Slow news day in the SDFLA...

...so we'll have to turn to Alabama, via CNN:

"Former Alabama prosecutor arrested on enticement, child porn charges"

Here's the quote from the former prosecutor's defense attorney:

"The facts of the case will turn out to be interesting and (we will) address those when we go to trial."

Interesting? Perhaps not the best choice of words... From the article:

A former Alabama assistant district attorney who specialized in prosecuting sex crimes against minors is accused of enticing what he thought was a teenage girl online for sexual purposes, authorities said.
Steven Giardini was indicted on charges of enticement and solicitation crimes over the computer with the intent to produce child pornography, the Alabama Attorney General's Office said in a statement. Giardini, a former prosecutor in Mobile County, was arrested Tuesday.
The charges stem from the suspect's alleged communication with what he thought was a 15-year-girl, Alabama Attorney General Troy King said in a statement Tuesday. But instead he was communicating with an agent from the FBI's Internet Crimes Against Children division.

More on Judge Huck

Last Monday, I posted about Judge Paul Huck's decision to take senior status. Today, the DBR has more on the story:

District Judge Paul Huck in Miami will take senior status at the end of the month, opening a third seat on the federal bench in South Florida. Huck is the second South Florida judge to announce he’ll take senior status in the past month. U.S. District Judge Alan S. Gold will be going senior in January. Public Defender Kathleen Williams has been nominated to replace U.S. District Judge Daniel T.K. Hurley, but judicial confirmations are on a slow track in the U.S. Senate.

***

Huck, 70, was appointed to the bench a decade ago by thenPresident Bill Clinton, following a 36-year career as a lawyer. Huck said he is going senior because he is able to do so under the court’s “rule of 80.” Under the rule, when a judge’s age, added to his or her years on the bench, totals 80, the judge has the option of staying put, going senior or retiring. The judge receives the same pay for all options. Huck, who is known as one of the hardest-working judges on the bench with a penchant for moving cases to resolution, still plans on working full-time. But he hopes to help out busy districts in other states and to do more teaching at the law schools of the University of Miami and University of Florida — his alma mater — and in high school civics classes. Huck has been hosting high school students in his courtroom to teach them about civics and turned his hallway on the 13th floor of the Miami courthouse into a civics training area with enlarged copies of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. “I want to try some cases in some other places,” he said. “Some of our districts are overloaded with long trials and need help, such as in Houston. Plus, I’m getting old.”

***

Huck did say he wants to “allow the position to open up and bring another person on.” Huck also said his decision does not signify any frustrations with the job, saying: “This is the best job in the world. It brings me a great deal of satisfaction. I wrestled with this for awhile.”

In addition to all the comments about Judge Huck being hard-working, the guy is also a mensch. He tries to go to every bar function and to all the going-away parties for PDs and AUSAs. You can tell that he loves the law and being around lawyers.

"2 Hialeah businessmen busted for bilking Medicare for penis pumps"

That headline, from Jay Weaver's article, really says it all, doesn't it? More:

It's one thing that a pair of Hialeah companies were fraudulently billing Medicare for penis pumps at $395 a pop to supposedly help male patients combat impotence.
It's quite another that Charlie RX and Happy Trips also billed the federal healthcare program for vacuum erection systems to aid female patients battle erectile dysfunction, authorities say.
And what's even more remarkable: Medicare paid the two medical equipment providers $28,600 after they submitted a total of $63,000 in false claims for the erection pumps, according to charges unsealed Monday in federal court in Miami.

Happy Trips indeed.

I'm back

Thanks to my guest bloggers -- SFL, Rumpole, and Rick B.

Now back to work.... I hope everyone enjoys the last good week of traffic because school starts in one week and then US1 and I-95 turn back into parking lots.

A couple of quick hits to start your week:

1. Blago jury still out.

2. Justice Sotomayor jokingly compares herself to J.Lo.

3. Blogger convicted after three tries for threatening comments about federal judges.

4. Justice Ginsburg wants the good ol' days back in the Senate.

5. Justice Scalia OK after tripping.

6. Neal Katyal likely to become 10th Justice.

7. A must read dissent by Judge Kozinski on GPS tracking and the 4th Amendment. The intro:

Having previously decimated the protections the Fourth
Amendment accords to the home itself, United States v.
Lemus, 596 F.3d 512 (9th Cir. 2010) (Kozinski, C.J., dissenting
from the denial of rehearing en banc); United States v.
Black, 482 F.3d 1044 (9th Cir. 2007) (Kozinski, J., dissenting
from the denial of rehearing en banc), our court now proceeds
to dismantle the zone of privacy we enjoy in the home’s curtilage
and in public. The needs of law enforcement, to which
my colleagues seem inclined to refuse nothing, are quickly
making personal privacy a distant memory. 1984 may have
come a bit later than predicted, but it’s here at last.

And the conclusion:

I don’t think that most people in the United States would
agree with the panel that someone who leaves his car parked
in his driveway outside the door of his home invites people
to crawl under it and attach a device that will track the vehicle’s
every movement and transmit that information to total
strangers. There is something creepy and un-American about
such clandestine and underhanded behavior. To those of us
who have lived under a totalitarian regime, there is an eerie
feeling of déjà vu. This case, if any, deserves the comprehensive,
mature and diverse consideration that an en banc panel
can provide. We are taking a giant leap into the unknown, and
the consequences for ourselves and our children may be dire
and irreversible. Some day, soon, we may wake up and find
we’re living in Oceania.

Let's Talk Judicial Appointments!

We might as well, since President Obama and Senator McConnell did the same the other day:

President Obama and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell had their first one-on-one meeting today, and it dealt primarily with one topic: Confirming judges.
Or, more precisely, Republican holds on Obama judicial nominees.

"Right now there are 12 federal judicial nominees that have passed the Judiciary Committee with a unanimous vote," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said before the meeting. "There are other judges that have been through the process and approved by the Judiciary Committee."

The meeting concerned "a direct discussion about moving those judges," Gibbs said.

The president is "rightly frustrated" at a pace that is "unrivaled and unmatched in its slowness," Gibbs said, and he added that some recess appointments may be in the offing.

Hmm, that's not good.

According to ACS' nifty website judicialnominations.org, there are now 100 vacancies out of 867 seats on the federal bench.

So that's roughly 10 percent of the judicial branch, with nominees cooling their heels for indefinite periods while they await an uncertain fate in the Senate.

My guess is this will have some deleterious institutional effects on the federal justice system, but what do I know?

This is SFL, hoping I'm wrong (again).