Fairfax County Death Star 2.0

Another chapter in the oddball reflections on Star Wars themes.

 The main judicial center building of the Fairfax County courts, housing the General District Court and Circuit Court, has been under construction for some time. It’s in an L shape, and the addition will close it with another L, creating a box with an internal courtyard. The existing court is still in full operation while the addition is being built.

 What it reminds me of is the second Death Star in "Return of the Jedi" – especially the part where the Emperor arrogantly chuckles to Luke Skywalker, now a full Jedi Knight, that this new Death Star is "fully operational" – which you would never know looking at its half-built structure still open to space. And of course the Rebels are clueless and don’t know the thing is up and running (though they find out soon enough).

 Hmm. Never mind the United States, or the Commonwealth of Virginia: imagine Fairfax County with its OWN Death Star. Your county tax dollars at work. Fairfax County is by far the largest and richest of the counties in Virginia, while much of the rest of the state is still rural areas with primer-colored pickups and Confederate flags. Imagine the legitimate uses a county government might have for a Death Star: shaking down competing counties. "Arlington, you’re going down!!!" "Prince William [Woodbridge and Manassas...home of the Bobbitt trial!], you’re late on your payments. You wouldn’t want an ‘accident’ to happen, would you?" "Henrico [north of Richmond], you fucked with the wrong highly urbanized and affluent Northern Virginia county!" Or perhaps better enforcement of real estate taxes – late on your payment, say goodbye to your whole house. Cut back on the Fairfax County Stormtroopers, errr Police Dept. Who needs cops when you have a Death Star? The possiblities are endless.

 Back when the dude who shot the CIA people in Langley was up for trial, the powers that be decided that some extra protection was necessary to defend the Fairfax County court complex from a possible terrorist attack. We can imagine Al Qaeda targeting the Pentagon or the World Trade Center – they already have. But a county court building? Is Fairfax County going to be the Great Satan of the Middle East? Fatwas issued to assassinate various Circuit Court judges? Suicide bombs against the jail? Jihad against Fairfax County? See, THIS is why Fairfax County needs its own Death Star. The Nike anti-aircraft missiles stationed in Fairfax County in the 50s are long gone.

 Other fun facts about Fairfax County (from its website...the comments are mine)

 1. 395 square miles and 252,828 acres of land. It used to include what is now Loudoun and Arlington counties and the cities of Alexandria and Falls Church. The Death Star will be useful when Fairfax decides to take back this area...

 2. Population in 2002: 991,000. It has more residents than 7 states: Alaska (duh!), Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming.

 3. One of only 24 counties in the US to have a triple A rating on its bonds (come in handy financing that Death Star. They aren’t cheap! Imagine that bond issue on the ballot: "Do you vote YES or NO to Fairfax County building its own Death Star?")

 4. It was established in 1742 (no Death Stars back then).

 5. In 1861, the county voted 1231 to 289 for Virginia to secede from the Union. Given how liberal the county is these days, chances are that vote wouldn’t be repeated today. Then again, given how liberal it is, maybe it would build a Peace Star instead of a Death Star. Somehow a Death Star is much cooler.

 6. The NRA is located in Fairfax County. They can help rewrite the 2^nd Amendment: "...the right of counties to keep and bear Death Stars shall not be infringed..."

 7. Speaking of international scope - and terrorism: the Fairfax County International Urban Search & Rescue resource, sponsored by the Fairfax County, Virginia Fire and Rescue Department, has handled emergencies across the US and overseas. The list of their missions is pretty impressive:

 Domestic: Oklahoma City bombing (1995); The Pentagon (9/11/01); Hurricane Isabel, east coast (2003); Hurricane Charley, FL (2004), Hurricane Katrina, LA (2005); Hurricane Rita, TX (2005), Hurrican Ernesto, FL (2006).

 Overseas: Earthquake, Armenia (1988); earthquake, Phillipines (1990); Nairobi Embassy Bombing (1998); earthquake, Turkey (1999); earthquake, Taiwan (1999), earthquake, Turkey (1999); Danube river flooding, Czech Republic (2002); earthquake, Iran (2003); earthquake, Morocco (2004); tsunami, Indonesia (2005); and earthquake, Pakistan (2005).

 NOTE: No alcohol or drugs were consumed in the writing of this blog entry. I reside in Fairfax County and blame it for my overactive imagination.

Sleazy Lawyers, Part II

[This is the last of the Myspace blog entries switched over here to Yahoo 360.]

 Plea Bargains = Corruption? Every day, in courts across the US, defendants go to court for various offenses. Traffic infractions such as speeding; minor misdemeanors such as drunk in public or disorderly conduct; all the way up to serious felonies. Very few will actually go to trial. In most cases, a privately retained attorney, a court-appointed attorney, a public defender, or even the defendant himself, will work some deal with the prosecutor and plead guilty to some lesser offense in exchange for a lesser sentence. Is this corruption?

 Ideally, every criminal case should be zealously prosecuted by the state and defended by the defendant – and that means going to trial. As a practical matter, doing so would bring the court system to a grinding halt. There is no way the courts could handle the load if every single case was tried.

 The truth of the matter is that most defendants are guilty and know they are guilty. The police in my area are all well-trained professionals who went to academies and take their jobs seriously. The prosecutors are selectively hired, know what they’re doing, and do not bring charges where no evidence supports them. To be fair to my clients, although they are guilty, they know they are, and don’t expect miracles or acquittals – only that I will do my best to assure that they end up with an outcome they can live with.

 This is the crucial difference between a cop taking a payoff and a prosecutor and defense counsel taking a plea bargain. The cop taking a payoff represents "the people" yet is selling them short; any money received goes into his own pocket – maybe shared with the other cops at the station. Contrast this with the prosecutor and defense counsel.

 The prosecutor also represents "the people" but his motivation in accepting a plea is not to save his own neck – which is not in any danger in a courthouse – or to make any money, but to see to it that "justice is done", recognizing that his own case may be imperfect. No prosecutor will allow an obviously guilty defendant to walk away completely. The prosecutor wants to see that some reasonable punishment is inflicted, even if that is not jail, or if it means a completely suspended sentence which will allow the defendant to walk out of court free of handcuffs and not go to jail (right away). If a fine is assessed, it goes to the court, not into the prosecutor’s pocket.

 And for my part, defense counsel is in direct communication with the client. I will not accept a plea without the client’s consent. And I only advise doing so if I honestly believe it’s in the client’s best interest. Sometimes a plea is not, and we go to trial. No one – not the state nor the defendant – is being cheated, swindled, or defrauded by a plea bargain. Nor is the purpose of the law perverted. The system does work, as surprising as that may sound. Maybe I’m just an optimist, not cynical enough for my own good.

 Then there’s the other side: the client who tries to spin you. The guy comes into my office, with a criminal case coming up soon in court. He claims he’s innocent, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and spins some sad saga. Uhh, yeah. So we go to court, I repeat his saga to the Commonwealth’s Attorney, who smiles and replies, "that’s not what I heard..." He tells a very different story, which if true, means my guy is guilty as hell. But he’s not such a bad prosecutor, so he offers me a guilty plea with suspended jail time and a small fine. I go back to my client and repeat what the CA told me – and the client looks very embarassed. Moreover, Mr. "I’m Completely Innocent!" grabs the plea bargain in a heartbeat. Experienced defense attorneys warn that you’ll have to meet with your client a few times – and each time more of the truth comes out and more of the lies disappear. You won’t get the full story until you show up in court and the prosecution tells you all the juicy stuff your client wouldn’t tell you.

 Finally, this is not really about sleazy lawyers – more like a transition from the discussion on defense clients. Sometime the client is the victim, pressing criminal charges against the aggressor. And they ask me to represent them at court - on the criminal matter. I have to explain, "no, that’s the prosecutor’s job, I’m a private attorney. You can hire me, I can go with you, but I’d simply be watching while the prosecutor did all the work. There’s no sense in having me there for that." I’m not about to do the prosecutor’s work – or second guess the prosecutor’s competence.

 Suffice to say that criminal defense work has its interesting and intriguing moments....

Brian vs. Snoopy

Yet another X v. Y comparison blog. Two white dogs from two different times. This is more a comparison of "Peanuts" vs. "The Family Guy" using Brian and Snoopy as the common link.

 Snoopy, from "Peanuts". Never talks, just walks around doing human stuff, including his Red Baron act. Clearly he’s intelligent, but his silence seems less like an attribute of being a dog – because he doesn’t act like one – than some arrogant contempt for the children around him, even his own "master", Charlie Brown., who he never accompanies as a dog does his master. His real friend is Woodstock, the little yellow bird. Charlie Brown is more like his caretaker than his friend (similar to cats’ views of their owners).

 I never liked "Peanuts". The humor and issues were dry and existentialist, the equivalent of a cloudy, rainy day with nothing to do. The children are self-absorbed and precocious; Charlie Brown, the main character, experiences little more than grief and frustration. These do not appear to be happy children, although they’re not poor or abused, more like simply bored with a dull, meaningless existence devoid of any excitement, fun or joy, children deprived of the innocent joy of childhood because they’re trapped in a boring world created by a sadistic cartoonist with nothing important to say.

 Lucy’s behavior is particularly obnoxious. Not only her stupid little psychiatric help stand (what is such a thing doing in a strip for children?) but her constant taunting of Charlie Brown with the football. Each time he’s sure she’ll pull the football away at the last moment, and each time she manages to persuade him that time it will be different (for a different reason) yet each time she does exactly the same thing. Ultimately her point seems to be, "I always pull it away at the last moment, you should know it by now and ignore whatever particular rationalization I give you". It’s a cruel game for her. If these were adults she’d be making sexual advances at him and always pulling away after he bought her dinner and brought her back to her place for "coffee" – a nightcap, a pleasure, she will never give him. What is this stupid insanity doing in a children’s comic?

 Fortunately, Lucy is repaid by Schroeder, who consistently rejects her advances, which are explicitly romantic in nature. Is he gay? Or more likely, he simply doesn’t like her – hardly surprising given her petulant arrogance and thoughtless cruelty. Perhaps there is some measure of justice in the Peanuts universe.

 The jazz music (Vince Guaraldi) is somewhat appropriate: it gives the cartoon an additional quality like the characters were cynical French beatniks smoking cigarettes in a coffee house. So much is absurd: Linus’ unsuccessful stalking of the Great Pumpkin; the swiss cheese ghost costume; the pathetically small Christmas tree. No one gets what they want: Charlie Brown doesn’t kick the football; Lucy doesn’t get Schroeder; Linus doesn’t see the Great Pumpkin, etc. Nothing happens.

 Brian, the Griffin family dog from "Family Guy". He can talk! He can drink! He can date stupid girls! And hell, he’s much smarter than Peter. He actually talks to Peter, Lois, Stewie, and the others. He’s arrogant, but not annoyingly so (this is Stewie’s angle). Aside from Lois, he’s probably the most well-adjusted member of the Griffin household. Unlike Snoopy, he doesn’t remain silent and aloof from all the humans around him, as if they’re beneath him; he’s an active member of the household.

 This show is, well, interesting. The bizarre tangents are entertaining (though it’s a bad habit that gets old quickly), and it certainly brings up alot of very delicate issues and deals with them in a tasteless – but nonetheless humorous – way. Though from this perspective South Park has them beat: all well and fine to bring up a topic (homosexuality, racism, homelessness, handicaps) for discussion, but once you’ve done so, what are you going to say? Or are you simply doing so to shock people and get credit for broaching the subject (Marilyn Manson’s angle)? With South Park at least a statement is made, a position is taken. Not only do they bring up the issue, they address it – in a colorful and bizarre fashion. By the time the episode is over you can perceive the message. I suppose I’d resent it more if I didn’t agree with it so often. "The Family Guy" is a step below that. "The Simpsons" are somewhere in between.

 In this case, though, the only "child" is Stewie, as intelligent as the Peanuts kids but considerably more twisted. Apparently Brian is the only one who can communicate with him, as the other characters consistently ignore whatever blasphemy he spews out. I find him mildly entertaining but mostly unlikable, unlike Brian who is imperfect but about as decent as any of these Quahogg people are going to be – an imperfect world full of imperfect people, to put it mildly, but certainly far more entertaining and comic than the Peanuts world. The others are mischievous in a mildly endearing way, like cute children who get into trouble. Peter is by far the worst. Quagmire is debauched, the buddies are just kinda there, and Meg and Chris are not that interesting. Put me down as being a fan – with Brian as my favorite character.

Sleazy Lawyers Part I

Recalling "Serpico" and "And Justice For All", two great Al Pacino movies, I’m drawn back into this issue of sleazy lawyers, more so from the latter than the former. I have a number of thoughts on this.

 #1. Sleazy, dishonest lawyers are much rarer in the circles I practice in than the public seems to believe. Most lawyers I’ve dealt with can be trusted to honor their word. Recognizing that they are on the other side, and represent adverse interests to your client’s position, you can still work amicably with them. Indeed, frequently the clients are wrapped up emotionally in the case and take everything personally, so the lawyers act as rational parties to throttle their clients and moderate their behavior, expectations, and demands. In the case of criminal matters, the state prosecutors (called Commonwealth’s Attorneys) vary from laid back to uptight, and some of the female ones – sorry, ladies – can be especially difficult and arrogant, like they have something to prove. However, the Federal (US) prosecutors, aka US Attorneys, with whom I’ve dealt, have been remarkably polite and "velvet glove" – to the point where you might forget they’re on the other side of the case.

 #2. Sleazy lawyer, sleazy client. On the rare occasions I’ve found sleazy lawyers on the other side, 100% of the time it’s because their clients are sleazy. Honest, decent clients seem to want to hire honest, decent attorneys. And the smarter, more devious sleazy clients sometimes hire decent lawyers to make their own case look more honorable. However, an honest attorney will not acquiesce in taking a dishonest or unethical position or tactic, so sleazy clients frequently jump from various lawyers in the course of litigation, stacking up delays while the new attorney gets a continuance... and ultimately withdraws when he/she finds ethical representation impossible. When a client comes to my office after having gone through several prior lawyers, that puts up a red flag. If it looks or smells bad, best to let the client go.

 #3. What is "sleazy"? The bar rules dictate that a lawyer represent his client’s case as zealously as the law and ethics allow. Aggressive lawyering is encouraged – so long as it doesn’t cross certain lines, which can admittedly be quite vague. While blackmail and extortion – and threatening criminal charges to force a settlement in a civil suit, or likewise threatening to make bogus sexual abuse allegations in a child custody dispute – are forbidden, any civil matter which involves various competing claims of varying strength and importance will boil down to negotiating the "cards on the table" and hopefully reaching a mutually acceptable agreement, which may involve waiving certain good faith claims or withdrawing ones which are less genuine but were only raised to "up the ante" and force an outcome on other issues. Ultimately an adult client can knowingly waive certain claims, and bogus claims will ultimately be exposed as such in court should the proponent be foolish enough to insist on bringing them before a trier of fact...at least in theory. ("Legal Myth #1: To succeed, a lawsuit must have merit.").

 #4. I had the bad experience to have to deal with a sleazy lawyer in the context of a lawsuit against me personally. I won’t mention names, but the lawsuit was (A) served on me by a process server I had recommended to the lawyer, (B) on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving; (C) the lawyer threatened bar sanctions against me not because of a good faith belief but merely out of spite; (D) his complaint was full of outright lies and falsehoods; (E) until the very end, and after two years of litigation and countless legal fees, he refused to negotiate in good faith. Had he done so at the beginning, he would have gotten the same thing he ultimately settled for, much quicker and less expensively for both of us. This was, bar none, the worse experience I had with another lawyer, and he surpassed in greed and dishonesty by several degrees of magnitude any other lawyer I’ve ever met. My own attorney was shocked and incredulous at the claims made by this man. Fortunately the nightmare is over.

 #5. In Brazil, lawyers have to take different exams to be federal civil attorneys or prosecutors, or even judges. Supposedly having a rigorous bureaucracy like this will weed out bad lawyers and judges and improve the system, right? Uh-uh. There are plenty of corrupt judges at all levels in Brazil. Unfortunately, passing a series of tough exams is no guarantee the candidate will be morally honest. But at least we know the crooked judges are competent!

 #6. I decided to become a lawyer in high school – I was good at writing, history, and debate, and didn’t want to spend 10 years in school to be a doctor (and was not nearly at good in science as I was at history). I also learned that the majority of politicians were lawyers, so the road to Congress and the White House went through law school. Eventually in college, as a government & politics major, I learned too much about politics: that politics was a nasty business full of moral ambiguities and compromises, best left to the smarmy frat rats and other slimy creatures. And of course the campus politics at the University of Maryland, College Park – with the joke of a Monarchist Party – further convinced me to stay light years away from any political involvement, at least as a candidate myself. But this didn’t discourage me from being a lawyer, per se, it merely killed any interest in personally entering politics.

 As for lawyers vs. politicians in sleaziness: most people would probably think of this as "crocodiles vs. alligators", i.e. hardly distinguishable, morally or otherwise. But I believe that as a practical matter, in the aggregate, politicians tend to be more sleazy than lawyers, by the nature of their business: courting public favor, whichever way the wind blows; telling the voters what they want to hear; and being put into positions of extreme temptation for bribes, kickbacks, and other "perquisites" which come with the job. Of course, I’ll concede that most of the lobbyists responsible for those temptations, bribes, etc. are themselves...attorneys! And lobbyists are all too frequently former politicians, whose value as such – having access to the right people and knowing what to do, how much to pay, whose ass to kiss, etc. - makes them such effective lobbyists. But it’s POLITICS that’s the mess and moral cesspool, not the legal profession itself, however many politicians are or were lawyers.