Ciceronian Review

Petrocelli Opens

In the opening statements in the Lay/Skelling trial Petrocelli is reported as follows:

Petrocelli blamed three men -- former Enron finance chief Andrew Fastow, Fastow aide Michael Kopper and treasurer Ben Glisan Jr. -- for stealing from Enron. All three have pleaded guilty to federal crimes.

But he said the other Enron executives who have struck plea deals with the government were ''hooked'' by prosecutors, and he challenged jurors to find the true facts about Enron and ignore four years of ''opinion'' about its collapse.

''They're not guilty of the crimes they pled guilty to,'' he said, referring to those executives.

He called Enron's bankruptcy a tragedy and said the company ''was the victim of an immediate, unexpected and temporary drain on its liquidity.''

I don't understand the rules here.  If people have pled guilty, I do not think one can still maintain that the are not guilty.  The plea and sentence would seem to be a fact that is not subject to controversy any longer.  A judgment is still there no matter how inconvenient.  That litigation is over.  I suppose the rules for criminal trial may be different.

Whose on First

No aid for the Palestine Authority while Hamas is involved, until Hamas recognizes the State of Israel, recognizes Jeruselum as its capital, and renounces the use of violence.  Reasonable demands, because, after all, the Israeli ruling parties all recognize the State of Palestine, with Jeruseleum as its capital, and hasd renounced violence as the means to achieve its ends. 
Oh, my mistake.

These sorts of conditions are a reason to think that the coverage and politics reflect an unusually large quantity of racism. 

Break Back

One of the more insightful commentaries on "Brokeback Mountain" appeared Sunday in the SL Tribune.  (The most deviant aspect of the movie is the idea that a cowboy would herd sheep.)  As the essay points out, those boys were not overly familiar with horses (which might explain the unnatural interest in sheep), and the curious idea that the shepherd would drive their charges past the tree line. 

The Trib is a weird paper.  It has developed a relentlessly local orientation since purchase by Singleton.  A lawyer is murdered in Virgina.  News here because she once lived here for a year or two a decade ago.  On the other hand, the editorials are less insane, and actually nearer my own views.  (It came out against confirmation on Alito.)

End of the book

"Vale" from Carthage

I, now at Carthage.  He, shot dead at Rome.
Shipmates last May.  "And what if one of us,"
I asked last May, in fun, in gentleness,
"Wear doom, like dungarees, and doesn't know?"
He laughed, "Not see Times Square again?"  The foam,
Feathering across that deck a year ago,
Swept those five words --like seeds--beyond the seas
    Into his future.  There they grew like trees;
    And as he passed them there next spring, they laid
    Upon his road of fire their sudden shade.
Though he had always scrapped his mess-kit pure
And scrubbed redeemingly his barracks floor,
Though all his button glowed their ritual-hymn
Like cloudless moons to intercede for him,
No furlough fluttered from the sky.  He will
Not see Times Square--he will not see--h will
Not see Times
                        change; at Carthage (while my friend,
Living those words at Rome, screamed in the  end)
I saw an ancient Roman's tomb and read
"Vale" in stone.  Here two wars mix their dead:
    Roman, my shipmate's dream walks hand in hand
    With yours tonight ("New York again" and "Rome"),
    Like widowed sisters bearing water home
    On tired heads through hot Tunisian sand
    In good cool urns, and says, "I understand."
Roman, you'll see your Forum Square no more.
What's left but this to say of any war?

(Carthage 1944)

Peter Vierek

Confessions

November’s issue of Poetry included an interesting essay on religious conversion by Mary Karr.  The essayist is a poet (well, I never!) who achieved rather more success as a memoirist than poet.  Her conversion seems to have come through a series of practices and experiences, rather than considered choice.  It is a sort of confirmation of James’ theories of religion and psychology.  Early on she starts praying, more accurately adopting some of the rituals of prayer without committing to pray, as part of an effort to control alcoholism.  The essay was originally a bit longer – perhaps in the elided portions there is more explanation of the transition from kneeling and saying thanks to some belief in the act.  But the published version moves from that start to other conversations (with people we are supposed to know and don’t).  Interestingly, little of what is recounted can be said to be direct discussion of religious belief.  A happy or thankful attitude towards existence is not religious in any helpful (or even intelligible) sense, at least where religion has to do with belief in one or more gods.  But those conversations seem to have been decisive for her ultimate conversion – Catholicism.  In the end, the essay seems to be suggesting that theism, or Catholicism, is a helpful strategy for coping with and ameliorating dysfunctions.  Truth is beside the point, and reasons going to the belief itself are also of little interest or import.  Which puts religious belief in the category of making lists as means to success.  I don’t mind, but it does seem to miss something, or to raise questions about what it is that the conversion involved or was.

Back

After a long lapse, return. I’ve been sleeping. That is what the end of the year is for I think – catching up on the earlier missed duties, among which I count sleep. Well, not all duties; I’ve passed on the duty to see to desert. There are plenty (one I suppose would be plenty) whom I know and did not get what they deserved last year, confining oneself to those personally known. It is a problem. Not for me, because I am not a believer in deontic ethics or in Kantian political theory, and, heaven forefend, no theological burden. So getting what is deserved is not the highest priority. It is a small puzzle why Kantians care so little for seeing to it that all get their just deserts. Plenty of big talk in the context of punishment (which, in an indefensible and grotesque mistake is taken to mean action by the state under the criminal law) about desert and retribution. But there is no basis for so limiting the application of the doctrines. If one believed that there is just desert for immoral conduct, then it is very hard to avoid the conclusion that there is just desert for the morally permissible and the morally required. That conclusion – or rather set of conclusions – should be anathema to marketeers, among a number of other groupings. It is obvious that recipients of good rarely deserve their fortune. Here is another way at the problem: economic allocations are normally thought to flow (in a general way) from voluntary exchange. That choice is grounded in a number of things, but not among them is any concept or notion of desert. (That would be a labor theory of value, e.g.) But those allocations strongly condition most others. Of course, outside of class, it is easy to see that almost nothing about Kant makes sense or can be made plausible.  It is can’t be argued (with a straight face) that Larry Ellickson deserves his wealth. Endowments are just gifts, if even that, and so too fortune. But I digress; I often digress. Seeing to it that those at hand get what they deserve: it would be quite a heavy duty. One would need to go about bapping people in the head, etc. And what of oneself? Self-administered comeuppance for the year’s inadequate performances? No, it is at least amusing to contemplate doing to others. One might think the list of those to be righted even longer in light of one’s profession. I doubt, however, that litigation involves folk notably more wanting than other endeavors. So, instead of putting folk aright, I took a lot of naps. I think the time ultimately better used thereby.