[Cons] Article III - Section 1 (5 of 10) Prosecutors

The former prosecutor who went berserk against the Duke Lacross team is one of the few examples of a prosecutor actually being punished for misconduct.  The truth is, as flawed as our system of justice may be against Law Enforcement, it is infinitely better than it is against Prosecutors.  Prosecutors wield tremendous power. 

I've mentioned these in numerous examples, but here are just a few examples.

Here, Here, Here, Here, Here, Here, Here, Here, Here, Here, Here, Here and Here.

And who publishes them? Basically no one.  Judges who arrogant snobs are a problem.  You can fix that with an empowered jury but a prosecutor who uses outrageous plea bargaining is able to wield psychotic levels of power.  The problem is, an institution is going to function how it was designed.  When you have prosecutors as an elected or indirectly appointed office, those officers want to get promoted and will work to show off how awesome they are with high numbers of convictions, not caring whether or not those prosecutions make sense.  We're not talking good or evil here; though there are good prosecutors who help people out when they need it, and evil prosecutors who sell children up the river with corrupt judges; we're just talking human nature.  When a prosecutor is in office, he wants to look good.  By making prosecution a political matter, rather than a matter of justice, at a local level you create problems.  At a federal level, the imperial nature of the US government causes the government to want to wield its power with majesty and awe.  This attitude started with J. Edgar Hoover and it has never really stopped since.

So let's itemize some of these problems, shall we? Specifically at the Federal level.

1) The US Attorney is appointed by and works at the pleasure of the President of the United States.  Furthermore, a federal court will not take a case unless someone has standing, and unless someone can prove specific harm, you can't take the government to court for violating the constitution.  That means unconstitutional acts (like violating a senate ratified Treaty on Torture) are completely and utterly ignored by the courts, because there is no one to prosecute them.

2)  The US Attorney is a cabinet level position, so he's peers with and buddy buddy with the very people he is supposed to able to prosecute if they violate the constitution.  The courts can't act as a check for what the prosecutor won't prosecute.

3) The US Attorney is ALSO in charge of the Justice Department, which includes several premier US Law Enforcement Agencies, including the FBI.  Which means when the FBI goes rogue, there aint no one to prosecute them except in the worst situations because the US Attornies work for the same guy as the FBI.

HOWEVER, as I said, as bad as cops are, internal affairs in this country works well enough that SOME things are not tolerated.  Publicly demanding bribes like they do in Mexico? Uh uh.  That's jail time buddy. 

So how to fix this?

Lots of countries make the justice department separate entirely from the rest of the government? This causes problems in Italy where the prosecutors go after the prime minister all the time.  I might see this is a problem, except that the Italian Prime Minister is the Itallian Rupurt Murdoch, aka fascist Burlosconi.  Maybe having someone file suit against Obama and Bush on a regular basis might make them respect the constitution a bit more.

How would they be appointed?  Lots of ways, but I think it should be a separate branch of the executive, so I'll talk about it more in Article II, but I will say that I think that prosecutors in general should be merged with law enforcement, and that the actual prosecution should be done as a part of law enforcement agencies.

If you just have a prosecutor sitting around 'protecting justice' they choose which laws they enforce, but also have to justify their existence by looking flashy.  Now, this won't be solved if its in law enforcement, but existing internal affairs departments could go after prosecutors rather than a non existent thing like what we have now.  I've been able to find all kinds of abstract reasons why they're supposed to be separate, but the real reason is that modern law enforcement is a modern invention while the King's prosecutor in court is an old feudal position.  When we became a democracy, the idea was to elect or appoint them, but like so much about Article III, so much of our courts was so poorly planned, it was just tacked on as an afterthought and just assumed it would work 'like the English courts.'

More importantly, the US attorney is not a constitutionally protected/defined role.  That means a simple act of congress could merge all US attorney positions into law enforcement agencies by a simple law without having to wait to reboot the constitution or amend the awful current one.

[Rant] Civility, Racism and Bigotry

So I got into an argument with someone on the internet today.  I thought about reposting here, but really, why bother? I try to post at least semi coherant stuff here, not just recycled logic.

The thing is,this person really obviously believed their own internal logic.  I think today was even more proof that the two cultures simply CANNOT be reconciled, and I'll tell you why.

Here's a video from the conservative side here you might watch if you can tolerate it:




I mean it all sounds pretty reasonable right?  Who doesn't like the individual vs the big evil government? And God knows I've ranted enough about the problems with institutions as well.  But the thing is...if you have noticed a single theme I have more than any other it is that of TRUTH.  I lived a lie my whole life until the age of 35.  I swallowed it hook line and sinker, only to discover that the leaders of that lie care only about their own power, profit and personal glory.

I digress. 

The meat of this conversation with the individual in question is that he called me a bigot for putting down people who have a different opinion than them.  This is a branch of the same stupid argument they make about tolerating intolerance, which I addressed here.



The link he posted was right here:

Now I mean, that might be the technical thinking...but is that really what most people think of when they think of the definition...here's the wikipedia entry:

Well that sounds like normal English.  So when you expand the google version, you see its based on a 17th century definition, whereas the one in wikipedia is sourced to a modern Meriam Webster dictionary.  So we see that the person here who is from a movement everyone else but them associates with misogynist assholes, he insists that their movement represents the interest of ALL blighted XYZ.  And to prove that, much like the GOP that trots out women who say, "There is no war on women!"  These collaborators say, "Nuh uh! #NotUsingMeAsAnExcuse!" And then idiot and many like him can point to him and pretend that they're not hanging out with mysogonist assholes.

He demands proof.  Then he says I'm being uncivil.

So what is this CIVIL thing they keep bringing up?

We'll use the google definition, since apparently that's what contards like.

"formal politeness and courtesy in behavior or speech."

Where have I heard that before?  Oh yes....



Is the incredibly racist slave owning psychopath CIVIL? Can we not at least be CIVIL to each other?

Of course, God FORBID you take offense at anything THEY might say, because you see, to a contard, it is not about what YOU find civil or what society finds civil but what THEY find civil.  If they feel civil toward you, if their gloves are still on then they are being civil.

Thus, it isn't YOUR definition of bigotry that matters, its THEIR definition.  Where have we heard this before? Oh yeah...













So...let's see here...you have to believe you're racially superior to others or that your race is better than others...and as long as you don't do that, you're not racist!  Cause...

You know...by that definition as long as there is ONE PERSON who you like and get along with in that race, who is tame and have the same beliefs as you do politically or socially and you believe that 99.9% of the people of that race aren't like that, then its AOK.  You can tell that off color joke because you're  NOT BEING RACIST.

Now, never mind that the vast majority of the population finds something like this incredibly racist...

"1 in 10000 negros is actually capable of acting like a white man...." but so long as you don't believe ALL of them are that way, YOU'RE NOT RACIST.

It all makes sense when you think about it.  If you define your own words and you don't have to care what 'the collective' thinks, then you can do whatever you want.

Get that? 

Where else have we seen it? The Austrian School of Economics which believes that ITS ideas matter more than science.  Science is merely part of the "collectivist" paradigm otherwise known as reality.  I've already established that by definition conservatives lie more and have a reason for society to tolerate their lies.  Libertarians ARE conservatives for purposes of truth.

And thus we see that even the words we use, the conversations we have can't hold them accountable unless society makes LYING a crime if isn't for fiction or parody.  Our very dialog, the very words we use, markets (which require truthful information to function) or government simply cannot work if we cannot talk to one another and until the individualists stop using 17th century definitions of words or care that while the REST of us call Racism "Someone else being offended about your stereotype about race" rather than your hypertechnical obscure definition (that happens to be an outdated dictionary definition) then we're all going nowhere.