Lawyer talk

John Micek has a report on yesterday's Bonusgate fun.  Unbelievable...

Arguing for the GOP, lawyer John Krill said lawmakers are protected by constitutional privilege and can't be compelled to testify because it might pull them away from their very important work of passing the state budget and stuff.

When we told a House Republican that his high-powered legal beagle had made this argument, he actually giggled.

But back at the courthouse, Krill was deadly serious, saying there was a grave constitutional principle at stake. Lawmakers, he said, just couldn't willy-nilly go around missing session and forgetting to vote on bridge-renamings and land conveyances and other bills.

The constitutional privilege (also afforded to members of Congress), Krill argued, is also applicable when ... say ... someone like Rep. Bud George is driving to and from Clearfield County. He just can't be snatched off the highway by some agent of the court and made to drone endlessly about bonus payments when he should be about the people's business.

"How do you enforce subpoenas?" he asked, not entirely rhetorically. "With bench warrants."

When one of our number gently suggested to Krill that his argument was ... ahhh ... specious because rank-and-file lawmakers tend to have very little to do with negotiating the budget and that schedules can be rearranged, the learned counsel worked himself up into a state of high dudgeon.

"Constitutional privilege isn't tenuous. Once you take that out, what are you left with?" Krill asked, before he actually quoted a line from "A Man for All Seasons" at us.

This was more than we could take. We were so traumataized by our return to Sophomore English Class that we went off to the courthouse snack machine to drown our sorrows in a package of Oreos.

There's just so much to love about Bonusgate...