My Style - Reclaim My Identity

Thursday, August 27, 2020

Now Posting At Substack

I'll be writing at The Popehat Report at Substack, and (generally) not here. This blog will remain as a historical artifact and collection of writing. Not turning on comments at Substack (at least not most of the time), but you can engage about particular posts on Twitter or Facebook.

Saturday, July 4, 2020

The Fourth of July [rerun]

[I've re-posted this many times, because it's fundamental to what it means to me to be an American.]

In the hot summer of 1992, I was working for Judge Ronald S.W. Lew, a federal judge in Los Angeles. One July morning he abruptly walked into my office and said without preamble "Get your coat." Somewhat concerned that I was about to be shown the door, I grabbed my blazer and followed him out of chambers into the hallway. I saw he had already assembled his two law clerks and his other summer extern there. Exchanging puzzled glances, we followed him into the art-deco judge's elevator of the old Spring Street courthouse, then into the cavernous judicial parking garage. He piled us into his spotless Cadillac and drove out of the garage without another word.

Within ten awkward, quiet minutes we arrived at one of the largest VFW posts in Los Angeles. Great throngs of people, dressed in Sunday best, were filing into the building. It was clear that they were families — babes in arms, small children running about, young and middle-aged parents. And in each family group there was a man — an elderly man, dressed in a military uniform, many stooped with age but all with the bearing of men who belonged in that VFW hall. They were all, I would learn later, Filipinos. Their children and grandchildren were Filipino-American; they were not. Yet.

Judge Lew — the first Chinese-American district court judge in the continental United States — grabbed his robe from the trunk and walked briskly into the VFW hall with his externs and clerks trailing behind him. We paused in the foyer and he introduced us to some of the VFW officers, who greeted him warmly. He donned his robe and peered through a window in a door to see hundreds of people sitting in the main hall, talking excitedly, the children waving small American flags and streamers about. One of the VFW officers whispered in his ear, and he nodded and said "I'll see them first." The clerks and my fellow extern were chatting to some INS officials, and so he beckoned me. I followed him through a doorway to a small anteroom.

There, in a dark and baroquely decorated room, we found eight elderly men. These were too infirm to stand. Three were on stretchers, several were in wheelchairs, two had oxygen tanks. One had an empty sleeve instead of a right arm. A few relatives, beaming, stood near each one. One by one, Judge Lew administered the naturalization oath to them — closely, sometimes touching their hands, speaking loudly so they could hear him, like a priest administering extreme unction. They smiled, grasped his hand, spoke the oath as loudly as they could with evident pride. Some wept. I may have as well. One said, not with anger but with the tone of a dream finally realized, "We've waited so long for this."

And oh, how they had waited. These men, born Filipinos, answered America's call in World War II and fought for us. President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked the men of the Philippines to fight, promising them United States citizenship and veterans benefits in return. 200,000 fought. Tens of thousands died. They weathered the brutal conditions under Japanese occupation, fought a valiant guerrilla war, and in some cases survived the Bataan death march.

In 1946, Congress reneged on FDR's promise. Filipino solders who fought for us and their families were not given their promised citizenship, let alone benefits. Many came here anyway, had children who were born U.S. citizens, and some even became citizens through the process available to any immigrant. But many others, remembering the promise, asked that it be kept. And they waited.

They waited 44 years, until after most of them were dead. It was not until 1990 that Congress finally addressed this particular stain on our honor and granted them citizenship. (Their promised benefits were not even brought to a vote until 2008, when most of the happy men I saw that day were dead.)

Hence this July naturalization ceremony. After Judge Lew naturalized the veterans who were too ill or infirm to stand in the main ceremony, he quickly took the stage in the main room. A frantic, joyous hush descended, and the dozens of veterans stood up and took the oath. Many wept. I kept getting something in my goddamned eye. And when Judge Lew declared them citizens, the families whooped and hugged their fathers and grandfathers and the children waved the little flags like maniacs.

I had the opportunity to congratulate a number of families and hear them greet Judge Lew. I heard expressions of great satisfaction. I heard more comments about how long they had waited. But I did not hear bitterness on this day. These men and their children had good cause to be bitter, and perhaps on other days they indulged in it. On this day they were proud to be Americans at last. Without forgetting the wrongs that had been done to them, they believed in an America that was more of the sum of its wrongs. Without forgetting more than 40 years of injustice, they believed in an America that had the potential to transcend its injustices. I don't know if these men forgave the Congress that betrayed them and dishonored their service in 1946, or the subsequent Congresses and administrations to weak or indifferent to remedy that wrong. I don't think that I could expect them to do so. But whether or not they forgave the sins of America, they loved the sinner, and were obviously enormously proud to become her citizens.

I am tremendously grateful to Judge Lew for taking me to that ceremony, and count myself privileged to have seen it. I think about it every Fourth of July, and more often than that. It reminds me that people have experienced far greater injustice than I ever will at this country's hands, and yet are proud of it and determined to be part of it. They are moved by what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature to believe in the shared idea of what America should be without abandoning the struggle to right its wrongs. I want to be one of them.

Friday, December 13, 2019

Murum Aries Attigit, Y'all

Tell them boys they can have the statue and $2.5m… US dollars, that is.

This here case is a pretty good story.

It all starts in Orange County, North Carolina. Folks there, well, everywhere, say the wheels of justice turn slowly. But, a few weeks ago, Lady Justice traded in her robe and blindfold for a pair of short cutoff jeans, tossed her scales into the kudzu on the side of a dusty road, and grabbed the keys to a bright orange 1969 Dodge Charger. She jumped in one window and Mendacius rode shotgun. The two of them let out a cry that bystanders called “a foxhunt yip mixed up with sort of a banshee squall.”

She pushed the pedal to the metal and made those 426 cubic inches growl through Orange County (North Carolina, that is) at such a speed that I do say that ol’ road’s hills flattened and its curves straightened for her. She screeched on up back to the courthouse hoping to return before anyone noticed her joyride had taken her from her post. She skidded to a stop, but those wheels were spinning just a bit too fast for her to brake in enough time to avoid running right over poor Veritas, who ironically was waiting outside for her daddy – who always did seem to dawdle when he was in that building. Lady Justice crawled out of the car window and put her blindfold back on, lest she see with her own eyes the consequences of leaving her post to go on such a joyride. And while she blindly wept, Mendacius grabbed her robes and scales and ran right in that courthouse to set things just the way he liked em – dirty.

Now Mr. Doucette ain’t no Greek god, but he might be mistaken for one mythological figure – Mr. Clean. Acts like him too – at least in this story. He’s a lawyer in North Carolina now, but once upon a time, he was on the Board of Governors of the University of North Carolina (“UNC”).

Way back, more than a hundred years ago, a group of ladies went around calling themselves the United Daughters of the Confederacy and putting up monuments to that lost cause. Now this was pretty darn ironic, since General Lee, himself, believed memorials like this would just keep the wounds of the Civil War open. He famously said “I think it well, moreover, not to keep open the sores of war, but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife and to commit to oblivion the feelings it engendered.”. Well who am I to argue with Robert E. Lee?

I might not be nobody to argue with the General, but a bunch of folks down South didn’t have so much respect for what he wanted. And those former slaves around that time were getting a bit what folks called “uppity.” It was right about 1908 when the started the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or as you know it, the NAACP. They started asking for things like “rights” and “equality.” So those nice ladies went around with smiles as wide as their hats and didn’t have to work to hard to convince the powers that be all across the South to start putting up monuments to General Lee’s lost cause, and nobody paid any mind to what he said about ‘em.

Along came “Silent Sam” – a pretty tall feller made all out of bronze who these nice ladies with a not-so-nice mission got put right there at the front door to the University of North Carolina, in a position of honor. Now that was a pretty ironic kind of position for him to be in, since his mission was about as dishonorable as the soldier he represented. Where the real thing was there to preserve slavery, Sam was there to remind Black people that, if Joss Whedon will indulge me and forgive me, the Confederates might have been on the losing side, but they weren’t quite convinced it was the wrong one.

When they oh so ironically pulled the sheet off of Silent Sam in 1913, this KKK supporter named Julian Carr spoke from his heart, and told the crowd that the Confederate soldiers it honored had saved “the very life of the Anglo Saxon race in the South,” and told the following story:

“One hundred yards from where we stand, less than ninety days perhaps after my return from Appomattox, I horse-whipped a negro wench until her skirts hung in shreds, because upon the streets of this quiet village she had publicly insulted and maligned a Southern lady, and then rushed for protection to these University buildings where was stationed a garrison of 100 Federal soldiers. I performed the pleasing duty in the immediate presence of the entire garrison, and for thirty nights afterwards slept with a double-barrel shot gun under my head.”

Nobody really remembered that until about 2018, but about then someone dug it up. With a metaphorical flamethrower taken to the tale that Sam stood there as a solemn testament to “southern pride,” some people just couldn’t take looking at him anymore – so they got together and damn if they didn’t tear that statue right down. Now that might not have been the polite, legal, or gentlemanly thing to do. And, I’m not one for giving a pass to destroying art or public property. But, I can still say, with no insincerity at all, that I damn well understand.

It don't end there. You see there’s this group of good ol boys, call themselves the North Carolina Sons of Confederate Veterans. We’re sure that some of ‘em are pretty nice guys and they mean well. But, them all that run it, they’re still a bit put out that you can buy an old Dodge Charger in the Auto Trader, but there’s no similar publication to buy and sell yourself a Negro, if y’all is so inclined.

So let's fast forward to November 27, 2019 – when the Sons of Confederate Veterans filed a lawsuit, despite lacking standing to bring it, against UNC for its failure to put Silent Sam back in his place of honor. (check it out) Despite the fact that the plaintiffs lacked standing, seven minutes after the suit was filed, a state court judge approved a settlement between the parties. Whoooo-eeee! Thats there where I was talking about earlier with Lady Justice using all 426 cubic inches of that engine!

Well, in those seven minutes, the Sons of Confederate Veterans got themselves the Silent Sam statue and slap my ass and call me Sally if they didn’t also get $2.5 million United States dollars from the University too. Now if that don’t beat all! Seven minutes of a lawsuit, and a nice sweetheart deal with a bag o’ cash come just raining down on the Confederates!

The day the settlement was approved, the Sons’ “commander” Ronald Kevin Stone, announced this “victory” to thousands of his members – not all of whom agreed with it. Some of those boys who didn’t much like it, they sent Mr. Doucette the victory proclamation. Well you might be surprised to learn that the victory proclamation itself confirmed that this deal stank like the shithouse on a shrimper boat. The Commander himself admitted that the Confederates had no business suing the University, and his victory speech sure made it seem like that someone might have used a bit of impropriety, as they say, to convince Justice to take that joyride of hers.

Now Mr. Doucette thought everyone had a right to know, so he went on and put that victory proclamation right up on the glowin’ tubes of all of the Internets, just so you and me and everyone else could see what they’d done. But, the Confederates didn’t like that. They wanted their skulduggery done in the shadows. So what they did is say that the proclamation was a copyrighted work, would you believe it? They then got it all censor-iffic despite knowing full well they were no more in their rights than if they were firing on Fort Sumter.

Well, Mr. Doucette wasn’t takin that lying down. He gave those boys a chance to come to their senses. They didn’t.

Murum Aries Attigit, Y'all..

Due Process for Tsarnaev – Demanded by a Masshole

By Marc J. Randazza

I want a new trial for Tsarnaev – because FUCK Dzhokhar Tsarnaev!

I don’t personally know anyone who got hurt in the Tsarnaev bombing. I don’t even know anyone who was in the zone of danger. Nevertheless, when I heard about the Marathon bombing, I wanted to cry and crush something at the same time. These motherfuckers bombed my home. It is as if they burned Paul Revere’s house, or bombed Fenway Park, or sank the U.S.S. Constitution, or put tomatoes in my chowder. It wasn’t just a bomb in a crowded place. This was a “fuck you, Boston” of biblical proportions.

I got this far into writing this, and it came back to me – that quickened breath, that pounding heartbeat, that desire to put my hands around Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s throat and bash his head into his cell wall again and again and again so that the last thing that fucking prick hears is the sound of his own skull cracking mixed with my voice screaming at him.

That is what I, personally, want. And yet, I want him to get a new trial. I would never support a government that let me, or anyone else, enjoy my desired outcome.

I want him to receive the fairest trial, the greatest due process, and the kindest punishment that we can tolerate. If that happens to be death, so be it. Let even that death be without cruelty, violence, or anger.

If you are reading this, and at any point your reaction is “he does not deserve” whatever I may advocate for, well … keep reading, you might get smarter.

I don’t give a shit what Tsarnaev deserves. He deserves to be tortured. He deserves an agonizing death. He deserves to have watched his brother die. He deserves to be strapped to a table, with his ass up in the air, and then to be put right in the prison yard in the incorrigible rapist section of a maximum security prison, with everyone in that cell block informed that every time they violate him, they get a day off their sentence.

Yet, I care more about my Constitution than I care about my desire for hideous retribution. Justice is not just giving a bad guy what he deserves. Justice is also about limiting that desire for severe retribution. Justice is who stands in between the bad guy and the good people who want to do bad bad things to him. Because if we do not give Tsarnaev a fair trial and a righteous punishment, we can do it to anyone else. They can do it to you.

You see, I want to do worse things to Tsarnaev than Tsarnaev ever did to anyone else. I feel that if I did these things, if I let loose the savage instincts inside me, I would feel the bliss of no longer restraining that brutality and that hatred, and I would likely have the cover of it being seen, by many, as somehow justified. It may be justified – but it would not be justice.

Now imagine a jury pool made up of the kind of people who wanted to declare war on the Dominican Republic because a guy there shot David Ortiz. Literally every man in New England has given his wife or girlfriend a hall pass to have sex with Tom Brady. Even the most homophobic guy in Boston would suck Tom Brady’s dick while humming Danny Boy atop a float in the St. Patricks' Day Parade if Bill Belichick told him it was necessary to the Patriots’ being able to score in the red zone. If a defendant is a Yankees fan, that defendant probably should suppress that evidence because it would mean that at least one juror would immediately pronounce him guilty.

Yet, these bastards think that someone who blew up the Boston Fucking Marathon can get a fair trial in Boston?

Not only was he tried in the very place he fouled, but even the jurors were not clean. One of them tweeted out dozens of statements after the bombings, including “Congratulations to all of the law enforcement professionals who worked so hard and went through hell to bring in that piece of garbage.” If that’s how you start off as a juror, you’re not unbiased. Could we not find a juror who hadn’t openly expressed how he felt about the defendant? Maybe not in Boston, we couldn’t.

”Juror 138, meanwhile, posted about being called to jury duty on Facebook. Friends commented on his post, and hours after he’d been instructed not to, he continued to post about jury selection and the case. Posts included friends telling him to “play the part” and “get on the jury” to send Tsarnaev “to jail where he will be taken care of.” He replied with details about jury selection and being “ten feet” from Tsarnaev.

When asked by the court about talking or posting about the case, he said he hadn’t. (source)

They might as well have put a gag ball in Lady Liberty’s mouth and fucked her up the ass on the courthouse steps.

What makes it really offensive is that there was no reason to do it this way. The case was airtight. Tsarnaev wasn’t going to walk even if you tried him in the most Boston-hating jurisdiction in America. We moved Timothy McVeigh’s trial to Denver, despite the fact that he was never going to walk free no matter where they tried him. Why? Because when he got that needle put in his arm, we wanted it to be after he got every goddamned bit of due process that our system deserves. And, to this day, there is nobody who can seriously question whether McVeigh got a fair shake.

Tsarnaev’s execution will always be tainted if he does not get a new trial.

Justice is only served by due process. Without due process, without a fair trial, without removing even the appearance of impropriety, Justice is kept out of the room, and replaced with the remorseless goddess of revenge — Nemesis.

I love Boston not just because it is my home town, but because of what it stands for – it was the cradle of American liberty, if that means anything anymore. Tsarnaev attacked a symbol of that symbol. That left a wound that Nemesis can not heal. If we fail to keep Justice in the room, if we stain even the slightest bit of due process in seeking her divine guidance, then what the fuck is the point of these symbols? What the fuck is the point of the Revolution and the Constitution if we can't hold up due process right there, steps from where the whole damn conspiracy started?

Tsarnaev needs due process not because he deserves it, but because we deserve it.

Because when that piece of shit finally goes down, I want it perfect. I do not want Tsarnaev to go to his grave with one person able to credibly say that he deserves any second guessing or sympathy. I want him utterly and completely destroyed.

I want due process for him, not because I care about what happens to him. I want due process for him because that is the ultimate "fuck you" to him. And, as an added benefit, we keep Justice right where she belongs.

Thursday, September 19, 2019

All The President's Lawyers: No Bill Thrill?

This week: did a grand jury no-bill DoJ? Link here.

Friday, September 13, 2019

Over At Crime Story, A Post About the College Bribery Scandal

Why do some big cases get investigated, and others don't? What makes the difference? Find out in my new column over at Crime Story.

By the way, Crime Story is worth your time. Kary Antholis — who comes from HBO — aims to increase knowledge of the criminal justice system through informed storytelling. Check it out.

Wednesday, September 11, 2019

All The President's Lawyers:

This week: Flynn, Manafort, Congress, and Jacob Wohl! Link here.