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Frank Jimenez to St. Pete Times -- I'm Not Returning Your Calls, Either!

a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Wb7gmBhM3z4/SVAVECZl9DI/AAAAAAAABHo/SMxkLZf-tSk/s1600-h/Heatmiser.png"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Wb7gmBhM3z4/SVAVECZl9DI/AAAAAAAABHo/SMxkLZf-tSk/s400/Heatmiser.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282745522013467698" border="0" //abr /a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Wb7gmBhM3z4/SVAUKxI8lkI/AAAAAAAABHg/TXKzQG22WX4/s1600-h/frankfacebook.jpg"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Wb7gmBhM3z4/SVAUKxI8lkI/AAAAAAAABHg/TXKzQG22WX4/s400/frankfacebook.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282744538127701570" border="0" //abr /a href="http://southfloridalawyers.blogspot.com/2008/12/rebekah-poston-and-alvin-davis-frank.html"We've already noted/a Frank's seeming inability to be available for phone calls with journalists who are writing negative stories about him. Well, a href="http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/editorials/article942679.ece"you can add the St. Pete Times to newspapers that won't be getting a call back from Frank anytime soon/a:br /p/pblockquotepspan style="font-weight: bold;"If Gov. Charlie Crist appoints Frank Jimenez to the Florida Supreme Court, he will be selecting the least qualified and most ideological nominee available./span Jimenez is a Cuban-American and would add diversity to a court that now lacks a Hispanic justice. But in this case, diversity would be a pretext for stacking the Supreme Court with political conservatives and abandoning its centrist history./ppspan style="font-weight: bold;"A Jimenez appointment would make a mockery of the state's judicial nomination process,/span which was initially designed to ensure meritorious and nonpolitical picks for the state's appellate courts. While it was reasonable for Crist to ask the Judicial Nominating Commission for more names to add diversity to the list of candidates, the commission's handling of the request in a contentious Wednesday night telephone conference is legally suspect and politically tainted./ppIn a series of 5-4 votes, the commission publicly agreed to waive its own rules and add at least one more name to the list of finalists. It is no coincidence that the majority were appointees made directly by Crist or former Gov. Jeb Bush, and that the minority were gubernatorial appointees recommended by the Florida Bar. One guess how the secret ballot to add Jimenez went. This was not a broad search for diversity but a heavy-handed move to add one specific name to the list./ppspan style="font-weight: bold;"Jimenez is a Bush acolyte whose career has been advanced through one political appointment after another./span As the governor's assistant general counsel, he sent an e-mail in which he plotted with Bush to recruit "ideologically compatible" applicants for judgeships by creating shadow regional panels to encourage certain judicial candidacies. That alone illustrates the contempt he has for an independent judiciary./p/blockquotep/p(h/ta href="http://www.flapolitics.com/" flapolitics.com/a)br /br /Sheesh. Who put coal in the stocking of the St. Pete Times' editorial board? I'm not even quoting all the good stuff due to it being the holidays and all.br /br /Given that Frank is from South Florida, I wonder whether our "paper of record" will weigh in on it. (Note to Miami Herald -- when writing an editorial, try to have it span style="font-style: italic;"express /spana span style="font-style: italic;"point of view/span).br /br /All I know is if Heat Miser and Snow Miser can get along, there is hope for all of us.

Full post as published by South Florida Lawyers on December 22, 2008 (boomark / email).