Joe Fahey

There are certain events that occur during your lifetime about which you will always remember where you were and whom you were with when they occurred. The attack on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the airplane crash in Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001 is one. If you’re old, like me, you remember where you were on November 22, 1963 when President Kennedy was killed. So, the recent reports that a knife had been found on the former estate of OJ Simpson that could be the murder weapon, caused memories of that trial and verdict almost twenty-one years ago to come flooding back into my memory.

The discovery of the knife was as bizarre as almost everything else associated with the trial. A construction worker during the demolition of the Simpson estate allegedly found the knife and turned it over to a Los Angeles police officer. That officer, rather than turning the knife in to the department, kept it as a souvenir. This year, after trying to learn the Simpson case number which he was going to have engraved into the knife, it was confiscated by the department for testing.

The not guilty verdict in the Simpson case was initially stunning. The trial had lasted almost one year but jury deliberations took less than one day. In my view, it was the only criminal trial I watched in which there was not a single piece of exculpatory evidence. The swiftness of the deliberations led the world to assume that Simpson was about to be convicted. The verdict was also one of the most racially polarizing issues the nation had seen although recently, the Washington- Post reports that a majority of the African-American community now believes that Simpson was guilty.

With the benefit of two decades hindsight, it is easier to understand why the verdict was reached.

The trial judge was caught up in his own newly found celebrity and completely lost control of the trial. The prosecutors were totally inept putting a racist cop on the stand to account for the recovery of a key piece of evidence, a bloody glove allegedly worn by Simpson. To compound this error they allowed the witness to deny his racist views only to have them revealed in all their ugliness on tapes of interviews he had given to a writer. Moreover, the racism displayed in the tapes was emblematic of the culture that permeated the Los Angeles Police department which patrolled African-American and Latino neighborhoods like an army of occupation without any pretense of protecting and serving.

And of course there was the “Dream Team” of defense lawyers and experts who played to the antipathy that the minority members of the jury had for the Los-Angeles Police Department and the ugly racist sentiments expressed by the detective who discovered the glove. Of course, you couldn’t have a “Dream Team” that didn’t have a Kardashian on it. This was the genesis of the national affliction we are forced to bear by the incessant self-promotion of this family.

Most recently the Los-Angeles Police Department announced that the knife is unconnected to the murder of Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman but not before the Los Angeles Times reported that Simpson was “nervous” about the knife’s discovery and how it might affect his chances for parole in Nevada. Also, this week Alan Deshowitz, one of the members of the “Dream Team,” declared on CNN that it is possible O.J. Simson was both guilty and framed by the Los-Angeles Police Department.

In the end, it appears that O.J. may be the only inmate in the country who is serving a lengthy prison sentence in one state for a crime that he was found not guilty of in an another state.

God sees.

Last month in a post entitled ”Where Have You Gone Joe Dimaggio,” I discussed the civility that Senator Bernie Sanders has displayed in his contest with Hillary Clinton. That same characteristic is on display in the Republican match-up in the way in which Governor John Kasich has conducted himself.

The Republican candidates have had twelve debates. Despite being an admitted political junkie, I stopped watching them after the seventh one. My curiosity got the better of me before the eleventh and final one so tuned in. The reason why I missed debates eight through ten immediately reoccurred to me as the dialogue degenerated into a discussion of the size of Donald Trump’s hands and other anatomical appendages. Rubio became “Little Marco” and Cruz became “Lying Ted.” Alone on the stage attempting to inject some intelligent discourse into the event was the Governor of Ohio, John Kasich.

Kasich refused to engage in the name-calling and shouting that Trump, Cruz and Rubio incessantly resorted to. At one point, moderator, Chris Wallace, aired a somewhat humorous political ad that Kasich’s super PAC had run comparing Donald Trump to Russian President Vladimir Putin and asked Kasich if he really thought the comparison had merit. Kasich responded by telling Wallace that he “wouldn’t bite “on that question.

Reflecting on that debate, I was struck by how little time or attention that Kasich received from the moderators. Almost the entire debate was focused on the mud-wrestling Trump, Cruz and Rubio were engaged in. That mirrored what had occurred in the first seven debates that I watched. Those who received little attention inevitably sank in the polls and withdrew from the race. Most of them were far more experienced and credentialed than the three who received the time and attention.

It is clear that the various networks sponsoring the debates have committed an extraordinary amount of time and money to covering the 2016 race for the White House. They have a vested interest in insuring that they obtain the highest ratings for these debates in order to boost advertising revenue and recoup their investment. In doing so, they have skewered the outcome of the nominating contest on the Republican side by driving the adults in the room from the race.

This year we seem to have a penchant for Bullies.

The political rhetoric is abundant with calls for torture, waterboarding, carpet bombing and any other use of extreme and, perhaps unlawful, force against America’s enemies.

Actual violence has even broken out at some political events.

At a Trump rally in Birmingham, Alabama a Black Lives Matter protester was beaten and ejected from a Trump Rally. Asked to comment on it, Trump opined that “Maybe he should have been roughed up.” The following month at a rally in Las Vegas, Nevada, Trump said he would like “punch in the face” a protester that was escorted out of his event.
Trump’s rhetoric encouraging such mob violence has been escalating since earlier events held in other locales such as his Miami Doral Resort. No one should be surprised at these turn of events since Trump has used bullying language to insult Mexicans, Muslims and the Disabled.

Trump, however, is not the only bully on the political stage.

Governor Andrew Cuomo is not above using bullying tactics to upstage his perceived rivals and those who disagree with him on public policy.

One would have thought that Cuomo and New York City Mayor, Bill de Blasio, would have been natural partners, both having served in the Bill Clinton Administration. Yet the Mayor was barely in office when Cuomo undercut his State legislative agenda which included tax abatement for affordable housing and a renewal of mayoral control over the New York City schools. The Mayor commenting on Cuomo’s actions said that “if someone disagrees with him openly, some kind of revenge or vendetta follows.”

No one knows that better than Syracuse Mayor, Stephanie Miner, who was on the staff of Governor Mario Cuomo.

When Cuomo proposed that municipalities could defer pension payments into the future to avoid borrowing and balance their budgets, Mayor Miner wrote a well-reasoned op-ed piece in the New York Times disagreeing with the wisdom of the plan. Time proved Mayor Miner right.

Since that article appeared the Governor rejected providing any assistance to help Syracuse repair its aged and crumbling water pipes, responding; “Fix your own pipes.” Apparently he believe the money would be better spent on a lake side amphitheater on Onondaga Lake or building a new football stadium for Syracuse University, a private educational institution.

Indeed the Governor has expressed his pique by refusing to set foot inside the city in all of his visits to Central New York since the article appeared. It leads one to wonder whether he is intent on setting a new standard for pettiness or is simply geographically challenged.

In the end these two bullies have two thing in common.

First is that they inherited highly recognizable names from their fathers.

Second, is that if they hadn’t been born with those names, they would both be homeless.

I won’t miss Antonin Scalia.
What he brought to the American system of justice was neither fair nor just.
During my career as a trial court judge, I obtained an advanced law school degree in criminal law. The particular area I concentrated on was Constitutional Law.
I read every Death Penalty decision decided by the Rehnquist Supreme Court, which began at the same time that Judge Scalia became a member of that Court. The Rehnquist era lasted from 1986 to 2005.

Throughout that period Scalia almost never voted to reverse a death sentence. It didn’t matter what issues were raised even when accompanied by a claim of actual innocence. He almost always either affirmed when the appeal was denied or dissented when the rest of the bench voted to reverse. His opinions in support of what Justice Blackmun once described as the “machinery of death” were excessive to the point of being bloodthirsty. He erected or supported as many barriers as could be constructed, substantively or procedurally, to death penalty appellants challenging some fatally flawed trials and yet claim that there were no cases…” in which it is clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit. If such an event had occurred in recent years, we would not have to hunt for it; the innocent’s name would be shouted from the rooftops by the abolition lobby.”

In Scalia’s world the execution of Cameron Todd Willingham never occurred and the fruits and successes of the Innocence Project did not exist.
I sometimes wondered how he would have reacted if one of his relatives or a grandchild had been unfortunate enough to find themselves on Death Row. Perhaps we might have found out what he was truly made of.

His disdain for the “damned and despised” as Clarence Darrow once described them, was not limited to death penalty appellants.

He railed against gay citizens in an opinion which struck down laws that criminalized sexual relations between consenting adults, proclaiming; “Today’s opinion is the product of a Court, which is the product of a law-profession culture, that has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda, by which I mean the agenda promoted by some homosexual activists directed at eliminating the moral opprobrium that has traditionally attached to homosexual conduct.”

Last year he double-downed on that moral judgement in his dissent in the decision that affirmed the right of gay people to marry.

In a recent case before the Court involving what role affirmative action might play in the admission policies of the University of Texas, Scalia cited some dubious research in a brief that suggested that African-American students might not succeed in a challenging academic setting and observed; “I don’t think it stands to reason that it’s a good thing for the University of Texas to admit as many blacks as possible.”

Before he arrived on the Court, death penalty laws were evaluated by whether they were consistent with “evolving standards of decency’ and the Constitution was considered to be a “living document” capable of being applied to the changing standards of a modern world. Scalia rejected this concept and, instead espoused something called an “originalist” and “textualist” interpretation that required it be applied according to the intent of the founding fathers or those who when it was amended. In short, the Constitution would have no more relevance to current times than the Dead Sea Scrolls.

There have been times throughout his career and in his opinions that he has sounded like Donald Trump in a robe with a pen. I’ve never expected much from Donald Trump, I did expect more from Scalia.

If you’d like to comment on the blog please contact jefahey2016@gmail.com and I’ll set up an account. All existing users wishing to send an e-mail should use this new address.

I have been a political junkie all of my life. One of my constant refrains has been that the only two things in life that I will bet on are prize-fights and political races because anything can happen. That last statement seems like a bit of an understatement this year.
The Republican race for President, as I’ve said, resembles a demolition derby. The only thing that the candidates seem to agree on is that everyone else in the race is a liar. Indeed, some have characterized others as being “the biggest liar” or “the worst liar I have ever met.” For awhile, I thought there might be Guinness Book of Records contest going on this year in that category. It will be very interesting when the Party holds its Convention this July in Cleveland and selects a nominee and all of the candidates have to endorse him and proclaim that he is the only one Americans should believe in.
I thought I’d seen everything that could happen in politics and then Donald Trump decided to go to war with Pope Francis.
Some of his supporters will contend that the Pope struck first by impugning Trump’s genuineness as a Christian, however it was Trump who characterized the Pope as being a “political Pope” and suggested that the Mass he celebrated on the Juarez border was a prop staged by the Mexican government.
Once my shock at Trump’’s audacity had subsided I was able to give his tactic a more cold-eyed appraisal. It became clear to me that Trump saw this gambit as another way to appeal to Evangelical voters, who distrust the Catholic Church and in a state in which Catholics are a distinct minority.
The battle for Evangelical voters within the Republican Party has been going on for at least two decades. We are now into the second generation of Evangelical church leaders such as Jerry Falwell Jr. and Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham, either endorsing a candidate or registering their flock to vote. Candidates this year are increasingly trying to pander to this voting bloc. Cruz is harping on Judeo-Christian values and using his Evangelical pastor father as a surrogate. Rubio trumpets the fact that he attends two churches, one is Roman-Catholic and the other Evangelical. Trump rails against Muslims, vowing to bar them from the country and has now taken on the Pope.
Forty-five years ago John F. Kennedy had to appear before the Greater Houston Ministerial Association to defend his right, as a Roman-Catholic, to run for President. His eloquent exposition about the need to keep religious beliefs separate from the discharge of official duties should be required reading for anyone seeking public office today and in the future. http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jfkhoustonministers.html
It might bring us back to time when the separation of Church and State is once again viewed not as a vice but a virtue. Miracles sometimes happen.

American politics could use more candidates like Senator Bernie Sanders. He may be the last true gentleman to be in that arena.

I am not offering an opinion on who you should vote for in this Presidential election but Senator Sanders has conducted his campaign with an uncommon civility not seen anywhere else this year.

He has refused to run negative advertisements against either of the opponents he has faced in the contest for the Democratic Party nomination. He has repeatedly refused to criticize Hillary Clinton on the issue of her private e-mail server.

When it is apparent that she is more knowledgeable about an issue, particularly in the area of foreign affairs, he has readily acknowledged it. He treats his opponents with respect and has displayed a dignity throughout the debates and town hall gatherings consistently.

The contest for the Republican Party nomination appears to be little more than a demolition derby with Donald Trump driving the biggest car. He called Mexicans “rapists and criminals.” He has called for a ban on all Muslims entering the country. He has insulted African-Americans, the disabled, his opponents, the media and anyone else that draws his ire. Just as disappointing, his fellow Republican opponents have remained mute during his verbal assaults on Mexicans, Muslims and other immigrant groups, particularly the two who celebrate their own immigrant stories, Rubio and Cruz.

Equally refreshing is Sanders refusal to employ his own super-Pac. The United States Supreme Court, in its infinite wisdom, has allowed the electoral process to become a cesspool by its dubious holdings that corporations enjoy the same rights as people and that the unregulated, undisclosed sources of vast sums of money somehow constitute the exercise of free speech. As a result, for the rest of this year you might be afraid to turn your television on due to the commercials you might see.

I don’t know who will ultimately prevail in either nominating contest but Sanders deportment throughout this process is a breath of fresh air.

I have a three year-old granddaughter who is very big on “Do Overs.” She likes to wake up adults in the morning and if you get up ahead of her, you have to get back into bed and pretend you’re asleep so she can still wake you up. The same is true of unwrapping a present. She likes to help. If you unwrap a gift in front of her without her help, she’ll make you re-wrap it so that she can help you unwrap it.
Earlier this year an anti-abortion group based in California secretly recorded videos purporting to show Planned Parenthood officials agreeing to sell fetal body parts for profit. Planned Parenthood officials charged that the recordings were heavily edited and created a misleading account of the interviews with the filmmakers, who themselves posed as willing purchasers.
The ensuing uproar led to demands that the U.S. government defund Planned Parenthood and one candidate for President, Carley Fiorina, claimed the video showed a live aborted fetus, when it plainly did not. The Lieutenant-Governor of Texas demanded that the District Attorney of Harris County based in Houston open a grand jury investigation of Planned Parenthood to see if criminal charges against the organization and its officials were warranted. Both public officials are registered Republicans too.
In one of those “Be Careful What You Ask For” moments that we rarely see, the grand jury did bring criminal charges. It indicted two members of the anti-abortion group for their conduct in making the videos and cleared Planned Parenthood of any wrongdoing.
Now, the lawyers representing the indicted anti-abortion activists want a “do over.” They contend that the grand jury became a “run-away” grand jury that indicted the wrong parties. They want a “do over” in which a second grand jury is empaneled.
A “run-away” grand jury is a grand jury which ignores the wishes of a prosecutor and its members decide for themselves who and what it will investigate. They are historically rare and were most often seen in the last century when some of them decided to investigate official corruption in various localities like New York City on their own.
Since members of a grand jury are the sole determiners of both the credibility of witnesses and what facts occurred, it is hard to see how the findings of this grand jury and the charges it brought are flawed. This is particularly so because a grand jury cannot take any official action unless a majority of its members are in agreement.
Following indictment a judge may examine the evidence that was presented to the grand jury to see if it is legally sufficient to support the criminal charges lodged but getting “do over” in which charges are represented to another grand jury absent a finding that the evidence is insufficient is unheard of.
The Harris County prosecutor who describes herself as “pro-life,” has declared that her office is “open to hearing the lawyers concerns” and her spokesperson has suggested that “Sometimes justice is served by dismissing cases.”
That would be the ultimate “do over” and would hardly inspire confidence in the justice system.
It’s far more serious that waking someone up or unwrapping a present.

Have you ever noticed that when politicians advocate putting “boots on the ground” in a combat zone, it’s always someone else’s boots? Never their own.
This has become increasingly evident during this 2016 Presidential campaign as the candidates try to outdo one another in appearing the most forceful about getting “boots on the ground.”
A look at all of the candidates in both parties reveal that while many could have been called, few chose to go. (Sorry about the Biblical analogy).
Donald Trump could have served in Vietnam but suffered from plantar fasciitis. He hasn’t disclosed which foot was afflicted. Ben Carson and Jeb Bush were also at an age when they could have served in Vietnam but for unknown reasons did not. All three of them advocate sending troops to battle ISIS
Governor Chris Christie, Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio could have served in the first Gulf War in 1991 but apparently chose not to. All three of them advocate sending troops to fight ISIS.
On the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders could have served in Vietnam but did not. To be fair, he does not advocate sending troops to any combat zones. Hillary Clinton’s position is somewhat nuanced. While she supports a No-Fly Zone in Syria, she does not favor putting boots on the ground. Her husband, former president, Bill Clinton, famously avoided the draft during the Vietnam War. Martin O’Malley was too young to have served in Vietnam and too old to have served in the First Gulf War. He too does not favor either a No-Fly Zone in Syria or committing American troops.
What can you take away from this?
The late columnist, Mike Royko, had a term he used to describe politicians who favored sending others to fight wars while they avoided it. He called them “war wimps.”
It would be interesting to see how those politicians who favor sending troops to combat zones would vote on a restoration of the Selective Service Draft that would encompass their children of both genders.
My guess is that they’d oppose it, while still advocating sending other people’s children to bear the burden they avoided.
I’m not sure which candidate in either party is going to win the caucuses in Iowa tomorrow night but this bears thinking about as we head into the November 2016 election.

The American humorist, Mark Twain, once wrote that there are three kinds of lies: “lies, damned lies and statistics.”
In March of last year, Duke University basketball coach, Mike Krzyzewski, Was the only Division I men’s’ coach to win 1,000 games. It was expected that Syracuse University basketball coach, Jim Boeheim, who had over 966 wins was expected to be the next Division I men’s’ coach to cross that threshold.
That expectation was dashed on March 15, 2015 when the NCAA stripped Boeheim of 108 victories due to eligibility issues some of his players had during earlier seasons and which the University had disclosed through self-reporting. On December 3, 2015 the NCAA denied Boeheim’s appeal and upheld the sanctions it imposed. Boeheim now ranks sixth in most victories.
This isn’t the first time or the first sport in which the NCAA had sanctioned an athletic program by stripping the coach of victories. The University of Michigan’s basketball program was stripped of 113 victories for violations, Penn State head coach, Joe Paterno was stripped of 112 victories following the conviction of assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky, for committing multiple sex offenses against children in the Penn State locker room.
The use of this kind of sanction is a curious one since it calls into question the historical integrity of the NCAA’s record keeping and raises more questions. If those 108 victories are nullified how is the won-lost record of the defeated team affected? Does that team now get to claim a victory? What about the points scored by the individual players? Are they nullified too?
Even more curious is the NCAA’s determination to uphold the sanction despite having reinstated the 112 victories Paterno’s team won while Sandusky was sexually abusing children. It certainly makes one wonder about the NCAA’s priorities.
I think Twain would characterize this one as a damned lie.