Pa. Supremes, Staff Cleared Following Email Network Review

PENNSYLVANIA—A comprehensive email audit of the justices and employees of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has just concluded. In all, according to mcall.com, nearly 5,000 email messages were examined, and aside from the 234 messages that allegedly contained porn, a supposed abrogation of duty that cost their sender, Supreme Court Justice Seamus P. McCaffery, his seat on the court, all of the other emails are clean. The email reaming... er, investigation was courtesy of attorney Robert L. Byer, who "conducted the review in conjunction with Attorney General Kathleen Kane's staff." In the end, Byer found that the Court's email network was not a hotbed of controversy, but was about as banal as most email networks. In fact, mcall.com reports that "nearly two-thirds of the emails were spam sent by former Supreme Court Justice Seamus P. McCaffery and his wife containing humorous stories, inspirational stories with respect to the military and police, stories about pets and animals, sports and other junk mail." The expectation was that far worse would be discovered. According to the article, "legal scholars and advocates of transparency in the courts" were afraid that in addition to the porn, emails might also "contain inappropriate communications about cases." They did not. Instead, the review discovered that, in addition to "the nuisance messages from McCaffery and his wife... most messages that were sent or received by both a Supreme Court justice and a member of the attorney general's office were official business or announcements from law schools and professional organizations." What's more, "Only four messages were actually initiated by a Supreme Court justice and each related to arrangements for an informal dinner attended by Justice J. Michael Eakin." Scandalous! There is of course an unavoidable irony in the fact that the Pennsylvania AGs office, which has spent so much time and energy in pursuit of emails allegedly containing porn, has had no problem engaging in fetishistic behavior that includes this anal-reaming-like examination of thousands of emails, even though there was no indication that any of them contained anything illegal. In other words, without any probable cause to search them. On it's face, that's what a little porn will do in Pennsylvania. Sadly, the entire episode may actually have been a cover for crass political infighting, with porn used as a handy excuse to engage in the shameful witch hunt. If they had any moxie, the staff of the Court would express vociferous objection to having had their emails examined in this manner.