Back on 15 February, in the wake of the Chuck Rosenthal resignation letter that praised the staff of the DA’s office, attorney Mark Bennett crafted a particularly nice line on his blog:
Chuck closes his letter with praise for the ADAs:
I am extremely proud of the work that the ladies and gentlemen of this office do for the citizens of Harris County. They have too many cases, are under compensated, and are often unfairly criticized for the hard decisions they make in fulfilling their mandate to see that justice is done. The residents of Harris County need to appreciate the great work these folks do. As the saying goes, “If I were asked to lead a charge on Hell, I’d want these people in my ranks.”
I expect those ADAs’ response will be something along the lines of “gee, thanks.” Until six weeks ago, they would all probably have followed Chuck on his charge into Hell; most of them now feel like, in the past five weeks, they have.
Fast forward to today’s column from Lisa Falkenberg, who also seems to have appreciated Bennett’s style:
That was nice of him to think of them, finally.
One might argue that, over the past six weeks, Rosenthal has indeed led a charge, not exactly on hell, but straight into hell, dragging along with him the unwilling participants within his ranks.
That’s not as good as the original, but it’s strikingly similar nonetheless (which may mean some Chronsters are better at the craft of “borrowing” than the Senior Plagiarist who also shares the Metro/State state pages, or the Chron business columnist who rips off old Chicago Tribune prose after it’s linked on blogs).
Bennett offers Falkenberg an amusing apology for this misunderstanding on his blog.
