Category Archives: Justice

Updated: The Gormless Judge Goldstone

Crime, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Justice, South-Africa, Terrorism

The supremely smug Richard Goldstone began his career by helping to demote a lesser evil (the National Party) and promote the quintessential evil (Mandela’s African National Congress). “We now have, I’m proud to say, a working, wonderful democracy in South Africa,” boasted the venerated singularly charmless gentleman to CNN’s Fareed Zakaria.

The South African justice, who presided over “the United Nations International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda from 15 August 1994 to September 1996,” continues his celebrity career with a report about Israel’s alleged war crimes in Gaza. “The report,” writes Ha’aretz, “which accuses both Israel and Hamas of war crimes, was formally presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council on Tuesday.”

I suggest Goldstone might want to look in his own plate before he goes passing judgment on (an admittedly imperfect) Israel. Since he helped usher in this “wonderful democracy,” upward of 300,000 innocents have been murdered. The New savage South Africa is now the most violent country in the world.

Here is the CNN interview the singularity boring Zakaria conducted with the singularly smug justice:

ZAKARIA: South African Justice Richard Goldstone made his name with legal cases of world importance but also of great delicacy and sensitivity. First in his home country of South Africa, pursuing an end to the political violence that came with apartheid, then on to the international stage as Chief Prosecutor of the UN Tribunals for War Crimes in Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

But his latest job is more controversial. In April, the UN Human Rights Council appointed Goldstone to head a mission to investigate allegations of human rights violations in the 22-day conflict between Israel and Gaza that began last December. From the start, some on both sides questioned whether a fair inquiry could be made, and in the end Israel, which took much of the blame in the final, almost 600-page report, though not exclusive blame, has reacted angrily.

Listen to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressing the UN General Assembly last week.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, PRIME MINISTER OF ISRAEL: A democracy legitimately defending itself against terror is morally hanged, drawn and quartered and given an unfair trial to boot. By these twisted standards, the UN Human Rights Council would have dragged Roosevelt and Churchill to the dock as war criminals.

What a perfect version of truth. What a perversion of justice.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAKARIA: Netanyahu said that the report threatens to derail the peace process. Now listen to my conversation with the man at the center of this storm, Justice Goldstone.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Judge Goldstone, thank you for doing this.

JUDGE RICHARD GOLDSTONE, HEAD OF UN GAZA INVESTIGATION: It’s a pleasure.

ZAKARIA: The Prime Minister of Israel, as you know, denounced your report effectively on the floor of the United Nations General Assembly, and his basic argument is that the report is morally obtuse because it does not just distinguish between a democratic state that is being threatened by this hail of rockets and a terrorist organization, in his words, that is trying to inflict disproportionate and random violence on civilians.

GOLDSTONE: I think – I think, with respect, Prime Minister Netanyahu, misunderstands the basis on which we investigated. We – we didn’t question the right of Israel to defend itself or to defend its citizens. It clearly has that right. What we looked was the methods used in doing that. So we didn’t – we didn’t question Israel’s right of self-defense. We, in effect, in a way, took it as a given. It was, as I say, the – the – whether it was a proportionate response or a disproportionate response that we looked at.

And the other way, too, we – we didn’t look at whether Hamas is entitled to use military force to – to gain independence for the Palestinian people. We – we looked at what – what methods Hamas used, and we found those to be unlawful.

ZAKARIA: The Israelis claim that Hamas put themselves in hospitals, forced the Israelis to attack – to strike there, and that would produce an international public outrage. What did you find?

GOLDSTONE: Well, we didn’t exclude all of those allegations. We couldn’t. We – we had a short-time line (ph), we had a very, very scarce resources. We investigated specific incidents and we didn’t find, in respect of those incidents, that the Israeli claims had – had been – been justified. But certainly we can’t exclude it across the board.

ZAKARIA: You spoke of the Israeli behavior during Gaza as being part of a pattern that you described as, the Israeli term, ‘dahia’ (ph). What does that mean?

GOLDSTONE: Well, the – the – the attitude of Israel and the policy of Israel, especially since the Hamas victory a few years ago, has been really to turn the screws on – on Gaza. We felt that one of the purposes was to make life so difficult for the people of Gaza that they would turn their back on Hamas and it would lose support. In fact, if anything, it was my personal impression that it’s had the opposite effect.

ZAKARIA: What was the infrastructure damage like? Describe so that people can get a sense of what – what you regard as excessive.

GOLDSTONE: Well, the – the infrastructure damage, first of all, that had no military justification at all, was the bulldozing of agricultural fields. Huge tracks of land were just bulldozed by – by tank bulldozers. The only operating flour factory in Gaza. Obviously, flour is terribly important to feed – for making bread, a staple part of their diet. The only flour factory was – was effectively destroyed. They destroyed most of the egg production. They – they killed tens of thousands of chickens. You know, and this has got nothing to do with firing of rockets and mortars. It was the destruction of infrastructure — of part of the infrastructure of Gaza.

ZAKARIA: How will you describe Hamas’ responsibility here? You dealt with that in the report as well. Would you describe Hamas as guilty of war crimes?

GOLDSTONE: Oh yes, absolutely, of serious war crimes, which do amount crimes against humanity, and that’s the firing of thousands of rockets that have no precision at all into civilian areas. That’s a very serious crime.

But we also criticized its use of civilians and not protecting civilians sufficiently in its launching of rockets. And they put civilians in harm’s way.

ZAKARIA: And you found that both Israel and Hamas in a sense did not take enough precaution about the potential for civilian casualties?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Absolutely.

ZAKARIA: Judge Goldstone, you’re Jewish.

GOLDSTONE: Right.

ZAKARIA: How do you react when you hear Israelis accusing you of anti-Israeli bias, anti-Zionism, some have used the phrase “self- hating Jew”?

GOLDSTONE: First, there’s obviously no truth in it. I’ve got a great love for Israel. It’s a country that, as I said, I’ve been to many times, and I’ve worked for many Israeli causes and continue to do so. So it’s factually incorrect.

But what saddens me is the fact that Jews, whether in Israel or outside Israel, feel that because I’m Jewish I shouldn’t investigate Israel.

If anything, I think I have a greater obligation to do that. If I’ve investigated war crimes in other countries, why should Israel be different? And it seems to me that that should be welcomed and recognized.

ZAKARIA: When you look at these crimes against humanity, these war crimes, how do they compare? You have a long career. You’ve seen many of these kinds of things, investigated some. Where does this stand? How should we think of it?

GOLDSTONE: Well, you know, I don’t like making comparisons because each situation is so different. But certainly one can compare what has happened here to situations that I’ve investigated in the former Yugoslavian genocide. One doesn’t here in respect of Gaza get anywhere in my view anywhere near that sort of situation.

It’s very different. Many people are comparing what’s happening in the occupied territories to apartheid South Africa. I don’t like that comparison. There’s some similarities, but there are more differences.

ZAKARIA: Do you see this as the end of the report and your role?

GOLDSTONE: Absolutely. It’s now in the political arena. I hope that we have provided a road map for both sides to investigate themselves and to come to their own conclusions, their own investigations, and where relevant their own prosecutions.

ZAKARIA: Spending time dealing with this, do you have any thoughts or insights into the Israeli-Palestinian divide? Do you think there will be peace? How do you look at this?

GOLDSTONE: No South African can be pessimistic about the prospects of for peace. We had an impossible situation and a certainty that we were going to have bloodbath, and because we had good leadership it was averted, and we now have, I’m proud to say, a working, wonderful democracy in South Africa. We’ve got problems but we’re moving in a good direction.

ZAKARIA: You will be back in Israel anytime soon?

GOLDSTONE: No plans at the moment, but I certainly expect to. I don’t have close family, but I have many, many friends there. I’d love to see them.

ZAKARIA: Judge Goldstone, thank you for doing this.

GOLDSTONE: Thank you very much.

Update (Oct. 7): My father, who was steeped in the anti-apartheid movement and ostracized for his convictions, informs me that Goldstone had no such history of protest. The judge attached himself to this fashionable cause once it became safe and politically prudent. Goldstone’s bio corroborates my father’s assessment, noting only that he joined the cause du jour in “the latter years of Apartheid in South Africa,” when,

Goldstone served as chairperson of the South African Standing Commission of Inquiry Regarding Public Violence and Intimidation, later known as the Goldstone Commission.[1] The Commission played a critical role in uncovering and publicizing allegations of grave wrongdoing by the Apartheid-era South African security forces and bringing home to “White” South Africans the extensive violence that was being done in their name. The Commission concluded that most of the violence of those years was being orchestrated by shadowy figures within the Apartheid regime, often through the use of a so-called “third force.” The Commission thus provided a first road map for the investigations into security force wrongdoing that, after democratization, were taken up by the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Long Live Jack Kevorkian

America, Fascism, Government, Individual Rights, Justice, Law, libertarianism, Liberty, Natural Law, Religion, The State

IN HIS OWN WORDS. Jack Kevorkian is a free man. And that makes him better than most: “The law can only stop a person from exercising a right”;”You cannot transgress a natural right”; “Religion puts your mind in a straitjacket”; “Maybe Michael Jackson craved [anesthetics] so much, the doctor administered them to keep him quiet. The patient got what he wanted”; “America is not the country you think it is. How free are you? You are as free as the law lets you be, and America is the greatest law factory in the world“; “We have a lot of traits of fascism in this country; Ayn Rand predicted it”; “Are we done as a country? We’re done as a free country, yes”; “Most people are enslaved sheep. They cry to the government, ‘Do something for me.'”
Bar one, I agree with all the aforementioned. Jack Kevorkian may be ideologically confused, but he is free and fiercely courageous.

Slumming It On The SCOTUS

Affirmative Action, Justice, Law, Multiculturalism, The Courts

SHE’S IN. SotoSetAsides Mayor has been confirmed as a United States Supreme Court Justice. Let the deluge of original commentary vis-a-vis the history-making nature of the event commence. (For one of my older columns, read “Media’s Judicial Jiu-Jitsu For Da Big Man,” or search the blog archive for the many debates we’ve had about Sonia.

At LRC.COM, my good friend Tom DiLorenzo, comments about her worldview (sealed with Tom’s vintage humor):

“The newest black-robed deity talks the language of pop-Marxism, the fundamental belief system of the man who appointed her. Sotomayor’s now-famous comment about how she possesses special and unique legal insights by virtue of being a “Latina woman” is an expression of what used to be called “Marxian class consciousness,” that is, one’s views are determined by the social class one belongs to. In the old days the relevant Marxian classes were the working and capitalist classes. After the worldwide collapse of socialism in the late ’80s/early ’90s, the pop Marxists of academe switched their tune to a different sort of class struggle: Now it’s the White Heterosexual Male Oppressor “class” versus all of the various mascot groups of the academic left, i.e., women, minorities, homosexuals, Latinos, the transgendered, etc., etc.

P.S. A friend who is married to a Latina woman makes good use of Sotomayor’s lingo whenever his wife asks him to perform various chores around the house: He tells her that as a Latina woman she has special skills in doing the chores, and should therefore do them herself.”

Update VI: Sonia A-Shout-Out-To-My-Mom Mayor

Affirmative Action, Constitution, Justice, Law, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Private Property, The Courts

FIDELITY TO THE LAW. As you read through Sonia Sotomayor’s brief remarks delivered at her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, consider first that Sotomayor swore “fidelity” to the law, not to the Constitution. Second, her alleged loyalty to the law should not assuage you, since this statement begs the question; it assumes that post-Constitution America holds an immutable notion of what the law is. Not so. (The law to Obama liberals, for example, must entail an admixture of empathy and life experience.)

But how unlike Sotomoayor is this writer. I’ve opened this post with a comment on logic and the law. Sotomayor began and continued her statement by extending the love, the gratitude, the humility to … blah blah… “who made this day possible.” Sonia gave a shout out to mom, bro, barack.

Her initial greetings and props are uncanny in their mundane, anti-intellectual, Oprah-worthy nature. I can just hear the mentors of Sotomayor—the people responsible for the bumper crops of mindless monolithic graduates emerging from US institutions—instructing her throughout the years: “be sure to emphasize your community service, the strong black or Hispanic women in your life, the diversity of your complexion and your career.”

The law according to our Latina: “my judicial philosophy … is simple: fidelity to the law. The task of a judge is not to make the law — it is to apply the law. And it is clear, I believe, that my record in two courts reflects my rigorous commitment to interpreting the Constitution according to its terms; interpreting statutes according to their terms and Congress’ intent; and hewing faithfully to precedents established by the Supreme Court and my Circuit Court.”

Much is made of hewing to precedent. George Bush “thought” that a judicial activist was someone who disobeys the President. Left-liberals believe a judicial activist is someone who reverses precedent, unless the precedent was established by an originalist Court.

Right thinking individuals know that striking down unconstitutional laws is not judicial activism. Judicial activism means 1) minting new rights not in the Constitution 2) striking down laws to comport with these freshly minted unconstitutional rights.

Update I (July 14): PULLING A JOE THE PLUMBER ON FRANK RICCI. The firefighter from New Haven, whose Constitutional case Sotomayor dismissed in a hastily scribbled paragraph, is being smeared by the likes of Dahlia Lithwick of Slate magazine. Watch and listen as Fox News’ Megyn Kelly interviews Ricci’s attorney, and asks: “Does this remind you at all of what happened to Joe the Plumber?” Ricci will be witness for the Minority at the hearings.

Update II: Sen. Grassley grills the woman—who is manifestly working with half the brainpower of a Justice Roberts—about property rights and unlawful “takings.” Her responses are poor.
The Volokh Conspiracy: “During the confirmation hearings today, Judge Sotomayor considerably misstated of the holding of Kelo v. City of New London, making the decision seem more limited than it actually was. In response to questioning by Democratic Senator Herb Kohl, Sotomayor refused to reveal her view of Kelo, a standard tactic used by previous Supreme Court nominees, but also incorrectly claimed that Kelo upheld a taking in an ‘economically blighted area.'”

I’m disgusted at the absence of a transcript to refer to. What impoverished reporting from the mainstream media. Can’t they get a court stenographer to offer a contemporaneous transcript?

During the tremendously important session on Kelo, an anti-abortion dunderhead began screaming. Here I am straining to hear how the woman excused her troubling ruling in Didden v. Village of Port Chester, when one of those abortion idiots disrupts a most crucial moment in the hearing: a discussion of government’s violation of property rights. But then what would a zealot like that know about property rights!? This sort of “Christian” is forever demonstrating for the glory of aborting full-terms people abroad and protecting fetuses not HIS stateside.

Update III: SEN. CHARLES SCHUMER is showcasing the wonders of his nominee by walking her through decisions that prove her fidelity to the rule of law and not to feelings. At one point Sotomayor says she’s entrusted with doing what’s in the common good, which she equates with following the law. I thought that following the law was supposed to provide justice and a remedy for individuals or other entities wronged. The common good?

Update IV: So Republican Lindsey Graham of the interminable war on terror, amnesty for illegals and many other Republican initiatives, can be bright when he chooses to. He has been asking poignant questions on judicial philosophy: originalism vs. living-document doctrine; is there a right in the Constitution that provides for abortion, etc. In the last probe, Sotomayour was permitted to fudge the question. Naturally, the Constitution provides for no right to abortion. If abortion is to be regulated, it must be at the state level.

I spoke to soon; Graham has gone back to his area of moral comfort: the amorphous, ever-morphing war on terror.

So far, Sen. Charles Grassley gets my vote for canniest politician. He asked good questions on property rights.

Update V: Let’s get back to that part of the hearings. If I understood Sotomayor’s testimony on the Didden Case, “where her Second Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled that it was constitutionally permissible for a state to condemn property because the owners had refused developer Greg Wasser’s demand to pay him $800,000 or give him a 50% stake in their business, threatening to have the property condemned if they did not comply (via The Volokh Conspiracy)—then her decision against private property rights turned on a technicality.

Update VI (July 15): Judge Sotomayor and two other 2nd Circuit judges tried to bury their hastily written summary orders, “which represent the unanimous judgment of three appellate judges,” in the “discrimination suit by a group of [white] firefighters against New Haven, Conn.” As Stuart Taylor Jr. of National Journal tells it, this sneaky act might have prevented the case from coming before the SCOTUS. Fortunately, Judge Cabranes, “a Clinton appointee of Puerto Rican heritage — and once a mentor to [Sotomayor] — … published a blistering June 12, 2008, dissent,” thus bringing “the case forcefully to the attention of the Supreme Court.”

Read on.