it because I didn’t want it to be as long as a list of all the blogs contained in my Google Reader, because it seemed somewhat difficult to decide which blogs to include on the blogroll, and because at one time it was my goal (long since abandoned) to more frequently link in posts themselves to everything in my Google Reader that I found of interest and wanted to recommend. If I had my druthers I’d write a new post saying simply “read this” every time Jeff Gamso wrote a post, every time Norm Pattis wrote a post, every time John Regan (aka Atticus aka Strike Lawyer) wrote a post, every time IOZ wrote a post, every time Matt Brown wrote a post, and every time any new post is written on any of the blogs listed on my newly installed blogroll to the right, but that’s no way to write a blog. And that’s basically my criteria for being on the blogroll: I can basically recommend everything they write and/or they’ve been gracious enough to include me on their own blogroll.
I got in a religious debate of sorts in the comment thread on this post by IOZ, whose commentariat is comprised of commenters who, like IOZ himself, are in the main extremely clever and educated atheistic anarchists. There is an historic and understandable connection between anarchism and atheism (despite the fact that the founder of Stoicism, Zeno of Citium, who taught that the deity is an immortal and perfect living being and the providential “father of all,” is also regarded as the father of anarchism). Anarchism by definition means without rulers, and so would seem naturally inclined to reject the existence of a God whom we should obey and acknowledge as our Lord.
What makes a Christian a Christian? Following the commandments of Jesus Christ. And what, according to Jesus Christ himself, is the greatest commandment, on which all of the law and prophets are based? To love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul; and your neighbor as your self. And what element of this greatest of commandments is its practical starting point? The denial and suppression of the overweening Self, of everything in us which is not God.
Observe that this greatest of commandments demands of us nothing more than Justice founded in Truth. Observe also the Liberty of a soul which through Truth has overcome the fear / wrath / despair which necessarily sprouts from Self-regard and Self-concern. It may be that we doubt the very existence of God, but only through living in accordance with the Truth about our selves may we hope to learn the Truth about God.
Observe, finally, that we need not believe anything about Jesus Christ to see the Truth in and obey this greatest of commandments.
It appears that what Tim Robbins’ Guardian Angel said Eckhart said wasn’t an exact quotation, but a fair paraphrase of Eckhart’s teachings, adapted to explain the devils Robbins encounters in the horror movie (Jacob’s Ladder) from which this clip is taken. Here’s a sermon Eckhart actually did preach.
. . . after “quitting” more than two months ago. Highly recommended:
[Love-2.1-80] Again, here you see, where and how you are to seek your Salvation, not in taking up your traveling Staff, or crossing the Seas to find out a new Luther or a new Calvin, to clothe yourself with their Opinions. No. The Oracle is at Home, that always and only speaks the Truth to you, because nothing is your Truth, but that Good and that Evil which is yours within you. For Salvation or Damnation is no outward Thing, that is brought into you from without, but is only That which springs up within you, as the Birth and State of your own Life. What you are in yourself, what is doing in yourself, is all that can be either your Salvation or Damnation.
I don’t mean to get all religious on all y’all. My old blog explicitly tied religion of a certain stripe to libertarianism, and this new blog was meant to drop the religious emphasis of that blog in favor of a focus on “the philosophy and practice of law and liberty.” But I still regard “religion,” properly understood, as inextricably bound up with the quest for liberty, in the soul and in society.
From The Spirit of Love, by William Law:
[Love-2.1-45] The Scripture saith, “We are not sufficient of ourselves to think a good Thought.” If so, then we cannot be chargeable with not thinking, and willing that which is good, but upon this Supposition, that there is always a supernatural Power within us, ready and able to help us to the Good which we cannot have from ourselves.
[Love-2.1-46] The Difference then of a good and a bad Man does not lie in this, that the one wills that which is good, and the other does not, but solely in this, that the one concurs with the living inspiring Spirit of God within him and the other resists it, and is and can be only chargeable with Evil, because he resists it.
[Love-2.1-47] Therefore whether you consider that which is good or bad in a Man, they equally prove the perpetual Indwelling and Operation of the Spirit of God within us, since we can only be bad by resisting, as we are good by yielding to the Spirit of God; both which equally suppose a perpetual Operation of the Spirit of God within us.
by Thomas L. Knapp at the Center for a Stateless Society:
Beware: Should you happen to spot me on the streets of Westminster, you are exhorted to summon law enforcement immediately! That London borough’s “Counter Terrorist Focus Desk” considers me a threat to the public safety (“Anarchists should be reported, advises Westminster anti-terror police,” The Guardian, July 31).
Yes, I am an anarchist. I state this without apology, understanding that you may find it strange or even scary, or may not understand the term well. I’d like to explain myself to you, while there’s still time, before someone else tells you a scary story and urges you to assist in my apprehension.
I confess that I joined the Navy at the age of 17 in large part because I wanted guidance in how to live. I was not raised by my mother or father, for reasons I won’t go in to here, but to this absence I attribute the absence of a certain assurance in my path that I felt I should have but didn’t. Joining the Navy was to me an appeal, from the mixed messages that had up till then buffeted me back and forth, to an authority that I knew was widely respected by “society.”
To me, the fundamental truths of anarchism have become blindingly self-evident: The politicians and lawyers who make, interpret and enforce “the laws” are, on average and as a class, less honorable, wise and just than are people in general. The State is designed, not to protect and serve, but to steal from the poor and give to the rich. The State has no moral authority. There is no law other than the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God. The State is in its essence an usurper and an imposter. We are morally obligated to obey only those of its “laws” which happen to plagiarize the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God, and are morally obligated to disobey those of its “laws” which violate the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.
Debbie Harbeson in the July 7th New Albany News & Tribune:
Let’s say you — or someone you care about — had a few drinks one night and, knowing it would not be a good idea to drive, decided to let a sober person take the wheel.
Did you realize you can still be charged with a criminal offense? It’s true. The Indiana Supreme Court just affirmed this in Moore v. State.
. . .
We’ve all heard of the CSI Effect, the theory that watching CSI on television causes people who later sit on juries to unrealistically expect more from prosecutors than just the testimony of a jailhouse snitch before they’ll convict.
I wonder what effect watching on television the public vilification of the jurors who rendered the not-guilty verdict in the Casey Anthony trial might have on future jurors in future cases. As Juror No. 12 told her husband before going into hiding: “I’d rather go to jail than sit on a jury like this again.” But hey, why go to jail or into hiding when you can just convict?
First, Norm Pattis:
Two things struck me from afar about why the defense won this case, and both come down to rules broken by Casey Anthony’s lawyer. If Mr. Baez had tried the case according to the textbook, he might well have lost it.
According to Norm, these two unconventional things were: (1) laying out in opening statement and arguing for in summation a theory of how Casey’s daughter died, even though he kept Casey from testifying and wasn’t able to offer any actual evidence supporting this theory at trial; and (2) arguing to the jury that the case against Casey was not strong enough to support a penalty of death, even though punishment is not supposed to be a consideration during the guilt phase of trial.
I always root against the State, except perhaps in the rare case when the State prosecutes one of its own.
As Lew Rockwell writes (in a post quoted by the Atlantic):
I wonder: even if this woman were guilty, what is to be gained by turning her over to the greatest killing, torturing, and looting machine on earth, government, as if it were some moral authority? We need private judicial proceedings, restitution and not retribution, and not exaltation of the dullards and thugs who compose government. It is never right for them to judge anybody on anything.
This attitude is consistent with, rather than contrary to, my view (for which I’ve been excoriated a fair amount in the criminal defense blogosphere) that the role of the criminal defense attorney is to “do justice,” notwithstanding my acknowledgement that losing for those we think innocent is more devastating than losing in general.
By turning this case into a capital prosecution, prosecutors ensured jurors would have to be “death qualified” and thus would know from the outset that prosecutors wanted Anthony executed for her alleged crimes. Though sometimes death-qualified juries may show a greater willingness to convict, here I suspect that the death-qualification process could have primed the jurors to expect a forensic smoking gun showing conclusively that Casey Anthony murdered her daughter in cold blood. When no such smoking gun was presented by the prosecution, the jurors may have ultimately been much more willing (and perhaps even eager) to find reasonable doubt on all serious charges.
COMPARE Glenn Greenwald’s July 4th post on the motives of Bradley Manning with Bryan J. Brown’s “July 4th Primer — to the Indiana Supreme Court,” consisting of his final filing with that court in his unsuccessful bid to be admitted by them to the practice of law in Indiana. (Background on Bryan’s case is here, here, and here.)
CONTRAST Jeff Gamso’s July 4th post contrasting the relative “necessity” of dissolving political bands in 1776 and now with Norm Pattis’ July 4th post contrasting the trial in 1770 of the British soldiers charged with murder for their role in the Boston Massacre with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in 2011 in the case of Harry Connick, District Attorney v. John Thompson (throwing out a $14 million jury award for an innocent man who was imprisoned for 18 years, including 14 on death row, because prosecutors hid evidence that exonerated him).
— reversing the Indiana Court of Appeals to reinstate a criminal conviction for no good reason (as they also recently did in Barnes and Coleman).
The facts in Brenda Moore v. State were not in dispute:
The defendant had consumed two tall cans of beer at her sister’s house on the evening of December 5, 2008. A friend of the defendant’s brother asked for a ride to visit a friend. The defendant explained to him that she could not drive because she had been drinking but that he could drive her car if he had a license. The brother’s friend then drove the defendant’s car with the defendant riding as a front seat passenger. When an Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Officer pulled over the car because the license plate light was not working, the officer determined that the driver did not have a valid driver’s license and that the defendant could not operate the vehicle because she was intoxicated.
SPOILER ALERT! Don’t read the title of this post if you haven’t finished reading Norm Pattis‘ new book, Taking Back the Courts: What We Can Do to Reclaim Our Sovereignty, as those are the words with which it concludes.
I’ll write more about the book later, once I’ve actually finished it, but wanted to note the coincidence of Norm’s (perhaps hyperbolic) embrace of “chaos” with my (perhaps hyperbolic) embrace of “chaos” in my last post, titled “Chaotic Good v. Lawful Evil.” (Incidentally, for the edification of my non-geek readers, “Chaotic Good” and “Lawful Evil” are “alignments” in Dungeons & Dragons.)
Anarchists hoping to spread the word and aspiring to a modicum of acceptance and respectability, including myself, are perhaps too eager to clarify that “anarchy” doesn’t mean chaos, to emphasize that the change we seek is incremental, and to point out that the famous circled-A symbol for anarchy signifies “Anarchy is Order.”
I mean, so what if the homicide rate in the Old West was seven times what it is today? That doesn’t answer the question of whether life in the Wild West wasn’t better and grander than it is today, or whether life today wouldn’t be better and grander if the State suddenly collapsed . . . even if the homicide rate reverted to Wild West levels.
How is it that the supposed anarchist and proprietor of lysanderspooner.org has come to write this drivel (comments closed) at the Volokh Conspiracy about what he calls “The Dangerous Effort to Delegitimate Supreme Court Justices” (emphasis added) — and in particular, Justices Thomas, Scalia, and Alito?
Has Barnett read the recent USA Today retrospective which “lays bare the complete disdain Justice Thomas has shown for those accused of and convicted of crimes” during his 20 years on the SCOTUS?
I can only assume that he has, and that the former prosecutor shares Thomas’ disdain, as it would be consistent with Barnett’s apparent disdain for the innocent victims of War.
For my part, I prefer to highlight as edifying stories like this one about the Wisconsin Supreme Court, this one about the Michigan Supreme Court, this one about the Indiana Supreme Court, and yes, the USA Today story about Justice Thomas referenced above as well as this recent NYT story, which Barnett characterizes as “advancing another empty charge against Justice Thomas.”
Lysander Spooner would be so very proud.
Roderick Long links to a great cartoon asking: “What if war were treated the way abortion is now, and vice versa?”
Gene Callahan, who in the words of a critic is “apparently a former libertarian turned communitarian,” in a comment on Roderick’s post answers the cartoon’s question thusly: “Then some murder would be easier, and some murder harder.”
Roderick replies to Gene: “Killing a mindless collection of cells isn’t murder. And killing a person in self-defense isn’t murder.”
I replied to Roderick:
Jamison Koehler cites Ashe v. Swenson (1970) as currently his favorite U.S. Supreme Court case. In a comment on his post I wrote: “If you like Ashe, you might also like Yeager. Until recently these used to be my favorite U.S. Supreme Court cases too.”
What recently changed my mind about these cases is the Indiana Supreme Court’s decision in Tyrus Coleman v. State (2011), and the utter failure of these cases to do Mr. Coleman (whom I represented at trial) any good. Now when I read Yeager the only significant thing about the case seems to me to be the fact that the defendant, Mr. Yeager, was an Enron executive.
“You could argue that the degree to which Mennonites today, perhaps more often today, critique U.S. government policy than, say, may have been the case in 1910, a hundred years ago, is evidence that Mennonites feel more of an interest in and a responsibility for their country.”
So says Steve Nolt, professor of Mennonite history at Goshen College, as quoted in an Elkhart Truth article about the college’s reversal last week of its decision last March to begin playing an instrumental version of the Star Spangled Banner before sporting events. Before that, the college didn’t play the national anthem at all, and it’s now resuming that policy. (However, although the college has now stopped playing the “Star Spangled Banner,” it apparently still flies the Star Spangled Banner.)
 Lysander Spooner |
 Henry George |
 Harriet Tubman |
 Sitting Bull |
 Angelus Silesius |
 Smedley Butler |
 Rose Wilder Lane |
 Albert Jay Nock |
 Dora Marsden |
 Leo Tolstoy |
 Henry David Thoreau |
 John Brown |
 Karl Hess |
 Levi Coffin |
 Max Stirner |
 Dorothy Day |
 Ernst Jünger |
 Thomas Paine |
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