CFAF "deemed" criminally inept: Part 11

As promised — or, depending on one's perspective, threatened — the next entry in that which has now become what singer/songwriter Paul Simon, in his most severe bowl-haircut days, might have called "a simple desultory philippic." We last left off at the Coalition for America's Families [sic] (CFAF) case 60., State v. Stuart.

I'm going to skip the next case, State v. Richard A. Brown, just because. I figure if CFAF can simply arbitrarily and capriciously exclude it from "its" list of cases, which it did, then so can I.

Unlike CFAF, however, I will get back to it.

If there is any justice or truth, then CFAF these days is hiding its collective head in abject shame. Not so, incidentally, for CFAF's leading cheerleader, chief helper-elf in legal analysis and statistics, and alleged "journalist," who has lately taken to not just lying, but lying through her teeth, rather than check up on a handful of easily verifiable facts. And this is apparently what they're teaching in university Reporting 101 classes nowadays. Given the choice, I'm inclined to humor, but that's just sad. Profoundly so.

So evidently in certain quarters, there not only exists neither justice nor truth, there exists in their stead a willful, deliberate, and determined effort to avoid both at any costs.

On a less serious but equally pathetic note, the next case, State v. Hale, is the final case on the list of 62 Wisconsin Supreme Court decisions that CFAF appropriated from the Butler campaign upon which to perform its extravagant litany of nefarious hijinks.

I quote directly from the CFAF document in my possession:

There are 6 cases missing from [the Butler campaign's] analysis, a yes is where CFAF deems Butler w/ the criminal.

Thereupon follows, I kid you not, the names of seven cases. How manifestly not surprising and what a classic examplar of CFAF's relentlessly desperate fumbling and bumbling. As I've observed previously, you simply cannot make this stuff up.

62. State v. Hale 2003AP417-CR

Rick Esenberg of Marquette Law School wrote recently, "[She] says that she has the 'against' and 'for' numbers. Let's take her at her word." The statement is by turns astonishing and laughable. State v. Hale is yet another fine example of why.

Hale contains five separate opinions: the majority opinion by Justice Bradley, and concurring opinions by Chief Justice Abrahamson, Justice Wilcox (joined by Justices Crooks and Prosser), Justice Prosser (joined by Justices Wilcox and Roggensack), and Justice Butler.

When judges write concurring opinions, it means they join the majority opinion's central ruling, which in this case was the unanimous affirming of Hale's three criminal convictions, but they would have reached that result through different reasoning, based on their interpretation of the underlying numerous and varied legal questions that lead to the result.

I don't mind admitting that it would probably take me at least two days of close analysis, research, and writing to tease out each separate legal question from Hale (and there are many other multi-opinion examples like Hale) and assign each judge's disposition on each question as either "pro-defendant" or "pro-State." And, even then, such assignments would be subject to reasonable review and objection from the likes of Rick Esenberg. Moreover, he would still need to present his own analysis as to why any such assignment was misapplied by your humble reviewer. And then rebuttal and so forth.

At the same time as imploring us all to take a demonstrable prevaricator "at her word," Esenberg has himself suggested a number of alternative denominators — other than the criminal convictions themselves — by which "for" or "against" the constitutional rights of criminal defendants might be assessed. Some of these suggestions certainly have merit.

But if somebody imagines that the prevaricator in question — or anybody — could have performed a similar task on 70 decisions in two days, well, then that somebody needs their head examined, not to put too fine a point on it (or on the examined head).

To be fair, Esenberg did at least distance himself from the term "pro-criminal" at one point during his series of discursive academic vacations before allowing, "I think someone tried very hard to get a very low number and may have allowed that desire to get in the way of his or her better judgment."

One might accept this as the Understatement of the Millennium with respect to both CFAF and its helpful elf's now-thoroughly debunked projects, but Esenberg was referring to the Butler campaign(!).

It's abundantly clear now that the Butler campaign did not "cook" any number. The cooking, frying, baking, basting, broiling, barbecuing, and sauce-reductioning occurred entirely in the comedy kitchens of CFAF and its prevaricating elf.

If the Butler campaign committed any misstep at all, it issued from Justice Butler himself during his interview with the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel editorial board when he said, "I voted to uphold the convictions 75% of the time." I recall immediately thinking, on hearing this, 'Wait until Esenberg gets a hold of that one, he'll be on it like a dog with a bone.' Which is exactly what happened.

What Butler should have said — and I'm fairly certain, without even asking him, what he meant to say — was that in 75% of the cases involving criminal convictions, his vote did not disturb the existing conviction, which remained completely intact. And that is correct to within less than two percentage points, as I've shown, through my laborious presentation of each individual case to which Butler was making reference.

"Laborious," incidentally, is a reference to the impositions made on the kind reader, and not to those happily engaged by the writer.

Nevertheless, CFAF didn't "deem" State v. Hale "w/ Criminal," but rather passes it by without comment.

Thus ends the list of cases that not only couldn't CFAF produce itself, instead relying on material produced by the Butler campaign, it manipulated and twisted and otherwise transparently schemed and scammed the cases into confirming beyond a shadow of any doubt its own sleazy machinations informed by profound incompetence: its own and, as it turns out, that of its helpful prevaricating elf.

Considered separately, sleazy machinations and profound incompetence are bad enough. But profoundly incompetent, sleazy machinations are a quite remarkable addition to the panoply of preexisting "family values." A remarkable and singularly unwelcome addition, in my own considered estimation.

I'll get to CFAF's remaining seven (or is it six? Math hurts!) cases after State v. Richard A. Brown.

ttfn