Scott Walker hires himself a sleaze merchant

Back from a well deserved vacation, Chris Liebenthal rounds up the phony outrage emanating from a couple of conservative "bloggers" in the wake of local sleuth Michael Horne's revealing how Republican gubernatorial hopeful Scott Walker had farmed out the design of his campaign website to an Ohio firm with GOP connections.

Dan Cody's item here is also worth a gander, chronicling as it does the comical histrionics of one desperately ineffective amateur logician, Aaron Rodriguez.

Walker is running on a promise of keeping jobs in Wisconsin: "Wisconsin just isn’t competitive," sez the current Milwaukee County Executive. "Other States are taking our jobs."

The Buckeye State for one, with Walker's own generous facilitating.

Lately we've been enjoying following The Real Scott Walker's Dilbertian ambitions on teh Twitter.

Also noteworthy is Scott Walker's retaining the gracious services of R.J. Johnson as his "general consultant." Some of Johnson's prior exploits are related here by Harris Kane of Heartland Hollar fame.

R.J. Johnson, it will be recalled, was formerly the point man for the Coalition For America's Families (CFAF), a sleazeball right-wing outfit that lied and lied and lied about former Justice Louis Butler's record during the 2008 State Supreme Court election.

CFAF's exceedingly disreputable machinations were in support of Michael Gableman, a then-circuit judge currently under investigation by the Wisconsin Judicial Commission for ethics violations.

Indeed, CFAF's dissembling elicited from Gableman one of the more memorable statements of his political campaign:

"I don't know if the number is 30%, 60%, 80%, or 90%," [Gableman] said, before adding, "I'm unaware of any study that contradicts those numbers."

What the Hell, it could be all of them!

Among many, many other things, Johnson and his "family values" henchpersons notoriously referred to a mentally and physically disabled Wisconsin woman accused of sexual assault as a "criminal," after she had successfully withdrawn an unjustly entered guilty plea.

Thus may yet another race to the bottom be in the offing.

And in a masterstroke of unintended irony, the first video testimony at the Flash intro to Scott Walker's Ohio-designed website features a woman declaring, "I have lost faith in the political system."

You and me both, sister. Thanks to the likes of R.J. Johnson.

Another Gableman ad recalled

A judge today dismissed the 29-year-old first-degree murder case against Ralph Armstrong, citing what he said were repeated violations by prosecutors of a court order concerning evidence in the case and a failure to tell Armstrong's lawyers about his brother's purported confession nearly 15 years ago.

A prior appeal of Ralph Armstrong's to the Wisconsin Supreme Court was the subject of advertising deemed defamatory and deployed by one of those so-called "family values" outfits last year in support of currently embattled judge Mike Gableman.

The teevee spot was concocted by the Coalition For America's Families and its then-"spokesman" R.J. Johnson. Johnson has been lately found laboring for the election campaign of Milwaukee County Executive and Republican gubernatorial hopeful Scott Walker.

A number of television stations refused to run the ad despite the outfit's subsequent removal of the defamatory language.

Its incendiary message even bothered Mike Gableman's enablers.

Marquette University law professor and court watcher Richard Esenberg observed disapprovingly that the ad contained a "shot of the victim's body followed, not immediately but soon, with a shot of [former Wisconsin Supreme Court] Justice Louis Butler laughing."

This is apparently a conservative family value: Portray your political opponents as deriving pleasure from rape and homicide.*

Ironically, as it turns out, the Ralph Armstrong ad was intended to bolster Gableman's repeated claims of the righteous role of State prosecutors as opposed to that of criminal defense attorneys.

Moreover, the "family values" crowd and R.J. Johnson used the Supreme Court's decision in State v. Armstrong, 2005 WI 119, as a cudgel against Justice Butler but then asserted that Butler mustn't be allowed to cite the case when discussing his own record on the court.

One couldn't invent a finer example of rank hypocrisy, which, as everybody knows, is a quality valued highly by America's Families.

* Evidently there exist voters clueless enough to believe such a thing, otherwise the suggestion wouldn't find its way into a political ad. The breathtakingly cynical political objective is to leave the composition of the State's highest appellate court up to that sort of mentality.

This approach is willingly accepted by many as a necessary artifact of democracy, yet fewer than 20% of Wisconsin's registered voters participated in the 2008 spring election that installed Gableman.

It's not clear how many of the other eight in every ten stayed away out of sheer revulsion at the process and the uses to which it's put.

Those that did have the likes of R.J. Johnson to thank.

They're the ones who want to elect judges

And this is how those elections are "repurposed":

Now [Scott Walker's] opponents are itching for payback, and it appears they're going to start taking out their frustrations on conservative State Supreme Court Justice David Prosser.

Such is life.

Prof. Charles Franklin, UW-Pol Sci, is skeptical, advising the malcontents to direct their energies to the recall elections of Senate Republicans (although there's no reason why they can't do both):

"If you try to bring Prosser into it, you have a harder time explaining why (he) is a part of it."

What, didn't Prof. Franklin get the memo?

Our campaign efforts will include building an organization that will return Justice Prosser to the bench, protecting the conservative judicial majority and acting as a common sense compliment [sic] to both the new [Republican] administration and [Republican] legislature. — Prosser for Supreme Court

There: Explaining all done.

Story by AP
IMG by Xoff

See also: Club For Growth tops $321K touting Prosser in primary*

R.J. Johnson, a key adviser to Wisconsin Club for Growth, a conservative group backing Gov. Scott Walker's budget-repair bill, said Tuesday that the organization will stay "actively engaged in the budget debate." Johnson is a former political strategist for Walker. — Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, 2/22/11

Prosser, Walker, same backers, same agents. It's not that hard.

Justice Prosser's term ends July 31, 2011, for those tracking the expanding docket of lawsuits against Wisconsin's Republican leaders.

They are defending against two on one day, tomorrow in Madison.

* Nine point three per cent voter turnout.

Spot the typo

Because I can't:

"As the only statewide Republican candidate in the entire nation to defeat an incumbent Democrat in 2006, we know what has to be done," Van Hollen wrote. "We know what it takes to win and we'll do it again, but I need your continued support to get there."

In reality, Van Hollen's predecessor, Peg Lautenschlager, lost in the Democratic primary to Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk. Van Hollen never got the chance to defeat the incumbent Democrat in '06.

"It may be time to find a hobby for those whose feathers were ruffled by the typo," snickered Darrin Schmitz,* Van Hollen's campaign spokesman.

Dan Bice.

I wonder what the typographical error is. "Statewide," "entire nation," and "incumbent Democrat" all appear to be spelled correctly.

I don't know how far through the alphabet you have to go, but in 2006 in Alabama, Republican Beth Killough Chapman defeated the incumbent Democrat, Nancy L. Worley, to become Secretary of State.

I'm pretty sure that's a statewide office too.

* An intriguing selection by Attorney General Van Hollen, the State of Wisconsin's top law enforcement officer.

Darrin Schmitz also engineered the political campaign of one Mike Gableman, who currently faces potential expulsion from the Wisconsin Supreme Court for violations of the Wisconsin Code of Judicial Conduct committed during that campaign.

Clearly, Gableman received some quality advice from Darrin Schmitz.

And Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker, another Republican seeking statewide office, has enlisted the services of yet another supportive associate of Mike Gableman's, R.J. Johnson.

Both Messrs. Schmitz and Johnson appear to specialize in races to the bottom. Must be the Republican way.

WMSC recusal rule reax

Stanley Kutler is well worth the read:

Justice O’Connor must be appalled

I reckon she is also.

Actual Racine Journal-Times headline:

Supreme Court recusal rule is disgrace to state

Whoa. That guy's reaction makes my own seem cold, calculated ... practically Zen-like. So somebody was paying attention; that's good to know. Even the otherwise restrained Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel inquires boldly of the court(s):

To the highest bidder?

More than just a little rhetorical, I feel we have to take that as.

I don't know about that "impartial justice" bill the J-S is promoting, however. Looks more like an instantaneous constitutional flusterpuck to me. But, hey. It's nice work if you can get it.

This was a nice touch, though:

Such purveyors of so-called phony issue ads as the Club for Growth and the Coalition for America's Families.

Dadburnit, there's that pesky Coalition for America's Families agin.

Last we all reconnoitered them thar badlands, Mr. R.J. Johnson of "shadowy interest group" renown was a top Scott Walker for Governor (never mind America's Families this time around) desperado.

Is that still the case?

If Republicans oppose frivolous lawsuits

Update: Frivolity in Oconto — That didn't take long

Then why does the chair of the Oconto County GOP expect a circuit court judge to stand in for the Wisconsin Senate sergeant-at-arms?

Senator sued over budget tactic — Fox11online.com

It's also uncharacteristic for a conservative to demand that the judiciary insinuate itself into the legislature's business in a case where the Senate has not yet exhausted its own authority to return the named defendant, State Sen. Jim Holperin, to the chamber.

The GOP chair's lawsuit may be seeking to apply pressure to Sen. Holperin, but that's not necessarily a good thing because filing suits for reasons like that is the very essence of frivolousness.

However, if the Republican chairman's suit somehow manages to survive a motion to dismiss, it will be interesting to see the plaintiff expand on his argument that Sen. Holperin's continuing absence discourages tourists from visiting Oconto County, in that Holperin's "fleeing the State" creates a negative impression on vacationers.

If I was a Republican snowmobiler, I might see that as a plus.

Speaking of tourism, come visit the tropical paradise of Madison.

Barthel v. Holperin (.pdf; 12 pgs.)

eta 1: Both the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and WisPolitics.com are referring to Mr. Barthel as "a Lakewood man," which is true, but his status as a Republican party official seems more significant than his hometown, particularly where a number of Barthel's allegations are lifted straight out of Republican Governor Scott Walker's playbook.

eta 2: A report on the Senate leadership's ongoing efforts to "compel" the return of the 14 Democrats. No judge is likely to step in and interfere with those efforts. The State constitution both authorizes that body's rulemaking and mitigates against judicial intervention.

eta 3: "The court action is partly funded by Wisconsin Club for Growth [a.k.a. Koch Industries], which is advised by R.J. Johnson, who worked as a political strategist for Walker's campaign."

— Journal-Sentinel

Is this really what the courts are for?

If by "educate" you mean "lie to"

Said R.J. Johnson, a spokesman for the Coalition for America's Families: "We educate the public on behalf of our membership and the issues and policies that concern them."

Via Patrick Marley.