Ireland's hope of first gay president kaput.

[JimC]

On the basis of all the posts here, there is only one conclusion...

Cormac for President of Ireland!

Cormac's too clever and has too much integrity for that shit.

Therefore he is ideal!

[devogue]

On the basis of all the posts here, there is only one conclusion...

Cormac for President of Ireland!

Cormac's too clever and has too much integrity for that shit.

Therefore he is ideal!

It wouldn't go down well in Donegal and Mayo. They like a bit of divilment there.

[Animavore]

I would probably be more suited for president

[devogue]

I would probably be more suited for president

I think Jedward should go for it. People are so fucked off they would vote them in for a laugh.

Or Dustin.

[Animavore]

I would probably be more suited for president

I think Jedward should go for it. People are so fucked off they would vote them in for a laugh.

Or Dustin.

I was just thinking that (Jedward)!

[Cormac]

I would probably be more suited for president

I think Jedward should go for it. People are so fucked off they would vote them in for a laugh.

Or Dustin.

If I ever got into power, those three and their puppeteers would be the first off to the labour camps...

[Animavore]

Dustin did actually go for President once.

[klr]

Dustin did actually go for President once.

I was going to remind you of that.

[devogue]

Dustin did actually go for President once.

He would win it now. He got Eurovision, and that's far more important.

[JimC]

The president in Ireland is a fairly empty role, or am I wrong?

[Animavore]

The president in Ireland is a fairly empty role, or am I wrong?

They're like The Queen.

[klr]

The president in Ireland is a fairly empty role, or am I wrong?

Yup, a bit like the Queen in the UK ... or OZ.

[JimC]

The president in Ireland is a fairly empty role, or am I wrong?

Yup, a bit like the Queen in the UK ... or OZ.

We have a Governer General, who represents the Queen, so it's emptiness squared...

Much better to rely on a PM; currently a red-headed atheistical female with delusions of grandeur...

[Cormac]

The role of President is actually very important. Our current President, Mary McAleese has been absolutely amazing, and particularly in relation to the peace process in Northern Ireland.

The office of President is a very valuable diplomatic tool. It should not be handed as a reward to long term politicians.

[Seth]

You misunderstood my intention.

I am not declaring that he should have done what he did. I'm not saying that he should be President. In point of fact, I think he should not, as this issue would follow him, and bring our state into (further) disrepute.

However, everyone should note that what was at issue here was his right to seek and get a nomination, and not the actual election itself. For me, it was for the people to decide, not the other parties or the media. This will not happen now.

Well, he decided that his chances of being elected were nil after the scandal broke, so he did the responsible thing in not wasting all the donated campaign funds of his supporters, didn't he? He made the decision right? He wasn't told by the government or anybody else that he was not allowed to run, so what's the problem? He could have continued but decided not to.

I'm simply trying to give some other information, because what has been said so far is short of detail and, for that matter, legal perspective.

Okay, fine, but what other information have you actually provided? Your claim that he was 7 years out of the gay relationship when the incident occurred does not seem to be accurate, given the OP. Do you have inside information refuting the claims in the story? If so, I'd love to hear them, but so far you just made a conflicting statement without any supporting information.

For my two cents, I think it is ok for someone to write to seek clemency for a criminal. A judge is under absolutely no obligation to pay any heed to it. I think he was very unwise to use Dail (parliament) headed paper.

I too think it's okay for "someone" to write to seek clemency, so long as he's not an elected politician using state stationary in an attempt to improperly influence the judge. It also matters which criminal he's seeking clemency for. Writing supporting clemency for someone you are unassociated with and don't know because his or her case has been brought to you by a constituent and your review of the record reveals what you believe to be a gross miscarriage of justice is one thing. Using state stationary and the power of your office to seek clemency for your intimate sexual partner is quite another thing entirely, particularly in the view of the public. It reeks of self-serving abuse of power, frankly.

BUT, in all the letters that he wrote on behalf of prisoners (of conscience and otherwise), he would have written on headed paper (as he said in his radio interview yesterday). Personally, I think this is inappropriate, and should never have happened. The significance of this is that he didn't use the headed paper just for his former lover specifically. He used it for all people for whom he made representations. It was still wrong, but wrong for a different reason.

Yes, but such slipups have tripped up many a politician. Politics is seldom fair, but it's how we (try to) get the best representatives.

1. The relationship between Norris and the offender had been over for at least 7 years by the time the "Crime" was committed.

That was far from clear in the OP, which said, "Senator Norris had a relationship with Mr Yitzhak Nawi for almost 30 years and the couple were together until 2001." Then it said, "his former partner Ezra Yitzhak Nawi on his conviction for the statutory rape of a 15-year-old Palestinian boy in 1997."

So, Norris had a relationship with Nawi beginning as early as 1971, and Nawi was convicted of a rape occurring in 1997.

This clearly indicates that Norris and Nawi had a relationship at the time the rape occurred in 1997, which continued for four years after the incident.

The "Independent" is one of those newspapers of outrage. It rarely reports in a measured manner, and is very quick to call for public outrage.

There was an interview with Norris on the radio yesterday afternoon in which he declared that their intimate relationship ended in 1985, when it became apparent that the other fellow would not commit to a lifelong exclusive relationship.

And, as quoted in the Irish Times (the paper of record) today:

"“I deeply regret the most recent of all the controversies concerning my former partner of 25 years ago, Ezra Nawi,” said Mr Norris. “The fallout from his disgraceful behaviour has now spread to me and is in danger of contaminating others close to me both in my political and personal life.”

After that, their involvement continued in relation to charitable and human rights work in Israel/Palestine.

It would seem that the Independent is factually wrong on at least this count.

Fair enough. Doesn't really explain why he wrote the letter if he truly believes it was "disgraceful behavior."

2. Norris has spent most of his life fighting for human rights in particular for abused children, and this is openly acknowledged by his political rivals.

Great. Glad to hear it. That still wouldn't excuse his knowledge of or covering-up of a 1997 statutory rape by his partner.

What knowledge? He didn't know. He declared yesterday that he had no knowledge of the crime before his friend was prosecuted.

1. The relationship ended in 1985, the statutory rape in (I think) 1995, and the trial in 1997.
2. Norris lives in Ireland, the convict lives in Israel/Palestine.
3. The crime was committed in Palestine.

Fair enough, now that the chain of events has been clarified. Still doesn't explain why he would write a letter seeking clemency for someone convicted of "disgraceful behavior."

3. The offender had a history of depression and self-harm and Norris was terrified that I
without some intervention, the trial might push him over the edge.

Who cares? If Nawi raped a 15 year old boy, suicide would have been a viable option for him. I note with some disgust the opprobrium heaped upon the Catholic Church in the recent event of one of it's officials being found in possession of kiddie porn (among other such opprobrium heaped upon innocent Catholics and Catholic priests in this forum) and yet when a favorite son is mired in a sex scandal, it's all "oh, no, it's not really RAPE if it was consensual, even if the child was 15." This seems to ignore the fact that a good many of the allegations of sexual abuse by Catholic priests (some 4000 or so allegations out of more than half a million Catholic priests, almost all of which are allegations made about purported events more than 40 years ago) also involved, at least potentially, "consensual" sex with teenagers.

Sauce, goose, gander.

This is how Norris explains himself:

He struck a note of defiance in saying he neither regretted supporting nor seeking clemency for his friend but regretted giving the impression he did not have sufficient compassion for the victim. “I accept that more than a decade and a half later when I have now reviewed the issue and am not emotionally involved, when I was afraid that Ezra might take his own life, I see that I was wrong.”

Fair enough, admitting one was wrong is fine, if a bit self-serving in this particular context. Perhaps that's why he judged that his prior actions fatally tainted his candidacy. As I said, politics is hardly fair. After all, Teddy Kennedy got drunk and drove off a bridge, leaving a girl to die and running away from the accident, and he served in Congress for decades before finally dying in the saddle. That was grossly unfair to the people of the United States, but it happens.

Incidentally, your argument fails here because you've employed the Tu Quoque fallacy.

The major scandal in Ireland involving the Catholic Church was not the crimes committed by opportunistic predators, but the actions of the church in actively covering it up, and actively undermining the law in countries all around the globe.

The problem is that atheists tend to conflate both Catholics, as religious individuals, and innocent Catholic priests, all 500,000 of them together with a very small number of Bishops who did such things and condemn the whole lot of them as if each and every one of them is guilty of some crime. Moreover, most atheists fail to understand the structure of the Catholic church and do not understand how little actual regulatory authority the Vatican and the Pope have over individual Bishops and Archbishops, particularly in the United States.

Opprobrium is due where it is due, to be certain, but the typical atheist approach is to condemn everyone and everything Catholic using the same broad brush in spite of the fact that a) many of the allegations are 40 years or more old and are impossible to prove or defend, and are generally undertaken because of the large amount of money that one can get from the church by making even spurious or false accusations against dead priests, and b) without acknowledging the enormous efforts undertaken by the church in recent years to prevent such abuse.

And there is the matter of focusing on the Catholic church, where there are about 4000 validated complaints of sexual abuse in the US, while ignoring the estimated five MILLION children PER YEAR who are molested by public school teachers. I have no idea what the stats are for Ireland when it comes to sexual abuse by teachers, but if I had to guess, there's a significant amount of child-buggering going on in schools in Ireland too. One has to ask whether all the sound and fury about the Catholic church is really aimed at protecting children or if it's merely a convenient stalking horse for the anti-religious agenda of atheists, given how little attention and outrage is directed at other identifiable groups of child molesters.

I'm all for jailing priests (and teachers) who bugger kids and Bishops (and school administrators) who conspire to conceal the crimes, but I don't accept at face value every accusation made about events 40 or more years old. The standard of evidence for criminal cases still applies so far as I'm concerned. There's a reason there are statutes of limitation against charging people many years after the fact; it's generally impossible to provide the accused with a fair trial when evidence has been lost (or never preserved), witnesses have died and are no longer available, memories have faded and it has become little more than a matter of one person's word against another. The presumption of innocence must prevail in such situations.

As to the cover-ups, I have no problem whatsoever with prosecuting those Bishops or others who have actively engaged in tampering with evidence or were conspirators, but the same statutes of limitation must apply.

Norris openly wrote a letter to a court giving a character reference for someone he cared about who had committed a crime, and about which crime he had known nothing until the trial. In his letter, he asked for clemency (not a pardon - but clemency - seeking a sentence that might be more appropriate- in his opinion. The court was not in any way obliged to act).

This is categorically different.

Perhaps, but still a bad political decision.

4. At no time has Norris condoned the crime in question

He condones it by asking for clemency. Did he condemn it, he would not do so.

That is nonsense. He doesn't condone the crime at all, and never did.

Unless he believes the individual is innocent of the crime, asking for clemency for a convicted felon convicted of the rape of a child is condoning the act and minimizing the gravity of it, as he admitted in the quote you provided above. He said he was wrong to do it. I'm merely saying the same thing. Make up your mind.

This is a general outline of his letters. He asks for clemency on these grounds:

1. Psychiatric social workers had recommended a non-custodial sentence
2. That similar cases around the world had led to non-custodial sentences
3. That he did not argue his innocence, and thereby spared the victim the ordeal of giving evidence (this would normally lead to some leniency from a court).
4. That he had offered financial compensation
5. That he suffered from mental health problems

I don't see any condoning in these letters.

I do. I see him minimizing the impact on the victim, disrespecting the rights of the victim to justice, condoning an attempt to buy-off the victim to evade punishment, an invocation of the appeal to popular practice fallacy, and a general belief that raping 15 year old boys is not a serious criminal offense that justifies a harsh prison sentence. To me that's condoning the crime. And I believe to the public the impression is the same thing. His action at the time played into every gay stereotype there is, particularly the false stereotype that homosexuals are axiomatically child-predators too, and it was exceedingly imprudent of him, and he acknowledged it was wrong. He really had no choice but to withdraw.

5. At the time he wrote this letter it was commonplace for politicians to write letters on behalf of both accused and convicted people.

Convicted pedophile rapists? That sounds like a pretty bad political choice to make to me.

I don't disagree. It was a bad political choice.

Yup.

One of Norris's rivals for the presidency wrote letters seeking clemency for a double murderer who was on death row.

That would cause me to reject him as well.

Yes, but we'll see if he is forced to drop out of the race, BEFORE the people get a chance to vote.

The public is fickle when it comes to politicians.

Is statutory rape worse than double murder. If so, why?

You assume that it's acceptable for a politician to come to the defense of convicts of any stripe. It's not. They have no business writing letters and abusing the prestige and authority of their office to suborn the legal system that has duly judged and sentenced someone for a heinous crime.

I make no such assumption. My criticism is of the media, the political parties, and my citizens who have acted to prevent Norris getting a nomination, let alone get to stand in front of the people and their judgement in the election to come.

Why are you critical? It's all part of the vetting process that takes place with every candidate in every election. That's the purpose of the press, to dig into the backgrounds of candidates and look for scandals and hidden character defects and misbehavior that might make the person a poor choice as an elected official. God knows the press has failed often enough in that respect, with Nixon, Clinton and a host of others, but the theory is correct. People have a right, and a need to know about those who are seeking power and public office long before they get to the ballot box, so that the public debate can be had over the candidates qualification to serve. If such information is suppressed, how are voters to know who is qualified to serve?

The nomination process necessarily and justifiably includes public review of a candidates record and personal character. We don't want nominees who are unfit for public service in the eyes of the public, because that just clutters up the field. It's a winnowing process, and always has been, and the public and the press are the ones who rightfully separate the wheat from the chaff in the court of public opinion. It cannot properly work any other way. When critical information such as this is suppressed, charlatans and demagogues attain office, and we all suffer. Does that mean that some qualified candidates who might have a black mark in their past don't get a chance? Yes, but better that than allow someone of poor moral character into office.

If the issue is that he wrote letters seeking clemency for a convicted criminal, then surely his rival will also have to withdraw? But he won't.

That's up to him, isn't it. But it's the public who will eventually decide. It's not just about writing a letter, it's the precise circumstances involved. As I said, writing a letter about someone you don't know based on your review of his trial and your perception of a miscarriage of justice is one thing, but writing a letter for a former lover arguing that he shouldn't be punished so harshly gives the appearance of being entirely self-serving, and the public doesn't like self-serving politicians.

This stinks of hypocrisy and corruption to me, and it is problematic because this current government whined and whined about political dirty tricks, unfairness, and hypocrisy the whole time they were in opposition, and they came to power on a massive mandate to change this.

What's corrupt about revealing factual information?

6. In all criminal trials, judges will hear character references for the accused

During the trial perhaps. Once convicted and sentenced, the felon should not have the luxury of a pet legislator going to bat for him. Not unless the legislator is going to write letters for EVERY convict. It's an abuse of power, plain and simple. Legislators should respect the independence of the judiciary and keep their mouths shut about such matters and not try to exercise undue influence. And "everybody else is doing it" is hardly a rational or logical argument I'm afraid. It's pure fallacy.

Note, that the trial was in Israel, and Norris lives and works in Ireland. There is no question of a legislator attempting to influence the judiciary.

Not necessarily true. The cachet of a government legislator from another country is considerably greater than just your average citizen writing the same letter, which is, of course, precisely why he wrote the letter on government stationary in his capacity as a government official.

And it is common for judges to take such statements into account in sentencing. In fact, it is the only time that such testimony is really relevant, because such testimony has nothing to say about the facts of the case. It can only be of any value in helping the judge to come to a decision about the most appropriate sentence, given all circumstances.

True, but so what? This is not about what the Israeli judge did, it's about him misusing the power of his office and potentially tarnishing the reputation of the Irish government by using his position to argue for clemency for his former lover. It was clearly a misuse of his office, and now he's paying the price, as he himself acknowledged.

7. The point should be made that Norris was by far the favourite to win the presidency, despite an unprecedentedly dirty campaign, particularly by the main government party.

Until his dirty underwear was revealed. Oh well, that's the whole point of politics and newspapers, to hold public officials accountable to the people for ALL their misbehaviors, including the ones they don't want revealed. Then it's up to the voters to decide whether to vest power and trust in them.

Please note, the voters will not get to decide, because the other parties acted to prevent him getting a nomination. They had tried again and again to stop his nomination, because he was the clear favourite to win the election if he could secure a nomination, and they were set to lose the campaign. All attempts to date had failed, until this came out.

Oh well. He withdrew of his own accord. He could have carried on, but didn't. No one to blame but himself. It's not like the evidence produced by the press was false and defamatory information after all. It was the truth. He admitted it was the truth. I really don't know why you object to having a truth about a candidate published in the press. You do understand that if such truths are suppressed by the press to favor a candidate, that this facilitates the election of tyrants and other unqualified candidates. You may not believe that this incident fatally tarnishes his ability to be President, but HE DID, and moreover, the public has every right to know about the incident and judge for themselves whether he's really qualified for office. You seem to be arguing that the information should have been suppressed. To what end? Just so that your favorite could be elected without the people having full knowledge of his past actions as a legislator? That's corruption to me.

The fact that you have so many misapprehensions about this case, and the fact that the independent is factually wrong on at least one count, suggests to me that there was an effort to attempt to make out that Norris was complicit in some way with the crime. This was the impressiom that many took, and it is just wrong.

I am all for holding him to account, but for acts he has committed, not acts someone else committed. Neither should political parties be allowed to get away with their behaviour.

What behavior? Publishing factual information? If you're complaining about the timeline, that was corrected by other press outlets. Certainly he could have, had he wished, corrected the misinformation himself and carried on with his candidacy. But he didn't. Evidently he was less concerned about the timeline than he was about his abuse of his office, which is a correct judgment. He never should have written a letter asking for clemency for his former lover using state stationary. That's why he withdrew, and justifiably so.

8. The full story of this is not in the public domain, and the point has been widely made that there may be more to this story than meets the eye

Oh dearie me, special knowledge is it? Well, put the full story right here and let's find out, shall we?

When it comes out, I will. I don't have special knowledge. But I have observed Norris all my life, and in all that time he has come across as a thoroughly decent person. I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt until the full details emerge, which they mostly will.

Bear in mind, that I think that due to this affair, he can no longer be our President. However, I am very uncomfortable about some matters:

1. Norris will not now stand in front of the electorate - so the voters will have no say one way or the other.

By his own choice.

2. The timing of this is suspicious - why now, and not ages ago. He has, after all, been a Senator for many years.

Perhaps it was not discovered till now. Or perhaps those with knowledge of the letter felt that it was pertinent to an analysis of his qualification to hold the Presidency of Ireland, which is a position of high prestige and international implication that might be severely affected if the information came out only after his election to office, which might create a much greater and more harmful scandal for Ireland.

The higher you go in government, the more scrupulous you have to be in your behavior and the more deeply the press and the public will investigate your background. That's perfectly natural and appropriate, since many are called to serve in high office, but few are chosen.

3. The behaviour of the ruling party in particular.

Politics is a dirty business, and I'm sure the minority party does its fair share of dirty tricking.