Judge Cortiñas Channels His Inner Tears For Fears

Rules shmules, who the hail cares -- the Gov says to find somebody else:

In a tense and prickly telephone meeting Wednesday night, the Florida Supreme Court Judicial Nominating Commission fiercely debated whether to consider sending the name of a Miami-based appeals court judge to Gov. Charlie Crist for consideration as his third pick to the high court.

During the unorthodox, 90-minute conference call, the nine commission members made the unusual decision, by a 5-4 vote, to officially ''diverge'' from rules governing how they meet -- just in case they happened to be already breaking those rules by meeting over the phone.

But then it gets weirder:

Then they voted 5-4 to break their rules again and consider a new applicant to the Supreme Court: Angel A. Cortiñas, a judge on the Third District Court of Appeal in Miami-Dade. Cortiñas has not gone through the same interview and vetting process that 18 other applicants went through a week ago.

''You can interview me now,'' shouted Cortiñas, who was listening to the conference call.

The Judge continued:

"These are the things I could do without. Come on, I'm talking to you -- come on!"

Anyways, here's what happened next:

The commission voted down, 5-4, a motion to reopen the entire 30-day application process but then voted to consider Cortiñas, who had not previously applied for the opening, in the name of diversity. Cortiñas had applied in the summer for other vacancies on the court.

Ok, I'm not a betting man, but based solely on the foregoing I would say Judge Cortiñas has a very good shot of becoming our next Florida Supreme Court Justice.

LATE UPDATE:

A dear reader and good friend relates that only the hunky and reliably Hispanic Frank Jimenez has made it out of committee. For prior coverage of Frank see here and here.

EVEN LATER UPDATE:

The DBR confirms the news about Jimenez we broke earlier today.