U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman
Posted on 12/18/2003 2:02:32 AM PST by Main Street
PONTEFICATIONS
THE MAN WHO SHOT PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN in March 1981 will be able to take unsupervised outings from the psychiatric facility where he was sent after being found not guilty by reason of insanity.
This ruling by U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman has caused widespread outrage. It will cause more when Americans learn that this highly-partisan judge was himself involved in an attempt to “assassinate” President Reagan politically.
Prior to his 1994 appointment to the Federal bench by President Bill Clinton, Paul L. Friedman in 1987-1988 was one of five Associate Independent Counsels assisting Lefty Lawrence Walsh’s political witch-hunt undertaken to cripple or destroy the Reagan Administration that history remembers as Iran-Contra.
Given his past as a partisan Reagan persecutor, Judge Friedman should have recused himself from deciding whether to release John W. Hinckley, Jr., 48, whose bullets came within inches of killing the same President that Friedman tried to bring down.
Instead, Friedman this week sent a message to America’s mentally unstable residents now being whipped by Democratic propaganda into hatred against current President George W. Bush that one can shoot a Republican President and not only escape the death penalty but also gain fame and regain freedom after doing so.
Perhaps Judge Friedman empathizes with madmen because he himself is a loony Leftist.
After being elevated from a private lawyer to one of the nation’s highest judgeships, Friedman became a member of the “Magnificent Seven,” as the first seven Clinton D.C. appointees modestly called themselves.
This cabal of Lefty judges quickly took to having monthly secret meetings as a group. “It’s not only in bad taste, it certainly has the appearance of impropriety,” one courthouse officer told the Washington Times. “It’s hard to imagine any rationale for these meetings.”
The stench from these judges later mingled with that of Clinton corruption and scandal cases that arrived at this court’s door. Such cases by custom had been assigned randomly by computer or drawing lots. But Democrat-appointed Chief U.S. District Judge Norma Holloway Johnson intervened and, in violation of all ethical standards, herself assigned Clinton-related cases entirely to Clinton-appointed, politically-friendly judges.
Clintonoid Judge Paul L. Friedman eagerly accepted the case of Democratic fundraiser Charlie Yah Lin Trie and threw out many charges against him. Trie later pled guilty after a federal appeals court overturned Friedman’s ruling.
Friedman’s involvement in this case, wrote Associated Press reporter Pete Yost of what expert observers thought, raised “an appearance problem at least” of “whether there has been impartial administration of justice.”
But Judge Friedman’s ideological reign of impropriety was only beginning. He gave only a feather-light slap on the wrist to Pauline Kanchanalak despite her illegal funneling of nearly $700,000 in illegal foreign contributions into Democratic coffers. He meted out even less punishment to Maria Hsia for her criminal role in Al Gore’s brown bag corrupt fundraising in 1996 at a Los Angeles Buddhist Temple. By arbitrarily dismissing virtually all charges against Hsia, Friedman made it almost impossible for prosecutors to plea bargain for her testimony against Clinton or Gore.
But while Judge Friedman found nothing wrong with Democrats raking in millions of foreign dollars in “soft money,” he in 1995 came down like a ton of bricks against Republican fundraising by Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich’s political action committee GOPAC.
“Can a judge be swayed by promises of future advancement, even to the Supreme Court if they rule correctly?” asked one commentator sardonically after observing Friedman’s rulings helpful to President Clinton and Vice President Gore.
Since then Judge Friedman has upheld the Internal Revenue Service selective removal of tax exempt status from a church that criticized then-President Bill Clinton. He has ordered Vice President Dick Cheney to turn over thousands of pages of documents from his confidential Energy Task Force for Democrat exploitation. He has continued to be one of America’s most relentlessly Democrat-friendly judges.
And now Judge Friedman has unleashed in Washington, D.C., only blocks from the White House, a man who nearly assassinated one Republican President and has shown recurrent evidence of lying to psychiatrists and retaining his obsessions.
One urban legend about American Presidents is the “Curse of Tecumseh,” the Shawnee Chief who after defeat in the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811 purportedly prophesied that the general who beat him, William Henry Harrison, would become President but would die in office. Harrison, in fact, died of illness a month after taking his presidential oath after being elected in 1840.
This curse, according to its expanded legend, means that every person elected President in a year ending in Zero will die in office. After Harrison, the president elected in 1860, Abraham Lincoln, would be assassinated. Ditto for the 1880 winner James Garfield and 1900 winner William McKinley.
Elected in 1920, Warren G. Harding would die in office of illness, as would the 1940 victor Franklin D. Roosevelt.
After his election in 1960 John F. Kennedy would die by an assassin’s bullet in Dallas, as nearly did 1980 winner Ronald Reagan.
Reagan beat Tecumseh’s Curse, narrowly living out his term. But after surviving Hinckley’s bullets, he seemed transformed, as if born again.
And now the would-be assassin who shot him is being unleashed only blocks away from the White House in which resides President George W. Bush, elected in 2000, a year ending in Zero.
Democrats have already tried to destroy this presidency, not only with their voodoo politics of invoking irrational hatred but also with their use of parliamentary gimmicks to prevent President Bush from using the powers the voters constitutionally gave him – including the power to appoint Federal judges.
In Judge Paul L. Friedman, we have the perfect ideological example of why and how Democrats rule – not just make rulings, but rule the nation – from the bench. In an earlier time we were “a government of laws and not men.”
But nowadays men in black robes arrogantly and arbitrarily declare the law to be whatever madhouse-opening thing they wish. The Democrats have loosed insanity and lawlessness upon our world, and wherever they rule no human being is safe.
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Mr. Ponte hosts a national radio talk show Saturdays 6-9 PM Eastern Time (3-6 PM Pacific Time) and Sundays 9 PM-Midnight Eastern Time (6-9 PM Pacific Time) on the Liberty Broadcasting network (formerly TalkAmerica). Internet Audio worldwide is at LibertyBroadcasting .com. The show’s live call-in number is (888) 822-8255. A professional speaker, he is a former Roving Editor for Reader’s Digest.
Psst, President Bush, lay off those pretzels. They'll kill ya.
"It is not like he shot a Democratic President or candidate like Robert Kennedy.
Who cares about Reagan, anyway?"
It is a mistake to subvert mental health care into a system for continuing incarceration because the criminal legal system either failed (as in this case) or does not have appropriate remedies (such as in recidivist sexual offenders).
If you believe that Hinckley should never be released then you should find a legal remedy. Endlessly claiming someone is dangerous who is not is a false and dangerous way to keep someone in jail. The communists were notorious for using hospitals as an alternative to prisons with the very best of intentions. God forbid this should happen here.
As far as the past political actions of the Judge in question, it is hard to imagine a man of affairs without political opinions and experience. The real fault lies not in appointing this judge but in not appointing other (Republican) judges with political beliefs and experience --Bjork, Estrada and so forth.
The Magnificent Seven's only justice is for "just them" and the Clintons.
The fact remains that there are many judges out there who are America's enemies.
Character does matter. That is why religion, the Boy Scouts, families, and anything wholesome are on their list of things to be destroyed.
BUMP
A very interesting idea. Let's see what Ted thinks about that.
The point is intent!
Anyone who fires a gun at another person has the intention of killing that person.
The penalty for that outragious act, whether successful or not, should be death.
In my opinion, intending to kill, but missing the target is no excuse for a lesser penalty!!
That's the justification for releasing the guy in Minnesota who probably killed Dru Sjodin, too.
If you believe that Hinckley should never be released then you should find a legal remedy.
What do you suggest? I think Republicans would like to abolish of the 'not guilty by reason of insanity' verdict (along with other legal reforms); but with trial lawyers in the Dims' hip pockets there's about as much chance for that as for the proverbial snowball in hell.
The real fault lies not in appointing this judge but in not appointing other (Republican) judges with political beliefs and experience --Bjork, Estrada and so forth.
Heh. Their names may derive from the same north Germanic root, but otherwise the similarities are... nil...
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