"WHAT WAS HE SMOKING?"
All the bad guys rigging judicial elections in Brooklyn might have gone to jail, but at least one of this year’s Kings County judicial races fails to inspire confidence that the clubhouse has been cleaned of political riffraff. The Brooklyn Paper has a story about a gay and lesbian Democratic political club’s incensed reaction to the joint endorsement — by Borough President Marty Markowitz and Democratic Party boss and Assemblyman Vito Lopez — of Brooklyn Civil Court candidate Noach Dear. We’ve written about Dear before, after he was lambasted in the pages of The Village Voice. Now, the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club has fighting words for Markowitz: It alleges that Dear objected to the 1986 gay rights bill during his 18 years in the City Council and has urged voters to call or e-mail Markowitz’s office to “tell him that an anti-choice, homophobic bigot does not belong on the Civil Court.” Said Allen Roskoff, president of the Jim Owles club, “I think Marty has made a terrible mistake. I don’t know what he was smoking. Endorsing Dear is unconscionable. It’s despicable. I can’t see him being able to qualify for the endorsement of a gay club after this.” It doesn’t help the borough’s reputation that Dear’s opponent, Karen Yellen, has 15 years experience on the bench (to Dear’ zero), and that her testimony against former corrupt Democratic honcho Clarence Norman — to whose cronies she once doled out $21,000 in unnecessary expenditures in a judicial race — was a critical piece of evidence in his bribery trial. “Karen Yellen’s testimony sent Clarence Norman to prison. She is owed a vote of thanks [from] all those committed to judicial reform,” a blogger wrote on Room Eight, a site devoted to New York City politics.

 
GOING OUT OF STATE 
Elsewhere on the gay legal beat, The New York Sun reports on a ruling by Court of Claims Judge Thomas McNamara that directs New York to recognize gay marriages performed out of state or overseas for the purposes of collecting benefits under the New York State Retirement System. One of six or so pending cases statewide over the issue, McNamara’s decision sustains a 2004 policy of the comptroller’s office, which was challenged by an Arizona-based anti-gay marriage group after the New York Court of Appeals ruled in 2006 that the state Constitution does not provide same-sex couples with the right to wed.

 
BLACK BOX WILL PLAY 
From The New York Law Journal: a story about Southern District Judge Alvin Hellerstein’s recent ruling that allows the families of victims of Flight 93 — the 9/11 plane that crashed into a rural field in Pennsylvania — to play portions of a cockpit voice recording before a jury. In limiting playback to a portion of the recording, Judge Hellerstein said he wanted to avoid invading "unnecessarily the privacy of other passengers and crew members and their families.”

 
SEX OFFENDER LAWS QUESTIONED 
Forbes has a piece today about a report released Wednesday by Human Rights Watch that takes aim at state laws targeting sex offenders, many of which the group deems questionable, especially in their residency restrictions and recidivism analyses. "These are laws that weren't based on reason — they were based on a few horrific cases," said Jamie Fellner, director of the U.S. program at Human Rights Watch. "But it's very difficult for politicians to demonstrate the courage to urge changes in these laws."

 
CLOSED DOORS, ANGRY JUDGE 
And finally, The Glen Falls Post Star has a story about Warren County Supreme Court Justice David Krogmann’s ruling against the Washington County Attorney’s Office. That office had filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit accusing the county Board of Supervisors of holding an illegal closed-door meeting to discuss whether county Budget Officer Kenneth Talkington actually had an MBA degree. Krogmann wrote that he was “troubled by the [the county’s] circuitous argument” that lawyer John Winn could not bring the lawsuit because he was not present for the meeting in question. “Moreover,” wrote the judge, “but for hearsay, the plaintiff, as well as other interested residents in Washington County, would never have known that a meeting took place on July 12, 2007. This is precisely the kind of action the Open Meetings Law was designed to prevent.”