Thursday, November 29, 2012

WHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD?








To get to an 8am sounding calendar in court,  of course. 









SHAKESPEAREAN DRAMAS

Fair is foul, and foul is fair:
Hover through the fog and filthy air.

The Witches, Macbeth, Act I, Scene I




In West Palm Beach, the  drama of fallen judge Ana Gardiner is playing out in a bar hearing. 
Judge Gardiner took the stand yesterday to tearfully recount how she lost everything, including her job as a judge. You will remember that Judge Gardiner engaged in texting with Broward Prosecutor Howard Schienberg while Schienberg was prosecuting a death penalty case before her.  While Gardiner portrayed herself as a remorseful, if not pitiful victim of circumstance, she was far from a caring, compassionate individual- not to say an unbiased judge- while she and Schienberg shared snickers and  laughs over how the gruesome pictures affected members of the jury. 

The Sun Sentinel coverage is here, including this excerpt: "Feeling brutally flayed by a courthouse blog,* in a depressive hole and unable to get out of bed in the morning, Gardiner said she began to be absent from work: 'I couldn't handle continuing to work in that place' she said. 'I've given everything up, including one of the things that I loved the most, which was my job,' she said. 'I lost my job forever. I lost my ability to ever, ever sit as a judge.' "


PANDO'S NEW PROBLEMS
Meanwhile, another former judge has new problems, as  Judge Ana Pando, who lost her seat in an election, and resigned in a fit of pique, has new charges against her, courtesy of the JQC. The charges include  improperly accepting and not disclosing gifts and campaign contributions, and writing bad checks. The WLRN story is here, and here is an excerpt from the JQC complaint: 

From at least June 2010 and continuing during the pendency of these proceedings, you have routinely written worthless checks off of two separate checking accounts maintained by you. Your conduct in writing bad checks is fundamentally dishonest, unethical, and brings disrepute on the judiciary and the legal profession as a whole.

The bard is best read when looking for answers to the unanswerable questions of life:


Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer'd it.

Antony, Julius Ceasar, Act III, scene II. 

See You In Court. 


* For once, we were not the courthouse blog doing the brutal  flaying of a Broward Judge, although we enjoyed it immensely. 





21 comments:

  1. I'm surprised a chicken successfully eluded the Santeros long enough to be visually memorialized on your fair Blog.

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  2. Wow- want to see the result of an unmoderated blog? Check out the comments in the JAA blog about Gardiner. It zooms all over the place with one reoccurring theme- who is sleeping with whom. Quite inappropriate in our opinion.

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  3. Gardiner: ex hottie.
    New Herald reporter- Current hottie.

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  4. Ummm... Rump, what's with the Shakespearean dramas?

    The comment moderation is driving me up the wall. I can barely read the numbers.

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  5. Read the DBR article about Pando beore you get all excited. She never bounced a single check. They got her records and she was overdrawn but, paid fees and checks were honored OK. So what!

    Her lawyer said not one person was stiffed.

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  6. Judge Gardiner didnt get that 900 calls & Texts w/ the lead ASA during a Murder case AS IT was being tried in front of her was improper?
    Pull her ticket

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  7. Breaking:


    Michael Jordan asked to change his shorts .....

    Michael Jordan said Thursday he did refuse to change out of cargo shorts while playing golf recently at a Miami Beach country club, but he said he was hardly being a rebel.


    "I've been there many times and no one told me a thing," Jordan told ESPN Chicago by text. "Then all of a sudden they come to me on the 11th hole and say I can't wear cargo shorts. Wow! The round is almost over and you want me to buy shorts now? Yeah, right!!"


    After declining to change, Jordan reportedly continued his round, but it could be his last at the club. A report in the New York Post quoted a source saying that Jordan, a Chicago Bulls Hall of Famer and owner of the Charlotte Bobcats, would not be invited back.


    "No problem!!" Jordan replied.


    A spokesman from La Gorce Country Club said its president was on vacation and declined comment at this time. An employee in the pro shop said that required attire is: "a collared shirt and golf shorts or pants, no cargo or denim. If there are pockets on the outside, it's not allowed."

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  8. Breaking Two:

    TNT pissed; Heat fans more pissed

    San Antonio meets the HEAT tonight in a national TV showdown at the AAA and the Spurs have decided to sit four of their top six players including Parker, Duncan, Green and Ginobili

    Enjoy the game

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  9. I sympathize with the problems with comment moderation. I hate those words and numbers as well. I turned it off for now. But what appears to happen is that bots attack and I end up having 50-60 comments every few hours and then I need to spend 20 min searching through the spam for the real comments. Lets see what happens now.

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  10. THE CAPTAIN REPORTS:

    VERY SAD NEWS ......

    Horace, sad news to report today that former County Court Judge Calvin Mapp has passed away. He was the first black County Court Judge at the MJB.

    Did you read Judge Mapp's book? Remember, that was required reading if you were regularly appearing before the good Judge back in the 1980's.

    Rest in Peace Judge. You left a fine legacy.

    CAPTAIN OUT .....

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  11. beer goggles. your definition of a hottie must mean something different.

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  12. That rooster has been by the courthouse all week. I saw him behind the behind the front facade where the smokers are. Let's hope the Santeros let him be.

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  13. Calvin Mapp was a GREAT guy and a true pioneer. I'm sorry to hear of his passing.

    BTDT

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  14. So Ana Gardiner feigns contrition for her actions, well that's just to bad she has to suffer the consequences like the defendants who came before her.

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  15. Was in front of Judge Mapp many times. He was Hard on Lawyers but not clients. He didnt go oout of his way to screw a Defendant. He Was one of the People's Judges.
    I liked that Crusty Man

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  16. Pando, schmando. If Gardiner isn't disbarred, the whole disciplinary system is a disgrace. The "Judge" was carrying on with the prosecutor while presiding over a death penalty case. Then she lies about it to the JQC and resigns to avoid prosecution. This woman doesn't deserve to practice law!

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  17. I prefer an unmoderated blog. I don't think a mod should be censoring it's posters based on what he or she thinks is inappropriate gossip.

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  18. CONGRATS to the LIVING chicken running around the REGB. QUITE an accomplishment, since the only chickens I've ever seen around there have been dead, beheaded, and in a brown paper bag.

    THIS IS AN ODE TO THE LIVING REGB CHICKEN.

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  19. James- lets get right to the point here. Between 3-4K people read this blog on a daily basis. Lets say you're a judge- and you're running for re-election and as an aside, you are having problems at home with your wife. Someone starts a vicious campaign to say you're sleeping with your court reporter, and posts 5-6 times a day on a blog read by your colleagues.

    Is that fair?

    I cannot just stand by and work on something I enjoy and allow thugs to use my good work to trash and hurt people.

    I have a few simple rules. I do not moderate based on content other than content that 1) attacks a person's physical characteristics- i.e.., joe schmo is fat; 2) discusses a person's personal life- see above; 3) is a complete ad hominem attack- i.e.., rumplole is a bad lawyer who never shows up to court, cheats his clients, loses all his trials, dresses poorly, and has bad taste in wine.

    The point is that the posts and comments in this blog have a disturbing tendency to show up high in google searches, and I am acutely aware of people's reputations. So I moderate. Deal with it.

    PS- trying signing your name to a few posts and watch the crazies come out of the woodwork to attack you and you will see what I mean.

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  20. Rump, on the subject of moderation:

    I disagree with James at 6:55.

    Having been mentioned in the comments here from time to time during the election a couple of years ago -- not always kindly, albeit not "brutally flayed" and nothing I couldn't endure -- I think you moderate to just about the right degree. Comments here can be lively, even caustic, but you keep them from verging over into vile.

    For example, I think I have a sense of the one or two comments about me that you kept out during the election. I'm guessing, but I think know, since most of them were also sent to me and others as nasty, always anonymous emails. Then about that same time I'd see a comment from you along the lines of "I won't publish a comment about a candidate that says X."

    I was glad those attacks didn't get published here, not because they were true, but because they weren't and because we live in an age where even a denial inevitably lends some kind of credence to even the most outrageous, baseless charge.

    Your level of moderation certainly doesn't exclude the legions of negative comments that don't violate your loose rules. Folks seem to be able to have their say and, as we've discussed, allowing anonymity likewise widens the scope of the debate -- for good or ill. [As for me, if a comment contains a fact, I'm interested whether it's anonymous or not. (I.e., such and such a judge was late to the bench this morning.) But I largely ignore anonymous comments expressing an opinion (i.e., judge so and so is prosecution-minded). YMMV, of course.]

    All this to say: Your blog, your rules, and I think the moderation level is fine. Heck, we all read the damned thing every day or so, no matter who protests that he does not.

    (Although, like everyone, and especially those of us with aging eyes, I do hate the bot-excluding, illegible, comment verification codes.)

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  21. Is your "good work" code for not having a life?

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