Hornswoggles & Dervishes

I cannot recommend Scott Horton's stellar blog enough.

No Comment is topical, poetical, insightful and literate. Today Mr. Horton breaks down Bush's Judicial Bamboozlement. To briefly take your mind off this mess we live in, he also has posted the genius Persian philosopher Rumi's "Dervish At The Door." It's inspired me to dig out my copy of The Illuminated Rumi. Almost ten years ago I was turned on to Rumi by my dear, spiritually minded friend, Abdi Assadi.

-AF

Nation Ed. Expresses Concern That Spitzer Was "Targeted"

Via Raw Story:

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough talked with Nation editor and publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel about the Elliot Spitzer scandal. Vanden Heuvel, a classmate of the New York governor's at Princeton, expressed concern that Spitzer was targeted unfairly, while the MSNBC host called the probe a waste of resources.

Newsflash: Joe Scarborough makes sense! It does happen once in a great while. Although if I were Scarborough (and thank Jeebus I'm not), I'd avoid such quotes as "I'm against hookers being wiretapped." It sounds creepy.

AF

PS Why is it that every time I hear Katrina vanden Heuvel's name I'm reminded of Johann Gambolputty de von Ausfern-
schplenden-schlitter-crasscrenbon-fried-digger-dingle-
dangle-dongle-dungle-burstein-von-knacker-thrasher-
apple-banger-horowitz-ticolensic-grander-knotty-spelltinkle-
grandlich-grumblemeyer-spelterwasser-kurstlich-himbleeisen-
bahnwagen-gutenabend-bitte-ein-nürnburger-bratwustle-
gerspurten-mitz-weimache-luber-hundsfut-gumberaber-
shönedanker-kalbsfleisch-mittler-aucher von Hautkopft
of Ulm?

Spitzer Investigation Time Line

TPM Muckracker has the skinny.

AF

Harper's Horton & Silverstein on Spitzer Investigation

Harper's Scott Horton has this thought provoking take on the Spitzer investigation. Here's the nub of The Spitzer Sex Sting: A Few More Questions:

So here are the rather amazing facts that surface in the Spitzer case:

(1) The prosecutors handling the case came from the Public Integrity Section.

(2) The prosecution is opened under the White-Slave Traffic Act of 1910. You read that correctly. The statute itself is highly disreputable, and most of the high-profile cases brought under it were politically motivated and grossly abusive. Here are a few:

• Heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson was the first man prosecuted under the act — for having an affair with Lucille Cameron, whom he later married. The prosecution was manifestly an effort “to get” Johnson, who at the time was the most famous African-American. (All of this is developed well in Ken Burns’s film “Unforgiveable Blackness”).

• University of Chicago sociologist William I. Thomas was prosecuted for having an affair with an officer’s wife in France. Thomas was targeted because of his Bohemian social and his radical political views.

• In 1944 Charles Chaplin was prosecuted for having an affair with actress Joan Barry. The prosecution again provided cover for a politically motivated effort to drive Chaplin out of the country.

• Canadian author Elizabeth Smart was arrested and charged in 1940 while crossing the border with the British poet George Barker.

(3) The resources dedicated to the case in terms of prosecutors and investigators are extraordinary.

(4) How the investigation got started. The Justice Department has yet to give a full account of why they were looking into Spitzer’s payments, and indeed the suggestion in the ABC account is that it didn’t have anything to do with a prostitution ring. The suggestion that this was driven by an IRS inquiry and involved a bank might heighten, rather than allay, concerns of a politically motivated prosecution.

Horton's colleague Ken Silverstein catches this powerful point from a reader:

Amazing how Senator David Vitter’s name never leaked out of the Justice Department after the arrest of the D.C. Madam, but Eliot Spitzer’s name leaked out of the Justice Department within a week of the initial arrest in the Emperor V.I.P. case.

Yes, amazing isn't it?

AF

The Bubble & The Damage Done

The consistently genius Scott Horton at Harper's No Comment blog has these excellent twin posts examining our "faith-based" economy: "The Bubble Bursts" and "How Bush's Fiscal Mismanagement Produced a Recession." He also offer a similarly excellent evisceration of Orwell admirer Michael Mukasey "Bulletins from the Ministry for Torture." Sadly, Mukasey admires Orwell for not for the substance of his cautionary prose but for the clarity of his vision. Further proof that some among us were born without the irony gland.

Mr. Horton, a lawyer, has also written extensively about the Bush Administration's enlistment of the US Justice Department to punish its political adversaries. This time his focus is not on the USA's or Alabama. In order to prove just how widespread this practice was, Horton takes us to the Motor City in A Political Prosecution Goes Under the Microscope.

AF

**Note: This post edited slightly for clarity.

A Scott Horton Must Read

Thucydides on the Role of Justice in Conflict