American foreign policy » Undiplomatic

9 March 2010 Charles J. Brown
10:28 pm

Jack Cade, White Courtesy Phone Please

Via Adam Serwer, it turns out that the Cheneyites remain convinced of the justice of their holy cause. This time it’s Hans von Spakovsky, who was one of the Bush-era DOJ officials responsible for hiring attorneys for non-political positions based on their political affiliations:

I certainly don’t think those same lawyers should be in the Justice Department directing policy and making decisions on prosecutions of those same terrorists. That would be like hiring Mob lawyers in the Organized Crime and Narcotics Task Force or hiring someone who volunteered to defend the Klu Klux Klan in the Civil Rights Division. Those lawyers who all come from big firms have a wide choice of who to help on a pro bono basis and their choice of terrorists says a lot about them –- I would not hire them to represent my company either if I were still a corporate in-house counsel, because I would not want my company’s money subsidizing that kind of legal work.

Those lovely sentiments come via Dave Weigel over at the Washington Independent, who sought out von Spakovsky’s views. Von S. also has a lengthy piece in National Review arguing that the DOJ under Holder is radicalizing its civil rights division — and thus is racist. (I wish I was making this up, but I’m not It just goes to show that the current stewards of William F. Buckley’s legacy will not be satisfied until they eliminate all rational thought from this former bastion of thoughtful conservatism.)

I’ve already touched upon the mob lawyer canard in my comments on Marc Thiessen column in today’s WaPo. Now Steve over at Nomoremrniceblog dismantles the equally insipid (and offensive ) Klan lawyer argument:

I can’t find any Klan defenders in Holder’s Justice Department, but I can certainly find Klan defenders whose work I think Holder would approve of.

How about Eleanor Holmes Norton, currently D.C.’s non-voting member of the House of Representatives, who, as a young ACLU lawyer, defended the free-speech rights of Klansmen, George Wallace, and the National States Rights Party?

Or Anthony P. Griffin, who defended a Klan Grand Dragon in the early 1990s and won the 1993 William J. Brennan, Jr., Award from the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression?

Or David P. Baugh, who defended a Klan cross-burner in 1998 and subsequently received the Virginia State Bar’s Lewis F. Powell Jr. Pro Bono Award?

All three of these lawyers are African-American, by the way.

This is a disgraceful argument. Attempting to secure due process for terrorism defendants, or free speech rights for racist haters, is not the same as waging jihad or fomenting a race war. It’s about maintaining a society with the rule of law.

Methinks the Cheneyites are starting to sound like the mob in Act IV of Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part 2:

DICK THE BUTCHER: First thing we do, let’s smear all the lawyers. . . .in DOJ.

Okay, that’s not quite what he said, but it’s close enough. And lest we forget, here’s what happens a little later in the same scene — an event that few remember and no one likes to quote:

CADE: Let me alone. Dost thou use to write thy name? Or hast thou a mark to thyself, like an honest plain-dealing man?

CLERK: Sir, I thank God, I have been so well brought up that I can write my name.

ALL: He hath confessed; away with him! He’s a villain and a traitor.

CADE: Away with him, I say! Hang him with his pen and ink horn about his neck.

Because that’s what happens after you kill smear all the lawyers: a long slow slide into summary justice and mob rule.