The N.C. State Bar vs. Rachel Hunter: When The North Carolina Courts Get Something WRONG, They REALLY Get It WRONG

I'm angry this morning. I was actually angry yesterday. But I slept on it to be sure.

North Carolinians concerned about free-speech . . . particularly North Carolina bloggers . . particularly North Carolina bloggers thinking about running for office/blogging while they do it . . . ought to be experiencing a collective ice-cold chill running down their spines with the latest cowardly, two-faced, politically-motivated, flat-out WRONG decision handed down yesterday by the North Carolina Court of Appeals in the case of the N.C. State Bar vs. Rachel Hunter.

Regular readers may recall that the high-minded North Carolina State Bar slammed the hammer down hard on Rachel (a Cary lawyer who ran in two unsuccessful state judicial campaigns) for the horrible/awful sin of using the blogging moniker/nickname, "Madame Justice", on her campaign website . . . as a method of connecting with the public and achieving name-recognition.

Last year, after a series of "anonymous" grievances filed with the Bar (apparently made by people-with-obvious-agendas who were quite willing to swear under-Oath that they were gullible simpletons), Rachel was sanctioned by the Bar. And she lost her job because of the sanction. She got another job and appealed the Bar's disciplinary action to the N.C. Court of Appeals.

That appeal was rejected yesterday. And I'm not just stunned. I'm really pissed-off. Disgusted. Head ready to explode.

Of course, all of this happened in the land of Nifong . . . a state where innocent men can be sent to death row - and ultimately exonerated by "innocence commissions", yet their ethically-challenged/didn't-give-a-rat's-tail-about-the-whole-truth prosecutors suffer no consequences whatsoever.

It happened in a state where former Senator/never-ending Presidential candidate/baby-daddy John Edwards can divert campaign funds to his mistress's up-keep . . . and former Governor/N.C. Attorney General Mike Sleazely can snare cushy university jobs for his wife/weasel all kinds of influence-for-personal-profit-schemes . . yet both can STILL walk the streets free - unindicted and undisciplined by the State Bar. In fact, Edwards-fronting-his-baby-Mama can have other fine upstanding lawyers sue his ex-right-hand-man over ownership of their joint sex tape (the tape said baby-Mama threw in the trash).

And (last-but-not-least-and-the-reason-yours-truly-is-in-this-ether) it happened in a state where "non-profit" hospital executives can repeatedly in-your-face LIE-under-Oath in a Randolph County Court proceeding without the District Attorney, the Bar or the state Attorney General so much as batting an eyelid. In fact, the victim of the white-collar crime, a physician-in-public-service FIRED for standing up to threats-based-on-lies and saving a newborn baby's life (not-to-mention sued for telling the truth to the government she served) is prevented from even swearing out a complaint and does not/has NEVER merited a meeting with the DA (she's not "right people").

Meanwhile, her ex-attorney's daughter (also a lawyer/employed by dear-old-Dad's firm) is snuggling up for "celebrity" dances with one of the hospital executives-who-lied. Nothing SMELLS there. Alcohol referendums make for interesting dance partners.

While we're at it, as the GOOD doctor has lost well-over-a-decade-of-her-life falling through every legal black hole, the state & Federal oversight agencies that are charged to protect patients and who were supposed to have the doctor's back have been deliberately, methodically, criminally/cruelly obtuse and impotent in dealing with the "non-profit" hospital administrators (collecting very phat paychecks) who broke every rule.

I know I'm leaving stuff out, but you get the drift.

Given the lawyers-and-gentlemen that the North Carolina State Bar has NOT disciplined in its quest for higher legal/professional standards, I'm just not understanding how the Bar can argue-with-a-straight-face that the action taken against Rachel was fair or just?

Higher standards than what? The lowest crap-filled gutter?

As for free speech, in this country, you can dip plastic statutes of Jesus Christ and/or the Virgin Mary in urine or feces can call it "art". Pornography is "free speech". Satire can be uber-ugly and humiliating to its targets. But a judicial candidate going by a nickname is deceptive and taboo?

Moving on to the ominous implications for blogging and political speech, that isn't going to ring many bells in this neck of the woods - since a lot of local bloggers just HATE Rachel and her colorful hubby, Connie Mack Berry, Jr. And that's because, red, blue or polka-dotted, those two don't march to anybody's tune.

In fact, Greensboro blogger-king and blue-boy, Ed Cone, HATES Rachel so much that he once pronounced her "batshit crazy". Rachel was undergoing therapy for a brain-tumor at the time.

So right and wrong are not going to matter to enlightened, well-named, well-connected folks like Ed Cone. No chills are running down their spine. Larger, more ominous considerations are not in play. "Free speech" only matters to these people when you agree with them.

Cue the Snoopy dance.

Some of us know better (mostly because we've taken the slings and arrows of a justice system used to intimidate and silence and suppress the truth). I've made all my arguments against this modern-day professional/political witch-hunt before, so I'm not inclined to repeat a lot of what I've said before now.

But I cannot convey how RIDICULOUS I find the Bar's premise . . . that Rachels' online nickname (one she had used on&off for years in the blogosphere) was somehow misleading to the voters. I mean, the Bar must mean the really, Really, REALLY STUPID voters who can barely point & click . . . as opposed to all of the really, Really, REALLY SMART folks in the bluer-areas-of-our-state who voted for Edwards and Sleazely . . . men whose intent to mislead and dupe the public to-their-own-ends out-distances ANYTHING Rachel Hunter EVER even imagined by a magnitude of thousands-of-light-years.

The fundamental hypocrisy is just mind-blowing.

I call the Appellate Court's decision cowardly because it was an "unpublished/not-constituting legal authority/citation-disfavored" opinion. I'm thinking there are reasons for that. Somebody is trying to fly a smooth move in under-the-radar.

Being technically-impaired, I don't have a way to link it the opinion here for the average uber-stupid-according-to-the-North-Carolina-State-Bar citizen to read. Sorry.

But I have skimmed a PDF-file of the opinion. And I must say, on first-speed-read, I've never seen a more convoluted, manufactured, self-serving load of clap-trap designed to intimidate candidates and squelch political speech in a very long time.

"Madame Justice" Hunter might not have been a N.C. Supreme Court Justice, but neither was Bill Clinton "the first Black President".

It took so long to issue the decision that those of us following the appeal thought there actually might be a dissent or even a reversal. As it turns out, these judges and their eager clerks were just taking their time to stack the deck. It just REEKS.

You can almost smell the stale cigars and the watered-down Scotch over the FECUND STENCH of politically-motivated hardball. Almost.

As I understand it, the next step for Rachel is to appeal the case to the N.C. Supremes. Since (incredibly to me and conveniently for the Bar) there was not a dissent on the ruling, Rachel has to ask permission to appeal. And that permission might not be granted.

Like I said, it's really convenient for the North Carolina Bar.

Totally shutting down her options (very much akin to what Randolph County's Garland Yates has so-far done to me), would be par-for-the-course with this state's do-as-we-say-not-as-we-do good-ole-boy club.

On the other hand, I understand that a jump to the Federal realm/jurisdiction is now possible.

And that could be FUN.

While we're at it, let me get this straight: The self-admitted "child-of-a-borderline" Greensboro blogger with "sociopathic tendencies" that he (and his wife) are apparently aware of, could BRUTALLY and CRUELLY harass/insult/embarrass another (female) blogger (a practicing physician and customer of "the wife's" clothing business) with threatening e-mails hurled into her Inbox, nasty "anonymous" comments on her blog and a series of horrible libelous blog posts . . . e-mails that the victim of his sick, warped bile was forced to read/absorb/re-live again in open court (to the great amusement of the snickering lawyers sitting in the back of the Courtroom). The grinning clown could then hide behind his attorney (an Asheboro City Council member who, like so many of Asheboro's "right people" HATES Dr. Johnson because her favorite Facebook page is not The Flying Pig), and sit smugly at the defense table while said attorney floated a wholly FALSE theory of his client's motives and intent . . .

. . . that intent actually (and obviously to everyone but the grudge-motivated obtuse) being to inflict humiliation and ridicule and pain . . . that intent being to frighten the doctor into silence . . .

. . . (a whole lot like what the State Bar, under cover of self-righteous legality, is trying to do to Rachel Hunter - yet taking it one step further by messing with her livelihood) . . .

. . . AND, according to another uber-enlightened member of the North Carolina judiciary, presiding over a farcical show-trial, all-of-that did not "rise" to the level of cyber-stalking?!?

In case you haven't figured it out, you're damned straight I'm still furious about what Jeff Martin did (and bloggers like Ed Cone & Roch Smith, Jr. - supposedly so concerned about civility and relevance - minimized and condoned . . . and Councilman Clark Bell, friend of Schmidlys, defended) . . . still white-hot seething over how the-joke-that-is-the-Randolph-County-criminal-justice-system compounded insult upon injury.

But hey, what Martin did is merely a "hobby", and his victim is supposed to suck it up and deal because no one can interfere with his FREE HATE SPEECH???

Meanwhile, the North Carolina State Bar and its minions can shut down Rachel Hunter's wholly-innocuous/certainly-comparatively-benign use of an online nickname . . . because compared to the dishonest/unethical behavior on the part of all the other barristers in this state that the Bar has not reigned in, Rachel is somehow uber-evilly devious, a threat to the public good and worthy of professional sanction?

ARE . . . YOU . . . FRICKING . . . KIDDING . . . ME?

I gotta tell you people that the justice system in North Carolina is way-beyond messed up!

But hey, Ed and Roch et.al. all think that when the already-legally-brutallized baby-doctor-horribly-wronged finally pieced together the PERJURY and the CONTEMT and the FRAUD committed by Randolph Hospital's senior frat-boy/team-playing executives, Bob Morrison & Steven Eblin, she should have felt very comfortable taking it back to civil Court . . . the SAME Court where civil justice was obstructed and she was de-frauded & swindled . . . instead of asking DA Garland Yates, the N.C. State Bar and the State of North Carolina to treat these things as the CRIMES that they were/are and move them up the legal food chain for appropriate investigation and review???

I'm supposed to take refuge and comfort in the high standards and tender mercies of the "home Court".

Yeah, right. Tell me another good one.

I have news for you people. Right and wrong do NOT matter any more in the North Carolina justice system.

It is all and only about who has the money and the power. We-The-Ordinary-People are screwed. I wish Rachel all the best. I know all-too-well that once caught in the North Carolina legal system's web of deceit and "culture-of-corruption" (to quote another lawyer-in-public-office), hers is an up-hill battle.