This morning one of the commissioners I regularly appear before decided to explain the criminal process to some 11 year old using the analogy of Goldilocks and the three bears. Naturally, at the break, I had to goof on her:
"These handcuffs are tooooo loose!"
"These handcuffs are tooooo tight!"
"These handcuffs are juuuust right!"
Turn around to find some parent staring at me in disbelief. Hey, do this for a while and see if you start to think this way...
Like the guy in our chemical dependency treatment program who could not understand why we asked him not to wear the belt with the marijuana leaf on it. "But it's a cool belt, man." Yeah, if you're a POT HEAD. You are supposed to be in recovery and support others in their recovery too. Take off your belt if you are coming to group. And don't let your pants sag. None of us want see that. Cheers!
"I will forever, at all hazards, assert the dignity, independence, and integrity of the English Bar, without which impartial justice, the most valuable part of the English Constitution, can have no existence. "From the moment that any advocate can be permitted to say that he will or will not stand between the Crown and the subject arraigned in the court where he daily sits to practise, from that moment the liberties of England are at an end. "If the advocate refuses to defend, from what he may think of the charge or of the defense, he assumes the character of the judge; nay, he assumes it before the hour of judgment; and, in proportion to his rank and reputation, puts the heavy influence of, perhaps, a mistaken opinion into the scale against the accused, in whose favor the benevolent principle of English law makes all presumptions, and which commands the very judge to be his counsel."
-Lord Thomas Erskine, Attorney General of England, on his defense of Thomas Paine for sedition (1792)
1 comment:
Like the guy in our chemical dependency treatment program who could not understand why we asked him not to wear the belt with the marijuana leaf on it. "But it's a cool belt, man." Yeah, if you're a POT HEAD. You are supposed to be in recovery and support others in their recovery too. Take off your belt if you are coming to group. And don't let your pants sag. None of us want see that. Cheers!
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