Bloggers take a slam from a new and unusual quarter–the sentencing memo where James Tobin’s lawyers explain why he should spend zero time in jail.
What about deterring future election sabotage? Mr. Tobin, his lawyers explain, is a fine human being who has already suffered enough…cruel treatment from bloggers, for instance:
Mr. Tobins case has also received extensive coverage on the internet, and many blogs
and opinion sites have written about him. A search revealed that over 90,000 website entries
have postings about Mr. Tobin and this case and over 1,000 blog entries have discussed Mr.
Tobins case. Due to the nature of these sites, this information is not only often inaccurate, but
sometimes quite personally insulting. One site calls Mr. Tobin a skunk and a hypocrite.12
Another website put Mr. Tobins face on a playing card, in an apparent attempt to mimic the
playing cards of most-wanted Iraqi regime leaders distributed by the United States military in
Iraq.13 Finally, more than one site has compared Mr. Tobin to a terrorist.1412 See http://www.gophypocrites.com/2005/12/hyp05050.html
13 See http://www.billionairesforbush.com/cards2.php#3
14 See http://phlipsrants.blogspot.com/ 2006/04/rnc-is-can-now-
also http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/ archives/000390.php
Compared him to a terrorist? If you check out those links for footnote 14, you see that both posts are making fun of an over-the-top warning from the Department of Homeland Security that describes “tying up company phone lines to prevent legitimate calls” as a terrorist tactic.
Just for the record, Mr. Butswinkas, I don’t consider James Tobin a skunk or a terrorist. And I still don’t understand why you and he failed to make a plea bargain with the US Attorney. The much-less-expensive lawyers of Allen Raymond and Chuck McGee understood that such a bargain was in their clients’ best interests.
As a result of those plea bargains and their testimony, even the NH Democratic Party urged the court to show leniency in sentencing them.
In the case of James Tobin, however, a lenient sentence would send the wrong message to politicians who think about tampering with our elections.
Mr. Tobin may be a fine human being, but I still find it telling that he knew exactly where Chuck McGee could find somebody willing to jam people’s phones. McGee on his own had tried many telemarketers–all turned him down. James Tobin had the right name on the tip of his Rolodex.
James Tobin’s trial for phone jamming was a curious spectacle. At the front of the courtroom, Dane Butswinkas painted a heart-warming picture of Tobin as the smalltown boy who made a simple mistake. On the spectators’ benches, half a dozen young lawyers took careful notes on behalf of defendants in the civil suit–no doubt also burning up many RNC dollars. In the center of it all sat James Tobin–anxious and unhappy, but holding to his denial of guilt, his refusal to cooperate, and his determined silence. In my opinion, that’s how conspirators behave. And our only resource to persuade others to act differently is to sentence closed-mouth conspirators–like Mr. Tobin–to some serious time in federal prison.