"Bernie" Makes a Point

Some snivelling little weasel keeps anonymously posting "off-topic" referrals to Bernard Allen's website here. The latest referred to a a blog entry that relates, at least impiedly, to a Standard-Examiner article that tells how bad Ogden gets the shaft from the Governor's office on local judicial appointments. You can read "Bernie's blog article here.

I honestly don't know why Bernie decided to set up his own blog, rather than to just post on this one, which I've worked my a** off for almost four months to set up for discussion, and to build up respectable readership from all political viewpoints, with a notable degree of success.

Maybe he just likes to rant to himself.

He does have a point about this, though: Ogden City "takes it in the shorts" every time the Governor of Utah brings in a carpet-bagger judge up from Salt Lake City (to buy a home on the southern outskirts of Ogden) to administer justice in our town. District Court judges should be familiar with the communities in which they reside and administer "justice." Above all, judges should be accountable to the communities over which they preside. Recent appointees don't even come close to that. The same thing's been going on, of course, since the coming of the railroad to Ogden, when the local Ogden "Bishop's Courts" determined they had no actual legal "jurisdiction" over "gentiles*." (See, e.g., Ogden Anecdotes, (1985 Ed.) by I. Woodhouse, p. 26.)

The Governor's office acts like a remote Roman Emperor in the appointment of Ogden District Court judges. Bernie's entirely correct on at least this single point.

Does anyone here have any comments about the low-quality of judges that Utah Governors have historically appointed from SLC to the Ogden Branch of the Second Judicial District -- especially recently?

Comments, anyone?

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*Readers who reside in the real world should understand that the term "gentile" locally refers to anyone who isn't "Mormon." It's just another in a long line of local cultural "quirks."