My Sunday Feeling

It is a cold and nasty day here in the People’s Republic of Hillcrest.  They are calling for rain for the next 24 hours or so with highs only getting up in the forties.  February and March in Arkansas can produce grim weather like this.  I even remember it snowing once in April.  Anyway, days like today remind me of winter in New Orleans.  It never gets all that cold in Fahrenheit terms but the wind and the humidity cut you clear to the bone.

It’s one of the reasons that they drink so much down there.

I ran in a 5k race yesterday morning.  Later that afternoon I played 9 holes of golf.  It was pretty nippy but at least it was dry.  There will not be any golf or any other outdoor activities today.  Which leaves me with plenty of time to watch basketball and crank this hooey out.

How ‘bout them Hogs? - Ok.  Let’s get this over with.  The Razorbacks should have won that game Friday against the Bucknell Bisons.  After all, as Wally stated repeatedly in today’s column in which excoriates Stan Heath, Bucknell was slower and methodical.  

Bucknell is also a damn good basketball team.  And I figured that if the Razorbacks put forth one of their typically execrable displays of marksmanship from the floor they would have a hard time with a team that takes the air out of the ball.

When it comes right down to it, basketball can be a pretty simple game.  You wouldn’t know that from listening to hoops junkies like Seth Green or Dick Vitale for five minutes but it is.  I figured that if Bucknell kept it close it would come down to free throws.  Stevie Wonder shoots free throws as well as anyone on the Razorbacks.  

And this is why I had Bucknell over the Hogs in one of my brackets.  Simple.

Stay in school Ronnie! - While we’re on the subject of the Razorbacks, there is much speculation as to whether junior guard Ronnie Brewer will jump to the NBA after this season.  Not there’s any reason he should listen to me, but my advice is that he would be better off completing his eligibility.

Guards are a dime a dozen in the NBA.  Whoever has been telling Brewer that he is a lottery pick has been smoking crack.  The kid has a jump shot that is as ugly and unsound as any I have ever seen.  He’s great at jumping passing lanes but I really haven’t seen him give much of an effort at locking an opposing player down on defense.  He’s not much of a defensive rebounder and he tends to disappear sometimes.

Like yesterday.

I’m not one to get on college kids.  Ronnie Brewer is a great college player.  More importantly, by all accounts he is a great kid.  Odds are, he will be an NBA player.  But he would profit more with another year of college to refine his skills than from riding the pine with an NBA team.  

Stay in school, Ronnie.  You ain’t ready.

Tick,Tick,Tick- The rumors morphed into reality yesterday and Uber Head Case Terrell Owens was signed by the Dallas Cowboys of all people.  When I first started hearing this being bandied about earlier in the week, I wondered if maybe Jerry Jones might have been given a little too much anesthesia before his face lift.  

To say Terrell Owens is a cancer is to libel cancer.  When he was with the 49ers, he insinuated that quarterback Jeff Garcia was gay.  The Eagles basically fired him a couple of games into last season because of his constant bitching about money and Donovan McNabb.  As someone once said, “T.O loves him some T.O.”  Randy Moss and Keyshawn Johnson are merely disagreeable by comparison.

But the more I thought about it, the more it made a sense on a certain level.  The Cowboys have pretty much stunk the last 10 seasons, having won just one playoff game during that period of time.  Owens, for all of the baggage he packs, is at worst the 3rd or 4th best receiver in the league.  The Cowboys, lousy as they are, have kick –started their offense with the acquisition of Owens.

The men that run NFL clubs are a notoriously cold-blooded lot.  This latest transaction is just more proof of that.  They will tolerate anything just short of overt criminal behavior out of their star players off the field as long as they produce on it.  Both Bill Parcells and Jerry Jones have past relevant work experience with high maintenance superstars.

When Parcells was with the Giants, Lawrence Taylor once showed up late for a team meeting wearing handcuffs courtesy of a spin with a dominatrix the night before.  He also had to constantly muzzle the ever dyspeptic Keyshawn Johnson when he coached the Jets, although it is too Keyshawn’s credit there were are no stories linking him to hookers and drugs.  

Jerry Jones once had such solid citizens as Michael Irvin, Nate Newton, Erik Williams and Charles Haley on the payroll.  Only an outsized ego such as Jimmy Johnson could have kept this bunch of sociopaths on the same page long enough to win a couple of Super Bowls.  Speaking of the High Haired One, what does Jimmy Johnson think about taking on Terrell Owens?  

“With Terrell, he’s going to be disruptive,” Johnson told Randy Galloway of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.  “He’s going to be yelling at Drew [Bledsoe, the Cowboy’s quarterback, who will undoubtedly need to acquire a set of earplugs before the season is over], he’s going to divide your locker room.  It may be sooner, it may be later, but it will be a negative for your team.”

There you have it.  I give it a year.  Tops.

After that, brace yourself for the “ka-boom!” sound you will hear just southwest of here.

A massive screw-up-  If you have been following the trial of 9-11 henchman Zacarias Moussaoui , you will have heard that a large monkey wrench was thrown into the proceedings when it was discovered that a trial attorney for the Transportation Safety Administration (an undoubtedly soon-to-be dismissed woman named Carla Martin)had disclosed transcripts of trial testimony  (along with opening statements of counsel) to witnesses from the FAA who were going to testify.  

First of all, some background.  In almost every trial concerning any matter of consequence, counsel for both sides invokes what is simply referred to as “The Rule.”  The Rule, which is codified in the Federal Rules of Evidence (although for the life of me I can’t remember where) has it’s origins with the great judges of the Old Testament.  Simply stated, the Rule requires that all fact witnesses be excluded from the courtroom until after they have offered their testimony.  This is so that their testimony will not be influenced, or tainted, by the testimony of prior witnesses in the proceeding.   Not only are witnesses forbidden to discuss the testimony with those who have yet to take the stand, the attorneys themselves may not discuss such matters to their own witnesses if they have been excluded.

In the Moussaoui case, the judge went one step further.  She specifically ordered that witnesses not be given transcripts of the trial or be told about the arguments of counsel.  So, the question out on the golf course yesterday and amongst lawyers everywhere was:  “What in God’s name was she thinking?”

This is lawyering 101.  You do not violate the Rule.  This is how bad Carla Martin screwed up.  Even I wouldn’t have done what she apparently did.  Even I know better than that.

However, I ran across a blog the other day that provides a plausible explanation for her conduct.  Apparently, Martin is involved in a massive torts case involving a class of people comprised of folks injured or killed on 9-11.  The TSA is being sued along with a couple of airlines.  A big issue in that case involves what TSA and the airline industry could have done to prevent this atrocity.  As I understand it, a big issue in the penalty phase of the Moussaoui case is what he could have done to prevent it.  The supposition is that she wasn’t so much coaching the FAA witnesses for the criminal case as she was trying to insure that they didn’t make any inconsistent statements that might come back to haunt them in the civil case.  Go to http://talkleft.com/new_archives/014298.html for the entire article.

One of the scarier aspects of practicing law is that you sometimes fail to see the “big picture” when you are locked in on complicated matters.  It seems like the bigger the case, the more you seem to view things from the wrong end of the telescope.

Still, Ms. Martin is not some kid fresh out of school.  She is an extremely experienced litigator.  You would think that a bell would have gone off in her head before she handed those witnesses the transcripts.  

The good news is that Zacarias Moussaoui is going nowhere.  He pleaded guilty.  He will die in prison.  The bad news for Carla Martin is that she has big problems with a pissed off Federal Judge and she may have problems with her license before it is all said and done.

We should all remember to look through the proper end of the telescope.  And we should always keep an ear cocked for that bell in the back of our head. The one that ought to go off anytime we are about to throw our careers out the window.

Speaking of windows, the windows on my little house are almost frosted this chilly morning.  And yet I can see my flowers on the deck after wiping away the condensation.  Spring is coming. Really it is.  

Really it is.