Thought for the Weekend...

Could we PLEASE end the election of judges in Pennsylvania? Appoint them. Maybe the stupid "tough on crime" pandering will quiet down a little.

Follow Up: They should get life in prison.

Any judge who so totally compromises the justice system...

Things were different in the Luzerne County juvenile courtroom, and everyone knew it. Proceedings on average took less than two minutes. Detention center workers were told in advance how many juveniles to expect at the end of each day — even before hearings to determine their innocence or guilt. Lawyers told families not to bother hiring them. They would not be allowed to speak anyway.

“The judge’s whim is all that mattered in that courtroom,” said Marsha Levick, the legal director of the Juvenile Law Center, a child advocacy organization in Philadelphia, which began raising concerns about the court to state authorities in 1999. “The law was basically irrelevant.”

Last month, the law caught up with Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., 58, who ran that juvenile court for 12 years, and Judge Michael T. Conahan, 56, a colleague on the county’s Court of Common Pleas.

In what authorities are calling the biggest legal scandal in state history, the two judges pleaded guilty to tax evasion and wire fraud in a scheme that involved sending thousands of juveniles to two private detention centers in exchange for $2.6 million in kickbacks.

Send them away. Here's the rest of the article.

Pennsylvania Embarrasses Itself (again)

What is wrong with Scranton, PA? Remember the prosecutor who was sending kids to detention centers and getting kickbacks for it? Here is another of our state's finest making mayhem and, one would guess, getting plenty of secondary gain from it:

When a high school cheerleader in northeastern Pennsylvania learned that she might face criminal charges after investigators reported finding a nude photo of her on someone else’s cellphone, she was more confused than frightened at being caught up in a case of “sexting”: the increasingly popular phenomenon of nude or seminude photos sent over wireless phones.

“They said they had a full-bodied naked picture of me, but I knew I’d never had any naked picture taken of me,” the student, Marissa Miller, 15, recalled of the Feb. 10 telephone call to her mother as the two were having lunch together at Tunkhannock Area High School. Marissa is a freshman at the school, where her mother, MaryJo, works with special education students.

The picture that investigators from the office of District Attorney George P. Skumanick of Wyoming County had was taken two years earlier at a slumber party. It showed Marissa and a friend from the waist up. Both were wearing bras.

Mr. Skumanick said he considered the photo “provocative” enough to tell Marissa and the friend, Grace Kelly, that if they did not attend a 10-hour class dealing with pornography and sexual violence, he was considering filing a charge of sexual abuse of a minor against both girls. If convicted, they could serve time in prison and would probably have to register as sex offenders.

What a maroon.

Poetry Friday

Po Chu I was many things: a successful government official, a well known and tremendously popular poet, and an exemplar of Confucian duty. He is considered one of the four great Tang dynasty poets, along with the Buddhist Wang Wei, the Taoist estatic Li Bai, and the greatest of the them all, the perfect Du Fu.
Po Chu I was considered the "people's poet". His success in government gave him a wide perspective on the suffering all around him, and yet he didn't become complacent or withdrawn. This earned him devotion over the next thousand or so years.
If you want to see more go here. If you want to peruse a great book on the poet, here's an e-text.

The Grain Tribute (transl. Arthur Waley)

There came an officer knocking by night at my door

In a loud voice demanding grain-tribute.

My house-servants dared not wait till the morning,

But brought candles and set them on the barn-floor.

Passed through the sieve, clean-washed as pearls,

A whole cart-load, thirty bushels of grain.

But still they cry that it is not paid in full:

With whips and curses they goad my servants and boys.

Once, in error, I entered public life;

I am inwardly ashamed that my talents were not sufficient.

In succession I occupied four official posts;

For doing nothing—ten years’ salary!

Often have I heard that saying of ancient men

That “good and ill follow in an endless chain.”

And to-day it ought to set my heart at rest

To return to others the corn in my great barn.