Adams and Adegbile: More in common than first letter of last name

At first blush there does not appear to be any connection between our second president John Adams and Obama administration nominee to head the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, Debo Adegbile. But look again. Yesterday, the Senate voted down Adegbile's confirmation solely on the grounds that Adegbile once defended convicte...d cop killer Mumia Abdu-Jamal from unfairly receiving the death penalty. Adegbile did this as required by his job as director of the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund. Many individuals and groups, including Amnesty International, intervened in Abdu-Jama's case and they prevailed in having his death sentence reduced to life based on appellate court determination that unfair sentencing procedures tainted the death sentence determination.

Adegbile, in providing legal council to the condemned, was engaging in one of the most sacred tenets of American democracy: the right of every person to fair and vigorous legal representation. That distinguishes America from many despotic lands that laugh at the need to provide council for those deemed "undesirable." Yet, all Senate Republicans, and an Un-Magnificent Seven Democrats played politics with a worthy nomination, by demonizing Adegbile for representing American values far better than they do.

That brings us back to second president John Adams. In 1770, 8 British soldiers, being tried for murder after e Boston demonstrators were killed in in the Boston Massacre, couldn't procure legal representation. Adams, an aspiring revolutionary leader, risked his political future by taking the case. He got 6 soldiers acquitted and a reduced verdict of manslaughter for the 2 who did the shooting. Apparently, folks in Adams' time took American ideals much more seriously than the 52 US Senators who torpedoed a great potential public servant over his choice of client. Adams was elected to the Massachusetts General Court while preparing for the trial, Vice President in 1787 and President in 1796. And Adegbile? Let's hope he gets a second chance at the top Civil Rights Division job based on Majority Leader Harry Reid's procedural vote against him to retain the right to resubmit. If the senators who don't practice American ideals today were around in 1770, Adams wouldn't have become President, and Paul Giamatti would have lost the best acting gig of his career.