Salon slime ball misfires Tom Smith

Salon, the fairly disreputable online magazine, hurls a slime ball at federal district judge Terrence Boyle, but seems to have their facts a bit wrong, in the sense of being the opposite of true.  Salon says Judge Boyle bought GE stock while a matter involving GE was before his court, and then ruled favorably to GE.  Doesn’t sound so good.  But then, the lawyer representing the plaintiff in this disability case writes in to say, ahem, I won that case and GE lost it, and in fact, it was decided before Boyle bought the stock. And for good measure, the lawyer adds that the notion that a disability claim would make a difference in the stock price of a company with $134 billion in annual revenues, is absurd on its face.  This does raise the philosophical question, is it possible that Salon could have been wronger?  Well, perhaps, but still, it is the kind of irresponsible pseudo-journalism which people accuse blogs of, but Salon is not even a blog.

Judge Boyle is, of course, a conservative who has been nominated to a federal circuit court judgeship.  So I suppose all normal rules have long since ceased to apply.

A disclosure:  my younger sister, now putting criminals behind bars in Salt Lake City, clerked for Judge Boyle way back when.  And I once had a nice vacation in North Carolina.