Well, his friends sure did it. We are on the road, big time, as they say. The Senate Judiciary Committee voted 14-5 to endorse David Ogden to be majordomo at the Department of Justice. Big Pornography lawyer Ogden will stride into to the full Senate for his final vote. Prepare for the deluge.
Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the committee's ranking Republican, dismissed the 11,000 phone calls, letters and such rallied at the 11th hour to oppose Ogden.
Mr. Specter, who is nothing if not flexible, views the experienced advocate for child pornography as merely serving his sordid clients. That fits. I remember Specter in a legislative trial of my own. He was examining Hustler's "Chester the Molester" cartoon. Chester was reaching out under the water in a pool to molest a little girl.
Ignoring the "Molester" title, Specter announced to the press that he saw nothing wrong in that picture - no crime was being committed here, he said.
So, yes, we will have some dark days of injustice ahead. Big Pornography has unfortunately had its friends in every administration, even during the days of Reagan. Never, however, was it this brazen. Our new injustice department will make Janet Reno's Clinton injustice look like a conservative coalition.
We have come a long way from our 1948 patriarchal Common Law. While it is true that women couldn't open their own charge accounts, laws largely favored children and women's social and sexual protection. Wives who were battered or whose husbands were unfaithful commonly received child custody, alimony, the family property and even respect. Nineteen states granted the death penalty, life or very long terms for rape; 28 states gave the rapist 20 years or more, and one state 15 years or more.
Don't expect a return to that kind of family and motherhood bias with this DOJ. Expect from this injustice department something like a return to 1981 when the New York Court of Appeals legalized child pornography in the Ferber case and when the New York Legislature passed an "incest exception" allowing judges to give probation to men (and women) who raped their own "sons, daughters, stepchildren, nephews, nieces, cousins or grandchildren."
The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously overturned Ferber in 1982 but not until 2006 was New York's corrupt "incest exception" eliminated. Andrew Vachss, a hero in its defeat, wrote, "Eventually, I came to realize that too many 'child advocacy' organizations were dependent for their lifeblood (money) on the very politicians I would have expected them to confront. But instead of confrontation, all I ever saw was collaboration" on the vile incest exception.
That brings us to Mr. Ogden today. Why would a "child advocacy organization" like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children publicly endorse this notorious special-interest maven to the U.S. Department of Justice? What kind of justice can we expect for children? Ferber again? The "incest exception" redux?
What justice will Ogden oversee for crime victims when the National Center for Victims of Crime endorsed this veteran pornography pusher? What justice can ordinary women expect when National Women's Law Center looked forward to his leadership?
Ogden got kudos from the Iowa attorney general, the Maryland attorney general and the Massachusetts governor. Read the "Letters Received in Connection with the Nomination." Amazing.
Americans resist the idea of greed, of sexual lusts, money or power corrupting our authorities. But my research finds the pro-woman and pro-family Common Law of the first half of the 20th century sabotaged by a radical legal male cult that crafted the 1955 American Law Institute Model Penal Code and its misogyny and anti-family ideology.
Naturally, all of the committee Democrats voted for Ogden. The five Musketeers that stood, swords outstretched for the American people, were Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., John Cornyn, R-Texas, Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Jeff Sessions, R-Ala.
Thank you, gentlemen!
In response to Specter's defense of Mr. Ogden as merely serving his boss like a lawyer is supposed to do, Sen. Hatch commented on Ogden's service to the sex-industrial complex, saying, "The pattern here is so consistent and the record is so long that it does give me pause."
In fact, if Mr. Ogden had a consistent pattern of working for the Ku Klux Klan, he wouldn't even have been nominated for the proverbial dog catcher job.
The Senate's approval of Ogden should come within days.