"I wouldn’t be wasting time on a Bob Menendez political obituary."

"I think Bob Menendez is a very tenacious person, and he has the advantage of six long years and a fairly forgiving political environment in New Jersey."

According to — who better to say? — Bob Torricelli.

Think of all the Bobs who've thrived in fairly forgiving New Jersey.

It's all about the time frame. Torricelli had to withdraw when allegations emerged in the midst of a campaign. He didn't have any leeway for riding out the New Jersey forgiveness arc.

"A 99-year-old Italian man is divorcing his wife of 77 years after he stumbled across letters she had written to a secret lover in the 1940s."

"The 96-year-old woman, identified in court papers as Rosa C., reportedly confessed to having an affair 60 years ago, and then tried desperately to persuade her hubby to stay.... Once the divorce is finalized, the pair could take the record for world’s oldest divorcees."

"Where does David Prosser go to get his reputation back?"

Asks David Blaska.

There are some people who need to apologize to Mr. Justice David Prosser now that he has been cleared and soon. They took a shallowly researched and preposterous allegation -- that Prosser held fellow justice Ann Walsh Bradley in a chokehold -- and ran to the guillotine with it.

Yes, let's look back on the public demonstrations. Let's remember that protesters had a big ugly balloon effigy of Justice Prosser, which they tied by the neck to a lamppost. Look at their signs. Let's remember how these protesters strung together "allegations about Justice Prosser choking Justice Bradley [with] much more general issues about abortion and violence against women." As I said at the time:

I heard no acknowledgements of the uncertainties about what we know about what happened and no sensitivity about fairness and due process. I heard: 1. declarations about the importance of women's issues and 2. a demonization of Justice Prosser.

This is the level of left-wing activism we witnessed here in Madison. A justice is despised because his decisions do not please liberals, and so, without thought, they forgot about things liberals like to love themselves for caring about, such as fairness and due process. These are the same people who have been chanting the chant "shame, shame, shame" for months up at the Capitol.



How are they not oppressed by their own shame? Seriously, for the purposes of writing the previous paragraph, I channeled the feeling of shame that I would feel if I had done that, and now I am literally nauseated. If I had said what the people in the video at the last link said, I would be weeping now and begging forgiveness. But I am not them, so I will simply ask that they stage a rally in support of Justice Prosser and they publicly retract their earlier statements and commit themselves to the core principles of liberalism: fairness and due process.

Blaska demands apologies from people who should be "ashamed of their lynch mob mentality." He names the "practitioners of the dark arts of 'by any means necessary.'" Check out his list (which unfortunately includes the name of a UW law student). I'll highlight this:

Ms. Emily Mills owes an apology for blogging that UW law professor and bloggress Ann Althouse "has gone to great and terrible lengths to excuse the alleged behavior, attack the credibility of only the anonymous sources with whom she disagrees, suggest that no arrests (yet) mean no wrongdoing, impugn the honor of Justice Bradley, and cast doubt on the very justice system of this state." Looks like it is the other way around, Ms. Emily.

(Here's my contemporaneous pushback of Mills.)  Blaska ends his column with a request for more names. I have one: Bill Wineke. Like Mills, he owes me an apology.

ADDED: My analysis of the investigative report that was released today is in the previous post.

"Unforgiveness is like cancer. It will eat you from the inside out."

"It's not about that other person, me forgiving him does not diminish what he's done. Yes, he murdered my son - but the forgiveness is for me."

"These friendships, relationships, are a precious and priceless gift from God."

"Here I am, a convicted felon, a murderer, a man undeserving of anything that is good and wholesome. Yet, there are people who have found it in their heart to love me and have concern for me. Also, these friendships help to connect me with the church, and with society. It’s not a one-sided relationship but one of mutual giving."

Sayeth David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam, who received a 25-years-to-life sentence in 1977.

How do you begin to understand this quote?
	I contemplate the profound mystery that is God.
	I subtract 1977 from 2010.
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"After everything we had heard, I was picturing a monster..."

"Here was someone who had dreamed up a scheme to murder her family and manipulated people into carrying out her plan. And then in walks this tiny, meek, blond-headed girl who couldn’t fight her way out of a wet paper sack."

(Via Metafilter.)

"A woman in an airport bathroom who, I felt, had addressed my daughter Julia with an unforgivable tone of officiousness and disdain..."

Oh, the things that have become unforgivable.