I hate smears.  Whatever the source, I always go back to Aristotle's appeal in The Rhetoric:  "It is not right to pervert the judge by moving him to anger or envy or pity -- one might as well warp a carpenter's rule before using it." 

His caution was against emotional appeals but the point holds for smears.  Once you warp the rule, your measurement is off.  The further you get from a good measurement, the harder it is to get back to the truth.  Politicians do this all the time and I won't pretend to be so naive to expect it never to happen, but the Kozinski case reeks:

L. Gordon Crovitz editorializes at The Wall Street Journal:

"Indeed, Judge Kozinski is well known for taking the law very seriously, but himself not at all seriously. He was born in Romania, came to California when he was 12, and at 18 went on "The Dating Game" and won. At 35, he was the nation's youngest federal appeals court judge. More recently, he applied to and won a gossip blog's "judicial hottie" contest ("I have it on very good authority that discerning females and gay men find graying, pudgy, middle-aged men with an accent close to Gov. Schwarzenegger's almost totally irresistible," he wrote in his application.)

There's even a law review article entitled "Humor, the Law, and Judge Kozinski's Greatest Hits." In his spare time, Judge Kozinski once served as the videogame reviewer for The Wall Street Journal. He sends an occasional blast email of slapstick jokes to friends. Full disclosure: I have been known to laugh out loud at them."

Accountability rests with The LA Times.