Bill McCollum's Good Judgment

I love how lawyers always double down, rather than just confess error and move on.

When you have a lawyer who is also a politician, that tendency is multiplied by the number of 'long stroke' massages one can obtain by a Rentboy in the world's most totally gay continent (Europe):

Attorney General Bill McCollum Tuesday defended his personal intervention into the selection of an antigay expert witness in the case defending the state's gay adoption ban, saying his office "searched a long time" for someone and that George Rekers was the only one of two they could find.

Records show that McCollum personally requested that the state's Department of Children & Families hire Rekers at $300 an hour to help the state defend the case. When the agency balked at the price tag, McCollum's office persisted, ultimately leading to DCF paying pay him $120,000 over two years.

McCollum said that while he would not hire Rekers again knowing what he knows now -- that Rekers vacationed for two weeks in Europe with a gay male escort from Miami and received sexual massages from him -- he suggested that without Rekers the agency would not have been successful.

Note to Big Bill: the agency was not successful, and Judge Lederman found your $120k man to be thoroughly not credible (incredible?) as an "expert."

Also, if you can only find two "experts" -- total -- in the whole country willing to defend your position, maybe your position is insupportable?

Do they not have Daubert at custody hearings?

Worse yet, you now got them all mad and twittery:

Because of this, the Florida GLBT Democratic Caucus calls on McCollum to immediately refund the state of Florida $120,000 whether it’s from his campaign account or his own pocket. “Bill McCollum showed incredibly poor judgment when he hired Dr. George Rekers to spew hate-filled propaganda on the stand,” said Phillip Perry, spokesman for the Florida GLBT Democratic Caucus. “The only way that McCollum can make this right is if he immediately apologizes and pays back taxpayers for this egregious mistake. Floridians expect their leaders to spend taxpayer dollars wisely during these tough times, not waste it on hiring quacks posing as scientists to pursue a narrow, hate-inspired political agenda.”

You know what I always say: any stroke worth doing is worth doing slow, long, and well.

UPDATE:

The good Doc's prior expert testimony experience didn't go so hot either:

But three years before Florida hired Rekers, an Arkansas judge in 2004 denounced him during a similar state adoption case.

"The Arkansas judge, Timothy Fox, said Rekers’ testimony was worthless as evidence because it was only his personal view," according to an editorial this week in The Arkansas Leader.

The Arkansas Supreme Court also concluded Rekers’ testimony "was pointless'' and declared the state’s antigay adoption rule unconstitutional, the editorial continued.

Sheesh, how do you prep an expert for a cross on something like?

"Well, worthless is a state of mind."

"Pointless is as pointless does, I guess."

Judge Cindy Lederman Is a Genius.

Here's why:

"Dr. Rekers' testimony was far from a neutral and unbiased recitation of the relevant scientific evidence. Dr. Rekers' beliefs are motivated by his strong ideological and theological convictions that are not consistent with the science. Based on his testimony and demeanor at trial, the court can not consider his testimony to be credible nor worthy of forming the basis of public policy.''

The Florida Attorney General's Office has appealed Lederman's ruling, and a decision is expected anytime.

Not bad, Judge, but I would have added:

"Further, based on his preposterous mustache and absurd comb-over, this man is either a buffoon or a closeted self-hating homosexual, or possibly both."

Wait a second, who is our dummkopf attorney general again?

Oh yeah, that health-care suing fella who blew -- metaphorically of course -- $87k of taxpayer monies on this tortured hypocrite.

BTW, Bill, scrubbing your wall won't erase the taint.

They Write Letters.....

This time it's the dynamic duo, Judges Cindy Lederman and Jeri Beth Cohen, and they apparently think it's a bad idea to further defund the Guardian Ad Litem program:

If Florida House budget proposal 2009 passes, the most vulnerable children are at risk of losing their voice in court. This proposal recommends a 23-percent cut -- $7.6 million -- in the GAL budget. If passed, it will force the program to substantially reduce the indispensable support system upon which volunteer advocates rely. About 5,700 victims of abuse, abandonment and neglect (18 percent of the total number of children in care) will lose their GAL. This means their voices in court will go silent, and judges will lose an indispensable resource in making sound, therapeutic decisions.

Not one organization involved in child welfare supports the cut, including the Department of Children & Families, Florida's Children First and The Children's Campaign. The Florida Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges -- 48 juvenile-court judges from Pensacola to Miami -- is not in favor of cutting one penny from the GAL budget, let alone by $7.6 million.

Although the Legislature mandates a GAL for every child, that has not been achieved because of lack of funding. By drastically defunding an underfunded mandate, the Legislature is breaking faith with the children it promised to care for and protect.

Good letter, but like I always say don't send it to the Herald, which will print it alongside various rantings by its well-informed readers and that cranky old guy Abe Simpson.

Wait a minute, that's David Broder.

BREAKING -- Judge Lederman Holds Gay Adoption Ban Unconstitutional

Miami Herald story here:

Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Cindy Lederman Tuesday declared Florida's 50-year-old ban on gay adoptions unconstitutional -- a ruling state lawyers immediately said they would challenge.

The ruling sets the stage for Frank Gill, a gay man from North Miami, to adopt two foster children he has raised since 2004.

In a 53-page ruling, Judge Lederman said, ``It is clear that sexual orientation is not a predictor of a person's ability to parent.''

Two lawyers from the Florida Attorney General's Office said they would file an appeal Tuesday.

''We respect the court's decision,'' said Assistant Attorney General Valerie Martin. ``Based upon the wishes of our client, the Department of Children & Families, we will file an appeal.''

Gill, who is raising the half-brothers, ages 4 and 8, said he was ''elated'' by the ruling and ``I cried tears of joy for the first time in my life.''

Thank you Judge.

It's called progress, people.

Charlie Crist: Pig Roasts Yes, Gay Adoption No.

Big Charlie has "no second thoughts" about denying gay folks an opportunity to adopt children who have been through a TPR proceeding. The issue is coming to a head in Judge Cindy Lederman's courtroom this morning as Charlie Auslander goes to trial on behalf of a gay man seeking to adopt two children:

On Wednesday, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Cindy Lederman will begin a trial over Gill's petition to adopt the two half-siblings. Their mother and respective fathers lost their rights to raise them in 2006.

Opposing Gill are the Florida Department of Children & Families and the state attorney general's office. Neil Skene, a DCF special counsel, said he couldn't discuss the Gill adoption, citing the confidentiality of adoption cases. He said that, in general, DCF ''is obliged by statute to oppose the adoption'' when any potential adoptive parent discloses that he or she is gay. The attorney general defends state laws that are challenged, Skene said.

Gov. Charlie Crist said Tuesday that he is not reconsidering the adoption ban. ''No second thoughts,'' he said.

Currently, 3,270 Florida foster children are available for adoption statewide, including 415 in Miami-Dade, 229 in Broward and 13 in Monroe counties, said DCF spokeswoman Erin Geraghty. Many of the children have special needs, like mental illness or developmental disabilities.

The challenge to Florida's law -- which was approved in 1977 amid a heated battle over the civil rights of gay men and women -- will play out in Lederman's small courtroom in Miami's Juvenile Justice Center.

Gill's trial will feature dueling scholars; lawyers for both sides say they intend to present academic research to prove their cases.

State leaders say the stakes are high.

''This case involves issues of great public importance in that [Gill] is challenging a state statute's validity on constitutional grounds,'' Assistant Attorney General Valerie J. Martin wrote in court pleadings.

In court records, state leaders maintain they are upholding public morality and working to ''encourage optimal family structure by seeking to place adoptive children in homes that have both a mother and a father; and in promoting the moral, emotional, mental and physical well-being of minor children,'' Martin wrote.

Gill's attorneys, and lawyers who will represent the two children, insist there is no ''reliable scientific research'' concluding that children fare better in families with heterosexual parents. And without such proof, they say, the state is discriminating against them.

''Florida's statutory gay adoption ban is a constitution-breaching whipsaw of the innocent,'' wrote Charles Auslander, a Children's Trust chief and one of the boys' lawyers. ``It prevents children innocently placed with these foster caregivers from achieving permanency for a reason entirely beyond the power of the child to remedy.''

The two boys, whose names are being withheld to protect their privacy, were raised by the same mother, whose parental rights were severed in 2006. Court records say the mother used cocaine and refused to testify against one of the boys' fathers when he physically abused them.

Gill, 47, and his 34-year-old partner took custody of the half-brothers in December 2004. The boys live with Gill, his partner, and his partner's teenage son in North Miami. Gill's partner is not being named to protect the privacy of his birth son, who shares his name.

`BOYS THRIVING'

In his adoption petition, Gill said ``the boys are thriving physically, emotionally and intellectually.''

When the boys entered foster care, ''they both had peeling scalps because of ringworm, and [the older boy] barely spoke for the first month and was significantly behind his peers developmentally,'' records say.

Recently, Gill said, he had the two boys write down the new surnames they will be given after adoption. The 8-year-old had a look of panic, at first, because he had barely mastered writing the name he was given at birth.

''But then I looked down,'' Gill added, 'and he had a big look of contentment. He spent the next hour writing his new name. `We're going to have the same last name,' '' Gill says the boy said. ' `That's going to make us a family.' That just broke my heart,'' Gill added.

Hilarie Bass, managing partner for the law firm Greenberg Traurig, who was appointed by Lederman to represent the boys, recommended in a report that Lederman grant the adoption petition.

IN GILL'S CORNER

''Upon my visit to the home, I observed the minor children to be happy, healthy, well-adjusted, well-groomed, polite and energetic kids,'' Bass wrote. 'Both . . . referred to [Gill] and [his partner] as `Dad.' ''

A court-appointed guardian also has recommended that Gill be allowed to adopt the boys, records say.

So let's see, the parents lost rights to the children in a TPR proceeding. Hilarie Bass, the children's court-appointed attorney, supports the adoption. So does the guardian ad litem. And the most that DCF Special Counsel Neil Skene can muster in defense is that the DCF is "obligated by statute" to oppose the adoption. But Big Charlie has "no second thoughts." I wonder why?

In light of legendary Judge Joe Eaton's passing, I hope Judge Lederman shows the courage and strength of conviction that Judge Eaton did for so many years. We need more Joe Eatons on the bench.

Judge Lederman, this is your warrior moment.