Top blogger Ann Althouse gets her source

Inexplicably popular blogger and alleged professor of law Ann Althouse "tweeted" yesterday that reports Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser seized a colleague, Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, around the throat were "unsourced." However they were not unsourced but anonymously sourced, a crucial distinction that should have been immediately apparent to a self-styled media critic such as Althouse and furthermore one who is surely familiar with the traditional discretion of the justices' law clerks, who are often privy to the court's private conferences.

The alleged professor of law went on to warn "you people" on Twitter they may be subject to a defamation action, apparently either unaware or forgetful of the substantial burden imposed on public figures (e.g., Prosser) which requires proof a defendant acted in "actual malice."

And all of that addlepated nonsense packed into one "tweet."

Anyway, now Althouse has her source:

"The facts are that I was demanding that [Prosser] get out of my office and he put his hands around my neck in anger in a chokehold," Justice Ann Walsh Bradley told the Journal Sentinel.

Prosser denies everything.

Following which report Althouse adds, "From what I have heard, Bradley is significantly larger than Prosser." What, she's never even seen them?

It's strange that Althouse, who allegedly professes the law in Madison, Wisconsin, has not attended a hearing at the State Supreme Court, which also sits in Madison (just a brief sashay down State St. in fact).

Justices Prosser and Bradley sit side by each (second and third from the left,* respectively, where the latter appears no larger than the former).

And damn near everybody is "significantly larger" than Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson,** who Prosser previously threatened to "destroy."

Althouse could measure their physical attributes as they ascend the bench, in order to confirm her own "unsourced" assertion that "Bradley is significantly larger than Prosser," whatever that's supposed to mean.

Did not David slay Goliath?

Moreover, Althouse might do well to revisit the law of self defense, if that is indeed among the topics she allegedly professes to law students.

You don't get to strangle somebody who merely raises their hands.

* Conservative hero Mike Gableman is on the far right, where he invents the Supreme Court's jurisdiction from whole cloth and forward slash.

** Not only have I seen the Chief Justice, but I have met her, more than once, and I'm not even an alleged University of Wisconsin law professor.

eta: Much, much more from Wis. Atty. Briane Pagel.