Sooner or later it was inevitable somebody would make anotherthreat against Littleton's still-jittery Columbine High Schoolfollowing last year's tragedy. The threat could be genuinelymalicious or just stupidly reckless but, in any event, had to betaken seriously.
It turned out to be an 18-year-old aspiring actor in Florida,who, seated at is computer, allegedly decided to go on the Internetand, via an anonymous (but as it turned out, traceable) e-mail, tella Columbine student he would "finish what begun." The unnervedrecipient reported it to authorities.
Such a threat is a felony, and Michael Ian Campbell, of CapeCoral, Fla., extradited to Colorado, entered his plea to the chargein a Denver federal court Tuesday: not guilty.
Campbell's attorney, nationally prominent and flamboyant Miamitrial lawyer Ellis Rubin, explained afterward that his client hadmade a "virtual threat made in a virtual state of mind." Campbell washypnotized, Rubin told the media, so the accused had been impaired by"Internet intoxication."
Rubin is something of a pioneer when it comes to the fill-in-the-blank-made-me-do-it defense. In 1977 he came up with a TV-intoxication defense in defending a Florida teen accused of killingan elderly neighbor. In 1991, he crafted a nymphomania defense inrepresenting a woman accused of prostitution, claiming she couldn'thelp herself because she was sexually insatiable.
In both those cases, Rubin's efforts didn't bear fruit. Thepurportedly sex-addicted woman eventually pleaded guilty, and theostensibly TV-addicted teen was convicted. (On unsuccessful appeal,he even denounced Rubin.) Which leads us to question how seriousRubin and all such attorneys are with these tortured attempts atexculpation. Is the ulterior motive here simply to beat the bushesfor more clients?
Certainly, an attorney's job at trial is to plant the proverbialseed of doubt in jurors' minds; it's the state's job to prove theaccused committed the act. We have no quarrel with that.
Yet, we wonder if these outlandish defenses - even as we allsnicker at them - don't also serve ultimately to engender ever morepublic cynicism about the justice system.
Let's not prejudge Campbell himself; his fate is for the systemto decide. That's as it should be. It's these cavalier, almostwhimsical attempts to shift blame, facts be damned, that not onlyundermine justice, but perhaps also send a damaging message to thenext generation throughout society.
Multiplying media/ Mergers hardly hamper marketplace of ideas
Karl Marx warned that capital would become concentrated in fewerand fewer hands until almost everyone had to dance to the tune ofalmost no one. Well, Marx put it a little more eloquently, but heturned out to be wrong in any event.
The latest take by the nation's economists is that a larger sliceof the American population holds equity in assorted enterprises thanever before. Not only are we an ever-more prosperous society overall,able to spawn and invest in ever more ventures, but also thephenomenon of investment tools like the 401(k) have made many of usbusiness "owners" of companies we've never even heard of.
And when in some industries there is a mega-merger that combinesthe resources of large corporations to form a more productive super-corporation, as with the announced fusion of Time Warner and AmericaOnline, it's still not necessarily to the detriment of consumerchoice.
Notably, we found it curious how the director of the Project forExcellence in Journalism, in a front-page Gazette report Wednesday,foretold the doom of competing media.
"What this merger invites is the possibility of a new era inAmerican communications that sees the end of an independent press,"pronounced Tom Rosentiel.
In the broadcast industry alone, we live in an era in which (toexaggerate slightly) some TV viewers won't live long enough to makeit all the way through the offerings of their local cable package.Then there's satellite TV.
Oh, and the Internet.
Though larger corporations do buy up plenty of the offerings ineach of those media, the effect is more often to bring about greatereconomic efficiency rather than to homogenize the variety of theofferings themselves. It is precisely because of the breadth of thecompetition that major movers and shakers in the marketplace of ideastry to compensate through buyouts, essentially co-opting some of thecompetitors. That's just plain good business.
The good news is twofold for those concerned that mediaconglomerates will squelch choice: Mergers occur not to killcompeting kinds of media but to profit from them - if anythingensuring those competitors an even longer life. Meanwhile, ever newcompetitors will always keep on coming.
Driving while buzzed/ Is alcohol a threat at any level?
It will be interesting to see how lawmakers in Denver receive aproposal to lower the blood-alcohol level for determining drunkendrivers, from .10 to .08.
We've long bristled at federal attempts to impose that standardon all states; that determination should be up to the statesthemselves. But now that such a measure, House Bill 1132 (sponsoredby two Denver-area Democrats) is upon us, what shall we decide? Is.08 simply too low a level at which to assume the average motoristcan't safely drive? Or, as some surely would contend, is any leveltoo high?
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