Seems to me that this judge has just injected himself and his courtroom into the middle of a political campaign in a very inappropriate way..

The straight-and-narrow proceedings of federal court took a striking political detour yesterday during a hearing in Camden for six men accused in a terror plot against Fort Dix.

The U.S. district judge presiding over a pretrial hearing for the group known as the "Fort Dix Six" threw sharp words from the bench when shown a campaign flyer being circulated by Republicans vying for state legislative seats in Burlington County.

The flyer, which was entered into evidence because of its potential impact on jurors, implies that Democratic Assembly hopeful Tracy Riley is a terrorist sympathizer.

The reason? Her husband, Michael Riley, is defending one of the men accused in the alleged plot to gun down soldiers at Fort Dix, the Army base in Burlington County. One of the men is expected to enter a guilty plea today.

Judge Robert B. Kugler, who examined the flyer for its impact on potential jurors, did little to conceal his shock.

"Wow," Kugler said, inspecting the mailer that Riley had handed him. "I had heard this was going on. . . . It's pretty despicable stuff, honestly."

When I was a seminarian, the brother of my moral theology professor was representing Jeff Dahmer, and Fr. Pat pointedly reminded us that ensuring that a clientÂ’s rights and interests are protected is appropriate to the degree that one neither lies to undercut justice nor acts to become enmeshed in the clientÂ’s crimes (like Lynn Stewart did). After all, no sane person would have argued that my professorÂ’s brother was condoning or supporting murder or cannibalism by representing his client.

Now I’m not going to get into the propriety of the ad – after all, if we are going to continue to follow the misguided policy of treating terrorists as criminals rather than enemies of the state, we are going to have to afford them the right to an attorney. It is a part of our system, and an attorney for a terrorist is no more responsible for his client’s crimes than is the attorney for a murderer or a child molester. Based upon this belief, I know that as a candidate I would not have signed off on this campaign flyer for that very reason.

That said, I don’t believe that the issue of the flyer should have been dealt with in the manner it was, especially not in open court. The attorney in question, the husband of the candidate opposed in the flyer, expressed concern about contamination of the jury pool. It was his job to raise the issue. But for the judge to make the comments that he did from the bench – in particular, the attack from the bench on one of the candidates supported by this campaign literature – seems to me to have crossed a line into inappropriate political involvement by a judge. By making said criticism from the bench, he implicitly endorsed the defense attorney’s wife. Such criticism should not have been made at all. As such, Judge Kugler ought to be sanctioned for unethical conduct.

OPEN TRACKBACKING AT Perri Nelson's Website, , third world county, Right Truth, The World According to Carl, Inside the Northwest Territory, The Pet Haven Blog, The Pink Flamingo, Big Dog's Weblog, The Amboy Times, Cao's Blog, Adeline and Hazel, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Posted by: Greg at 10:03 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 585 words, total size 5 kb.

Why will OJ go down this time? Because his co-defendants are going to testify against him.

Two co-defendants in the O.J. Simpson armed robbery case in Las Vegas, Nevada, have agreed to plead guilty to reduced charges and testify against the former football star, officials said Monday.

Walter Alexander and Charles H. Cashmore said they will testify against Simpson and three other co-defendants, and will include in their testimony that guns were used in the alleged robbery.

In return for Alexander's cooperation, Clark County District Attorney David Roger promised to seek a suspended sentence on a charge of conspiracy to commit robbery, according to Clark County Court spokesman Michael Sommermeyer.

Earlier Monday, Cashmore appeared before Judge Joe M. Bonaventure and said he would plead guilty to an accessory to robbery charge, court information officer Michael Sommermeyer said.

Clark County District Attorney David Roger announced in court that Cashmore would testify against Simpson and four others. Cashmore is scheduled for arraignment on October 23.

Imagine if they had managed to turn Al Cowlings against OJ before the murder case -- he'd have long since had a needle in his arm or a life sentence.

Posted by: Greg at 11:19 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 203 words, total size 1 kb.

We have, in recent years, been allowing the statute of limitations for sex offenses to get longer and longer. That creates big problems when the case comes down to the word of the accuser against the accused due to the lack of physical evidence. But it raises even bigger issues when the accusation is over something that happened when the accused was also a minor.

They were both children more than 25 years ago when Sona Gandhi and her neighbor had the encounters that she would later call sexual abuse. They were certainly adults the day Gandhi confronted the man in a Rockville courtroom last winter.

But the man, now 40, was charged as a juvenile because of his age at the time of the alleged offenses, in a type of case that is becoming more common as women increasingly report being molested as children.

"I deal with this every day of my life," Gandhi, 33, told the man in court, according to a copy of her prepared remarks. "I hope that's something you think about every day of yours."

Cases such as the one prompted by Gandhi's report to police last year have ignited a legal debate about whether adults can and should be tried in juvenile court and whether labeling adults as sex offenders for things they did as teenagers is fair and necessary.

I wonder about this. And I don't have an answer. Should we be going back a quarter century and charging folks with acting out sexually? And if we do, what is the appropriate forum to handle these charges? For that matter, does sexual acting out by teens merit the same treatment as adult sex offenses?

I especially wonder about these questions given the claims of a colleague of mine. A 13-year-old neighbor touched him inappropriately when he was 8. Now, a quarter century later, the neighbor is a respected professional in the community. No hint of improper conduct has been associated with him in the years since. Should he be charged with a crime for something that happened in 1984? And does it belong in adult court, when the boy who actd out has grown into a very different man?

These questions especially matter when you consider these facts.

Research on juvenile sex offenders shows they are more likely than adults to respond to treatment. And experts say many juveniles who commit sex offenses don't do so as adults.

Again, I do not know the answer -- but would love to hear some reactions from others.

Posted by: Greg at 01:45 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 426 words, total size 3 kb.

I've always considered Maureen Dowd to be the NYT's equivalent of a two-dollar hooker. Now I've discovered that her white bed sheets do double duty. How else can you explain this column on Justice Clarence Thomas? Yo know, with all the bigoted attacks on a black man who remains to uppity to fall in line with the liberal agenda.

Not the sort of person I’d like to tailgate with, listen to Marvin Gaye with, share Ripple or a Scotch and Drambuie or a blackberry brandy with — if I were still drinking.

and

I know it wasnÂ’t what my hero Atticus Finch would have done. But having the power to carjack the presidency and control the fate of the country did give me that old X-rated tingle.

Because after all, black men are just carjackers who hang out drinking Ripple in their spare time. Right, Ms. Dowd?

What's more, Maureen Dowd explicitly accuses Justice Thomas of subverting justice. It is time for her to put up or shut up. Prove the accusations or resign in disgrace.

H/T Reformed Chicks Babbling, The Revolutionary Political/Sports Blog, Narcissistic Views

OPEN TRACKBACKING AT The Pink Flamingo, Rosemary's Thoughts, Cao's Blog, CORSARI D'ITALIA, The World According to Carl, and The Populist, Big Dog's Weblog, Walls of the City, and Shadowscope, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Posted by: Greg at 07:20 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 230 words, total size 2 kb.

Tawana Brawley.

Crystal Gail Mangum.

Anita Hill.

Each used false accusations of sexual improprieties to attack and destroy men. Each has been shown to be a liar.

But since she is a liberal icon, Anita Hill has gotten space in the New York Times to continue to spread her lies about Justice Clarence Thomas. Her claims were not credible in 1991 -- they remain beyond belief in 2007.

ON Oct. 11, 1991, I testified about my experience as an employee of Clarence ThomasÂ’s at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

I stand by my testimony.

Justice Thomas has every right to present himself as he wishes in his new memoir, “My Grandfather’s Son.” He may even be entitled to feel abused by the confirmation process that led to his appointment to the Supreme Court.

But I will not stand by silently and allow him, in his anger, to reinvent me.

Anita Hill claims that "[a] number of independent authors" have supported her. The problem is that none of those authors can be particularly viewed as unbiased or non-partisan. The witnesses on her behalf were decidedly unpersuasive -- indeed, I remember watching the hearings with an anti-Thomas Democrat whose response to their testimony was to turn to me and admit that he was convinced following their testimony that Clarence Thomas was innocent.

The sort of false charges that Anita Hill made were sensational enough in 1991 that the media was more than willing to be complicit in them. But since them, we have heard Tawna Brawley recant her charges of sexual abuse against powerful men, and watched as Crysta Gail Mangum used sexually loaded charges to falsely smear young men at Duke. Anita Hill, sadly, is cut from the same cloth. But in each case, liberals have been willing to take the word of an accuser, even when the evidence is against them.

The time has come for Anita Hill to realize that her 15 minutes are up -- and that it is morally wrong for her to seek to revictimize the man whose reputation she sullied in order to gain another quarter hour.

MORE AT Power Line, Sister Toldjah, Colossus of Rhodey, Don Surber, American Mind, Captain's Quarters, OnDeadline, Neptunus Lex, Macsmind

OPEN TRACKBACKING AT Stop the ACLU, Outside the Beltway, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, Perri Nelson's Website, DeMediacratic Nation, Jeanette's Celebrity Corner, Adam's Blog, Right Truth, The Populist, Webloggin, Leaning Straight Up, The Amboy Times, Conservative Cat, Allie is Wired, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, Pirate's Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Right Voices, Gone Hollywood, Wake Up America, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Posted by: Greg at 06:09 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 444 words, total size 5 kb.