Lawyers. Very very smart lawyers. Very very smart lawyers in Congress because, you know, it’s legislators who write the laws to advance policies and seal up holes in our foundation, and the people who know how to do that are lawyers.
I can’t do it. Most of you can’t do it. Many congresspeople can’t do it, either.
It’s why I was pissed off when Representative Dan Goldman lost his New York City primary. He will not be in Congress next year. The man who won that primary does not have a law degree, although in every other respect he’s an excellent public servant.
Dan Goldman lost the primary because…Israel.
There are salient issues, existential issues in this America which we need to consider when we decide for whom we’re going to vote in the upcoming elections. Israel is not one of them. Palestinian sovereignty is not one of them. The only sovereignty for which we voters have powers to address is the sovereignty of the United States of America. And that issue, especially now, must be the immediate center of our citizenship.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is of passionate concern for many of us who care about human rights. It eats at our guts — but is peripheral to our current elections. Our elections will not resolve the conflict; that’s on the shoulders of Israelis, Israeli voters and international influence. Dropping a demonstrably gifted representative from the New York congressional delegation because he did not fully decry Israel’s existence, even as he decried its actions, will not resolve conflicts in the Middle East.
I’m thinking those who voted against Dan Goldman did not witness his outstanding and thrilling role in the first Trump impeachment inquiry and trial. Did you watch it? I did and was mesmerized by this rare event in American history, and by the way it was conducted. Dan Goldman was not then a congressman but was brought in as investigator and legal counsel by the Democratic majority on the House Intelligence Committee, chaired by Adam Schiff.
It was Goldman who questioned many of the witnesses in the hearings. The way he questioned them — calmly, firmly, patiently and intelligently — might have been a revelation to anyone who thinks melodramatic showmanship is the mark of a good litigator.
There are congresspeople without law degrees who are priceless managers of the knotty structure that is our government (I’m thinking about Nancy Pelosi), and plenty of other top-notch congresspeople, also without law degrees, who are gifted at the large variety of government roles necessary to having a functioning government.
But right now we’re facing a future with two critical and complex operations that only lawyers can take on: massive, blatant corruption and SCOTUS.
Only lawyers have the skills and patience to carve through the corruption and identify the federal criminal and civil laws that can be accurately applied to this horror and the people who revel in it. As infuriating as it looks, not every apparent act of corruption may be illegal and criminal. Only lawyers can figure out what laws do apply and get indictments; only lawyers can write criminal complaints; only lawyers can prosecute.
And only intelligent lawyers who fully understand the Constitution and our subsequent history as a nation of laws, not men, can stick their fingers into the gaps in SCOTUS decisions (there are gaps), and the Roberts’s court’s illogic which has weakened and sickened our civilization.
Smart lawyers can not only pinpoint those flaws but use those flaws when they write legislation to counter the destruction SCOTUS has wreaked.
I can’t do it; most of you can’t do it. Dan Goldman can do it. I’m sorry he won’t be in the House working with the terrific lawyers who conducted the two Trump impeachment hearings and trials.
I hope they’ll bring him back as a special legal counsel to participate in cleaning up the wreckage and giving us back our country.