It's beginning to look that way. More cases are turning up where "mistakes" on the part of govt lawyers somehow end up helping the kind of defendants who heavily backed the GOP. The latest "mistake" just let WR Grace off the hook after unconscionable actions that killed people.
Chemical maker W.R. Grace and three former executives were acquitted yesterday of charges that they knowingly exposed residents of a small Montana mining town to asbestos over many years and concealed the deadly threat.
The jury, which received the case Wednesday, returned its verdict yesterday morning, quickly dispensing with the government's long-running effort to hold Grace criminally responsible for high rates of lung disease in the mountain community of Libby.
Controversies about evidence loomed large over the case. The federal judge presiding over the trial in Missoula barred prosecutors from using much of the evidence they hoped to introduce, and the government apologized for withholding evidence from the defense.
Complaints of misconduct in the Justice Department's handling of the case echoed similar allegations in the recently dismissed ethics conviction of former senator Ted Stevens, the Alaska Republican.
Clever. Nobody wants to start prosecuting lawyers for making mistakes. Of course when the "mistakes" are fundamental, Legal Procedures 101-type "mistakes", maybe somebody ought not be allowed to practice law in the first place. Or prevented from practicing if they slipped through the system by, say, attending a Xtianist "law school".
That's been a recurring theme of this crisis. Greenspan and Bush both claimed that nobody could have foreseen the credit meltdown. I'm convinced that the Madoff hearings were conducted with the sole purpose of having Markopolos deliver, "the SEC is incompetent, but not corrupt" message.
http://osrshortbus.blogspot.com/2009/03/im-not-so-wild-about-harry.html
Posted by: OSR | May 10, 2009 at 08:21 AM
I know. I've been pointing out for years that it's hard to call somebody (meaning Bush) incompetent when it's clear he's getting everything he wants. These are not "mistakes". They're the intended result.
(Like your blog, btw. Expect me to steal from you in future.)
Posted by: mick | May 11, 2009 at 01:55 PM