Witchcraft’s Candidate

The American Spectator

By Ben Stein on 1.18.10

In the entire history of jurisprudence of the United States of America, there are no cases that I know of more shameful than the prosecutions of several groups of day care operators on totally false, trumped up charges of child abuse. In the Fells Acres case in Massachusetts and the McMartin Pre-School case near Los Angeles and in some other cases in the 1980s, wildly, insanely fabricated charges were made against totally innocent men and women running child care centers.

These charges involved such mental illness artifacts as that teachers at the schools put meat cleavers in the rectums of small children and then drew them out — without leaving a mark — that teachers flew around the school yard on brooms, that teachers cut off the legs of animals in front of children, all with zero evidence, of course.

The Fells Acres case in Massachusetts put several totally innocent men and women in prison for extended periods and ruined their reputations and lives — all, again, on charges that could not possibly have been more insane.

These were cases that made the Stalinist Show Trials of the 1930s, with prosecutor Andrei Vishinsky, seem sensible and temperate by comparison. They were abuses of prosecutorial discretion on a monstrous scale. They were brought to ridicule by many writers, chiefly the great Dorothy Rabinowitz of the Wall Street Journal editorial board.

Now, here come some really breathtaking parts. These cases were little by little overturned and sentences commuted by authorities in various places, even in Massachusetts. But in the Bay State, guess which state prosecutor fought like a tigress to put the totally innocent Gerald Amirault back in prison and keep ruining this innocent family’s life?

A woman named Martha Coakley. This woman, possibly the most questionable person ever to run for office in this country, is now the Democrat candidate for the Senate seat vacated by the death of Edward Kennedy.

I learned of this from my old pal Dorothy Rabinowitz at the Journal. I was still reeling from reading about this travesty when I turned on my TV Sunday morning to see our President, Barack Obama, speaking to a pep rally in Massachusetts on behalf of this bad woman.

Of course, every word Mr. Obama said in his speech was either a lie or wildly misleading: his claims of putting families back to work are a joke; his claims that he is standing up to the Wall Street bankers are actually laugh out loud funny (tell me how many bankers your administration is prosecuting, please, Mister President); his assertions that his party will not raise taxes on the middle class are comical considering what his health care plan will cost people with good health plans.

But those were Mr. Obama’s standard evasions and mistakes of fact and frankly, he may even believe them himself, so he gets a pass, as he always does — his whole life is about getting a pass.

Then, however, he put his arm around this woman, Martha Coakley, who kept innocent human beings in jail on totally faked charges that made the Salem Witch Trials look innocent, and I knew we were in real trouble.

If our President can endorse a woman who openly debases the judicial process, a woman who actually believes in witchcraft, we are in desperate shape.

President Obama believes he can trust Vladimir Putin. He believes he can deal honestly with Ahmadinejad. He believes that with no experience at all, he can wreck the health care system and build a better one. And he believes that a woman version of Vishinsky should be a U.S. Senator. These are frightening times.

But face the fact. Here we are. Unless the upstart challenger, Scott Brown, can pull this one out, we are about to have a woman who believes that innocent people should be put in jail just for political correctness’ sake (“We Believe The Children”), who literally does not believe in a society of laws, in the U.S. Senate. This is very scary stuff.

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