Prof. Rick's Freud slipped here

Law professor returns to his eager defenses of Mike Gableman:

We might say that "free legal services' is — deliberately or accidentally — not a complete and accurate description of the free arrangement at issue.

We knew it was a free arrangement all along. It's pleasant to see Mike Gableman's stoutest cheerleader finally acknowledging that fact.

He goes on:

I am also confident that Justice Gableman understood the nature of the arguments being made for his recusal and, in fact, made clear that he based his decision on "the circumstances of the case ... and the submissions of the parties."

'Because he said so,' offers Prof. Rick of Gableman, who doesn't exactly enjoy a reputation for honesty, having been prosecuted by the Wisconsin Judicial Commission for lying about another judge's professional record.

If Prof. Rick is so confident now that Gableman "understood the nature of the arguments being made," where was his confidence that Gableman understood the procedural history of State v. Reuben Lee Mitchell?

If Prof. Rick's level of confidence in the latter equaled his present confidence in Gableman's profound understanding, then Prof. Rick would have to admit that Gableman knew full well that he was baldly lying during his political campaign in 2008. But you'll never hear that from Prof. Rick, whose own partisan expediencies regularly trump whatever pretense to principled scholarship he's apparently duped the Journal-Sentinel into accepting. That farce is worse than the sloppy writing.

Good for a laugh, at least.