Philip Rosmarin

I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…

On Memorial Day, we commemorate our American war dead.

Some of us pause to reflect on the more than a million men and women who have died since the Civil War to keep America free. Some of us take a token of America — a wreath, a flag — and leave it on the grave of one of the million.

And some of us, many more of us, take up a towel and head for the beach.

In the larger sense, it is for this last group of us that the million died most. They didn’t die that we might reflect on their deaths. They didn’t die that we might plant graveyard flags.

They died to give us the freedom to go to the beach. To give us the freedom to choose our actions, as individuals and as a nation. To salute the flag, or take a knee. They died to give us the freedom to be free.

Some died believing it was for the greatest force for good on this earth. Some died believing it was probably for nothing. But somewhere, amid the million convolutions of each dying brain, was perhaps this thought: “Remember me. Remember what I have done and why I have done it. Just this much, America. Remember.”

It matters not whether we believe in that. That they believed is enough. That they asked us to remember them, that we have need for a Memorial Day to do it, is America’s tragedy.

Remembering is for those who have forgotten. What matters is that we do not forget those million, that we keep them somewhere always in our minds.

We can mark the dead with wreaths and flags, but we can honor them only by keeping what they tried to keep and could not — world peace.

In their deaths we know that peace and freedom cannot be bought by war. War bought America a million dead.

Memorial Day is to honor the dead and not the war. There is neither honor nor glory in war. Honor and glory come with the prevention of war.

So let us, beginning anew this Memorial Day, put our government on notice that we want no more war — in Korea, in Iran, or anywhere else. Let us plant no more new graveside flags. Let us instead plant the seeds of a new world peace.

That would make almost anyone worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize.

I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…

Someone once asked me what the difference is between a lawyer and an attorney. An attorney, I told the fella, has a bigger head.

I don’t know whether Donald Trump’s former personal attorney (he actually seems more like a lawyer to me) is any good — the evidence suggests he isn’t — but I do know that just because he is a graduate of the alleged worst law school in America has extremely little bearing on that.

Cooley Law School, which is Michael Cohen’s alma mater and part of Western Michigan University, offers pretty much the same classes as Harvard Law School. The core curriculum is certainly the same, as it is for every accredited law school in the United States. There’s some little bother going on right now about whether Cooley will retain its American Bar Association accreditation, but let’s let the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan sort that out.

For now, Cooley actually offers some advantages that Harvard can’t even dream of. For one, it offers a law school aspirant who didn’t score 177 on the Law School Admission Test a chance to become the next Clarence Darrow (and, just so you know, Clarence Darrow never had to take an LSAT, and if he did have to take such a test would’ve never gotten anybody off of anything).

Remember Abraham Lincoln? That guy was home-schooled. Never would’ve had a chance today at Harvard, but probably would’ve made the cut at Cooley. Without schools like Cooley, for many the dream is dead on arrival at the test hall.

Does Harvard allow you to take all your classes on the weekends, so you can hold down a full-time job to pay for all that legal learning? I don’t think so. Cooley does.

Take a bunch of your classes online? At Cooley, no problem. Harvard professors need to see the terrified faces of their 1Ls. They can’t hand out a dime to call your mother and tell her there is serious doubt about you ever becoming a lawyer if Crim Law is competing with Grand Theft Auto V for your online attention.

You really think Harvard Law School is so much better than Cooley? Anthony Scaramucci and Ted Cruz went to Harvard Law School.

In short, there are fine opportunities at so-called lesser schools that just aren’t available at so-called prestige law schools.

Like becoming personal lawyer to the President of the United States.

Oh. Wait.

I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…

Vice President Mike Pence calls disgraced former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio “a tireless champion of…the rule of law.”

Sheriff Joe was certainly tireless in the racist policies and practices against Latinos, homosexuals, and most of all Latino homosexuals, that he embraced (the polices and practices; he would never embrace a Latino homosexual) as sheriff.

He was tireless in locking up people on suspicion of being Latino.

He was tireless in refusing to obey court orders to stop locking up people on suspicion of being Latino.

He was tireless — and remains tireless — in insisting that the last American President not elected to office by the Russians was merely a Kenyan poseur.

He was tireless in repeatedly violating the constitutional rights of the inmates under his charge. Tireless in refusing them medical and mental health care. Tireless in making their physical conditions as miserable as possible, literally stacking them in holding cells, feeding them spoiled food, dressing them up in pink underwear (never mind what dressing them up in pink underwear says about Sheriff Joe’s sexual fantasies). Tireless in setting up a self-described concentration camp for his jail overflow he called Tent City where he boasted of temperatures inside the tents of one hundred forty-five degrees Fahrenheit.

He was tireless in his refusal to investigate rapes of teenage girls, and of numerous other sex crimes, often because the victims were children of immigrants.

He was tireless in harassing and jailing, without evidence, investigative reporters who wrote stories about all these things. No wonder Donald Trump rushed to pardon him for a criminal conviction a judge didn’t even have time to sentence him for.

“I’m honored to have you here,” said the Vice President.

Yes, he probably was.

I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…

The best wedding I ever attended was the one at which I met my wife.

We’d known each other for a few years before that, but she was just some girl before the guy said you may now kiss the bride.

The next best wedding was our daughter’s. Both were much, much better than the one she sings about here.

I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…

Sometimes I walk into a courtroom and feel the anxiety of the injustice done to my client physically sing in my blood. (They make pills for that sort of thing,)

But the other day, I walked into the courtroom feeling explicably happy. Happy because a criminal case was about to be dismissed, and happy because there was, singing in my blood, something my daughter and her husband had just recorded. This time, it was a celebration.

It was this.