What's wrong with that? Just because I'm a judge.....

Judge Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, described as "A brilliant legal mind," granted a 48-hour stay in the obscenity trial of a Hollywood adult filmmaker after the prosecutor requested time to explore "a potential conflict of interest concerning the court having a . . . sexually explicit website with similar material to what is on trial here."

According to the LA Times, this brilliant legal mind is also a sexual weirdo who is not brilliant enought to know that websites are accessible to anyone with an internet connection and that it really isn't appropriate for a thinking, ethical human - who is also a bloody judge - to have werid-assed sexual stuff on his WORK computer!

When asked about the site, Kozinski denyed that the material was purient, stating he simply thought it was 'odd and interesting,' and part of life.

"'Before the site was taken down, visitors to http://alex.kozinski.com were greeted with the message: "Ain't nothin' here. Y'all best be movin' on, compadre.'"

"The sexually explicit material on the site was extensive, including images of masturbation, public sex and contortionist sex."

I'm sorry, but last time I checked, "brilliant legal mind" didn't preclude having simple common sense.

This Tuesday past, Kozinski acknowledged that his website was full of weirdness - naked women painted as cows; naked men cavorting with aroused farm animals.... yeah, weird.

He claimed he didn't realised the site was accessible but he also said he'd forwarded the material to 'friends.' Given his profession and the level he's at in the profession, one wonders who those friends are and what trials they might be presiding over currently....

He then claimed that he didn't remember posting some of the material and then... he blamed his kid.

Kozinski knows full well the internet is essentially a glass house and he said so in an interview with Reason Magazine:

"Kozinski: The world is probably getting more libertarian. Modern communications and modern trade are making it very difficult for modern governments to exercise controls. You can no longer keep ideas out of China. People can log onto the Internet; they’ve got television. It essentially becomes impossible to block ideas.

Then Reason made this point:

Reason: There is a countervailing tendency in technology: It also allows the authorities—whether the government or your employer—to keep tabs on you.

Kozinski: It is certainly easier to keep track of people, and that will be a threat to privacy. But I think people can work around it once they realize that they live in a fish bowl. They will take defensive measures. For instance, you don’t have to walk around with a cell phone if you don’t want to be tracked. You don’t have to use the Internet."

Kozinski then makes it clear that he knows how to protect material from prying eyes:

Reason: Has this new technology made us freer if we have to be afraid?

Kozinski: You don’t always need complete privacy. There are ways of getting it if you want it.

First, he attempts a defence of ignorance, which, if he were really such a brilliant legal mind, he would know is not accepted as a defence ever.

Then he calls objectionable material 'funny,' in order to diminish the crime, a tactic regularly used by criminals trying to worm themselves out of a dirty little hole they've dug for themselves.

Then, he has the audacity to blame his own child for putting material on a website he had, a day earlier, claimed he didn't know was publicly accessible.

This man should be thrown to the wolves from whence he came. He's either not mentally capable of doing his job or is seriously compromised in his ethics.

There's no question he has some weird sexual stuff going on in his life.

For the record, this is why the rest of the world laughs at the U.S. This guy should not be on the bench. Period. There is likely much prior indication of previous inappropriate behavior, but as judges in the U.S. are elected, their friends - meaning those in whose best interest it is to keep such judges on the bench - turn many a blind eye.

According to Reason Magazine, "Kozinski, now married with three children, was a late intellectual bloomer who, before graduating at the top of his law class at UCLA, wiled away his time wooing women in such unusual places as television’s Dating Game, which he won with an audaciously smarmy pick-up line: “Hello, the flower of my heart.” That unctuousness is totally absent from his legal writings, which feature a razor-sharp analytic skill."

Why is this guy still sitting???

Photo Credit: Stephen Osman, LA Times