June 2008
by Walter J. McNamara, Esq.

 

The Final Days

As I enter the final days of my term as President of the Lake County Bar Association (it never became the "reign" that I hoped it would be), I acknowledge my debt to so many.

I want to thank my assistant and partner in crime, Kathy Briggs, for putting up with my constant whining about having to write this column, and Ruth Ann and Carrie for their help, encouragement and - in Ruth Ann’s case - actually writing letters for me.

I also want to thank the Executive Committee for a dozen laugh filled monthly bar meetings and the friendship and collegiality that we have shared.

Finally, Lake County has a great Bar and a really great Bench. In more than 39 years of practice, I do not recall ever seeing a Bench as uniformly excellent as the current Judges of the Lake County Common Pleas Court and the three Judges of the Lake County Municipal Courts. Each one is bright, fair and hardworking. Since I have had the opportunity (burden) of trying cases in a fair number of locales during my practice, I truly appreciate the Lake County 2008 Bench. While I am sure we will have excellent replacements, I take this opportunity to salute Judge William Weaver and Judge Paul Mitrovich, who will be retiring at the end of the year after having given so much to Lake County.

Most of the time being President of the Lake County Bar was fun; some of the time, it was challenging; and sometimes it was downright depressing.

Here are some interesting facts about the Lake County Bar Association that I did not know until I became President:

1. It does not have a standing army;

2. The President does not have a secret service detail;

3. There is no provision allowing the President to instigate warrantless wire tapping of any attorney’s telephones;

4. Proposals to use water boarding as a substitute for depositions are not readily welcomed;

5. Unlike the U.S. President, the Lake County Bar President does not have the authority to appoint Federal Judges;

6. No one plays hail to the chief when the Bar Association President enters the room;

7. As President of the Bar Association, with the obligation of protecting the Lake County Bar, I seem to be the only one who feared an attack from the Geauga County Bar;

8. Even if the Bar Association had a standing army, it has no tanks or artillery;

9. No television network is interested in a reality show about the Lake County Bar Association;

10. The most distressing fact is that the President does not get paid.

It has been a fun and enlightening year. I thank you and gladly give this up to my buddy, Mark Ziccarelli.

Incidentally, despite all the effort this takes, I bear no grudge to those who talked me into getting into this in the first place (do you hear that Messrs. Klammer, Gibson and Lucci).

May 2008
by Walter J. McNamara, Esq.
 

The Trouble With Michael Clayton

Movies and TV love to portray lawyers. From our rather mundane daily existence, the movies extract high drama and danger. I recently had the opportunity to see the movie, "Michael Clayton", showing George Clooney and a host of others. In the movie, Clooney plays an "of counsel" to a large New York firm, where he is the "fixer". That means he does not do regular legal work but, when a client drifts off into some sort of non-business trouble, i.e., hit and run accident or drunk driving, Clooney "fixes" it, so the other lawyers need not dirty their hands. The main story finds Clooney trying to fix the senior litigation partner, who has been involved for more than a decade with an environmental case, defending an environmental polluter whom the senior litigator believes is a "bad guy". In the course of the journey, representatives of the large multinational polluter start to murder key players, including threatening Clooney, himself.

I will not give away the ending - although you might guess that the bad lawyers and bad polluter don’t win in the end - but I am fascinated by the premise.

Where have I failed? I have practiced law for nearly 40 years; how come I have never had anybody on either side try to murder the lawyer on the other side? Are my cases so uninteresting, is my life so mundane and pointless, that no one has ever thought of murdering me? Isn’t there drama enough in what we do on a day-to-day basis without resorting to murder and mayhem? I find my life to be pretty interesting, pretty challenging, and at times more exciting than I want. Yet, I have never been involved in a car chase relating to any of my cases. That is pretty sad when you think about it.

Is it also sad that on each "Law & Order" (and there are three of them), the prosecutor and the defense attorney can summarize there case in less than two minutes? Many of you may recall that retired Judge Marty Parks liked that idea. However, quite a few of us found that difficult. I do not know that I can summarize anything complicated in two minutes. On the other hand, do you notice that every judge on "Law & Order" is willing to take the most feeble defense pretext - with or without any evidence to support it - and deny the use of critical police evidence? The judge - an elected official, I believe in New York - does not seem to care that a serial killer will go free to commit more atrocities, he just simply hates the police.

In all of the years I have practiced, I have only met one such judge (from Cuyahoga County, now retired).

Moreover, why is it that, whenever I try a case, there are never new witnesses appearing at the end who can provide that piece of key evidence to win the case for me? That never happened.

I know: these are tools that the media uses for dramatic effect. On the other hand, I thought my life was dramatic enough without those tools.

My last science column: I appreciate that many of you had comments on my last column involving string theory. I learned, for example, that I misspelled "Schroedinger’s" cat (thanks to Pat Nosera, I mean Nocero]). I also heard from our good friend George Haskell that he has "valiantly labored through everyone [of the columns] from beginning to end no matter how lengthy, up until the April issue." Brother Haskell believes that up until I began meditating on exploding atoms, he deserved an award from the Bar for slogging through my columns. I agree. George BP Haskell is hereby awarded the "Persistence Award" for being that member of the Bar who read the greatest number of my columns during my brief tenure as President. Let me hasten to make that award to any of you who feel you deserve it. I know I get tired of reading the columns myself.

Finally, along the lines of new scientific discoveries, my friend Don Stein from the Mentor Municipal Court has been pleased to tell me of the discovery of a new element:

"Governmentium":

"Research has led to the discovery of the heaviest element yet known to science. The new element, Governmentium (Gv), has one neuron, 25 assistant neurons, 88 deputy neurons and 198 assistant deputy neurons, giving it an atomic mass of 312.

These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons. Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert; however, it can be detected, because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact.

A minute amount of Governmentium can cause a reaction that would normally take less than a second, to take from four days to four years to complete.

Governmentium has a normal half-life of 2-6 years; it does not decay but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neurons and deputy neurons, exchange places.

In fact, Governmentium's mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization will cause more morons to become neurons, forming isodopes.

This characteristic of moron promotion leads some scientists to believe that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a critical concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as critical morass.

When catalyzed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium, an element that radiates just as much energy as Governmentium since it has half as many peons but twice as many morons."

I hope Spring is treating you kindly.

April 2008
by Walter J. McNamara, Esq.

 

Many people ask me where the ideas for this column come from.^[1]  Some may feel I am running out of ideas.^[2]  This is especially awkward because some^[3] have inquired as to why these columns do not reflect more legal learning. 

            My lack of knowledge about the law is matched only by my lack of knowledge about many things.  For example, physics fascinates me; yet I do not understand it.  When we were kids we were told that all things were made of atoms and that if the nucleus of an atom was as big as a basketball, the electron in orbit around the atom would be in outer space.  This seems to leave a lot of empty space if everything is made up of atoms.  In that case, why aren’t we all mostly empty space.  We should be able to walk through walls, etc.  However, apparently when we touch something, what we are feeling is the electromagnetic force of that object against the electromagnetic force of our hand.  I frankly do not understand this concept, but it intrigues me.

            It also intrigues me that, if the nucleus of an atom is made up of protons and neutrons packed tightly together, should it not be constantly exploding? Even I know that when it comes to magnetism, opposites attract and two poles with the same magnetic charge repel.  Thus, if you have a bunch of positively charged protons packed up inside a nucleus, shouldn’t they all be repelling each other and, literally, exploding apart?  Apparently there is something called the “strong force” which operates inside the nucleus of an atom to keep it packed together.^[4]  Since I have trouble with math beyond adding and subtracting, I will never truly be able to understand physics.  However, there are recent theories which you can read about in books by fellows like Brian Greene.  Dr. Greene has published a couple of books, such as the Elegant Universe and The Fabric of the Cosmos, both of which deal with exotic points of physics.  The Elegant Universe, for example, tries to explain the concept of “string theory”.  String theory postulates^[5] that the smallest unit of “stuff” is something called strings.  Backing up a bit to the protons and neutrons, physicists more or less have determined that they are made up of quarks.  Quarks have certain properties with names that make no sense.  For example, quarks have charm, up, down and color, to name a few.  Since quarks really do not have any color as far as we know, these are simply words that physicists use to describe characteristics of a quark that are not readily explained to the rest of us.  Some thought that quarks were the smallest unit of “stuff” in the universe, seeing as how they made up things as small as protons and neutrons.  However, Dr. Greene and a group of theorists have created a mathematical model which posits that “strings” are the constituent units of quarks.  In other words, a bunch of strings get together to make up a quark.  The strings are actually - and this makes utterly no sense to me - one dimensional vibrations.  The frequency at which they vibrate apparently determines the characteristics of the quark.

            The only problem with this is that there is never going to be a way to experimentally verify the existence of strings.  In addition, while the mathematicians say that the mathematical model supporting string theory is elegant, it does require that the universe be made up of eleven dimensions. 

            When I was growing up, I was told there were three dimensions (plus time as a fourth dimension). The concept of having a bunch of extra dimensions is a little hard to realize.  This is probably why quarks have characteristics such as up, down, charm and color, since nothing else makes sense.  No one knows where these other dimensions are and what they look like.   Very strange.

            However, no more strange than the “many worlds theories” which posit that there are an infinite number of parallel universes and each time an action is taken (i.e., the collapse of a wave function^[6]), a new universe is created and the old universe splits off.

            I believe physics is interesting and fun, to the extent it can be explained to non-scientists, such as me, but I write this column, in part, simply to irritate Judge Lucci, who has always hated it when I talk about these things. 

            While we do not normally receive letters to the editor in the Lake Legal Views, I would appreciate hearing from any of you who have a better understanding of this than me, because, as soon as I get to the part called M theory, I get really confused.

            By the way, as I write this column, Easter is fast approaching.  I hope that the Easter Bunny (or EB, as his business associates call him) is good to you and yours.

March 2008
by Walter J. McNamara, Esq.
 

To my joy and amazement, I found that the words of my last column touched the heart of one of our more prominent jurists. Judge William Weaver dropped me a note to let me know that, thanks to my column’s warning about the dearth of air traffic controllers in the coming years, he has restructured his retirement plans so instead of collecting scrap metal by the road and selling it to the highest bidder, he now intends to step up for America and become an air traffic controller.

Bill Weaver has an incredibly sharp mind and is a great Juvenile Judge. For some of us that are not going to be quite as sharp in our elder years, I suggest that air traffic controller may not be the job we want, as the downside of mistakes are to be pretty grim.

As I write this column, there has been horrible tribal strife in Kenya. Coincidently, President Bush just finished visiting Tanzania. I visited both Tanzania and Kenya in 2001 before 9/11.

On my first Sunday morning in Nairobi, my schedule said I had the morning free, so I thought I would walk around. As I walked through the hotel lobby and out the door, a frantic desk clerk called out for me to stop. Where was I going? I explained to him that I was simply going to walk around and take a look at the neighborhood. I was told this would be a very bad idea because he did not have any armed guards to accompany me. It was then I noticed that the lobby was full of men in uniform carrying machine guns, and that were a number of men outside the lobby doors on the street, also carrying machine guns. I was surprised by this warning and ignored it. After I had walked about a half an hour, I realized that: a) it was a good thing it was Sunday morning, and b) tourists shouldn’t walk around places they don’t understand.

I was only in Nairobi a few days when my trip took me on a photo safari into the Masai Mara country. A photo safari is amazing almost every moment. Once you are in the grasslands, you see lions, giraffes, elephants, zebras, buffalo and all other sorts of animals every minute of every day. You can be in a vehicle out in the grasslands, stand up and look around, and as far as you can see, there is no sign of human habitation or presence. There are no plastic bags floating around, no junk, no litter, no lights. The vehicles (usually a Toyota or Land Rover) generally did not have sides or a roof and therefore were completely exposed. However, since lions and other predators apparently can’t smell past the scent of a vehicle, you could get within feet from an entire pride of lions sunning themselves under a tree and, unless you are dumb enough to - as they say - "break the plane" of the vehicle, you are perfectly safe. The lions have apparently known the vehicles all their short lives because this tourist trade has been going on for decades. Lions realize that the vehicles neither harm them nor provide nutrition. I had a different guide each day and was continually amazed at the amount of information each one possessed about the wildlife.

In Kenya, I stayed in an enclosed camp every night and spent the evenings outside with the wildlife on the other side of the fence. One night we were privileged to watch a 2,000 pound crocodile be intimidated by a couple of hippos who decided to run him/her off. I learned that hippos are the most dangerous large animal in Africa as far as people are concerned. While hippos don’t eat people, they have terrible tempers and tend to run off or stomp anything smaller than them that gets in the way. At two to three tons, most things are smaller than a hippo.

An interesting feature of Kenyan life was that, from time to time while I was transferred by land (as opposed to plane) from one camp to another, I often saw boards with spiked nails on the roads turned upwards to deflate your tires. Manning each of these places, is a Kenyan police officer. When I inquired of my guides what was going on, I was told that it was the police looking for a bribe. Apparently the police are not paid that well in Kenya, and it is considered rational to stop vehicles and make sure they have the proper licensing. In each case, I was told that this would not affect me because, if they were carrying tourists, they had the proper licenses and the police would not dare stop them.

I was in Africa a total of about four weeks and spent the first twelve days in Kenya. During that time, I became acutely aware of tribal rivalries. We seem to think tribes are small isolated groups (at least I do), but in Africa a tribe may be several million people. The tribal rivalries in Kenya have always been very fierce. On the contrary, Tanzania, right next door, seemed to be a very peaceful country. The big difference was that your camp was not fenced in at night, so once you were put in your tent, you had to stay there for the night - meaning it had bathroom facilities. If you wanted for any reason to leave at night, you would be required to blow a whistle and several Masai tribesmen - of whom lions are legendarily frightened - would take you to your destination, fighting off lions with their spears.

In Tanzania, I had the pleasure one night of being awakened by some large presence pushing on the canvas of my tent, in total darkness. It kept me up for a while because I couldn’t tell whether the noise was a roar (lion) or a muffled snort (hippo). It turned out to be a hippo, but I am told, as long as you don’t have food in your tent, the animals will stay out. You close down the tent completely by latching all of the ends together at the door, I always spent time with my flashlight looking around for mambas under my bed before I settled in each night. The black mamba is the one animal all of my guides were afraid of.

The people in Tanzania were very kind and I got to spend a few days in Arusha. In Arusha they are very proud that they have had the genocide trials concerning atrocities for that neighboring Rwanda. I stayed at the Arusha Lodge, the only room I have every been in where the light wasn’t bright enough to read at night. However, the folks were all good hearted and the staff was extremely pleasant.

I rounded out my trip in Mombasa, Kenya. Though a Muslim community, it seemed rather liberal to me at the time - actually most of the people I met were in bars during the day. I felt completely safe in Mombasa and had many incredible experiences in the town and the area. Only about two years after I left, the hotel next door to mine - one frequented by Israelis - was bombed by Islamic Extremists.

By the way, if you want to feel temporarily rich, find a Tanzanian ATM that prints out your account balance. Since it takes 800 shillings to make a U.S. dollar, your balance looks pretty good.

February 2008
by Walter J. McNamara, Esq.
 

THE BIG PICTURE

I was recently reminded by my friend and colleague, Richard Hennig, that my last month's column on television failed to note that Richard's TV has a 73" screen, probably the biggest TV screen in Lake County.

In what turned out to be a related incident, a colleague of ours from Painesville sent me a letter questioning why I would take on certain legal matters during the "senectitude" of my practice. Since I had no idea what the word senectitude meant, we looked it up in the dictionary (to no avail), but finally Googled the word. Apparently it means something to do with old age.

Since I still enjoy practicing law, (and have really nothing else to do), I haven't thought about retiring despite the senectitude in which I'm involved.

However, statistics will tell you that the baby boomers (of which I'm about the earliest) are going to be retiring in record numbers soon. This will have a dramatic effect on society as a whole.

For example, though politicians are afraid to even touch the Social Security system, the mathematical fact is that in 1945, when I was born, each retiree in America had 42 workers contributing to his Social Security. At this juncture, each retiree enjoys the support of only three workers, and by the time the baby boomer generation is completely retired, there will be only two workers for each retiree.

For those of us who believe that the goal of each generation is to advance the ball for the next generation, this is a discouraging fact. That I have worked most of my life with the result of almost bankrupting the next generation doesn't seem rational.

Apparently, while the Social Security system is a huge problem, the Medicare system is an even bigger problem. As we enter the ages of senectitude, we gobble up medical services at an alarming rate. I know because I have done this in recent years.

The problem is complicated by the fact that we are having fewer children than previous generations, so that as I senectitudinally sit home in my retirement and need help from my family, there aren't as many to carry the load. More to the point, many baby-boom senectituders, like myself, are no longer married, so the children will be required to divide their attention between mom and dad, living separately.

In addition, the children no longer live right around the corner (I've got them living in different states and one different country), so it's not just a matter of coming over to make dinner tonight.

This will again strain the system because the retired baby boomers, as they get even older, would demand and need more services than their family can provide.

Additionally, the nature of the economy will change dramatically. Studies indicate that young folk buy "things," such as cars, houses, furniture, et cetera, whereas older folk need services - see medical, social, et cetera. Productivity can grow exponentially faster with the production of goods, than it can for services. Just think about it: a manufacturer can produce a car in a much shorter time than 30 years ago, but it still takes about the same amount of time to drive your grandma to the doctor's, wait for her appointment, and drive her back home.1

Finally, it's not going to be nearly as much fun taking care of a bunch of old people as it would be to make things and buy zippy new cars. My generation will no doubt burden the younger generation. While we baby boomers have been notoriously self-involved, unless we find a way around this problem, we will have failed to advance the ball for the next generation.

Modestly, I suggest that we all keep working a little bit longer, Social Security be means-tested, so that if you don't need it you don't get it; and when you finally retire, if your health permits, you should get another job - at least part-time - just to keep occupied.

My friend Don Stein, a bailiff from the Mentor Court, retired from his career and took on a part-time job in the Mentor Court with Judge Swain. He's still there with Judge Trebets, and has a ball. This is probably the best way to retire.

For myself, I am studying for my future careers by standing before a mirror each day and practicing both: "Welcome to Wal-Mart," and "Do you want fries with that?"

Not everyone will think this is bad, but the federal government is going to be deeply impacted by the retirement of a large part of its labor force in the foreseeable future. While no one is going to miss an IRS agent or two, those darned air traffic controls will be missed.

An interesting and unrelated scientific fact:

Researchers have determined that violence is craved by mammals much the same as food and sex are craved. A study reported by no less an authority than Yahoonews.com indicated that research on mice proved that they would seek violence simply for the sake of violence. The act of violence tended to be pleasing, in fact, involving the same brain centers involved in other reward behavior. According to a researcher at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee: "We have found that the reward pathway of the brain becomes engaged in response to an aggressive event and that dopamine is involved."

I won't take a long time to describe the experiment, just suffice it to say it involved a fight among mice.

The fact that people get a kick out of violence isn't that astounding, I guess. But the news that it's sort of a "craving" was disappointing. I guess this explains a lot of what happens in the world (it certainly explains my willingness to spend an entire weekend watching NFL playoff games).

Also, my thanks to the aforementioned Don Stein and his lovely wife Ginny, who were kind enough to put me up for a couple days after some minor eye surgery and drive me around as necessary.

Thank you very much.

[1] For those interested, I suggest that many of these points, and more, may be found in the January/February 2008 Atlantic Monthly magazine, which has a terrific article on the impact aging will make on the family.

January 2008
by Walter J. McNamara, Esq.
 

Your Television and You

Though many scoff at television and those who watch it, I stand staunchly with those few who really love TV. Admittedly, the shows I enjoy are not necessary popular, like Grey’s Anatomy, Desperate Housewives or the guy who opens suitcases one after another looking for money. There are some really entertaining and informative programs for those of us willing to risk the cat calls of our friends and associates and admit that our taste is not as fin and subtle as those who would rather see an opera than an episode of Smallville on a Thursday night.1

From the lack of response I received from one column (in which I asked how many other folks of my era enjoyed South Park), I gather I am somewhat unusual in my tastes. However, for those of you who value your intellectual capacity (and place in the community) more than I do, there are still some terrific things to be learned from television.

If you regularly watch the Nova science series on PBS, you will have learned not only a great deal about Alexander Hamilton and John and Abigail Adams, but also some very accessible explanations of science, such as a brief series by Dr. Brian Greene on string theory.2

In addition, various discovery, history and geographic channels have been kind enough to teach me about Andrew Jackson, Sam Giancana (the one-time Boss of the Chicago Mob), as well as some interesting climatalogical facts.

For example, when we talk about the potential of climate catastrophe, did you know that every several hundred thousand years the magnetic poles of the Earth switch places? This has caused huge catastrophes in the past, wiping our many species and causing climate disruption all across the Earth. In addition, there is a super volcano in Yellowstone National Park (I believe under Old Faithful) which, if it ever erupts, will, in a worst case scenario, incinerate everything for more than a 100-mile radius and dramatically change the climate of the Earth, likely leading to mass starvation and total civic and political disruption.

On a less dramatic note, I was surprise to find that, from 1300 until the mid-1800's, the Earth underwent a "little ice age". The little ice age, while not as impressive as the bigger ice ages (which, for example, carved out the Great Lakes), impacted human kind sufficiently that it is thought to be a major factor in the plagues of the 14^th and 17^th centuries as well as bringing about the end of feudalism in the Middle Ages.

This gets me to wondering whether or not our current global warming is simply a continuation of the warming up from the little ice age, as opposed to something I did when I drove to work today. Though I am in no position to argue with the many erudite folks who insist that humans are responsible for global warming,3 I am always concerned when I am told that we have done something in the past couple decades that truly impacts the entire Earth’s climate.

The idea that we are responsible for things, and therefore can fix them, is a human trait that one must always view somewhat cynically. Remember those old movies where the natives were about to burn the explorers at the stake, and one explorer realized (by his atlas) that he could predict an eclipse of the Sun and use that to convince the natives he was powerful enough to make the Sun disappear. Thereafter, the innocent natives let the explorers go on their merry way. Well, it is sort of like that. I am not sure that we can fix anything about the climate because there are a number of factors that we do not control.

That being said, however, I am fully in line with those who promote reducing our carbon foot-print. This has nothing to do with the concept of global warming, although, like chicken soup, I do not see how it can hurt. An indisputable fact - in my very disputable mind - is that our continued use of fossil fuels simply transfers great amounts of wealth from the United States to people who not only hate us, but would like to hurt us badly. Currently, not only wackos in the Middle East (see Ahmadinejad in Iran) but those closer to home (such as Hugo Chavez) and those we once hoped to be friends (such as Vladamir Putin) benefit enormously from huge transfers of wealth from us to them, simply in order to access their oil and gas.

Let me be real pompous here and pontificate: in 1974 we knew we had a huge problem because you had to wait in line to get gas and you were lucky to get a tankful. That followed the OPEC oil embargo, and everyone here knew then that we were potentially very vulnerable.

So since then, have we accomplished much in our energy policy? No! Yet Brazil, a country no one thinks is ahead of us technologically, has become energy self-sufficient. Among other things, it processes its sugar cane into biofuels. Sugar is apparently a gazillion4 more times efficient than corn in creating ethanol.

We are also the "Saudi Arabia", of coal and, if we find a clean way of using it, surely this will add to our energy independence. In any event, I have proven that I am no rocket scientist, but I think that one of America’s main goals in the immediate future should be to have energy independence and make a point of keeping it.5

As a final note, let me also recommend at least one internet site. For those of you that love satire, there is nothing better than onion.com. The Onion is a satirical newspaper that is now published online as well. It has articles, fake news panels and fake radio news. Recent articles include:

"PATRIOTS PROUD OF DEFEATING WHOEVER THAT LAST TEAMS WAS"

"MAN LIKES WOMAN SO MUCH HE MARRIES HER"

"CRAZED LONE GUNMAN ENVIED BY CRAZED MARRIED GUNMAN"

and on the radio news,

"NATIONAL BEARD GROWERS ASSOCIATION CLAIMS ENTIRE 08 CROP LOST TO HOT DAY" and finally,

"LONG-AWAITED BABY BOOMER DIE OFF TO BEGIN SOON".

I love the Onion and suggest that you each try it on the web.

As I write, this Christmas has not yet occurred, but, as you read this, the Holidays are over. I hope the memories of your Holidays are warm and fuzzy. Now get back to work.

           ^[1] By the by, I actually did see an opera once and found that it took an awfully long time and I understood very little of it.

            ^[2] More of which in 2008.

            ^[3] There are apparently still a number of reputable scientists who deny mankind’s responsibility for global warming and a few                  who even deny that the Earth is warming.  It is apparently a very complicated question.

            ^[4] Gazillion is a scientific term that I do not know the meaning of.

            ^[5] Wow, I really do pontificate.

December 2007
by Walter J. McNamara, Esq.

PRO BONO

I assume that most of you do not equate the term "pro bono" with those folks who took Sonny’s side during his divorce from Cher (chuckle, chuckle). However, as the Holidays roll around, and good feelings and charity to your fellow women/men fill the heart of each of us, I recall that some folks (see, e.g. Linda Cooper and Geoff Weaver) had difficulties with the thought that the requirement for pro bono service would become mandatory for lawyers.

The requirement for 50 hours for "Pro Bono Publico" is found in Rule 6.1 of the Model Rules of Professional Conduct. That Model Rule asks lawyers to "... aspire to render at least (50) hours of pro bono publico legal services per year...".

Since the rule refers to free legal services rendered "... without fee or expectation of fee..." (emphasis added), I suppose that being stiffed by your client’s failure to pay a bill would not qualify.

Under the Model Rule the majority of the 50 hours would be rendered to "persons of limited means" or charitable, community, etc. organizations. Some of the hours apparently could be garnered by providing services at "substantially reduced fee" for charitable, religious, civic, civil rights, etc. type organizations or persons of limited means.

The Model Rule also allows you to gather some more hours by participating in activities to improve the law, the legal system or the legal profession. (Obviously writing this column would not quality for many hours).

The Supreme Court, however, has not enacted the Model Code provision. On September 20, 2007, the Ohio Supreme Court issued a statement of its support for "pro bono legal services by Ohio lawyers". In its statement, the Court emphasized its encouragement for lawyers to seek new and additional "pro bono opportunities".

The Supreme Court mentioned that, in 2007, the importance of this obligation was "reemphasized" in the preamble to the Ohio Rules of Professional Conduct. The implementation of 6.1 of the Model Rules was recommended by a Supreme Court Task Force last year on Pro Se and Indigent Litigants. To quote the official news release covering the statement: "The Task Force’s other recommendations are still under consideration."

"‘We are thankful to the members of the task force and the legal organizations for their hard work and recommendations,’ Chief Justice Moyer said. ‘At this time, the Court has elected to call on Ohio attorneys to voluntarily report their pro bono representation and financial support for legal aid programs. The ranks of Ohio lawyers are filled with hard working professionals who take seriously their obligation to facilitate equal access to justice for all. This is a way of encouraging even more pro bono work without a bureaucratic mandate.’" The Court’s statement indicated its intention to act, with the Ohio Legal Assistance Foundation, to develop a process by which Ohio lawyers may, anonymously and voluntarily, report their pro bono activities. The Supreme Court has noted the availability of a website, www.ohioprobono.org, which contains a listing of organizations and opportunities for pro bono work.

No doubt most of us are pleased that the Ohio Supreme Court has not adopted Model Rule 6.1; not so much because we do not want to do pro bono work, but simply because it seemed a bit of an unnecessary regulation. However, I do agree with the Supreme Court that we, as lawyers, have a serious responsibility to seek out pro bono opportunities, help insure equal and fair access to the justice system and serve our communities and those organizations which, in turn, serve the community.

Young lawyers should start doing this early in their practice and more mature lawyers (me, for example) should keep doing it. One thing you find is that you may be doing pro bono work for an organization, and it may give you personal satisfaction, but it also enables you to meet many folks who will have the opportunity to see you operate as a lawyer. Either they or their friends and family will need a lawyer at some time in the future. Thus, it is good for you and good business too.

Since I feel I have preached enough (even for the Holiday season), I next direct your attention to the fact that there is a serious effort in the scientific community to develop remote control robotic cockroaches. By doing this, scientists are able to study cockroach behavior (something I did not think was that exciting in the first place). Apparently this provides a valuable additional tool to get down to the cockroach’s eye level. Robotic cockroaches look like matchbooks from the standpoint of those of us standing many feet taller than the average cockroach, but from the cockroach’s standpoint they look about right. It seems that cockroaches are a social group and tend to gather in clusters in dark and covered places. However, when two or three robotic cockroaches break off from the group and cluster in a light, uncovered patch, the social need of the cockroach overwhelms their need for protection. They follow the robotic cockroaches into the well-lit, uncovered area. This is interesting social behavior, but potential suicide for the average cockroach. Isn’t science fascinating?

I am sure there has been a lot of government money invested in the cockroach program.

November 2007
by Walter J. McNamara, Esq.

 

Despite Everything ... Still The Best Location In The Nation

When you read this, it will be old news, but as I write it, the Indians lost Game 7 to the Boston Red Socks, late last night. Boston wins the American League Pennant and the Indians do not go to the World Series.

However, this is still the "Best Location In The Nation", as they used to say when I was a kid. The Indians had a great year and made us all very proud. The Cavaliers had a great year and got everyone revved up, and the Browns, as of October 21, are dead even at 3 and 3.

It is not just the sports teams that make this such a great place to live. If you can ignore the snowfall, often bitter January/February temperatures (and sometimes March), we have it pretty good compared to almost everyone else. In Lake County, we are blessed with a great judicial roster. Each judge is qualified, fair, and impartial and actually knows what he/she is doing.

We also have a fine Bar Association with, by and large, reasonable lawyers, who are problem solvers, not nitpicking problem makers.

If you take advantage of the area’s opportunities, you may enjoy not only the Lake, but the numerous music venues from rock and roll to classical, theater productions, as well as some of the greatest museums in the world. If you have not visited the Cleveland Museum of Art recently, I suggest you take a Saturday or Sunday afternoon and check it out. This is a great museum in a wonderful setting, and, though it lacks in quantity of masterpieces that show in some of the larger museums in New York City, it exhibits quality art from every period and from every master.

Personally, my favorite is the Natural History Museum. I have enjoyed taking my grandchildren there to see the dinosaur exhibits, particularly the traveling Sue exhibit last spring. It featured Sue, the huge tyrannosaurus normally housed at the Field Museum in Chicago. If you have not visited it recently, I strongly recommend that you try the Natural History Museum, where the kids will marvel at the displays and you are likely to be equally impressed.

Over and above sports, music and cultural venues, Cleveland also has the best traffic deal that I have come across in the United States in any large city. If you spend any time in New York, Chicago, LA, San Francisco, Houston, Miami, etc. etc., ad nauseam, you realize what a wonderful traffic system exists in Cleveland. I suspect it is because no one knows how great Cleveland can be, so its population has dwindled rather than exploded. While that has had negative economic impact on the area, one of the real benefits is that you can travel from Lake County to downtown in 35 minutes and the traffic - even in rush hour - is never that unbearable. Try traveling from anyplace 30 miles from Chicago to the Loop and you will appreciate what I am saying. Try driving at all in LA or San Francisco and you will wonder why people even attempt to live in these better climated, yet impossible to navigate cities.

Another obvious fact is that the Cleveland area has super housing prices compared to many other large metropolitan areas. A few years ago, I went with my daughter and son-in-law (then living in San Francisco) to look at a house. For $850,000, you could buy a 1,200 square foot house with no lawn, a one-car garage, situated so close to the neighbors that you could reach out of a window on each side and touch them and in a neighborhood that was "chancy" at best. After spending about one year looking around in San Francisco, the kids decided to move back to his hometown of Indianapolis, where housing prices are quite similar to Cleveland’s. Since then, they have had three children and live in a very nice house for the kind of money they would spend in Cleveland. Incidentally, while Indianapolis does have the Colts and the Pacers, it lacks a baseball team, so I am not sure how civilized people can live there.

Everyone always knocks the Cleveland area, so I thought, as a lifelong resident, I should say something nice about it especially since the Indians came so close to glory. I am still amazed by the fact that, during Game 5, I had seats by the left outfield and could watch Manny Ramirez who, while an Indian was at bat, would turn around and look at the scoreboard and not have his glove on his hand during the "at bat". In general, he acted like my son did when he was 5 years old playing the outfield, searching for insects in the grass rather than play the game. And yet, Manny made some great defensive plays during the seventh game. Oh well. "Go Rockies", he said bitterly.

Finally kudos to Judge Vincent Culotta for being the only person to note that, in my last column, when I talked about Zac and Vanessa, I misspelled the name Zac by adding an "h" to the end. 

October 2007
by Walter J. McNamara, Esq.

 

            I wanted to write an entire column about Brittany Spears or perhaps Zach and Vanessa.  Then I realized even I am not interested in Brittany Spears and probably only a handful of you know about Zach and Vanessa. (Those who have tweens that watch High School Musical II)

            Instead I decided to do something of a book report on a topic that fascinates me.  The book is entitled “The Shia Revival” by Vali Nasr, and is available at local bookstores everywhere.  I urge you to read it.

            What got me started was a blip on CNN the other evening: somehow, without me noticing it at least, the Israelis launched an air strike into Syria for the first time in decades to take out the beginnings of a nuclear facility that Syria was building in cooperation with Iran and North Korea.  This did not make a lot of news because the Israelis denied it ever happened and the Syrians deny they had any burgeoning nuclear facilities.  What I found most intriguing was that the Arab League and other Arab nations made only mild protests about the action.  What is this, I thought: Shouldn’t Israel be condemned and threatened by Arab nations when it takes out a Syrian pre-nuke plant?

            The fact is that the other Arab nations probably breathed a sigh of relief.  The Saudi’s, Egyptians & Jordanians are primarily Sunnis.  Iran, the plurality of Syria and the bulk of Iraq are populated by the Shiite sect of the Muslin religion.  Shiites make up only 10-15% of the total Muslin population and have been historically at odds with their Sunni brethren.  Much like in 16^th and 17^th Century Europe, where the Catholics and Protestants each considered the other to be heretics deserving of damnation and death, the Sunni/Shia divide has been festering since the 7^th Century. 

            In the past, the Shias often followed a “quietist” tradition; wherein the Shia Imams would, in essence, leave politics to the politicians and be concerned with the purity of their religion.  Even today, the top Shia cleric in Iraq, an Iranian named Ayatollah Al-Sistani practices the quietist tradition and has urged his Shia countrymen to refrain from sectarian attacks against Sunnis.  The opposite of the quietist tradition is embodied by the late Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran.  Instead of quietly contemplating the purity of his religion, he decided to try to run a whole country based on Shia precepts.  He is apparently not well thought of by the prestigious Shia religious philosophers who still believe the quietist tradition is the only proper way for a religious Imam.

            The Sunni/Shiite split began after Mohammad’s death in 632.  According to the book on which I am reporting, most of the followers of the Prophet believed that a counsel of tribal elders should choose the most respected of them to become the head of the community.  These folks, incidentally, became known as Sunnis and they chose one Abu Bakr, father-in-law and close friend of the Prophet as his successor (known as Caliph).  However, a small group of the Prophet’s followers wanted the Caliph to be his cousin and son-in-law, Ali ibn Abi Talib, and they evolved into the Shiites. 

            The Muslim faith descended into some degree of chaos, and eventually a minority formed their own religious schism, and supported Ali, “... the Prophet’s cousin, virtual adoptive son and son-in-law as the one who should have been the Prophet’s successor all along.” (Page 37 of our book). The schism between the Shiites and Sunnis became very focused in 680 when Ali’s son, Husayn was killed in a massacre along with 72 (they still remember the number to this day) of his faithful followers. Keep in mind that Husayn was actually the Prophet’s grandson, so his murder was most shocking to his followers; he became a Shia Saint.

            The author, Nasr, believes that the Shias’ experience mirrors, to some extent, the Jewish experience of persecution through the millennia.  Always reviled as heretics and cast under a cloud of suspicion by the more powerful Sunnis, the Shias believe that martyrdom is the greatest expression of their faith; a view now being expressed by extremist Sunnis in the form of suicide bombings.

            In essence, the Sunnis find religious authority through their community and the consensus of tribal leaders, whereas the Shias look to Imams and Saints to save them; those who are particularly blessed and know the word of God. 

            In any event, Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, ruled Iraq with an iron fist, persecuting Shias whenever he thought advantageous.  In fact, a greater part of the Shiite resistance to America’s presence in Iraq now dates from the first Gulf War, when we urged the Shiites to revolt against Saddam, and then left them at the mercy of his terrible retribution after the war.

            After the toppling of Hussein, many Sunnis were horrified that the Shias were publicly proclaiming their religious activities and engaging in what Sunnis considered abominable Shiite religious rituals.  If memory serves correct, the beginning of the worst sectarian violence was the attack on the Mosque of the Saint Husayn by Sunni extremists in 2006.  Reportedly, Sunni extremists consider Shiites to be even more of a religious perversion than Christianity or Judaism. 

            One of the remaining ramifications that the Saddam/Sunni rule of Iraq is that the Sunnis in Iraq, according to opinion polls, believe that they are the majority.  It is difficult - even horrifying - for them to believe that the Shiites are the majority and they are a minority. 

            Many Sunnis see today’s government as Shiite dominated, with the police and army as Shiite organizations.  Muktadar al-Sadr’s militia represents the extreme Shia position and it has been very active in ethnically cleansing Sunnis out of Shiite neighborhoods.  Conversely, the Sunni extremists have been actively cleansing the Shiites out of Sunni neighborhoods.  The lack of integrated neighborhoods in Baghdad is now given as one of the reasons that there is bit less death and destruction in the city, namely because ethnic cleansing has removed from most neighborhoods the offending minority, be it Sunni or Shiite.

            Taking it beyond Iraq, we receive pressure from our Saudi allies (?), who are devoted Sunnis, because they are very concerned about what they perceive as a Shiite government in Iraq and its intentions to ally with Iran.  Though no one in the U.S. Government has said this, I wonder whether or not our recent efforts to arm the Sunnis in the outlying provinces and encouraging them to track down and fight Al Qeda does not, to some extent, reflect a U.S. understanding that, when we leave, the Sunnis will have to be as well armed as the Shiites.  If not, the powerful Sunni states in the Middle East (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan) will interfere on their own and widen an anticipated Iraqi civil war into a general conflict in the Middle East.  This probably explains why the Egyptians, Jordanians and Saudis secretly hope that we do something to take out Iran’s nuclear capability.

            As I write this, I confess it is full of factual errors, misconceptions and foolish dribbling. However, it interested me, and, after all, it is all about me.

            Lastly, we have recently lost some good friends; Joanne Sommers and my good friend, Richard DiCicco.  Let us wish their families well at this difficult time.

September 2007
by Walter J. McNamara, Esq.

The Enemy Within: Dora the Explorer

Everyone who reads this column1expects that I ramble sometimes incoherently. Today I intend to prove that all the rambling may be incoherent.

As a proud grandfather of five, I have lately taken a closer look at children’s programming. A news item caught my attention a couple a weeks ago; a study proved that "Baby Einstein" was not doing its viewers any particular good. Since my boisterous, fun-loving 3-year old grandson, Drew (already a member of the prestigious FFA Society2) loves Baby Einstein, I thought I should cast a more critical look at children’s programs which, thanks to Drew, his 5-year old sister Delaney and 2-year old cousin Sophia, I am forced to watch on a fairly regular basis. Dora the Explorer stands out because the recent recall by Mattel of hundreds of toys made in China3 involved a bundle of Dora toys. Since my grandchildren must have every Dora-themed toy, we have had a lot of recall activity.

Despite finding lead in the paint of Dora the Explorer toys, I think that the content of the show is equally questionable. In Dora’s case, she is off on a different adventure every day, which takes her to dangerous places: a bridge, a mountain, a jungle or some other place for which she must use her map. Oddly, Dora’s parents do not seem to care that she is out facing dangers that would cower even Indiana Jones. In addition, Dora’s good friend is a monkey named Boots and her parents apparently do not care if Boots is clean or not. Who knows what pestilence this furry friend may be carrying. Dora’s parents even encourage her to go on these dangerous journeys without parental supervision, such as the time they asked her to go to the library and return books. You might think this is a simple task for a girl of approximately 5 to 6 (as I perceive Dora’s age), but it involved daunting trials and dangerous conditions.

So, what Dora the Explorer teaches children/grandchildren is that without parental supervision and in the presence of dangerous wild beasts, you can engage in extremely risky behavior sometimes for the most odd purposes - and by this I mean I have had to watch Dora seek out the "big red chicken" on at least six different occasions (there are a lot of repeats in the Dora series) to the delight of Sophia.

How does Dora manage to survive all this? Well, she has a magic backpack. Thus, we are teaching our children to rely on "magic solutions" to pull them through the most dangerous and risky messes.

Another offender is Dora’s cousin, Diego. Diego may be a couple of years older than Dora, but he too has a magical rescue pack and, even worse, hangs around with a baby jaguar. Surely the baby jaguar’s parents are looking somewhere for their offspring and will wreak havoc upon Diego when they catch him. Of course dangerous companions may be the rule, not the exception, in children’s programming. Did you ever notice that Barney stands on two legs, has short forelegs and a large tail? Even the most cursory look shows Barney (despite his pretense of lovability) to be a carnivore. And yet, he pals around with Baby Bop, who is obviously an herbivore. Is anyone else concerned that Barney is raising Baby Bop for dinner?

Finally, I turn attention to what may be one of the worst offenders in TV Land; that’s right, the Wonder Pets. I am sure everyone is familiar with the Wonder Pets. The Wonder Pets4, Linney the guinea pig, Ming Ming the Duck and Tuck the turtle, have, as their regular day job, the positions of being pets in an apparent kindergarten/first grade school room. Yet when the class leaves for the day, the Wonder Pets turn into magical creatures themselves, capable of saving baby animals. While this may sound like a noble activity, once again, the reliance upon magic to make things possible gives children a false impression. Moreover, the Wonder Pets have a motto,

"We’re not too big and we’re not too tough, but when we work together, we’ve got the right stuff."

You see what I mean: rugged individualism is disparaged by the Wonder Pets. While self-deprecation may be a charming quality in a Ronald Reagan, should it be taught so blatantly to little children?

Well that is about all I have to say because, thanks to Jerry Walker, I have been reminded of a campaign promise not to have long columns. I am sure I will break that promise next time. Finally, a shout out to the entire Time Capsule Committee, Judge Paul and Jean Mitrovich, John Rodgers, Bob Gambol, Lora Lynn Stalnaker, Marie Tomba, Mark Welch, Ron Taddeo, Jim Loicano, Tom Colpetzer, Abbey DelaMotte, Jim Collins, Cathy Haworth. I hope you came to the Time Capsule Ball and had a great time. It was a fascinating experience and a lot of fun.

Finally, an interesting legal fact I learned a short time ago: Do you know that, in Ohio, you can take a kid into a bar? I found this out at Applebee’s when I was taking Delaney to dinner after a movie. There were no tables available, so the hostess said, yes you can take her to the bar to eat. I did not know that was legal - then there is still so much law that eludes me.

1 Her name is Katherine Briggs

2 Future Felons of America

3 For further information, please see my president’s column in last month’s Lake Legal Views.

⁴ Well, you would be if you hung around Sophia enough.

          

August 2007
PRESIDENT’S COLUMN by Walter J. McNamara, Esq.

 

Last month I admitted to knowing virtually nothing, and, therefore, said I would refrain from giving advice to younger lawyers.

However, I do have some advice for younger lawyers - and even experienced ones: Learn to spell your Judges names! For example, never address a pleading to Judge Eugene Loochee and never send a letter to Judge William Wheevor. Judges (and rightly so) expect their names to be spelled correctly, especially by those who practice before them. I learned this the hard way upon receiving a very pointed (but really funny) e-mail from a person who will remain anonymous (although on many work days he wears a black robe) when I spelled Judge Mitrovich’s name incorrectly in last month’s column. Let us all remember there is only one "t" in Mitrovich and it’s not in the third syllable. My profound apologies.

This month I have decided to ramble on a little bit about China. If you follow the news, you will notice that China’s exports have recently been found to contain antifreeze (in toothpaste), poison (in pet food) and cardboard in human food. This caused quite uproar in China. In their own unique style, they decided to fix it by having the head of (what amounts to) their FDA taken out and shot ... literally. The Communist Party then proceeded to blame the foreign press (here you read USA) for making such a big deal out of the adulterated and poisoned goods. In apparent retaliation, China also has taken to inspecting American food imports and has recently determined that several of those do not meet its high standards and must be shipped back to America.

In a totally unrelated development, China has also decided that the Starbucks, which is located in the Forbidden City in Beijing, must be closed and moved from the Forbidden City. As I am sure you know, the Forbidden City is a very large compound which housed the Royal Family for centuries and currently is a major tourist attraction.

This all fascinates me because I spent nearly a month in China a few years ago. I had some opportunity to marvel at the country and its people. The first thing you notice is that everyone you see (outside of your own tour group) is Han Chinese. While China’s minority population is about the size of the total US population, it is not apparent in Beijing, Shanghai or the other large cities, at least that I visited. Compared to an American city, in which all hues are readily apparent, these huge Chinese cities are eerily monolithic in their population.

Beijing’s air is incredibly polluted. The Chinese have recently started to work on this because they are slated to host the Olympics and want to impress the rest of the world with the first class nature of their country.

It is an amazing country. Shanghai, for example, has an official population of about 19 million, but they say, off the record, that the real population is close to 35 million (roughly that of California), simply because of all the rural families that move into the city and are unaccounted for. Shanghai may have more neon lights than Las Vegas and it has the bulk of the world’s large construction cranes building skyscrapers there. The Shanghai skyline is breathtaking because each skyscraper has, at its top, its own unique design - for example a cupola with a bell. Another thing one notices is that the Chinese are a bit behind on the concept of maintenance. As you drive through Shanghai, you will see abandoned skyscrapers with large multi-story cracks. When I asked what these cracks were, I was told they are the old skyscrapers (maybe as old as 5 to 8 years) and cannot be used anymore because of defective construction. There is also quite a problem with the elevators in the large skyscrapers. One guide told me that her mother, a retired Communist Party official, was granted the benefit of living on the 30^th floor of one of the new apartment buildings because of her service to the Party. However, since the elevator seldom worked, when the elderly lady left her apartment to shop (30 floors down), it was a several day journey, broken up by the fact that, upon her return; she visited many friends in the building. Thus, she would return by climbing the stairs with her groceries, stopping at the various floors where her friends lived.

I was taken to a number of Chinese factories and the conditions were abominable. There was no concept of workers’ safety, pollution control or anything found in our most modern factories. Since I do not pretend to have a representative sampling of Chinese industry, I can only talk about the factories I saw. To me it was obvious they could use the EPA or OSHA.

The Chinese concept of sanitation often does not quite match ours either. For example, on the 4-hour train ride from Guanzhou to Hong Kong, we were told me must not use the restrooms during the final hour of the trip. The "restroom" was a small closet with a hole in the floor, directly onto the railroad tracks. The prohibition against using the "restroom" was meant to keep Hong Kong clean.

Having said that, I found the Chinese people to be wonderful. They were universally friendly, always wanted to have their picture taken with you and very curious about Westerners. I was surrounded in the Shanghai museum by about 50 second graders on a field trip, most of whom insisted I write something in English on a scrap of paper (apparently they were not looking for my autograph), much to the embarrassment of their teacher, but to the amusement of the guards.

Like everybody, the Chinese tend to exaggerate facts, so I do not know if it is true that the city of Wuhan, one of China’s so-called "furnace" cities, reaches 50^N c, in the summer. Roughly translated, that is 122^". By the way, if you have never heard of Wuhan - and I had not before my trip - you may be surprised to know that its population is estimated at approximately 10 million people. Yes, there is city larger than New York that most of us have never even heard of.

China is changing so rapidly that I am certain my impressions during my visit of several years ago have been overtaken by time and change. I am interested in China primarily because I tend to believe that, with a population of 1.3 billion, China, along with India, will emerge for the next generation as the greatest competitor/partner (and hopefully not enemy) of the United States. China bustles with business activity and it is the most capitalistic place I have ever visited; surprising since it is run by the Communist Party. There is, however, a vast difference in their philosophy of Communism, which provides that the government will be run by one party (the Chinese Communist Party is the largest political party in the world) but rampant capitalism will feed the people. China’s bustling capitalism has not brought great prosperity to the rural areas, but it has uplifted the large urban areas.

A final note on the Chinese justice system: at the beginning of the rambling I remarked that China had executed the head of its FDA based on the adulterated pet food, toothpaste and other tainted exports. China executes more people than any other country on Earth and actually has "economic police". I spent a number of days in a little town called Gualin, which is a resort in China (this little town has a population greater than Cleveland and Philadelphia combined). I was out looking around until 2:30 AM with the Gualiners - none of whom spoke English - and I had a great time using sign language, taking each other’s pictures, watching them pick out snakes to eat in the outdoor restaurants, etc. I remarked to my guide the next day that it was a great city and they were very lucky that they had no crime. My guide told me, with some embarrassment, that, yes they did have crime. In fact on that Tuesday (this was Friday when I spoke to her) they had caught three drug dealers. The amount of drugs confiscated was so small it would have been a misdemeanor in Ohio, but she told me that they were tried as drug dealers and convicted. I asked what would happen to them, and I was told that they had been shot on Thursday. For those of you interested in opening a criminal appellate practice in China, I suggest you save your money.

 

July 2007
PRESIDENT’S COLUMN by Walter J. McNamara, Esq.

Well, it’s finally here ... the time when I am supposed to write my first column as President. Having been a member of this Organization for decades, with two partners who were President (Gene "Call Me Judge" Lucci and Pat "I think I’ll retire early" Hanrahan) I know that the President is obligated to write a monthly column; I also know the stress that the column puts upon his knowledge and ingenuity. Since I do not have that much knowledge, I cannot hope to compete with my predecessor Bob "Call Me Robert" Gambol. Bob Gambol would wax eloquently about his dog, Micro, ancient coins, ancient history and many matters philosophical, including advice to younger lawyers. Bob’s columns were always long, but enjoyable, and very informative. Here’s the deal: I ramble somewhat incoherently. I don’t always have much advice for younger lawyers because it occurs to me after 38 years of practice that I do not know anything. In fact, the longer I practice the more I realize I don’t know. I do not have a dog (nor a cat), and I do not wax eloquent very well. So Bob Gambol has set the bar too high and the only thing that I can offer that Bob did not is that these columns will be much shorter.1 Frankly, it is a relief to me that not many of you will read my column this month because of other pressing national issues facing us: Of course, I refer to Paris Hilton and her incarceration. Does it make you wonder that the entire world media is focused on Paris Hilton when a lady in Tennessee just got an additional 30 days in jail (only) for killing her husband by shooting him in the back with a shot gun, because she felt he was oppressive?

Continuing with my unintelligible ramblings, I am enjoying the earliest pre-pre-pre-primary season that I have ever seen since I began following Presidential campaigns (ever so superficially) in 1952. That year, my dad was for Stevenson, who he felt was for the working man, as opposed to Eisenhower, who was for the rich. Over the years I watched my father morph into a conservative Republican. He moved further and further to the right until the Vietnam War. Then my father advised me to go to Canada to avoid the draft. He reasoned his way: my grandfather had been wounded and gassed in WWI in the trenches in France. This was especially poignant since my grandfather had only come over from Italy a few years before and joined the Army in WWI to become a citizen. After my grandfather, my father had the bad luck to be wounded and captured in WWII and was held a POW in Germany for many months until the end of WWII. Incidentally, in 1995, I visited the town where he had been held prisoner. I was fortunate enough to be there on his birthday, March 5. Though he had already passed away a couple years earlier, I was there 50 years after he had spent what was likely his 23^rd birthday in 1945 in prison. No one in town, of course, remembered where the prison camp was, but it was interesting to note that the front page of the paper that day carried a picture from a recent Cavaliers game showing one of the Cleveland stars (I forget who at this point) dunking the basketball. The newspaper also contained advertisements for Volkswagen, as well as Ford and special coupons for Office Max.

It’s like those friends who go to Vietnam on tours and receive the friendliest of receptions: You wonder in 50 years if Iraq and Iran will have changed so much that there will be a Disney World Middle East straddling their border.

Politics seems more contentious lately. At one time, John Stewart of the Daily Show railed against shows such as "Crossfire" where a liberal and a conservative sit and shout at each other over a guest who seems too stunned to contribute anything significant. James Carville, a self-proclaimed liberal, was asked whether or not his participation on shows such as "Crossfire" shed much light on issues. His response was to say that people that watch shows such as "Crossfire" are like drunks leaning against the lamp post. They are not there for the illumination, but for the support.

So, I have rambled a bit - as I tend to do (which, believe me, is really a bad thing when you do it in front of a jury). Since I do not have a dog to walk along the beach, I tend to enjoy television. I have a bet with myself, and if anyone reads this - which God forbid I doubt - I would be interested in knowing your take on the issue: Am I the only adult who watches "South Park"; are there any other members of the Bar Association or adults in their family that watch "Smallville"? I’m sure I’m alone and probably rightly so.

A final shout out to the Time Capsule: remember - and I am sure you heard enough about this already, but I am going to keep harping on it - the Lake County Commissioners, Lake County Historical Society and Lake County Bar Association are jointly sponsoring the removal of the Time Capsule from the Courthouse and the placing there of a new Time Capsule to be opened on August 10, 2107. There will be a gala dinner dance at LaMalfa on August 10 ($75 single and $125 per couple) which all of you are urged to attend. Judge Paul and wife Jeanne Mitrovitch have been a tremendous help in this project, as has Bob Gambol, Laura Lynn Stalnaker (who seems indefatigable), Cathy Haworth, Abby DelaMotte, John Rogers, Dr. Ron Taddeo and many, many others. This is an important event and I urge everyone to attend.

I have decided to table, for the moment, the question of me becoming President for life of the Bar Association. I am sure I will take this up in another column.

Thank you.