September 14, 2005, 4:24 pm

United States of America vs James "Andy" Collins and Yank Barry

If you study history, and I do, you will find numerous cases where overzealous Federal officials went after someone because they had "reliable information" from some self-serving lowlife, ie Patrick Graham. They were SO enamored with getting a conviction on someone, especially a high profile public official ie Andy Collins, that they allowed their judgement to be clouded. In some instances, they threw common sense and an obvious lack of factual information to the wind, and convinced a grand jury to issue indictments in hope of scaring a plea out of someone.

When that tactic failed, they went ahead and went to trial with what little factual information they had, hoping to "sell a hog" to a jury. It's a percentage game; you get a conviction on one out of every two trials and you have a 50% conviction rate. In baseball, a .500 batting average will get you a BIG bonus and a contract extension. In the Federal judicial bureaucracy, that will get you a cherry appointment as a US District Judge or a US District Attorney....

And so the legacy continues. Rather than wait till you get them dead to rights, they want to frame up a weak, bogus ass charge and try to make it stick.

I don't profess to know all the details, in fact I only know what I've heard and read, including the judge's opinion. But if the judge's opinion was not a scathing indictment of the government's tactics and evidence, nothing is.

If Andy Collins did something illegal, get him. If not, quit wasting my tax dollars. If you want to do real justice, dig into Patrick Graham and his family, and right all those wrongs. There's enough there to go around for everybody.