SPITZER'S SPAT 
With all the bickering between Governor Eliot Spitzer and his foes — Democrat and Republican alike — it’s no wonder the Legislature couldn’t reach a judicial pay raise agreement and other issues in the session that ended in late June. The New York Law Journal and The Daily News do a nice job summarizing the acrimonious state of affairs. One annoyance that some legislators think contributed to the stalemate: the continuous bickering between Spitzer and Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, whom the governor has accused of misappropriating state funds. (Bruno, meanwhile, thinks the governor’s real motive is to shake up the current 33-29 Senate majority Republicans enjoy.) Democratic Assemblyman John J. McEneny had this to say: "I think this needless and useless fight has got to calm down. You can't campaign to take away somebody's majority status and burn the bridges during the legislative session and when you need a bridge to cross, it's not there. Why? Because you burned it!"

 
OH, BROOKLYN, THOU ART LESS LOVELY AND LESS TEMPERATE 
The Brooklyn Eagle has an update in the continuing investigation over the depleting of the bank account of retired Brooklyn Judge John Phillips, while he languished in a Bronx nursing home. New evidence suggests Phillips’s former court-appointed property guardian, Emani P. Taylor, used upwards of $200,000 of the judge’s one-time $10 million estate to pay off a mortgage and dote on family and friends. But when offered the opportunity to prosecute Taylor, the Brooklyn DA’s office declined, choosing instead to refer the matter to an attorney disciplinary committee for the Appellate Division, Second Department. But the real question is what happened to the rest of Phillips’ estate — most of which has disappeared under Taylor and other guardians– what this says about the state of Brooklyn’s guardianship judges, and why the DA’s office is choosing to lay low.

 
CHEEKY MATTER 
A Forbes AP thread relays the crusade of a Times Square church to prevent a bidet billboard ad featuring naked buttocks with smiley faces from going up on the side of a theatre district building where it rents space. Reverend Neil Rhodes, pastor of the interdenominational Times Square Church, successfully petitioned Manhattan State Supreme Court Justice Marcy Friedman to issue a temporary injunction against the billboard. “The court finds that the motion presents novel and significant issues on which further legal authority is required," said Friedman.

 
SOVEREIGN LAND? 
And in another AP story, Newsday details the continued plight of the Buffalo anti-casino group Citizens for a Better Buffalo to shut down the Seneca Indian Nation's newest casino. This week the group will file another lawsuit in federal court — they lost an earlier such lawsuit in January — arguing that the casino does not lie on sovereign land. (The Buffalo Creek Casino opened July 3, a day after the National Indian Gaming Commission ruled that the off-reservation property qualified as Indian lands under federal Indian gaming regulations.)

 
WHAT'S REAL AND NOT REAL 
Finally, Madison County Judge Biagio DiStefano must decide whether to grant a new trial to convicted rapist Dan Lackey, whose eight-year sentence was cast into doubt after new evidence suggested the alleged victim retracted her story about a similar rape in Oswego County, and that police may have forced a confession out of Lackey, who has an I.Q. in the low 70s, after a rigorous interrogation. Only three months after Lackey’s conviction, his accuser told state police investigator Michael Pastuf that she’d lied about a second attack. “I don't know what is real and not real anymore,” the woman said. “This has been going on a couple of times in the past. When this happens, I black out, and I am not really aware of what goes on around me. I heard voices. The voices call my name, they tell me to say things to people, and the voices also tell me to hurt myself." The Oneida Dispatch covers the evidentiary hearing.