Padilla and Just-Us.

Paul Craig Roberts kills it once again discussing the recent Padilla conviction

The US Constitution and Anglo-American legal tradition prevent indictments, much less convictions, based on a prosecutor's theory that a person wanted to commit a crime in the past or might want to in the future. Padilla has harmed no one. There is no evidence that he made an agreement with any party to harm anyone whether for money or ideology or any reason...



Under Benthamite law, people can be arrested and prosecuted for thought crimes. Under Benthamite law, it is the government that protects the people, not the Constitution and Bill of Rights that protect the individual. Benthamite law makes "advocacy speech," for example, a call for the overthrow of the US government, upheld in the 1969 Supreme Court decision, Brandenburg v. Ohio, a serious federal crime.

I've said this before and I'll repeat it again, when the "blind" cleric was convicted for his speeches that supposedly lead the first World Trade Center bombers to do their thing, I said it was a dangerous precedent to try and convict someone for speech. Nobody wanted to listen.

I've also been steadfast against so called "hate crime" legislation because it attempts to criminalize thought. It does not matter if a murderer hates black people. If that person commits murder then he ought to be convicted of the act of murder regardless to the thoughts going on in his head. Such thoughts may be of interest to social scientists but it has no place in the criminal Justice [sic] system. That American citizens have been OK with the criminalizing of non-actions has laid the foundation for the prosecution of Padilla.

What is even more contradictory, and perhaps grounds for an appeal (I'm no lawyer so take this suggestion with a grain of salt), is the fact that there is a person by the name of Jack McClellan currently walking around California who admits to having pedophillic thoughts about children and who goes out looking for children to watch, but cannot be arrested for his clear admission that he harbors, what would be in Padilla's case, criminal thought. The fact is that it is absolutely correct to not arrest or otherwise detain Mr. McClellan, because regardless of how sick he is, he has committed no crime against anyone, nor has he been caught attempting to do so. There is no case.

Similarly Padilla has committed no crime. He wasn't even charged with the so called "crimes" that got him detained for 3.5 years. Odd thing is, three Jurors wore red white and blue to send a "message" to Padilla. Sadly they actually showed just how unqualified they were to even sit in the jury box.