Probable Cause

Nearly fifty years ago, the United States Supreme Court held that all people — even poor people — are entitled to be defended by competent counsel.  Anyone who watches television knows that “if you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed to represent you.”

What they don’t tell you on television is that, increasingly, the attorney appointed to represent you will also be representing possibly as many as 200 other people at the same time.

Meanwhile, Fresno County continues to decrease the number of Public Defenders and necessarily therefore increases the caseload of those poor souls remaining.

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Adrianos Facchetti, a California “Internet Defamation Attorney,” writing the California Defamation Law Blog asks, among other things, if governments should regulate the Internet to control defamatory speech — however that might be accomplished.

I could only think of one response….

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The United States Supreme Court the other day decided that the United States Constitution should survive 9/11.

The Court ruled¹ 5-4 that detainees at “Gitmo” — the military base the U.S. military built in Cuba to try to avoid having to honor the Constitution — have rights under the Constitution. As one writer responded,

This is unbelievable! These people should have the same rights our victims of 911 had and all the soldiers who are trying to protect us from further attack! Just when you think this Court can’t get any more stupid, surprise!

I assume the second sentence was supposed to end in a question mark, because otherwise, it doesn’t make sense. I’m sure this writer did not believe that Gitmo detainees were supposed to have rights. And I have to agree. After all, who would have thought that the Founders of the United States of America would have wanted the Constitution to survive 9/11?

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1. Links in this story may have expired by the time you read this. I have no control over other websites. [↩]