"In 25 years on the bench I have never seen anything approach the mishandling and misconduct I have seen in this case."

That was Judge Emmet Sullivan today, ordering a probe into the Ted Stevens case. Here's the AP. The coverage of the case is worth a read. From the article:

During Tuesday's hearing, Sullivan read a primer on criminal procedure, the kind of rudimentary lecture students normally receive during their first year of law school.
The judge said he has seen a troubling trend of prosecutors withholding evidence in cases against people ranging from Guantanamo Bay detainees to public officials such as Stevens. He called on judges nationwide to issue formal orders in all criminal cases requiring that prosecutors turn over evidence to defendants.
It was a stinging rebuke of the Justice Department and Sullivan called on Holder to order training for all prosecutors.

In (misconduct) news closer to home, a large internet pharmacy case was dismissed in Judge Zloch's courtroom today. You remember this one -- it's the Google jury... Here's coverage by the Health Care Fraud Blog:

In a stunning development with implications in two large prosecutions, the United States dismissed with prejudice an Indictment against 10 individuals today in a South Florida courtroom, two of whom had already plead guilty and testified in the trial against the other eight defendants. This follows an eight week trial featuring two mistrials, one based on prosecutorial misconduct and also included accusations against the government of witness tampering and the testimony of a federal prosecutor to attempt to refute the testimony that the government gave permission for one of the defendants to operate his business.

I'm backkkkkk

Who was the little rat who lied and told Google we were a spam blog, huh? (A couple of days ago we received a msg from Google saying that we were under suspicion of being a spam blog. Google therefore blocked us and said that until it could investigate, we were shut down... This happened to Rumpole a while back too. He was gracious enough to agree to post anything important while we were blocked, but I figured I could use a day or two without blogging.)

Well, your dirty tricks didn't work...

We're back baby.

And now we know what Jay Weaver has been holed up doing the last couple of weeks.... writing about Medicaid fraud. Lots of words to read here.

Cliff's Notes version -- There is a great deal of Medicaid fraud in Florida.