Category Archives: Uncategorized

Uncategorized

Path to the truth about Bergdahl opens up

The Pentagon has appointed a major general — an officer with two stars on his epaulets — to probe the case involving Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.

The general, who hasn’t been identified, is going to examine all the facts surrounding allegations that Bergdahl walked off his post before he was captured five years ago by Taliban militants in Afghanistan.

http://news.msn.com/us/us-military-appoints-general-to-probe-bergdahl-disappearance

Those allegations — along with what the United States gave up in return for Bergdahl’s release from captivity — have sullied what should be an unqualified joyous occasion.

The desertion charge might be the most problematic for everyone involved.

Critics of the prisoner exchange have tried and convicted Bergdahl of desertion. The young sergeant, who’s just 28 years of age, hasn’t talked publicly about anything. We don’t know his side of the story. Heck, we don’t even know with any certainty what others have alleged happened.

I believe we need to trust that a two-star general grade officer — I hope he’s a combat veteran who understands the pressure that young men and women face when they’re in harm’s way — will be able to find the whole truth and present it cleanly and without bias.

If the former POW is guilty of desertion, then he should be court-martialed. If he’s convicted, he needs to be punished.

Let’s remember, though, that he is a U.S. citizens and he deserves the presumption of innocence until it is proven otherwise.

Uncategorized

Cantor shows flashes of grace

I awoke this morning awaiting the Sunday news talk shows and figured one of the guests would be U.S. House Majority Leader (for the time being) Eric Cantor, R-Va.

What I didn’t quite anticipate was the grace that Cantor demonstrated as he answered Question No. 1 from all the talk show hosts who interviewed him: How in the world did you manage to lose that Republican Party congressional primary race this past week to someone no one believed had a chance?

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/06/2014-virginia-primary-eric-cantor-campaign-107815.html?hp=t3_3

I’ll stipulate up front that I am no fan of Cantor. I long have considered him to be a classic obstructionist who seemed more in love with the sound of his voice than he was in the doing the job he was sent to do, which is legislate on behalf of his congressional district and, yes, the rest of the country.

He lost this past Tuesday to a Randolph-Macon College economics professor, Dave Brat, who pounded Cantor mercilessly over immigration reform. Brat opposes it; Cantor supported some version of it. Brat also bloodied Cantor badly over the lawmaker’s seeming indifference to the cares and concerns of his constituents.

Thus, Brat beat Cantor in a turnout of something like 13 percent of Republicans in the 7th Congressional District of Virginia.

I didn’t hear Cantor utter a single harsh word about his opponent today. He didn’t gripe about being mischaracterized. Nor did I hear him accuse Brat of lying about his record.

Instead, I watched him take his lumps like a man and vow to stay engaged in the political process in the future, but as someone acting on the sidelines.

There’s something gratifying about watching someone demonstrate how to be a gracious loser.

Uncategorized

Let's avoid the 'vain' epithet

There’s a phrase that sends me into orbit every time I hear it.

It comes from those who don’t know better, often from those who’ve never answered their nation’s call to place themselves in harm’s way.

The phrase is likely to resurface in the weeks or months ahead if the situation in Iraq goes completely south and the Sunni insurgents take control of the country.

It will come out like this: “All those servicemen and women we lost in Iraq will have died in vain.”

That is the most preposterous, insulting, degrading and unpatriotic thing one can say about a fallen warrior.

Whatever happens in the conflict that has erupted in Iraq, none of those nearly 4,500 brave Americans lost during the Iraq War will have died in vain.

When someone wears their uniform and receives a lawful order to go into battle, he or she is acting on behalf of the rest of us back home. That individual is conducting himself or herself as honorably as is humanly possible.

To suggest that an individual dies “in vain” because of a failed strategy, or set of policies or even a battlefield tactic demeans the service they performed.

The Vietnam War produced a lot of that kind of empty rhetoric. It’s been said many times over many decades now that the 58,000 individuals who gave their all in Vietnam died “in vain.” They did not. They died in service to their country.

I’m quite sure some folks will quibble with what “dying in vain” really means. They’ll seek to parse the language and suggest they mean no disrespect to the fallen when they say such things.

Me? I take it as an insult in the extreme.

Uncategorized

Father's Day stirs memories

Father’s Day has been a joyous, but oddly strange, event for me for the past, oh, 34 years or so.

My own father died in the late summer of 1980. He was just 59. He was out cavorting on a business/pleasure trip just north of Vancouver, British Columbia when a small speedboat he was riding in crashed and capsized. Two of the men survived the crash; Dad was one of the two who died.

In recent years I’ve tried to imagine him as an old man. He’d be 93 now. I know a lot of 90-plus-year-old men. Many of them are quite vital, full of energy and ideas, are fully engaged in the world around them. Would Dad be like that? We’ll never know.

Mom would die just four years after Dad. She was just 61 when she passed away. She had suffered from Alzheimer’s disease and, take it from me, no one ever should endure the misery of watching a cherished member of your family vanish before your eyes — even as she sits right in front of you.

But Father’s Day has been a blessing for me nonetheless.

Yes, I still miss both of my parents terribly. However, I’ve been blessed beyond all measure by the life I’ve been able to lead. I owe those blessings to my wife and my own two sons.

We’ve ventured far and wide as a family. We’ve gone to places, seen things and met the most interesting people possible. We’ve been able to share much of that together. I have enjoyed the ride immensely along the way and hope they’ve all enjoyed it as well.

My sons are now successful in their respective careers. They’ve forged good lives and have grown into responsible men. One of them has added blessings even above all that by marrying a lovely young woman and producing our first granddaughter who, I shall declare here and now, is the most beautiful girl on Planet Earth.

It’s been said that everyone has a story to tell. This is just a tiny fraction of my own story. This post, though, isn’t about me. It’s about my blessed family.

Those young men and their mother are the reasons today I celebrate Father’s Day.

Uncategorized

Mexico becomes migrant thoroughfare

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn is making a valid point about the latest immigration crisis to hit Texas and other border states.

All those undocumented immigrants who are flooding into Texas — more than 40,000 at last count — are coming not from Mexico, but from beyond Mexico. They’re fleeing to the United States from Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and points south of Mexico’s border with Central America.

Thus, it is in U.S. interests to help Mexico seal its borders with Central America.

http://www.panhandlepbs.org/news/texas-tribune/cornyn-us-should-help-mexico-seal-its-southern-border/

Cornyn, R-Texas, said during a conference call with reporters, “That 500-mile border between Guatemala and Mexico is a sieve. Once these unaccompanied minors or other adults get in to the hands of the gangs that smuggle them through areas controlled by the Zetas or other cartels, this is not a benign situation. This is a dangerous and deadly … journey.”

They’ve been pouring into Texas, Arizona and New Mexico — but mostly into Texas. Border Patrol agents and local police are arresting them by the thousands.

Naturally, critics of the Obama administration are finding a way to blame them for the trouble. It’s been brewing for years. Cornyn himself has blamed current immigration policy as enticing this flood of illegal immigrants. The view in Central America, Cornyn said, is that “the administration simply will not enforce current immigration laws.”

I would suggest the arrests of the immigrants implies that the U.S. government does enforce those laws.

Helping our neighbor secure its southern border, though, is in our national interest.

It also might be time to remind Mexico of its own responsibility to stop these illegal immigrants from passing through its territory en route to the United States. Perhaps a little geopolitical neighborliness would be in order.

Uncategorized

Carrier headed to Persian Gulf

Here we go.

The United States has just dispatched a nuclear-powered attack aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. George H.W. Bush — one of the newest ships in the fleet — to the Persian Gulf.

Its mission is to protect Americans who might be put in harm’s way in the fighting that threatens to engulf Iraq.

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/iraq-turmoil/u-s-aircraft-carrier-ordered-persian-gulf-wake-iraq-unrest-n131256

This is a most interesting development.

Just so everyone is in the know, the George H.W. Bush is packing an immense amount of firepower.

I had the honor about two decades ago of spending a few nights aboard the U.S.S. Carl Vinson, another of the Navy’s premier attack carriers. I was there to cover a tour led by the late U.S. Rep. Charles Wilson, D-Lufkin, who wanted to tour the ship, buck up the sailors and Marines aboard and tell them how proud he was of the service they perform for the country.

The Carl Vinson, I hasten to add, was the ship where they took Osama bin Laden’s body in May 2011; he then was “buried at sea,” reportedly in a respectful manner.

But to the point. The commanding officer of the Carl Vinson at the time was Capt. John Payne and he told us about the incredible amount of ordnance those ships pack while they’re deployed. I, of course, asked the obvious question: “Skipper, are you carrying any nukes?” He answered the only way he could: “You know I can’t answer that.” He had the slightest smile on his face as he replied.

There remains immense conventional firepower on these ships.

The George H.W. Bush is packing all of that — and perhaps even more, given that it is such a new ship.

This, I submit, is one of the “other options” President Obama is considering in response to the Iraq crisis. He has declared he won’t send ground troops back into Iraq. He hasn’t ruled out air strikes.

But with a massive warship headed straight into the war zone, my hunch is that we might be getting ready to unleash some of that firepower on the bad guys.

Stay tuned for the next act.

Uncategorized

Lance Ito: circus ringmaster

Twenty years ago this week, a horrible crime occurred in front of a Los Angeles-area condo. Two people were stabbed to death. One of them was the former wife of a football legend; the other was her friend.

The football legend, O.J. Simpson, went on trial for the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman and was acquitted after an eight-month circus presided over by LA County Superior Court Judge Lance Ito.

Ito made a fateful decision early on: He allowed TV cameras to record the event. I guess it’s OK to allow the public in on these kinds of proceedings, but only if the judge sets some rules for the conduct of the lawyers who’ll take the stage.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/13/justice/o-j-simpson-where-are-they-now/index.html?hpt=hp_c2

Ito apparently didn’t do that. The trial went on for eight months. The 12 jurors were sequestered, kept away from their families and friends and left to talk only among themselves.

The trial dragged on and on and on.

I bring this up to relay a point made to me during the trial by the then-chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court, who came by for a visit at the newspaper where I worked at the time. Chief Justice Tom Phillips — a former trial court judge in Houston — and I talked for a bit about the Simpson trial and he told me something fascinating.

He said Ito had the power to limit the time the lawyers needed to make their case. He said Texas trial law gives judges here that kind of power and he said he was quite certain California law had similar provisions that gave the presiding judge the power to keep the lawyers on a tight leash.

Ito gave the so-called Simpson “Dream Team” of lawyers and the prosecution’s Team of Nincompoops all the time they requested to prance, preen and pontificate in front of the jurors — and, of course, millions of the rest of America watching on television.

As one who generally favors televised court proceedings, I prefer instead to watch a more tightly controlled event than what we got two decades ago with the Trial of the Century.

Lance Ito is going to retire from the bench next January. I’d love to read a memoir, should he write one, that explains the “logic” behind letting those lawyers run wild in a public courtroom.

Uncategorized

Brat vs. Trammell

David Brat vs. Jack Trammell will become, I guarantee, the most watched contest for the U.S. House of Representatives in this election cycle.

It’s not because either of them has a sparkling political resume. Or that they’ve made huge names for themselves in their shared occupation. It’s because one of them, Brat, knocked off one of the most powerful members of Congress in the Republican Party primary this past week in the most stunning upset in anyone’s memory. In doing so, Brat has leveled the playing field significantly for Trammell, his Democratic opponent this fall, to possibly win a seat in the Virginia congressional district that has been thought to be strongly Republican.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/06/2014-virginia-election-jack-trammell-eric-cantor-107855.html?hp=f2

This one’s going to be a mind-blower.

Brat and Trammell are professors at a college I’d never heard of before this past week. Brat teaches economics, Trammell teaches sociology at Randolph-Macon College. You haven’t heard of it, either? I didn’t think so.

I’m sure it’s a fine school.

Back to Brat and Trammell.

Brat’s victory was a stunner. He was outspent by a gazillion to one by lame-duck House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. The turnout for the GOP primary was dismal, which suited Brat just fine. His supporters were the more dedicated bunch, which always bodes well for a low-turnout election.

He campaigned essentially on a single issue: immigration reform. He’s against it. Cantor was for some version of reform. Brat accused Cantor of favoring “amnesty” for undocumented immigrants. The label stuck to Cantor like Velcro.

Trammell? I know nothing about the guy, except that he’s as much of a political novice as Brat.

He is a last-minute candidate. Democrats were without a chance if Cantor had won. He didn’t. Now they think they’ve got a puncher’s chance against Brat. But as Politico.com reports, Trammell’s gone into a “lockdown” since the GOP primary. I reckon he’s starting to assemble something resembling a campaign strategy for the 7th Congressional District of Virginia.

He’d better roll something impressive. The eyes of the nation will be upon both of these guys.

Uncategorized

Just wondering: Why the no-bill?

1 Comment

It’s a bit dicey for me to question a grand jury’s deliberation, given that no one other than the grand jurors are supposed to know what goes on when the doors are closed.

However, I’m wondering about that Randall County no-bill decision regarding the Amarillo Animal Control Department’s euthanizing of unwanted pets.

The grand jury decided against filing criminal charges against anyone involved in what’s become something of a scandal at the animal shelter.

Animals were being put down in violation of state law. They were given the lethal drugs while failing to be weighed so officials at the shelter would know much of the drug to administer. There were reports of animals suffering greatly during the euthanasia process.

The top two animal control officers, director Mike McGee and assistant director Shannon Barlow both “retired” recently from the city — which, of course, is laughable on its face. They’d been placed on administrative leave when the animal control troubles became known. They should have been fired.

District Attorney James Farren, whose office presented evidence to the grand jury, expressed surprise at the no-bill. He’s not alone in the surprise. The grand jury said it found no animal cruelty at the shelter? I don’t get that one.

If animals weren’t suffering needlessly, then why did the grand jury ever get this case in the first place?

It’s one thing to accept — even grudgingly — a grand jury’s decision. It’s quite another to believe in it.

Uncategorized

For whom will Dewhurst vote?

My mind is wandering as I sit at my computer, so I thought I’d share this idle thought.

Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst is still suffering emotional wounds from his loss to state Sen. Dan Patrick in the lieutenant governor’s Republican runoff.

He knows Patrick well, having worked with him in the Texas Senate, over which Dewhurst presides as lieutenant governor.

Dewhurst also knows Democratic state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, who is running against Patrick in the general election for lieutenant governor.

My idle thought? Who will get Dewhurst’s vote this fall?

I’m really in no position to ask Dewhurst directly. Even if I did, he wouldn’t answer. He does get to vote in secret, just like the rest of us. Heck, he might even lie about who he’ll vote for. None of us ever would know the difference.

My trick knee, though, suggests that Van de Putte stands at least a decent chance of getting at least one crossover vote from a Republican.

Patrick said some pretty mean things to and about Dewhurst in the primary and then in the runoff. That’s the nature of campaigns in many cases. Patrick, though, tried to suggest in so many words that Dewhurst is a closet liberal or moderate — or something other than a staunch conservative, which is how Dewhurst sought to portray himself.

Do these harsh things just disappear when all the votes are counted? I think not.

Just wondering out loud …