Whenever there is a defendant in a notorious case, somebody like Timothy McVeigh, I always smell a rat when, out of the woodwork, comes some “top lawyer with a national reputation” to take over the case from the local public defender or mall lawyer defending him.
If you want to know *why* I distrust this, call it the “Breaker Morant” principle. If you’ve seen the movie, it is about military officers that are being railroaded in a trial. However, the important thing is that they were denied a “good” attorney, and given an inexperienced, but honest and energetic young attorney to defend them, and he *almost* got them an acquittal.
If you want to railroad someone in a trial, the last thing you want is an “unknown factor”, that could ruin the case. You want everything to be under your control to insure a conviction, and in these cases, an execution.
The way to get around this is to bring in a “professional loser”, who everybody, including the defendant, thinks is doing a great job defending him, but who screws up just enough to *insure* a conviction.
And that is where the big “Washington lawyer” comes in. They are the guaranteed nail in your coffin, to insure you have no, zero chance of getting an acquittal, mistrial, appeal, or any other way around your conviction.
Kenneth Starr was this, in reverse. He was hired to *guarantee* that no serious charges would be brought against Bill Clinton. Also to occupy space and use up resources that someone else might have used to nail that corrupt SOB on any number of *real* criminal charges.
No, Ken Starr was the best friend Bill Clinton ever had.
And the same rule applies to whatever big name lawyer is out there, such as Ted Olson and David Boies. They are utterly indifferent to these gay couples. Probably indifferent to the California law. Their interest is at the *federal* level.
So whose side are they really on? Have they been ordered by their overlords to create a case for the new SCOTUS, on appeal? The purpose in doing so would be to legislate national gay marriage from the bench, like Roe v. Wade was legislated. That is, their real bosses would have counted heads at the SCOTUS, and figured they will win if a good test case is brought before them.
Conversely, though I’m not betting on it, Olson and Boies might have been ordered to so screw up gay marriage at the federal level, that it has no chance of being pushed through by a lower federal bench.
The point is, that lawyers of this kind are never doing what they appear to be doing, so should always be looked at with the darkest of distrust and skepticism. They are just as likely to be doing exactly the opposite of what they are supposed to be doing, as doing something so inscrutable, the entire game is ruined.
Damn - great, great post! But I just fought you on another thread! Sigh. Can't you be a consistent bad guy? I hate having to think through everything.
All I can say is wow! This is a really amazing revelation. I should print this up, frame it and hang it on my wall. I just learned something new today. Thanks.
So who could have been the Republican fixer in the Clinton/Ken Starr event? Could our ever faithful friend Arlen Specter have been the one?