If a judge donates money to the Throw Orrin Judd in Jail Political Action Committee, would you not try to get him removed from any criminal proceeding against you?

No. I'd assume that would make him even more conscious of the need to be fair.

You'd probably also assume that if the local DA has a track record of frivolously indicting your family & friends, that would make him even more conscious of the need to be fair towards you...

All DAs are political hacks who want elected office, few judges are.

In TX DAs ARE an elected office. And in lots of states, judges are, aren't they?

da's want to be governors. Judges want to be judges.

So far it's following the Kay Bailey Hutchinson script. Does this mean Earle will drop charges when it goes to trial?

Posted by: jd watson at November 1, 2005 7:43 PM

He might, but the Hutchison kerfuffle came when Democrats controlled the U.S. House and Senate, as well as the Texas governor's office, state House and state Senate, so his incompetence was less of a national issue when the charges were dropped. So the Democrats were far more sanguine about their political situation than they are today.

If Ronnie drops the charges now, with all of the national Democrats and much of the media waiting on the DeLay trial like they were waiting on the Rove indictment, Earle faces the possiblity of being treated like one of those flunkies for a villianous mastermind in the James Bond films, who has to pay the price for failing to kill 007. So I would expect this to at the very least make it through the first couple of days of court, even though based on the evidence he's shown, DeGuerin may be able to get the case thrown out without presenting any witnesses once Earle has finished his presentation.

b;

It looks like you forgot to link to the donations page for that PAC. Could you repost with the link?

John:
OTOH, if he goes to trial and has the case thrown out after a few days, might he be liable to charges of prosecutorial misconduct, harassment or misuse of office, especially if he is unable to produce the document mentioned in the indictment?

Posted by: jd watson at November 1, 2005 8:52 PM

That's certainly possible, jd, especially if the charges were filed in the run-up to the 2006 state elections and became a campaign issue. Earle's term is up in 2008, so any change would affect Travis County's legal system, though I'm not sure if the increase in Republicans in the parts of the county outside Austin in recent years would be enough to keep the Travis County Democrats from just putting another partisan in Ronnie's place if he was removed from office.

So the conference room in the DNC headquarters has chairs built over trap doors, with Howard Dean's fingers on the buttons? That would explain what happened to Clinton's cabinet, and the Algore and Kerry campaigns, but how did Algore himself escape? Maybe because St. Hillary has the real keypad?