Dad was a well-known lawyer. No one loved the law more than he did. He’s been dead for 36 years. Yesterday, I was at a funeral. An elderly gentleman, a lawyer I didn’t know asked me if I was Marston Smith’s son and then proceeded with a narrative I’ve heard many times. “Your Dad was a really smart man and a brilliant lawyer…..” and then he told me a couple of stories and interactions he had had with him that fortified his opinion. 36 years after his death and these types of interactions with folks I don’t know happen with a good bit of frequency.
I mention Dad’s comment to the Rylands because often a son does not understand a parental comment until years after the comment was uttered. I quit drinking when I was 30. Years before, I remember my mother saying people drink to medicate themselves. At the time, her comment meant nothing to me, but as soon as I understood her comment, I quit that day.
So are you prosecuting or are you persecuting?
It might surprise the reader that I’m not a big fan of yesterday’s ruling by the Delaware jury on the 3 federal gun charges against Hunter Biden. Indeed, this might shock all readers who read my article last week where I announced that I felt the United States was in the midst of a civil war due to the corruption and despotism of the Biden family and their allies.
There’s a difference between a malum in se crime (a crime that is bad in and of itself) and a malum prohibitum crime (an offense that is merely a crime because it violates something that our spineless law makers prohibit). Splitting somebody’s throat is a malum in se crime, jaywalking at 4 am across Park Avenue when no cars are in sight is a malum prohibitum crime. We’ve all committed malum prohibitum crimes, some of us do so every day.
One of the themes I hear when people approach me to talk about Dad is how fair and honest he was. It’s usually a story about how legally he didn’t have to do something, but did that something because he felt it was the right thing to do, often against his interest. My brother Walter often reminds me that when Dad was at the University of Virginia Law School, “natural law” was taught. I could write a treatise on natural law, but to define it in a few words, it is the law of right and wrong that has been manifested to us by God. These laws are not written down, but we know what they are. We “feel” them. Except the truly evil, most of us abide by these laws even though there are no statutes or marble friezes adorning neo-classical temples inscribing them.
Hunter Biden definitely broke the law, but is it such a big deal that he deserves 25 years in prison? Buying a gun is a God-given constitutional right, so putting restrictions on this right is suspect to begin with. The real problem is Congress makes a multitude of unnecessary laws because a majority of its members don’t have the testicles, much less the honor to do NOTHING, when doing NOTHING is much better than crafting burdensome laws that cause more harm than good. We have an oversized Nanny State government. Hunter Biden was and I think likely still is an addict and a user. How many alcoholics do you know who admit to being an alcoholic? Ok, he lied on the federal form, not good, but doesn’t the federal government lie to us 100 times/day about much more serious matters? It’s ok for them to lie to us, but lie to them about something inconsequential and go to jail for 25 years? How about some balance? Let’s also acknowledge how stupid this law is. Bad guys who intend to use a gun in a crime don’t buy guns legally. If they did, do you think they are going to tell the truth on a federal form? A teeny, tiny percentage of people who buy guns through legal means ever use such guns in a crime. The act of buying or having a gun has nothing to do with using that gun in a crime. When I was in high school, virtually every male had a gun in his car, no one ever shot anyone.
When I was at the University of Virginia, all my fraternity brothers had shot guns in their rooms. No one shot anybody, and we were drunk all the time. (I remember once when some local homies tried to rob the place and quickly found 8 gun barrels pointed at their heads, but that’s a story for another day).
The government likely spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, perhaps millions prosecuting this case. Persecution occurs when the government targets one individual to prosecute when many others are committing the same crime.
I don’t like Hunter Biden. I don’t think there is anything more reprehensible than peddling influence and selling out your country. The DOJ slow walked his financial crimes such that the statute of limitations would expire on many of them. He could be charged with many more, much more serious crimes. The DOJ has protected him at every opportunity. David Weiss, his prosecutor was appointed by that crook of crook Merrick Garland, and this was after Weiss was aware and failed to initially disclose to the federal district court a secret plea arrangement that prevented Hunter from ever being prosecuted for anything! It would not surprise me if the DOJ has struck a secret deal with the Bidens. It may be at Hunter’s sentencing hearing the prosecution recommends no jail time. It may be that by the time the sentencing occurs Joe Biden has either won or lost the presidency and can then pardon his son with no political consequences. To me, none of this matters.
I don’t want to ever win by not playing fairly. Cowering defendants to bend the knee to the blunt force of government violates natural law. If the law is not administered fairly, we all lose. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but the degradation of our legal system is not worth political expediency. Once the corrupt players see that they can pass unwise laws to persecute their enemies, they will just enact more such laws and persecute more of their enemies.
The convention of natural law regulates most of us to behave. No one is perfect. All of us would be better off if we reduced the Federal Code to about 1/1oth of its size and returned to a culture of “right and wrong” and rejected the legalism of our current age.
