And now we send you

....back to your regularly expected blogging …

Or, if you’ve been going over to Incoming Stuff, more than your regularly expected blogging … my wife and I are almost convinced that this sudden bout of blogging on her part must be a sure sign that the apocalypse is very very near …

On to my blog today …

I have a link to the State of the Union speech, but I haven’t had a chance to sit down and read the whole thing yet … and in fact I’ve read very little about it other than Neal Boortz’ take on the whole thing. I, however, will wait till I’ve read (or heard) the speech before I go taking any shots at it though.

I have, however, heard that the democratic party made complete idiots out of themselves over a few points … primarily a statement made by President Bush that nothing had been done in regard to Social Security Reform (State of the Democratic party).

That is, however, all I’m going to say about the State of the Union Address today … maybe I’ll get a chance to read the speech tonight and I’ll make a few comments about it … but I’m not going to make any promises … I’m sure you can find enough articles out there bashing the speech, bashing the President, bashing the Democrats, and bashing the people bashing people…. Maybe I’ll just write my own State of the Union Ramble and leave it at that….

Right now however I wanted to rant about the Trial of Saddam …. Or should I call it the charade or joke of Saddam ….

I haven’t seen news of Yesterday’s hearing, but the last report I read was that Saddam’s (and some of the other defendants) lawyers were boycotting the proceeding saying that the Judge was not impartial and that he had a grudge against Saddam and the Bathist party.

As a result the Judge assigned court appointed defense lawyers to handle those defendants whose lawyers are going to want to be paid for not being there. Saddam and several of the other defendants refused to work with the court appointed lawyers and are, therefore, refusing to attend the hearings.

Oh boy! Isn’t this just fun. Let’s play the game called ‘pick your judge’ where you stonewall, complain, and boycott and yell ‘woe is me’ to the media until you get a judge that you think is going to let you off the hook.

This isn’t the way you conduct a trial … and I think that Saddam needs to pay for the contempt he is showing to the authority of the law. IF there is evidence that the judge in the case does, in fact, have a personal grudge against Saddam his lawyers should present EVIDENCE of this fact to the panel that is overseeing the hearings, but until they remove him the trail must continue. The panel must be impartial and must not base their decision in the matter on the stunts pulled by the defense teams (and in fact the stunts being pulled by the defense teams in order to draw media attention to the whole thing and thus give their stunts a perceived added ‘truth’ to them leads me to believe that they don’t find their evidence of the Judge’s bias to be convincing and are, therefore, trying to force the panel to a decision that they agree with.) and at this point even if the panel DOES order the Judge replaced they should fine Saddam (and any of his co-defendants) AND the defense teams a million dollars a day (or the local equivalent).

What they are doing is ridiculous, absurd, and is aimed, not at trying to get Saddam a fair trial, but trying to get him a trial that he can’t loose. I read an article several weeks ago that Saddam and his lawyers were saying that he never tortured nor had anyone tortured … yet one of the claims that Saddam’s defense team has supposedly made is that the Judge was Tortured under Saddam’s supervision (the article I was going to link to that has been edited down from a 2 page article (the link I mailed myself yesterday was to page 2) to a 1 page summery and no longer mentions most of the specifics of the complaints of the defense team … Defendants absent as Saddam trial resumes and I can’t find any other article that does.)

In any case the Iraqi courts can not allow Saddam or anyone else to make such a mockery of the process … if they do then it will forever mar their judicial system and EVERY person put on trial will try to use the same tactics. Either the Judge or the panel overseeing the trial need to put their foot down and put it down HARD. There are going to be liberal bleeding hearts out there that if Saddam is convicted of anything, or given any sentence beyond a slap on the wrist, will say that he wasn’t treated fairly, or that the court was too harsh, or some other such nonsense. The Iraqi courts need to put that aside and ignore it … the world is full of idiots that think that any punishment beyond a stern look and a sharp ‘no! Bad!!’ is too harsh …

I have some things to say as well about the ‘Muslim outrage’ over the political cartoons … but I’ll have to get to that later … right now I’ve got to get to work.