1 Boring Old Man

Listening to the cross-examination of Judy Miller and Matthew Cooper today, I am reminded how glad I am I stayed away from law school. It was particularly grating when the defense lawyers hammered away at Matthew Cooper about minor variations in the transcripts of his previous testimony, and his notes. From my point of view, the stuff about typos was like fingernails on a chalkboard – excruciating. It’s like I imagine what waterboarding must feel like to listen to it. I suppose that trials are won and lost over such witness badgering – but, for me, it’s disillusioning.

In college, my law school room-mate explained, "You think lawyering is about right and wrong. That’s not right. It’s about every defendent having a right to the best possible defense." That sounded like a good idea to me, for something someone else might be doing, but not me. So, rather than persist in pre-law, I changed my major at the first possible moment to anything-but-pre-law. As they droned on about typos today, I lost my enthusiasm for the case and did other things.

I hope it doesn’t come down to that – a contest over lawyers managing minutia. Not that I care about whether Libby goes to jail or not. What I care about is that the trial gets us an inch closer to the truth about this Administration and their Iraq war. This kind of dialogue doesn’t seem to be heading that way:

Jefress: Do you ever type an r when you mean to type an n?

Jefress: I don’t need to introduce these, but I do need to display them.

Jefress: Brings up page. [Jeffress has found a note where MC clearly typed r instead of n]

Jefress: were you typing notes while you were talking to someone.

Jefress: You meant to type erroneous but you hit an "r" instead, so it became "erroreous."

Matthew Cooper: Sure

Jefress: Shows him typing "eregy" instead of "energy" [on an aluminum tube story]

Arrgh!