There is a kefuffle going on pitting Liz Cheney (I guess she’s a daughter of the former Vice President) and, I believe, Karl Rove, against the Obama Administration (surprise! surprise!) over the issue of attorneys in the administration having represented Guantanamo detainees prisoners (let’s call the thing by its proper name to promote a little clarity).
There’s some play in the joints of the prior paragraph’s description because I’m having trouble getting agitated over this issue and I haven’t followed it closely. But since my day job is as a lawyer, and my profession generally has been condemning the Cheney/Rove side shrilly, I want to register a dissent.
First, you can tell something about a lawyer’s loyalties by seeing what cases they take on pro bono.
The italicized “pro bono” is key. Lawyers indeed (as the profession and the left have lept up to shout) have an obligation to represent unpopular people. Maybe they even have an obligation to represent unpopular causes, which isn’t quite the same thing. Those obligations, however, are limited by the lawyer’s internal compass (e.g., “can I really represent this person or cause effectively when I find them so odious?”) and there’s no obligation to take on all comers pro bono.
As someone noted a few decades ago, “there’s ‘unpopular causes’ and then there’s unpopular ‘unpopular causes.'” “Unpopular causes” can be a term of art for the left’s favorite projects. You’ll not, for instance, find the left praising me for the handful of “issue” cases I’ve handled pro bono. No, those causes are unpopular unpopular causes among those who buy their ink by the barrel.
Second, and arising from the first, self-congratulation for taking on a merely “unpopular cause,” not an unpopular unpopular cause, is idiotic.
That’s muh story and Ah’m stickin’ to it.
We now return to more nomal fare.
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 