While it is hardly a shocking concept - that the government uses force and punishes crimes - it is implicitly stated more than explicitly. We often forget that a criminal prosecution is GOVERNMENT versus defendant, focusing on the sometimes shocking alleged facts surrounding the latter rather than on the constant capacity for predation, tyranny and injustice by agents of the former.

There is an interesting issue implicit in your comment, of whether there is a relationship dimension to the ineffective assistance doctrine (i.e., does effective assistance require that lawyers get along with clients and take direction from them), and discussing this issue would let you relate the point you seem driven to make to the Time story. But, perhaps surprisingly, you don’t mention this issue either. The Supreme Court pretty much resolved it (in favor of your view), in Jones v. Barnes, and it has held fast to that resolution during the course of several ineffective assistance cases over the past dozen years, but I take it that blog commentary doesn’t discuss law.

Maybe it would help to write an outlne of your commentary before putting it in final form. That way you could check the logic of the argument. Logical connections (or the lack thereof), are often easier to see in outline form.

[As an aside, I can’t tell if you use “procedural bar” to mean “time-barred,” that is, outside the relevant statute of limitations, or whether there was some other procedural rule in the case that was not complied with. Whether “procedural bar” is a carefully chosen word of art, in other words, or as just an imprecise, generic, catch-all term when you’r not sure of the specific issue in question, is not clear. Given the rest ot the comment, I suspect that the latter is the case, but it does not matter. Resolving that question is not necessary to saying what’s confusing about your comment.]