Bloodthirsty Liberal

I don’t care where you try him now, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed can’t get a fair trial anywhere after this:

“Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is going to meet justice and he’s going to meet his maker,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told John King on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday morning.

“He’s likely to be executed for the heinous crimes he committed,” he added.

Your honor I move for immediate dismissal of all charges against my client on the grounds that—

Granted.

And President Obama did the same thing two and a half months ago!

I don’t care how KSM croaks. I’d give the family of each victim of 9/11 a pistol with a single shot, and allow them to file through his cell one at a time. Whether they choose to use it is up to them. Whether there would be anything left to use it on after the first few hundred shots is unclear, but we can always recruit one of his codefendants or Zacarias Moussaoui to make up the bench.

Think I’m bloodthirsty? At least I don’t intend to pervert the US Justice system through show trials.

I don’t get these people. They allow the No-nad the Barbarian, the Undie Bomber, to lawyer up after less than an hour of interrogation—but they’re happy to use a federal courtroom as their personal Helen Hayes Theater for their predictable little drama. Not to mention act as judge, jury, and executioner to any Afghan goatherd unfortunate enough to pass through their crosshairs.

I just don’t get these people.

[Channeling my inner Bob Newhart, this is how I see this policy shift having been made.]

So, Mr. President, your plan to bring KSM to the big town flopped. It always was a bit of a long shot, sir, I’m sure even you will agree.

Not that big of a long shot, no sir. It’s just a figure of speech.

But the show must go on. As the song goes, sir:

Nothing’s impossible I have found,
For when my chin is on the ground,
I pick myself up,
Dust myself off,
Start All over again.

Yes sir, no more singing. If I may offer a suggestion, however, sir, perhaps you might look at another venue to stage this little spectacle. No one said you had to open on Broadway.

Well, yes sir, I guess you did. But perhaps you might look a little further south.

Even farther south, sir. The Minetta Lane Theater is a lovely space, to be sure, and I’ll never forget seeing The Fantasticks at the Sullivan—yes sir, I’ll finish my review later.

Let me give you a hint, if you’ll allow me, sir. Think Godfather II, Hymen Roth, Michael Corleone….

Yes sir, Little Italy is a very good guess.

Yes, Orchard Street is another good guess, sir. But I’m thinking even further south. If I may, sir:

I like to be in America,
Okay by me in America…

Sorry about the singing, sir, I was just trying—yes, I know that’s Puerto Rico, sir, but it was just supposed to be a hint. Let me give it away, sir.

You don’t want the truth because deep down in places that you don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall.

The China Syndrome, sir? Oh I see. Yes, indeed, China does have a wall. I’m sorry, I should just tell—no, not Chinatown, either.

Cuba, sir. A Few Good Men… Guantanamo… ring a bell sir?

The trial of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed won’t be held in lower Manhattan and could take place in a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay, sources said last night.

Administration officials said that no final decision had been made but that officials of the Department of Justice and the White House were working feverishly to find a venue that would be less expensive and less of a security risk than New York City.

The back-to-the-future Gitmo option was reported yesterday by Fox News and was not disputed by White House officials.

Such a move would likely bring howls of protest from liberals already frustrated that President Obama has failed to meet his deadline for closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay.

It would also indicate that after years of attacking the Bush administration for its handling of the war on terror, Obama officials are embracing one of the most controversial aspects of it.

Okay, maybe my little scene wasn’t hysterically funny, but you’ll have to agree this turn of events is.

Dorothy Rabinowitz won a Pulitzer Prize for her reporting on the Amirault case, and Martha Coakley’s shameful, disgraceful role in it.

Let her remind us of that family’s utter destruction at the hands of overzealous state prosecutors:

The story of the Amiraults of Massachusetts, and of the prosecution that had turned the lives of this thriving American family to dust, was well known to the world by the year 2001. It was well known, especially, to District Attorney Martha Coakley, who had by then arrived to take a final, conspicuous, role in a case so notorious as to assure that the Amiraults’ name would be known around the globe.

…

Gerald was sent to prison for 30 to 40 years, his mother and sister sentenced to eight to 20 years. The prosecutors celebrated what they called, at the time “a model, multidisciplinary prosecution.” Gerald’s wife, Patricia, and their three children—the family unfailingly devoted to him—went on with their lives. They spoke to him nightly and cherished such hope as they could find, that he would be restored to them.

…

It was clear, when Martha Coakley took over as the new Middlesex County district attorney in 1999, that public opinion was running sharply against the prosecutors in the case. Violet Amirault was now gone. Ill and penniless after her release, she had been hounded to the end by prosecutors who succeeded in getting the Supreme Judicial Court to void the women’s reversals of conviction. She lay waiting all the last days of her life, suitcase packed, for the expected court order to send her back to prison. Violet would die of cancer before any order came in September 1997.

That left Cheryl alone, facing rearrest. In the face of the increasing furor surrounding the case, Ms. Coakley agreed to revise and revoke her sentence to time served—but certain things had to be clear, she told the press. Cheryl’s case, and that of Gerald, she explained, had nothing to do with one another—a startling proposition given the horrific abuse charges, identical in nature, of which all three of the Amiraults had been convicted.

…

Before agreeing to revise Cheryl’s sentence to time served, Ms. Coakley asked the Amiraults’ attorney, James Sultan, to pledge—in exchange—that he would stop representing Gerald and undertake no further legal action on his behalf. She had evidently concluded that with Sultan gone—Sultan, whose mastery of the case was complete—any further effort by Gerald to win freedom would be doomed. Mr. Sultan, of course, refused.

In 2000, the Massachusetts Governor’s Board of Pardons and Paroles met to consider a commutation of Gerald’s sentence. After nine months of investigation, the board, reputed to be the toughest in the country, voted 5-0, with one abstention, to commute his sentence. Still more newsworthy was an added statement, signed by a majority of the board, which pointed to the lack of evidence against the Amiraults, and the “extraordinary if not bizarre allegations” on which they had been convicted.

…

If the current attorney general of Massachusetts actually believes, as no serious citizen does, the preposterous charges that caused the Amiraults to be thrown into prison—the butcher knife rape with no blood, the public tree-tying episode, the mutilated squirrel and the rest—that is powerful testimony to the mind and capacities of this aspirant to a Senate seat. It is little short of wonderful to hear now of Ms. Coakley’s concern for the rights of terror suspects at Guantanamo—her urgent call for the protection of the right to the presumption of innocence.

If the sound of ghostly laughter is heard in Massachusetts these days as this campaign rolls on, with Martha Coakley self-portrayed as the guardian of justice and civil liberties, there is good reason.

I can’t possibly know what happened at the Fells Acre school—but I can be damned sure it wasn’t what the Amiraults were convicted of. Coakley wasn’t there at the beginning of the case, but her complicity in the crimes committed against that family should disqualify her from any public office above Deputy Road Kill Disposal Officer.

Aggie and I have referred to the Amirault skeleton in Martha Coakley’s closet, without going into too much detail.

Gerald Amirault, one of three wrongly convicted for child rape and abuse, talked this morning (an hour ago as I write) about the 20+ year nightmare from which he is slowly awakening—and Martha Coakley’s complicity in justice gone very, very wrong.

Watch this at WEEI

[embedded player removed because it was so annoying—follow link to listen to interview]

John McCormack merely got shoved to the ground and tore his pant leg. Gerald Amirault should have been so lucky.

Other than reality TV stars (check that: wannabe reality TV stars) crashing White House parties and China ginning up bogus carbon cuts to make themselves look good in front of Eurocrats, there’s not a lot going on.

So let’s just enjoy this barely believable column from local scribe and radio host, Howie Carr (I say barely believable, but if you find it unbelievable, remember this is Massachusetts):

If I ever get in a jam, I wouldn’t think of asking for any special consideration.

Just treat me like an illegal alien.

The illegal alien du jour is Angel Castaneda, also known as Enrique Colon, which is the name on his driver’s license. It’s called identity fraud, at least if you’re an American citizen. If you’re an illegal alien, it’s called, “Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.”

First of all, Angel is no angel. He’s already been deported once, and guess what - he came back. As the old song goes, “Everything free in America.” And now in his latest crime he stands convicted last month of holding off an entire shift of Danvers cops - not one cop but an entire shift - with a chain saw that was running.

The idiot judge gave him a whopping six months at the House of Correction. Angel copped an Alford plea and could be out of Middleton by Super Bowl Sunday.

Angel - who after all was only committing the crimes that Americans will no longer commit - had been “drinking and doing whatever” all night in Lawrence. Imagine, an illegal alien in Lawrence - excuse me, he’s a “New American,” as Gov. Deval Patrick puts it.

He was driving back to his house in Danvers when he called his wife, whom he’d allegedly been threatening all night. She handed the phone to a cop she’d called, and the cop informed Angel that the missus had asked for a restraining order.

To which this “New American” responded in so many words, “Restraining orders? I don’t need no stinkin’ restraining orders.”

A few seconds later, the El Salvadorean criminal pulled up in a pickup truck, shirtless, started up his chain saw and began, as one newspaper account put it, “terrorizing his wife’s family, sawing off a patio table umbrella, then trying to saw his way into a window, and finally trying to cut and kick his way inside the locked front door.”

The cop radioed back: “Dispatch, send everybody!”

Eventually five Danvers cops arrived. Somehow they got Angel/Enrique to turn off the saw and put it down.

Luckily for Angel, his lawyer knew how to tug at Judge Robert Cornetta’s heartstrings. According to The Salem News, she told Cornetta that Angel couldn’t remember a bit of his crime spree.

Oh yes, the old I-can’t-remember defense. Yeah, that’s the ticket. And for good measure, he has a “substance” problem and “relapsed” after the death of his father last year. Riiiiiight.

Asked for a comment, the judge’s flack replied that he did order ICE “be notified immediately of the defendant’s illegal status and to hold him on a detainer.”

Of course, these days among New Americans the synonym for deportation is “vacation.” Given his record, chances are good he’ll be resuming his crime wave in Lawrence sometime around Groundhog Day. He’ll have a new driver’s license under a new fake name, he won’t be paying taxes, and by next fall he could very well be voting in the governor’s race.

For Deval Patrick, naturally.

Yeah, I printed the whole thing. You tell me what detail I could have left out.

There’s also a video at the site of Carr laughing his way through the insanities of political life here in the Commonwealth.

I’m big enough to admit when I’m wrong.

I’ve been critical of President Obama and AG Holder for their imbecilic idea of trying KSM and a few of his closest friends in civilian courts, thereby offering them the full range of rights and privileges extended to American citizens by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights—or to withhold and subvert those rights, thereby disemboweling the precious and irreplaceable US justice system.

But I’ve been wrong.

Now that I see KSM & Co. intend to use this show trial to put on a show their own—a real barn-burner, too—I’m down with it. Dancing virgins, pyrotechnics, contortionists, and bearded ladies—it’s got box office boffo written all over it!

The five men facing trial in the Sept. 11 attacks will plead not guilty so that they can air their criticisms of U.S. foreign policy, the lawyer for one of the defendants said Sunday.

Scott Fenstermaker, the lawyer for accused terrorist Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, said the men would not deny their role in the 2001 attacks but “would explain what happened and why they did it.”

…

Mohammed, Ali and the others will explain “their assessment of American foreign policy,” Fenstermaker said. “Their assessment is negative,” he said.

Really? After all we’ve done for them? Ingrates. Maybe they’d rather do their jail time in the Maine State Prison’s Supermax unit, rather than the cozy Caribbean coast of Guantanamo. Maine is lovely in the summer, all five weeks of it.

But I don’t think they’re going to have to worry about that. I think they’re going to get off. If I were on the jury, I’d hold out for not guilty until they dragged my bullet-ridden corpse out of the jury room.

Three thousand people died because of KSM, and I’ve mourned them in this space, but many times that have died in the defense of liberty. I hate miscarriages of justice, and any government that has behaved so appalingly prejudicial toward those who are now presumed innocent until proved guilty won’t get any help from me.

In fact, I suggest KSM and his merry men read up on the trial of the Chicago 8. You want to know how to turn the courtroom into the big top, Abbie Hoffman, peace be upon him, is your man. He was a Jew, Khalid, but your kind of Jew.

Here’s a taste to whet your appetite, boys.

I stumbled around making this case earlier this morning, but Andy McCarthy makes it quite succinctly:

In a meeting with the press in China, President Obama said that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would be “convicted” and had “the death penalty applied to him” . . . and then said he wasn’t “pre-judging” the case. He made the second statement after it was pointed out to him — by NBC’s Chuck Todd — that the first statement would be taken as the president’s interfering in the trial process. Obama said that wasn’t his intention. I’m sure it wasn’t — he’s trying to contain the political damage caused by his decision — but that won’t matter. He has given the defense its first motion that the executive branch, indeed the president himself, is tainting the jury pool. Nice work.

He either gets a fair trial or he doesn’t. What is this, The Ox Bow Incident?

I’m all for stringing him up and making him dance at the end of a rope, but I thought this was supposed to show how compassionate and merciful we are. Now President Obama is fouling the jury pool by recalling the famous line by a prospective juror during empanelment at the Robert Chambers trial: “The creep should fry.”

If we do throw a necktie party for KSM and his merry men, may I suggest this venue? It’s nearby the scene of the crime, and the Christian iconography is sure to inflame Muslim sentiments.

Trinity Church, Wall Street, New York City

PS:
Not to be a bore, but I underestimated Eric Holder. If KSM walks or gets sprung on a technicality (one of the bills of rights, pick any), he’s got it all figured out:

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa: “I don’t think you can say that failure to convict is not an option, when we have juries in this country.”

Attorney General Eric Holder: I have thought about that possibility. Congress has passed legislation that would not allow the release of these individuals in this country. If there is not a successful conclusion to this trial, that would not mean that this person would be released into this country…

Grassley: My understanding is that if for some reason he’s not convicted, or a judge lets him off on a technicallity, he’ll be an enemy combatant, so you’re right back where you started.

Guilty, he dies; innocent, he rots in jail. That’s the Chicago way.

I mean it more every time I say it: toss those Free Mumia t-shirts and posters and get yourself a “Free Khalid” mouse pad or coffee mug.

They say in the realm of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

I don’t know about that, but in the Empire State, a blind man can still land a pretty solid kick in the nuts:

“This is not a decision that I would have made. I think terrorism isn’t just attack, it’s anxiety and I think you feel the anxiety and frustration of New Yorkers who took the bullet for the rest of the country,” he said.

Paterson’s comments break with Democrats, who generally support the President’s decision.

“Our country was attacked on its own soil on September 11, 2001 and New York was very much the epicenter of that attack. Over 2,700 lives were lost,” he said. “It’s very painful. We’re still having trouble getting over it. We still have been unable to rebuild that site and having those terrorists so close to the attack is gonna be an encumbrance on all New Yorkers.”

Paterson also said that the White House warned him six months ago this very situation would happen.

BEEP!! BEEP!! BEEP!!

W-a-a-a-a-it a minute.

President Obama conveniently decamped to Germany, conveniently waited until after the NY-23rd election (and others), conveniently let Eric Holder take the heat—and this has been administration policy almost from the beginning!?!?!?!?!

What a [bleeping] pile of chicken [bleep] ([heaping] pile of chicken [tenders], of course).

The more I think about this decision, the less I understand it. As a means of demonizing the Bush administration, it makes perfect sense; as a means of carrying out justice, it’s absurd.

KSM wasn’t arrested by any method recognized in the US court system, was he? Or held and interrogated? Or given access to counsel? How can the government make its case if he has a right to face his accusers? You thought the outing of Valerie Plame was inappropriate (thanks to Richard-bleeping-Armitage), imagine the body count if everyone involved in his capture and arrest has to come forward in court.

I’m not a lawyer, but it seems to me that the very decision to proceed this way calls for all charges to be dismissed. KSM was a military target, not a judicial one—I don’t see how the two can be integrated.

Then there is the matter of his many and boastful confessions, not all of them under “enhanced interrogation”. He wants to be known as the mastermind of 9/11, as the pair of hands that slit Daniel Pearl’s throat. Presented this way, he has no defense, nor cares to mount one.

Which means this is no justice at all; it’s a kangaroo court, a show trial. It’s the most cynical manipulation of the justice system I can imagine. Use the crazy guy to implicate himself while we (Team Obama) implicate the Bush administration. That’s so sleazy, I have to tip my cap in admiration.

In response, I can only say “Free KSM!” “Justice for the Gitmo 5!” I actually hope he gets off. He’ll be “dealt with” in other ways—and I’d look for impeachment proceedings aghainst this disgrace to the office to start the next day.

PS: Not to beat a dead terrorist (or soon to be), but if Miranda rights don’t count, if the chain of evidence doesn’t count, if none of the long-established rights of the accused mean a bucket of warm spit for KSM, who’s to say they will for any of us? Not to be paranoid, but who are they to decide what rights can be ignored? An American trial either means something, or it doesn’t.

Which is why this is nonsense. KSM doesn’t deserve the least little bit of American justice—except a noose. Not only is he not an American citizen, his sole purpose in his miserable life was the destruction of this country, and the death of as many of its citizens as possible. His only connection to America is having attended North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University—go Aggies!—identified by Wikipedia as the “largest publicly funded historically black college (HBCU) in the state of North Carolina”. So, if he got alienated from American society there, it was solely (get it?) in the company of African Americans. Which makes him a racist son of a bitch to boot.

So, again I ask, who is he and what has he done that requires a trial in the US justice system? Why don’t we try Italian or Senegalese or Antarctic prisoners in US courts if they’re so great for everybody?

To add to Aggie’s post below, I just have to pass on what Rush observed today: that KSM and his fellow jihadis have already admitted to their guilt, confessed without coercion in open court, and asked to be martyred for their crimes.

So why the dog and pony show?

Easy. The terrorists aren’t on trial. We are. Bush is. This production is supposed to be an Andrew Lloyd Weber extravaganza for the legions still under the influence of Bush Derangement Syndrome: it might as well feature cats on roller skates in the Paris Opera House.

The defendants won’t be the Islamic fascists, but instead a chorus line of Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, and enough high-kicking CIA agents to fill Radio City Music Hall.

If any of the terrorists is even put on the stand it will be only to tickle them with a feather duster.

“After you slit Daniel Pearl’s throat, Mr. Mohammed, did you yourself receive brutal and inhuman treatment by having a wet washcloth placed over your mouth and nose? I’m sure it must have been positively beastly.”

I can only hope and pray that by their base appeal to the unreconstructed Stalinists in our population (Hello, Cambridge! Hiya, Seattle!) with this obscenity—plus so many others—this party of traitors and their leader, Baradict ArnObama, will be turned out into the cold by the rest of the country.

In Massachusetts, we’re so crazy, even our Republicans appoint moonbats:

Who are Judges Richard Moses and Janet Sanders?

They are, of course, the distinguished $129,693.98-a-year Massachusetts judges who both ruled that a serial sex offender named David Flavell was not a danger to the public, even though his arrests for assorted sex crimes are in the double digits.

For the record, both of these idiot judges were appointed by Republican governors, Moses by Jane Swift in 2002 and Sanders first to the district court in 1994 by Bill Weld. She was then “promoted” to the superior court in 2001 by, you guessed it, Jane Swift.

Moses is a former employee of the ACLU. Are you surprised?

As for this poor underprivileged victim Flavell, both judges point out that he is an “African-American male” from a broken home who has a child (but apparently no wife). His perv MO used to be exposing himself - “the vast majority of his transgressions involve exhibitionism,” the former ACLU employee wrote dismissively.

For instance, Flavell once exposed himself to a woman with her four children in her car in the parking lot of The Gap in Canton. Do you really want a guy walking around who’s been arrested a “vast” number of times for sex offenses? If you worked for the ACLU, the answer it seems is yes.

Meanwhile, Judge Sanders last month assured taxpayers that they had nothing to worry about. The increasing violence of his attacks against women were “not a ratcheting up . . . (but) simply a change in his modus operandi.”

That will, I am sure, come as quite a relief to the female Mass. General employee whom Flavell allegedly attempted to rape Thursday in a hospital bathroom.

And you thought Willie Horton was the exception. At least Dukakis came to see the error of his ways. That’s not part of the job description for judges here in the Commonwealth:

No wonder these judges have so much sympathy for sex fiends, and so little for their victims. In Sanders’ words, she finds Flavell’s enablers and apologists “more persuasive” than those who believed that the perv was getting worse.

In fact, Judge Sanders seems angrier at the Legislature than at this Level 3 sex offender she cut loose to try to rape again. At one point in her decision, she mentions how when Flavell attacked a woman at a bookstore, police found gloves, duct tape and a ski mask in his car.

Not to worry, this judicial parasite on the public payroll assures us, this savage fiend only had that stuff in his car because he’s homeless. And she blamed that on the fact, she claims, that it’s difficult for Level 3 sex offenders to get housing, thanks to the Legislature’s allegedly draconian (if belated) stand against serial perverts.

“Certainly,” she sniffs, “he should not be penalized for the consequences which the Legislature has imposed upon him.”

What did I write in the post below this one, that I oppose the death penalty? Not for judges, I don’t. Hanging’s too good for them.