Judge caught playing solitaire

Anyone could be forgiven for wasting a bit of time on a sunny Friday afternoon when the World Cup's about to start, and sinking to playing a bit of Solitaire on the PC hardly seems like that much of a sin - but obviously you wouldn't want to do it if you were, you know, trying an alleged mafia boss for murder.

Unless you were federal judge Shira Scheindlin, anyway - who this week caught some flack from the founder of civilian anti-crime group the Guardian Angels, Curtis Silwa, for doing just that, during the trial of John A. (Junior) Gotti no less.

Silwa alleges that Scheindlin, a Manhattan Federal Court Judge, was playing Solitaire on the PC while he was busy testifying against Gotti in racketeering trials. He didn't bother pointing it out at the time, but did recently after Scheindlin made things difficult for he government trying to prosecute Gotti for his role in orchestrating a 1992 shooting that nearly killed Silwa.

And he finds it particularly galling, he says, because New York mayor Michael Bloomberg's already fired a city worker for playing Solitaire at his desk. "Should a federal judge be playing video solitaire when an employee of the New York City government gets fired for playing video solitaire?" he asked (himself). "I don't think any of us are that good at multitasking. To me that's an abuse and an outrage."

According to the New York Daily News, Scheindlin didn't return a call for comment "but it's unlikely she'd step aside". No such luck for employees lower down, of course, including our famous friend the PSP-playing bus driver, who thought he'd combine GTA: Liberty City Stories with a bit of real-life driving - down icy roads and everything.