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Former FBI chief James Comey has been storming the airwaves this week to promote A Higher Loyalty, his very-sincere-and-definitely-not-an-attempt-to-burnish-his-reputation-and-cash-in-on-getting-fired-by-the-president memoir.While much of the buzz around the book involves its comments on Donald Trump, Comey is a career lawman, which means A Higher Loyalty also filled with spicy takes on criminal justice, paeans to the rule of law, and sweaty odes to the great and powerful institutions that save us from anarchy.Over on Twitter, freelance writer Patrick Blanchfield has been reading through Comey's new book and flagging particularly dumb passages about criminal justice. He's been busy . . .. . . Claiming the term "mass incarceration" is insulting to law enforcement is an attempt to replace the real target of criminal justice reformers—the policies, institutions, and political imperatives that incentivize and protect bad policing and overzealous prosecutions—with the ostensibly well-meaning frontline of law enforcement, whose feelings must be preserved.Oh, but Comey isn't done. He also has bad opinions on the rule of law.Readers might remember that Martha Stewart was sentenced to five months in federal prison in 2004 as a result of an insider trading investigation. The businesswoman and homemaker extraordinaire wasn't actually convicted of securities fraud. The feds could only make the charges of conspiracy, obstruction, and false statements stick.Because almost everyone intentionally or unintentionally tells falsehoods to the FBI, it's a common tactic for federal prosecutors to ring up defendants on a smorgasbord of charges, confident that they'll at least get a conviction for false statements. Think that's unjust? For Comey, it's nothing less than preserving the fabric of society like an Old Testament God . . .
