Monday, August 18, 2014

The “Ridiculous” and Outrageous Rick Perry Indictment

Those who followed my twitter feed over the weekend know I can get a good rant on about the indictment of Rick Perry.  But I will try to keep this to a readable length.  As any number of good lawyers can tell you, the indictment is absurd.  The veto is part of a Texas governor’s powers, and threatening a veto is part of expected political give and take.  One prosecutor has even called out the prosecutor who talked a grand jury into the indictment:

The indictment against Perry is such a groundless, utterly shameless criminalization of politics that the prosecutor, Michael McCrum, and Travis County as a whole should be mercilessly mocked, insulted, and made to feel the pain for supporting officials willing to run the criminal justice system like a banana republic. Here is the letter that Patterico, an prosecutor himself, sent to McCrum:

Mr. McCrum,
You should be deeply ashamed of yourself. This prosecution is a joke. It is perhaps one of the most outrageous abuses of power by a prosecutor I have heard of in years. I'm a prosecutor myself - writing you on my own and not speaking for my office - and I just want you to know that your actions tar good prosecutors everywhere. Thank God you never became U.S. Attorney. I hope you lose quickly and are drummed out of public life in disgrace.
Patrick Frey
Los Angeles

Even a number of left of center people have spoken out against this indictment.  David Axelrod called it “pretty sketchy.”  Alan Dershowitz is outraged by it.  And Jonathan Chait even wrote a piece entitled “This Indictment Of Rick Perry Is Unbelievably Ridiculous”.

Which it is.  But some Democrats still have no shame and are cheerleading this travesty, namely scumbags Jim Messina and Joaquin Castro.

This indictment is part of a pattern of Democrats engaging in bogus prosecutions to take down opponents.  It is more worthy of Putin’s Russian than of America.  It also part of a problem that transcends politics – the willingness of too many prosecutors to indict for reasons other than justice and evidence.

Travis County, Texas, from whence the Perry indictment comes, has a shameful history of being a part of both patterns.  I remember that past Travis Co. DA Ronnie Earle’s indictment of Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison pretty much got thrown out of court.  The trial lasted about 30 minutes with the judge instructing the jury to give a directed verdict of Not Guilty.  (I’ve never been a fan of Hutchison, by the way.)  And Earle’s conviction of Tom Delay was thrown out, but not after destroying Delay’s career.

As for the current Travis County DA, she is a corrupt drunk, convicted of DWI. (She was three times the level limit.) She should have been convicted of resisting arrest as well.  The purported reason Perry was indicted is he threatened to veto public integrity funds for her office if she did not resign.  She did not, and he did.

I thought vetoing funds to corrupt partisan power-hungry drunks is good government.  I guess to some Democrats, it is a criminal offense.


Or is standing up to Obama and running for the Republican nomination for President the real criminal offense here?

2 comments:

Tregonsee said...

Mr. McCrum is the type of attorney which gives the other 5% a bad name.

BillB said...

Perry is a much more promising candidate for POTUS than anything the Democrats can put up. I think that this crowd of Democrats would like to try to find a way to make a felony of being a Conservative. That way they could remove the Conservatives' right to vote and be able to win all elections without opposition.