Joel Jacobsen

 Sridhar Pappu of the Washington Post began a profile of axed U.S. Attorney David Iglesias with a description of the "the dusty, desolate collection of adobe homes and Vietnamese restaurants that seem to form this city".  This, I think, counts as the single weirdest thing anybody has ever said about Albuquerque.

"Dusty" isn't weird - that's  just accurate.  And "adobe" is an understandable mistake, since the dominant building style uses stucco to gesture architecturally in the direction of traditional adobe.  (Hand-made bricks are, for reasons that will be obvious if you think about it for half a second, a very expensive building material.)  The use of the word "desolate" - "devoid of inhabitants and visitors" - to describe a metropolitan area of 791,000 is a bit loose, perhaps, but the writer's meaning (hideous hick town) is clear enough.

No, it's the bit about Vietnamese restaurants that has everyone here scratching their pellagra and thoughtfully rubbing their goiters. 

I've long thought that there are two unmistakable signs that a small city has become a big city: exit ramp traffic backs up all the way onto the freeway; and the opening of good Asian restaurants.  By these standards, Albuquerque rates.  But barely.  There are, in fact, some good Thai and Vietnamese restaurants (though, for whatever reason, not much good Chinese), but you have to hunt for them.  My yellow pages lists 7 Vietnamese restaurants, or roughly 1 per 18.8 square miles.

I've avoided writing about the U.S. Attorneys scandal, even though it has unexpectedly put New Mexico in the national news as nothing except our Governor's election to the Presidency has recently done.  In part that's because I know some of the people  involved (Iglesias tried real hard to become my boss nine years ago) but mainly because it didn't seem to have much to do with the subjects of this blog.

But certain familiar themes are beginning to emerge from the disorganized mass of information provided by reporters whose vocational major allowed them to get advanced degrees without loading them down with historical perspective or an understanding of American political institutions.

First:  The Washington HQ of the DOJ was/is deeply corrupt, and as with many judges, the corrupting influence is power rather than money.  After the revelation of Gonzales's shameful bullying of the hospitalized prior AG, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that he was named the replacement AG precisely because he was prepared to violate the law in a way that John Ashcroft wasn't.  As if to confirm this view of his character, Gonzales has committed perjury, a criminal offense, on multiple occasions since taking office.  When Monica Goodling, counsel to the Attorney General, said she would invoke her privilege against self-incrimination, she meant that if she testified truthfully she would reveal information that could be used to convict her of crimes.  And - a scandal that seems curiously camouflaged behind the firing scandal - the FBI, an agency of the DOJ,  repeatedly violated the law by J. Edgar Hoovering. 

Second: A concrete manifestation of the DOJ's corruption is the effort to use criminal prosecutions to influence elections.  That's what was going on with Iglesias (look at the second section of the Pappu article, which is more solidly sourced than the lede).   That's pretty obviously what went on in Wisconsin, where  sleazebag U.S. Attorney Biskupic saved his position by his election-timed prosecution of poor Georgia Thompson, a prosecution the Seventh Circuit recently termed "preposterous."   Biskupic is the anti-Iglesias, the U.S. Attorney prepared to sell himself for the glamour of the make-up and short skirts - er, I mean, the dignity of the job.

Third: This specific form of corruption might already have touched the judiciary: From a distance, it sure looks as though Democratic Justice Oliver Diaz was prosecuted (twice) for raising money to fund his race for the Mississippi Supreme Court.  It's at least possible that the real corruption in the case against Diaz involved the prosecutor, not the defendant.  Maybe I'm wrong about that; in some respects I hope I am.

Fourth: As with Guantanamo Bay, extraordinary renditions, secret prisons, and approved torture, the DOJ scandals show again that our courts are all-but-helpless to do anything about genuine abuses by the executive branch.  (See post 262.)  Judges seem to find a great deal of satisfaction in the elaborate role-playing courtroom games in which they get to pretend to discipline police officers and prosecutors, but they're sea anemones, carnivores who must wait for their prey to come to them.   When a contemptuous executive maintains a prudent distance, judges can do nothing but adhere to their (dignified) rocks, waving their tentacles helplessly.