President Trump nominates Christie ally to Appeals Court

Paul B. Matey

President Donald J. Trump today announced the nomination of Paul B. Matey of Roseland, NJ to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.

A 2001 graduate of Seton Hall Law School, Matey was former Governor Chris Christie’s Deputy Chief Counsel and served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney during Christie’s tenure as the chief federal prosecutor in New Jersey.  He is currently the Sr. Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary of University Hospital in Newark.

Prior to entering Seton Hall Law, Matey worked in marketing for the comic-book division of Marvel Entertainment, according to his LinkedIn profile. Read the rest of this entry »

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N.J. loses again in quest to bring sports betting to state

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court on Tuesday threw out New Jersey’s sports betting law, once again blocking the state from expanding its gambling options to augment Atlantic City and the horse-racing industry. The Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia ruled that the state’s law violated a 1992 federal ban on sports betting, the Associated… Read the rest of this entry »

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Ex-labor leader gets 4 months for funneling funds to girlfriend

NEWARK–Former labor leader Richard “Buzzy” Dressel, whose embezzlement conviction was reinstated by an appellate court last year after the judge in the case threw out the jury’s verdict, was sentenced Monday by the same judge to four months in prison. Dressel, 66, was also ordered to pay back $37,778 to his union. The one-time business manager… Read the rest of this entry »

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Menendez Denies Retribution In Blocking Shwartz’s Appointment To Appeals Court

Senator Robert Menendez denies he is preventing Federal Magistrate Patty Shwartz’s appointment to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals because her boyfriend is the federal prosecutor who lead the corruption investigation into the senator during his 2006 campaign, according to a report at Politico.

Menendez said it wasn’t appropriate to debate a potential judges qualifications in the press, before he went on to malign Shwartz:

“It is incredibly disappointing and unfortunate that my real concerns over the suitability of Judge Shwartz to serve a lifetime appointment as circuit court judge have been spun as some petty political vendetta by some of her supporters,” Menendez said in a statement to POLITICO.

“I proceeded to ask her substantive legal questions and was not fully satisfied with her responses,” Menendez said. “In my opinion, Judge Shwartz did not adequately demonstrate the breadth of knowledge of constitutional law and pivotal Supreme Court decisions such as Citizens United that we should expect from a United States Circuit Court judge.”

“In the interview with Judge Shwartz, in my opinion, she misapplied the application of strict scrutiny versus rational basis review to the questions at hand,” Menendez added. “She did not express substantive knowledge as to the scope of the rights of corporations under the Constitution or jurisprudence on the constitutional limits of Executive Branch powers.

Menendez lied to me personally and didn’t respond when I called him on it,  in the months after Jon Corzine appointed him to the Senate.  Thus my bias makes it difficult to believe anything he says.  He’s just not trustworthy.

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For Democratic U.S. Senators, it’s not what you know or who you know, it’s who you have sex with.

Character, scholarship, temperament and a demonstrated ability to do the job.  One would hope that those are the most important qualities our U.S. Senators consider when they participate in the vetting of potential federal judges.

Evidently, who potential judges share their beds and bodies with are a more important consideration to New Jersey’s U.S. Senators; Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez.

Two weeks ago we read the news that Lautenberg passed over candidates expected to be nominated for federal judgeships in New Jersey and “out of nowhere” endorsed New York Senator Chuck Schumer’s brother-in-law to sit on New Jersey’s District Court.

Today we read that Menendez is using  senatorial courtesy to block the nomination of U.S. Magistrate Patty Shwartz to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.

Shwartz has been in a relationship with James Nobile for two decades, according to The New York Times.  Nobile is the head of the New Jersey U.S. Attorney’s public corruption unit which investigated Menendez in 2006 while the Hudson County pol was running for his own term as Senator after having been appointed by Governor Jon Corzine.

Menendez was elected despite the news of the investigation.  The investigation has been closed with no charges filed.

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