Don Giuliani

After you've read about Rudy Giuliani snubbing farmers in Iowa because they "aren’t worth a million dollars and he is campaigning on the Death Tax right now," Paul Craig Roberts lays down the smack in The Criminal Career of Rudy Giuliani.

A few choice snippets:

Giuliani is a media creation. Giuliani was unknown until in search of name recognition he staged a stormtrooper assault on the financial firm Princeton/Newport involving fifty federal marshals outfitted with automatic weapons and bulletproof vests. On another occasion he had two New York investment bankers hauled off their trading floor in handcuffs.

Giuliani’s victims had done nothing and were exonerated. But Giuliani’s media stunts served to turn public sentiment against white-collar defendants.

Roberts goes on to detail Giuliani's pursuit of Michael Milken; threatening to arrest his brother, hassling his grandmother, all in order extract a plea bargain because Giuliani knew he had no case. And American law doesn't come out of this too well, either.

It is a damning indication of the collapse of American law that an assistant US attorney can be well received when he brags to law school students that federal prosecutors frame Americans with novel interpretations that create ex post facto law and violate mens rea – no crime without intent – the foundation of the Anglo-American legal system.

Other tidbits: Leona Helmsley was framed, The National Review once exposed Giuliani and now sings his praises, The Wall Street editorial page sucks now too. Ok, maybe that's not much of a tidbit. But he nails them all.

In conclusion:

Giuliani rode his prosecutions of the rich to the NYC mayoralty, just as he rode 9/11 to become a GOP presidential candidate. Giuliani’s career never served justice; it served his personal ambition, his ego. That a person so short on integrity could become a candidate for president is a damning indictment of the US political system.

Now, think about those farmers. Not so bizarre after all. And I bet The Wall Street editorial page won't even notice it.