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THE LAW IS A ASS for 06/11/2002
DOCKET ENTRY
"The Law is a Ass" Installment # 148
Originally written as installment # 132 and published in Comics Buyer's Guide issue # 747, March 11, 1988 issue
Don't go there now. Just read the column in its natural course. But when you get to the last topic, the one about the Meese report--you know, the report issued by then Attorney General Ed Meese on pornography--just read that last joke and think about our present Attorney General, John Ashcroft, and his own encounter with the statue of limitations. Bet you didn't know I had that much influence, did you?
******
THE LAW IS A ASS
Installment # 148
by
BOB INGERSOLL
Well, at least this time it wasn't quite as big.
A while back, I told you how I always bring a column installment up to Don and Maggie at the Chicago Convention and they respond by giving me a pile of fan mail big enough to use as a land fill somewhere. Remember that? Remember how I also told you that I was going to give Don and Maggie two column installments at the 1987 Mid-Ohio Con, and I feared what I might get from them in return? Well, I gave them the columns, and they gave me a pile of fan mail. As I said, it wasn't quite as big. This one was only big enough to stuff a moose.
What does all this mean? It means it's time to answer my mail again.
******
First up, thanks to Jeff Ferris from San Fransisco, who sent me some pictures of me, he took at the 1987 San Diego convention. Jeff's seen the pictures, including the profile shot of me talking to Marv Wolfman with my fat gut protruding out, so he knows why I'm going to make sure they're never published. The rest of you will have to imagine it. One thing bothers me about that picture, though. I'm standing straight up and talking but with my legs crossed at the ankles. How did I get myself into that position subconsciously? I just tried it consciously, and it hurt!
Second up, thanks to Nancy McCaskey of Monticello, Florida, who sent me a review of a book entitled, Disorderly Conduct. This book presents amusing excerpts of verbal exchanges from actual cases. My favorite from those quoted in the review goes, "Defendant: 'Judge, I want you to appoint me another lawyer.' Judge: 'And why is that?' Defendant: 'Because the public defender isn't interested in my case.' Judge: '[Mr. Public Defender] Do you have any comments on the defendant's motion?' Public Defender: 'I'm sorry, Your Honor, I wasn't listening.' "
Two people, Timothy Gunn of Glen Burnie, Maryland and Gary Lawson of Alexandria, Virginia correctly pointed out that I was incorrect, when I said the Constitutional Convention added the Bill of Rights to the Constitution. As both Timothy and Gary reminded me, the Bill of Rights was added by the First Congress of the United States on September 25, 1789. I sit corrected. (You don't think I write these columns standing up, do you?).
Mr. Lawson, in a different letter, questioned my statement from another column that there is a clause in the Constitution which guarantees that a defendant is innocent until proven guilty. He argued that no such right is specifically guaranteed in the Constitution.
It is true, as Gary says, there is no clause which specifically confers this right. Still, the right is in the Constitution. It's found in one of the very clauses Gary mentioned in his letter, the Due Process Clause. The Due Process Clause of the Constitution guarantees all criminal defendants the rights accorded to criminal defendants under the Anglo-American common law. Innocent until proven guilty was one such common law right universally accepted as being part of the American due process, which the Due Process Clause guaranteed. So there is a clause which guarantees the right. The fact that it does so implicitly and by custom doesn't mean the clause doesn't guarantee the
Now, before I answer any more mail, let's get one thing straight; I'm willing to acknowledge a gaff on my part--I devote this column to writing about other people's mistakes, so I'd be pretty crass, if I couldn't admit my own--but I don't give No Prizes!
Henry Kujawa of Camden, New Jersey wrote in to tell me he agreed with my analysis of Brian DePalma's movie, The Untouchables, and the legal mistakes which ruined the ending of the film. I was glad to see that someone agreed with something I said. I was beginning to think I was so dunderheaded, that I should give up this column completely.
Of course, Henry's letter may cause some consternation for those who place "The Law Is an Ass" in the Most Disliked category in the CBG poll. But I liked it.
Donald Webster of Hapeville, Georgia also wrote about The Untouchables. Specifically, he wondered why I once wrote I wouldn't write the column analyzing the movie, as he asked, because I had already written this column. All I meant, Donald, was that I wrote my column on The Untouchables, before I read your letter asking for such a column, and that I wasn't going to write about the movie again. (Of course, I have written about it again, haven't I? Two times, in fact.)
Donald also asked me about an episode of Duck Tales in which Flintheart Glomgold disguised himself as Scrooge McDuck, took a painting from his own gallery, then had Scrooge charged, tried and convicted of theft. Later, when Glomgold's trick was revealed, the courts decided that he couldn't be convicted of anything, as all he did was take his own painting. Donald wondered if there might not be some crime other than theft of which Glomgold might be guilty.
Yes. There is, first of all--and as Donald suggested--the obvious charge of perjury committed, when Glomgold knowingly made the false testimony that Scrooge McDuck stole his painting. He is also guilty of the crime of Falsification, because he knowingly made a false statement with the purpose of incriminating another.
So Glomgold is a scurrilous cad who is guilty of heinous crimes. Only one question, Don? Do you want to tell the courts they've got to prosecute a duck, or should I?
Andrew Jones of Vincetown, New Jersey wrote in and thanked me for clarifying my position on the new obscenity definition supplied by the Supreme Court last Summer. Andrew goes on to say that the decision isn't quite as big a victory as I said it was, because it still provides for the possibility of someone being convicted of selling obscenity and that the only clear cut victory for freedom of speech will come, when the Court rules that taste should not be legislated and there is no such thing as obscenity.
I quite agree, Andrew. That's why I also wrote that all speech deserves first amendment protection. Still, I regard the decision as a victory. Anything which makes it more difficult for the government to prosecute obscenity laws can't be anything but a victory for free speech.
Speaking of obscenity, I got a letter about the Meese Commission Report. (Yes, the natural "hate" joke is too obvious, isn't it? Tell you what, I won't write it, you just think it.) This letter came from Mike McCain, who--if I've put the correct envelope with his letter--is from Denver. Mike pointed out to me that, while Meese was delivering the findings of his Obscenity Commission, he was flanked by statues of human females in a state of undress. Mike wondered what joke I would make about this.
None, Mike. Any joke I could make would be even more obvious than the one I passed up earlier and would still pale in comparison to the actual findings of the Commission itself.
******
Well, I still have half a pile of mail to answer and I've run out of column. Join me here next week for the next fun filled chapter of "The Law Is a Ass", More Fan Mail From Some Flounder? or Partial Post!
Bob Ingersoll
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