BernieHund: The Political Watchdog

Last post on the judge.  It’s becoming rather boring.

Last night on one of those programs that tells all about what goes on in Hollywood, it was reported that Judge Alex Kozinski had said that his son maintains the website in question (www.alex.kozinski.com) and could have uploaded some of the materials that were seen there.

Today, it seems that Judge Kozinski’s wife is weighing in on the subject saying that the story in the LA Times was “outright lies.”  According to a FOX News report

Marcy Jane Tiffany, wife of 9th U.S. Circuit Court of AppealsChief Judge Alex Kozinski, described some of the material stored on the home computer as raunchy and juvenile. Only a handful of files among hundreds had a “sexual aspect,” but they were not pornography, she said.

“Alex is not into porn — he is into funny — and sometimes funny has a sexual character,” Tiffany wrote in a nearly 2,000-word defense of her husband, posted on a Web site called patterico.com.

Of the several hundred files in the computer folder at issue, “the vast majority was cute, amusing and not in the least bit sexual in nature,” Tiffany, a Torrance, Calif., lawyer, wrote. “The tiny percentage of the material that was sexual in nature was all of a humorous character.”

David Lauter, the editor for the LA Times in Los Angeles replied

The newspaper’s Californiaeditor, David Lauter, said in a statement that the articles were fair and accurate and “speak for themselves.”

The stories “raised important issues on a matter of significant public concern,” Lauter said. “The judge was presented with the facts … and was given a full opportunity to respond. We took his responses into account before publication and included what he said in our stories.”

Those articles, Lauter added, “already have dealt with the salient issues.”

Well, so much for that.  As we can see, Judge Kozinski has a family that is willing to speak up and rally around the head of the household.  That’s admirable in any family and no one can question that.  However, it seems like the opportunity to mitigate the circumstances by raising doubts as to whom uploaded the material.  Reasonable doubt?

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts has named five judges from the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals to investigate and to handle any ethics questions.  I suppose someone had to be named to look into the matter, but the reality is that no matter what is decided by the Philadelphia Five, their conclusions will always be suspect among some.  We have all heard about the silent code among police officers and I suspect that now we will hear something similar about the judges.

Besides, pornography is hard to define.  We have all heard the stories of mothers who took pictures of their naked little boys playing with “wee willie” in the bathtub and were turned into the cops by the drugstore developing the film.  I don’t consider that child porn.  If it were, my parents would have been under the jail… the pictures of potty training, the first time I sat on the little pot alone, or running topless in the yard at age 4.  Oh, my God!  I have a scrapbook of “porn” and I was the child star.  We should all know that is ridiculous.  And, since none of us have actually seen the aroused animal chasing the man, or the striptease artist with the transexual… well, perhaps we shouldn’t assume they are porn.

That said, we are in a grey area.  What is porn and what isn’t?  What is offensive to some and not to others?  What about Ira Issacs?  He got a mistrial after the Kozinski revelation.  And, I suppose to some his films are pornographic.  I’ve never seen them, but again what offends me may not offend others.  In fact, since I perceive from the descriptions of his “body of work” that I wouldn’t enjoy spending my time watching his films, I don’t.  But, should that prevent others from making a different decision?  I think not.

So, once again we are faced with what is porn?  I have to say that I think sex between minors or an adult and a minor is in the black area… only because a minor shouldn’t be put in that situation.  But, between consenting adults?  Well, I’m not into watching other people have sex, man and woman, man and man, or woman and woman or another combination of the lot.  But, that’s my preference. 

Back to the judge.  I don’t believe anyone really cares what he watches on his own time.  I don’t really care if he just collects odd videos and clips of activities that have no appeal to me any more than I care about the stamps collected by my next door neighbor.  It’s none of my business.

All that said, the damage has been done. 

Federal rules say judges should “act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.”

I can go through a litany of sayings… “once the horse is out of the barn” and on and on and on.  But, the truth is that it doesn’t matter if everyone considered the judge’s now defunct website pornographic or not.  The disclosure and the follow-up comments from the judge have left us all with a perception that it is porn.  And, we all know that perception in many cases is far more damning than reality.  In this case it appears the judge be damned.