The most excellent TPM Muckraker reports that Senator Pete Dominici has retained Lee Blalack to represent him in the ongoing Senate ethics investigation into the purge of U.S. Attorneys in the Pearl Harbor Day Massacre.
Color me cynical, but I read this as Dominici knows that he abrogated ethics rules and proper protocol, and most likely, the worst is still to come. Perhaps one of the attorneys who posts here will let us know what the mechanism is for replacing a Senator under New Mexico law...Blalack, a partner in O'Melveny & Myers LLP's Washington office, is an experienced defense lawyer. As attorney for Cunningham, who is serving a sentence of more than eight years, Blalack dealt with one of the federal prosecutors who was later ousted, Carol S. Lam of San Diego.
At least thats the feeling I got reading this article from the Washington Post. I finished the article with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. The founders of this nation established three co-equal branches of government, and set things up the way they did to assure that the citizens of this nation would not be ground under the heel of tyranny by the majority.
Those grand ideals held for over 200 years, until the appointment of Bush the younger to the office of the presidency. In six short years, we have seen over-reach after over-reach. We have been introduced to the concept of the Unitary Executive. We have seen Habeas Corpus, the Insurrection Acts of 1807 and Posse Comitatus suspended.
Yet in spite of all that, the politicization of Justice is the greatest existential threat to this nation that we have faced in the century and a half since the end of the Civil War. The thing that sickens me about it is that the existential threat we face does not come from outside our country, or even a rebel faction inside.
The existential threat we face comes from within our own government.
