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Las Vegas Sun columnist Jon Ralston heaps praise on this week's Times series about the city's shady judiciary (link via Romenesko):
I'm embarrassed.For the local judicial system. For the valley's media. And for Southern Nevada.
It took an out-of-state newspaper, the Los Angeles Times, to publish one of the most devastating pieces about Las Vegas that we have seen in many years. The story, which the paper printed this week, is not some of the standard Sin-City-with-Flamboyant-Mayor lampooning we have come to expect. This is an in-depth investigative piece, the product of years of reporting by two journalists, which exposes the incestuous nature of a judiciary fueled by friendships and campaign money.
The notion of Las Vegas as a juice town is not news. The idea that judges can be unduly influenced by who they know and the money they receive is something cynics have long assumed - and one of the reasons many of us have called for electing judges. But what the L.A. Times has done is devote resources to detailing and documenting a causal connection between influence attempted and decisions rendered.
Through extensive research and interviews, the reporters have uncovered a pay-to-play system that will be hard for the locals to refute.
And in so doing, the California newspaper has left every journalist who has covered courts and politics in this state red-faced and surely induced many past and current judges to wonder if any law enforcement agencies are looking at the same information the Times reporters had.
Juice vs. Justice part 1, part 2, sidebar on clean judge, photo gallery