Strict constructionist strikes again

"As a strict constructionist," Jefferson County Circuit Judge Randy Koschnick gravely intones at every available opportunity.

How strict a constructionist is Koschnick, really. Not very. Speaking to Rotary Club members in Madison on Wednesday, Koschnick said:

When I first announced my candidacy last November, I offered a clean campaign pledge to Justice Abrahamson which I signed and which she declined to sign. And among the pledges that I proposed we would make would be that we would either refuse to accept contributions from lawyers who have cases pending or that we would recuse from those cases if we decided to accept the donation.

Except that isn't even what Koschnick's own "pledge" reads. It says:

refusing and returning contributions from parties with cases before their respective courts

Parties. Not lawyers. Lawyers are not parties. And no so-called strict constructionist would ever construe "parties" so expansively as to include the lawyers retained to represent them in court.

But apparently this strict constructionist does, when convenient.

If this is how Judge Koschnick construes his own words, then exactly what sort of liberally activist interpretive methodology can he be expected to apply to the words of other people? The mind boggles.

Neither does Judge Koschnick's "pledge" include for the numerous gyrations he's performed in his attempts to justify the fact that he's done exactly what he's accusing his political opponent of having done.

And here's a pertinent little reminder of what Justice Antonin Scalia had to say about campaign contributions a couple of weeks ago.