Martha Stewart
An editorial in today's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette notes that "she was nailed for covering up a crime that the government wasn't moved to charge her with", the beneficiaries of her conviction are "mostly prosecutors who can boast a famous scalp", and the moral lesson to be drawn from her plight is "to make highly lawyered statements to inquiring prosecutors or else invoke the right not to speak to them at all[emphasis added]." Well said. More than a few "little people" who dozed off in a haze of perverse pleasure derived from Martha Stewart's discomfiture are going to wake with their own lives under the microscopes of other "little people", employed by tax agencies, whose prosecutorial zeal evolved in a culture of government power at the service of envy that was encouraged by their own applause.