Ah, Sweet Poetic Justice: Rove Screws AAs - then gets judged by them in GJ

[Laura PourMeADrink]

After orchestrating massive disenfranchment of African American voters in November, what a perfect example of poetic justice that Rover et al are now being judged by a predominately African American grand jury ! What makes it even sweeter is the lack of bitterness by this segment of the population, over the election.

When I asked a colleage of mine why there was no outrage as one would expect, he replied, "We knew before the election that it was going to be rigged. What you have to understand is that we, as a race, have been through life experiences that are so much more devastating than a rigged election."






http://rawstory.com/news/2005/What_Karl_Rove_and_Cheneys_chief_of_staff_told__0717.html


"A grand jury, the old maxim goes, will indict a ham sandwich if a prosecutor asks it of them," he writes. "But I didn't get that sense from this group of grand jurors. They somewhat reflected the demographics of the District of Columbia. The majority were African American and were disproportionately women."

[journalist3072]

1. Well, I'm an African-American, and I'm not bitter, but I'm angry....

I'm angry over 2 stolen elections. I get angry every time I think about the fact that in places like Ohio, they did not place enough voting machines in predmoninantly Black neighborhoods.

You had African-Americans forced to wait in line anywhere from 4-10 hours, as opposed to White neighborhoods, where the wait was as short as 15 minutes.

It's called voter suppression. You purposefully place all these barriers to keep people from voting, in the hopes that they give up, which many of them did.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

2. I agree, it was despicable. Do you see the attitude I was describing

elsewhere? Or do you think it was just an isolated viewpoint from people I know in DC?

[HysteryDiagnosis]

3. forced to wait in line anywhere from 4-10 hours

This in itself was a crime and should have been investigated as such. A revote with sufficient machines EVERYWHERE would have been the only proper solution along with jailtime for those who set it up the way it was.

[Cha]

4. Thank you for being "angry"!

No time for bitterness..we have a country to get back.

Not to mention all the disenfranchisement in Florida in 2000 and 2004!

I would think it's illegal what they did..isn't there a law against "Voter Suppression"?

[WhoseMarie]

8. A case I know of here in Florida - a guy who works at a hotel here

had some sort of legal issue a few years back and he evidently long ago paid his 'debt to society'. He's gay and we all know how he'll vote. HOwever, Glenda Hood, the Katherine Harris replacement here in FL, dragged the process out to get his vote reinstated for over 2 1/2 years!

He phoned, wrote, faxed...nothing. They finally reinstated his ability to vote effective something like the 5th of November.

Now...how many of those do you think there were? I'm sure he wasn't the only one.

[skids]

5. GJ's don't "judge".

Just a minor peeve. I was a foreman of a GJ and even after having it explained to them several times, many of the jurors just don't seem to get what the GJ does, and were treating it like a trial jury.

The GJ doesn't say anything about whether the person did the crime. All it does is say whether it would be reasonable for the government to accuse the person of the crime.

Basically the GJ is there for no other reason than to A) prevent the DAs from harrassing people who are obviously innocent and B) in extremely rare cases, to accuse people of crimes when the DAs are giving obvious criminals a free pass.

(The latter would be pretty interesting to see happen, say Fitz gets fired, but the GJ decides to continue the investigation on their own, call Fitz as a witness, and indite anyway. It's a daydream though, because the DAs hate it when this happens and do everything they can to discourage it. The only jurist right more detested by the judicial system than that is trial jury nullification.)

[Glorfindel]

6. Another minor peeve (and truly no offense intended)

the difference between "indite" (which anyone who is able to read and write can do)and "indict" (which is a legal term). I, too, have served on grand juries and have been very impressed with the great seriousness given to the deliberations.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

7. Thanks for the clarification. So much to learn. What I love about

DU - so much diverse expertise.