We watched the morning news a bit ago as onetime Disney-superstar-turned-train-wreck Lindsay Lohan slipped in the back door of the Los Angeles County morgue to do ghoulish penance for whatever it was that got her on probation.
Lohan landed at the morgue (not in a body bag--yet!) after failing to complete her mandated public-service hours at a women's center.
The judge didn't take kindly to the troubled actress's failure to do as she had been ordered as part of her earlier sentencing.
Judges tend to be that way.
That leads us to Rachel Alexander, whose testimony at the State Bar of Arizona's disciplinary hearings against her, former Maricopa County Andrew Thomas, and top assistant Lisa Aubuchon are continuing at the Arizona Supreme Court.
Thomas and Aubuchon face possible disbarment. Lesser-light Alexander is looking at a possible suspension of her law ticket.
As has been reported ad naseum here and elsewhere, Alexander faces the serious sanctions for her role in the county craziness that included criminal charges (later dropped) against a sitting judge, and a bungled racketeering lawsuit against judges, county supervisors, a law firm and others for allegedly "conspiring" to bring down Thomas, bully-pulpit Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and the American Way of Life.
The RICO "case" devised by Thomas/Aubuchon/Alexander/Sally Wells et al. was replete with innuendo, uncorroborated political allegations and other fanciful nonsense, also went the way of most waste--down the toilet to oblivion.
Alexander's late-blooming role in that case as a water-carrier for her boss Thomas (an ambitious ideologue with more conspiracy theories floating around his head than a JFK assassination buff) was light years past what her pay grade should have been.
Technically speaking, she's not a bad writer, having honed her skills on the taxpayer's dime publishing snarky blog items, press releases, and predictable right-wing "essays" shilling for Thomas as a "special assistant" deputy county attorney for the five years or so the guy was County Attorney.
(Alexander left the office around the same time as Thomas resigned to run his own barely failed campaign for Arizona Attorney General. She now supposedly is practicing bankruptcy law. Insert joke about "moral bankruptcy" here.)
But she had about as much business signing her name to that ill-conceived and grossly politically motivated amended RICO suit as Shaquille O'Neal had being a Tempe police detective (The suit actually was composed by Aubuchon, under the direct supervision of Mr. Thomas).
What we didn't totally realize until yesterday, however, is that Ms. Alexander is far from the sharpest knife in the proverbial drawer. She's actually as dull as an old butter knife.
With her livelihood as an attorney on the line, we would have thought that she might have boned up on what the RICO case she signed her name to ostensibly was about, and perhaps formulated a coherent thought or two about the alleged legal basis behind it.
In the alternative (a better option, for sure, in this instance), she would have conjured an explanation of some kind for her office's unprecedented and unsubstantiated full-scale legal/political assault on the judicial and executive branches of Maricopa County government.
Clearly, Alexander did neither, opting instead to fumble and stumble through hours of painful-to-watch testimony that certainly hurt her cause with the panel.
Here's the Lohan connection:
Just like poor little Lindsay, Alexander doesn't seem to understand that one should at least feign respect for an institution and its members who will be deciding her immediate professional fate.
Instead, on October 5, she posted a screed on her website, intellectualconservative.com composed by John Hawkins, her pal and editor of RightWingNews.com.
In part, Hawkins wrote this of the ongoing disciplinary hearings:
"This is nothing but a trumped-up, meritless witch hunt and it is particularly galling to see Rachel Alexander dragged into it since she was a minor player in the legal proceedings. Unfortunately, her blogging has long since made her a juicy political target in Maricopa County. In other words, Rachel Alexander's inclusion despite her tangential involvement in the issue appears to be little more than a shot across the bow of conservative bloggers.
"The message is, `If you're a conservative and stick your head up high to let people know where you stand politically, no matter how far we have to reach, we'll find a way to drag you through the mud.'"
"Blogging while conservative is not a crime. Fighting against illegal immigration and corruption is not a crime. However, misusing the justice system for purely political purposes is absolutely despicable and the more sunlight that shines in on this issue in Arizona, the more the cockroaches who are persecuting conservatives will start to scatter."
Even if Alexander truly believes that she and the others are the "victims" of a meritless, trumped-up "witch hunt," it surely would have been wise of her to tell kindred spirit Hawkins to lay low for awhile on the matter.
Independent State Bar counsel John Gleason made big points at the end of the day when he referred Alexander to her earlier deposition testimony in the case.
Paraphrasing here, the only remorse that she has expressed is that she got caught.
In the criminal-justice world we often frequent (as an observer!), that lack of remorse often is defined as sociopathy.
Forget suspensions!
Forget disbarment!
Perhaps some Lohan-like duty at the Maricopa County morgue is what's in order for the whole crew--Thomas, Aubuchon, Alexander, and a slew of others, especially the conveniently forgetful Sally Wells.
