The paths of justice have some odd twists to them. Consider these twists. As I wrote in a blog post almost exactly a year ago, both parties to a case involving a Baltimore council member's alleged acceptance of a bribe argued that a statutory provision entitled "Action for defamation against local …

The power of the pen is great, and one place that it is especially powerful in the field of government ethics is in summaries and directions. Those who write summaries of ethics laws and directions for filing complaints or other forms can have an enormous effect on government ethics, either intenti…

Last week, I wrote about a Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision invalidating a Montgomery County's ethics code to the extent it applied to the employees of independent agencies, such as the district attorney's office. According to an article in yesterday's Pokiomen Valley Patch, the district attorne…

Update: September 27, 2011 According to Melissa Griffin's column in the Examiner yesterday, the board of supervisors' Government Audit and Oversight Committee met last week to discuss the civil grand jury report discussed below. The results of the committee consideration of the report are included …