The Philadelphia Inquirer and its columnist Daniel Rubin on the Luzerne County juvenile justice scandal (via Obbie). One detail I hadn’t known: after teenagers were sent on minor or dubious charges to the detention centers from which Judges Ciavarella and Conahan were getting kickbacks, their parents were made to pay the costs of their detention, their wages sometimes garnished when they fell behind.
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And another opportunity to play “Guess that political party”.
Interesting that the first comment on the story was a hyperbolic denunciation of corrupt Republican neo-con judges tucking bribes between the pages of their Bibles. After someone else pointed out that both judges are longtime Democrats, there were a dozen blustery comments along the lines of “well, whatever the party, it was wrong.” I am rather confident in speculating that they would not have been so even-handed had these crooked judges in fact been Republicans. What has gotten into the people of Philadelphia? Why do they put up with such corrupt machine politics?