At Stardate 20030626.2315, Jan Coffey wrote:
> Further, a judge is accountable to the Justice Dept.; when reports come > in about a judge seemingly abusing his powers, the Justice Dept. will > investigate and if necessary take action.
You certainly do trust your governemnt a lot.
Of course we do -- the people in the government are there because we (the people) voted them into government. We wouldn't vote someone into office if we didn't trust that person. That doesn't mean that after the election we return to our daily lives and not check on our elected leaders, though. If they screw up, they have betrayed our trust and I can assure you that then there'll be hell to pay.
Regardless of their political views, our elected leaders to be reasonable and intelligent people. They know very well that if they screw up, they'll pay the price for that at the next election.
Does the American public actually have any idea about how we perceive your extreme distrust of government and anything that reeks of government involvement? You can argue about whether or not it is justified, but over here the general perception is that your fear of government borders on paranoia. And the "the rest of the world is out to get us" argument we hear so often doesn't exactly help to contradict our perceptions.
> >The addition of a required explination on the other hand sounds like a > >good idea. "Explain the proof" that is an improvement that I will be > >mailing to my senator and congraswoman as soon as I can get it reviewed > >for spelling etc.. > > More accurately: "explain how you reached your decision".
It sounds good that a jury should have to explain their decision. What else?
Well, a cold beer sure would be nice. Hey, it's 30 degrees out here! :-)
Oh wait, that's not what you meant, right? Well, lessee, what else? How about a jury (if you insist on having one) whose members are not your peers but are selected from all walks of life? That way the jury decision will be more representative of how the entire population would vote. When your case is decided by your peers, there's a bigger chance of the jury voting "not guilty" to protect one their own.
Example. Location: Some southern state, in a town where racism is still rampant. A white working-class guy murders a black guy. The jury is made up of his peers: they're all white, all working-class, they all live in the same town. Personally I would be surprised if that jury would find the killer guilty.
Then there's also the issue of deciding when someone qualifies as your peer. I mean, for someone to resemble my peer as closely as possible, he would have to be a white male, 36 years old, married, a two-year old son, and a job as sys-admin for a government agency. Where do you draw the line?
Jeroen van Baardwijk
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