Thursday, August 07, 2008

Municipal charters and the 25th Amendment

I've been a little obsessed with the Detroit text message scandal, and today's news brings such political horror on several levels:

Kilpatrick will spend night in jail
Judge unmoved by mayor's apology

[Judge] Giles’ jailing of Kilpatrick leaves no clear line of authority in who is running the city ... because there currently is no deputy mayor.

... "Last week was a tremendous wake-up call to me," [Mayor Kilpatrick] said, referring to Giles' rebuke last month after he allegedly assaulted law enforcement officials trying to serve a subpoena . . . . Kilpatrick further said he was not "frolicking" in Windsor [Canada] but trying to make a deal that would let him avoid laying off more than a thousand city workers....

"The defendant left the state of Michigan, left the country, without prior notice to the court," [Prosecutor] Moran said, referring to a recent trip to Windsor. . . .
Suddenly Seattle's mayor's problems seem really small.

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