If I were a time traveler from an earlier age, I’m sure that along with our music, manners and clothing, the thing that would mystify me the most is our legal system.

For openers, I would not understand why rapists and pedophiles are not executed, or at the very least locked away in dungeons to be gnawed on by rats.

What possible excuse could there be for keeping these creatures alive? Some crimes can be explained, if not excused. People sometimes kill in self-defense or in a jealous rage. People sometimes steal food when they’re starving. But rape and child molestation are cold, calculated atrocities, and anybody who commits them has allowed his membership in the human race to lapse.

I would also argue that an attempted murder should carry the same penalty as a successful homicide. Why should justice be thwarted just because a bullet happens to carom off a skull? Dumb luck should not carry the day. Neither should incompetence be rewarded.

That brings us to those self-serving hypocrites, criminal defense attorneys. The system encourages them to wrap themselves in the cloak of the righteous, allowing them to parrot the line that everyone is entitled to the best defense (that money can buy). There’s no denying that innocent people have occasionally been forced to stand trial, but even Alan Dershowitz, eminent lawyer and Harvard law professor, has stated that over 90% of those indicted are obviously guilty. That means that nine out of 10 clients should go to jail. Defense attorneys will tell you that they don’t know if their clients are guilty, but that it really doesn’t matter. Their job isn’t to pursue justice, but to create a reasonable doubt in the minds of the jurors. It’s not their fault, after all, if a dozen cantaloupes would often do a better job of passing judgment.

Frankly, I can’t even fantasize a life in which I would devote my efforts to getting people responsible for the vilest of crimes acquitted so that, presumably, they could go out and commit them again, at least once their check cleared.

Aside from the fact that the system allows these moral parasites to achieve fame and fortune, I will never grasp the reason that past crimes are not supposed to be considered by the jury. Why should the fact that you have been convicted of arson or assault five times over the past 20 years be ruled irrelevant, even though in every other area of life your past history is the only way that potential spouses, employers and business associates, have to judge you.

If more and more people come to hold the legal system in contempt, it might be that they’re simply following the example of our elected leaders. Here in California, the voters passed Proposition 8, defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman. But Governor Jerry Brown and Attorney General Kamala Harris not only refused to enforce the law, but refused to defend it before the Supreme Court.

On a federal level, Barack Obama went to war with Arizona because Governor Brewer did what he refused to do, what the Constitution obliged him to do: namely, defend our border.

And now, a month or so after the Supreme Court ruled that the portion of the Civil Rights Act that compelled certain states to get federal approval before changing their election laws had become moot because most of the states affected had more black voters registered than white ones, Attorney General Eric Holder gave the Court the proverbial finger. Taking his marching orders from Obama, he boasted to his buddies down at the Mystic Knights of the Sea Lodge Hall – I mean the Urban League – that he has no intention of standing by while Texas makes photo IDs mandatory at election time.

Having nutballs at the top of the Justice Department is nothing new. One of Holder’s predecessors, courtesy of LBJ, was the demonically radical Ramsey Clark. But as bad as Clark was as Attorney General, he really came into his own once he went into business for himself. Among those he has dedicated his life to defending have been loony cult leader David Koresh, Saddam Hussein, Nazi war criminal Jakob Reimer, convicted killer Leonard Peltier, Nazi concentration camp commander Karl Linnas and Serbian war criminal Slobodan Milosevic. Some lawyers chase ambulances, Ramsey Clark chose to chase hearses.

And after racking up that sterling record, the putz tried to have George W. Bush impeached and tried for war crimes, along with Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft.

For good measure, he addressed the second Durban Review Conference, a conference that was boycotted by such civilized nations as Austria, Canada, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland and the U.S. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the keynote speaker, and took the occasion to join Clark in accusing Israel of genocide. What made that particularly ironic is that one of Ramsey Clark’s more despicable clients had been Elizaphan Ntakirutimana, who played a particularly bloody role in the actual genocide that ravaged Rwanda.

To truly grasp the idiocy of the man and to fully appreciate why he remains at 85 a mythic figure to the moral pygmies on the Left, you should know that during the L.A. riots, Mr. Clark was asked by a reporter if he would view with suspicion a black person inserting wicks into multiple bottles filled with gasoline, and replied he would not.

Neither, I’m willing to wager, would Eric Holder.

Author’s Note: Although I’m still seeking sponsors, my online radio show is on the air, every Wednesday, at 1 p.m. That’s L.A. time. Access www.latalkradio.com, channel 1, and click on Listen Live. You can also download to your iPhone or Android apps. The call-in number is (323)203-0815. I’d like to hear your questions and comments, pro or con. Especially pro.