- An Udder Trainwreck
The U.S. Supreme Court held, today, that Guantanamo detainees - some of whom have been held for more than six years without charges - are entitled to challenge their detention in court.
You may not have heard about that important legal ruling, however, as there's only one legal story today: Judge Kinky, as Judge Alex Kozinski of the 9th Circuit is probably fated to be known. Since Scott Glover of the Los Angeles Times disclosed the porn cache on the judge's personal site (alex.kozinski.com), there has been a blaze of reaction - questioning whether taxpayer dollars were spent on the site as well as why anyone would store porn on their personal site when it's pretty readily available on the Internet.
And it's not as if Kozinski was unaware of the carnal cornucopia available online, according to The Recorder, which offered a trip down memory lane to Kozinski's previous battle to protect the privacy of judges' internet usage. He went to war with Leonidas Ralph Mecham, then the top administrator of the federal courts, and then Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who reportedly said, "Tell Alex to watch pornography at home and not download it and watch it in the courts."
OK, so what, Kozinski wasn't supposed to listen to a direct order from Rehnquist?
Anyway, Mecham and Rehnquist called for disciplinary action against Kozinski and others at the 9th Circuit, but the U.S. Judicial Conference's Executive Committee refused. Mecham had led a study into court Internet usage following a surge in bandwidth usage, which Kozinski violently opposed, disabling the court's security system to protect the privacy of the judiciary.
Probably the most interesting coverage is at Patterico's Pontifications, which obtained from Cyrus Sanai images he took from Kozinski's site on Christmas Eve 2007. Sanai is a lawyer who dislikes Kozinski and was a source of the Los Angeles Times story. If you go to the link, there are three photos that, while perhaps tasteless, are not unsuitable for adults who would like to get a flavor of some of the images this furor is about. You will need to go to the links Patterico has provided to see the more explicit images. Please do not take this as a recommendation to visit them. However, if you are of the "know it when I see it" camp, these images are perhaps helpful to a better discussion of the Judge's error in judgment at posting these on his site. In the past 24 hours, he's also told several media outlets that his adult son, Yale, handled the website for him and posted some of the images. Here's Patterico. http://patterico.com/2008/06/12/exclusive-kozinskis-porn-images-from-judge-alex-kozinskis-web-site/
Finally, there is the Ira Isaacs case, the prosecution of a Hollywood adult video maven for distributing pornography. Judge Kozinski has granted a 48 hour stay so the prosecution can determine if there is a conflict between the esteemed and experienced judge who appears to like pictures of a sexual, and particularly humorous and sexual persuasion, and a person who distributes allegedly hard-core porn. While painful and embarassing, it's hard to see a legal reason for Judge Kozinski to leave the case without subjecting all future jurists to an inquiry into their personal predilections.
-- Katrina Dewey
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| 11:03 AM Jun 12, 2008 | Email the Daily Dragon | Email this Article | Post Comments |
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