Reform of the security services has been indefinitely postponed and the energy of Ministers dissipated on ever more draconian and irrelevant laws.
But he was not allowed to go into detail before the jury and his motives were ruled irrelevant in law as under the Official Secrets Act his disclosures were an absolute criminal offence.
"The board and Tom would like to make us irrelevant," one law-school professor told me.
In a post yesterday, Denver Post reporter John Frank tried to unravel Beauprez's logic, and he made some headway, reporting that Beauprez apparently believes his abortion stance is irrelevant, because federal law is all that matters regarding abortion, and Beauprez won't "deny what the law provides you".
Mr. Ridder has insisted that the information was not used for commercial advantage, an argument that the judge called irrelevant under the law.
But Alan Herson argues that the new ordinance is irrelevant because the law that matters is the one in effect the day his son sought a permit.
"All forces, including the judiciary, feel they are somehow accountable before people and give some sort of explanation these days, even though their answers might be irrelevant to the law".
In a strongly worded decision, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit declared on Tuesday that because of the growth in the Hispanic population in this region, ethnicity was an irrelevant criterion for law officers to stop a person, unless there was other very specific information identifying the suspect.
That is a personal opinion, irrelevant to the law and ought to be irrelevant to the sentence as well.
A ruling by the United States Supreme Court in 1978, followed by an act of Congress in 1980, effectively made those state laws irrelevant.
