Is judge's contempt threat correct?

All over the news these days is the action of an irate judge over emails he received from a party in a court case with the FCC.

U.S. District Judge Robert W. Gettleman's computer got fried after author and popular infomercial promoter Kevin Trudeau put the judge's email address on his website and urged readers to write to the good judge.

And write, they did. Enough to crash the judge's computer and upset his BlackBerry.

The judge held Trudeau in direct criminal contempt and told him to surrender his passport and post a $50,000 bond.

First of all, should Judge Gettleman have conducted the contempt hearing, since he is the one who was offended? Should another judge have held the hearing and heard testimony from Judge Gettleman in order to decide whether OR NOT any contempt had occurred?

Does Judge Gettleman's contempt charge threaten to squelch free speech? Nothing was reported that Trudeau enticed anyone to write or paid them to write. He put out a request, and his fans wrote to the judge.

Should the judge have hauled all the authors of those emails into his court?

I wonder if all those authors will wait a week and then email Judge Gettleman that they are sorry that his computer and his BlackBerry crashed. (heh-heh)

According to the Daily Herald, "Gettleman said the glut of e-mails delayed court business and will force the U.S. Marshals Service to do a threat assessment." Is he saying that the court's email system is so weak from a security standpoint that it couldn't screen out an onslaught of identical or similar emails and route them into a spam pile for sorting out? Did Trudeau really do the court a favor by identifying a gross weakness in the court's email system?

No, I'm not going to give you his email address and, for the record, I do not recommend emailing the judge.