NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo

March 27, 2009

Attorney General Andrew Cuomo
Office of the Attorney General
The Capitol
Albany, New York 12224-0341

Mr. Coomo,

Lillian Hellman would be proud. So would Joe McCarthy.

Even though Sweet Lil, as hatchet faced a harridan as this country produced in the 20th century, made her bones by NOT NAMING NAMES she would have approved of this crusade. Perhaps jihad would be a better word. The reason would be simple: The target was not a cabal of traitors but, rather, businessmen.

Joe McCarthy would have been proud also. He never met a witness he couldn’t intimidate. When a Congressman from Colorado with the horribly inappropriate name of Polis [look it up] snarls at fellow citizens “We will hunt you down” sphincters tighten. When you subpoena men who, having lived up to their contracts, expected others to live up to theirs, something is jarred in the universe of freedom. When the government not only responds to the mob’s wishes but leads it into frenzy something else is fractured. Daniel Webster would come back from the grave to ask his famous question “Neighbor, how stands the Republic”? The answer he always wanted was “Iron bottomed and copper sheathed” would not the one he would get today.

Is it not a “slippery slope” we tread upon, would it not have a “chilling effect” on agreements between free men, when the government decides ex post facto that it doesn’t like an agreement between two consenting adults?

Senator McCarthy’s first counsel, the not quite yet sainted Bobby Kennedy, would have liked it also. What ever else he did he had no qualms in wiretapping Martin Luther King, remember?

Most of all, your father would have liked it.

Who can forget his principled stand on abortion? Delivered at a Catholic university it showed the conundrum faced by modern American Liberals whenever conscience and the law collide. Since he had no allegiance to the “permanent things”, since he had no fixed star to set a course on, his following line of reasoning was applauded.

Your father said that while he was personally opposed to abortion he would uphold the law because it was…the Law.

The problem with Logic is that it is not a parabolic curve.


It would follow, ERGO, that if he were Governor when Dred Scott was on the run, and had he been captured in New York, he would have shipped his free Black ass back on the first Southbound train because it was…the Law.

Modern American Liberals, when they have the whip hand, act like 17 year old boys with a case of beer and the keys to the family car.

The Rule of Law is a fragile thing. It’s bad enough when the more feral members of society attack it. When the government, at any level, leads the assault on it the foundations of a just society are undermined.

Like father, like son.

Shame on both of you.