Attorney General Robert Maximus inflated his chest and stretched to his full height as he stared down on the Supreme Court justices seated before him. A little over six feet in his stocking feet Robert Maximus seemed larger than most men his size. His closely cropped hair, high forehead, probing eyes, and muscular appearance spoke loud and clear–"Do not screw with me." Maximus was not pleased and the Supreme Court justices knew it.

"You men represent the pinnacle, the very top of a profession conceived to represent justice and fairness in the best American tradition, a tradition that goes back to 1776. Yet, over the course of over two hundred years it has slunk to the lowest human denominator in the entire History of Man. There are over a million lawyers in the U.S. with less than a tenth of them making an honest living. The rest are thieves. The profession you represent has pursued greed, self advancement, and the pilfering of every pocket it can find, whether corporate, governmental, or individual for the sole purpose of accumulating as much wealth and power for the lawyers. It has brought this country to its knees. It has proven to be unworthy of the great trust placed in it by our founding fathers who believed it was prudent to devise a government based on checks and balances supplied by three separate divisions, the executive branch, the legislative and the judicial.

Justice Ordinaire, visibly chaffed by Maximus's accurate accounting of the sorry state of affairs in the country, replied angrily: "How can you say that? It takes years of hard study to be a lawyer. Moreover, lawyers are subject to disbarment by their peers."

Robert Maximus's face reddened, then turned a luminous green. His body started to elongate, then widen, until he stood before them, a full seven feet-six. His eyes bored into Justice Ordinaire's face, his gaze penetrating through pale blue irises into the brain that made them see. A dull ache radiated through Justice Ordinaire's skull that escalated into a throbbing headache.

"Are you feeling a slight headache now? Justice Ordinaire," said Robert Maximus. It is nothing to what you might feel like unless you change your attitude. Here, Let me give you a sneak preview." His eyes bored deeper into the justice's brain as the justice felt a searing shot of pain shooting through his skull. Justice Sears thought he saw a flat line of yellow light connect Maximus's eyes to Justice Ordinaire's pupils now filling his irises until they were jet black. Justice Ordinaire slumped to the floor, crying, "Stop. Make it stop. I beg you sir."

I can incinerate your brain to ashes. I can make everyone smell it as it fries you into oblivion. But for now I will release you from your torment. The pain in Justice Ordinaire's head started to subside as Maximus continued. "You will listen to me from now on without question. And all of you will do exactly what I ask. You will tell no one what you have seen or what you have heard–or suffer the consequences. Am I clear on this?"

"Very clear," said Justice Ordinaire.

"Now, I am going to tell you what you and the other members of your profession have done, and then I'm going to tell you what you are going to do about it."

Attorney general Maximus pushed a button on a small console panel attached to his desk. Within seconds the most beautiful woman the men had ever seen entered the room carrying a small electric motor which she carefully placed on the table in front of them. The slender blonde was long legged. Her back was muscled like a swimmer's, her waist tiny compared to the width of her shoulders. A weight lifter she decidedly wasn't. She was built the way women should all have been built, with an ass that was firm yet rounded in just the right proportions to finish out her thighs flowing into gorgeous cheeks. Topless, the blonde showed nipples that were small and firm .

"Do you know what's on the table?" Maximus asked.

"It's an electric motor of sorts," Justice Sears replied.

"It's a three horsepower Sukup motor that is commonly used to drive augers that move grain around grain bins that store grain for farmers," said Maximus. "This one was recently taken off a farmer's grain bin after the farmer trying to use it fell off the bin and died. Kim, show the justices present the safety shields that caused the farmer's death."

Kim bent over the table giving the lawyers present a glorious view of her tight buttocks as she pointed out a flat metal plate that surrounded the motor's two pulleys. Inside the plate was a belt that had been tightened for the demonstration. Four bolts secured by four nuts attached the plate to the motor.

Maximus continued. "Note that there are four bolts and nuts holding the safety plate to the motor. That second pulley is not normally attached. It is attached to an auger, which resembles a cork screw. This motor fits onto the base of the auger and it is held in place by the belt which can be tightened or loosed by the farmer as needed. But to do this he has to get at the adjusting nuts with his wrench. But with that safety shield attached it is impossible for him to do it. He has to take it off. Here's what happened to the farmer who was recently killed. He had his roof auger bolted to the roof so that grain could travel from the lower and outer side of the roof up to the top of the bin where it could dump his corn into a little opening in the exact center of the bin roof. He had a little metal box or hopper on the end of the auger or corkscrew and into this he had another auger running from his tractor. This little motor was at the other end of the roof auger at the very top and center of the bin. What he'd do is he'd power up the first auger with his tractor's power take off drive. Then he'd pull up to it with his wagons full of grain and start dumping into the auger. The grain would go up the auger tube and then drop into the little hopper which fed his roof auger on the outermost edge of his bin roof. Want to know how he was killed?

"I do, even if they don't," Kim replied.

"The belt on the roof auger got loose. So at the very top of his bin, the pulley on this electric motor was spinning like mad but nothing was happening. Nothing was happening because the now useless belt could not turn the second pulley that turns the corkscrew or auger. The two pulleys are supposed to be turning at the same time and it's the belt that connects them together. It was starting to rain. The farmer climbed up the bin ladder, ascending to the very top of his bin, and then he tried to tighten up the belt. But first he had to take off the safety shield and he had four bolts and nuts to take off. He only had a crescent wrench and it didn't fit the nuts very well. The bolts and nuts were 9/16ths of an inch and he didn't have any socket wrenches that would fit them with him. Their threads had gotten rusty. He started to get desperate and careless. If it were not for the safety shield he could have easily tightened the belt with his crescent wrench in five minutes. The bin roof had gotten wet and slippery. The man lost his footing and fell forty feet down to his death."

"So what does that have to do with us," asked Justice Deodorize who had so far remained silent."

Maximus turned to face the man who had interrupted him. His eyes shot lasers of green light into the Chief Justice's retinas. The Chief Justice crumpled to the floor clutching his eyelids in pain.

"I warn all of you. Do not interrupt me. My point is lawyers had represented client's who had worked for farmers who had been injured on the job by augers that didn't have safety shields. In one famous case the plaintiff had gotten higher than a kite on marjuana and had then tried to tighten a belt on an electric motor attached to an auger while it was still running. The idiot never tried to turn the electricity off. All he would have had to do was to push a button or pull the electrical cord plug away from the male plus attached to the motor. Two seconds and he would have disabled the electricity. Your lawyer friends won the man a million dollar settlement in court which was paid by the farmer's insurance company." But this kind of accident doesn't happen all that often. Now.....that little electric motor on the table would normally cost only $210. But the manufacturer has to put a safety shield on it by law and that increases its price by 30 % making it $273. Instead of $210.00. Now most farmers take these safety shields off as soon as they put a belt on the motors and never put them back on again. It's such a pain for them to take those four bolts off each time they want to make a simple belt adjustment."

Think about it. This is just one little example. Nearly every product sold in this country today has a lawyer's fee built in. Americans are so quick to sue. Someone sued McDonalds because her coffee was too hot. Car manufacturers are constantly being sued because someone's in a car accident and smells a huge windfall from their deep pockets. Gun manufacturers are now putting terrible trigger pulls in their guns because they are afraid someone is going to sue them for negligently manufacturing weapons that are too easy to shoot someone with or use to commit suicide. Now many gun manufacturers are putting trigger locks on their guns. So the first anyone who wants to shoot his gun well does, is to hire a gunsmith to lighten the trigger. So your lawyer friends are responsible for making guns much more expensive and more ineffective than they should be.
The worse thing your profession has done is getting involved with malpractice litigation. Doctors have had to pay huge premiums to avoid being bankrupted by their patients suing them for negligence. Your fellow lawyers have forced doctors and hospitals to submit their patients to very expensive and unnecessary procedures to avoid being sued on the basis that they didn't do everything possible and to explore every contingency that might affect their patients. One insurance company after another has gone out of the health care business because of the explosive rising cost of claims. The health care system in this country is in ruin because of you pricks.

Maximus looked into one face after the other, grimacing in disgust. Every Supreme Court Justice felt the chest pain start, the heavy weight of death, pushing down on their rib cages. Everyman among them was on the verge of unconsciousness. Maximus smiled. Suddenly the chest pain each man felt went away.

"The lawyers have ruined this country. It can no longer function as a free and democratic society. Only an iron hand can save it but the freedom and democratic fabric promised by our Founding Fathers has been lost forever. And all because of you," Maximus continued, his voice once again filled with rage. So this administration is putting the whole profession on trial. We are the revolution and a lot of heads are going to roll. I command all of you to do exactly what I say.

As the supreme court justices watched, Maximus revealed himself for the first time. They had thought they had seen him grow, with his body transforming itself before their eyes. They had all experienced severe chest pains and worse. Maximus's body now took on an iridescent red glow, seeming to expand outward in every direction. The specter was not unlike the ever changing shape inside a lava light, a constantly shifting element taking on new dimensions every second. What had been Maximus became an amorphous mass as tall as the ceiling. And then it started to fade, until it was no longer there.

*****

The lawyer stood in the center of the coliseum facing his opponent with a U.S. cavalry sword, covered in his armor. The sword had been designed to be used from a horse with the cavalryman thrashing down on foot soldiers. It was too heavy and unwieldy a weapon to be effective on foot. Inside its steel plated covering his large pot belly cringed as he watched his opponent bearing down on him. The other man had been a Middle Weight boxer who had been one of the top ten and once narrowly lost a bout for the Middle Weight championship. Twenty-seven years old, the boxer was in his prime. His reflexes and coordination were at their peak. He stood before the crowd bare chested wearing light weight running shorts.

The crowd rose to its feet crying, "Kill the lawyer. Kill all the lawyers."

The boxer was quick and agile on his feet, twisting to one side or the other, or backpedaling as the lawyer prodded towards him slashing at him with his 1865 Union Cavalry sword. He carried a sword patterned after the Roman legionary's sword used for hundreds of years by Roman foot soldiers. Its 20 inch blade made it quick in combat where it was used to get in close where it could do its deadly work.

The boxer feinted to the left, then moved swiftly towards his armored opponent his blade flashing brightly in the sun. The lawyer, whose name was Pondero Defecation, stepped backwards and fell. He tried to leap to his feet with seventy pounds of armored plate pinning him into slow moving futility as the boxer stood over him grinning wickedly. The boxer stood aside, letting him get up as the crowd howled in derision.

Five minutes passed. Pondero's movements steadily became slower as he tired. The boxer was too quick for him, easily dodging or ducking each swipe he made with his unwieldy sword. Pondero lunged one last time as the boxer stepped aside and kicked him in the ass as his heavily weighted body moved past him. The lawyer sprawled out on the ground as the boxer stood over him.

Like the professional woodsman with his axe, the boxer quickly analyzed his target, a human being if one could call his opponent instead of being made of wood. Seeing the joints in the armor, the boxer swung sharply down on the break in the armor plate covering the lawyer's left leg. Like a logger pruning a tree, the boxer turned his sword sharply down on Pondero's right leg, severing it at the knee. Bright red blood started to ooze out from the two stumps into the sand of the arena.

Pondero looked down, saw both legs separated from his body lying in a pool of his own blood in the sand, and cried out in anguish. The boxer maneuvered swiftly behind his prostate opponent, wrapped thickly muscled forearms around Pondero's head, and jerked his helmet off. Then he stepped back as the crowd cheered, "Kill the lawyer", and brought his sword down on the lawyer's unprotected neck.

The heavy blow completely severed Pondero's trunk from his head which rolled out onto the sand as the crowd watched the lawyer's body thrash and jerk uncontrollably on the ground. Different theories have been believed about what happens when a man is beheaded. Some say death is instantaneous and that there is no pain or consciousness of the blow. Some have believed that the brain of the victim continues to function for a number of seconds after the head is cut off.

This time, television cameras had zoomed closely in. The tape that was later replayed on national television showed Pondero's eyes widening with fright, as the head rolled across the sand before coming to a stop, miraculously ending upright with a full view of the body jerking spasmodically before it. No one watching out of the millions seeing the episode on T.V. doubted for a moment that the lawyer's brain took more than thirty seconds to lose consciousness.

*****

A few days before Peter announced the U.S. government would be nationalizing the health care system, Blue Cross–Blue Shield ran a series of television ads. Top executives representing Blue Cross-Blue Shield were adamantly opposed to running the ads but one hour with Attorney General Robert Maximus convinced them to change their minds. Peter chuckled aloud as he watched the ad run on his wide-screen television.

"Enroll today with Blue-Cross Blue Shield to protect what you've worked so hard for. We are the only insurance company left underwriting the hospital bills that are inevitably going to catch up with you. And when they do, it's going to be the poor house for you, unless you pay what we ask. But don't blame us because there's no competition left to help keep your health insurance premiums lower than they are going to be. Blame the American Bar Association and all its lawyers who made medical care unaffordable because of its introduction of Mal Practice Incorporated. But for this indispensable service provided by America's lawyers, we at Blue Cross Blue Shield, thank them for making us the only game in town. So don't be late at the starting gate. Call 1-800-Bad-Care today for your free application. Remember Bad Care because that's exactly what you are going to get if you don't start paying us immediately.

"That ought to get the country in a fine mood against the lawyers, thought Peter. "And I made up that ad myself."

*****

The sign at the entryway to the new fairgrounds read: "Peter's Organic Gardens". The core of the fairgrounds was an 80 acre field laid out as a 2640 by 1320 foot rectangle. Wooden bleachers surrounded the field for the spectators. A quarter of a million of them were present to watch the grand christening of Peter's new gardens. Every man, woman and child among them had been promised an unprecedented public spectacle of gore and bloodshed with a theatrical cast composed of America's Most Unwanted, practicing lawyers and judges they had become convinced of having ruined the country.

For the past few days twenty tractors had worked the field digging five foot holes with pto driven post hole diggers. Each tractor had its post hole digger mounted on a three point hitch on its back which was driven by its power takeoff. The power takeoffs were powered by the tractors' power-trains and could be controlled by a driver sitting in a tractor cab. To turn the power takeoff on or off the driver simply pushed a lever in or out in his cab. The stub of a shaft protruded from the back end of each tractor. This stub could be attached to a variety of farm machinery which could be driven by the tractors' drive-train.

Peter had watched the tractor drivers jockeying back and forth digging holes with their equipment. Each driver would back his tractor up to a small flag placed there to mark where each hole should be. By pushing the power take-off lever up, the drivers turned the screws of the post hole diggers on, which started to whirl at a furious pace. By pushing another lever down on his right, a driver could lower the screw onto the ground. It took just thirty seconds to dig each hole as the dirt piled up behind the corkscrew. When a driver finished digging a hole he'd drive his tractor up to the next flag and start digging a new one. Together the twenty drivers could complete 40 holes a minute or 2400 an hour. Working in shifts the drivers were able to dig 50,000 holes a day. By the end of the second day they had dug 61,952 holes.

The holes wound up making a grid pattern 352 holes long and 176 holes wide with each hole, each hole being 7.5 feet from the next.

God and Peter stood together looking at the instrument of execution. The machine was a John Deere 165 horsepower tractor. A fifteen foot wide stalk shredder was attached to the tractor. On the back of the stalk shredder was a clevis hitch mounted to a fifteen foot disk. At the bottom of the stalk shredder mounted all along a heavy rotor were brackets each one of which enclosed two double edged steel blades. Like the post hole digger's augers, the rotor could be turned at high speed by the tractor's power takeoff. The rapidly spinning rotor would whip the steel blades into a frenzy. The tractor driver could control the cutting height of the blades by getting out of his tractor to make an adjustment on the hydraulic cylinder stop that adjusted the height the stalk shredder traveled above the ground.

To those knowing nothing about farm machinery a disk is named after its disk shaped circular blades that work the soil. This particular disk, attached to the stalk shredder had its blades seven and a half inches from each other. A hydraulic cylinder controlled the raising and lowering of the disk. A cylinder stop could be set to adjust how far into the ground the circular blades could penetrate. Peter and God had ordered the tractor driver to mount the disk to the clevis hitch behind the stalk shredder so he could drive them in tandem. With the whirling blades of the stalk shredder pulverizing the lawyer's heads and the disk cutting what was left of them while mixing the bloody mess into the soil.

"By my calculations, we can bury 61,952 lawyers up to their necks in those holes," said God.

"I don't think your calculations are right, God. You have not allowed for any distance between the spectators and the condemned. I think we need a twenty foot buffer on each side. So I have had my drivers leave 20 foot off each side. What we have are 346.67 holes on the long side by 173.34 holes on the short side. So if you multiply the two together we have enough holes for 60,091.78 lawyers."

"Now how are we going to come up with 78 hundredths of one lawyer to make this thing come out right?" asked God.

"I'll leave that to you. You will come up with something."

"We got another problem," said God.

"What's that?" Peter asked.

"Well, we've got this whole thing set up assuming seven and a half foot centers. Both the stalk shredder and disk are fifteen feet wide. So as the driver makes a pass down the field, the center of both the stalk shredder and the disk takes off a lawyer's head. The lawyer to the left of the center lawyer is planted in the ground exactly seven and a half feet away and it's the same thing with the lawyer to the right of the lawyer in the center. Now we've got all this down to a science. The driver has been instructed to drive at precisely 5 ½ miles an hour. This means he will be driving one half mile to the end of the plot in 1/11th of one hour which is 5 and three quarters minutes. If he can drive straight he's going to be able to decapitate three lawyers every seven and a half feet which is 1,056 lawyers by the time he's traveled down the whole field before he has to turn around to start his next pass. What happens if he doesn't drive straight?"

"Well, if he drives say six inches to the left of where he's supposed to be driving he's going to miss all the lawyers who are lined up on his right side. But he's bound to not be driving six inches off all of the time or even most of the time. So some of the lawyers on his right are going to be sparred while some will be only partially decapitated, and others will be only nicked," said Peter.

"Then you see my point," God replied. It is not going to come out right. And what are we going to do with those lawyers who are only wounded or who remain untouched by the farm machinery?"

"You've got a good point there. Hey, I've got an idea. We can spare the lives of those lawyers who manage to live through it. And we can say that those who have lived through it have been saved by an act of God."

"Hey, I like it. But I got another question."

"Shoot. Lay it on me."

"What do we do about the lawyers who are planted in the end rows?"

"Well, I can tell you've never farmed," said Peter.

"I'm serious. How are we going to handle the end rows?" asked God.

"One way to do it is to have the driver mow down the end rows on each end of the field first. Then he can start driving back and forth down the long end of the field until he's covered the whole field," said Peter.

"That is the thorough way to do it," said God. "But it's awfully time consuming. The spectators are likely to get bored. A better idea might be for the driver to start driving up and down the entire long side of the field and make long looping turns on each headland with the stalk shredder and disk still lowered and the blades of the shredder still whirling around. A lot of lawyers planted in the headland will escape the disk and the stalk shredder. A number of them will have their heads only crushed by the wheels of the machinery or their necks broken. We can once again proclaim those who escape as being spared by the hand of God."

"I like the idea," said Peter. Oh, and by the way, what about the few good lawyers. There are some who are truly professional, who have been very honorable and honest and who have done the best jobs that they could. How can we separate out these few from the despicable wretches that we are executing?"

"Got that handled," said God. With a wave of his hand a printer suddenly appeared before them. "You see, I'm God. I see everything. Nothing escapes me. I know everything there is to know. I know who's been good and who's been bad. Now......I have just turned the left side of my brain into a gigantic database that is sifting through millions of data. As we speak I'm turning the right side of my brain into a powerful microprocessor which is sorting through all that data being sifted through the left side of my brain. It is separating out the minority of all those lawyers close-by who have been good and generating a computer printout of those we need to spare."

Suddenly the printer came to life. In a few minutes 5,923 names were printed out.

"Hymm.......That's only 5,923 lawyers out of the 61,952 lawyers we were going to execute today. That's less than 10 percent."

"Ten percent is far more than I expected," said Peter. "I had no idea there was such a heavy percentage of good lawyers in the land."

*****

It took the tractor and driver 10 hours to complete the grisly work. After God and Peter spared the 5,923 lawyers who turned out to be honest men and women, 56,029 lawyers were planted in the field. 5,701 men and women lived through the mass decapitations. Some of them remained untouched by the farm machinery. Many of them were dying, with their skulls half crushed in, necks broken or huge segments of their heads cut off. Others would have been disfigured for life but still lived with their faces torn off. After the tractor had finished and its driver shut its engine off, a single voice cried out close to Peter from the crowd.

"What about those who are still alive?"

"I have spared them by the grace of God," Peter replied.

Another voice cried out. A lawyer buried to his neck in a hole near Peter and God had overheard Peter's conversation with the spectator. "Then get me out of this hole for crying out loud."

"Let me check with God, first," Peter replied to the buried attorney. Turning to God, Peter said softly: "God, go check on that man. "

God walked over to the attorney who was buried up to his neck and crouched down next to him. "What is it son?" God asked in a voice full of concern.

"Please get me out of this hole."

"I am God, son. Up to now I have spared your life."

"If you are God, then please get me out of this hole."

"I've done all I'm about to do today, son. I give you your life back but it is up to you to get out of your own hole you have dug for yourself."

Turning away from the man, God got up and walked away thinking: "You've all dug your own holes, all of you attorneys thinking you were gods, believing you were the sole arbiters of what was just and not just. And everyone of you used your own selfish greed for your scales of justice. Well go ahead, be Gods then, and get yourselves out of your holes."

After the bleachers emptied out and everyone went home, God and Peter were the last ones to leave. No one would return for a month. It would take more than a week for some of the lawyers still buried in the field to die. But for Peter, it was his first application of fertilizer upon the organic farm on which he planned on planting his first crops the following Spring.