Judicial Excess

Talk Left notes a case in Michigan involving a judge who has openly ignored a binding U.S. Supreme Court precedent requiring the judge to appoint counsel for defendants who have plead guilty but want to contest their sentences. This is the kind of behavior that should not only have the judge removed from the bench, but should also have the judge disbarred from the practice of law and sent to jail for contempt of court for a few months. There is no place for that kind of open defiance of the governing rules of law in the judiciary, particuarly when it seriously harms the people who come before that judge in court.