Just four months ago, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris was the defendant before Circuit Judge N. Sanders Sauls of Tallahassee in one of the biggest cases that any court will ever hear. His ruling that she didn't have to recount Florida presidential ballots was a big break for George W. Bush, who ultimately won the state's 25 electoral votes after the U.S. Supreme Court intervened and stopped the recount of disputed ballots.

Now, the South Carolina chapter of FreeRepublic.com, a stridently conservative organization, has proposed to honor Harris and Sauls at a meeting in June at an island resort, where Harris would also be the principal speaker. Sauls accepted the invitation as a welcome opportunity to meet Harris for the first time.

Is he the only person who doesn't see something wrong with that?

Even Harris has reconsidered, though there is no ethical reason she couldn't attend. And if she doesn't go, says Sauls, he may not either. But he shouldn't have agreed in the first place.

Sauls says he accepted only on the group's assurance that it isn't partisan and that it wouldn't be a fundraising event. Either circumstance, he admits, would clearly violate judicial ethics rules.

But there's also a general rule that "a judge shall avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety in all of the judge's activities." At the very least, Sauls should have sought an opinion from the Florida Supreme Court's Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee before agreeing to share FreeRepublic's applause with a recent litigant in any case, let alone one of such enormous significance.

FreeRepublic, which concedes it is too political for its donors to take tax exemptions, organized a 1998 rally calling for President Bill Clinton's impeachment. It created the "SoreLoserman" T-shirts.

Its honoree last year was Linda Tripp.

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