The District Judge Elizabeth Halverson saga is starting to creep beyond the borders of Nevada and into the California news media, while locally the docudrama is the first thing many of us read each day. When they make a TV special of it, I'd like to suggest a name: Power and Paranoia.

Halverson spent nine years as a fairly lowly law clerk. (I always assumed the 425-pound woman, according to her driver's license, stayed as long as she could for the county's health insurance coverage.) After she was fired, she ran for one judgeship, lost, but in 2006 won on her second try.