(December 18, 2024 at 11:53 am)Thumpalumpacus Wrote:Good article on that HEREQuote:A federal judge apologized after he was found to have violated the judiciary’s code of conduct for publishing an op-ed earlier this year criticizing Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito over a flag controversy.
U.S. District Judge Michael Ponsor in May wrote that the decision to fly an upside-down American flag outside of the conservative justice’s home “shouldn’t have happened” and was “dumb.”
“For these violations of the Code, unintentional at the time but clear in retrospect, I offer my unreserved apology and my commitment to scrupulously avoid any such transgression in the future,” Ponsor, an appointee of former President Clinton, wrote in his apology.
The apology was made public Tuesday by The Article III Project, a conservative legal group founded by an ally of President-elect Trump that filed a judicial complaint against Ponsor after The New York Times published his essay.
His apology was attached to an order from Albert Diaz, the chief judge of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals who was assigned to handle the complaint, finding that Ponsor violated the code of conduct for federal judges.
Diaz wrote that it violated provisions prohibiting a judge from diminishing public confidence in the judiciary and publicly commenting on the merits of a pending matter. The appeals judge said he was satisfied with Ponsor’s public apology letter, and that it was sufficient enough to conclude the matter.
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-bat...ito-op-ed/
Listen, pal, if you want to see conduct that undermines public confidence in the judiciary, look at Alito's behavior that prompted the opinion piece -- that of Thomas as well.
"Alito’s behavior violates multiple canons of the ethics code the Court adopted for itself in November. At a basic level, the public display of symbols associated with an active political movement constitutes political activity, which the code explicitly forbids. His actions also call into question whether he will preside impartially over January 6 cases, as the code requires justices do “at all times.”"
"Perhaps even more troubling than the underlying conduct is Alito’s subsequent failure to disavow it. Since January 6, federal judges across the country have heard hundreds of criminal cases involving January 6 rioters. Alito’s failure to distance himself from these symbols threatens to legitimize a movement that presents an ongoing security risk to the justice’s colleagues in the lower federal courts — and to the rule of law in general. The judges hearing these cases have faced unprecedented waves of harassment and violent threats against themselves and their families.. Such threats against judges for the discharge of their duties undermine an independent judiciary, which the ethics code requires justices to uphold and preserve."