A incisive argument via illustration about the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad by taddy porter at bitch's place:
Let me explain with a little story about my friend T-.
T- is a working man in his late 40's, a father with three kids. He lives on the north side of Milwaukee, with wife and kiddies in a well maintained brick house in the working class neighborhood of Sherman Park.
To maintain home and hearth and feed three healthy teen agers, T- works more jobs than you can count.
He has a first shift job in a stamping plant on Milwaukee's South Side. After that, he goes to work cleaning offices in downtown Milwaukee. He runs a big floor buffing machine, looks kind of like a zamboni. He does this until 10 or 11 at night.
On weekends, he works at any number of sidelines. He has a snow plowing business. He details cars. He drives taxi. He cleans beer lines (a very lucrative craft, I might add). He mows lawns and does landscaping.
The point is, he is a solid citizen and works all the damned time.
In mid-January, there was a big snowfall in Milwaukee. To T-, that's money in the bank. Around midnight of a Friday, he was sitting in the cab of his Ford F-250, idling at the curb in front of his house, waiting for his helper to show up so he could get started plowing out his clients.
While he waited, he blew himself a big spliff.
At the psychological moment, an MPD TAC Squad cruiser rolled by. The TAC Squad are the heavies for the organs of public security in Milwaukee. They patrol the city late night to suppress threats to the public order. They observed a nimbo-cumulus cloud emerge from the passenger side of T-'s pickup and investigated.
The upshot was that T- was busted for smoking a joint.
The TAC squad lads bundled him into the back seat of the cruiser, wedged between a beefy Polish sergeant on one side and a beefy African-American sergeant on the other. For hours they drove him all over the county while they tried to persuade him to fall in with their plans as follows: they wanted him to make some crack buys for them. At the end of their shift, they would pay him $1000 for his troubles and release him without a stain on his character. It was their assumption, I guess, that any Black person knows where to buy crack. T- is Black and, so, ipso facto, just the man for the job.
T- declined to participate. First, he knew the offer of $1000 was bullshit. Second, he had no fucking idea where to buy crack. He's a working man. Third, he would not have gotten involved even if he did. These crack dealers tend to be bad hombres and its a smart fellow that steers clear of them.
None of this made the least impression on the TAC squad boys. They rode him around till sunup, denying him any contact with his family. In the morning, they took him to jail.
He did not see a magistrate until Monday morning. When he was brought before his honor, it turned out there was no charge or, at least, no charge paperwork, so he was released.
The point of this amusing anecdote is that, for working people, the requirements of the 14th amendment and other pertinent protocols are more often honored in the breach than as a matter of routine. So we don't appreciate being lectured by Mrs Greenspan and Chris Matthews and the rest of the millionaire gasbags on how the minions of the law are tied down like Gulliver by the uncallused wonder that is American justice.
Law enforcement will find a way to make its case, don't even trip. If they would go to those lengths with my friend just to turn over a few penny ante drug-dealers, imagine the schemes they can employ to convict Snuffy Smith. I mean KSM.
We got him. He's not going anywhere.
The idea is to punish him, not the Constitution.
That's some fine snark, right there.
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