Where's "Honest Services" from the Supreme Court?

[Daveparts still]

Where's "Honest Services" from the Supreme Court?
By David Glenn Cox

Our great, all-knowing, all-seeing founding fathers founded a government based on three equal branches with the logic that any one branch that became too extreme or out of bounds could be curtailed by the other two. A power-hungry president could be cut off at the knees by a balking Legislative Branch or Supreme Court. An extreme Legislative Branch could be battled with a veto pen. A Supreme Court gone off the rails could be hamstrung by new legislation written to address judicial decisions.

At least that’s the way it is supposed to work, on paper. In the decision in the case of Bush vs. Gore, the Supreme Court chose to overrule the Constitution and to vote in favor of Governor Bush. This despite two court justices having immediate family members working for the Bush campaign. The Court then ruled to cover up its mangling of the Constitution by adding that its ruling was to apply just this once. Have you ever heard of justice applying just this once?

But I’m not writing to drag up the Court’s turds from its cat box, only to point out that they make the rules up as they go along. President Obama called out the justices during his State of the Union Address for their ruling that unleashed, unlimited corporate spending in campaigns was, in effect, the corporations' right to free speech. The Court chose to go farther in their ruling than the plaintiffs ever dreamed or asked. The President offered that he would propose legislation to put corporate spending limits back into place, but I won’t hold my breath.

The President has proposed a stand-alone agency to represent consumers against the slings and arrows of outrageous corporate capitalism. Two points for Obama for suggesting it in the first place. However, you have to ask yourself just how serious the administration was in its suggestion. When the administration wanted a reauthorization of the Patriot Act, they tacked it onto the jobs bill. The stand-alone consumer bill, otherwise known as the David versus Goliath act of 2010, had its neck wrung on the Senate floor like a sick chicken.

March 1 (Bloomberg) -- "Senate Banking Committee negotiators, working through the weekend, agreed to drop the stand-alone consumer agency sought by the Obama administration and opposed by the banking industry, removing an obstacle that has stalled new U.S. financial rules."

Senate Banking Committee Chairman, Democrat Chris Dodd, joined with the Republicans in seeking an alternative. One Republican plan is to place consumer oversight with the Treasury, while another Republican plan is to invest the Federal Reserve with the power to protect consumers. In effect Republicans, along with Chris Dodd, think that Al Capone ought to be in charge of protecting tavern owners from exploitation.

If I was Barack Obama and one of my pieces of legislation was drawn and quartered and the lead henchman was from my own party, I think that I would be pretty angry. Wouldn’t you? Dodd proposed to the White House a Bureau of Financial Protection in the Treasury to be given regulatory powers. Of course if that President was, say, George W. Bush or Herbert Hoover, then you get a pretty realistic understanding of the basic flaw in the plan. But what does this White House say about its plan being kicked to the curb with such short shrift? Nothing!

When you say nothing in Washington it means, okay, whatever you guys want to do is fine with me. The President has been called a lot of names but Fighting Barack isn’t one of them. Since he refuses to fight for what he says he supports, it leads to a lack of credibility. Or in the words of comedian Ripp Taylor, “You better laugh at the jokes, folks, this is the act. I don’t dance!”

Just what is Obama waiting for? To prove his grace and dignity while his claimed agenda is shredded like hamburger by members of his own party? Vince Lombardi said it best, “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” I’m still waiting anxiously for that Legislative Branch to rein in the Supreme Court because, you'd better hold your nose, they’re just getting started.

March 1 (Bloomberg) -- "Four years after a Houston jury found Jeffery Skilling guilty of leading the accounting fraud that drove Enron Corporation into bankruptcy, that signature prosecution victory may be in jeopardy. The U.S. Supreme Court today will consider the former Enron chief executive officer’s appeal, having already hinted that it will throw out at least one count of his conviction for so-called honest services fraud."

Attorneys for Skilling are looking to overturn all nineteen charges for which Skilling was sentenced to more than 24 years in prison. Skilling's attorneys contend that the trial judge erred when he moved the venue to Houston, and they also contend that the law titled “Honest Services” is unconstitutionally vague. Skilling's conviction was recently upheld by a Federal Court, but it's great to be on the Supreme Court where you can pick and choose the cases to hear.

Poor Jeffery Skillings claims that after Enron was bankrupted, costing over 5,000 jobs and a billion dollars in retirement funds, that he couldn’t get a fair trial. His attorneys point to a negative editorial in the Houston Chronicle and a local rap song, “Drop the S Off Skilling.”

“The degree of hostility and animus that existed in Houston against the defendants - Mr. Skilling in particular -was far more intense than other venues,” said Skilling’s lead attorney, Daniel Petrocelli of O’Melveny & Myers LLP in Los Angeles. Last time I checked Houston was in Texas where they executed a mentally retarded man and a man convicted of arson even after the evidence against him was proven to be false. So now the Supreme Court is considering giving Skilling a new trial because of a newspaper editorial and a local rap song?

Skilling’s appeal claims the atmosphere in Houston, when the trial began in 2006, was one of hostility toward him, fed by "unrelenting and searing” media coverage. Following Skilling’s logic anyone unpopular in the media should be immune from prosecution. Poor, poor Bernie Madoff pled guilty when he could have waited and used the Skilling defense. Skilling isn’t arguing that he didn’t commit the crimes; he’s arguing that he couldn’t get a fair trail because the public didn’t like him.

The Supreme Court, by a willingness to hear the case, is again stepping over the line. Judge Sonya Sotomayor expressed sympathy towards Skilling's plea. If Sotomayor sides with the other conservatives on the bench, the deal is done. You can’t be convicted by a jury if you have the money to prove that the public at large didn’t like you. Federal Solicitor Elana Kagan argued, “Whatever the beliefs of Houston residents generally, the particular individuals selected for petitioner’s jury neither knew nor cared much about Enron’s collapse or the resulting media coverage.”

Where are the complaints from conservatives about judicial activism? This is judicial extremism to the point of judicial fascism. It will strip any meaning from a jury trial, leaving one standard for the wealthy and another for everyone else.

Thank goodness we’ve got Fighting Barack on our side, huh?

[jotsy]

1. K n R to counter the unrecs

I don't much care for the idea of you being picked on, tyvm.

Hades in a hand basket I say. The supremes have already demonstrated their preferential notions for corporate entities. If bias has already been an issue in the matter, what make these traitors think we'll believe they're not. I know they don't care what we think, an out loud, on the inside, kind of pointless question, I guess.

Been seeing your byline more and more while trolling the blogosphere for tidbits. Hope the exposure is helping to see better to that pesky needs thing.

[DemReadingDU]

2. The Supreme Court has become a joke

as well as the rest of our government. It's all about money and wealth.