The bond issue should have been resolved immediately... I'm not sure how a hearing on the issue is helpful; either Russ is entitled to a said bonded stay, or he isn't.
Agree, but I think adding it to the hearing was a timing and frustration reaction. On March 11, Greer asked for bond, Hardin asked for IFP review, and dropped a reply to Greer's response on sanctions. On March 12, there were 4 Defense additions to the docket, plus the Magistrate denying Hardin's short discovery form. March 13 was when the Magistrate scheduled the hearing.
Under my theory of "Magistrate works slowly on orders and ignores the docket until he's done", I think he resurfaced from chambers on the 12th to drop his latest order, saw 7 new entries since he last checked, and just swept it all into a hearing. I think he was annoyed and used the scheduling as his way of yelling STOP IT RETARDS into the docket. The issues slotted for agenda aren't because he needs briefing, but because he doesn't want to write 7 more orders. The only thing he looked at was Hardin's time extension to respond to the FAC, made necessary by the hearing date.
Denying bond in text would take more work to explain the reasoning. Browbeating Russ in person before denying it is probably sufficient. Hopefully he's not planning that for Hardin too, but I suspect what stops it is having a solid rule or citation to instruct the judge on what he can't get away with dismissing out of hand.
Update, generally, implies that things are going on.
Couldn't Hardin have emailed a couple more discovery requests to Russ by now, which were uneventfully fulfilled, and therefore the court (and us) wouldn't know about it? If Hardin didn't need to compel cooperation, he wouldn't have needed to file anything yet.
...stop laughing, it's theoretically
possible! At least to the point that the judge may ask about it.