Vermont county prosecutor takes stand on drug laws

Robert Sand, a state's attorney (akin to a district attorney or prosecutor elsewhere) in Windsor County, Vermont is standing by his decision to send a sixty-one year old attorney found in possession of two and a half pounds of weed to court diversion. The governor, Jim Douglas, is pissed. Douglas has ordered the state police to bypass Sand's office and go to the Vermont Attorney General with significant drug cases arising in Sand's county.

Although I've worked on the defense side of criminal law in the past, I have to say I really agree with what Sand has done here. In Vermont, corrections is the largest department in state government with over 700 state employees. Vermont conservatives (yes, we have those here) bemoan our "generous welfare state." But, then conservatives like Douglas go and try to make examples out of someone like Attorney Sand, sending the message that they want to feed the corrections beast. It defies logic, but that's politics.

As anyone familiar with Vermont can attest, we have a drug problem up here. A lot of those folks whose use and sell end up in jail several times during the course of their lives. Although we can only speculate about the particulars of this case in particular, what Sand decided to do is very common sensical and very practical: he's sending this person to get help and try to figure herself out. He's not sending a sixty-one year-old woman to jail. He's not making her pay huge fines. He's not giving her up to the Feds. He's trying to fix her problem with one of the best tools he has available.

Kind of reminds you of a prosecutors real job: seeking justice.

But, sadly, it doesn't seem like that is what Gov. Douglas has in mind. Why seek justice when you can look good as a "law and order" governor?

Pakistan and the rule of law

In case you hadn't heard, there's a revolt going on in Pakistan. General Musharraf has arrested justices of the Pakistani Supreme Court and other high courts and tried to reconsitute them with justices and judges who are loyal to him. It's like FDR's court-packing plan, but with home arrests instead of semi-retirement. In response, the nation's lawyers, along with some opposition party folks have taken to the streets and (as far as the lawyers go) have refused to practice before the reconstituted tribunals.

What gets me the most about all this is the way the American television media is treating this. I was at the gym last night on the treadmill watching CBS and Fox (someone was flipping channels, thank God they didn't turn it to CMT) as they discussed the revolts. The talking heads called this a revolt by reactionaries and revolutionaries and other like-sounding bad names. I thought to myself "how disingenuous can our media be?"

Really, folks, this is about the rule of law. The rule of law is a great thing: it makes our every day intereactions, from the times you have to talk to the police to the time you try to set up a 401(k) predictable and stable. That's good. Makes things more peaceful and businessmen will tell you its one of the keys to economic strength. Pakistan doesn't have it right now, and it doesn't have it because General Musharraf is afraid that people are going to go against him.

But, to listen to our media, these are a bunch of crazed hooligans and Islamofascists (another disingenuous term) running around Islamabad tearing the place up. It's lawyers fighting for what we have, and, as a lawyer, I would do the same if George Bush tried to replace Justice Ginsberg with Robert Bork and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals with the board of Halliburton. I just wish our media would call it like it is.

Mukasey, the rule of law, and the Sox

From the New York Times this morning: should the President obey federal law when "defending the nation?

I want to know how we got back to this point. It seems like we swing back and forth between being a rule of law kind of nation and being a cult-of-the-leader nation. We're heading down a dangerous, dangerous path if we, as a nation, start to think that the President has the inherent authority to ignore federal law so long as he is "defending the nation." What does "defending the nation" even mean? Truman took it to mean controlling steel mills so that the bullets and tanks could continue being built during the Korean War. Bush "defends the nation" by spying on citizens and locking people away. It's too amorphous a concept to really use, and that's why it's so scary. And I'm sure Michael Mukasey knows it.

So why is he saying this stuff?

On another note, just to dilute the bullshit, an article about the Red Sox winning that doesn't include a threat to anyone's life.