Recent comments I've suppressed.... and why

Figuring out which comments to let through and which to flush isn't always easy for this blogger.

Sure, it's easy to bar comments that say Judge So-and-So is a crook and it's harmless enough to let through comments like Congratulations to new Judge So-and-So; she'll do a great job. It's the ones in between that get the blogger into trouble.

If I set out to offend someone, you (and the person to be offended) will know about it. But I feel bad when I offend people by accident. And yet I have offended people inadvertently -- as I was reminded a couple of months ago now when I was invited by a mutual acquaintance to have coffee with a person who has been frequently lampooned in comments on this blog. This person hadn't reached out to me before, but had been doing a slow burn every time a judge or politician or friend would call and say did you see what they're saying about you on Leyhane's blog? Well, I didn't know that this person was becoming increasingly upset; when you don't hear from someone, it's easy to jump to the conclusion that the person doesn't mind... there are those, after all, who subscribe to the theory that all publicity is good publicity.

And then there are others who immediately let me know they don't like this comment, or that one. I encourage people not to be too thin-skinned. Politics ain't beanbag, as Finley Peter Dunne's Mr. Dooley once correctly opined. And don't we already have the terrible example of too-thin-skinned in the White House? No slight, no matter how slight, can go unresponded, usually in a 3:00 a.m. tweet. Better to laugh off a snide remark or two or, at least, if you can't do that (as my baseball-playing sons would shout at a teammate who'd been hit by a pitch), don't rub it.

On the other hand, my aim is to pass good information along, not to toughen the psyches of some or indulge the meanness of others. So when a comment comes in, and I know it will be offensive to someone, I have to make a calculation: How interesting or valuable -- and how likely true -- is the information provided? How deeply intertwined is it within the gratuitous slaps at others? I wish I could edit comments, but I can't. Case in point: Someone recently sent in a prediction about who is likely to be appointed to a current vacancy. It's a plausible bit of speculation -- and some of the speculations provided by readers in these comments have proved spot on -- but I had to take a pass because of how it was worded.

And then there are the commenters that are trying to re-open disputes that have long been resolved -- and not resolved by me, mind you, but by the Cook County Electoral Board and/or the courts in past election cycles. Yes, I understand that challenges may, and probably will, be renewed when and if these candidates refile for new vacancies in the upcoming primary. I will report on the challenges, as I have in the past, the best of my ability and as my day job permits. In the meantime, stop with these kinds of comments. They're not going in.

Also beyond the pale are old-news comments about ARDC issues.

Readers: Did you know you can check any lawyer's ARDC status online? Visit the ARDC website and click on lawyer search in the upper left-hand corner of your screen. Follow the directions and you too can see, inter alia whether this lawyer or that one has been the subject of any complaints by the disciplinary authorities and, if so, how those complaints were resolved. And guess what? The evaluating bar groups can do this, too! And, not only that, every candidate who submits credentials for bar evaluation signs forms giving permission for the bar groups to get further information from ARDC, information that the ARDC would otherwise keep confidential. So the bar groups know more than you, dear anonymous commenters, about this candidate's ARDC history or that one's. So stop trying to plant poisonous comments about prior complaints, OK? The bar groups knew about them and decided that Candidate X was qualified despite a prior ARDC complaint. Those comments aren't going in either.

Just today, someone sent in a comment that, among other things, claimed that Candidate Y had terrible bar ratings. I can't run that. For better or for worse, bar groups do not reveal candidate ratings on a rolling basis. In my opinion, it would be nice to click to a page on the CBA website -- for example -- which listed the names of all persons having current judicial ratings, all hyperlinked to their respective CBA ratings. It would be a greater logistical challenge for the Alliance, with its 11 constituent groups, which is why I used the CBA as my example here. But, either way, no such site exists. All the bar groups will be working diligently right up until the eve of the March 2018 Primary evaluating candidates and the groups' evaluations of every candidate then still in the running will be released all at once. And, meanwhile, although the CBA and the Alliance have both worked very cooperatively with me through the years, they're not going to let me check whether Candidate Y has current ratings and what those ratings are -- which I'd want to do before deciding to let such a comment through. So -- although there may have been some merit to the comment, I can't run it.

I am grateful for the comments that come into the blog. I know readers value them. I will let through what I think I can. But I can't let them all in and, now, perhaps, you better understand why.