Wishful Thinking?
I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…
Idaho Senator Larry Craig, who privately enjoys a man-to-man talk from time to time, but publicly likes to demean gay men, now has taken to demeaning Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who I’m pretty sure has never had the pleasure of addressing the senator underneath a toilet stall. According to CNN, Craig said Romney, his former campaign boss, “threw me under the campaign bus” when Romney learned Craig had pleaded guilty to playing footsie with an undercover, top-of-the-toilet, cop.
Dream on, Senator. Hey, and while you’re at it, why not keep your word and give up your seat to someone who deserves it (your Senate seat, that is)?
Imbalance of Powers
I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…
The United States Constitution, normally a touchstone not only for lawyers but all citizens, residents, and visitors of this country, may seem out-of-touch with reality to immigrants trying to pass their civics test to become naturalized Americans.
One question, for example, asks “What stops one branch of government from becoming too powerful?”
The real-world answer, in the real world of the Bush executive branch, is of course, “Nothing.”
But for wannabe Americans who are better advised to adopt the current Administration’s low regard for “reality-based” governance, you should still answer, “Checks and Balances” or “Separation of Powers.” And welcome to America.
Indecent Charges
I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…
In my hometown (Boulder, Colorado), I’m sorry to say at least one of our police officers expressed a prurient interest in a high school senior by writing him a ticket for indecent exposure after the boy tried to streak (mostly) naked across a football field. He (the boy, not the officer) was attired in purple paint and stylish racing flats. I say the officer’s interest was “prurient” because indecent exposure requires that the boy “knowingly expose(d) his genitals to the view of any person under circumstances in which such conduct is likely to cause affront or alarm to the other person.”
Now the only people who apparently might have been offended were the officers themselves, because the lad was arrested in flagrante but not delicto, before he had actually started to streak the field. As far as I can tell from the newspaper account, there were no other witnesses to this shocking, absolutely shocking behavior. And we all know what kind of affront or alarm it must have caused the officers to prompt them to scotch-tape snack napkins over the child’s purple pubescence. It is devoutly to be hoped that our guardians of public decency allowed the boy to apply the sticky strips himself.
The law itself presupposes circumstances that are NOT likely to cause affront or alarm. Surely streaking is one such circumstance, where the only alarm one might experience is that the poor kid will trip and suffer a debilitating turf-burn.
Other students have started a campaign to free the misdemeanant. Of course, free him. And in the spirit of giving people the benefit of the doubt, let’s free the officers too, and cease this fruitless speculation about whether they’re spending their off-hours in a museum somewhere, ogling a Michaelangelo.
We Get By with a Little Help from Our Friends
I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…
A Filipino judge, unconscionably fired from his bench for hiring invisible (at least to the less perceptive among us) elves as court clerks, wants his job back. Florentino Floro Jr. says that if he is re-elevated to the bench (judges must be elevated to the bench because it’s a few steps up) he’ll call off the king of the elves, who’s turned hit man, inflicting illness and car accidents on Floro’s former bosses, the Supreme Court.
Floro says the elves only help him predict the future on his personal time, and never used them to help him make judicial decisions. Of course not: that would be unethical.