First of all, why were you rehashing old wounds. If you had a problem with him prior, you should have resolved it when it came up initially instead of bringing it up later. Secondly, regardless of my position, if you are my boss and you call me a little piece of shit, I'm going to clean your clock. Once you fired the person, it's a done deal, why block the door. You were asking for and obviously got a lot less than what you really deserved - termination and your ass kicked. Be glad all you got was the demotion.