Doing nothing ought to be a crime. The conventional wisdom,
which on visiting days can probably be verified by polling the
involuntary guests (a.k.a. inmates) of our better penal
institutions, is that you had to have done something --
anything --to be considered to have committed a crime.
Walking down the cells blocks one would be hard put to find someone
behind bars for not raping a girl, or not
committing a burglary, or not stabbing a person. However,
in terms of the number of people that are in one way or another
injured, some of the worst crimes imaginable are committed by
people not doing something -- and some of the worst
offenders are people who you would never think of as criminals.
Their crimes run the gamut from relatively mild ones, those
committed against the body politic, to the crime of murder.
Senator Robert Torricelli, the Tony Soprano of the U.S. Senate,
because of a remarkable combination of fund-raising abilities,
chutzpah, and the Senate's high level of tolerance for the illegal
conduct of its members, managed to dodge the repeated efforts of
law enforcement to give him a forced retirement as a guest of the
U.S. Department of Prisons. When it came time for him to face the
New Jersey electorate he was opposed by a political unknown, Doug
Forrester. Forrester campaigned unmercifully against Torricelli on
the one issue that sat on the road to Torricelli's re-election like
a 300-pound gorilla: Torricelli's lawless behavior.
Torricelli slavishly followed former President Clinton's "They
never convicted me of anything and I didn't do anything but I
apologize anyway or not doing anything because people may have
thought I did what I didn't do anyway it all depends on what the
word 'do' means" approach to these sorts of problems.
Unfortunately, while this worked for Clinton, it was not working
for Torricelli, who was falling as much as thirteen points behind
in the pre-election polls.
To make matters worse, Torricelli was unable to block a federal
judge from releasing a pre-sentencing report stating that David
Chang, the person who is now in jail for his illegal gifts to
Torricelli, including an $8,100 Rolex watch, made accusations that
were "credible in most respects." If all this were not bad enough,
a 38-minute, commercial-free TV interview with Chang was broadcast
in New Jersey. Torricelli, in order to avoid further humiliation
and, in his view, to prevent the Garden State from falling into the
GOP column, resigned from the campaign. The only difficulty for the
Democrats was a New Jersey law requiring, quite sensibly, that any
substitution of candidates be made at least 51 days before election
-- a deadline missed by a two-week margin. The New Jersey Supreme
Court, in a decision defying both law and logic, found that the law
did not say what it clearly said, and allowed mega-rich former
senator Frank Lautenberg to become the Democratic nominee.
The court's reasoning was that to hold otherwise would deny the
New Jersey voters a choice of a Democratic candidate. The court
ignored the reality that any voter who chose to vote for any
Democrat could simply write in the Democrat's name on the ballot.
Of more importance is the fact that the Democratic Party
did in fact choose a candidate. It was the party's choice
to wait until it was clear that its candidate could not win -- and
unfortunately that realization and decision came about within the
proscribed period-- and only then was his candidacy withdrawn. The
United States Supreme Court refused to hear any appeal of the New
Jersey court's decision, and by this refusal allowed the lower
court's decision to remain unaffected.
The illogic and mischief of this decision is obvious. A
campaigning candidate may spend all his time and treasure hammering
away at an issue which, because of the other candidate's actions or
positions, have been placed at core-center of the campaign. When
the electorate is finally convinced of the accuracy of the
accusations, the weakened candidate is withdrawn, and another
substituted, leaving the remaining candidate exhausted of funds and
having to start all over again.
But why stop at substituting candidates only once? Why not keep
doing it until a winner turns up? The United States Supreme Court,
by choosing to do nothing, allowed a miscarriage of justice and
certainly provided a precedent for this sort of thing to occur in
the future with second, third and fourth choice candidates warming
up in the ball pen like replacement pitchers.
No less a revered personage that President Franklin Roosevelt,
by his careful non-action, allowed mass murder to take place.
The steamship Saint Louis arrived in Havana harbor from
Hamburg with 937 passengers who had fled from the jack boots of
Hitler's storm troopers as they marched and murdered across Europe.
Roosevelt refused the refugees admission to the U.S., sending the
boat back to Europe with a sure and certain fate awaiting the
passengers of ultimately ending up in waiting gas chambers .
Historian Michael Beschloss in his just-published book, The
Conquerors, reveals that Churchill, in the hope of impeding
the Nazi death camp murders of Jews, wanted to mount an air strike
against the camps and their adjacent rail facilities.
"He [Churchill] told his Foreign secretary Anthony Eden, that
Hitler's war against Jews was 'probably the greatest and most
horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world,'
adding: 'Get everything out of the Air Force you can, and invoke
me, if necessary.' In July, 1944 Churchill was told that U.S.
bomber pilots could do the job best ..."
Roosevelt refused to do anything and millions of Jews were
destroyed in the ovens. Interestingly, Roosevelt who, to this day
is revered by most Jews, had less then a love for Jews. The book
reveals:
"After World War II began, FDR had privately said to Morgenthau
[Henry Morgenthau was Treasury Secretary, a Jew, and a Hudson
Valley friend of Roosevelt] and a Catholic appointee, Leo Crowley,
'You know this is a Protestant country, and the Catholics and Jews
are here under sufferance.' He bluntly told them it was 'up to you'
to 'go along with anything I want.'"
President Bush had the choice to do nothing about Iraq. This
would have been the most comfortable course for him. Perhaps the
Iraqis would do nothing with their weapons of mass destruction
until after his administration was over. And if they acted before
that time, he could have sat back and said "I told you so" and, in
the meantime, let Americans and the rest of the world bathe in the
sunlight of false security. He chose not to do this. So perhaps
history is a fine teacher -- at least to those who heed its
lessons.
topics:
Law, Supreme Court, Iraq, NATO
