Steve M. makes a relevant point about another comparison Cheneyite conservatives are using to justify the McCarthyism of Keep America Safe. Hans von Spakovsky -- who is as equipped to talk about proper hiring practices as Tiger Woods is to talk about monogamy -- offered this argument, reported by Dave Weigel:
I certainly don't think those same lawyers should be in the Justice Department directing policy and making decisions on prosecutions of those same terrorists. That would be like hiring Mob lawyers in the Organized Crime and Narcotics Task Force or hiring someone who volunteered to defend the Klu Klux Klan in the Civil Rights Division. Those lawyers who all come from big firms have a wide choice of who to help on a pro bono basis and their choice of terrorists says a lot about them –- I would not hire them to represent my company either if I were still a corporate in-house counsel, because I would not want my company's money subsidizing that kind of legal work.
Right. Take it away, Steve:
How about Eleanor Holmes Norton, currently D.C.'s non-voting member of the House of Representatives, who, as a young ACLU lawyer, defended the free-speech rights of Klansmen, George Wallace, and the National States Rights Party?
Or Anthony P. Griffin, who defended a Klan Grand Dragon in the early 1990s and won the 1993 William J. Brennan, Jr., Award from the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression?
Or David P. Baugh, who defended a Klan cross-burner in 1998 and subsequently received the Virginia State Bar's Lewis F. Powell Jr. Pro Bono Award?
All three of these lawyers are African-American, by the way.
Again, the difference between the Cheneyites and everyone else is the latter think the law applies to everyone, whereas the Cheneyites think only their friends have rights and only their enemies should be punished.
-- A. Serwer
