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Well, it was Grover Norquist and his minions of Republican members of Congress who signed his no taxes commitment that let Casey Anthony walk.
Grover Norquist (flickr image by Gage Skidmore)
It's become very clear that the reason she was found not guilty was because of a bad call by the prosecution, asking for the death penalty when they couldn't even show cause of death. CNN reported on attorney Jeffrey Toobin's commentary,
"...the prosecution's decision to make this a death penalty case. "(This) always seemed like a wrong decision to me, given the ... absence of a cause of death (and) a time of death," Toobin said.
This was a case of bad judgment by the prosecutors.
How is that related to Grover Norquist and the Republican anti-tax policy? Norquist has been quoted as saying that his goal is to, by cutting taxes, shrink the size of government so much that "it's small enough to drown in a bathtub."
Fact is, prosecutors are part of government. if the prosecutors made the wrong decision we have to consider whether the government in Florida had the best people on the job. Could the district attorney's office afford to pay to attract the best attorneys? Are the best employees no longer at all available to be hired by the government because Norquist and his enemies of government have already decimated funds so much that the drowning in the bathtub has already begun?
Is Casey Anthony's acquittal an indication of justice? Most Americans, certainly most Fox News viewers don't think so. But I propose that her acquittal was directly due to the success of Groven Norquist. That he may not have shrunken government enough to entirely drown it in a bathtub, but he and his anti-tax signatories have had enough success, especially in backward, neanderthal state like Florida, which elected a criminal for governor, to damage the government institution that metes out justice-- the court system.
I am not in any way saying that government workers are less competent. I AM saying that if government is intentionally starved, with the intent of destroying it, that it is inevitable that the best possible employees will no longer be attracted to serve, even the people with the noblest intentions, since they also have obligations to their families to make a decent living.
Right wingers in the Republican and Democratic parties are attacking government. They often base their approach on untested and unproven Libertarian theories, on the pathologically narcissistic theories of Ayn Rand (by the way, the protagonist of her best-seller Atlas Shrugged inherited her wealth from her father. She didn't earn it.)
Grover Norquist played a major role that led to the release of Casey Anthony. But it's not just her. There are thousands of real felons who are not being properly prosecuted. There are also tens of thousands of innocent people who are being unjustly prosecuted. We face a future, as right wingers work to drown government in a bathtup-- that includes education, courts, police, roads, bridges, homeland security-- that is bringing America down at an accelerating rate, to third world status. We are already behind many third world nations based on many important measures, including life-span, health care, education, technologies. Grover Norquist and the people who follow his anti-tax policies are destroying America's future. They are more dangerous enemies for the coming generations of America than any terrorist organization. It's time that they are seen as such enemies.
