No, something more nefariously think tankery must be afoot, and sure enough, there is. Jordahl's festival of partisan non sequiturs has nothing to do with professional dues, but it has everything to do with the WJCIC, a special committee that was set up by the president of the State Bar late last year to monitor the conduct of the State Supreme Court election campaign.
Apparently Jordahl doesn't read her own links, even as she makes a notably revealing choice of web hosts for those links.
As evidence of "a contentious Board of Governors meeting during which Bar President Thomas Basting was roundly criticized for creating the WJCIC," Jordahl provides a Wisconsin Law Journal press release, courtesy of GablemanForSupremeCourt.com.
The press release informs us that the State Bar Board of Governors did vote to approve Tom Basting's committee, despite reservations voiced by some board members. Democracy, they call that.
Yet in the very next breath, Jordahl says, "Without the requisite advice and consent of the Board set forth in the Bar’s bylaws, Basting created the WJCIC and unilaterally made all appointments to the committee," and then, in an effort to claim that Basting's committee was unlawful (or at least unbylawful), links to that portion of the bylaws that completely contradicts the very document Mike Gableman's election campaign paid to provide her with.
And they call this a "think tank"? Can we at least then remove "Wisconsin" from the think tank's moniker? It's embarrassing.
Bar member [singular] Thomas Jones articulated this view in a letter to the Wisconsin Lawyer magazine writing, “My bar dues help finance this political gambit. This bad idea is a restriction of campaign free speech and an attempt to ensure that Justice Butler keeps his job and keeps on delivering goods to the leftist trial bar, the guys who now own our state bar and are buying the judges they like.”And this is what somebody I used to know referred to as "anecdotal outrage." Jordahl is also horrified that Basting appointed non-lawyers to the committee. What business have they, monitoring an election campaign in hopes of its compliance with Supreme Court Rules.
My goodness, what a gang of renegade fascists the WJCIC was/is.
Its jackbooted clampdown on protected political speech shocked the conscience, and Mike Gableman and his enablers and supporters could barely exercise their First Amendment rights to misrepresent, deceive, lie, and defame for four solid months.
Down with the State Bar.
5 comments:
Read more carefully. Basting created the WJCIC without approval of the Governors. The meeting that you and Deb refer to came after it was up and running.
Conservative antipathy to the organized bar is not rooted in the WJCIC, but in the tendency of bar politicians to use the organization to advance their preferred political positions. This is one reason that the WJCIC was mistrusted although the more fundamental one is that it was a group claiming authority it did not have to apply a standard that does not exist.
I do agree that the whole project cratered and had no impact on anything.
Great Post! Of course, you realize that Ms. Jordahl's next proposal will be to get rid of the going to law school requirement so that she can become a lawyer. Heck, let's bring back the apprentice program where any idiot clerking for or promoting our favorite Burnett county Judge
Basting created the WJCIC without approval of the Governors.
I suppose that's a question of the space-time continuum, in that there may be a point in time where a special committee exists in its larval stage prior to its approval by the Board. "Review" is what the bylaws call it. Not advice and consent.
I suppose that's a question of the space-time continuum, in that there may be a point in time where a special committee exists in its larval stage prior to its approval by the Board.
It was hardly larval. The governors'meeting was on Februry 29By that time the WJCIC was up and running; had criticized people, had embarassed itself through release of its internal e-mails and changed its membership.
I understand that you may think the WJCIC was a good idea and don't like the way that the campaign went. But Basting alienated a lot of people by unilaterally inserting the bar into this. That the governors ultimately declined to shut him down doesn't change that.
Basting alienated a lot of people by unilaterally inserting the bar into this.
I don't doubt it. Whether he thinks it was worth it or not, I can't say. But I think it was.
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