Mencken Was Right, Nancy Grace Dept. 0
Mencken was right when he said, “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.”
A surfeit of stupid, reported by John Kass in the Chicago Tribune. Here’s one example:
“I said, ‘Oh my God, help me,'” Sammay Blackwell, 26, told her local News on 6. “She hit me again, causing my vehicle to flip two-and-a-half times, landing on the driver’s side, and I just laid there playing dead.”
Charged with assault and battery with a deadly weapon, the alleged Oklahoma nutball reportedly told police she’d been “trying to save the children.”
More stupid to come: As Steve Chapman points out in the same newspaper, bad cases make bad law:
(snip)
The point of these measures is retribution against a single villain who allegedly escaped the severe penalty she deserved. But a law specifically aimed at preventing a repeat of today’s notorious case will almost certainly be irrelevant to the shocking crime of tomorrow. In these instances, the unforeseen and surprising are the norm.
From the push for Caylee’s Law, you might assume the problem with American justice is that there are not enough criminal laws on the books. In fact, there are some 4,400 such statutes at the federal level alone, on top of thousands more enacted by the states.
And, as Chapman goes on to explain persuasively, the law of unintended consequences is likely to result in any “Caylee’s Law” ensnaring some innocent someone into an unwarranted felony conviction.
The problem with the Casey Anthony case is that the prosecution either did not have or botched the case (I’m suspecting the former–suspicions are not evidence).
And now the lynch mob is forming to string up someone–anyone–in retribution.
