Judge not. Oh, what the hell, go ahead and judge.

I just released my second novel, Running for the Bench (A Brief Political Comedy). You can buy it now on Amazon .

Modesty prevents me from telling you how good it is, but you should know that the novel is damn funny and insightful. I can tell you that the book is about a Dallas divorce attorney running for judge.

And this brings me to my non-personal-aggrandizement point. Why in the world do we elect judges? Those of you who have read my previous blogs (God bless you) might have recognized my left-leaning tendency, and Dallas County just elected 42 new countywide officeholders, each and every one of them a Democrat. It was an unprecedented clean sweep.

So, if there were any time for me to gloat and praise the wisdom of the voters, this would be the time. But it isn’t, and I’m not.

The fact is, the average citizen, not to mention the average lawyer, has no idea who these people are whom we’re putting into office. As in every judicial election, some good people were put in place along with some bad, and some good judges lost their spots along with some bad. And it’s all just a crapshoot.

It doesn’t make any logical sense to elect judges. In a republican (little “r”) form of democracy, like ours, we elect people to represent us in state legislatures and congress and so on, because each person can’t be present to deliberate and vote on each decision. But judges don’t “represent” us. They aren’t supposed to be swayed by us at all. A judge is supposed to do one thing: apply and interpret the law (okay, two things).

Even most lawyers don’t know the identity or qualifications of judicial candidates outside of their own specialty area of practice. It would be like me, a lawyer, voting for who the best doctor is, and using a political party affiliation to do it.

Okay, end of tirade. For now.

Buy the book. Please.