Hacker News Reader

Comment by thinkcomp | Hacker News Reader

The video of Eric Holder is simultaneously baffling and revealing. The USDOJ really thinks it did a good job. It's unbelievable. Holder's metric of success is apparently (in this case) nothing but how little time Aaron could have spent in jail. No other considerations seem to matter.

I'm not sure how people so ignorant and blind wind up in positions of authority, but it scares me. Even scarier is the fact that I find myself agreeing with the Republican Senator from Texas who is likely only pressing the point with Holder to embarrass the Obama administration.

This microcosm encapsulates so well government doing all of the wrong things for all of the wrong reasons. How did it come to this?

View on HN

> How did it come to this?

Perhaps some Mark Twain quotes from the late 1800s might change your mind about us having recently "come to this":

"All Congresses and Parliaments have a kindly feeling for idiots, and a compassion for them, on account of personal experience and heredity."

"It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress."

"[I] was reporter in a legislature two sessions and the same in Congress one session, and thus learned to know personally three sample bodies of the smallest minds and the selfishest souls and the cowardliest hearts that God makes."

They don't just apply to Congressmen. They're relevant to pretty much any level of our government. It seems to apply anywhere that people are given power before they deserve it.

No other considerations seem to matter.

He was caught red-handed, so to speak. Any rational jury would have convicted him on evidentiary grounds had he chosen to go trial. There doesn't seem to be any record of his defense counsel arguing before the court that he was unfit to stand trial.

> This microcosm encapsulates so well government doing all of the wrong things for all of the wrong reasons. How did it come to this?

It's always been like this, and the people pushing the political buttons and pulling the political levers are patting the AG's back now. Special interests have an iron grip on politics in Washington now and the only way to win is to spend the most money.

Don't think this is limited to the Federal government, the States have been infiltrated just as well. Money makes the world go around.

You use of 'infiltrated' indicates that there was a time when money did not drive politics.

There was no such time.

> who is likely only pressing the point with Holder to embarrass the Obama administration.

He's doing it to build up his bid for the 2016 presidential election, and maybe a little to please his daddy.

I'm positive it has nothing to do with embarrassing the Obama administration.

Question: if Swartz was likely to only serve a short time for his "crimes" what's the justification for the amount of resources used in his prosecution? Either he was truly or a bad guy who deserved the concentrated attention of the US Attorney or his crimes were minor and those attentions were the result either of incompetence or personal vendetta. Are there any other options?

1. The only other cases available for the prosecuting attorneys with the kind of legal background needed to prosecute cases like Aaron's were of even lesser likely jail times (i.e. the "they'd be twiddling their thumbs otherwise" claim).

2. Or maybe, the seriousness of a crime is not actually completely correlated to the likely prison sentence. The prison sentence given should be based on what is required to prevent recurrence by the suspect in this particular case, and to prevent new occurrences of the same crime by others. E.g. if you could prevent theft of $20 million with a $5 padlock you'd normally call that a wise investment.

> I'm not sure how people so ignorant and blind wind up in positions of authority, but it scares me.

When will you run for office so that we may vote for you?

I'm being snide but the fact is that it's not at all a mystery how these people end up there. The self-proclaimed "best and brightest" go off to less annoying/higher paying/etc. jobs. QED.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com