So, even though we don't know Elena Kagan, it's time she got to know us.
We can do so by flooding her office in Washington with faxes and letters telling her that Fumo's sentencing at the hands of Ronald "The Pushover" Buckwalter was a bad joke.
The fax number is 202-514- 5331. Send it to the attention of press aide Beverly Lumpkin.
The address is: Hon. Elena Kagan, Office of the Solicitor General, 950 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Washington, D.C. 20530.
We need to remind Kagan that Buckwalter's sentence in Fumo's 137-count corruption conviction fell so far short of the 11-to-14 year term recommended by the guidelines, it's as though the judge rewrote the laws and nullified the jury's decision.
Kagan also needs to know that we fear we're already seeing the corrosive local effect of Buckwalter's leniency.
One week after Fumo's sentencing, New Jersey state Sen. Wayne Bryant, who'd faced up to 10 years in prison on bribery and pension-fraud convictions, got just four years in the pokey, also in deference to his years of "public service."
It won't be long before attorneys for other convicted public officials start citing these two precedents as a rationale for giving easy time to their own sleazebag clients.
That's why the federal prosecutors who got Fumo convicted want so badly for him to get a tougher sentence that conforms more closely to the guidelines.
If 55 months becomes the new standard around here - you get less than five years in a federal lockup for obstructing justice, destroying evidence, ripping off the public for millions, lying about it on the witness stand and then showing absolutely no remorse - then any act of corruption short of 137 counts will draw a minor fine and probation.
Corruption is liable to become a summary offense, like a traffic ticket.
