I am troubled to hear of the various calls for the investigation and impeachment of Judge Sam Kent, a federal district judge sitting in Galveston, Texas. Not out of any particular affection for the man himself, as we have never met. Nor is it out of any particular interest in the rights of alleged sexual harrassers, although I am reserving judgment until I read more about what allegedly occurred. Rather, I will miss the opportunity to read some of the snarkiest, most inappropriately sarcastic rulings and opinions in the history of the federal court system. First off, the allegations: the Fifth Circuit has already issued a reprimand:

The reprimand against Kent says a court employee complained in May of sexual harassment and that an investigation led to other, unspecified complaints. The order issued last Friday didn’t say whether the 19 judges on the council determined the complaints to be true.

The list of ethical complaints beyond the harrassment is, uh, long.

If even a fraction of these are true, then investigation and possible impeachment are certainly appropriate. I merely want to take a moment to salute the man who singlehandedly, and quite facetiously, made the federal judiciary fun.

I now present Kent’s greatest hits, as I see them.

• In Smith v. Colonial Penn Ins. Co., Kent denied the insurance company’s motion to transfer venue to Houston because of Galveston‘s lack of a major airport (and citing the convenience of both plaintiff and defendant in its motion), stating that “it is not this Court’s concern how the Plaintiff gets here, whether it be by plane, train, automobile, horseback, foot, or on the back of a huge Texas jackrabbit, as long as Plaintiff is here at the proper date and time.”
• In Rep. of Bolivia v. Phillip Morris Companies, et al, a tobacco lawsuit inexplicably brought by a South American nation in Brazoria County, Texas, Judge Kent ordered the case transferred to the District of Columbia, noting that “[w]hile this Court does not [after reviewing a somewhat dated globe] profess to understand all of the political subtleties of the geographical transmogrifications ongoing in Eastern Europe, the Court is virtually certain that Bolivia is not within the four counties over which this Court presides, even though the words Brazoria and Bolivia are a lot alike and caused some real, initial confusion until the Court conferred with its law clerks.”
• In Bradshaw v. Unity Marine Corp., Judge Kent granted one defendant’s motion for summary judgment (dismissing the lawsuit before trial), noting the attorneys’ general lack of preparedness:
  

  Before proceeding further, the Court notes that this case involves two extremely likable lawyers, who have together delivered some of the most amateurish pleadings ever to cross the hallowed causeway into Galveston, an effort which leads the Court to surmise but one plausible explanation. Both attorneys have obviously entered into a secret pact — complete with hats, handshakes and cryptic words — to draft their pleadings entirely in crayon on the back sides of gravy-stained paper place mats, in the hope that the Court would be so charmed by their child-like efforts that their utter dearth of legal authorities in their briefing would go unnoticed. Whatever actually occurred, the Court is now faced with the daunting task of deciphering their submissions. With Big Chief tablet readied, thick black pencil in hand, and a devil-may-care laugh in the face of death, life on the razor’s edge sense of exhilaration, the Court begins.

He may turn out to be an unethical sexual harasser, but dangit, he made judicial opinions entertaining. Justice Clarence Thomas can’t even do that by accident.

I’m a reasonably law-n-order-type guy, but there is something creepily Orwellian (and Gattacan) about this, via Volokh Conspiracy:

Facts: Rape suspect walking on a street spits on the sidewalk. An investigator is following the suspect, and he collects the spit; a DNA test proves a match. Holding: No Fourth Amendment violation. Analysis:

[A]lthough the defendant had a reasonable expectation of privacy in his saliva (and other bodily fluids)…when he expectorated on to a public street and did not retrieve the fluid, he voluntarily abandoned that protection; he assumed the risk of the public witnessing his action and thereafter taking possession of his bodily fluids.

(Emphasis added)

As one commenter to the post notes:

I wonder about the scenario where the cops take a suspect down to the station, load him up with coffee and donuts, and wait for him to take a crap in the special DNA-collecting toilet.

I suppose the basic argument, once again, is that if you haven’t done anything wrong and/or have nothing to hide, what is the harm in the police being able to scoop up your saliva, et al? I worry (not entirely facetiously) about the coffee and donuts scenario presented above, but also about, uh, let’s call them “false positives.” Yes, you may call me paranoid, but what if someone somehow gets someone else’s genetic materials (and the possibilities here are endless, ranging from a good spy story to a porn movie plot, ask me about my screenplays) and plants them at the scene of a crime? Will we someday have to submit a spit/blood/mucus/urine/stool/hair follicle/s***n sample to get a driver’s license or passport?

Given that we now inhabit a country where the Republican candidates for president don’t quite seem to get that Jack Bauer is a fictional character, and the CSI’s are all huge hits, is my scenario that far-fetched?

If it turns out that the government will require me to submit a s***n sample, may I at least make a request as to who collects it?

Perhaps there is a simpler moral here: it is rude to spit, urinate, vomit, or otherwise expel genetic material in public, and now you really don’t want to do it (or at least use a trash can, you know, for plausible deniability).