There is a growing scandal over pornographic emails that has now snared a State Supreme Court Justice. There has been an ongoing investigation over pornographic emails being shared by employees at the attorney general’s office. That investigation has led to the disclosure of 54 emails sent from Justice Seamus McCaffery’s personal Comcast email address to an employee at the State Attorney General’s Office. In those emails were a reported 8 pornographic images and videos.
The scandal was itself the outgrowth of the Jerry Sandusky child abuse scandal where there were allegations of improper decisions by officials. That investigation uncovered the pornographic material. and expanded to include aides close to Governor Tom Corbett.
Emails from eight former staffers at the attorney general’s office where produced under media requests. The eight men worked under Corbett during his tenure as attorney general and some continued with him after he became governor.
Corbett now finds himself at the center of a new scandal. Two of the men, Christopher Abruzzo, Environmental Protection Secretary under Corbett, and Glenn Parno, a lawyer with the Department of Environmental Protection, have resigned.
McCaffery allegedly forwarded emails with titles like ‘tan lines XXX’ depicting nude centerfolds, though only eight messages were found with lewd content. Two had off-color jokes.
Since pornography itself is legal (so long as it is not child pornography), this type of violation is generally not something that justifies removal as opposed to an admonishment in the use of any public office or equipment for personal purposes. However, most public employees do use their emails for some personal or non-business messaging or texts. A few years ago, then Chief Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit became embroiled in such a scandal, though he was able to weather the storm and continued on the bench.
McCaffery was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland and came to this country at age 5. He is a former Marine and a former Philadelphia police officer. After serving as an officer for 20 years and retiring as a Sergeant, he became a lawyer. He is a graduate of La Salle University and law school at Temple University. He is also a retired as a Colonel in the U.S. Air Force Reserve.
Source: Daily Mail
THE COLORADO SUPREME COURT . . . “POLITICIANS IN BLACK ROBES.” (AS IT TURNS OUT.)
For decades I refused to believe it, but it is now incontrovertibly established. The Colorado Supreme Court is indisputably a political actor. Our Colorado Supreme Court exists to serve Colorado political parties. At present, the Colorado Supreme Court is more rightly considered an adjunct of the Colorado Legislative Branch, than a check on the Colorado Legislative Branch. Rather than “truth-seeking,” the Colorado Supreme Court now sees its role as “political-outcome seeking.” Litigants successfully use the Colorado Supreme Court to achieve political purposes. In the Ralph Carr Justice Center, rather than meeting impartial guardians of the law, litigants meet their political allies on the bench.
“I think there are many who think of judges as politicians in robes. In many states, that’s what they are.” “They seem to think judges should be a reflex of the popular will.”
Sandra Day O’Connor
In this article, I provide an example of the political and partisan role of the Colorado Supreme Court. I describe a case in which the Colorado Supreme Court summarily erases billions of dollars of debt owed by Colorado state and local governments. That is, one branch of Colorado state government relieves another branch of Colorado government of its legal debts.
The case involves Colorado statutory contracts that create financial obligations on the part of Colorado governments. Over decades, political considerations induced the Colorado Legislature to mismanage those financial obligations. In recent years, the terms of those statutory contracts were deemed politically inconvenient and politically unpopular. The Legislative Branch asked the Colorado Supreme Court to discard the contracts.
In 2010, the Colorado Legislative Branch requested that the Colorado Supreme Court grant this political favor by ignoring the Contract Clause of the US Constitution, ignoring the history of legislative mismanagement of these state financial obligations, and relieving Colorado governments of their accrued legal debts.
In this article, I address the Colorado Supreme Court’s lack of independence, integrity, and impartiality. I provide a brief history of the efforts of the Colorado Legislature and the Colorado Supreme Court to escape Colorado governmental financial obligations. I comment on the recent (October, 2014) Colorado Supreme Court Decision itself, which summarily erased these billions of dollars of Colorado public sector debt. I highlight some of the numerous factual and logical errors that exist in the Colorado Supreme Court’s Decision in the case. I express incredulity at the Colorado Supreme Court’s willful ignorance of public pension administration, knowledge that was necessary to any court claiming to “seek truth” in the case.
My intent in writing this article is to enhance the public record of, and further document, what I consider to be one of the greatest “crimes” in Colorado history.
Visit the following link for the complete article:
http://coloradopols.com/diary/64487/the-colorado-supreme-court-politicians-in-black-robes-as-it-turns-out
Nevertheless, the law does transcend politics and absent party affiliation one of the things that disturbs me about government is the fact that we see transgressions without subsequent termination. I don’t care if its the IRS and lost emails (Lerner did resign), or the Obamacare website, or the Republicans botching the butterfly ballot in Florida. I just want to see more of these people get fired and ultimately that is one of the underlying reasons the private sector just has no respect for them whatsoever.
If the justice is Republican, he should be removed, because hypocrisy.
If he’s a Democrat, however, he should stay, because diversity. Or witch-hunt. Or minor indiscretion. (See: Clinton, William J..)
That’s what matters.
“rafflaw – if pornography is illegal then yes the judge should be removed.”
Otherwise lawful conduct can still be good cause for termination of employment.
In the real world you get fired for doing things like that at work and if true, this judge should be removed.
maybe the barking is under the wrong tree. If I were a ‘pure’ judge and didnlt want to get get caught influencing the prosecuter…. I’d be back channell. Sure that’s against the rules too. But lesser of evil. We don’t know why he was sending such to the AG office…but the fact he was sending there and not to some pimper partner says something. Unless they are all creeps.
Dogs have sex in public and sometimes get laughed at and sometimes criticized. You take itchinBayDog for example…… [censored by the Dogalogue Machine] Then you take artinFayDog for example. Why he [censored by Dogalogue Machine] and in the end he just gave up and quit. Judge not, least ye shall be judged. That seems to be a good standard. If a judge gets caught with his pants down then do not let him be the judge of a pants perp. But, all that being said, how about showing the porn which the judge was judging so that we may judge. Not the judge but the porn itself.
So he likes porn. Many men and women, too, do. What’s the todo?
Seems to me like he has been warned by the Jerry Sandusky case if nothing else. You would think a Supreme Court Justice would get a clue.
Nick I get that the USA is and equal opportunity employer for smut.
This is much ado about nothing and it seems that males and perhaps some females have been, reading, looking at, drawing or sending porn for an incredibly long time. The judge was using is own and not a work account, it was not child porn, it is legal so give it up already! Too many people minding the business of other people instead of their own!
Sex ed at Onesie Twosie blog.
Mango:
This is male behavior, not political. I agree that there are probably a lot of tragic stories behind porn actresses. I don’t think people are aware of the stories behind the women. Males have kept images of the female form for eons. I recall the ruins of Pompeii had pornographic images all over the walls in an ancient brothel, and I believe it was in some homes, as well.
This is a pretty common thing to occur at work – male employees forwarding crude jokes and/or nudey pictures.
Embarrassing, sure, but I would have expected an admonishment not to use work email for personal, especially objectionable, use. Resigning or firing seems like overkill to me.
At first, I thought this was child porn, because it was discovered in the Sandusky probe. But this seems to be just typical stuff 20 year old guys send each other. You’d think men of this age would figure out that work email is saved and monitored.
Of course they were good Catholic girls. I wouldn’t associate w/ Protestants.
If these emails did come from the judge, he should be removed from the bench without delay.
rafflaw – if pornography is illegal then yes the judge should be removed. If pornography is not illegal then no, he should not be removed. It appears he used his private account not his official account and almost everyone uses their office computer for personal business. That would probably include you.
You know they tried to do a study on males who had no contact with pornography and they had to cancel the study because they could not find any males to fit the criteria. 😉 True story.
Paul, When I worked @ the Jersey shore I got to know 2 girls from Northern Ireland. There was a long tradition of Irish girls coming to the US to work as maids. These were funny, bright, and man could they drink. They didn’t want to talk much about the horror over there. This was the early 70’s when it was very bad. But, I developed a relationship w/ one of these girls. She lived in a very bad neighborhood and was always on guard. When I would walk down the street w/ her in very safe Wildwood, NJ she would be jittery and incredibly aware of her surroundings. You just can’t turn that off. So, you are indeed correct about having grown up in a terroristic country like Northern Ireland. Think of the poor kids in the Middle East.
Nick – were they Catholic or Protestant. Makes a big difference.
It appears he has done nothing illegal, just embarrassing. I put it down to being born in Northern Ireland, that is what warped him forever.
Gee, I wonder what Squeeky’s thoughts on this will be???