You can't quit, you're fired.

Although I am still feeling pretty unsettled about the shooting in Newtown Connecticut on Friday, I assume that our Reader(s)™ want a diversion from the bad news.  Perhaps something from the judges do the darndest things file.


The associated press ran a story on Friday about how former Philadelphia traffic court judge Willie Singletary was removed from office by the Pennsylvania Court of Judicial Discipline.

(Former) Judge Singletary was removed because he showed a female court clerk cellphone photos of his genitals.  Sadly, the order of removal is not online yet.  In any event, apparently while Judge Singletarywas showing cell phone pictures of things other than his genitals to the clerk he accidentally showed her pictures of his erect penis.  The story does not say why Judge Singletary had such photos on his phone.  While Judge Singletary's lawyer called showing the photos a "one-time, accidental mistake," it is not clear what he thinks the mistake was.  The complaint against the judge alleged that the judge asked "do you like it?" after showing the photos to the clerk.  So one might conclude that the mistake was showing the pictures to the wrong person and not having the photos on his phone, or taking the pictures in the first place.  If that is the mistake the lawyer means, then he has miscounted the number of mistakes by at least two.

As to the part about being a former judge, that is a one (another?) weird thing about the story.  It turns out that Judge Singletary was removed from office despite the fact that he resigned last February after the allegations about the pictures were made.  Judge Singletary's lawyer pointed out that the Court presumably knew that when it decided to remove the judge.  The other weird thing is that prior to becoming a traffic court judge, Judge Singletary was a pastor who founded a West Philadelphia church.  Mr. Torvik will have to come up with the jokes about that.