Inquirer’s editorial “Board overboard” reports:
“The Judicial Conduct Board, the panel designated to investigate the myriad misdeeds of Pennsylvania’s judiciary, has so thoroughly botched its probe of Supreme Court Justice J. Michael Eakin as to raise a question: Who should investigate the Judicial Conduct Board?
“The Inquirer reported this week that a member of the board, which last year hastily excused Eakin’s involvement in Harrisburg’s great pornorgraphic email exchange, had himself received similar offensive messages. The Daily News reported last week that the conduct board’s chief counsel, Robert Graci, represented Eakin’s 2011 retention campaign and has been identified as a longtime friend. It’s not clear whether the board member, Eugene Dooley, ever recused himself from the Eakin matter; Graci did so recently, but last year he signed the letter giving the justice the good news of his premature exoneration.
“Given the shared confidences and cozy connections among judges and the body that is supposed to police them, there can be no mystery about the kid-gloves treatment of Eakin or any of the commonwealth’s other wayward jurists. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court’s deeply unsatisfying response has been to order the conduct board to investigate Eakin again.”
Fair enough. The logical next step would be to question the probity of the Judicial Conduct Board’s recommendation that Attorney General Kathleen Kane’s law license be revoked for the exact same reason.
But logic has no role when the Inquirer / Daily News is trying to save what little reputation it has left having outed Kane as its alleged source of information and leading the charge to drive her from office.
Here is what comes next:
“Like the Supreme Court itself, the board is far too compromised to continue. So is Attorney General Kathleen Kane, who, since discovering the emails through the accounts of current and former employees, has selectively released them to target enemies and distract from her own malfeasance. All of which underscores the need for an independent special prosecutor to conduct a thorough investigation of Eakin and the other emailers.”
We would welcome an independent investigation, especially if conducted by the FBI. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court should immediately restore Kane’s license until a real investigation takes place.
The Inquirer’s shoddy and biased attacks on A G Kane while defending scum like Eakin is an affront to the profession of journalism.
The Inquirer is the house organ for the Philadelphia Democratic Party, kind of like this blog Is for Tom Wolfe and the Lancaster York Democratic Party. I will say that there is a total lack of integrity and impartiality in today’s media.
Who cares what the Inquirer has to say? It’s all garbage. I stopped reading it years ago.