Every so often I am glad to see sparks of what has always and continues to make America great. Such a spark came in the speech that Reade Seligmann gave after it was announced that not only was the case against him and his co-defendants being dropped but that they were all without reservation innocent of all charges against them;

This entire experience has opened my eyes up to a tragic world of injustice I never knew existed. If it is possible for law enforcement officials to systematically railroad us with no evidence whatsoever, it is frightening to think what they could do to those who do not to have the resources to defend themselves.

Truly after a hard fought and well deserved vindication which would have left a lesser man bitter and resentful (both of which he and his fellow teammates had every right to be) he sought and attained the higher ground.

It also reminds me of Luke Chapter 23 verse 31 where the Bible says; for “if these things are done when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?”

I cannot imagine what it must be like at that age, or any age for that matter, whatever resources you may have, to suffer the full weight of the Judicial System of the United States of America. I can only say that Mr. Seligmann and his colleagues have some very broad shoulders.

Malicious and False Prosecution is truly a horrible thing to witness, and in this, all America has been treated to an unpleasant lesson in how far things can go wrong when people with a personal agenda are given free reign to run their own little witch hunts, often with the full approval of a significant portion of the populace that simply happens to share their personal bias.

Fortunately, this was just a Local Prosecutor run amok. This could never happen at the Federal Level could it?

Actually it is going on right now in the case of the Senate Judiciary Committee vs. Alberto Gonzales. The Senate Judiciary Committee, comprised as it is of such stellar intellectuals and partisan hacks as Patrick Leahy, Edward Kennedy, Joseph Biden, Dianne Feinstein, Russ Feingold, Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin have made it clear that they already believe that there was a crime committed; they just can’t say what it is.

At least the Durham prosecutor wasn’t trying to figure out what the charges were as he went along. He just used the facts that fit his theory and ignored all the rest. Not quite the Scientific method, but at least it wasn’t exactly intellectually flawed on the face of it.

Alternately, the current strategy of the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee seems to be to subpoena every email record and document known to man while subsequently judging Gonzalez in the court of public opinion, until they can cobble together sufficient doubt of reality itself and hope that Gonzalez (or the Administration) ultimately decides that they can’t take the heat.

I think that my personal favorite bit of sophistry is Patrick Leahy in not quite calling for Alberto Gonzales’ resignation claiming that Gonzales was undermining himself and his agency's law enforcement efforts and that he has been “damaging to the administration” and “No doubt, it is bad for the Department of Justice [and] there has been a very substantial decrease in morale.”

Of course there is a decrease in morale and of course Gonzalez is having leadership issues. He is being trashed 24/7 in the media and spending all of his time defending himself to Congress. He couldn’t possibly be providing any leadership whatsoever to his department right now.

That’s right up there with someone who kills their spouse and then puts forward as a defense that they should be allowed to go free because they have children to care for, when they were the one who created the problem in the first place. Way to go Leahy. Some leader you would make.

Certainly, the lesson that we need to take from both of these cases is that when Elected Officials (such as Mike Nifong and the members of the Senate Judicary Committee) use their positions in power to bring down someone, of whose guilt they have already assured themselves, with only the most specious of evidence, that person has a long road ahead of themselves in keeping their head above water, but it is even harder when the media is against them too.

One of the key principle upon which this Country was founded is the principle of Innocence until proven guilty. Unfortunately, the Legislature, Judiciary and Media all seem to have lost sight of this. If we do nothing else, we need to restore this principle, or we will never have justice.