HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND II

The view from the beach we're running on every morning. (OK. Part walk, part run. But it's still exercise.)

Here's a Memorial Day Weekend update because we're just in one of those moods.

Here's a nice Sun Sentinel article on Federal Judge James Cohn. "A true southern gentlemen" is how he is described. Judge Cohn will be sentencing Former Broward School Board Member

Beverly Gallagher on June 2. A week later he will be sentencing Scott Rothstein and on July 2 he will be sentencing former Miramar City Commissioner Fitzroy Salesman.

Quite a trifecta for the Judge.

WORLD WIDE ECOLOGICAL DISASTER.

The latest attempt to cap the gushing oil well in the Gulf Of Mexico has failed. It is reasonable to assume that the well will continue gushing until August, when a relief well will be finished.

The Gulf of Mexico is considered the "nursery" of the seas. Species as far flung as Blue Fin Tuna, which are harvested off the coast of Massachusetts, Dorado (Dolphin), several species of Turtles, Grouper and Snapper, not to mention several species of whales, all spawn in the Gulf. Currents from the Gulf reach the Atlantic and the Caribbean oceans within a short period of time, and other oceans thereafter. The world and our oceans are much more interconnected than we realize.

Even if the well was plugged today, there would be an ecological collapse of monumental proportions. When a species like Blue Fin Tuna which spends it life in the northern atlantic collapses, it effects the entire food chain below it. Some species will explode in volume, and others will collapse, all upsetting the delicate natural balance that has existed for thousands of years.

And all of these results are from the known problems of oil spills. Who knows the effects the chemical dispersants will cause when it is dumped on currents we barely know about 5000 feet below the surface? When it comes to the effects of humans on nature this much is true- there are things we know and can control; there are things we don't know and can't control; and most importantly- there are things about which we don't know we don't know. And that is the truly scary part because we will soon find out about that.

From a practical standpoint two ideas emerge from this disaster: we shouldn't be drilling a mile beneath the ocean when we clearly can't control accidents. And also this- the wide spread ecological disaster that will come to define our time will also unfortunately define the Obama Presidency. And that is a shame, because this man is so talented, and he has brought back talented and smart people to government. And none of that will matter because this oil spill will over shadow it all.

This is a whole lot worse than we've even begun to wrap our minds around. But let us leave you with this- if you are a cook, or an accountant, or a lawyer, or a taxi cab driver in Miami- just how to do think your life will change when the entire tourist industry in our town collapses? No one visits beaches and oceans ruined by oil and chemicals.

Sorry to be so morose, but this is what is on our mind.

HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND

Good morning. It's Memorial Day Weekend and here's the news you need to enjoy your weekend.

IT'S THE CONSTITUTION, STUPID.

Meet Judge Beatrice Butchko- former prosecutor; spent time in private practice; appointed Circuit Court Judge, and self described (drum roll please)

DEFENDER OF THE CONSTITUTION!

Under an April 25, 2010 (why did it take Rumpole so long to address this story? See below) Miami Herald Headline "Miami Dade Judge Blasts Flawed Public Defender System" Judge Butchko said this in response to a PD who announced she was not ready for trial because she was overloaded with cases:

'We're not in some Third-World nation where the Constitution means nothing. In this division, the Constitution means something,'' Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Betty Butchko told lawyers Friday.

Rumpole wonders: What does Judge Butchko know about other divisions that we don't? Who does she hang out with, robed reader wise? Who is she eating lunch with? Will she respond and list just which divisions she is aware of in which the Constitution means less than something? Stay tuned.

OBAMA'S CLEANUP KERFUFFLE:

Jefferson Parish Councilman Chris Roberts accuses BP of trucking in 300-400 extra workers for Friday's photo op showing the President walking the beaches with BP workers in the background earnestly cleaning what looked to us to be pristine beaches.

Understandably the WH was nervous about letting the press photograph the President on oil fouled beaches, lest the images be used in 2010 and 2010 campaigns. But what about the allegation carried by CNN here that the workers were trucked in for a staged photo op?

REMEMBRANCES OF JUDGE EDWARD DAVIS:

Everyone's favorite federal blogger has two wonderful emails from Judges Moreno and Altonaga on Judge Ned Davis. It's must reading.

RUMPOLE'S TOP LIST:

Vienna tops the list of Best Cities in the World based on Mercer's quality of life survey here.

And Usher's OMG rests atop the Billboard Hot 100.

Rumpole's Daily Reading List:

As we spend this Memorial Day Weekend with the rich and famous in Montauk, NY, we post our daily reading list for your perusal:

When you wake up in the morning, if you're not immediately heading over to Politico to read Mike Allen's Playbook and The Huddle, then you're already behind.

Next, for us, we read the on line editions of Le Monde, The NY Times, The London Times, The Financial Times (Londo Edition) and the Washington Post. It's only then that we reluctantly turn our attention to the Miami Herald and the mundane news of who shot who, and whether Miami Beach will let revelers be served alcoholic drinks on the beach. Thus, we some times miss local stories like the one above. Most of the time alert readers will give us a tip.

Enjoy your holiday weekend, and get ready for the crush on Tuesday. If a few alert readers can send us updates and pictures of the lines outside the REGJB we will be greatly appreciative and will have a shot of Patron in your honour.

MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND THOUGHTS

As we spend another holiday weekend in our fair city, there are several random thoughts we thought we might share.

Go over to the Broward Blog.

As the debate rages in Broward County between the Status Quo Brigade of Judges and a few good ol boy lawyers (Motto: "It’s our Court System and we’ll run it however we damn please.") and the upstart Brigade of Brave Broward lawyers, there is a nice reprint of Thomas Payne’s Common Sense pamphlet on the Broward Blog.

Printed anonymously in February 1776, Common Sense serves now to remind us why reasoned anonymous critique is a backbone of American Democracy.

The Broward Judiciary’s “Diversity Committee” immediately responded to the Blog's defense of anonymous critique with a press release stating “anything written about Common Sense has absolutely nothing to do with the Broward Judiciary.”

Rumpole says that what these lawyers have done is nothing short of remarkable. We who labour here in Miami well know the feeling of being “a stranger in a strange land”. Ask any Judge who was a practicing trial lawyer before ascending to the bench, and they will tell you that “going to Broward” is one of the things they miss the least. These Broward Blogging Lawyers have drawn intense media coverage of their Courthouse. (Of course, lets give credit where credit is due. They were ably assisted by a bevy of Judges whose propensity for making outlandish statements from the bench, or getting arrested, was remarkable.)

The Broward Bloggers succeeded in bringing down the Chief Judge, and have opened for discussion with the current judicial leadership topics like why the rate of defendants sentenced to State prison in Broward is the highest in the State by far.

In a very real sense, Blogging is the 21st century American’s answer to the anonymous pamphleteering during the Revolutionary War. It is no surprise that of all the countries on earth, it was the United States that brought forth blogging to the forefront of political action.
Questioning authority by reasoned critiques of those who govern, is in our blood. It makes us proud to be a small part of this legacy of democracy.


HEADLINES:

Switching topics, if you head over to the on-line edition of various newspapers you might randomly view headlines like these:

“Engulfed by Climate Change, Town Seeks Lifeline”

MELTDOWN
The earth beneath much of Alaska is not what it used to be. The permanently frozen subsoil, known as permafrost, upon which Newtok and so many other Native Alaskan villages rest, is melting, yielding to warming air temperatures and a warming ocean. Sea ice that would normally protect coastal villages is forming later in the year, allowing fall storms to pound away at the shoreline.
Erosion has made Newtok an island...

and

White House rejected warnings on Iraq War

WARNED ON IRAQ

U.S. intelligence agencies warned the Bush administration before the invasion of Iraq that ousting Saddam Hussein would create a ''significant risk'' of sectarian strife, encourage al Qaeda attacks and open the way for Iranian interference. ..
Nevertheless, President Bush, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other top aides decided not to deploy the major occupation that force military planners had recommended, planned to reduce U.S. troops rapidly after the invasion and believed that ousting Saddam would ignite a democratic revolution across the Middle East.

What these two stories have in common is a man from Texas with his head buried in the sand.

Experts told the current administration that global warming was a fact and needed to be addressed. The administration responded with a campaign to terrorize those experts by threatening their jobs if they released their reports.

Experts told the current administration that we did not have enough troops to win the peace in Iraq. They were ridiculed by men (namely the President, Vice President, and their respective staffs) whose youth was marked by a successful determination to avoid military service in the Vietnam war.

Welcome to Vietnam redux.
Created by men whose main qualification to lead a country into war was the ability to look into the camera and tell the American public that because they pray, they can be trusted and know what their doing-- its fourty years later and a new generation of old men are sending young men and women to die half way around the world for a war no one wants.

Hopefully, as an electorate, we will never make that mistake again.

So there you have it.

Good old American common sense and the legacy of Common Sense drives modern day Bloggers North of the Border to take back our courthouse from the oligarchy of Ross and his crowd.

Meanwhile a town in Alaska melts- but don't tell the President it's because of global warming, because his henchmen may well just fire you. No, maybe those Inuit are just praying to the wrong deity.
And more troops die in a war the President was told we could not win -but- as an idiot from Texas once tried to say "fool me once shame on you....fool me twice, shame on me."


There is a lot to think about on any Memorial Day, but this is what is on our Mind this Memorial Day Weekend.

Be safe, and see you in Court Tuesday, and maybe for drinks and Hors De Oeuvres afterwards.