Impeachment Trial Begins for Lousiana Judge

[Freddie Stubbs]

Source: NY Times

A special Senate committee this morning begins deliberating corruption charges against Judge G. Thomas Porteous Jr. It could set a precedent on whether a judge can be removed for conduct that occurred before he joined the bench.

The House voted unanimously in March to impeach Judge Porteous, a New Orleans federal district judge appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1994. He is accused of accepting bribes while he was a Louisiana state judge in Jefferson Parish, and of lying to the Senate and the Federal Bureau of Investigation during the vetting process.

Judge Porteous has been suspended with pay since 2008, when a judicial ethics panel first recommended his impeachment. If convicted, he would become the eighth federal judge impeached and removed by Congress. A two-thirds vote in the Senate is required to convict.

A bipartisan, 12-member panel of senators headed by Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, will conduct the trial. Five House members serve as “managers,” or prosecutors: Representatives Adam Schiff, Democrat of California; Bob Goodlatte, Republican of Virginia; Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California; Hank Johnson, Democrat of Georgia; and Jim Sensenbrenner, Republican of Wisconsin.

Read more: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/13/impeachment-trial-begins-for-lousiana-judge/

[alp227]

1. 11 years after the Clinton impeachment, one of Clinton's appointees is on trial

Interesting. Wikipedia's article about the judge explains why (and neither this article nor the New Orleans Times-Picayune article linked explain):

On June 18, 2008 the Judicial Conference of the United States transmitted a certificate<8> to the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives expressing the Conference's determination that consideration of impeachment of Porteous might be warranted.<8> The certificate stated that there was substantial evidence that Porteous "repeatedly committed perjury by signing false financial disclosure forms under oath,"<9> thus concealing "cash and things of value that he solicited and received from lawyers appearing in litigation before him."<9>

Is perjury a value spread among Clinton and his crew? Just askin'.

Now when is that Torture Memo author Jay Bybee (a Bush Jr. appointee) gonna be impeached?

[No Elephants]

3. Clinton is no idol of mine, but smearing him with this is quite a stretch.

[alp227]

4. What? I thought I put tags around that supposed "smear"

regarding perjury. it's supposed to be openbracket rightwingtalkingpoint closedbracket. Seems that anything within brackets never displays on DU. Grr!

[ShockediSay]

2. If lying to Congress is grounds for impeachment, what about Alito and Roberts

as they testified under oath about the "value of precedent" before they swept away about 100 years of precedent so as to allow corporations, in one more step toward fascism, unlimited power to corrupt the political process with money?

And what about their affiliation with The Federalist Society, and its agenda driven membership, clearly in violation of the Judicial Code of Ethics prohibiting federal judges from engaging in activities detracting in appearance from impartiality, IMHO.

Why aren't we banging the impeachment drum against these political hacks IMHO, Alito and Roberts.