Thursday, July 16, 2015

Minitel's prosecutocracy

   

Last night I asked my class if they had heard of Orwell's book, 1984. With one exception, they had not heard of either the book or the author. These are students from Iowa, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Puerto Rico, and Utah.

They had heard of "Big Brother," but they had no idea where the term came from and no idea of how their own government is becoming Big Brother in a far more literal way than I ever expected.

In our current Ministry of Truth, or Minitel, we now have a "prosecutocracy" that uses the federal prosecutorial power arbitrarily to benefit those who agree with the President and to punish those who disagree.

This latest case is one of the more blatant I've seen yet.

Excellent commentary from Mark Steyn:

Dinesh D'Souza was the target of a politically motivated prosecution and, bearing in mind that process-is-the-punishment shtick, he knew he couldn't win, so he cut a deal. Under the appalling hacks who pass for jurists in this system, D'Souza is now discovering that, when you cut a deal with the feds, the terms have a way of subtly evolving. For example, a man called Richard M Berman, who purports to be a US district judge, has just ordered D'Souza to undergo psychological counseling.

I should say, as I always do, that I have no use for Dinesh D'Souza. Nevertheless, he is the victim here of an abusive prosecutocracy and an out-of-control judge who disgraces his office:
The psychiatrists D'Souza was first ordered to see found no signs of depression, but U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman overruled their findings and ordered D'Souza see a new psychological counselor weekly.
The guy who needs psychological counseling here is Richard M Berman. It is a common tool of totalitarian societies to classify any opposition as mental illness. You don't have to like D'Souza to be utterly revolted when a thug operator posing as a judge starts using the medicalization of dissent with the enthusiasm of any old Soviet commissar.

D'Souza is in the horrible situation of having to weigh objecting to Berman against his urge to see family back in India and being denied freedom to travel - all for a campaign finance offense that is a barely discernible fraction next to what the Clinton Foundation, Lois Lerner's IRS and Obama's tax-exempt brother are pulling every hour of the day. The fact that d'Souza's freedom to see his family is even at issue testifies to what a vile system federal "justice" is.

Judge Berman's site is here:

http://www.nysd.uscourts.gov/judge/Berman

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