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Wolf Blitzer Hates Due Process, The Presumption of Innocence

Nov 12, 2009
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Law, Politics & Current Events

The mass murder at Fort Hood was horrific. If Nidal Malik Hasan did, in fact, commit it, there are indications that it was a terrorist act, at least by some relevant definitions.

Naturally, people are angry. People are angry that it's cruel and senseless and tragic.

Wolf Blitzer is angry. But he's not just angry about those things. He's outraged that Col. John Galligan (Ret.) agreed to represent Nidal Malik Hasan, who after all, is an accused mass murderer.

They asked me, how could a retired U.S. military officer, a full colonel, go ahead and represent someone accused of mass murder? And I want you to explain to our viewers why you're doing this.

The proper response — the one I would give — is "why, it's because fuck you, you shallow, totalitarian-sympathizing talking head." Maj. Galligan did better.

The rights that I'm asking be accorded to Major Hasan are the rights that service members live and die for.

But Wolfie couldn't resist the parting cheap shot:

I'm sure he will get a much fairer hearing than those 13 Americans who were brutally gunned down the other day. I'm sure he will get all of the rights that are applied by the military code of justice.

That's the typical whine of barstool philosophers everywhere about how it doesn't make sense that brutes, who are no respecters of the law and order, enjoy due process of law. Such people disregard that we have decided not to be brutes — a hard-fought decision of millennia. We don't summarily execute the accused murderer (who summarily executed his victims) because we've decided to be better than murderers and thugs.

Somebody forgot to tell Wolf.

Last 5 posts by Ken

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13 Comments

  1. Ezra  •  Nov 12, 2009 @4:55 pm

    Major Galligan made my day with that answer. Now, if only he would make his way to Gitmo…

  2. davids  •  Nov 12, 2009 @5:05 pm

    I fully agree with Major Galligan.

    I want him to be tried. I want the prosecutors to have all their ducks in a row and prove he did it, and that he did it as a terrorist act. I want them to prove this in the face of vigorous defense.

    Then I want him hung.

  3. Jdog  •  Nov 12, 2009 @5:13 pm

    Seems awfully straightforward; everybody, no matter what they did, deserves a real defense, and as a society, we deserve to know that if somebody's convicted — not impossible, in Hasan's case — whatever defense he had was put forward. Eichmann got one; Hasan gets one, too.

  4. Zubon  •  Nov 12, 2009 @6:11 pm

    I’m sure he will get a much fairer hearing than those 13 Americans who were brutally gunned down the other day. I’m sure he will get all of the rights that are applied by the military code of justice.

    How dare the good guys follow the rules! They'll probably observe Fifth Amendment rights, too. Well I've got news for you, you Constitution-supporting soldiers, you won't get to apply Third Amendment rights in this case, you hear me? You can't take that victory from the Wolf!

  5. Transplanted Lawyer  •  Nov 12, 2009 @6:23 pm

    It does seem awfully straightforward, JDog, but there are a lot of people out there who don't get it.

    There was a wonderful movie back in the early 1980's with Anthony Quinn, John Geilguld, Oliver Reed, and Rod Steiger (as Mussolini!) called "Lion of the Desert." Anthony Quinn plays a resistance fighter trying to kick the Italian Fascists out of Libya. Quinn's guerillas capture a couple of Italian soldiers and they want to kill them, but he says no. The protest from the men is "But they do it to us!"

    "They are not our teachers" is Quinn's answer and it is the superbly correct one.

  6. Brian Dunbar  •  Nov 12, 2009 @7:41 pm

    I doubt Mr. Blitzer is genuinely outraged that Colonel Galligan is defending Major Hasan. Blitzer is playing the part and playing up ratings: see, America: I can be as outraged as my think you want me to be!

    A coldly cynical part of myself doubts he personally gives much of a rip for 13 guys he'd cross the street to avoid.

  7. PatrickKelley  •  Nov 12, 2009 @8:44 pm

    Brian Dunbar took the words right out of my keyboard. Blitzer is just being a patronizing ass, trying to pull in ratings from red state America, which he obviously thinks feels this way. Everybody deserves a fair legal defense in a court of law. More importantly than the fact they deserve it, it happens to be their legal right, and the legal obligation of the courts to provide them with one, and the moral obligation of us all to make sure that happens.

    Having said all that, I hope they fry the bastard. Which makes it all the more important to make sure he is given a fair trial with competent representation.

  8. Jdog  •  Nov 13, 2009 @5:36 am

    Well, yeah; a vigorous defense doesn't mean that a guy who murdered more than a dozen people gets to walk. It just means that, if and when he gets convicted and sentenced, it's much more likely to be a fair sentence, and to be seen as a fair sentence. I'm not at all sure what Hasan's lawyer can do — an insanity defense seems to be a very long shot, and I don't see that the government is going to have a whole lot of difficulty meeting its burden of proof on the facts of the matter — but that's okay with me.

  9. piperTom  •  Nov 13, 2009 @6:25 am

    "Thanks for that question, Wolf. It's making me think… I believe I should withdraw from the case — right after you explain to me exactly when an accused person should be executed without trial."

  10. mojo  •  Nov 13, 2009 @9:27 am

    He'll get a fair trial, hopefully followed by a first-class hanging.

  11. randomscrub  •  Nov 13, 2009 @10:51 am

    Clearly Mr. Blitzer needs to reacquaint himself with the founding of our Republic. John Adams was the lawyer for British soldiers who perpetrated the Boston Massacre, ensuring that they got adequate representation. Seems a noble tradition worth preserving.

    http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/FTRIALS/bostonmassacre/bostonmassacre.html

  12. SPQR  •  Nov 13, 2009 @12:58 pm

    Remind me again how CNN is different from Fox?

  13. South Florida Lawyers  •  Nov 13, 2009 @3:55 pm

    Great stuff. We're seeing the same shinola from John Yoo(!) and Andy McCarthy who is whining that KSM gets a lawyer, unlike all the dead victims:

    http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NDVjYmJhYWU3OWQ2MWUxNzU3M2M1OTczZTIxYTE3Zjg=

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