Bloody Lawyers – Page 16

She’s so Vain…. She Probably Thinks This Post Is About Her

Published on March 27, 20076 Comments

Surprise, surprise. It is.

Tbogg, as have so many other bloggers who loathe the self-obsessed Wisconsin law lecturer, has the video up of the video head to head between Ann Althouse and progressive writer Garance Franke-Ruta, in which Ann Althouse comes over as the vindictive, vain and bullying Queen Bee type she is by going off on an ad-feminam rant halfway through, much to the consternation of Franke-Ruta.

See it for yourself:

I mean jeez, Franke-Ruta only mentioned Jessica Valenti’s breasts because pressed by Althouse for a reason why the progressive blogs loathed her so much. A full-on mauling seemed a little excessive. As Franke-Ruta comments on her own blog:

But I do want to provide some additional background to my use of the phrase “Jessica Valenti breast controversy,” which was neither intended to provoke nor chosen out of a a soup of total ignorance. In preparation for our BHTV encounter and to get a sense of Ann Althouse, since we’d never met and I mainly knew her through her New York Times columns, which I enjoyed, and the occasional persual of the cultural criticism on her blog, I watched her previous BHTV episdode with Glenn Reynolds and Helen Smith. It included a segment where Althouse and Smith went into some detail discussing various blogospheric breast controversies, including how one AutoAdmit commenter calling himself “Hitler Hitler Hitler” had said of Althouse that she had a “decent rack.” In that earlier episode, Althouse and Smith talked openly about blogospheric breast commentary, much of which I agree is incredibly juvenile and stupid, with amusement and good humor and suggestions that laughing off criticism is the best response. Althouse said (forward to 4:30): “They constantly talk about me and connect me to the subject of breasts. They constantly portray me as someone who, um, is opposed to the fact that women have breasts…Which is, I guess, sort of funny.” She didn’t seem particularly thin-skinned about the issue.

On looking at that bit of video again Althouse’s unjustified attack on seems just a little too fortuitous to me, a little too preplanned. Althouse didn’t come unprepared – you can see that, it looks as though she’d even done her hair and makeup for the occasion – and that was an ambush, in my opinion.

What’s sad is that athough she was in the right, nevertheless I don’t think Franke-Ruta came over particularly well at all, as talented or as capable as she may be off-screen. (Though I do find it hard to believe she’s over 30. Is it me or are police officers and polciy wonks getting younger these days?).

Head to head video debate is obviously not her metier, though I’m told she regularly appears on televiison as representing the progressive point of view. I don’t wish to be cruel, but is she really the best talking head we can put up against Althouse, who should be easily defeated in open debate given the paucity of her political positions and the mendacity of her arguments?

Franke-Ruta was easily perplexed and derailed by that fabricated and theatrical (but then real as she started to enjoy it) bit of business by Althouse; she immediately gave ground by apologising (what the hell for?), and then kept on doing it. She was totally nonplussed.

Even allowing for the element of surprise, if Franke-Ruta’d only had a little gumption Althouse would’ve been totally deflated, because right and logic were patently on her side, not Althouse’s. But as it was, even if Athouse did lose it for a while and come across as more than a little crazy, she still did what she meant to do and kept to her own agenda the whole time – ie the evil that is progressive bloggers.

Althouse and her mouthbreathing fans’re now chalking that one up as a win over the progressive blogosphere. Technically they’re right, Althouse’s temper tantrum notwithstanding. And that stinks.

US Military Lawyer: Bush’s Military Commissions Are Kangaroo Courts

Published on March 26, 20071 Comment

Yes, Virginia, there’s still some decent Americans left. Step forward US Air Force Reserve officer and military lawyer Lt, Cl. Yvonne Bradley, JAG.

Bradley is in London to research the defence of her assigned defendant, Ethiopian Binyan Muhammed, about to undergo US ‘justice’ at a Bush/Gonzales military commssion in Guantanamo Bay.

Everything we see, read and hear at the moment is rehearsed, rehashed or re-spun: it’s all stuff we know already. No one speaks off the cuff any more. So it was startling and heartening to to hear what Bradley had to say on the subject on Today Programme this morning.

[Sorry, the clip’s available only until tomorrow morning SFAIK].

This isn’t an official transcript but my own, so any errors are mine and the ellipses occur where the interviewer makes a statement or goes off to some other interviewee.

BBC: Introduction of Lt Col Bradley, brief outline of history of military commissions.

YB: I cannot compare when I stand outside the Old Bailey and consider military commissions… here I see fairness and due process..justice. In Guanatanamo none of those things will exist. There is no way, I’m convinced, that anyone would recieve a fair trial under the current rules, the current procedures…that they are all designed for one thing – to assure the government a conviction.

BBC:You think the result is already predetermined and no matter what the defence the result will be “Guilty, Guilty, Guilty”?

YB: No matter what brilliant defence anyone can present with in the commissions will result in one thing and I think you put it beautifully – guilty. guilty. guilty. I have to call it the way it is, it’s a kangaroo court.

BBC: Given your major misgivings why are you taking part in these military commissions? Should’nt you be washing your hands of them and saying “I’m having nothing to do with it”?

YB: Part of the system is having defence attorneys who will advocate for their client. In cases of this nature, which may be more political, this may take place outside the courtroom.

BBC: interviewer cuts to US officials Thomas L Hemingway and John Bellinger and Amnesty Intl re military commissions act and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s ‘confession’

YB: I am totally convinced that in 15, 20, 40 years from now we’ll look back on these trials the same way as we look back on the McCarthy era, the same way we look back on Japanese internment, the way we look back at some of the great injustices that happen and say “What did we do, what were we thinking’?

This an an open acknowledgement by serving US military that these military commissions are political show trials and that JAG lawyers are prepared to enter the political arena to fight them. Chalk up another first for Bushco, bringing military lawyers in civilian politics.

But as it turns out what Bradley said wasn’t quite off the cuff. She’sspoken out from the outset and all the way through the process not only putting her military career in jeopardy but risking military discipline herself by continuing to speak out against their illegality even during the hearings themselves:

The issues regarding legal representation then took a surprising turn. Maj. Bradley told the commission that due to an ethical conflict, she could not proceed as Muhammad’s detailed military counsel without violating the rules of the Pennsylvania Bar (where she is licensed to practice). She did not explain what the ethical issue was, but it was clear from the proceedings that counsel and Col. Kohlmann had discussed it in a private meeting and through other communications. Col. Kohlmann ordered Maj. Bradley to fulfill her duty to zealously represent her client and told her that if she disobeyed his order, she did so at her “own peril.”

Now, there have been at least two other military commissions cases in which the Presiding Officer has had to order military defense counsel to represent his/her client: in the case of al Bahlul and yesterday in Omar Ahmed Khadr’s case. In each, in the end and under protest, military lawyers did participate in the proceedings – in some fashion – on their client’s behalf. But today, Maj. Bradley did not. Instead, when Col. Kohlmann asked her to begin voir dire – in which counsel question the Presiding Officer to ascertain potential bias – Maj. Bradley stood and invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. It is hard for me to convey on the page the impact of Maj. Bradley’s decision not to participate in the proceedings against her client, despite Col. Kohlmann’s direct order.

Col. Kohlmann then told Maj. Bradley that if she had no questions, he would find that her client waived his rights to voir dire. Maj. Bradley responded that she wasn’t saying yes or no to voir dire, but that she couldn’t move forward as counsel given the ethical conflict she faced in this case. And so it went on:

Now that’s what I call a decent lawyer and a decent human being. If only there were more.

Happy Families

Published on March 23, 20073 Comments

I read this story, (typically it comes from the New York Post, which loves this kind of thing) with growing dismay and pity for two little girls who’re growing up with a pair of self-denying bigots for parents. The story speaks for itself:

The Andrews family. [video here]

BLACK BABY IS BORN TO WHITE PAIR
By TODD VENEZIA

March 22, 2007 —

Should a couple be entitled to sue because a fertility clinic mistakenly impregnated the woman with sperm other than her mate’s? Click ‘Discussion Board’ beneath the photo to tell us what you think.

A Park Avenue fertility clinic’s blunder has left a family devastated – after a black baby was born to a Hispanic woman and her white husband, the couple charges in a lawsuit.

The mistake, made during in-vitro conception, wasn’t discovered until Jessica Andrews was born – and it became clear she didn’t look anything like her mom, Nancy, or dad, Thomas, the suit says.

The baby’s complexion was much darker than that of her mom – a light-skinned native of the Dominican Republic – or dad.

“Jessica doesn’t look like them,” said the couple’s attorney Howard Stern, of Long Island.

When Thomas and Nancy Andrews asked their doctor, Manhattan obstetrician Martin Keltz, what was going on, he allegedly told them that Jessica’s condition was an “abnormality,” and assured them she would “get lighter over time,” according to the couple’s suit, filed in Manhattan Supreme Court.

[…]

The family is so distraught that they have not even told many of their relatives about the situation. The Andrews fear the natural father may try to come forward and claim rights to the girl, the suit says.

The family is so distraught that they have not even told many of their relatives about the situation. The Andrews fear the natural father may try to come forward and claim rights to the girl, the suit says.

“[Jessica] will never know or be able to determine the identity of her actual father, and will consequently never be able to know her full medical history and condition,” the suit also claims.

[…]

The Andrews, however, fear that because of the circumstances of her birth “she may be subjected to physical and emotional illness as a result of not being the same race as her parents and siblings,” according to their suit.

Oh, right – but not from having had her parents reject her so publicly?

Anyone who watches television, reads newspapers or listens to radio knows what a mediafest this made-for-tabloid confluence of race, immigration, medicine and crime is likely to become. That the Andrews, who surely must know this too, don’t seem to have thought much about putting their children through it is very revealing.

The story doesn’t say how much they’re sueing for but I ‘d imagine it’s a substantial amount. These people have fucked-up values and not just about race.