Daily Archives: March 29, 2004

Calvin Murphy charged with sexually assaulting five daughters

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In a stunning development on the local Houston scene, former Houston Rocket and Basketball Hall of Famer Calvin Murphy was charged today with sexually molesting five of his own children in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Murphy, who is 55 and has been the T.V. color commentator for the Rockets for many years, was charged with three counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child and three counts of indecency with a child. The charges involve five daughters of Murphy’s (from three different women) who were under 17 at the time of the alleged assaults, but are now adults. Murphy has a total of 14 children!
Houston criminal defense attorney Rusty Hardin, who defended Arthur Anderson in the criminal trial arising from the Anderson’s involvement in the Enron scandal, is Murphy’s attorney and claims that the charges against Murphy are false. Murphy had no comment when he surrendered to authorities earlier today, where he posted a $90,000 bond and was released. The Rockets later granted his request for a leave of absence from his broadcasting duties.
Murphy was the subject of a criminal investigation several years ago in connection with allegations that he falsified payment records in connection with a position that he held with the City of Houston. The grand jury that investigated that matter elected not to issue an indictment against Murphy.

The Uses of Failure

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Lee Harris over at Tech Central Station has this interesting piece on Americans’ distaste for failure. Mr. Harris notes as follows:

If Americans have one collective shortcoming, it is that we have no use for failure. Success alone is what counts for us; and though we are apt to applaud those who have given their best to come in at second or third place, we all tend to shrink back from complete and abject failure.
That is why, whenever a President looks around for men to be by his side, to guide him and to give him counsel, he will look to those who have been successful at everything that they have put their hand to. It is one of our cherished mottos that success breeds success; and we are confident that if we appoint only successful men to positions of prominence, any project undertaken by these men is bound to be successful, too.
This is our form of paganism, since underlying the American myth of success is the primitive belief that some people are just plain lucky — just as certain numbers are, or certain days, or certain arrangements of the planets.

Mr. Harris goes on to discuss the Greek notion of hubris, which necessarily flows from success, and then recommends as follows:

Failure has lessons to teach us that are often far more valuable than those of success. Success all too often reassures us that we are right, and often with little reason. The man who sells everything he owes in order to buy lottery tickets, and who loses, becomes a little wiser. But the man who sells everything, and wins, will remain a fool forever.
Which is why I am hereby proposing a new department for the United States — the department of human failure, whose secretary should be appointed purely on the basis of his lack of worldly success. He will be required to attend every cabinet meeting, and at the end of each discussion, all the successful men around the table must listen in silence for the fiftieth time as the Secretary of Failure tells them how he lost his business, or how he gambled away a fortune, or how his summer vacation in Florida turned into the worst nightmare of his life.
True, it would not ascend to the lofty heights of Sophocles and Euripides; but it would help.

Thanks to my friend Bill Hesson for the link to Mr. Harris’ piece.

An Essential War

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Former Secretary of State George Schultz, now a distinguished fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, is inarguably a great American. In this extraordinary Wall Street Journal ($) op-ed, Mr. Schultz uses his depth and experience to give us the big picture on why the decision to go to war in Iraq was the correct one. Mr. Schultz begins by pointing out the devastating effect that Islamic fascists have had on the state system, which is the bedrock of international relations:

Today, looking back on the past quarter century of terrorism, we can see that it is the method of choice of an extensive, internationally connected ideological movement dedicated to the destruction of our international system of cooperation and progress. We can see that the 1981 assassination of President Anwar Sadat, the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the 2001 destruction of the Twin Towers, the bombs on the trains in Madrid, and scores of other terrorist attacks in between and in many countries, were carried out by one part or another of this movement. And the movement is connected to states that develop awesome weaponry, with some of it, or with expertise, for sale.
What should we do? First and foremost, shore up the state system.
The world has worked for three centuries with the sovereign state as the basic operating entity, presumably accountable to its citizens and responsible for their well-being. In this system, states also interact with each other — bilaterally or multilaterally — to accomplish ends that transcend their borders. They create international organizations to serve their ends, not govern them.
Increasingly, the state system has been eroding. Terrorists have exploited this weakness by burrowing into the state system in order to attack it. While the state system weakens, no replacement is in sight that can perform the essential functions of establishing an orderly and lawful society, protecting essential freedoms, providing a framework for fruitful economic activity, contributing to effective international cooperation, and providing for the common defense.

Mr. Schultz goes on to provide a compelling background to the Bush Administration’s decision to use force in Iraq, noting Saddam Hussein’s violation of the 1991 cease-fire and 17 U.N. Resolutions, and the consistency of the Bush Administration’s decision with prior actions that the U.S. government had taken during the Clinton Administration. Mr. Schultz notes the highlights:

Where do we stand now? These key points need to be understood:
? There has never been a clearer case of a rogue state using its privileges of statehood to advance its dictator’s interests in ways that defy and endanger the international state system.
? The international legal case against Saddam — 17 resolutions — was unprecedented.
? The intelligence services of all involved nations and the U.N. inspectors over more than a decade all agreed that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction that posed a threat to international peace and security.
? Saddam had four undisturbed years [from 1998 when he threw out the weapons inspectors to 2002] to augment, conceal, disperse, or otherwise deal with his arsenal.
? He used every means to avoid cooperating or explaining what he has done with them. This refusal in itself was, under the U.N. resolutions, adequate grounds for resuming the military operation against him that had been put in abeyance in 1991 pending his compliance.
? President Bush, in ordering U.S. forces into action, stated that we were doing so under U.N. Security Council Resolutions 678 and 687, the original bases for military action against Saddam Hussein in 1991. Those who criticize the U.S. for unilateralism should recognize that no nation in the history of the United Nations has ever engaged in such a sustained and committed multilateral diplomatic effort to adhere to the principles of international law and international organization within the international system. In the end, it was the U.S. that upheld and acted in accordance with the U.N. resolutions on Iraq, not those on the Security Council who tried to stop us.

Finally, with the depth of insight of one who has lived and studied an earlier dark time in the world’s past, Mr. Schultz concludes as follows:

Sept. 11 forced us to comprehend the extent and danger of the challenge. We began to act before our enemy was able to extend and consolidate his network.
If we put this in terms of World War II, we are now sometime around 1937. In the 1930s, the world failed to do what it needed to do to head off a world war. Appeasement never works. Today we are in action. We must not flinch. With a powerful interplay of strength and diplomacy, we can win this war.