Double jeopardy.

Our judiciary, as the guardian of our law, must treat the most wicked of us as it would the cream-of-the-crop, no disparate treatment, no repressive treatment. We know our laws against double jeopardy protect all of us from being kicked around twice for the same problem, and once that problem's been adjudged, right or wrong, that's it, it's over, period. But that standard seems to be in the process of being stretched thin by the judiciary as applied to the continuing saga of former Pinellas Circuit Judge Charles Cope.

Every government or quasi-government agency who handled the Cope matter failed the public for which it serves, from the California prosecutors who plea-bargained down the serious charges against him, to our own judiciary through the proceedings of the Judicial Qualifications Commission and the subsequent slap-on-the-wrist he received from the Supreme Court, for among other reasons, his "sincere remorse," which neither his victims nor the public ever heard or witnessed.

But there's no provision in our law...