In the end, I guess, it's only going to take one grand jury outcome that the courtesan class likes for some of them to declare that the system is fixed.
Amazing what can happen when a grand jury works as it should. Lisa Falkenberg, HoustonChronicle.com ($$$)
Her work is done here. Everything worked out as it should (In Falkenberg's mind) so justice was served and God Save the Queen.
All of the "journalism" that occurs, all of the columns second-guessing the political motivations when grand juries issue indictments Ms. Falkenberg and her contemporaries don't like? There will be none of that here.
There will be no questioning of justice allowed because the right side lost and the 'correct" side won. Because the people who were trying to 'buy' baby organs were guilty and the people clearly trying to 'sell' baby organs (on the full videos, which were not, as Falkenberg has erroneously claimed, 'heavily edited' at all) were not guilty of anything at all.
In other words: Pay no attention to the (wo)man behind the curtain. Nothing to see here.
Had this played out differently, had PP been indicted for attempting to traffic in human organs (as they clearly were)? Falkenberg and company would have been apoplectic in their rage against both Anderson and the system. Yes, that same system that Falkenberg is now claiming is "fixed".
At the beginning of her, now Pulitzer prize-winning (as she and the Chron will be sure to tell you every five minutes) career Falkenberg wrote a column or two about "synchronizing traffic lights". This was something that a lot of people were talking about and had worked on for a while but she wrote two columns about it and, shortly after then-Mayor Bill White, instituted the software (which "sequenced" the lights rather than "synchronized" them FWIW) Falkenberg then took a victory lap around town, took credit for it in a column, and pretty much ignored Houston traffic issues to this day.
Try to drive downtown today. The lights are currently a mess, as are the roads, as is most of Houston's crumbling infrastructure, something that Ms. Falkenberg has chosen to not focus on in her whimsical teen-beat political column. Hey, once you declare something to be "fixed" it's best to move on. Mission Accomplished and all of that.
Now, lucky us, Falkenberg's work on the grand jury system has resulted in a high-profile decision with which she (and most others at the Chron) agree with politically. Nothing to see here, move on. Ms. Falkenberg has "fixed" the problem and has now taken a victory lap fitting of someone who's editor sat as chair of the Pulitzer Judging Panel and, basically, gifted her the award.
For the sake of the less high-profile accused, let's hope the long-term prognosis for the grand jury system doesn't work out the same way that Downtown Houston's mobility did. Sadly, however, given the political nature of the entire legal system today I don't see any way we're going to not puncture tires going forward.
But hey, for now the baby-part profiteers are still baby-part profiteering (although it's unclear if they ever got their Lamborghini [license plate: DED FTUS]) and that is good enough for Lisa.
