By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
There are some cases where probable cause is questioned and there are a few others that leave me shaking my head in disbelief of how ridiculous some officers can be.
The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals recently handed down a stinging rebuke of the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office and its deputies some of whom, Plaintiffs claim, lied about a field test of a suspected Marijuana product, finding evidence of marijuana grow derived from purchasing tools at a gardening retailer somehow established probable cause sufficient to send in a SWAT team to execute a search warrant and detain a couple for several hours.
The leafy green vegetable matter in question was not marijuana but tea leaves.
It is a classic example of department officials promising to make a publicity garnering drug sweep and when arrests are not made, someone must be sent to jail at all costs. And as can often be the case with such maligned efforts the end result was a civil rights lawsuit in federal court.
The spokesman for the New York State Court system has been fired after a disastrous butt-call to a reporter in which 
The judges and court staff at Seattle’s King County Courthouse have been fighting to get something done about the disgusting conditions around the outside door. Homeless people left excrement and urine around the door — a stench that is deterring jurors and others from coming into the building. Judges have asked for the city to take action and clean up the unsanitary conditions with a simple power washing and better policing. That would seem a no brainer but objections were heard from city council members, including one who reportedly said that the use of hoses might be racially insensitive or traumatic.
Columbia University has reached a settlement in one of its most controversial cases of alleged sexual assault. Paul Nungesser, who was accused of raping a fellow classmate who became known as “mattress girl,” will receive a settlement. Emma Sulkowicz carried around a mattress on campus in protest, even taking the mattress to graduation. She 
Judge Richard Posner may have just announced his own impending retirement from the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. Posner is arguing that federal judges should be subject to 