Over the last few weeks a number of articles on Daily Kos called attention to Garcetti vs. Ceballos, where retaliation for reporting discipline was outrageously restyled as managerial discipline. The issues range from free speech to enabling government corruption to the chill on whistleblowers.

I have nothing to add but gratitude for all who recognized immediately that any decision that give employees reason to be afraid to report fraud, negligence, and incompetence to their superiors will be a savage blow to the public good. I’m only here today to do my citizen’s duty and pass on that on Thursday, June 29th, National Whistleblower Center Chairman Stephen Kohn will be testifying before the House Committee on Government Reform about the ramifications of Garcetti v. Ceballos. Please note this link includes the handy-dandy Capwiz link to write your political representatives and let them know that you resent every move our government makes toward establishing the Orwellian state.

In the U.S. Alaa Ahmed Seif Al Islam would be a celebrated public intellectual, and would probably be a highly paid consultant. He’s an award-winning journalist-blogger, open source developer, and a human rights activist. On May 7, 2006, Alaa was beaten and jailed for participating in a protest to support a free, independent judiciary in Egypt.

The blogosphere has been abuzz with the hope that the combined efforts of online activists might be able to free Alaa. Journalactivist Jon Garfunkel has done some excellent in-depth analysis of the various strategies attempted by online activists, including his own foray into purchasing Google AdWords. Garfunkel makes an important observation: while online activists may get swept up in the crowd cause of the moment, their attention span is notoriously short. They don’t follow up on whether their effort actually worked. Alaa is still in jail.

I learned this morning that Carl Robert Frederick, founder of The American Pro Se Association passed away on Monday. The APSA web site is a godsend for people of little means who suddenly find themselves embroiled in the court system. (For those interested, HALT is also a terrific resource).

Frederick dedicated many years of his life to helping people understand the legal system at a time when the legal system has become all but inaccessible to to most citizens. He also advocated for mandatory high school level law courses. This is a worthy goal, and I hope his friends, family, and fellow travelers continue the effort. As long as the majority of the citizenry find the legal system incompehensible and unaffordable, there will be no chance for equitable justice in this country.

This is a case of the criminals running the prison if I’ve ever seen one. It’s utter rankism for guards to assume they are allowed to engage in the behavior that the inmates without their rank are being punished for.

It’s time to replace the Bar Association with an oversight agency that protects the public interest. When people have a complaint about the conduct of a particular lawyer or the legal system in general, the first thing they usually do is fire a complaint with the bar association. However, all they usually find there is interminable delays and reluctance to discipline one of their own. On top of putting victims of lawyer misconduct through additional bureaucratic hassle for nothing, the lawyers are given the identifying information that allows them to retaliate.

Now the Bar Association in Ohio is out to make an example of (and extort lawyer fees from) a family that acted on behalf of their own their own child. It’s time for the public to rise and say that this is the last straw. No one should be obliged to pay to enforce their rights under the law. People who can afford a lawyer obviously already have an unfair advantage: but people who can’t afford tens of thousands of dollars shouldn’t therefore be denied protection of their rights. People who have no way of protecting their rights might as well not be citizens of this country.

A friend of mine who is familiar with the legal landscape in Ohio recommended that anyone with an lawyer complaint there should contact the Clerk of the Ohio State Supreme Court and file a complaint against the lawyer with the Disciplinary Committee. The Disciplinary Committee of the Court governs the licensure of the attorneys in Ohio. I’m not sure if other states have similar mechanisms. I do know California has a general problem with oversight, ranging from deteriorating juvenile services to failure to curb judicial misconduct.

It has become a cliche to say the legal system is broken, but perhaps recent events will demonstrate that a major factor in the problem is that in the U.S. we’ve left oversight to the members of the club. A truly independent agency needs to be created to alleviate this problem.

As the media grapples with how to present CIA-whistleblower Mary McCarthy, I can’t help but group her in the pantheon of whistleblowing women enshrined by Time Magazine in 2002. The gist was that women are more likely to be marginalized by rankism, so taking an ethical stand is their route to dignity.

Even though McCarthy is in an unusually good position as whistleblowing goes (visible to an interested public, able to afford an attorney and invoke whistleblower protections), she will surely pay the price that society exacts on those who make a stand. Rush Limbaugh has already been spamming Google News in an attempt to remake public opinion in the Bush administration’s favor and isolate the troublemaker. Even more disturbing, prominent bloggers have been taking potshots.

In the end, the truth about any dust up is always complex. The media does the public a disservice when they construct cardboard heroes or villains. This is not only a cheap tactic to whip up emotions and increase circulation, the decision to spoonfeed people “what they want to hear” shows a profound disrespect for their intelligence and willingness to engage with difficult, multi-threaded events. Bloggers sometimes do a good job of balancing out media agendas, but in this case it looks like they want to get on the smear bandwagon. My heart goes out to McCarthy. Whether she’s a whistleblower or not, whether she gains public character approval or not, it’s clear that she’s now at the mercy of the media. I hope everyone remembers that if she was already shafted in the workplace, it would double the injustice for press and the public to pile on her now. Let’s all take a step back and see how the facts unfold.

I’ve been trying to sort out the case of Lynne Stewart. She served as a court-appointed defense attorney for an accused terrorist, and she dared to do her best as an attorney by issuing a press release on his behalf. For her adhering to the ethics of the legal profession, she could end up serving thirty years in prison. There are multiple reasons why average citizens should be outraged over this case. First, the government gathered evidence by invading attorney-client privilege with a wiretap. Second, treating advocacy of an unpopular client as a CRIME effectively discourages legal defense for dissenters: it’s already way too difficult for unpopular people (or even invisible people - those who haven’t been able to rally the media or the public to their cause) to find representation. Third, former Attorney General John Ashcroft coordinated his arrest of Stewart with an appearance on David Letterman to “message” the public on his actions: in other words, the government is not only trying to deprive the unpopular of any legal defense, it conducts a PR strategy to MAKE the target unpopular.

One of the primary causes of the erosion of Constitutional (and Human) rights over the last few years has been the willingness of the media to spin litigation. If one of the parties in a case gets initiative in the media, then they win, no matter what the actual facts are. This has encouraged both the government and large corporations to devote their immense resources to pre-trial public relations campaigns. Worse, lawyers now engage in the practice of slipping soundbytes into legal filings in the hope that the press will pick it up. They rely on the fact that the courts themselves don’t discourage lawyer from lying: they simply assume the opposing counsel will challenge the lie. The media, however, doesn’t make that distinction: they know that any quote from a legal document will bear a special aura of authority, yet they rarely issue any sort of disclaimer. Nothing grabs an audience like a cardboard-cutout villain, and the media cares more about garnering an audience than defending the Constitution.

At least in the Lynne Stewart case, there is a serious effort to bring this scandal of injustice to light. You can’t walk two blocks in Berkeley without tripping over a pamphlet or poster. Just remember for every Lynne Stewart, there are countless victims of State tyranny who simply go unnoticed. How long before the entire U.S. legal system turns into Guantanamo? This United States will continue sliding into the abyss of autocracy until its constituent citizenry remembers that everything they value is built on equality under the law and the inalienable rights of the individual - even the unpopular individual.

Recently the U.S. has been facing significant challenges to one of the fundamental principles of our Constitution, the separation of church and state. As pundits and litigators rattle swords over beachhead issues like prayer in schools and Intelligent Design, it’s edifying to consider the logical outcome of theocracy. Afghanistan has provided a timely demonstration in the form of a Christian convert that faced the death penalty for apostasy from Islam. While the Afghan court system cheated the question by tossing the case on a technicality, Muslim religious leaders prayed for the death penalty and threatened to whip up the anger of the people to tear the man who dared to turn away from their god “to pieces”.

Because Afghanistan is a theocracy, their government may not be able to adhere to their agreement to abide by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They can’t let all converts off on a technicality. Perhaps they will try a variation of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell - though Afghan policymakers should take a hard look at how well that’s working for the U.S. armed forces first. Or should the U.S. offer amnesty for all?.

Given the collapse of the Human Rights Commission and the failure of the U.S. to incorporate Universal Declaration into its domestic legal system (not to mention our willingness to resort to torture), there may be no genuine defenders of freedom of conscience left. It may be only a matter of years before we see people on trial for their religion in the U.S., complete with lynchings, witch burnings, and crucifixions. It’s time to call on the U.S. government to restore the principle of separation of church and state in our own country, and lead by example in order to promote the wisdom of freedom of conscience throughout the world.

A friend of mine just sent me an excellent New York Times article about the social bullying in the court room. Given the popular faith in equality under the law, it’s surprising how little judges seem to care about how financial and social bars have effectively limited access to a fair hearing to the wealthy. In the U.S., the court system has become a parasite that feeds on the rich and shrugs off the poor. As an instrument to enforce the will of the upper class, the courts are shortening the path to a plutocracy, and, increasingly, a kleptocracy.

The saddest irony is that cutbacks in prison education programs are contributing to the growth of the destitute class.

The settlement of the Santa Barbara Franciscan sexual abuse case brings up the idea of restorative justice. The underlying issue of many high profile court cases is that there’s no amount of money that would render justice. Moreover, the problem has been exacerbated by lawyers functioning in gameplan mentality who advise their clients to make no apologies and to smear and abuse the victim further just so they can get away with the initial wrongdoing. If the victim makes it through the years of litigation, they may only receive some sort of compensation for the complaint - there’s no compensation for the burden and trauma of the litigation itself.

The court system in the U.S. has been broken for a long time. While Supreme Court Justices have the standing to make threats to their job and well-being pubic knowledge, it’s easy to forget that regular people who are abused by bad judges have no voice. Unfortunately, the politicians who should be championing their constituents usually only go after judges when it serves their political agenda.

For all the other problems that plague the Catholic hierarchy, I think they’re on the right track by promoting the idea of restorative justice. It’s an important first step to talk about justice and try to figure out what it looks like in this day and age. Until we start talking about justice and how it applies equally to every citizen, the court system will remain in the hands of the game-players and the politicians, and the most vulnerable people in our society will continue to suffer in a world outside justice, where anything can be done to them at any time.