In December, the California Supreme Court declined to review a decision by the Commission on Judicial Performance to remove a judge for misconduct that took the CJP 114 pages to explain. This might be worth a full article, but right now I can only give you the lowlights. While the judge was being investigated for asking parties about their “churchgoing habits” (already not good), he ran a counter-investigation to find out whether court employees were cooperating, saying he was looking for “moles” and that people who “ratted” might get “what’s coming to them.” He also tried to “put a stop to plea bargaining,” had a generally “dysfunctional relationship” with staff and attorneys who appeared before him regularly, and had a habit of “acting inappropriately,” the CJP wrote, including “repeatedly referring to one Hawaiian staff member as ‘Queen Latifah.'” (Queen Latifah is from New Jersey.)
Who among us hasn’t fled from officers of one police department only to drive unwittingly into the parking garage of a different police department? Of course at that point you have only two options: (1) give up, or (2) jump off the second floor of the parking garage. I’m not here to tell you what to do. Well, I am, but I have sort of a conflict of interest here because jumping is funnier.
Speaking of trying to flee, it also might be worth trying to hide in somebody’s attic, but just remember that fugitives who do this tend to fall through the ceiling while police are searching the room below. This can be quite awkward at first but will quickly become hilarious to everyone but you. (To be fair, this sometimes happens to police too.)
Or have you considered a disguise? Wigs are sometimes an option but do little to obscure, let’s say, an extremely distinctive neck tattoo. Did I say “little”? I meant “nothing.” What’s that? You made yourself a neck wig? I’m going to change the subject now.
This reminds me that back in 2014, monkeys with that kind of immunity had become such a problem for government offices in India that officials hired 40 humans to try to scare them off by impersonating much bigger monkeys. I’d like to be able to tell you that the monkey-impersonators then lost all fear of humans and ran amok, forcing officials to hire even bigger people to scare them off, but I have no evidence that happened.
And that in turn reminds me of the 2019 case in which a woman claimed she had been attacked by Las Vegas legend Wayne Newton’s pet monkey, alleging Newton “knew or should have known that the monkey had a propensity” to do this kind of thing. To my knowledge, that monkey lacked immunity, although he might have been granted it later in exchange for testifying against his boss.
Sweden (I’m changing the subject again) has reportedly applied to trademark the name “Sweden,” saying it doesn’t want potential tourists to confuse it with other places in the world that are also named “Sweden.” But it turns out the records of the EU’s Intellectual Property office are online, so somebody who actually bothered to check could determine that no such application has been filed. Who’s the journalist here, anyway?
A driver in British Columbia tried to do the right thing on New Year’s Eve by calling police to report another driver he thought might be impaired. But officers then smelled alcohol on the breath of the driver who was trying to stop the other driver from driving, and he failed a breath test so they stopped him from driving instead. The reportedly impaired driver of course turned out to be sober; he “was just having trouble driving in the dark,” the report explained.
