Devin Cohen, candidate for Broklyn's 1st Civil Court in the September 9th primary, has announced two new endorsements: Congresswoman Yvette Clarke and City Councilman David Yassky. All he needs is a Chris Owens endorsement and Devin will have three-of-a-kind from the 2006 CD-11 Congressional race that divided the district so much. Since Devin already got the endorsement of CBID, the club that Chris is now the president of, in some ways Devin already has unified the CD-11 candidates behind him. This brings Devin's endorsement list to the following:

# Congresswoman Yvette Clarke
# Assemblymember Joan Millman
# Assemblymember Jim Brennan
# State Senator Velmanette Montgomery
# State Senator Martin Connor
# Councilmember Letitia James
# Councilmember David Yassky
# District Leader Alan Fleishman
# District Leader JoAnne Simon
# District Leader William Saunders
# Independent Neighborhood Democrats
# Central Brooklyn Independent Democrats
# Lambda Independent Democrats of Brooklyn
# 57th A.D. Regular Democratic
Organization

The most neglected part of electoral politics is the election of judges. And yet in many ways more people are affected by who gets elected judge than any other elected position. The ignorance most people have about judicial candidates means that more often than not political bosses can shove any political crony they want into our court system regardless of qualifications. Did you know that although there is a screening panel there is no requirement for someone to even have practiced law in order to be a judge. This was dramatically demonstrated in 2007 when the Brooklyn political machine, including Vito Lopez, Marty Markowitz and Dominic Recchia, supported Noach Dear, a known homophobe, for judge despite the fact that the NY Bar Assn had declared him unqualified and he had never practiced law in his life. So now Brooklyn has a useless, homophobic judge on the bench just because local politicians wanted to give him a political plum. Our courts deserve better.