A TALE OF TWO SPEECHES

 It was the best of times (April 1, 1940), and the worst of times (March 14, 2025). 

Two speeches to the Department of Justice in the Great Hall of Justice. 

The first speech was given by Robert Jackson on April 1, 1940. The chief prosecutor at the Neurenberg Germany war crimes trials. Jackson was also Attorney General of the United States before serving as a Supreme Court justice where he remains one of the best writers ever to serve on the Court. 

Jackson's April 1, 1940 speech was called The Federal Prosecutor. 

The prosecutor has more control over life, liberty, and reputation than any other person in America. His discretion is tremendous. He can have citizens investigated and, if he is that kind of person, he can have this done to the tune of public statements and veiled or unveiled intimations. Or the prosecutor may choose a more subtle course and simply have a citizen’s friends interviewed. The prosecutor can order arrests, present cases to the grand jury in secret session, and on the basis of his one-sided presentation of the facts, can cause the citizen to be indicted and held for trial. He may dismiss the case before trial, in which case the defense never has a chance to be heard. Or he may go on with a public trial. If he obtains a conviction, the prosecutor can still make recommendations as to sentence, as to whether the prisoner should get probation or a suspended sentence, and after he is put away, as to whether he is a fit subject for parole. While the prosecutor at his best is one of the most beneficent forces in our society, when he acts from malice or other base motives, he is one of the worst.

...

In times of fear or hysteria political, racial, religious, social, and economic groups, often from the best of motives, cry for the scalps of individuals or groups because they do not like their views. Particularly do we need to be dispassionate and courageous in those cases which deal with so-called “subversive activities.” They are dangerous to civil liberty because the prosecutor has no definite standards to determine what constitutes a “subversive activity,” such as we have for murder or larceny. Activities which seem benevolent and helpful to wage earners, persons on relief, or those who are disadvantaged in the struggle for existence may be regarded as “subversive” by those whose property interests might be burdened or affected thereby. Those who are in office are apt to regard as “subversive” the activities of any of those who would bring about a change of administration. Some of our soundest constitutional doctrines were once punished as subversive. We must not forget that it was not so long ago that both the term “Republican” and the term “Democrat” were epithets with sinister meaning to denote persons of radical tendencies that were “subversive” of the order of things then dominant.

And then we have the ignorant fool-thug who addressed the prosecutors at the Department of Justice last week, and in what is becoming a normal, tyrannical screed, cursed his predecessors and those who obtained multiple criminal indictments against him- and in one case a criminal conviction. He threatened lawyers who opposed him in court, and the lawyers who prosecuted him, and promised to see them punished for doing their jobs in the manner that Attorney General Jackson said they should.  And as he did this his Attorney General lackey stood by and nodded, calling the United States of America's Justice Department the justice department of our deranged president. She and the current director of the FBI are Quislings in the finest example of that derogatory term. 

It was the best of times. 

It is now the worst of times.