“What sets science and the law apart from religion is that nothing is expected to be taken on faith. We re encouraged to ask whether the evidence actually supports what we re being told - or what we grew up believing - and we re allowed to ask whether we re hearing all the evidence or just some small prejudicial part of it. If our beliefs aren t supported by the evidence, then we re encouraged to alter our beliefs.”
“In 1996 Dorothy Mackey wrote an Op-ed piece, “Violence from comrades a fact of life for military women.” ABC News 20/ 20 did a segment on rape in the military. By November four women came forward at Aberdeen Proving Ground, in Maryland, about a pattern of rape by drill sergeants. In 1997 the military finds three black drill sergeants to scapegoat. They were sent to prison and this left the commanding generals and colonels untouched to retire quietly. The Army appointed a panel to investigate sexual harassment. One of the panelists was the sergeant Major of the Army, Eugene McKinney. On hearing his nomination, former associates and one officer came forward with charges of sexual coercion and misconduct. In 1998 he was acquitted of all charges after women spoke (of how they were being stigmatized, their careers stopped, and their characters questioned. A Congressional panel studied military investigative practices. In 1998, the Court of Appeals ruled against Dorothy Mackay. She had been outspoken on media and highly visible. There is an old Arabic saying “When the hen crows cut off her head.”“This court finds that Col. Milam and Lt. Col. Elmore were acting in the scope of their duties” in 1991-1992 when Capt. Mackey alleged they harassed, intimidated and assaulted her. A legislative remedy was asked for and she appealed to the Supreme Court. Of course the Supreme Court refused to hear the case in 1999, as it always has under the feres doctrine. Her case was cited to block the suit of one of the Aberdeen survivors as well!”
“A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience as can be imagined.”
“All I wanted to do was hide away from the world, but I still had a role to play. I had to be Girl A - the key witness in the trial that finally saw my abusers locked up. Girl A - the girl in the newspaper stories who had been through the most hideous experience imaginable. When I read those stories, I felt like I was reading about somebody else, another girl who was subjected to the depths of human depravity. But it wasn t. It was about me. I am Girl A.”
“In court the next morning I sat at a table in the judge’s chambers. On the other side of the table, close enough for me to reach across and touch him, sat Ted Bundy. He’s adorable, I thought, surprised at my first impression, because I’d pictured him in my mind as brooding, dark, intense disdain (p. 83). (Loftus testified as a defense expert for Ted Bundy in 1976, Bundy was found guilty of aggravated kidnapping)”
“In front of the law there is a doorkeeper. A man from the countryside comes up to the door and asks for entry. But the doorkeeper says he can t let him in to the law right now. The man thinks about this, and then he asks if he ll be able to go in later on. That s possible, says the doorkeeper, but not now . The gateway to the law is open as it always is, and the doorkeeper has stepped to one side, so the man bends over to try and see in. When the doorkeeper notices this he laughs and says, If you re tempted give it a try, try and go in even though I say you can t. Careful though: I m powerful. And I m only the lowliest of all the doormen. But there’s a doorkeeper for each of the rooms and each of them is more powerful than the last. It s more than I can stand just to look at the third one.”
“We are usually on bended knee before laws or angrily reacting against them, both immature responses.”
“I think there might be a better way,change the law”
“A szerkezet, az igazságosztás szerkezete, ez a bonyolult, nagy gépezet, bizonyosan tökéletlen volt, gyakran csikorgott, minden zugában rozsdás volt és poros: de jobbat nem tudott senki, tökéletesebbet nem talált még fel ember, nélkülözni nem lehetett, bele kellett nyugodni. A bíró volt az, aki lélekkel, erővel töltötte meg e gépezetet.”
“Anyone who denies the law of non-contradiction should be beaten and burned until he admits that to be beaten is not the same as not to be beaten, and to be burned is not the same as not to be burned.”
“It seems to me that any law that is not enforced and can t be enforced weakens all other laws.”
“This is England, he explained. Tell someone it s a procedure, and they ll believe you. The pointless procedure is one of our great natural resources.”
“[T]hus one should not think that desire is repressed, for the simple reason that the law is what constitutes both desire and the lack on which it is predicated. Where there is desire, the power relation is already present: an illusion, then, to denounce this relation for a repression exerted after the event.”
“Money equals power; power makes the law; and law makes government.”
“La segunda ley de la supervivencia afirma que no existe una segunda ley. O comes o te comen. Punto.”
“I believe that there is something in all of us that is seeking expression, that wants to be heard, that wants to be accepted and respected and loved. We each express ourselves in different ways - through manipulation or domination, through receiving and giving pain, through crying, through loving, through giving hope and inspiration to others. We are all seeking the same thing - expression of who we are and what we want from this life.”
“Law firms can create environments for abusive relationships. This is especially true if an attorney has no self-direction, has no independent means of financial support, and has massive student loan indebtedness. You ve basically made yourself an indentured servant.”