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.