When someone leaves a comment and signs his comment with the name of a retired baseball player, we are a bit suspicious. However, he asks a good question, one worth answering:
I cannot for the life of me understand why no one is taking a right-wing blog seriously in their zealous defense of war protesters. I can't imagine why you guys have zero credibility on this one. Windmills, tilting... etc.
This is your third comment. You follow this blog enough to know that our reason for coming into existence is that we have found the courts completely unwilling to enforce either the lawyer or the judicial version of the ethics rules. Based on an email address you left the first time, you are either a law student or a law professor.
Not to burst your bubble, but I almost certainly don't fit any normal definition of "right wing," which is one of the reasons I seem to be effective. Until the facts came out, I wrote at least one essay in support of Udall's conduct and what I thought was a 30 day sentence. You will admit that that is something someone who was reflexively right wing or left wing wouldn't do. Well, maybe you won't. The facts never seem to dissuade those on either fringe of the political spectrum from the views they cherish, and the current circus in Congress over the war report is one of many good examples.
To answer your question, powerful people who abuse their power and feel they are above challenge need to be challenged.
The Denver Post abused its power with its reporting. Mark Udall and his staff abused their power in a way that almost any civilized person would immediately recognize and be repulsed by. The judge apparently opined that no real harm had occurred and then hit the woman with a very severe sentence. That is abuse by any measure.
The courts aren't looking at one's politics before they allow a lawyer or a judge to abuse a citizen unethically. It is an apolitical issue. At some point, it is possible that I may choose pull the beard of the Supreme Court in a way that they might think they could throw me in jail. No doubt they would.
I already know that political people like you won't speak up for me. I know the Denver Post won't speak up for me. Both you and they are too smugly blinded by your politics to see right from wrong.
Sadly, I am not at all confident that any Republican of any stripe would speak up for me, not because they can't see right from wrong, but because they would choose not to look.
Throughout history, people have chosen to look away when governmental wrongs are committed. Here is a poem written by a German who went to a concentration camp in 1937.
First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.
Pastor Martin Niemöller
Draw your own conclusions as to its meaning. I think it means that while I dislike everything Caroline Bninski stands for, I shouldn't stand by and see her mugged by Mark Udall and the courts without saying something unless I am willing to be victimized by the same muggers in the same way.
Civilized people speak out. Cowards can never see that they will end up unprotected by their cowardly silence.
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Those who stumble on this essay and want to know what it is about might want to read two other essays: Did the Denver Post Lie to Protect Mark Udall? and Four Days to Freedom. The latter was written before I discovered that the Denver Post had done the very kind of reporting that the msm claims bloggers do.
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