Solomon "Sol" Wachtler appears to have coined the phrase.
He is a retired New York judge, ultimately chief judge of the New York Court of Appeals.
And still living at 96.
He is a retired New York judge, ultimately chief judge of the New York Court of Appeals.
And still living at 96.
He was a republican. He wanted to stop using grand juries to bring indictments, so he wasn’t impartial in his assessment.
Unrelatedly, he had an affair with a republican fund-raiser. When it ended, started making threats to kidnap her daughter, who was 14 at the time. He sent a sexually explicit note to the daughter, enclosing a condom.
He got a 15-month prison sentence.
This is who republicans are quoting whenever they repeat the phrase that “you can indict a ham sandwich”.
The real force behind the low no-true-bill rate for federal grand juries is that the DoJ had extraordinarily high standards for themselves before they even approached a GJ. They had to believe they could convict and sustain on appeal. They haven’t lived up to those standards for a couple years now.
Do you think that only Republicans say this or something?
Lists of indictments (and convictions) by administration over the past 50+ years (dating to the Nixon administration) shows a sharp majority under Republican presidential administrations.
<https://gigafact.org/fact-briefs/have-there-been-significant...>
For a longer history: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_federal_political_scan...>
Note that the US has had (by general consensus) six or seven party systems, with significant re-alignments occurring at several points.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_eras_of_the_United_S...>
The two most recent shifts, which Wikipedia traces to roughly 1980 and 2016 have substantially changed what were traditional hallmarks particularly of the Republican Party. Whilst in rhetoric the GOP remains "tough on crime", in practice it rather more consistently hews to Wilhoit's Law: "Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
<https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progre...>.
> This is who republicans are quoting whenever they repeat the phrase that “you can indict a ham sandwich”.
Frankly, I've seen all types of people use this quote, not just Republicans, which is a simple statement that there is a very low bar to indict in a grand jury proceeding, which any reasonable assessment of the statistics would deem true. The fact that the originator of the quote turned out to be a douchebag is totally irrelevant.
Also, I think this part is missing a very important step:
> The real force behind the low no-true-bill rate for federal grand juries is that the DoJ had extraordinarily high standards for themselves before they even approached a GJ. They had to believe they could convict and sustain on appeal.
While that may explain the very high conviction rate at trial, getting a grand jury indictment was also an excellent way for prosecutors to get a plea deal if the accused was looking at decades in jail even if the "beyond a reasonable doubt" threshold would be unlikely to be met.
He was born in 1930, though, so it's hard to say that he shares much in common with the ideology we call republican today.
At its core, government is power over people, and the evergreen question is "how far should that power go, and who wields that power?"
I believe that there are reasonable concerns on "both sides" about that, but the reality is that power is effectively wielded by the wealthy. Democracy is an experiment that ostensibly runs counter to that.
That quote is completely spot on, so any objection to it is worthy of asking why so. The problem with that is that it's not likely to have a satisfactory answer.
And Democrats were the party of slavery. Why do you bring this up? I'd think the Hackernews crowd would know history and wouldn't be surprised that on a long enough time line, philosophies change.
The point was that OP was making a rage-bait statement. HN is supposed to be better than that.
I saw mention of the peccadillo, but wasn't aware of the full back-story.