Hammer to Fall: Why Conrad Black is Wrong About Tom DeLay

I have a certain amount of sympathy for Conrad Black. While I refuse to refer to him as Baron Black of Crossharbour because I think British royal titles are moronic unless you slay a fucking dragon or something, I do respect his intelligence and feel that a great injustice was done to him over the last decade.

I'm not going to argue Black's guilt or innocence, but I'll believe until the day I die that the United States didn't have jurisdiction to prosecute him, especially for the obstruction count that he was convicted of. All of the actions prosecuted in United States of America v. Black occurred in Canada, so fuck the United States.

The fact that Hollinger was a NYSE traded company are essentially meaningless. If that alone justifies the application of American criminal laws on foreign nationals foe actions outside the territorial U.S, then foreign nationals would do well to de-list their stock there. The Americans are out of control when it comes to the extraterritorial application of their fucking laws and that isn't going to change until it bites them in the pocketbook.

I also admire Mr. Black's advocacy of criminal defendants, which is something that all conservatives should engage in a lot more often.

If you believe that conservatism is predicated on a distrust of the power of the state and the competence of the state to wield that power responsibly, it only stands to reason that you would side with the most vulnerable potential victims of said power. Instead, too many conservatives have for too long advocated for increased government power against the individual in the criminal justice system. Worse, in arguing for that, they have insipidly put forth that the relevant parts of the Constitution don't mean what they actually say.

Sure, our friend Conrad had to feel the cold boot of the state himself before he came around to this view, but that shouldn't make his current writing any less worthy of your respect.

That's why I'm more than a little sad about this article of his.

In this context, Tom DeLay is, to use another hackneyed American media expression, an authentic American hero. I had hoped that after the chief of staff of the former vice president, Scooter Libby, had been convicted by a rabidly partisan jury when there was no conclusive evidence, only an uncorroborated difference of recollection with a journalist; and then six-term senator Ted Stevens was convicted on the basis of what was subsequently found to be wrongful withholding of exculpatory evidence, that the executive and legislative branches of the federal government might awaken to the threat that the rogue prosecutocracy poses to them. (Justice came too late for Senator Stevens; he lost his place in the Senate, very narrowly, a few days after the erroneous judgment, and died in an air crash after his conviction was reversed.) To paraphrase Scotland Yard in vintage murder cases, no man or woman in America is safe from this monster.

Yes, Ted Stevens was fucked over in a Kafka-esque nightmare. The fact that he was very probably guilty of something matters not a fucking whit. Justice demands that he be prosecuted with something specific and the government go out of its way to play fair. That didn't happen, and the fact that the prosecution team wasn't immediately sent before a firing dquad at dawn shows just how seriously the Justice Department takes justice.

On the other hand, there was no shortage of "conclusive evidence" regarding Scooter Libby's factual guilt. Libby lied to the FBI and perjured himself before a Grand Jury and there were several respected and disinterested eyewitnesses who testified to that effect. The only injustice in his case was that President Bush commuted his sentence, especially so shortly after the Clinton impeachment saga, which was essentially about the same thing.

And Tom DeLay is a two-legged fucking monster. To suggest that he's "an authentic American hero" is nothing short of laughable. DeLay is the undead, walking embodiment of everything that's wrong with politics generally and the Republican Party in particular.

During the Clinton impeachment, Speaker Newt Gingrich was finally kicked out of politics for well over a decade. DeLay and his fellow Texan and blood-enemy, the appropriately named Dick Armey were just below him, as Whip and Majority Leader respectively.

In simpler times, Armey would have become Speaker upon Gingrich's resignation and DeLay Majority Leader. But the Republican House conference was still somewhat sane back then. They knew that both of those twisted fucks would have been a public relations disaster. So they elected Robert Livingston Speaker.

Unfortunately, Livingston was also fabled for his love of strange pussy and was forced to resign just as the Articles of Impeachment against Clinton were being voted on. DeLay then essentially hand-picked the obscure and incompetent Dennis Hastert as a puppet Speaker. Armey was effectively bypassed and himself resigned in 2002, allowing DeLay to enable Bush to engage in the wildest spending spree in American history.

But absolute power was never quite absolute enough for young Tom. So he went out about using his influence with the Texas legislature and the state's mouth-breathing goof of a governor, Rick Perry, to engage in some unprecedented and probably unconstitutional redistricting in 2003, designed to increase the GOP's national House delegation at the expense of the Democrats.

Even that wasn't enough. Texas has an age-old law banning corporate contributions to state candidates. DeLay figured that he could work around that by funnelling the corporate contributions through the Republican National Committee, who would then launder them back to his preferred legislative candidates in Austin. That's money laundering and that's a fucking felony.

Conrad Black sees it differently.

Tom DeLay is fighting a good fight and has taken his tormentors most of the way toward the highest appeals court in the tenebrous thickets of Texas criminal justice, while denying them their almost inevitable moment of glee and self-satisfaction by avoiding imprisonment thus far as he pursues his appeal, which was heard Wednesday. The issue is $190,000 of contributions to his PAC, which were given to the Republican National Committee, which funneled them into seven Texas House races where the Republicans were successful, which allegedly facilitated a favorable redistribution of federal House of Representatives seats that durably advantaged the Republicans.

It has now come down to whether the state’s money-laundering law covers transfers made by check—like so much American legal skirmishing, serious points and the fate of human beings are gradually reduced, amidst mountainous enrichment of the rapacious American legal system, to arcana too absurd for any normal person to take seriously. PACs in Texas are allowed to support parties but not candidates, and the issue comes to whether this was a conversion of contributions gradually and by stages and without specific intent or a guilty mind, to a technically illegal end, or if it was an active and multilevel conspiracy to violate (ridiculous, vague, and unworkable) election-financing laws. The fact that the question even has to be put at this point, after it has been batted round and through various courts for over five years, should be enough to establish the reasonable doubt whose absence the law requires for criminal convictions, but which, by the miraculous operation of American criminal justice, is almost never found to exist.

Black's argument in this case is ridiculous on its face.

The fact that DeLay's PAC sent the donations through the RNC is evidence enough that he knew that sending them directly to his state candidates was illegal. That tends to demonstrate a consciousness of guilt and can lead reasonable people to conclude that he conspired to violate the state law on corporate contributions. I'm shocked that he wasn't convicted of conspiracy, too.

I'm inclined to agree with Black that most campaign finance laws are "ridiculous, vague, and unworkable" and I'd just as soon have them all done away with. But I very rarely get my way, and the law is the fucking law. Furthermore, "a conversion of contributions gradually and by stages" should make a reasonable person more inclined to believe that there was a "specific intent or a guilty mind," not less. A person who thought that their actions were lawful would have dumped all the converted contributions at once.

If this is the stuff that makes Tom DeLay a "hero in the martyrology being created by the antics of the American prosecutocracy," then Rod Blagojevich might properly be something akin to a saint.

As I mentioned earlier, I support Conrad Black's scrutiny of American justice. It's long overdue and he could bring serious conservatives to where they should have been decades ago. Too many people are essentially losing their lives because the government is more powerful than they are and richer in resources.

Having said that, sometimes a motherfucker is just guilty beyond words. And Tom DeLay is such a motherfucker.


Neat Editorial Note: None of the above should suggest that Tom DeLay isn't a clever little cocksucker. You see that photo at the top of the post? That's his booking photo.

DeLay was indicted in Travis County, which is Austin. He turned himself in after a warrant was issued in Harris County, which surrounds Houston. Apparently Harris County is the single Texas jurisdiction that doesn't include anything that indicates that you've been charged with a crime in their booking photos.

That allowed DeLay to make his arrest look like a campaign photo. Which was genius!