Remember when Obama bowed too deep…
Remember when Obama was born…
FTFY.
Not quite Fox, but an appearance of corporate censorship of opposing views on the Opinion page:
The work of Rob Rogers, longtime political cartoonist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, has been notably absent from his paper’s opinion page during this past week. Aside from a cartoon criticizing the trade war posted on Tuesday, June 5, the most recent of Rogers’ drawings appeared last Thursday, May 24.
So where was Rogers all of last week? He did not simply “have the day off,” as printed in last Tuesday’s issue of the Post-Gazette.
Keith Burris, the Post-Gazette’s editorial director since March, when it merged its editorial board with the co-owned Toledo Blade, refused to publish six of Rogers’ cartoons in a row. Four were directly critical of President Donald Trump, and two alluded to racism.
Despite not being published in the Post-Gazette, Rogers continued posting these cartoons on Twitter, as he does with all of his work.
And now he’s been fired by the Trumpistas:
Welcome to America in 2018. Where you can be fired for objecting to separating children from their parents. At a newspaper.
Pre-trial detention!? That is only for poor and dark-skinned people!
Okay… This guy, what the fuck?
Or people who deliberately ignore the judge’s instructions and tamper with witnesses while they’re out on bail.
In Dershowitz’s defense he is equally critical anybody being put in jail before a trial. Basically, he doesn’t think that state has any right to keep people in jail until they been found guilty of a crime.
Well that’s an interesting and cuckoo-crazy take for sure. Hey guys, we caught this guy putting on a suicide bomb vest in an attempt to blow up a corner cafe. He’s free to go until we have our criminal case put together in a year or so, though.
Thanks for the context, Strollen. If it’s a consistent position, that’s much more understandable. If there’s suddenly hand-wringing because rich white guy got thrown in jail… well, you get my reaction. I saw Fox News guest and assumed the worst. :)
The other thing that he’s neglecting to mention is that Manafort would not be in jail right now if he didn’t continue to commit crimes while out on bail.
This is going far even for Dershowitz.
Manafort isn’t simply being jailed prior to trial… he was free, but then he intentionally worked to obstruct Justice.
I’ve been watching a lot of the Jeff Tobin and Alan Dershowitz debates on CNN. (Jeff is a former student.) Cause, I’ve been baffled how this formerly liberal icon and certainly one of the most famous law professor in my life, has suddenly turned into a Trumpist. Alan has gotten more grief for defending Trump than he did defending OJ.
This long but excellent Politico article explain what happened.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/05/11/alan-dershowitz-donald-trump-what-happened-218359
There is too much to summarize accurately. Briefly Alan hasn’t changed, us Trump haters have. Alan has two main arguments. The first is that constitution grants Presidents vast power and they are broader (pardons, firing people) than are commonly viewed. I’ll let the constitutional scholars argue that, but Alan is in a distinct minority.
The second is that in our hatred for Trump and his team we are ignoring civil liberties. (This happens to virtually everybody in the criminal justice system in Alan’s view.).
Let’s take the specific case of Manafort being jailed because of alleged witness tampering.
5th Amendment
No person… nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.
The government convinced a grand jury, that Manafort was contacting witnesses and attempting to influence their testimony. The judge took the grand jury indictment at face value, and revoked Manafort bail and now he is going to spend the next 3 months in jail.
As Alan remind us a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich. The prosecution presented their evidence the defense had no opportunity to present their side of the case. Everyone in this thread is assuming Manafort is guilty of what the government says he did. But by no stretch has their been anything like due process. The judge didn’t a hold a hearing on the charges, the whole scene in court was 15 minutes.
(Now mind you I want this Putin cocksucker, who believes like most of the Trump team, that laws don’t apply to him to spend the rest of his life in jail, and I’d personally take 10-1 odds that he is guilty).
According to Alan, the reason we have 98% conviction rate is that it is stunts like this throwing people in jail pre-trial. Then threaten to lock them up for 40 years, in order to convince them to take a deal a plead-guilty to 2 years. Even if sometimes they are innocent. Does this happen to poor people and minorities every day in America? You betcha. Does it make it right when it happens to a sleazy Trump team member? No it doesn’t.
That’s the crux of Alan’s defense.
Some context
But those people weren’t rich!
I mean I get Alan’s ideology, but realistically it’s horsecrap in a lot of ways.
If I walk outside and shoot down the mailman, I shouldn’t be allowed to walk free until I’m convicted of it. That’s inconsistent with reality. Now when it comes to non-violent offenses and minor stuff I can see his point and the bail system is pretty fubar as it is, but imprisonment prior to actual conviction has to be an option or things will fall apart quickly. People will run, murderers will kill and so on and so on.
Like tampering with witnesses?