|
|
|
"Black Robe Fever" -- Popehat Reveals His Malady
by Charles Carreon
August 4, 2013
Call it “gaining the first accuser advantage.” When the
chips are down, the fraudster will always accuse their
victim of exactly what they themselves are doing. I learned
this rule from Steve Cohen, and explained its operation in
the chapter entitled “What Moral High Ground?” in The
Sex.Com Chronicles. The victim is of course infuriated at
being falsely accused of exactly what the fraudster himself
is doing. Cohen, who had stolen Sex.Com with a forged
letter, leaped on an error Kremen’s lawyers made by creating
a new corporation to assert old claims, got the new
corporation dismissed from the case, and from then on argued
that Kremen’s entire claim was fraudulently concocted. What
had really happened, Cohen argued, was that Gary had
abandoned Sex.Com, letting Cohen turn it into a moneymaker,
then coming back years later and suing to steal all of
Cohen’s sweat equity. Cohen accused me of being a part of
this plot, because Gary had scrawled a mysterious reference
to “CC” on the Sex.Com “business plan” that he’d written
before Cohen induced the domain registrar to transfer the
domain to him. Of course, I had provably not known Gary
before June 1999, so he was barking up the wrong tree, but
the story had enough apparent substance to be alleged in a
cross-complaint against Gary.
The lesson I drew from the experience stuck with me. I see
the first-accuser advantage at work everywhere. Republicans
are big users of the technique. They use it against the
poor, often typified as minorities, when they sound off
about the oppression of white males as an excuse to
proactively rebuff demands for better treatment of the
poor. Ironically, white males who vote for Republican
Congressmen are one of the fastest-growing demographic
groups now descending into poverty, so you can see how
Republican exploitation of the first-accuser advantage
shifts the terms of the debate, and inspires constituent
loyalty powerful enough to nullify economic self-interest.
While they’re well aware that they are white males, white
male voters don’t realize that their wonderful Congressman
is going to sell them down the river economically. Because
the Congressman shifted the debate from poverty and
economics to skin color and sex, which are much easier to
comprehend.
In Popehat’s Black
Robe Fever post, he excoriates Judge Mark Martin of
Pennsylvania who dared to lecture the “victim” in some
asinine case concocted by frat boys and dismissed by an
embarrassed prosecutor before trial. Popehat launches into
this tirade about how this is a classic example of Black
Robe Fever. I’m reading it, and I’m not buying it. This
judge lectured Ernie Perce, who was making fun of Mohamed by
dressing as a zombie with a turban and claimed Talaag
Elbayomy attacked him with a wet noodle or something.
Popehat fails to inform his readers that dumb prosecutions
for trivial injuries that could be avoided by behaving
civilly and not provocatively are a regular annoyance to the
courts. Why the prosecutor charged it out is another
question, but the “victim” was clearly the nub of the
problem. That someone would become outraged at his antics
was utterly foreseeable, and the judge is trying to tell him
he should watch his ass because ethnic violence is a
reality, and it could be visited upon him. You know, that’s
a little piece of information that the young zombie Mohamed
might stick in his turban and profit from. The judge was
just dealing with his misdemeanor calendar and delivering a
few homilies for the benefit of society. That’s why we pay
him. He made no unfair rulings based on a whim. He
delivered a free lecture to a kid who probably needs a dad.
Popehat has attacked this particular judge because he is
scoring points with people who think pranking Muslims is an
important civil right. Using the first-accuser advantage,
Popehat has slandered a good judge who showed no lack of
proper judicial temper. How unfortunate.
The first-accuser advantage is a very clever, intuitively
effective use of what Robert Greene in “The 48 Laws of
Power” calls “the Mirror Effect.” Cohen would say, “Kremen
says I’m a fraud because he is one.” Or as Ken Popehat
White himself would say, “people who call people bullies are
usually bullies themselves.” Since Ken White has personally
accused more people of bullying than any other human being
who has ever lived, he’s a bully by his own definition. Let
us briefly pause to savor this admission, then move on to
discussing the evil of Black Robe Fever, from which Ken
White has been suffering for years, all to the damage and
injury of his victims.
The evil of this judicial “fever,” as Popehat puts it, is
that it strips us of our rights, and submits us to the rule
of whim. I have repeatedly said, “I would rather have a
judge who follows the law and takes the time to read it,
than one who believes he knows how to rule based on
experience and acquired wisdom.” Judges who feel themselves
subject to law, who bother to look it up and acquiesce to
its dictates, regardless of their opinion about its
rightness, are generally ones whose rulings you can predict
based on the case facts and established law. We call these
judges smart. If they don’t like a rule, they may
deconstruct it and find excuses not to apply it – and that’s
part of the growth of the law. On the other hand, the
rulings of judges who rule based on their intuitive feel,
and who will tread on the law and leave you to appeal the
ruling if you have the time and money, are often easier to
predict, and without reference to law books, because they’re
not reading the law. A judge’s prejudices become well-known
among practitioners, and lawyers are paid to know them as
part of the courtroom lore. We do the best we can with our
judges, and much of the time, we get good judicial work out
of them.
When judges rule by whim, it retards the growth of the law
and brings the judicial system into disrepute by generating
arbitrary results instead of well-reasoned, just results.
That is the real problem with judges having episodes of
Black Robe Fever. Whenever it’s happened in my courtroom
life, and it’s happened very rarely, everyone’s feeling
sorry for the poor lawyer and his client who are getting
treated to some kooky rant, and the judge’s reputation
declines rather severely. In fact, the most memorable time
was when Judge Kelleher in US District Court in downtown LA
reamed the lawyer ahead of me on the docket, asking her “Do
you know what rule you just violated?” The poor creature,
not a graduate of the finest school, I’m sure, stumbled,
“Yes, your honor.” Judge Kelleher responded, “Which one?”
For some reason, she said “Rule 9,” which was at that time
some kind of rule that got you in trouble, but it was the
wrong answer, and all the lawyers in the room knew it.
Judge Kelleher kicked her around with good humored sadism
for awhile, and ended up by telling her to go back to her
office and get the partner who was going to try the case to
show up at the hearing like his order had directed.
I was next up, and no one had told me who was going to try
the case. It was Chuck Mazursky’s case. Chuck tried all
his own cases, and Judge Kelleher knew him well. So he asks
me, “Who’s going to try the case?” I had re-read the rule
again when I saw the gal ahead of me take the blow to the
back of the neck, and responded, “I am the attorney
presently contemplated to try the case.” This was just
repeating the rule, but on your average day in a courtroom,
that’s a good part of what’s required. So Judge Kelleher
goes on and says he expects to see me at trial, and doesn’t
want Mr. Mazursky waltzing in here at the last minute. I
reaffirmed my prior statement, knowing of course that when
Chuck showed up to try the case, Kelleher would be delighted
to see him, and if he remembered me at all, would probably
say, “Pretty sharp kid you sent in here to the trial-setting
conference. Weird haircut, though.”
Interestingly enough, Ken White is a downtown LA lawyer, and
I gotta say, back when I practiced regularly in LA, everyone
knew there was a lot more Black Robe Fever in the downtown
LA courthouse of the Central District Federal Court than in
other courts. For years, we had Manny Real as Chief Judge,
who fined civil rights lawyer Steve Yagman $250,000,
overturned on appeal. Then there was Judge Gadbois, who had
two San Diego lawyers taken out of court in leg irons by the
Marshals for trying to practice in the Central District
without being admitted. Regarding the current status of the
judicial temperament in the Central District,
therobingroom.com provides some interesting reads. It
appears that there may be something in the air conditioning
there at that old Federal courthouse on Spring Street.
Of course, that’s the same courthouse where the US Attorney
has his office, and where Ken Popehat White parked his
abundant bulk for a few years, so maybe he picked up the
bug. However he got it, it has metastasized to the point
where there’s very little left of Kenneth Paul White
anymore. During the last four years he has been in a
permanent state of Black Robe Fever, convening court each
day, receiving the list of miscreants for arraignment from
the bloggers who serve as his minions and informants, and
reading the charges. If the accused do not plead guilty
instantly, the online chants begin, the Popehat signal goes
up, and a DIRA is commenced against the recalcitrant.
Popehat’s Reddit Zombies (PRZs) take up the cry. “Popehat
is here! Popehat is here!” The sound of verbal knives
unsheathing resounds like ten-thousand cavalrymen drawing
their sabers before the attack. Popehat fires the first
cannon-blast and there’s a mighty shout, a charge, and the
melee begins. Truth is the first victim of this war, and
soon the most energetic, most witless PRZs move with
storm-trooper speed, and their waves of obloquy push
virulent threads pulsing with lies to the top spots on
Google overnight. The Free Speech Mafia responds to the
Popehat signal, the pro bono defenders of nasty talk mount
their armored vehicles, and the victim wakes to find himself
in occupied territory. Outside his windows, weird siege
machines are being rolled into place. Beyond the realm of
immediate sight, Popehat is emailing furiously to his
network, that goes beyond the Free Speech Mafia, and
includes prosecutors and retired FBI agents. When served
with a subpoena in the Recouvreur case, he said he had
hundreds of emails about the case, so many it would be
burdensome to produce them. Purportedly, all this furious
labor brings him no monetary reward. If indeed this is
true, Popehat’s case of Black Robe Fever is one of the worst
on record, because virtually all real judges get paid.
Ken’s is an all-volunteer insanity.
It’s true, it takes a real judge to sign the order pitching
you out of your house, condemning you to serve time in
prison, or enter a judgment against you for money due. Ken
Popehat White doesn’t have that power, but of course he
could never become a judge. What group of lawyers would
want to see him on the bench? With the case of Black Robe
Fever he so obviously suffers from, he would be a terrifying
judge. It’s quite bad enough that he has found a way to use
his connections with the Free Speech Mafia to protect him
from reprisals from those whom he injures with such gusto.
It’s enough to make you want to believe in magic, or
something similarly effective, to disarm him and put a halt
to his sadistic agenda. If anyone has any ideas, feel free
to let me know.
|
