---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2000 08:40:26 -0700
From: DOC <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
July 31, 2000
ESSAY / By WILLIAM SAFIRE
Norma the Plumber
WASHINGTON -- Democrat Norma Holloway Johnson, in my view the
most partisan and power-abusive judge on the federal bench, is
finally being forced to answer questions about her conduct.
To avert favoritism, the chief judge of the D.C. District Court
is supposed to assign judges to cases randomly. But when
assigning politically sensitive cases involving Webster Hubbell
and Charlie Trie, Judge Johnson veered "off the wheel" to direct
those cases to Clinton-appointed judges.
When this apparent subversion of the administration of justice
drew fire in the press and a formal complaint from Judicial
Watch, the Judicial Council of D.C. listened to the chief
judge's protestations at any challenge to her integrity and too
hastily dismissed the complaint.
Then Representative Howard Coble, chairman of House Judiciary's
subcommittee on the courts, sent the Court of Appeals here
evidence of four more cases in which Chief Judge Johnson bypassed
the system to steer cases embarrassing to Democrats (including
that of Clinton-Gore fund-raiser Maria Hsia) to judges
notoriously soft on Clintonites. The implicit message: if the
Judicial Branch didn't clean up its act internally, the
Legislative Branch would step up to its constitutional
responsibility.
This evidence was somewhat sternly passed down to Judge Johnson's
embarrassed see-no-evil colleagues. They hastily convened a
five-judge panel to protect themselves from complicity in what
the House subcommittee chairman called an assignment procedure
that was "unusual, unorthodox and may be improper."
The Judicial Council hired an investigator. He is Joe D.
Whitley, a lackadaisical former U.S. attorney in Atlanta who
recused himself in the 80's Banca Lavoro scandal -- a suitably
Republican choice, but not the type to rock a boat in D.C.
However, when Whitley asked for the chief judge's records to
ascertain a pattern of partisanship in assignments, goes the
scuttlebutt, Johnson resisted until so ordered by the Judicial
Council. Now genial Joe is duty-bound to take testimony from
Johnson's possibly intimidated law clerks about any discussions
with them about what to tell the investigator.
Logic suggests we now have one furious chief judge. In the midst
of all this, and perhaps temperamentally related to it, the
vindictive Norma Holloway Johnson launches and pursues a leak
investigation even more bizarre and chilling than in the days of
the Nixon "plumbers."
The object of the beleaguered judge's rage is Charles Bakaly,
once Ken Starr's spokesman. She went after him for supposedly
leaking grand jury information; when the Court of Appeals decided
that no grand jury secrecy was involved, the angry judge charged
him with lying about a non-crime. (Nice irony there.) She wants
to brand him a criminal for swearing he did not pass on
"non-public" information in talking with a New York Times
reporter.
The huge secret that so incenses our out-of-control jurist was
that the independent counsel was considering indicting President
Clinton. Some secret: that possibility has been common knowledge
for years, and Starr's successor makes no bones about it in
public.
I have not discussed the case with my colleague, but I am one of
the thousands of journalists who discuss non-public information
with all kinds of sources every day (sometimes calling it
scuttlebutt) for the public purpose of making it public. I see
Johnson's vendetta as her intemperate way of getting even with
the House, the independent counsel and the press.
Consider: she makes an accusation of criminal contempt and asks
the Justice Department to prosecute her target in her court.
Reno Justice knows her charge is an egregious mixture of
petulance and arrogance, sure to be rejected by a jury, but does
not exercise its prosecutorial discretion to decline. Why?
Because Reno political appointees owe Johnson plenty for steering
Clinton cases to Clinton-appointed judges, and Justice's career
lawyers are terrified of her wrath.
So Justice and the out-of-control judge, perhaps in collusion,
make the criminal charge petty enough to rate only six months in
the slammer, which takes away a defendant's right to trial by
jury. Result: the accusation is made by Norma the Plumber, the
trial is conducted by Norma the Plumber, the verdict is rendered
by Norma the Plumber, and the sentence is meted out by Norma the
Plumber.
If that is justice in Washington D.C, something is rotten in the
state of the Judicial Branch.
=================================================================
Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
*Mike Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
~~~~~~~~ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
Shalom, A Salaam Aleikum, and to all, A Good Day.
=================================================================
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