Anagram: Shoot The Computer/ Recompute, Hotshot

      Before I get to Politics, a personal aside.   It’s been awhile since I’ve had serious issues with this or any computer.  Usually I keep it clean and virus free, and running lean and mean, but lately the damn thing has been running slow and crashing like crazy.  I don’t know whether it’s a virus/worm/whatever, or I have to fix something in my settings, or something just needs to be updated or changed, but it has affected everything I do here.  My job search has been affected, as has my blogging, both here and at examiner.com,  my downtime computer game playing, everything.  Went through a scan on bitdefender and it found…nothing.  I’ve altered the settings on my free AVG to look at everything, which i was surprised to find it wasn’t originally set to do.  

    Enough whining, onto politics!

      

       Ted Stevens got hosed. Big time.  I have read several stories, from places as varied as the Washington post, politico, and the Anchorage  daily news about how Ted Stevens was screwed by overzealous prosecutors who held back a key piece of testimony from the #1 witness in the Stevens trail. Bill Allen, whose testimony was damning at the trail, had in fact prior to giving his testimony spoken at a witness interview and told a different tale about a crucial piece of evidence, introduced at trial as Government Exhibit 495.  The Torricelli note, it seems, would have corroborated then Sen. Stevens story, injuring the prosecutions claim of malfeasance, and shown that on some level, Mr. Stevens in fact wanted to make a good accounting for himself and make sure that everything was done on the level.

     There ain’t no Justice.  It looks very much like the prosecutors, in their zeal to prosecute a big name , and in the process make a big name for themselves, forgot about the one thing they were supposed to remember.  Prosecuting is not about jailing people, or throwing the book at anyone.  It is about making sure that right is done, and that those who do ill are punished in a manner that fits the crime.  It looks very much like the request that Attorney General Eric Holder made to drop all charges in this case will be granted by U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, the judge who worked this trail.  This does not mean that anyone necessarily thinks ted is 100% innocent, but what it does say is that fairness counts, and former Sen. Stevens case was handled in a manner that was egregious, unfair and improper. 

     The next step here is investigation and possible prosecution of the prosecutors of this case.  I hope they receive real justice, something former Sen. Stevens was denied here.

      I almost feel the need to apologize, In part because when this case first broke into the news, I was all over Mr. Stevens.  I raked him over the coals but good.  I did him no injustice, i simply wrote what i felt about what i knew, which was clearly not everything. 

      That’s it for me for now, except for a second video and a few quotes.

     Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, speaking as keynote speaker to the ABA, speaking about the rule of law and freedom.  The most important part, in regards to today’s subject, happens at about the 3:00 mark, but the entire video is well worth watching.

      

That’s it for me.  Later!

justice

Today’s Nuggets, Via wikiquote: If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for the law. It invites every man to become a law unto himself. It invites anarchy.  Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

What do we mean when we say that first of all we seek liberty? I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it… What is this liberty that must lie in the hearts of men and women? It is not the ruthless, the unbridled will; it is not the freedom to do as one likes. That is the denial of liberty and leads straight to its overthrow. A society in which men recognize no check on their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few — as we have learned to our sorrow.
What then is the spirit of liberty? I cannot define it; I can only tell you my own faith. The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the minds of other men and women; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias; the spirit of liberty remembers that not even a sparrow falls to earth unheeded; the spirit of liberty is the spirit of Him who, near two thousand years ago, taught mankind that lesson it has never learned, but has never quite forgotten; that there may be a kingdom where the least shall be heard and considered side by side with the greatest.    Learned Hand