Please go read this Reuters article: Fortune-telling judge couldn’t see it coming. There’s something funny in every paragraph.
Actually, you know what, I’m going to do a commentary.
Here’s the first paragraph. I challenge you to read it aloud with a straight face:
A Philippine judge who claimed he could see into the future and admitted consulting imaginary mystic dwarfs has asked for his job back after being fired by the country’s Supreme Court.
Right. Nothing I can add to that.
Next paragraph:
“They should not have dismissed me for what I believed,” Florentino Floro, a trial judge in the capital’s Malabon northern suburb, told reporters after filing his appeal.
OK, first he’s trying to make this a freedom of religion issue? Really? I guess there’s nothing inherently more crazy about mystic dwarfs than there is about invisible paternalistic ominpotences…
But second, if you were a criminal, could you really feel respect for Mr. Justice Florentino Floro? You know every criminal in that circuit has a nickname or two for this guy.
Floro was sacked last month and fined 40,000 pesos ($780) after a three-year investigation found he was incompetent, had shown bias in a case he was trying and had criticized court procedure, a ruling showed.
Note: it took them three years to find out he was incompetent. He was consulting invisible magic dwarfs, and it took a three-year investigation to find something was wrong. The obvious conclusion is that the dwarfs were using their mystical powers to befuddle the investigation.
He told investigators that three mystic dwarfs — Armand, Luis and Angel — helped him carry out healing sessions during breaks in his chambers.
I’m going to let the “healing sessions” thing go, and just focus on the fact that the magic dwarfs were named Armand, Luis, and Angel. I’m trying to imagine what my reaction would be when a magical dwarf revealed himself to me, and then told me his name was “Armand”…
The Supreme Court said it was not within its expertise to conclude that Floro was insane, but agreed with the court clinic’s finding that he was suffering from psychosis.
I am also not qualified to make a legal determination of someone’s sanity, but I think I can comfortable go along with the court clinic here also, based only on four paragraphs of second-hand information.
You still have to click through to the Reuters article though, just to see the picture they chose to run with the piece.
