Edited on Thu Feb-14-08 11:09 AM by L. Coyote
"she has launched an effort to identify a Republican to charge, too"
That should be EASY! Try Bush! :rofl:
=========================
Of Crime and Indifference
Scott Horton - February 14, 2008 -
http://harpers.org/archive/2008/02/hbc-90002392The great theorist of modern criminology, Cesare Beccaria, dispensed some simple advice. The lawmaker, he argued, should keep his focus on criminalizing those things which cause the gravest offense to society and should resist criminalizing trivial matters. When the reach of criminal law grows too broad, it runs some fatal risks. One is that individuals who hold state power will be much more tempted to wield criminal justice for corrupt political ends. And the other is that the criminal justice system itself will become a subject of ridicule as the populace has increasing difficulty finding the essential element of justice without which it is a fraud.
America’s framers drew very heavily on Beccaria and his thinking. I recently saw John Adams’s heavily annotated copy of Dei delitti e delle pene, and Jefferson and Madison both also drew inspiration from the work. The American justice system is of course the offspring of the English system, but the thinking of writers like Beccaria played an important role in crafting the new product.
But today the American Justice Department continues down a strange detour on a road to abuse that Beccaria understood very well. Two examples demonstrate it.
In Birmingham, Alabama, a politically ambitious U.S. attorney named Alice Martin has secured ten indictments of Democratic political figures and their allies. Martin keeps the indictments under seal, so she can release them drop by drop to suit the needs of a political plan, namely the campaign of her Republican compatriots to take control of the state’s legislature. And according to recent reports, Martin has grown so apprehensive that the public will grow wise to her schemes that now she has launched an effort to identify a Republican to charge, too. ......