Eh...I guess it doesn't really matter...I mean it's not like the knowledge of said heart problems by the current Vice-President of the United States would have had any significance to American's day to day thinking process...right?
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Cheney Is Treated for an Irregular Heartbeat
By JAMES C. MCKINLEY JR
The New York Times
HOUSTON — The longtime district attorney in Willacy County, Tex., is not retiring from public office quietly after a defeat at the polls this year. Instead he has issued a flurry of indictments against his local political enemies, and then for good measure filed charges against Vice President Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales.
Mr. Cheney was charged with “engaging in an organized criminal activity” in connection with the 2001 beating death of an inmate by two fellow inmates at one of the privately run federal detention centers in the county, which is near the Mexican border, court officials said.
The indictment, brought by the district attorney, Juan Angel Guerra, asserts that Mr. Cheney has some culpability in what happened because he had invested in the GEO Corporation, a company in Florida that owns and operates the federal detention center in Raymondville where the death occurred.
For his part, Mr. Gonzales is accused of using his influence to stop an investigation into corruption during the building of another federal jail used by marshals. The indictment also says both Mr. Cheney and Mr. Gonzales “committed the crime of neglect” because, it contends, illegal immigrants were ill-treated at detention centers.
A lawyer for Mr. Cheney, Terrence O’Donnell, said the vice president had no direct investments in the GEO prison company but did have money invested in a mutual fund that might have invested in the company. He called the charge that Mr. Cheney had something to do with the assault or the running of the detention center “bizarre.”
George J. Terwilliger III, a lawyer for Mr. Gonzales, said, “This is obviously a bogus charge on its face, as any good prosecutor can recognize.”
Mr. Guerra was under indictment on charges of theft and tampering with records for more than a year and a half, until a judge dismissed them last month. During that time, Mr. Guerra, a Democrat who has been in office 12 years, lost a re-election bid. He leaves office on Dec. 31.
He also has been acting rather oddly since his arrest in March 2007. At one point, he camped outside the county jail in a trailer with a horse, three goats and a rooster, daring the sheriff to arrest him. Convinced that local law enforcement officers had aided the investigation against him, he threatened to dismiss hundreds of criminal cases in retaliation.
Then on Monday, Mr. Guerra, 53, persuaded a grand jury to issue indictments against people he said had something to do with the investigation against him, charging them with wrongful arrest and abuse of office.
Those charged included two local district court judges, the Willacy County court clerk, a special prosecutor appointed to investigate him and a former assistant United States attorney.
In a separate case, Mr. Guerra brought an indictment against a political rival, State Senator Eddie Lucio Jr., a Brownsville Democrat, charging that he accepted money from a company that handles the day-to-day operations at the Raymondville detention center.
“It’s just retaliation,” the county court clerk, Gilbert Lozano, said. “He’s not happy with some of the officials he had indicted.”
On Wednesday evening, a judge set an arraignment date for Friday for Mr. Cheney and Mr. Gonzales, but said they could have their lawyers appear on their behalf. The judge, Manuel Banales, said he would not listen to motions to quash the indictments until that hearing, because Mr. Guerra was not in court.
Since no one knew where Mr. Guerra was, the judge sent Texas rangers to his house to check on his well-being.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/16/washington/16cheney.html
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