January 17, 2007
Swear
To make our courtroom jury system work, you’ve got to have a jury. To have a jury, you’ve got have the proper number plus all without any known bias about the trial or the principals. Jury selectors have a ball with this when it comes to picking the jurists they want and think they can trust. It’s the Cowboy Way.
So one of the number-one satraps on the staff of the vice president of the US&A is about to go on trial, and they’re picking a jury. It seems altogether likely that Vice himself may be called as a witness. Trouble is, he’s not all that easy not to have an opinion about. There’re the Halliburton contracts and Iraq and Katrina, there’s quail hunting, there’s stonewalling congress with backdoor executive privilege about that energy commission thing, there’s torture, there’s the closet cabinet, and I’m sure heaven knows a few other things. There’re all these rumors and facts and gossip and attitude. Let’s hear it for attitude. So it’s hard to have an opinion more or less like his mom’s. How can we get a jury we can depend on if Vice shows up as a witness?
Well, in most cases like this, you do what they call changing the venue. If too many folk in Podunk know the sucker to pick an “unbiased” jury, just go down the road a piece to Flapsaddle and start over. Like I said, it’s the Cowboy Way.
Trouble is, when Podunk is the whole US&A, maybe even the whole world, how do you find another venue when there’s this ambiance thing all over the place? How do you do that when Vice is vice of an administration not all that well known up and down for truth-telling, and he shows up and down in all the ups and downs?
And then there is, we must remember, the Oath, this swearing to tell the truth and the whole truth just in case we missed something. And all this especially when a lot of us are still taking a new look at oaths, reeling from the fellow out in Minnesota who insisted on using the Qur’an for swearing, a book which we’ve probably read even less of than that other book which most swearers and juries expect to be used for occasions like this.
God bless America.