Not quite full disclosure

Marquette University visiting professor of law Richard Esenberg, in the course of delivering an effusive bouquet to Bradley Foundation chairman Michael W. Grebe, helpfully notes:

By way of full disclosure, Bradley funds the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute and I have a relationship with them.

The WPRI is what's known as a conservative "think tank."

Now perhaps it depends on what one means by "full disclosure," I suppose, but what Prof. Esenberg deigns not to disclose is that the Bradley Foundation also donates generously to the Alliance Defense Fund and Esenberg has a relationship with them as well.

Esenberg's co-counsel on the case of Appling v. Doyle, a challenge to Wisconsin's domestic partnership law,* includes two ADF attorneys, Austin Nimocks and Brian Raum. Both lawyers hail from ADF HQ in Scottsdale, AZ, but presumably have an interest in Wisconsin affairs.

One indication of that interest may obtain from the title of a 2003 tome authored by the ADF's chairman, Alan Sears: The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom Today. (The Homosexual Agenda was revealed to begin at 6 a.m. every day.)

Among the ADF's mottos is "Without Christ, we can do nothing."

The non-adherent is advised to bear the latter admonition in mind when considering offering oneself up as a potential ADF plaintiff.

Ms. Julaine Appling, who has long engaged in a frightful battle of wits against Satan and all of His minions, undoubtedly qualifies.**

This is easily available public knowledge, of course, but Prof. Esenberg's selective revelation doesn't appear to satisfy his own invocation of "full disclosure." They are the words he chose, after all.

Also worthy of helpful note is the fact that the Bradley Foundation recently forked over a check for $250K to The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, whose student division's deputy director*** turned up at the same law school faculty blog last week to distribute an edition of a FedSoc newsletter containing this comically antiseptic description of Mike Gableman's celebrated teevee spot:

The one television ad run by the challenger’s campaign drew national media attention for its aggressive tone.

Well, sure, that's one decidedly passive way of putting it. Another is to say it amounted to a statement deliberately misrepresenting the record of his political opponent, contrary to both the letter and the intent of Wisconsin Supreme Court Rule SCR 60.06(3)(c).

Yet another is to portray it bluntly as has the Wisconsin Judicial Commission: Gableman lied. Furthermore, the FedSoc employee in question failed to disclose his own whimsical shenanigans in service of none other than Mike Gableman and his political ambitions.

However, that's perfectly understandable, for a variety of reasons.

* Ain't it just so typical of those scheming liberals to short-circuit the democratic process and head straight into court. In this case, straight into the Wisconsin Supreme Court, the lower court finders of fact be damned (no pun intended; please see the following footnote).

** The named defendants being resistant to service of process, thus the selection of Gov. James Doyle et al as their corporeal stand-ins.

*** That is, a compensated FedSoc employee, not simply a member.