Posts Tagged → Court
The yaw in America’s orbit
Politically speaking, for a very long time, at least since 1865, America has had a pretty stable orbit. We circle a very dense, heavy, socially generous capitalistic economic core encased in a semi-plastic Constitution, and sometimes we swing out into the darkness of one far end of the solar system or another. But America has always returned back to the middle after those elliptical soirees, very often pulled back in by the power of the US Supreme Court. Because the US Supreme Court has always always always been the guardians of order and individual rights vs. a power-hungry government.
For all of its flaws and mistakes and legislating from the bench over the years, the US Supreme Court has always been kind of the center of America’s political system. A sort of brake sometimes, or a set of loose then taut reins other times, but always gently steering and operating with the deep respect of the governed. If the US Supreme Court said so, then it must have been concluded with the greatest of careful pondering, most Americans have always thought. However, with two decisions out of the Court this week, the Court’s central stabilizing arrangement is now at an open and notorious end.
The Court is yet one more government organ to now force-feed Americans their new role as subjects being ruled from the top down, no longer free citizens being governed by people we trust and approve of with the citizenry’s consent.
Our US Supreme Court is exerting great yaw upon the nation’s orbit. Which is to say the Court is not spinning or moving in a smooth track, and is therefore exerting destabilizing forces upon the body politic. Its latest decisions indicate a great deal of turmoil inside the Court and out. And the Court’s two recent decisions demonstrate that turmoil emanates from the Court purposefully engaging in overtly political acts, not based on wisdom and due process, but on purely short-term political desires.
The one decision is to dismiss the two main lawsuits from the stolen election of 2020, one from Pennsylvania and one from Texas. Back in December, the Court said that the US President or his assigns\ representatives did not have standing to make these cases before the Court. In other words, the sitting US President was not important enough to argue his case before the Court, which is a ridiculous position on its face. And now the Court has said the two cases are moot because the question has passed with the January 20th swearing in of corrupt fraud Joe Biden. In other words, The People can’t win either way with this Court. In no way was the Court going to hear these critically important cases, because the evidence of wrongdoing to steal the 2020 election is overwhelming. The Court wants to keep a lid on all that, Constitutional procedure and government credibility be damned.
The second decision is to grant New York politicians access to President Trump’s tax returns. This is something that has never happened before to any president or ex-president, and it is part of an ongoing public effort by the political establishment to utterly destroy President Donald Trump, both in and out of office, and his supporters. Like all of the other political decisions made in recent months, the precedent this decision sets can and will swing both ways. As I write this, some enterprising DA in East Succotash America is looking at ways to get Barack Hussein Obama’s tax returns, and Joe Biden’s, too, and to use them to pursue these two criminals to the ends of the earth.
Oh, the precedents that are being set!
One can picture in the mind’s eye the formerly off-stage narrator suddenly forcefully step forth onto the stage and address the audience directly for dramatic effect:
“But the blade cuts both ways! But such is the single-minded hatred for anti-establishment Trump held by the political establishment that they are blinded by what self-destructive forces their decisions are setting in motion. America’s orbit yaws this way and that, piloted as it is by blind hatred and ambition…”
No nation run on the concept of self-rule like America can withstand such open and notorious purposefully arbitrary and capricious decision making as we are witnessing from the US Supreme Court. Their decisions are disconnected from every law, custom, norm, and Constitutional principle that anchors American government to the nation’s people. Arbitrary and capricious decision making do not jibe with democratic self-rule; one must prevail over the other. One was created to stop the other. They are mutually exclusive, and yet the Court demands that we accept arbitrary and capricious as the new norm.
The US Supreme Court is willfully throwing its integrity and credibility overboard, and becoming yet another failed American institution seeking to simply rule the masses with brute force.
Despite housing the supposed greatest American political historians, the Court seems to intentionally kick sand in the face of The People. Even as The People are gathering their pitchforks and torches, these blind political elites deliberately mis-steer a path of self-government that yaws this way and that, moving America off course by design, throwing it off of its Constitutional orbit, deviating from the straight and just trajectory America has been on for 244 years. As an object yaws in its orbit, it becomes destabilized and eventually thrown off course forever. In nautical and aeronautical terms, America is now beginning to spin out of control, going off its rocker, going off course.
These dramatic moments are the powerful stuff of dramatic plays, told to Western audiences for at least three thousand years to teach pointed lessons from past mistakes, for a reason. And so one must ask, Whose skull will Hamlet II hold in the eventually inevitable tragic play that will be done years hence to describe the obviously avoidable downfall of the first American republic?
[Yaw: To swerve off course momentarily or temporarily; to move unsteadily; weave; to deviate temporarily from a straight course. If a ship or plane yaws too much, its deviations will become permanent and fatal to its enterprise]
Trump got played by the PA GOPe this week
Pennsylvania Primary Election Day Tuesday this week was not an especially exciting time, as voting days can go, because few names and positions were on the ballot, anywhere.
Somewhere up north Mabel’s cow got more votes than the local township highway manager, which caused a brief fuss. A tie-breaker of sorts was held and the road master challenged the cow to mow the grass along the road margin faster and better than he could. The cow did eat along at a pretty good clip, but the three voters agreed that the fresh cow patties left behind were a detriment. Some Amish happened along, ate the cow, and that settled it.
One bright spot here in Central Pennsylvania is where Senator Rich Alloway retired, kind of abruptly, if you ask me, and a special election was held between a hard-bitten retired Army colonel and long time entrepreneur, and a young, sweeeet, gentle as the morning breeze airhead of a Millennial Democrat who just wants to play Santa Claus with your money, goshdarnit her intentions are just so good.
The Army colonel won.
Three cheers for Central Pennsylvania.
One truly sad aspect of the day was the outcome of the most watched and only state-wide election for Pennsylvania Superior Court judge. With three beautiful and practically identical looking Republican women running for two open seats, a lot more interest was garnered.
Of the three primary contestants, former Montour County District Attorney Rebecca Warren is the most qualified for that seat. Articulate, forceful, experienced, principled, poised even with a kid on her hip, Warren has a well-deserved strong state-wide following. She was no shoo-in for one of the two seats, but it appeared she had a very good chance.
Too good of a chance for the Pennsylvania GOP, which is made of people who dislike conservatives even more than Democrats. So the PA GOPe ran a team of two candidates, Ms. Peck and Miss King, against the lone conservative, Warren.
As a plausible candidate for even township road master, let alone the very high court she aimed for, Miss Meghan King is only slightly more believable than the airhead who ran against the Army colonel in Alloway’s former district, and is probably less knowledgable than the cow up north. Seriously, the highly inexperienced, young, and dumb-of-tongue King was not up to the task of running for much of any public seat, and yet here she is, buoyed up by the good ol’ boys of the PA GOPe. It’s a lot of horsepower behind a newspaper sailboat, which is intriguing almost as much as why Alloway abruptly flew the cuckoo’s nest.
Serious forces are at work here, folks, “a dark and powerful magic,” to quote my favorite magician.
Peck stands on her own merits, and I’d be proud to have her on the Superior Court. But King? For real?! She sounds and looks like a child, and her public speaking is hesitant, halting, uncertain, because, goshdarnit, she was hand-picked to be a puppet or a parrot for the good ol’ boys, and she has not one clue about what it is she is saying or doing up at the podium. King is going to get check-mated by some kookus mongus leftwing Democrat in November. It won’t take much.
So Tuesday’s election came down to the amazing Rebecca Warren vs. the GOP good ol’ boys’ puppet, Miss King, and at the last minute, President Trump was duped by the GOPe guys into tweeting his support for Miss King after his wonderful rally in Montour County, here in central PA. And sure as shootin’, next thing ya know, Miss King obtained more votes than either of the other two candidates, and the cow to boot. Sure, Warren came very close to winning a seat, but King did not earn what she got through both the party establishment support and from the president’s tweet.
What bothers people like me about this election outcome is we work for years to find and get behind solid, conservative, independent-minded, constitutionally-based grass roots candidates like Rebecca Warren, and then the GOPe comes along and snatches away the victory and replaces it with a dishrag of a human being. It’s why the Republican Party, nationwide, is full of so many lame human beings, with no gumption, no vision; they just have a desire for power and to do what they are told by party bosses. They connive their way through all of these elections.
If President Trump actually knew how much damage he just did by supporting Miss King, and how badly he was duped by the PA GOPe, he would swear off primary endorsements forever. He did the same thing in Alabama two years ago and got stung. Winning primary elections by conniving simply places unqualified losers in positions of power, which works great only for those pulling the puppet strings. We don’t get great people, like Trump. When will Trump learn that he would never get the PA GOPe endorsement, not even for township road master, if he were in King’s shoes. The PA GOPe strongly opposes strong, independent – minded candidates.
Those of us who admire President Trump are hopeful that he will learn to ignore the same GOPe guys who have screwed him over since 2015 and who will continue to interfere with his agenda until 2025 (unless there is five bucks to be made; then they will come flocking). Otherwise he is simply shooting himself in the foot by helping zeros like King get elected over people who admire him, who share his values, and who want to fully implement his agenda, like Warren.
Dear PA GOPe: We know you guys care only about holding power, but you should know that with every stolen election like this where a grass roots Rebecca Warren loses, you chip away at the base’s commitment to the GOP and you make us dislike you ever more.
A naturally close race was artificially influenced by a well-intended tweet from our President. Under normal circumstances, in rural Tioga County Warren should have received 50% of the votes cast.
“Red Flag” ERPOs are violent, dangerous, un-American
In the 2002 movie “Minority Report,” police identify and swiftly SWAT-team-style arrest potential criminals before they have committed a crime, even if they are not in the act of committing the crime. That lack of due process, the discarding of the American core value of the presumption of innocence, and the mis-use of quacky, uncertain technology to concretely deprive citizens of their liberties for crimes they did not yet commit, and possibly only imagined, is at the movie’s heart.
Like the 1949 book 1984, in Minority Report an an all-seeing, all-controlling government squashes individuality, individual rights, and free thought by criminalizing “thought crimes,” even thoughts that have not actually been implemented in the physical world. The gist of both the 1949 book and the 2002 movie being that coercive government power can be easily mis-used and that it is at the core of illegitimate governance that justifies civilian resistance and disobedience.
So, welcome to Minority Report and 1984 in your life, right now, in the form of “Red Flag,” “Extreme Risk Prevention Order” and the politically named “Gun Violence Restraining Order” (there is no such thing as ‘gun violence’). These risky programs are being slowly enacted and implemented in states across America in the name of safety.
Theoretically, both ERPOs and GRVOs are designed to get out ahead of a gun owner and send in the SWAT team before that gun owner possibly commits a crime with a gun. Like the ill-fated “No Fly List” bar to gun ownership, both ERPOs and GRVOs are designed to empower police to quickly bypass the natural due process safeguards our federal Constitution explicitly grants to each citizen, behind a screen of secrecy and unaccountable government employees, in the name of immediate if poorly defined security.
The problem with these programs is that they are failing everywhere for reasons that anyone with a shred of common sense had been and would normally employ when assessing the possible risk-benefit value of laws encouraging police to go all cowboy on people who have not actually committed a violent crime. In every place where ERPOs and GRVOs have been implemented, police have aggressively gunned down in cold blood totally innocent citizens, often in their own homes, and always in circumstances where the citizen was either not armed or was only armed because the police had acted like violent, illegal home invaders that an armed citizen would normally resist.
Their results have been exactly the opposite of stopping violence, as ERPOs and GRVOs actually encourage violence; but it’s by the government against the citizen, which ERPO proponents want.
These programs are the anti-gun activist’s dream come true, as the true purpose of ERPOs and GVROs is to generally stigmatize all gun ownership and all individual gun owners by creating an automatic suspect class. Almost all of these programs enable pretty much anyone to call the police and “SWAT” some gun owner the person doesn’t like, doesn’t agree with politically, has a property line dispute with, wants to make an example of etc. “SWATTING” is where someone calls in a bogus threat to a local police department, identifying someone who is actually innocent and unsuspecting that in mere minutes his door is about to come crashing in with a heavily armed SWAT team who thinks he is holding a hostage with a gun to the head.
- ERPOs and GRVOs are the legalization and encouraging of SWATTING.
- ERPOs and GRVOs are dangerous; they promote violence, especially against innocent people.
- ERPOs and purposefully anti-gun-named GVROs are a direct threat to all American citizens, because due process is thrown out the door from the very beginning.
- These are back door channels to criminalizing gun ownership, mass intimidation and big government control over peaceful, law abiding gun owners.
- They are purposefully vague, potentially random, and are more than anything a NAZI Gestapo tactic to bully law abiding gun owners into relinquishing their guns out of fear of being dimed out for some imagined, fake crime.
Why are ERPOs and GRVOs happening? They are becoming popular because due process has gone out the window since Obama was elected in 2008. Obama ran an increasingly abusive government without a shred of respect for the rule of law or due process, and his big government admirers everywhere followed in his step. The result has been that any part of any government anywhere, at any level, that is controlled by Democrats has 360 degree unfettered reach and scope. And on the flip side, any part of government run by Republicans is automatically suspect and subject to endless questioning and investigation and blocking by over-reaching federal judges and bureaucrats.
It is how the Mueller investigation has worked, with its vague accusations of “obstruction” against people who had not and could not have committed any crime in the first place. Without a crime, there can be no obstruction. Roger Stone has been bankrupted for the ‘crime’ of being a political supporter of a president Mueller hates.
This is how the communists took control of Hungary and probably other European nations. They used unproven accusations, which became procedural abuses, to ensnare political opponents, who were then railroaded in the criminal justice system. Just as Mueller has done to his victims.
Democrats today are employing the same exact tactics as the European communists to gain political power the voters would never grant them at the ballot box. These tactics should be illegal and punishable by existing law, but the opposition party, the GOP, is spineless and weak, filled with self-dealing careerists. The culture change following in the wake of Obama’s anti-individual rights big government power grab has shifted in favor of anti-freedom control freaks. They like ERPOs and GVROs, because they suit their tactics, and the Republicans either enable them, empower them, or sit out the fight because there is no money to be made in it.
Do not allow ERPOs, GRVOs, or their derivations into your community or state, because these are undemocratic breaches of the public trust in a government that is supposed to serve its free people.
As a post script, the other big problem is what happens with someone’s legally owned guns when they are confiscated by police. Quite often they are stored under terrible conditions that either badly damage or destroy the firearms. And often the police refuse to honor the law and return the firearms to the citizen after he has been cleared. Moreover, the police often steal or sell confiscated guns, and there is little or no recourse for the citizen to be justly compensated for what has been essentially an unconstitutional taking of private property by government.
America should be going in the direction opposite of ERPOs, GRVOs, and their secret courts where accused people have no right to defend themselves and are presumed guilty. Our founding principles of limited government power, government transparency, and government accountability demand it.
Galileo before the Inquisition’s Secret Court. Is American due process really going backwards to the Dark Ages?
A culture of protest, a culture of animosity
If you desire to see the raw underbelly of an overly tolerant democracy, then watch or listen to today’s US Senate hearings on Judge Kavanaugh.
Kavanaugh is a smart, friendly, humble, kind of nerdy, bookish federal judge who had the audacity to be nominated to the US Supreme Court.
Why audacity? Because he is not super liberal. Because he does not walk in lock-step with the media arm of the Democrat Party. Because he has a judicial philosophy that is directly connected to how America was founded. He does not run around making legal judgments that are contrary to the US Constitution.
All this makes him audacious in the eyes of people who would use the US Supreme Court to achieve de facto legislative results they cannot get in the US Congress. Kavanaugh is audacious in some people’s eyes because he dares to fill a vacant seat on the Court, and play a constructive role in administering US law and jurisprudence.
To me, it looks like the most boring job in the world. Though at one time, in the heat of my youth, I aspired to be a constitutional scholar and actually studied a lot of constitutional law at Penn State and in graduate school (Vanderbilt) in preparation for it. My uncle has argued twice in front of the US Supreme Court, and on his second trip I was honored to help draft an Amicus brief and sit in the audience while the justices grilled both sides.
But now, look at how even Kavanaugh, The Most Boring Man In The World, is attacked and dragged through the mud by opponents of a lawful society. A shameless howling mob greeted him and the entire world today in one of the world’s most hallowed democratic chambers, the US Senate. To watch and listen to Kavanaugh’s opponents today in The People’s chamber, you would not know that we live in the most civilized nation.
From the 1960s to present, a culture of protest has developed to the point where the ends justify the means. That is, if someone opposes a political issue or a political person, they can go batshit crazy in front of everyone and put on the most foolish antics, with the craziest accusations, and the most violent and destructive behavior, because they are simply protesting.
And because they are protesting, they must be correct, is how they think. And if people oppose them, or have a majority in a legislative chamber or on a court, then every possible brick must be thrown in order to stop them…is how they think.
Where protest has its healthy roots in the First Amendment’s guarantee of peaceable assembly and petitioning the government, today’s protests are anything but constitutional. They are violent and hate filled, lawless and vile, cruel and destructive of people and property.
A very real culture of animosity has resulted out of the 1960s, and it is a bad thing, a toxic thing, corrosive and uncivilized. Its practitioners do not wish to live and let live; they desire control above all, and the use of angry mobs and threats to intimidate their opponents into acquiescence.
In the 1930s and 1940s, Hungary fell the same way. Slowly but surely the Communists there used a combination of violent mobs and corrupted police and courts to eliminate their political opponents. The Hungarian Communists used democratic processes and institutions to achieve non-democratic, tyrannical ends. Hungary went from one of Europe’s great nations to completely oppressed under the Communist boot. Only through uprising and great sacrifice were the Hungarian people freed once again, long after many horrible repressive crimes had been committed.
That same thing is now happening today with the national Democrat Party, whose hatred for the common person, the working person, the taxpayer and citizen, America’s “normal” and boring people, like Judge Kavanaugh, is so overwhelming that it can no longer be controlled.
If you love America, if you enjoy your simple pleasures and the basic freedoms we have here, then tell your US senators you support Kavanaugh, and do not vote for Democrats. The national Democrats do not have your interests at heart. Democrats care much more for illegal aliens (purported “victims”) who murder and rape our children than they care for you or me, taxpaying citizens who have worked hard to build this nation.
A good, decent man, a Justice Kavanaugh will restore some semblance of lawful and constitutional behavior to America, and the howling mob opposes that. Don’t let them win. They are not “protestors,” they are angry, lawless destroyers who pretend they are under the protection of the First Amendment.
2017 Year in Review
Looking back on 2017, it is tempting to list all of great accomplishments, and the few failures, of the new administration in DC.
One could spend a week discussing them all, but for the sake of time, here is one person’s opinion about what we have gained, and what we have yet to gain, from the new administration.
Gains
Where haven’t the citizens of America gained under the policies of the new administration?
From tax reform to ending executive policies designed to bully American citizens through the illegal use of government coercion, President Trump is daily deleting prior executive orders, and often substituting his own pro-freedom policies in their stead.
One gain has been the reining in of the US EPA, a place at which I used to work as a policy and legislative staffer, and which has long had an unprofessional staff culture of political activism substituting for careful reasoned decisions, shaped by law, in the interest of the American People. Fundamental transformation of USEPA was long overdue. The same can be said for NOAA, a huge source for fake climate change junk science, which is now getting a new chief who actually is a meteorologist and who does actually know a thing or two or three about Earth’s climate. How refreshing.
Another gain has been the moving of the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. No, this decision is not about Israel, it is about Western Civilization, of which tiny outpost Israel is the canary in the coal mine. Trump made this decision in the face of United Nations opposition, the same corrupt UN that is run by the biggest tyrannies in the world. He made this decision in the face of violence and threats of violence pouring forth from literally every single Muslim nation. The embassy move draws a stark contrast between a Christendom determined to survive, and everyone else. Sorry, the Jews are just the foil here, not the cause celebre.
Failures
If there is one friction point of real consequence in Washington, DC, it is that surface where the federal judiciary meets the executive branch.
Populated with political radicals, the federal judiciary has rogue judges who routinely use their positions to legislate from the bench, not adjudicate within the constitutional confines of their actual duties. They try to implement specific policies, instead of determining whether or not the question before them is simply constitutional, or not. They continually usurp powers from the executive branch, to the point where these judges have set themselves up as the actual bureaucrats running America.
Got a grievance? Bring it before the right federal judge, and you could get a very detailed, specific holding directing the executive branch of government to implement a certain policy in a certain way under a certain time frame.
The first problem here is that the judiciary rarely has actual jurisdiction in these subjects, because they are wholly functions of the executive branch. Immigration is one such area. Immigration and borders are clearly left to the executive branch to run. And yet America has federal judges who routinely issue holdings they believe will block the implementation of the executive branch’s functions. And these same federal judges will do the same things repeatedly, defiantly, even after the US Supreme Court has struck down their previous decision. These rogue judges are using their official positions to advance social justice causes.
A similar policy subject is gun regulation.
Despite the US Supreme Court’s Heller decision and others like it, lower courts routinely issue holdings on gun regulation that are in direct, clear conflict with US Supreme Court decisions.
A third policy subject is transgenders in the military. Recently a federal judge held that the US military must accept transgenders, ignoring the clear separation of constitutional powers between the executive branch and the judiciary. The executive branch has sole discretion over who it allows into the warfighting military, and civilian courts have zero jurisdiction. For a federal judge to insert himself into military matters is a clear violation of the US Constitution.
The second problem with this is, this is not the way the court system works.
Lower courts are always bound by the holdings of higher courts and by the duties and roles clearly spelled out in the US Constitution. Judges who disregard the higher courts and the Constitution, and instead issue their own politically motivated holdings, are destroying the rule of law in America. They are far overstepping their boundaries, and trying to make law and policy instead of deciding law or remanding a decision back to the political process. In essence setting themselves up as dictators who make all legislative, policy, and legal decisions.
If these rogue judges are successful, America’s court system will become meaningless. It will be a random assortment of competing political decisions governing hundreds of millions of citizens, made by a small handful of unelected people in black robes. These are decisions that are supposed to be hashed out through the political process by elected officials, accountable to the American People through elections and votes.
So, the failure here for the Trump Administration has been an unwillingness to simply disregard these rogue judges, and then move ahead with the administration’s immigration policy, foreign policy, and military decisions. Moreover, Trump’s administration should be openly calling for the impeachment and removal of these rogue judges. Official abuse of power is the most serious threat to American representative government, it must be confronted head-on, and that is not happening. Why is a mystery, because if there is one hallmark of this presidency, it is this president’s willingness to and enjoyment of directly communicating with the American People in the clearest terms.
Conclusion
The rogue judges issue highlights a scary fact that most establishment Republicans are loathe to address, and that is how liberals will do absolutely anything to impose their will on the American People.
The liberal lust for power and control, as marketed through “social justice” causes, means that their ends always justify their methods. It means that all officials with liberal opinions have to do is claim a higher moral ground, higher than existing law, and implement their views through their official role, no matter if it clearly contradicts established law, procedure, and policy.
This of course is not how any democracy or republic works. It is politically unsustainable (it is patently illegal), but it is evidence that liberals will burn down America in order to wrest control of it from the American People, or to prevent their political opponents from running it as the result of elections that liberals are unhappy with. It is also evidence that establishment Republicans have zero fight in them, because they do not believe in anything more than making more money than a person has use for.
If there is a need for a new political group in America, it is one that is focused on documenting official abuses by federal judges, and then working to hold them accountable. Impeachment and removal from the bench is what is needed.
So, in conclusion, 2017 was a very good year, an exciting year, and we can hope for more of the same in 2018.
Second Letter to Candidate Josh Feldman
Dear Josh,
Congratulations, you did maintain your position on the ballot after our challenge. But you have traded away your credibility and integrity in the process.
I read the courtroom transcript of your March 17, 2017 testimony, and on page five you stated under oath that you consciously falsely signed two affidavits. Even though you have only been an active attorney for a grand total of 78 days, surely you know that affidavits are the bedrock of our legal system. A falsified affidavit undermines everything our legal system stands on and stands for. The person who falsifies an affidavit is obviously unqualified to fill a judicial role. You are unqualified, Josh. Your own court testimony impeached your own credibility.
Additionally, you have run for this magisterial seat on the representation of being “the only attorney” among the candidates. But you only became an active licensed attorney on March 2, 2017, the day before you filed your first set of ballot petitions. On page three of your court testimony, you admit that you do not actually practice law and have no court room experience, having become “inactive” just one month after bar admission and having been “retired” from 2010 until this March 2nd.
Your attorney information page on the Disciplinary Board of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court says “I do not maintain professional liability insurance because I do not have private clients and have no possible exposure to possible malpractice actions.”
So your biggest selling point is actually flim-flam, a faint technicality. What is the point of electing an attorney who has no experience actually being an attorney, and who right out of the gate violates the most important election laws to try to get ahead?
Josh, how on earth could your lawyer have allowed you to take the stand in your own defense at the ballot petition hearing? Do you not realize the self-damning testimony you gave in court?
Perhaps no one should be surprised, as your incompetent goofball lawyer Adam Klein now has yet one more loss to his credit. You have learned an expensive but important lesson: Just because a lawyer is smug and arrogant does not mean he is seriously up to the task of effectively representing you.
Josh, I pledged $250 toward the outcome not as some sort of silly bet or wager, but as a principled statement about my belief in personal accountability. My philosophy of government requires me to do this: I had put my name out there as a plaintiff in a formal complaint about your ballot petitions, and you stayed on the ballot. In that process we learned that you have poor character, your word means nothing, and you have greatly over-represented your qualifications.
So, Josh, you do get the enclosed $250 check, but you will get no apology from me, because when you took the stand in court you admitted to filing false affidavits on your ballot petitions. You impeached your own credibility. If you cannot be trusted to file basic honest paperwork, then what do the voters expect of you if you become a magistrate and sit in judgment of us? Your petitions were flawed, Josh, and remain so, even though they technically contained enough signatures to keep you cross-filed and on the ballot.
This whole experience is sad to me. You have hurt yourself through your own over-reach, and then you were further injured by poor legal counsel. I like the fact that you are a fellow small business owner, and I wish that you had earnestly run for office on that good qualification alone. People could respect you for that.
Sincerely,
Josh
Josh First
Harrisburg City, PA
May 12, 2017
Marsico, Rozman and Morris for Dauphin County Judge
If you consider experience and qualifications alone when selecting a county judge, then there are only three logical people to get your vote on May 16th, 2017:
Ed Marsico
Michael Rozman
Royce Morris
Ed Marsico has been Dauphin County’s district attorney for a long time, so long that I have lost count of the years. During his time as the chief law enforcement official for Dauphin County, Ed has always struck a balance of fairness and restraint, when lesser people would have given in to anger over some of the heinous crimes committed in the Harrisburg area. That always struck me as the sign of a well developed personality, because man, I did not feel that way about some of the scumbag criminals he prosecuted. I wanted a public stoning. Ed pursued justice. Without any stain on his long career as a visible and scrutinized public servant, Ed Marsico is the most qualified candidate for county judge in this race and one of the most qualified we have ever had. He has earned your vote. (Ed has done a great job as DA, and I and many others would have liked to have had him run for Pennsylvania Attorney General, but Ed is devoted to Dauphin County).
Michael Rozman has served as deputy district attorney under Marsico for a long time. Often laboring away out of the limelight, Rozman has racked up some of the greatest experience any lawyer can have. Rozman’s mastery of forensics, crime scene investigations, police interviews and interrogations, and knowing how to distinguish a bad boy from a true bad guy puts him head and shoulders above any of the other candidates, except for his boss, Ed Marsico. Again, if experience and outstanding qualification matters to you, if you want justice and not politics in the court room, and if you want to be judged by someone who has had decades of experience dealing with courts, criminal matters, justice, and police work, then Michael Rozman has earned your vote.
Royce Morris is also exceptionally qualified to be judge, and he is the Yin to the Yang of Marsico and Rozman. Morris has been one of Central Pennsylvania’s leading criminal defense lawyers for a long, long time. His view of criminal law is seasoned with the understanding of the behavior and reasons why certain bad things happen and how people either purposefully or mistakenly end up in the criminal justice system. Royce has received accolades from judges, jurors, prosecutors, defendants and police officers for the careful way he has handled some of the region’s toughest defense cases. Again, if experience is what you care about, and you want to be judged by someone who is not a party hack or a devotee of political climbing, then Royce Morris earns your vote.
It is true that there are other candidates for the three vacant seats on the Dauphin County court. But none of those candidates has anywhere near the hard-bitten experience dealing with tough crimes and careful analysis like Marsico, Rozman, and Morris have had.
The quality difference between the top three candidates and the others is measured in light years, which is to say an enormous gap, not even close.
Yes, it is true that a Republican political endorsement was made for this seat, which benefited one of the other candidates, and while I am no fan of political endorsements in general, if there is one place where a political endorsement does not belong, where it actually indicates weakness and not strength, it is during the selection of a judge. Politics has no business entering the court room or the judge selection process, and only you, the informed voter can stop it.
About eight years ago now-Judge Andrew Dowling was not endorsed by the Dauphin GOP, and he was told not to run, and yet he went on to win his seat on the court, overcoming what is obviously a very shallow and judicially meaningless political process. A better process would be to rank judicial candidates by a letter system, or by gradations of qualification (e.g. Highly Qualified, Qualified, Not Qualified). That election, when Dowling overcame the political hackery, was a refreshing reminder of the wisdom and power of the citizen voter.
Three years ago outstanding judicial candidate Bill Tully was passed over by the Dauphin GOP, and another, very young and less qualified candidate was endorsed. He was closer to the political establishment. The voters rejected that set-up, too, and sent Tully to be the next Dauphin County judge. That election, when Tully overcame the political hackery, was a refreshing reminder of the wisdom and power of the citizen voter.
Readers may ask why I write these essays about candidates and politics, and I will tell you it is simply because I have always had a passion for good government and fairness. Believe me, I make no friends writing these things, I receive no money and actually have lost business because of my opinions. And I have garnered some enemies along the way, too. But if Americans are not brave enough to stand up for what they deserve, then they get really bad government filled with political hacks who care nothing for the welfare of their fellow citizens. Maybe I am brave, maybe I am foolish, but I stand up nonetheless, and I tell it like I see it, and I tell it from the perspective of the person in the street.
Vote for Marsico, Rozman, and Morris, and you will get judges we can be proud of. That is my opinion.