"Fundamental fairness and justice in our criminal justice system are far more important than the conviction and sentence of any one individual." - California Court of Appeal, Polanski v. Superior Court of Los Angeles County, 12/21/09

Demonstrating the same lack of self-esteem as prisoners who beat up...

When Emily Bazelon of Slate.com recently asked Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley about the Roman Polanski case, "Cooley's deputy tried to shush him." But the DA was apparently in no mood to remain silent. According to Bazelon: "Cooley wanted to hammer home the simple point that Polanski...

It's a fallacy that there's a morally or legally significant difference between what Robert Halderman stands accused of doing, and what agents and lawyers do all the time. Halderman had a marketable story to sell. Just because most agents and lawyers wouldn't go to David Letterman's house doesn't mean that...

During the "New Rules" segment on his HBO show last Friday night, Bill Maher blasted the Democratic Party for kowtowing to its corporate paymasters, and bemoaned the lack of real liberals on ballots and television. "And if occasionally you do get to hear Ralph Nader, Noam Chomsky or Dennis Kucinich,"...

In his recent interview with Roland Burris, Chris Matthews conducted himself not as a fair-minded journalist but a prosecutor who believes it's okay to conceal exculpatory evidence to win a case.

Like everyone else who has been sucked in by a lynch mob mentality at Burris's expense, Matthews simply...

Although this week's decision by the California Supreme Court is understandably disappointing to proponents of same sex marriage, it should not be interpreted as any sort of disrespect to gays and their rights. Indeed, this is the very same court which last year ruled that gays do...

The media continues to exaggerate evidence of malfeasance on the part of Roland Burris. As if it would have been criminal for him to do what he didn't do anyway, Monica Davey and Ann Cullotta claim in The New York Times that "Mr. Burris had promised to send...

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom wants smokers in his city to pay an extra 33 cents for each pack of cigarettes purchased, to cover the cost of picking up discarded butts and help reduce a daunting budget deficit. That would be on top of the $1.88 per pack...

Some Huffington Post commenters who admire Code Pink's moxie think the mere willingness to insult Donald Rumsfeld to his face is a great accomplishment. It is not. It trivializes his alleged crimes to showily spew inane jargon, especially when nothing else is included in the presentation.

It's not as...

On Wednesday I admonished a Code Pink protester for her melodramatic "attempt" to arrest Donald Rumsfeld. My post (published here, here and here) was not a rebuke so much as a practical call for more advanced operations. Nonetheless, so-called progressives -- including David Swanson, whose...

I have mixed emotions about the verbal lambasting heaped on Donald Rumsfeld outside the May 9 White House Correspondents' Dinner in Washington DC. On one hand, I like the public to hold our leaders accountable. On the other hand, the first of two Code Pink protesters who loudly...

As someone who participated in one of the most audacious hidden camera pranks ever perpetrated, the April 26 Los Angeles Times article about pro-life activist Lila Rose and her clandestine video recordings naturally caught my attention. For the past three years, Rose, accompanied by a...

Although nothing about our nation's legal obligation to prosecute (or extradite) torturers was mentioned, the April 29 exchange between President Obama and reporter Jake Tapper suggests a criminal investigation is inevitable. Obama flatly stated that waterboarding is torture and referred to the Bush administration's sanctioning of the interrogation...

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Tuesday "it's time for a debate" about whether or not it should be legal to buy, sell and smoke pot for any reason. The Sacramento Bee reports:

"Schwarzenegger was at a fire safety event in Davis when he answered a question about a recent...

On Wednesday the House of Representatives passed the laughably named Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009. The purported prevention is what amuses me. Who are the bigots who refrain from killing only because they face harsher punishment than murderers who don't care what their victim's race...

Friday's decision by the Illinois Supreme Court reinforces what I've been saying for days: Harry Reid and his colleagues are faced with only two choices: Seat Roland Burris, or deprive Illinois of a senator, because there is no legal way to pick anyone but Burris until...

As I wrote even before Rod Blagojevich appointed Roland Burris to the United States Senate: "The standstill between Blago and his fellow Democrats is a problem of the party's making. It would actually be best for everybody if the governor were to fulfill his obligation to choose a new...

After I linked in an earlier post to the analyses of legal scholars who had opined that the Senate isn't authorized to deny the duly appointed Roland Burris membership in its club, several other preeminent jurists came forth with a different conclusion based on reasoning that the first group...

One thing that's serendipitous about Rod Blagojevich's refusal to yield to those who want him to go away, is that it presents a golden opportunity to discover how little the rule of law means to the very people who are most expected to honor it. As I wrote yesterday,...

Rarely is the debunking of conventional wisdom more apropos than in response to certain widely held misconceptions about the former governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer, and the current governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich. Indeed, the analogous scandals surrounding both men produced two of the year's biggest fallacies.

FALLACY #1:...