I'm Sure Eric Cantor Will Soon Hold A Press Conference For This, Too

On Thursday, March 25, Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the House minority whip, held a press conference to announce that he was also a victim of the spate of violence and threats spawned by the rancor surrounding the health care reform debate.  In his best melodramatic delivery, Cantor intoned, "Enough is enough.  It has to stop."  Then he walked away from his own press conference without taking questions from reporters.  Dramatic, indeed.


Unfortunately for Cantor, he was apparently just the victim of bad luck.


Turns out his nondescript office in a nondescript building in Richmond wasn't the target of an intended shot by some crazed crackpot looking to weigh on the health care reform issue through violence.  Instead, as Richmond Police reported, it wasn't really Cantor's campaign office that got hit by the bullet.  It was a room in the building -- the same building that houses his campaign office -- that he sometimes uses for meetings that was struck.


It also appears that the bullet had landed just inside a window on a downward trajectory; in other words, somebody shot a bullet into the air and it hit this building on the way down.  That's what we in the normal world call a coincidence.


Here's my favorite part:  According to the Richmond Police, "[t]he round struck with enough force to break the windowpane but did not penetrate the window blinds."  If someone were actually trying to cause damage or harm, he (or she) would have been better off to use a slingshot and a rock found by the side of the road.


Of course, Richmond Police knew within hours of the report of the "shooting" that it was most likely the result of random gunfire.  But that didn't stop Cantor from going into full accusatory mode and holding a press conference to announce this gravely serious incident to the public.  No sense in letting the facts get in the way of a good story, after all, especially if you can detract from some of the negative attention being focused on your GOP followers as a result of the other attacks directed mostly at Democrats who supported the health care reform bill.


But once the facts were out, Cantor couldn't be bothered to hold another presser to, if not apologize for his previous, overhyped announcement, at least clarify that the incident didn't turn out the way it first appeared to him.  Not until Cantor's office was contacted by media outlets about the Richmond Police's conclusion did Cantor release a statement that he was "very happy" that the incident appeared to be the result of random gunfire, and he used a spokesman to release that statement.  Yes, apologies and/or clarifications are for losers.


Amazingly, no one's really calling Cantor to task for his disparate treatment "before" the facts were all known and "after."  And pretty soon, the public won't remember because they're too busy listening to what others say about health care reform instead of bothering to read the law themselves.  Really, why let facts get in the way of your outrage.  If you do, you might find that some leaders in particular have been lying to you, and you just might find a new target for your outrage.

Tiger Woods: Master of His Domain?

The Masters golf tournament is a big draw for CBS and arguably the biggest of golf's majors.  This year, it has an added, uh, flavor since Tiger Woods announced he will make his return to golf at the PGA's most prestigious tournament.

In case you've been under a rock for the last few months, this will be the first time Woods has played a tournament since that disastrous November car crash outside his Florida home that set of a maelstrom that led to the disclosure of Tiger's multiple mistresses and a voracious sexual appetite that apparently knew no limits.

It seems like November and December were mainly news reports of the latest Tiger mistress to come forward, with occasional references to apparently minor holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas.  For a while, I thought I may have been the only person who hadn't slept with Tiger Woods.

And just as things had died down, Tiger announced he was returning to the Masters next month and gave two brief interviews - 11 minutes total - to ESPN and the Golf Channel.  I saw the ESPN interview, not because I wanted to, but because I was trying to watch SportsCenter one morning as I got dressed for work and the interview was aired, as the ESPN anchors said breathlessly, "in its entirety."  Running a five-minute clip in its entirety isn't exactly a groundbreaking use of TV time.  In fact, it happens countless times a day on TV, almost none of which involve Tiger Woods.

All of that aside, I found myself wondering why we as a society were making such a big deal over all the controversy and such in Tiger Woods' life.

Here's a secret:  He's just a golfer.

Woods doesn't cure people of their diseases.  He isn't in our schools every day teaching children how to read or do math.  He isn't volunteering in the Peace Corps making sure some of the poorest people on the globe have clean drinking water.  He isn't working dawn to dusk in Africa to make sure children don't die from diarrhea and infection because they didn't receive a vitamin A supplement that costs about $1.25 a day.  He isn't a lawyer pursuing justice all the way to the Supreme Court to make sure all children, regardless of race, have equal access to public schools.  He doesn't do any one of a million jobs that have a direct impact and make people's lives better.

So who cares about Tiger Woods' private life?

Who cares if he's a good husband and father?  Who cares if he disappointed his mother?  Who cares if this long-driving Lothario had more mistresses than Henry VIII?  Who cares if he got too far away from his Buddhism beliefs?  Who cares why he acted so recklessly?  Who cares at all about any of this?

Apparently, we do.  But we shouldn't.

Woods has been in the public spotlight since he appeared on TV as a toddler teeing up a golf ball on The Mike Douglas Show.  He's won nearly every thing he could win in the game of golf and collected nearly every accolade associated with the game.

But somehow we elevated him to godlike status because of his ability to put a little white ball in a small white cup on some of the finest manicured patches of grass in the world.  As if the ability to swing a three-iron better than anyone else before him magically transformed him into a person of good character who was worth emulating.

People young and old have admired athletes and adopted them as role models since the invention of sport.  But let's try to keep this in perspective.  There's nothing wrong with trying to model yourself after an athlete.  Plenty of young boys, myself included, wanted nothing more when they were growing up than to hit game-winning shots like Michael Jordan or throw touchdown passes like Joe Montana.  And plenty of girls have dreamed of scoring goals and winning soccer championships like Mia Hamm.

And even if you're just an occasional duffer, you would give just about anything to have Tiger's ability to seemingly exert total control over the golf ball while on the links.  In that sense, Tiger is a great role model, as far as the game of golf is concerned.  No one has worked harder to hone his amazing talent, and no one can top his competitive drive to win every time he takes to the course.

Let's remember that the reason any of us starting liking Tiger Woods was because he was a great golfer.  Nobody tuned in to watch him at the Masters at age 21 because they cared about Woods' political views or thoughts on marriage or philosophy on fatherhood.  Viewers watched because of his athletic ability.

So it's a little strange that we insisted on putting Tiger the golfer on a pedestal for the world to admire and copy, without really knowing what we were getting into.

But never forget, he's just a golfer - not a savior, not a messiah, not infallible, not the world's greatest husband - and, in the end, he's merely human.  Perhaps we should remember that before we rush to anoint the next athlete, singer or movie star as the next great role model to pattern our lives on.

Who's really making America less safe?

First, let's get my bias out of the way. No, it's not that I am a lawyer, although I am. No, my bias is that, foolishly, I really do believe in the Constitution that forms the framework of our American government. And I really believe that when the Framers added those first ten amendments (the Bill of Rights, as we like to call them), they did so with the intention that those amendments actually apply.

So I've been following this Liz Cheney attack ad controversy with some interest over the last few days. If you haven't heard, Ms. Cheney and her group, Keep America Safe, have put together an ad that refers to certain lawyers in the U.S. Department of Justice as the "Al Quaida 7" because those lawyers have represented some detainees at Guantanomo, Cuba. The group has criticized DOJ for not releasing a list of those seven lawyers, although the names of the lawyers are available by doing a basic Google (shameless corporate promotion alert!) search.

Cheney and her ilk have taken the position that only U.S. citizens are entitled to be represented by an attorney when accused of crimes. Of course, that's not what the Sixth Amendment actually says. Read it for yourself:

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district where in the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence. (Emphasis added.)

Ah, you say, but these people haven't officially been charged with a crime, as if being accused by the U.S. government of being an "enemy combatant" and imprisoned indefinitely doesn't amount to being accused of and punished for a crime. Perhaps anticipating such situations, the Founding Fathers embraced the legal concept of habeas corpus, which allows a person to challenge any detention by government authorities, and they specifically forbid Congress in Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution from suspending the right to apply for a writ of habeas corpus except in cases of rebellion or invasion.

And finally, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that enemy combatants have a right to petition for a writ of habeas corpus. So it's really not surprising that lawyers have been involved in this process where many people imprisoned in Guantanomo have successfully challenged their detention. In other words, many of the people being held in Guantanomo as "enemy combatants" are nothing of the sort, are actually innocent, and are trying to get released from custody.

But Liz Cheney hasn't let any of these facts get in the way of her attack on these DOJ lawyers. She has publicly accused these lawyers of disloyalty and believes that there ought to be "loyalty oath" for lawyers working for the government.

As a lawyer, I am deeply offended; that much is obvious. Only the most obtuse among us would believe that a lawyer representing a client necessarily shares the views, beliefs, and values of his client. I expect better from someone like Liz Cheney, who graduated from the University of Chicago Law School in 1996. I've represented people charged with killing a person, stealing their grandma's safe, snatching an elderly woman's purse, raping their girlfriend's daughter, beating up their girlfriend, selling cocaine, hiring prostitutes for sex, and other acts too awful to mention. Does this mean I support these activities? No, no, and hell, no. But I'll tell you what it does mean: It means I believe in the justice system of this country, and the last time I checked, the government is required to prove people are guilty of crimes before being able to lock them away, sometimes for the rest of their lives.

This is not just my opinion, but also that of some pretty smart guys by the names of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and those other guys you should remember from high school civics class. That puts me in pretty good company on that account. And when you start demonizing lawyers for insisting that the government follow the law, then you're the one making America less safe - for everyone.






See this excellent post from Slate.com for more.