In 1960, any number of public officials didn’t want the people they were supposed to serve counted, especially in the South. So, one of the tricks they employed was to arrest the enumerator who was going door to door, preferably on a Friday afternoon, on a charge of “impersonating a census taker,” and let him languish in jail over the weekend until the federal supervisor could be brought in on Monday to authenticate his employee. No doubt, a weekend in jail was discouraging to some. Which was why many neighborhoods had to be canvassed over and over again.
Although Rep. Alan Grayson is a bit disingenuous in ascribing the antagonism towards ACORN to their voter registration efforts, this discussion is a preliminary round in the battle over corporate regulation (including banks) that's next on the national agenda under the "consumer protection" heading.
Also, you will recall that Grayson relied on this argument to amend the bill to affect all corporations who have been convicted of fraud, which covers a host of military constractors.
Justice Antonin Scalia is entirely correct. Charging public officials for failing to deliver “honest services” to the people who employ them should be a standardized procedure throughout the land. That may not be the Justice’s intent in calling for a reconsideration of the law, but I think it’s a grand idea. Even better is that this novel approach to dealing with dishonest public servants was unearthed, in a manner of speaking, by a conservative Department of Justice.
Conservatives pride themselves on being objective. But, in using that word, they don’t mean that they’re discounting their own emotions or prejudices to define another person’s issues or interests. Rather, for all intents and purposes, they disregard their own perspective entirely and presume to know the other from what they see. And then they react to their perception and conclude that the object is responsible for that reaction. It’s as if the subject/agent doesn’t even exist.
