Is Ryan Lizza another set up?

[anneboleyn]

55. Exactly. Being anonymous goes against our entire legal system. The whole point is that an accused

person has the right to know, and confront in a courtroom, the person accusing him/her of a crime. There should of course also be a consistent system followed by places of employment. Sorry for those that think anonymity is okay in these situations but it goes against our entire system, AND it’s filled with potential abuses that can have enormous effects (and not just on the accused himself — think of Franken).

I also don’t believe that a person’s place of employment should be able to fire him/her summarily based on anonymous charges (c’mon — that is SO obviously open to abuse. It’s very hard for an employee to prove that he/she was fired inappropriately, especially when “anonymous allegations” are being used as evidence. Lizza seems to know the accuser in his case as he stated that he believed their relationship to be consensual). The accused is entitled to a proper investigation and ability to respond. As Loki and others have pointed out, our entire legal system is built on the idea that nobody (even the king, of course, as that was exactly the type of abuse our founding fathers (and the entire system of English common law) wanted to avoid — no anonymous agents) can make anonymous allegations while demanding that a person be punished (Franken deserved the Ethics Committee hearing. Yes, of course, maybe the result would have been the same but he deserved the process. One of the earliest and most vocal of his accusers was clearly politically motivated. The other charges needed to be investigated to avoid any possible political manipulations).

Lizza is apparently saying that the New Yorker can’t even point to a specific code for employees that he violated (he apparently believes he was engaged in a consensual relationship but the accuser says otherwise). If no investigation was conducted then he certainly should be entitled to one.