Lifetime appointments to the bench, the legitimate need to keep judges apart from the political hurly burly, and their own institutional insularity combine to make the conduct of the federal judiciary extremely opaque and difficult to hold to account. So it’s worth noting that on Friday, the Judicial Conference’s Committee on Judicial Conduct and Disability, which reviews cases of misconduct by federal judges, published two different decisions involving judicial misconduct where the essential issue before the panel was whether to make public the alleged misconduct or keep it cloaked behind the judicial trappings of secrecy and confidentiality.
In both cases, the committee opted in favor of openness. How it got there — and the backstory on both cases — is fascinating.
You may have seen this morning, Steve Kornacki released a blockbuster story on the BridgeGate front. It’s not narrowly tied to the George Washington Bridge lane closures. But it involves nearby Hoboken, where the city’s Mayor, Dawn Zimmer, says the Christie administration refused to provide Sandy Relief until the city approved a separate real estate project tied to Christie confidante, David Samson. Samson of course is Chairman of the Port Authority and currently eye deep in the BridgeGate story. Kornacki has been collaborating and reporting on this story for the last week with Brian Murphy, former NJ political reporter and now historian of US political economy at Baruch College. Brian has written up a deep look at this new story up at TPMCafe and what it in terms of the politics of New Jersey and the history of deep ties between tri-state politics and major development projects like this. Always a ripe ground for strong arm politics, bad acts and corruption. Read it here.
Looks like we’re on track for one of the New Jersey senators investigating the bridge scandal to himself be a fact witness. Awesome …
TPM’s Sahil Kapur reviews the forthcoming documentary on Mitt Romney that’s getting so much buzz.
Putin says gay people at the Olympics must leave the children alone.
Meet ‘The Alligator’, Chris Chritie’s new BridgeGate scandal lawyer.
And yes, he seems to like being called ‘The Alligator.”
This actually really surprises me. Ratings for the premier of this season’s Duck Dynasty were actually down dramatically from last year. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that going on a racist, homophobic rant ain’t great for ratings. (Actually, who knows?) But I’m surprised just the brouhaha itself didn’t juice ratings. I’ve never watched the show. But I could have seen myself tuning in just to see what these dudes were about. Apparently not.