Jerry Brown Demonstrates He Doesn’t Know How to Do His Own Job

So they had the last debate between Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman in California and Brown was asked about his staffer saying the word “whore” in that now infamous recording.  Mary Catherine Ham has a pretty good blow-by-blow over at Hot Air.  It is pretty clear that when Brown denied that calling a woman a whore was as bad as calling a black person the n-word, that was a bad misstep, because the audience really started to boo him.  And Whitman lost points by trying to distinguish it from someone on her staff calling congress a gaggle of whores (because it is truth in advertisement?).  But I think he got the worst of that exchange.

But  let me pause for a moment to say that in all honesty I never got all riled up about it.  That’s why it never made the blog, because I was like, “meh, who cares?”  I wouldn’t do it myself, but I am not shocked and appalled by it either.  Now if women feel this is really offensive to them I ain’t gonna begrudge them of that.  And if people just feel that our discourse needs to be more civil, I can get on board with that, too.  But I am not personally all that appalled.

But what I can’t stand is bullshit, so when he said this, I started to get annoyed:

“It’s unfortunate. It was a private conversation,” Brown said. “I’m not even sure it’s legal ’cause you have to get the consent of all the parties and there’s lots of people talking, so again, Ms. Whitman, I’m sorry it happened.”

Well, Moonbeam let me break it down for you, because apparently you don’t understand the criminal law of your own state at all.

First, who caused that conversation to be recorded?  You did.  You caused a recording device to record, and failed to turn it off, but gave everyone the impression that you had, vitiating any consent.  So if it was illegal, you would be the criminal.

Second, you pathetic excuse for a lawyer, if you actually bothered to crack open your statute books, this is what you read:

Every person who, intentionally and without the consent of all parties to a confidential communication, by means of any electronic amplifying or recording device, eavesdrops upon or records the confidential communication

It goes on telling us that it is a crime and what the punishment is, but Jerry, did you notice that little word right at the beginning?  “Intentionally.”  This isn’t legal mumbo-jumbo, Jerry.  If you accidentally leave it on, you are not intentionally committing that crime and so thankfully, you can clear yourself of all wrongdoing.

Now a reasonable person might say, “well, can you really expect him to know every statute off the top of his head.”  And if he was just a regular lawyer on the civil side, sure, I would agree.  But you, Jerry Brown, are the top criminal prosecutor in the state, and I expect that issues of surveillance by police comes up all the time.  Therefore I think it is perfectly reasonable to expect you to know this law backwards and forwards.  So if you don’t know for a fact that your conduct was legal, I consider it a confession that you are incompetent at your current job.

And besides all that, there are two other things that irritate me about his comments on that subject.

First, what the hell is the relevancy of the legality of the recording?  Does that mean the recording is suddenly wrong?  No, of course not.  So what it really sounds like to me is that you are saying that you were sorry you got caught.  And I imagine you are, but so what?

Finally, you haven’t figured out who said it yet?  Really?  You are going with that one?

I mean, you were there, Jerry.  The man said it in your presence.  And you can’t remember who said it?  Well, if that is the case, then just step aside because apparently you have gone senile, Moonbeam.

Well, either that, or it is so common to hear people call Whitman a whore in your office that you can’t remember who said it on that day.

Or you don’t want to tell us the truth.  Yeah, its probably that one, but don’t sell me a bunch of BS.

And you know what?  If he said, “I am not going to publicly identify the staffer, because I am not going to bring all this down on his head” I would totally respect that.  I mean Chris Christie said something like that a few months ago and I felt the same about that.  But if that is what you are going to do, be forthright about it, like Christie was.  You know, with words like what I just suggested.