A former Allegheny County judge, who served 27 months in federal prison in New Jersey, is suing the U.S. Bureau of Prisons because his newspapers were not delivered quickly enough.

A little bit of research on the part of former judge Joseph A. Jaffe would have revealed that newspapers, magazines and other periodicals that are mailed as second-class postage, now called periodical class, do not receive top delivery priority. Federal postal regulations permit postal workers up to three days at each post office handling the periodicals. Therefore, periodicals that go through three - or possibly four - different postal facilities will reach the subscriber as many as nine or twelve days later. This is just the way the postal system works for second-class mail.

Jaffe is reportedly suing the U.S. Bureau of Prisons because his copies of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Jewish Chronicle took 10 to 14 days to arrive, instead of the two days he expected.

Jaffe was sent to prison after he was convicted of extorting money from an attorney in exchange for giving the lawyer's firm extraordinary access to the judge. On the face of it, his lawsuit is not only misdirected - the U.S. Postal Service should be the target, not the federal prison system - but also frivolous.