BILL CHERRY'S GREATEST DALLAS PARK CITIES REAL ESTATE BLOG: AN ATTEMPT TO IMPEACH A FEDERAL JUDGE FALLS ON MY DEAF EARS

Federal Judge Samuel Kent presides over a very imporant federal court that's located in Texas. Federal judges have lifetime appointments.

Recently, he agreed to not hear any cases until after the first of the year. The gossips and the public lynch men have risen to the occasion, claiming that Judge Kent must be guilty of improprieties.

"Off with his head!" they are screaming, and at least one Texas newspaper is following suit, writing editorial after editorial and slanted story after slanted story advancing hearsay as if it were admissable evidence.

Legal and philosophic scholars worldwide express many concepts in the language of Latin.

One of those is "argumentum ad hominem."

Another is "argumentum ex silentio."

Translated, "argumentum ad hominem" is an appeal to the listener's logic, not by using pertinent facts and information but by using irrelevant attacks on the personality of one's opponent.

"Argumentum ex silentio" is trying to get someone to adopt a conclusion that is based on the absence of empirical data. "He has to be a bad guy because my friend says he is." What?

It seems to me that Judge Samuel Kent has found himself in a situation that combines "argumentum ad hominem" with "argumentum ex silentio."

So, with that, some have concluded that the time has come to destroy him.

Paradoxically, in this case, it amounts to an attempt to publicly indict and try a federal jurist, of all people, without the use of a courtroom, proper presentation of evidence and adjudication as our Bill of Rights guarantees every citizen.

I know two things about Samuel Kent.

One is that I have never heard anyone deliver a better talk on what it means to be an American than he did on two occasions before the Galveston Rotary Club.

And all without notes. The words and thoughts flowed. The audience was mesmerized.

The second was when a casual friend of mine was tried in Judge Kent's court. (Actually his mom and dad were longtime friends of my mom and dad, and that's how I knew him.)

The feds had decided my friend had developed some sort of clandestine method of white-collar stealing from a bank, a bank he didn't even work for.

Judge Kent listened for about an hour and then admonished the U.S. attorneys for bringing the case before him.

He ruled that my friend was not only a man of character but, primarily, was not smart enough to have dreamed up such a scheme.

"Bang," there went the gavel.

Judge Kent was right.

My friend was a man of character and, even had he had a previously undetectable character flaw, it couldn't have manifested itself in a scheme to steal from a bank.

He absolutely wasn't that smart.

Until and unless we're able to hear credible evidence to the contrary, maybe you and others wouldn't mind thinking of these two good things that Judge Kent did in the name of the Bill of Rights.

Bill Cherry is the author of Galveston Memories, a collection of columns published in The Daily News.

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