Rock On Georgetown Law Students!
My problem with being a lawyer is not the lawyer jokes or societal disdain for my profession, but rather the idiotic attorneys who make the jokes too real to be funny and the disdain all too appropriate. I am not talking about the slip and fall, ambulance chasing personal injury attorneys or medical malpractice attorneys that clutter the news with get rich offers for people who have been in car accidents while taking Vioxx. It is attorneys who use their education and credentials to subvert justice instead of promote it, who contort the facts and the law into unrecognizable shapes in order to give more power to the powerful, that I can't deal with. In other words, Alberto Gonzales is a pathetic excuse for a lawyer. His legal career is mainly distinguished by his willingness to completely overstate/misstate legal precedents in order to justify the atrocities of Dubbya. Torture, domestic spying, clubbing baby seals... Sure it's all within Presidential Powers. Legal Basis... Well.. You'll just have to trust me after all we are at war, this is about the terrorists!
The rockstar law students at Georgetown apparently agree with me. Gonzales gave a speech there this week defending the warrantless domestic wiretapping, during which the students got up and turned their backs to him. Another group came in midway carrying a banner paraphrasing Ben Franklin which read "Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither." After Gonzales' short propaganda plug for the administration, a panel thoroughly trashed his "legal arguments" including one panel members comment:
When you're a law student, they tell you if say that if you can't argue the law, argue the facts. They also tell you if you can't argue the facts, argue the law. If you can't argue either, apparently, the solution is to go on a public relations offensive and make it a political issue... to say over and over again "it's lawful", and to think that the American people will somehow come to believe this if we say it often enough.
(For more check out Insomnia's post. Thanks to Eric for the tip)
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