181. Life imitates Animal House

Flavia Colgan of the Philadelphia Daily News nicely sums up one of the plot points of the movie usually credited as the first of the gross-out comedies, although it's pretty sedate and decorous by contemporary standards:

In "Animal House," the evil Dean Wormer, in his quest to get rid of the nuisance of the Delta fraternity, puts them on "double secret probation." It was a made-up term that just made his desperation even more hilarious.

From Louisiana, always a rich source of material for this blog, we read this news story:

The state's highest court ordered Orleans Parish Criminal Court Judge Charles Elloie removed from the bench until a full hearing into alleged misconduct involving the setting of bonds can be heard.

Elloie has come under fire for years for his lenient and sometimes erroneous bond setting practices.

As the old saw has it, the easiest way to make money is to be standing around when it changes hands, and bail bonds involve a good deal of money changing hands.  It was a federal investigation into Jefferson Parish bail bond practices that wiretapped Judge Ronald Bodenheimer ordering a minion to plant OxyContin in the car of a man who had opposed the judge's request for a zoning variance on a little business he ran on the side.  (See post 12 and post 67.) 

Fellow south Louisiana Judge Alan Green was sent to prison for steering defendants to a particular bail bond company in exchange for kickbacks.  (See post 67.)  So whatever it was that Judge Elloie was allegedly up to, he was stepping in some big footprints.

For the cognoscenti, apparently, Judge Elloie's troubles aren't altogether surprising:

When Elloie ran for office in 1986, he was already on probation from the Louisiana Bar Association. During that election and in his early years in office, he repeatedly ran afoul of the Louisiana Judiciary Commission.

The commission placed Elloie on secret 3-year probation and later called on the Louisiana Supreme Court to censure him.

Secret probation?  As Flavia Colgan says, double secret probation and its governmental equivalents sell out the principles of representative democracy to protect the powerful.  The Louisiana Judiciary Commission, which imposed secret probation on Judge Elloie, is itself a highly secretive organization, whose activities are generally hidden from the public - as we find out from the website of the Louisiana Supreme Court, which apparently oversees the body appointed to oversee it.

The underlying concept is straightforward: the people have no right to know what one-third of the government is doing.  As to what, exactly, Judge Elloie was doing, here's a clue:

During the week he spent attending a continuing legal education seminar at a posh resort in Jamaica three months ago, Criminal District Court Judge Charles Elloie approved 11 bail reductions for defendants, court records show.