Gentle Reader -- You are welcome to peruse my web-based journal. I assure you that my contributions to this medium will be both infrequent and inconsequential. Read on!

JUST DO WHAT MR. CHENEY SAYS, OK?

I'd like to call my readership's attention to this story, regarding a fracas between a citizen, Steven Howards, and Vice President Dick Cheney last year. Accounts vary, but most agree that Mr. Howards approached Mr. Cheney to express displeasure with the Administrations' policies at a Colorado ski resort. To make his point, he touched M. Cheney in some way. He says it was a "pat"; others at the time say it was more aggressive. Cheney's Secret Service detail pointed out Howards to a Secret Service Agent named Reichle, who arrested Howards. Howards spent a few hours in a county jail. Howards has since sued.

Clear enough? It gets tricky . . .

The agent who made the arrest, Virgil D. Reichle Jr., said in a deposition that
he was left hanging with an untenable arrest because two agents assigned to
the vice president had at first agreed with a Denver agent that there had
been assault on Mr. Cheney by Mr. Howards, then changed their stories to say
that no assault had occurred.

Mr. Reichle, who did not witness the encounter, said in his deposition that
he believed the vice president’s security detail had wanted the Howards arrest
to go away so that Mr. Cheney would not be inconvenienced by a court case.

Come on, Reichle, go along! The VP just wanted to teach the guy a little lesson, let him sweat it in jail for a while. The actual law and facts don't matter when the VP is involved! Do you know what happens when you don't play along?

This happens:

But one of the three agents assigned to [Cheney], Daniel McLaughlin, said in his
deposition that Mr. Reichle’s description was backward. Mr. McLaughlin
said Mr. Reichle, who has since been transferred to Guam, asked
him in a call several hours after the encounter to say that there had been an
assault to bolster justification for the arrest.

Emphasis mine, naturally. And the private citizen whose rights were (probably) violated? Who cares? He's just some guy. This is CHENEY we're talking about.

posted by Carlton at 10:43 PM