Open letter to Jon Corzine

Note: lest I be chalked up as some sort of partisan hack, please note that I am an equal-opportunity jerk. Before any detractors suggest that I was a complete sarcastic dick in my letter to Bill Frist and relatively cordial in my letter to Corzine... you're right. Part of it was the fact that I really respect Corzine for (among other things) his pushing of legislation to pressure Darfur. Part of it is my disrespect for (among other things) Frist's short-sighted support of the "nuclear option" on judicial nominations. Part of it is that I just don't have the time or energy today.

Dear Senator Corzine,

I am a past supporter of yours who is considering a voting for you for governor in the fall, but I must say that I was disappointed by your support for the recently-passed legislation modifying the legal process for Terri Schiavo. Even ignoring the moral questions involved – and we must, since none of us are privy to the full information that was available only to those most intimately involved – for Congress to pass a law aimed at one situation is fundamentally unjust. I consider you a man of principal but cannot understand how you came to support this legislation.

Certainly, no system of justice is perfect, and ours is all in all among the best by any measure. If you find our current federal laws covering related issues problematic, I do truly hope that you seek to modify them. But granting special rights to some people and not others is akin to this administration’s imprisonment of “enemy combatants” under rules invented specifically for what they consider to be situations never envisioned by our founders. A quote (I believe attributed to John Adams) has surfaced quite a bit in recent days, but still I feel it necessary to reiterate that we are “a nation of laws, not men.”

Senator, you are in a better position than most to affect the pursuit of justice in America. If the rules are unfair for some, please see to it that they are changed. But you know as well as I do that this is impossible to do on a case-by-case basis. I didn’t read any statements from you in the newspaper when my own grandmother was on her deathbed two years ago, although certainly there were complicated moral and legal issues in the air then as well. And more than I am upset by Terri Schiavo’s condition, or sympathetic for her husband and parents as they have endured years of agonizing struggles, I resent that a woman’s life has become a political football.

Sincerely,
Mark Zipkin