Mixed in with the skateboarding kitty cats and Doritos-pilfering seagulls at YouTube.com, interested observers can now find what appears to be Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce's initial mass media salvo against State Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler, which turned up sometime within the last few hours.
Here's the link:
Louis Butler: 78% Pure Eeeevil
And here's the drama prairie dog, which seems particularly appropriate to the drama WMC circumstances:
Dah, dah, daaaaaaaah!!!!!11one!
More later, naturally. But in the meantime, a couple of threshold questions presented:
1. What and who exactly is the Judicial Evaluation Institute, and what data and methodology did it or they employ to arrive at the conclusion that Butler has "the second worst record on the court"?
2. What data and methodology was employed to portray Justice Annette Kingsland Ziegler, who's been on the court for all of five whole months,* as a "traditionalist"? (See, because there are only two kinds of judges: traditionalists, and activists.)
* During which time, according to my count, the court has released only a dozen or so decisions, mostly involving attorney discipline.
[Please visit the iT Butler/Gableman archive.]
February 9, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
Not being a member of the ABA, nor having the experience or eductation of yourself, and being but just a lay person, even I noted how skewed their sense of reality is.
They declared Ziegler to be a traditionalist. Even looking beyond the fact that she has only had her seat bought for her, but she enters her position under a cloud of doubt, given her poor ethics. If they consider traditionalism to be the ability to be bought and sold, and to have the lack of intestinal fortitude to decide appropriate behaviors on something besides a "gut check" I would rather have an activist.
Judicial Evaluation Institute: an "independent" organization! Independently funded by the Chamber of Commerce, that is, and committed to the conclusion that lawsuits are out of hand independently of any specific data.
It's the legal/policy version of Cargo Cult science, and a beautiful example of the power of money. Money lets you create this sort of political holo-deck, then issue news reports from it.
It is sheer crass dishonesty; and the question is not who does or does not carefully parse their statements so as to not quite utter the dishonesty themselves, but rather who stands up to be counted with, or counted against, the people who promulgate it.
JEI is all tied up with an Oklahoma outfit called Sequoyah Information Systems, one of the originators of these patently bogus "judicial performance evaluations." Sequoyah's founder was Marc Nuttle, the man who brought us Pat Robertson's 1988 presidential campaign. At one time they featured former Republican National Committee chief of staff Tom Cole as their senior tort "reform" advisor.
Last time I checked -- and admittedly it's been awhile -- JEI's spokesmodel and "legal advisor" was a lawyer by the name of John McMackin, who earned his wings lobbying for tort "reform" on behalf of asbestos product manufacturers. If memory serves, one of JEI's directors doubles as a Heritage Foundation trustee.
Bottom line: this is going to get a lot uglier, but y'all already surmised that.
WMC deleted the comments on YouTube pointing out the funding links of the "independent" study and themselves.
You didn't happen to grab a screen capture, did you? What made me laugh is that one of WMCMEDIA's favorite videos is "Drama Prairie Dog"! I swear I didn't notice that until just now.
No I did not. I did think they would delete the comments. They actually responded, but must have realized they were being disengenous in not pointing out the connection.
That should read I did not think they would delete the comments.
The deleted another one.
Post a Comment