Wednesday, March 19, 2008

The Swearing In Ceremony

Kenneth Magidson was sworn in today at the Jury Assembly Building at 4:30 during a fairly short ceremony, attended by those ADAs and Investigators who aren't on Spring Break with their families, as well as several county officials.

Bert Graham appeared relieved as he handed over control to the Assistant U.S. Attorney. District Court Judge Don Stricklin gave a brief speech, acknowledging that the D.A.'s Office had received a series of "body blows" to its reputation over the past 90 days, and he stated that Mr. Magidson was the right person for the job.

Magidson was then sworn in and gave a brief speech. He made no bombastic statements and promised no sweeping changes. He simply stated that the mission of the office was to seek justice for everyone and to do the right thing. He encouraged any of the ADAs who didn't know what the "right thing was" to come talk to him.

The ADAs and Investigators were then re-sworn in to their jobs.

Chuck Rosenthal's name was never mentioned.

And life went on at the CJC . . .

9 comments:

Unknown said...

Didn't understand Teflon Don's remarks that DA's needed to start doing their jobs. What have they been doing for the past 2 1/2 months?

Murray Newman said...

Yeah, what the hell was that?

I thought about doing a post on it, but I couldn't remember the exact words that he had used.

I thought it was really poor form of him to blast the ADAs in the middle of swearing in of the new D.A. He was extremely rude and disrespectful of his audience, in my opinion. And what the hell did the ADAs do to incur his wrath? The person he SHOULD have been directing his comments to resigned several weeks ago.

Oh well, as someone else pointed out, he's up for re-election this year too. I suppose he was just playing to the cameras.

Unknown said...

Other thoughts: Bert Graham should get some kind of award for being an unsung hero; stepping in like he did was much appreciated IMHO. Who was the African-American dude taking all the pictures? If he was from the Daily Pravda they wasted a lot of film. (Oh, I forgot they don't use film anymore) Noticed Kelly was not there. Did she not want to overshadow Ken's moment or did she have another engagement? Most remarkable thing was that neither Pat Lykos nor Sheila Jackson Lee were there getting face time.

Murray Newman said...

I'm not sure where Kelly was. She does have two young daughters, though, and it was Spring Break. There were a lot of people missing because of Spring Break.

Anonymous said...

JAGJO writes:

Magidson made a few changes his first official day... new executive assistant was a no brainer nor surprise. ABC 13 Oberg reported late this evening " Magidson also tweaked the phone and email policy today to pull it in line with other county departments" ..... Unlike the usually over zealous Ted, he did not specify what the changes were.

Anyone get the memo and care to elaborate on the "tweaking" ?

CJ Social Worker said...

To me, the swearing in ceremony was encouraging.

I thought Judge Stricklin's comments were meant to say: Hey - you guys have taken a beating over the last 3 months - chin up - you can do it - remember who you are - get on with it.


Truly, I thought he meant to be encouraging. Maybe I'm naive, but I can't imagine he'd mean to say something bad at a ceremony like this.

Anyway - I liked Bert's remarks and Ken Magidson's were very encouraging.

In the end - just ready to get back to doing the work. :-)

Murray Newman said...

CJ Social Worker,
That's how I was taking his speech at first, too. It wasn't until he got to the end and barked out "You are all ADAs, now start acting like it!"

I mean, seriously, what was that?

anonymous c said...

I wasn’t there, but I agree that it seems kind of hard to misconstrue Stricklin’s words.

Unless he was speaking in riddles, the clear implication is that the ADAs haven’t been acting like ADAs, thus far…which is b.s. to the nth degree.

JagJo, I think that AHCL’s latest post further elaborates on “the tweaking”. Hehe! Hugs!

CJ Social Worker said...

Like the football coach telling the team - "You're a good team - now get out there and act like it."

Or - "Hey - you're ADAs - remember what that's about - don't be down about the last 90 days - get out there and do it."

That's the way I heard it...

Episode Seven: The Voters Awaken - A One Act -Sci-Fi Play

SCENE:  The Death Star orbits over Downtown Houston. [INTERIOR] The Imperial Council Chambers. EMPRESS OGG sits at the head of a long table ...