Right-Wing Judge Found With Fetish Pornography On Website

A closely watched obscenity trial in Los Angeles federal court was suspended Wednesday after the judge acknowledged maintaining his own publicly accessible website featuring sexually explicit photos and videos.

Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, granted a 48-hour stay in the obscenity trial of a Hollywood adult filmmaker after the prosecutor requested time to explore "a potential conflict of interest concerning the court having a . . . sexually explicit website with similar material to what is on trial here."

Read the whole story here.

Comments

[Tropiholic]

The GOP needs to build more and bigger walk in closets. They are quickly running out of space.

[thinbluetorpedo]

Sounds like he is guilty of being stupid more than anything else.

[wm1066]

Wasn't there a judge about a year ago that got caught using a sex toy (pump) while presiding over cases? And the court reporter heard the pump, and he was exposed.

[pbfishtaco]

guilt, repression, projection. Sounds like a scene out of 'And Justice for All'.

[MemphisBuffalo]

He is added to the long list of GOP elite with sick and nasty desires. It was all on his work computer so tax dollars were spent to feed his illness. He should lose all retirement and have to pay back much of his salary.

[JackNasty]

The files in question were on a family website, not on his computer at work.

The definition of overreacting is reaching conclusions that are seriously disconnect from the facts.

[Turtleluv6]

His website was public access so if he accessed his personal accounts from work to share with his friends it's still wasting taxpayer money. Don't give the benefit of the doubt I work to hard to have this man wasting my money.

[kidrips]

This guy's a right-winger? On 9th Circuit? Are you sure? He looks alot like a liberal.

[Ramirez]

From the Lessig blog:
**

The Kozinski mess
June 12, 2008 11:31 PM - comments (23)

So the wires are a twitter with the story of Chief Judge Alex Kozinski's "web site" which, from reading the stories, you'd think was filled with porn (and worse), revealing a dark soul who, some experts in legal ethics suggest, shouldn't be presiding at an obscenity trial. That, you think, is what I mean by "the Kozinski mess."

It's not. What I mean by "the Kozinski mess" is the total inability of the media -- including we, the media, bloggers -- to get the basic facts right, and keep the reality in perspective. The real story here is how easily we let such a baseless smear travel - and our need is for a better developed immunity (in the sense of immunity from a virus) from this sort of garbage.

Here are the facts as I've been able to tell: For at least a month, a disgruntled litigant, angry at Judge Kozinski (and the Ninth Circuit) has been talking to the media to try to smear Kozinski. Kozinski had sent a link to a file (unrelated to the stuff being reported about) that was stored on a file server maintained by Kozinski's son, Yale. From that link (and a mistake in how the server was configured), it was possible to determine the directory structure for the server. .......
**

read more at:
http://lessig.org/blog/2008/06/the_kozinski_mess.html

[thundermummy]

"My son did it? "" I had know idea that it was publicly accessible?" These aren't explanations, they are excuses. Pretty dumb and equally incriminating excuses at that.

[Turtleluv6]

Nice try but no buying it.....

[Ramirez]

You obviously did not read the link.
More from Lessig article:
***

"Cyberspace is weird and obscure to many people. So let's translate all this a bit: Imagine the Kozinski's have a den in their house. In the den is a bunch of stuff deposited by anyone in the family -- pictures, books, videos, whatever. And imagine the den has a window, with a lock. But imagine finally the lock is badly installed, so anyone with 30 seconds of jiggling could open the window, climb into the den, and see what the judge keeps in his house. Now imagine finally some disgruntled litigant jiggers the lock, climbs into the window, and starts going through the family's stuff. He finds some stuff that he knows the local puritans won't like. He takes it, and then starts shopping it around to newspapers and the like: "Hey look," he says, "look at the sort of stuff the judge keeps in his house."

http://lessig.org/blog/2008/06/the_kozinski_mess.html

[research]

repressed sexuality breeds perversion.

[NoSillyName]

Why am I not surprised? The Right Wingers are all perverts of one kind or another.

[lthuedk_1]

Nothing unusual for a Rebot.
http://www.light-to-dark.com/republican_totem.html

[Arguman]

Skimming this article and the issues involved, I wonder why this really matters? So he likes to look at porn. So what? Anything not involving two naked people and the missionary position is considered a fetish by the media anyhow.

[Shozen]

It's called a direct "Conflict of Interest." The article states that the material posted on his website is substantially the same as the material being presented in his court for prosecution as obscene. Can it truly be obscene if the Judge posts the same stuff on his personal website? Even if a jury makes the ultimate decision in the case, the judge makes the preliminary decision regarding the material in order for the Government to take it to trial. In a nutshell, as the matter had gone to trial, the judge admits that he brakes the very law the state wants to enforce.

Tell us lots about the importance of the law if the Judge himself thinks it's okay to break it.

[deepintheheartoftejas]

Except now the material on his site has been posted to a variety of places, and everyone can see it's not remotely the same. None of it even fits the the standard definition of pornography. The alleged 'bestiality' video is one that was played on America's Funniest Home Videos on broadcast TV without any complaints, and which is widely available on youtube. The other stuff is the somewhat crude humor you'd find in the greeting cards section of any Spencer's in any mall in America. A pair of women lifting their skirts to show their pubes, in front of a sign that reads 'Bush for President'? This is supposed to be equivalent to some of the vilest pornography ever made, depicting rapes, outright bestiality, feces, etc. I'm not saying that should be illegal, but it's utterly disgusting. The pictures on Kozinski's servers didn't begin to approach that.

[VOTER]

I agree with you. "So What?"

Except, for the man's H Y P O C R I S Y which is typical for righteous Republicans.

[robiform]

You are absolutely correct--this is another in a very long series of incidents in which self-righteous politicians, preachers, et. al. who try to tell everyone else how to live their lives get caught doing things that are supposedly "sinful". Or, "do as I say, not as I do"!!

[Krikkit]

Unless it involves kiddies, leave the man alone!

This kind of reporting is despicable.

[rmetz74]

What's despicable is someone in a position of power punishing people for something he himself is guilty of.

[BitJam]

What the judge did was not illegal so how can you possibly say he is punishing others for the same behavior?

The LA Times really goofed when they published this non-story.

[Shozen]

Don't leave the judge alone. He is breaking the very law that the Government is trying to enforce against someone else. That's the issue.

What it despicable is Government prosecution if the matter involves consenting adults.

[BadCompany]

Should we leave him alone to impose criminal sentences on people like Ira Isaacs?

[ENPeterson]

Seriously, before you say "this is just another republican hypocrite" educate yourself about him, he is a fervent libertarian and has been very progressive in the areas of personal liberty and freedom. He is a great justice and his opinions are hilarious too. No you may not always agree with him, but you maybe surprised how often he sides with progressives. And he definitely does not push the moral right hollier than thou agenda.

[curly2]

You're right-- I don't think anyone read this article. If they did they they may have noted that this guy is a fervent First Amendment/free speech supporter, a conservative in terms of limiting government intervention and freedoms, NOT a "moralist" conservative trying to push a religious agenda.

The ironic thing is that if he's recused from the trial, the filmaker they discuss here (Ivans) will likely get a less tolerant judge for these kinds of videos.

[Turtleluv6]

Regardless of his record he not only has this felth on his website of employment but is allowing his son to access his account which brings up disclosure issues and funding by taxpayer money cause he isn't paying out of his pocket.

This man needs to be removed from office.

[lobo1939]

Larry Flint wrote in his book "Sex, Lies and Politics: The Naked Truth" that it is always republicans who have sex scandals.

[Turtleluv6]

He needs to be removed. Our tax paying dollars are supporting his sick ass.

[Quaoar]

The ass in the video (see Lessig's blog for youtube link) looked quite healthy, if a little bit horny.

[TroubleNYC]

What is he doing that is so "sick"?