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I write to build on Howie Carr's splendid article a while back on William Swamp Thing Weinreb, Boston's current federal prosecutor-in-chief.
Now, maybe I am a little biased due to the simple fact that I am a wrongfully imprisoned human rights advocate being persecuted by the Ivy League hypocrite and false progressive. So, full disclosure, unlike the paper-pushing, cowardly lion and his band of tin men, who had neither the courage nor the heart to stand up for Justina Pelletier's federally enumerated human and civil rights, I defended her life when she was tortured and nearly killed by their alma mater's $2-billion pediatric teaching hospital and its hapless Department of Children and Family lapdogs (see FreeMartyG.com).
But one only has to Google to see that Boston needs a special breed of U.S. attorney to restore dignity to the office after Carmen Ortiz's belated departure. As Ortiz's former cheerleader, Weinreb simply cannot cut it. Even if you are a fan of some of her prosecutions, take a look online and you will soon see that she and her lackeys made the Boston U.S. attorney's office a lightning rod for criticism, ridicule and disbelief across the globe.
The appeals court lambasted Ortiz, a retired federal judge said she ran the leakiest office in memory and abused her power, 61,000 people signed a White House petition to fire her, both parties in the U.S. House and Senate slammed her, national and international media disgraced her, a global cyber mob wielding virtual pitchforks and torches tarred and feathered her husband off Twitter, and, if the Internet ever goes Skynet, Ortiz and her crew would no doubt be at the top of its list for driving Reddit co-founder, visionary innovator and actual progressive Aaron Swartz to suicide.
Indeed, her office is one swamp even Democrats would like to see drained. You know the water has risen to Katrina levels when the Huffington Post goes after a Latina Obama appointee in Massachusetts. Letting Weinreb stay on after his role as Ortiz's yes-man and butler would not be draining the swamp, it is more akin to bringing in the E.P.A. to declare it a federally protected wetland, home to the newly endangered species hypocritus democratus obamus. His campaign contributions aside, to the conservatives eager for fresh, dry air, does silver spoon fed former treasurer of the Harvard Law Review William Weinreb sound anything like what you signed up for?
To liberals, I am here as a Huffington Post contributor whose tag line includes "imprisoned human rights activist" and whose accolades include a 100-day prison hunger strike on behalf of abused children and victims of political prosecutions to tell you that Weinreb is no progressive. He will not stand up for human rights if it is inconvenient or, gasp, politically risky. He refuses to investigate Harvard-affiliated Boston Children's Hospital for human and civil rights violations as well as healthcare fraud in the Pelletier case. And make no mistake about it, he shed at best crocodile tears for Aaron Swartz.
Weinreb's current cybercrime chief, Adam Bookbinder, was apprenticed to Stephen Heymann before the general public, outraged over Swartz's death, chased Heymann back into the Harvard swamp to which all three men dedicate their highest allegiances. As if to prove how little has changed since then, nothing says heartless like the way, just recently, that Weinreb and Bookbinder recommended a five-year prison sentence for a 51-year-old mentally ill, learning-disabled man with a history of depression whose non-violent offense was suing DreamWorks claiming that he came up with the idea for Kung Fu Panda.
Cases like that demonstrate what Demand Progress co-founder David Segal, a Democrat, said about the Boston U.S. Attorney's office under the Obama administration—that it is "plagued by vindictive, opportunistic prosecutors" with "a long and well-known track record of filing unscrupulous and frivolous charges." Their actions put Aaron Swartz, a true American hero who was trying to drain a different swamp, in the ground. Their unholy allegiances helped put Justina Pelletier, an innocent teenage girl, in a wheelchair.
Their office is the worst kind of swamp either side of the political aisle can imagine, and it cannot be drained fast enough. We need a U.S. attorney who will do exactly that, slash and burn the poison vines and rattlesnakes that have overtaken the top floor at the Moakley federal courthouse in the last eight years, not the guy who has been busy there accessorizing his fan boat.
