http://harpers.org/archive/2008/02/hbc-90002353One of Weimar Germany?s great satirists, Kurt Tucholsky, once offered some very pointed analysis. ?If you want to judge the internal qualities of any society,? he said, ?I give you this test. How do they treat the political opposition? A true democracy will tolerate opposition political figures and will allow them space to assert their views, however uncomfortable to the mainstream. But if the political opposition becomes the focus of attacks by the tools of justice, democracy itself is in jeopardy, for the transition to tyranny has begun.?
In America today, Tucholsky?s test renders very disturbing results. Since early in 2002, the Bush Administration?s Department of Justice has made ?public integrity? matters a top priority. U.S. Attorneys around the country have been urged aggressively to investigate and prosecute cases involving the corruption of elected officials. And, as academic studies have now revealed, this has been taken as an unambiguous mandate to persecute Democratic political figures. The raw political purpose of these prosecutions is rarely cloaked, as prosecutions are commenced concurrent with election schedules, and the most minute details of the criminal investigations invariably work their way on to the front pages of collusive newspapers. And sometimes prosecutions of Republicans by the Bush Justice Department reflects not even-handedness, but equally insidious corruption. That?s the point for my notes today.
If we had to pick one state in the nation where these evil tendencies are most obviously on display, then certainly it is Alabama, home to the nation?s highest profile and most abusive political prosecution. A major television network will shortly be exposing a number of lurid details surrounding the Siegelman case which point to corruption inside of the Justice Department. I have formed the view that the corruption on the prosecutorial side of the ledger greatly outweighs the corruption charged against the defendants in the Siegelman matter. The corruption inside of the Justice Department is exhibited on several different levels:
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