[kj] [OT] the exception would be International law, no?

[ade]

Dude, it sounds like you should be implementing certain aspects of Sharia law  - off with chubbys head!!!!

-----Original Message-----
From: gathering-bounces at misera.net
[mailto:gathering-bounces at misera.net]On Behalf Of Brendan
Sent: 24 March 2008 23:06
To: A list about all things Killing Joke (the band!)
Subject: Re: [kj] [OT] the exception would be International law, no?


The law is an ass, I'd go so far as to say it's a gaping leaky ass in
fact. I think one of the fundamental problems is the adversarial system
fullstop.

There was an article recently in the papers down here about how the amount
of civil proceedings at the District Court has plummeted in the last few
years, because the resolutions are so crap, the time to court is so long
(2 years all up in my case!), and the cost is prohibitive. Wish I had read
it before I tried to get my money back for a crappy IT training course I
did 2 and a half years ago now. I'm $20K in to a case to retrive $6500,
and a combination of a crappy overpaid lawyer assuring me we had
'uncontestable evidence' (wasn't even allowed) and a judge who didn't
understand anything technical in the slightest, and I lost. Fucking
massive waste of time and money. Now I have to decide whether to appeal,
fork out the same amount again probably, or cut my losses and lick my
wounds. It's infuriating because I am totally in the right, and I have
'smoking gun' evidence that they distributed loads of pirated software to
us all etc...unbelievable. It's amazing what a morbidly obese ruddy faced
arrogant bully defence litigator can do as well. Earning his money for
sure, telling a bunch of complete lies. And accusing me of being a liar
when I was in the box. I didn't tell a single lie or even colour my case
in my favour, I simply didn't need to. RANKLES!




>

> Ripped from the LA Times - sorry linkage lost..

>

> Mukasey's Paradox

> When you think about it, his manipulations are a beautiful, twisted thing.

> By Jonathan Turley

> March 4, 2008

> The recent decisions of Atty. Gen. Michael B. Mukasey to block any

> prosecution of Bush administration officials for contempt and to block any

> criminal investigation of torture led to a chorus of criticism. Many view

> the decisions as raw examples of political manipulation of the legal

> process and overt cronyism. I must confess that I was one of those crying

> foul until I suddenly realized that there was something profound, even

> beautiful, in Mukasey's action.

>

> In his twisting of legal principles, the attorney general has succeeded in

> creating a perfect paradox. Under Mukasey's Paradox, lawyers cannot commit

> crimes when they act under the orders of a president -- and a president

> cannot commit a crime when he acts under advice of lawyers.

>

>

>

> Such a perfect paradox is no easy task. Most attempts fall apart because

> of some element of logical consistency. The closest example to Mukasey's

> Paradox is the Grandfather Paradox: If you go back in time and kill your

> grandfather before he meets your grandmother, you would not be conceived

> and therefore you could not go back to kill your grandfather. That one can

> play real tricks with your head.

>

> Mukasey's Paradox appears designed to play tricks with Congress. Its

> origins date back to Mukasey's confirmation hearings, when he first denied

> knowing what waterboarding was and then (when it was defined for him)

> refused to recognize it as torture. In fact, it is not only a crime under

> U.S. law, it is a well-defined war crime under international law.

>

> The problem for Mukasey was that if he admitted waterboarding was a crime,

> then it was a crime that had been authorized by the president of the

> United States -- an admission that would trigger calls for both a criminal

> investigation and impeachment. Mukasey's confirmation was facing imminent

> defeat over his refusal to answer the question when Sens. Charles Schumer

> (D-N.Y.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) suddenly rescued him,

> guaranteeing that he would not have to answer it.

>

> Once in office, Mukasey still had the nasty problem of a secret torture

> program that was now hiding in plain view. Asked to order a criminal

> investigation of the program, Mukasey refused. His rationale left many

> lawyers gasping: Any torture that occurred was done on the advice of

> counsel and therefore, while they may have been wrong, it could not have

> been a crime for CIA interrogators or, presumably, the president. If this

> sounds ludicrous, it is. Under that logic, any president can simply

> surround himself with extremist or collusive lawyers and instantly

> decriminalize any crime.

>

> However, this is only half of Mukasey's Paradox. The other half occurred

> last week when Mukasey refused to allow contempt charges against White

> House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet E.

> Miers to be given to a grand jury. Bolten and Miers stand accused of

> contempt in refusing to testify before Congress in its investigation of

> the firings of several U.S. attorneys in 2006. Mukasey wrote to House

> Speaker Nancy Pelosi that their refusal to testify could not be a crime

> because the president ordered them not to testify under executive

> privilege.

>

> Under this logic, no official can be prosecuted for contempt as long as a

> president ordered them to commit the contempt -- even if the president's

> assertion of privilege is clearly invalid or incomplete. In this case,

> many experts have expressed skepticism that all or any of President Bush's

> assertions of privilege in this case would be upheld.

>

> When Mukasey blocked the contempt cases, many legal experts were filled

> with rage. But I came to see his rationales as objects of beauty rather

> than scorn. When one combines the two decisions, they fit neatly into

> Mukasey's Paradox. Mukasey was saying that lawyers could not be charged

> criminally because the president ordered them to commit the act -- and

> that the president could not be charged criminally because lawyers told

> him he could do it.

>

> Now some have pointed to other paradoxes in Mukasey's tenure. There is,

> for instance, the "paradox" that his confirmation was saved by Democrats

> -- who thereby allowed the president to avoid a confrontation on torture.

> There is the "paradox" of Mukasey insisting that courts should not

> investigate the Justice Department's failure to preserve the CIA torture

> tapes because the Justice Department should be allowed to investigate its

> own failure to previously investigate.

>

> Yet these are not real paradoxes -- they're merely political ironies. A

> paradox is a statement that seems true but yields a contradiction or a

> dual truth. When reduced to its purest form, Mukasey's Paradox is that

> government officials cannot violate the law -- but that because executive

> privilege is also a law, it's sometimes necessary to violate the law in

> order to uphold the law.

>

>

>

> Mukasey's Paradox will now join other paradoxes such as Zeno's Paradox.

> Indeed, members of Congress already use a variation of Zeno's Paradox to

> explain their lack of action on civil liberties, torture and Iraq. They

> seem to be always working toward "change" without actual change occurring.

> The answer is found in Zeno's Paradox: You will never reach Point B from

> Point A as you must always get halfway there, and half of the half, and

> half of that half, and so on.

>

> Mukasey's Paradox, if adopted, will result in administration officials

> being effectively beyond the reach of the law. Yet there is always hope.

>

> Consider that Mukasey took an oath under which he swore to uphold the laws

> of this country -- even if the violator is the president of the United

> States or his aides. That oath means that all laws must be upheld without

> exception. Except, according to his interpretation, that executive power

> is a form of constitutional law that creates exceptions to the enforcement

> of laws.

>

> But there's something known as the Exception Paradox, which goes as

> follows: If there is an exception to every rule, then every rule must have

> at least one exception, including the rule that there must be an exception

> to every rule. Thus, perhaps this is a rule without exception, and the

> president cannot order criminal acts.

>

> But that brings us back to Mukasey's Paradox. Even if there is no

> exception to the president ordering crimes, there is no crime because the

> president ordered it. Perfection.

>

> Jonathan Turley is a professor of law at George Washington University.

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