Oh boy. You know you're in deep do-do when your hometown
newspaper comes after you. Ask former Michigan Supreme Court Justice
Betty Weaver who must have been steaming when the Leelanau Enterprise
arrived in her mail box the other day.
For those who don't follow this stuff, Ms. Weaver has been on a
one-woman mission to reform the state's highest court. Her
relationship, if you can call it that, with Republican members of the
court has been ugly, personal and anything but collegial as the court
likes to self-describe.
Now retired from the bench, Ms. Weaver continues and recently
disclosed the transcripts from secretly recorded deliberations behind
close doors. The majority of the court recently censured their former
"friend" for not only recording the private judicial chit chat but for
letting the public in on the conversation to boot.
The newspaper was careful to applaud her efforts at reform but
takes her to the woodshed for playing politics with the transcript.
The paper says she justified the release to reveal the
"dysfunctional" level of the deliberations which included the use of
the "N" word by the lone African American Justice on the court.
The paper concludes, instead, that she did it to hurt the
re-election chances of that very Justice Robert Young, Jr. The
editorial convicts her of trying to cripple his campaign with what the
paper termed her "political shenanigans."
This was some pretty heavy duty stuff which leads to two
questions: Will she cancel her subscription and what will her letter
to the editor say?