BeldarBlog

Cheney to Base, come in please

Tomorrow's NYT reports that

Vice President Dick Cheney lashed out on Friday at critics of the Bush administration's Iraq policy, ridiculing their arguments against the war as naïve and dangerous in a speech that was a culmination of a campaign by the White House to regain support for the postwar effort.

Cheney was speaking to the Heritage Foundation — a sympathetic audience, no doubt intended to be a conduit for his remarks to promulgate throughout the core of the Administration's supporters.  The Veep was helping "prop up the base," and I'm glad to see that effort being made.

The vice president dared critics to refute the assessment that Iraq without Mr. Hussein was better off than before. "There would still be active terror camps in Iraq," he said, "the regime would still be allowing terrorist leaders into the country, and this ally of terrorists would still have a hidden biological weapons program, capable of producing deadly agents on short notice."

Ignoring Mr. Hussein's appetite for illicit weapons would have only courted disaster, he insisted. "Weakness and drift and vacillation in the face of danger invite attacks," he said. "Strength and resolve and decisive action defeat attacks before they can arrive on our soil."

Mr. Cheney said it was dangerous to rely too heavily on reaching international consensus before acting against terrorists, saying that approach "amounts to a policy of doing exactly nothing."

This isn't exactly new, but it does bear repeating. 

What I'd personally like to see added into the mix — and perhaps it was there, but just not included in what the Times chose to quote — would be more emphasis on the foreseeable benefits to the US and to the civilized (non-terroristic) world from a democratic and free Iraq.  During the last half of the twentieth century, the only free and democratic state in the Middle East has been Israel — and for obvious reasons, its ability to exercise moral suasion or influence or political leadership among Arab or other Islamic states has been nil.  To the extent we stay the course and succeed in building a democratic Iraq, however, it will become a "force multiplier," an agent of genuine revolution that we could never expect from the Saudis or the Egyptians.  There are legitimate grounds for optimism and excitement in Iraq — even if we're not yet to the proverbial "end of the beginning," much less the "beginning of the end" there.

It's a pity that the "Angry Left" — the same folks whose predecessors joined JFK's Peace Corps in droves in another era of strife and optimism — isn't likely to be persuaded to this viewpoint.  They're too consumed by their hatred of Dubya to see real prospects for improvement; they'd rather be "right" and see a "quagmire."  Just think what constructive purposes their energies could be harnessed to — if they were simply willing to do their work under American and Iraqi flags instead of insisting upon a hand-over to a laughably ineffective UN.

But even beyond the core that Cheney was addressing, there is a substantial thoughtful portion of the American public who're not yet self-blinded by hatred of Dubya or reflexive anti-Americanism.  For them to become inspired, we probably will need to at least reach the "end of the beginning" — a point where some tangible rewards begin to show up, a point where good news outshouts the latest body-count.  Until that day, the core has to stay faithful.  So I'm glad for Cheney's speech, and I'm glad for a President who doesn't let focus groups define our national policy.

(Pix swiped with thanks from Dean's World.)

Crackpot payoff update

Tim Fleck of the Houston Press has this story about Brenda Flores and the "two Bill Whites" scam.  Fleck's story contains a few more colorful details about the personalities involved — with the conspicuous exception of Janie Reyes, the Metro board member who also accompanied the real Bill White and Congressman Chris Bell on their visit to Reyes to persuade her to abandon her scheme.  Maybe she's just not talking, or maybe she hasn't been asked, but I'd be curious to hear her take on how she came to be involved, why she was at the meeting, and what happened.  According to Flick's story,

Flores claimed the initial plan she worked out with [Sylvester Turner campaign consultant Doris] Hubbard was to recruit a white male to run for mayor who was not a supporter of candidate White, had the same name and did not have a criminal record. She says that even with nearly 90 Bill Whites in the Houston area, it turned out to be an impossible task.

There's a suggestion that Flores had begun having second thoughts even before the White-Bell-Reyes visit to her home:

As the deadline approached, Flores began to regret her involvement and claims she told Hubbard she would not produce Bogus Bill's signed filing papers.

Flores says Hubbard called her house several times, demanding that "the papers" be turned over to the Turner campaign. A recording of one of the calls was murky, and The Insider could not confirm that it was the voice of Hubbard.

In her 90-minute meeting with White and his friends, Flores promised not to go through with the scheme. She claimed she feared for the safety of herself and her children if she did not return the money Hubbard allegedly gave her.

The Houston Chronicle also has an update saying that Harris County DA Chuck Rosenthal has started an investigation into the matter, but is unlikely to take any action until after the November 4th mayoral election.

Both Charles Kuffner and Kevin Whited have discussions up about this story (here and here), including an interesting question Kuff posed for Kevin in comments:  "[G]iven that White's campaign has a lot of self-funding, does your opinion change if the funds he used to cut her a check came out of his own money?"  Kevin's response, in part, was that he could understand if White said something like, "Because campaign finance laws are what they are, I couldn't just write her a personal check — then someone might call it a payoff. So I wrote a check from campaign funds, some of which I've given my own campaign."  My first reaction was just the opposite — that if White's motivation was charity, he ought to have written a personal check; reimbursing (indeed, over-reimbursing) Flores for her undocumented "expenses" incurred in a scheme to torpedo his own campaign is hardly a legitimate campaign expense!  He could have made public disclosure of a personal contribution, and his explanation would have been more coherent and self-consistent. 

But it still wouldn't have been convincing.  Politics aside, I believe Bill White is a nice guy and a sincere populist.  But you would have to be an absolute saint to not only forgive Flores' scheming but then become her private savior, benefactor, and financier.  It just doesn't compute.  It looks like hush money — and yet, why is it the White campaign that would want to cover this up, instead of the Turner campaign?

Kevin explains why he finds the $5k payoff disturbing:

The reason this is an issue of interest is that Bill White claims to be a financial wiz. In the debate last night, he tried to show up Orlando Sanchez by pointing out that Sanchez couldn't name the city's bond rating, but he could; he claimed that's a crucial piece of knowledge for a mayoral candidate (he's wrong on that last, by the way, but that's another topic). But it undermines Mr. White's credibility on financial matters when he just hands over $5,000 of campaign donations to an unstable, muckraking loon! That's not my idea of fiscal responsibility.

I agree with this point.  But I also remain troubled by the point raised, incredibly enough, by Turner during the debate:   If all the facts are on the table, then there's no good reason why White, Bell, and Reyes shouldn't have referred Flores to the police — or indeed, gone to the police themselves!  Maybe Turner has the Gary Hart bold-foolish gene and is guilty as sin while shamelessly still taunting White about this.  I just dunno. 

But the Bill White I thought I knew — the one I worked for when he was editor-in-chief of the Texas Law Review in 1978-1979, who graduated near or at the top of his class and then went on to be a fabulously successful trial lawyer, businessman, and political appointee — just isn't stupid enough to have done what he seems to have done for the skimpy reasons he claims to have been motivated by.  So I still have a feeling that something just isn't right here, and that there's more to the story than we know yet. 

Imaginations run wild

In a story posted today at 6:11pm, the San Antonio Express News quotes a Democratic Congressman as "decrying the apparent agreement" just reached this afternoon on redistricting by Texas Republicans — "even before it was announced":

“The latest redistricting map is an affront to minorities and clearly dilutes the voting strength of Hispanics in Texas,” said U.S. Rep. Ciro Rodriguez, D-San Antonio.

"As Republicans cynically seek to destroy the districts of Anglo Democrats, itself an attack on the political voice of minorities, Tom DeLay and his operatives in Austin gut the voting power of Hispanics in South Texas. Lt. Gov. Dewhurst is obviously going back on his word not to undermine minority opportunity districts.

“We have come too far to stand by while Republicans in Austin and Washington work to sideline the voice of Hispanics as they work day and night to gerrymander us into oblivion,” Rodriguez added. “They split communities and create unwieldy districts with greatly diminished Hispanic voting power, especially in the border districts of South Texas. This is retrogression, plain and simple.”

But the Houston Chronicle gives this report:

Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, said the deal was complete except for checking the proposed map with a computer program for potential problems such as violations of the Federal Voting Rights Act or a Congressional district with too few people in it. The computer check, which began around 5 p.m., would take about two hours to complete, Nelson said.

So what do you call a Congressman who purports to be making nuanced factual judgments about a Congressional district map that he can't possibly have even seen, much less studied at length? 

My imagination fails me. 

I'm quite willing to make a large bet, however, that when we do get to see the map, we'll find that Congressman Rodriguez himself hasn't been "gerrymandered into oblivion."  Any takers?

According to another story in the Express-News, state senator Leticia Van de Putte claims that an unnamed Republican state senator "told Van de Putte that if Democratic senators acted 'like Mexicans, you will be treated like Mexicans.'"  But two other Dem senators who Van de Putte claims also were present to hear the comment — Frank Madla and Judith Zaffirini — "told the San Antonio Express-News on Tuesday that they couldn't recall the comment from any Republican colleague." 

It seems Sen. Van de Putte's imagination hasn't failed her.  Nor has Rep. Rodriguez' imagination failed him.  That's because for the Dems, it's all about making people think it's all about race — regardless of the facts.

Still not about limbo

Episode 2 of "Raising the Bar" is up with links to topical law-related blogging from hither and yon.

Animal testimony

Will Baude at Crescat Sententia (who in turn hat-tipped Jim Leitzel, who blogs Vice Squad) has blogged about a recent AP story (republished in the NYT) about a man who wants to question a parrot in court.  The man's pet parrot accidentally escaped, and he thinks he's tracked down its current possessor, who's resisting the man's efforts to establish his ownership.  The man believes that in court, he can prove his claim by demonstrating that this parrot, like his lost pet, can whistle the "Andy Griffith Theme."

Will's reaction is that his "tentative thought" is that one "shouldn't be allowed to demand that other people bring their parrots into court":

A parrot should be thought of less as a human being (who can be forced to testify) than as a tape recorder, who probably can't in this circumstance. After all, suppose I had my video camera stolen, and then just saw you walking down the street with a camera that looked a lot like mine. Without some further evidence or probable cause or something surely I couldn't just drag you aside and make you play the tape inside for me to see if it was mine, could I?

I'm reminded of an occasion several years ago when I was called to jury duty in one of Harris County's Justice of the Peace (small claims) courts.  While waiting in the courtroom with the others who'd been summoned as prospective jurors that day, I observed a bench trial in another case in which the plaintiff was seeking to replevy (recover possession of) a pet that he claimed had been stolen — in that case, an adolescent chimpanzee.  The defendant claimed that he'd bought the chimp from someone who'd placed a classified newspaper advertisement, so in addition to disputing the plaintiff's original ownership, the defendant claimed to be a "bona fide purchaser for value" whose good-faith purchase extinguished whatever rights the original owner may have had to the property (if not the plaintiff's rights against the thief/seller). 

The plaintiff had served the defendant with a subpoena duces tecum compelling not only the defendant's own appearance at the trial, but also compelling the defendant to bring the chimp to court.  The defendant was seated at his counsel table with the chimp in his arms while the plaintiff testified.  On cross-examination, the defendant's lawyer violated one of the traditional rules of cross-examination by asking an open-ended question:   "So, Mr. Smith!  How can you prove that the chimp was yours to begin with?" 

At which point, the plaintiff looked at the chimp, smiled, and said in a very ordinary tone of voice, "C'mere, Bobo!" 

With a shriek of delight, the chimp instantly pried himself free of the defendant's arms, leapt over the counsel table, raced across the room, bounded over the railing in front of the witness chair, and flung himself into the plaintiff's arms — where the two of them hugged fiercely and began comforting and "grooming" each other while the entire courtroom sat in stunned silence.

The defense lawyer eventually stammered out, "Objection!"

"What's the nature of your objection, counselor?" asked the judge.

"Umm, I object to ... ummm ... the nontestimonial speech of the chimp as being hearsay since he's not subject to meaningful cross-examination!"  At that point, despite ourselves, the judge, I, and every other attorney in the courtroom burst into laughter.

"Overruled!" barked the judge.

The plaintiff then called the defendant to the stand as an adverse (hostile) witness, and proceeded to elicit testimony that the defendant had never gotten the so-called "seller's" name or address; that the seller had used a pager, so the defendant didn't even have a home phone number for him; that the seller neither had nor gave a written bill of sale or other pedigree/title papers; that the seller had no veterinary records for the chimp; that the seller had no "chimp paraphernalia" (clothes, toys, grooming equipment, cage, etc.) to sell along with the chimp; that the seller had insisted on cash; and that the seller had insisted on the handover taking place at a remote roadside rest stop halfway between two towns.

The court wisely ruled that the plaintiff had sufficiently established — via "nontestimonial conduct from the chipanzee" — his prior ownership, and moreover, that the circumstances of the purchase were sufficiently shady that it should have put the defendant on notice that he might be buying a "hot chimp" — meaning that he couldn't qualify as a "bona fide purchaser" who'd given value for the chimp "in good faith." 

"Judgment for the plaintiff!" announced the judge, "You and Bobo are free to go!"  Whereupon Bobo and his owner left the courtroom walking hand-in-hand — and no one present doubted that justice had been done.

As for the parrot:   I believe most judges are going to uphold the subpoena duces tecum directing the current custodian to bring the bird to court.  The general standard for whether a plaintiff who's stated a plausible claim can get such compulsory discovery is whether his request is "reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence."  You don't have to show a probability that in fact the parrot will whistle the "Andy Griffith Theme," just that you have a logical, coherent basis for believing that it might.

As for Will's camcorder hypothetical, when Will shows up in court to argue his motion to quash the subpoena duces tecum demanding that he appear in court and bring his camcorder and tapes for examination, the judge is going to start by asking the opposing party, "What basis do you have to think that this camcorder you claim to have seen is your camcorder?  Where's your sales receipt, your documentation showing the model and serial number?  What basis do you have to connect Mr. Baude to your alleged theft?"  If from the answers it's clear that the plaintiff is just speculating — on the proverbial "fishing trip," fishing around for evidence without any specific basis for believing that admissible evidence will turn up — Will can probably get the subpoena quashed.  But the judge is also likely to say, "So, I understand why you don't want the plaintiff, or me for that matter, scanning through your videotapes. But what's your objection to letting me look at the serial number on your camcorder, Mr. Baude?"  I suspect that serial number will get compared — and if it happens to have been filed off, then the tape may get viewed too.

Appellate courts always say that rulings like this are "committed to the sound discretion of the trial judge."  And part of that is a recognition that trial judges, especially after they've practiced law a while and then been on the bench a while, have good BS detectors.  If a story stinks, if the details don't add up, if someone's flinching and stuttering and downcast eyes suggest a guilty conscience rather than a normal "case of nerves" at having to show up in court, judges are permitted to factor those details into their decisions.  They're permitted, and expected, to balance hardships, to weigh privacy concerns against getting to "the truth," and to do what seems fair and right in the 99.999 percent of situations in which there's no absolute and binding statute or rule or case precedent directly on point.

Now what will be really interesting is this:   When the current possessor of the parrot is obliged to bring the parrot to court, will the plaintiff's lawyer be allowed to "lead his witness" by whistling the first few bars of the "Andy Griffith Theme"?  Or will he be restricted to Lauren Bacall's immortal line to Humphrey Bogart in To Have and Have Not?

Mayoral debate leaves $5k crackpot payoff unclear

I was pleased that the first and third questions in tonight's televised Houston mayoral debate had to do with the Brenda Flores mystery — although I wish the questions had been more direct and pointed.

Sylvester Turner made what sounded like categorical denials that he or his campaign had anything to do with Flores.  But I was left wondering whether there were some Clintonesque evasions:   "We did not pay her to find another Bill White" would fit with the Chronicle's report that the cash payment was ostensibly intended to be in connection with some sort of "early voter organization" in Spring Branch.  "We didn't pay her $5000" would fit with the Chronicle's report that the Turner consultant paid $2600 now, with another $2400 to be paid later.  "Was the campaign authorized to give her anything? No." — that's equivalent to "someone from my campaign gave her money without my authority."  However, Turner did multi-zing White by asking several times why he made a payoff instead of directing Flores' claim of "threats of retaliation" to the police.

Bill White tried to softly pound Turner, but lacked convincing answers about his own role.  He insisted that "we haven't accused any other campaign," but repeated that "a plot was thwarted" and that "people should ask why there was a plot."  His evasions frankly left me very disappointed:   "This woman has cancer.  My first instinct is to protect the vulnerable."  Oh, puh-lease, Mister Bill!  Does your campaign fund many other medical charities?  "We protected a person who came forward with information to help voters avoid being tricked."  Nuh-uh, sir, the person you paid off was the very person who by her own public admission concocted and almost executed the "plot that was thwarted"!  At least according to the Chronicle account, she didn't "come forward"; instead, you got a "tip" that the plot was in the works, and you took along Congressman Chris Bell and Janie Reyes because they were supposedly "buddies" of Flores and you thought you would need their help to get her to acknowledge the plot and then to persuade her to drop it.  You claim the payment you made "wasn't hush money because the plot was thwarted long before"; so if it wasn't hush money, what was it, and why was it more money than Flores had actually gotten from the Turner campaign consultant and more than she paid back?

In short, White answered none of the questions I posed in my original post.

Let me be very clear:   I'm not accusing Bill White of anything dishonest, corrupt, or unethical.  I'm accusing him of being foolish, of being an easy mark, of writing a check — if not for "hush money," then in his words "to put this whole thing behind us" — to someone who probably ought to be in jail herself instead of being rewarded.  That was exactly the wrong thing to do.  It smacks not only of bad judgment, but, frankly, panic.

I'm very disappointed.  What I wanted to hear from Turner was, "Someone connected with my campaign tried to finance a dirty trick, and when I found out, I immediately fired her."  What I wanted to hear from White was, "I made a stupid decision to throw money from my campaign fund at a problem — after it was solved — and I regret having done that.  I lost sight of my principles and laid down with the dogs for a moment, but I'm up and I'm brushing off the fleas." 

Instead — nothing but evasions.

UPDATE (Mon Oct 7 @ midnight):   Here's the Chronicle's debate coverage, headlined "Alleged scheme takes center stage at debate."  The story unfortunately has no new reporting on the actual facts of the Brenda Flores tale.

Baylor 42, Colorado 30

Although I very much enjoyed a three-week stay on the campus of the University of Colorado in July 1985 for the National Session of the National Institute of Trial Advocacy, I've never been a fan of Colorado sports teams — too much trash talk for one thing.  And I have two nieces and a nephew who either are or have recently been Baylor students. 

So I can't help enjoying 19½-point underdog Baylor's 42-30 win over the Buffs in Waco this weekend.  Baylor has had so much bad news lately, and while it's completely unfair, it's nevertheless true that negative publicity in connection with a university's sports program can affect campus morale and self-image just as powerfully, or moreso, as positive publicity.  Go Bears!