Cowards! Cowards! Cowards!
Listening to the obnoxious and clearly demented Antonin Scalia completely tanking the Voter Rights Act by referring to it as “a perpetuation of racial entitlement,” aroused some of my most obnoxious thought processes as well. After at least twice admitting that he was willing to let an innocent man be executed because ”innocence” is, somehow not a justification for a new trial, “Justice” Scalia’s opinions seem to have easily met the legal criteria for “insanity,” that is, not knowing “right” from “wrong.” Most of his less important opinions such as considering a multi-million dollar campaign contribution to be an expression of “speech,” only serve to confirm this sad but immutable fact.
Now, what you may ask, is even sadder than an insane Supreme Court Justice meting out the death penalty to victims whom he admits that he believes to be innocent? Is it a fellow Supreme Court “Justice” who receives some six hundred thousand dollars in payments through his lobbyist wife? Is it the same “Justice” who fails to recuse himself from making decisions on any of those cases involving his wife’s lobbying? Is it the same Justice accused by multiple law students of sexual harassment and even worse who was never thoroughly investigated by the Senate or the Bar Association?
Believe it or not, it is none of these! No, the saddest, in fact, the most disappointing and unavoidable fact is that the American Bar Association has so obviously forfeited its right to independently certify and monitor its members. Yes, the association metes out token sanctions and occasionally serious “punishment” to offending member attorneys, but not to judges who are attorneys. Mind you, it is not because the Bar Association does not have the power to censure or even disbar judges who happen to also be attorneys. No, it is because the Bar Association seems to be comprised of a group of so called “professionals” who are mostly abject cowards! Deathly afraid to offend even the most heinous, biased and incompetent judges for fear of retribution, they cower before judges who violate not just their oath as judges, but the standards set by the Bar as attorneys. Meanwhile it was the attorneys, the independent Bar Association that fought so hard to insure that only attorneys could become judges!
Notice something amiss here? The Bar Association is not under the jurisdiction of a local or federal “Department of Professional Regulation.” Attorneys insist that they are capable and can be trusted to regulate their own members! Whom are they kidding? Why are they not treated like all other professionals? Worse yet, judges are essentially unregulated because they too are regulated by themselves! What a colossal joke! Supposedly, Congress, can impeach a judge, even a Supreme Court Justice, but, luckily they probably don’t realize that they can. I mean, imagine a Michele Bachmann or an Alan West initiating impeachment proceedings against a Justice because he said something un-Christian or that civil unions were Constitutional. No, folks, unfortunately, we are stuck with the sniveling cowards of the American Bar Association, shaking in their boots, afraid to even censure, let alone disbar a bigoted and legally insane Supreme Court Justice or his colleague who received six hundred thousand dollars in illicit payments for his decisions!
Allen Finkelstein 2/27/2013