Scott Walker spokesmodel's "predominant function"

According to a United States Federal District Court:

Hooters has admitted that the Hooters Girl's predominant function is to provide vicarious sexual recreation, to titillate, entice, and arouse male customers' fantasies.

Ms. Matthews et al don't do much for me, but I'm not a table:

[Hooters'] counsel stated that Hooters' trade dress consisted of ... a table-top setup consisting of a wooden vertical paper towel spool ... and table tents ...

Now there is some furniture Rebecca Kleefisch can marry.

h/t Jud Lounsbury.

More than one million signatures to Recall Walker

"Thanks a million." — Scott Walker

I happened to catch Charlie Sykes and his fellow wing-nuts Christian Schneider and Brian Sikma on TMJ-4 on Sunday. All were yukking it up and claiming organizers would fail to collect enough signatures to recall Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch, but they got her too, with nearly 850,000 of them. These characters are in deep, profound denial.

And WISGOP challenges will likewise be an exercise in futility. Signature-gatherers have been triple-checking the docs prior to their submittal.

Now, more importantly, we'll see whether November, 2010 was a fluke.

Even if it wasn't, Scott Walker blew it, by rescinding the people's statutory rights, which wasn't necessary, and in particular wasn't necessary for any fiscal reason. Walker admitted that, and the litigation which culminated in the Wisconsin Supreme Court's invention of "supervisory/original" jurisdiction proved it. Rescinding the people's rights is not something you can do without consequence, apparently.

That's as it should be, and it's why the constitution authorizes recalls.

Do recalls cause the heartbreak of psoriasis?

Check out this laughably transparent, self-serving propaganda:

[R]ecall fever is sweeping Wisconsin politics ... and a top Republican wonders if the political turmoil is weakening the will of employers to expand.

Not coincidentally, the said "top Republican" is Wisconsin Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch, who is getting recalled as we speak.

Organizers* announced they collected 50,000 recall petitions during the first 48 hours. They need about 540,000 signatures in 60 days. So expect to hear all manner of fabricated nonsense from Wisconsin Reporter and their WISGOP taskmasters for the next little while.

You remember Wisconsin Reporter, they pilfered the other party's documents. They are not journalists, they are a Republican front.

* Download a petition at this link. Do it for Wisconsin Reporter.

Those bloody lawyers, always with the law

Rep. Joel Kleefisch (R-Sacred Institution) said he thought his bill would sail through the hearing, until he realized there were three attorneys on the committee. Two maintained that his bill would make it easier, not more difficult, to victimize a spouse.

Hilarious.

Put a teevee reporter in charge of lawmaking, this is what you get.

Rep. Joel Kleefisch's own spouse, incidentally, is currently Wisconsin's lieutenant-governor, who famously likened same-sex couples to dogs.

It's good to know the deep thinkers are running the show over there.

Another merit badge for the Eagle Scout

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who forced public workers to pay more for their pensions as part of a push to curb union rights, broke his campaign promise to pay the full cost of his own State pension immediately after taking office in January.

AP: Lt. Gov. Kleefisch made same pledge, also didn't pay as promised

What else is new.

An extraordinary writ is a supervisory remedy

Affirmed the Wisconsin Supreme Court, yesterday:

A supervisory writ is an extraordinary remedy to prevent a court from refusing to perform, or from violating, its plain duty.

So, is that what Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi did?

No, of course not. Which is apparently why the same Wisconsin Supreme Court, by a majority composed of the same four conservative justices who just one month ago needed to invent a novel form of judicial authority, which it dubbed "supervisory/original jurisdiction," to avoid precisely the requirement the Wisconsin Supreme Court now affirms.

The court elaborates:

[A] petition for a supervisory writ will not be issued unless the duty of the circuit court is plain [and the circuit court's] refusal to act within the line of such duty or its intent to act in violation of such duty is clear.

I'm paraphrasing. Yesterday's majority supplies the underlining.

Not only did the Supreme Court, in Huebsch v. Dane County Circuit Court, fail to describe either what Judge Sumi's plain duty was or how exactly she refused it or intended to violate it — and yesterday the Supreme Court confirmed that a supervisory court must do both — in fact neither the term "plain" nor the term "duty" even appear in the court's June 14 order in the context of Judge Sumi's deliberations.

Thus may one puzzle as to how the Supreme Court might issue a supervisory writ without even addressing the criteria by which it exercises its authority to issue a supervisory writ, let alone explaining it.

Simple: Invent a novel source of judicial authority, what any self-respecting conservative jurisprude would do, of course. For we are assured they are conservatives, even by those judges themselves.

Granted, they are conservative Republicans. But conservative in the sense of the oft-invoked and sacred canons of "judicial restraint"? Considerably less so, expediency permitting. Indeed if anyone was carefully mindful of conservative principles of restraint, it was Sumi.

And, more remarkably, yesterday the court clarified that "a supervisory writ is dedicated to the discretion of the court of original jurisdiction."

That's ambiguous, but what it means is the supervisory writ is aimed at the discretion of the court of original jurisdiction. That is, it's the discretion of the court of original jurisdiction, and the alleged abuse of that discretion, which a supervisory writ is dedicated to supervising.

And in Huebsch, the court of original jurisdiction was the one named in Huebsch's petition, the one presided over by Dane County Judge Sumi. That's what original jurisdiction means: the first court to hear the case.

In fact the Supreme Court was the third court to have been presented the case, the second being the District IV Court of Appeals, which passed the Department of Justice's previous motion for permission to appeal on to the Supreme Court.* So how in the world could the Supreme Court exercise any claimed definition of original jurisdiction over this case?

Again, piece of cake: Slap together with some punctuation the court's supervisory authority and its power to hear cases in original jurisdiction.

The Wisconsin constitution empowers the Supreme Court with four separate avenues of authority: superintending (a.k.a. supervisory), administrative (which is not at issue in Huebsch v. Dane County), appellate jurisdiction (the Huebsch Court dismissed the DOJ's petition to exercise its appellate jurisdiction), and original jurisdiction. Original jurisdiction was off the table in March. As Justice Crooks flatly stated, "No petition for original jurisdiction ... was filed in this court by any party. . . . There is nothing 'original' or 'in the first instance' here."

The Department of Justice clearly understood this, as is evident from the entire procedural history of this case, and from all of the DOJ's paper filings. The Supreme Court maneuvered the DOJ into position to act as the Supreme Court's proxy in order to achieve the result that a majority of the Supreme Court sought. There is no other explanation.

There's certainly no other satisfactory explanation. Take a look at this bland assertion made by the Huebsch v. Dane County majority:

¶5 IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that the petition for original jurisdiction in Case No. 2011AP765-W is granted, State ex rel. La Follette v. Stitt, 114 Wis. 2d 358, 338 N.W.2d 684 (1983), and all motions to dismiss and for supplemental briefing are denied.

Case No. 2011AP765-W is a petition for supervisory writ, and not a petition for original jurisdiction. On the other hand, La Follette v. Stitt was a petition for original jurisdiction. The Huebsch majority does not tell us where exactly to look in La Follette v. Stitt to support its rationale; it merely cites the entire case. But presumably, it means this:

We granted the petition to commence an original action because this matter is publici juris and requires a prompt and authoritative determination by this court in the first instance.

However the (judge-made) doctrine of publici juris** is invoked in Stitt to justify the granting of La Follette's petition to the Supreme Court to accept original jurisdiction over his case. Indeed, Stitt itself cites to this prior caselaw: "If the matter is publici juris, this court may elect to take original jurisdiction if asked to do so." This underlining added.

Which the Huebsch Court wasn't asked. Its ¶5 is pure magical fiat.

Any conservative could tell you that.

Footnote footnote: Yesterday's footnote 6 is also pretty cute. It reads, "Wisconsin Stat. § 809.51 is the appellate rule that governs petitions for a '[s]upervisory writ and original jurisdiction to issue prerogative writ.'"

This is true as far as it goes but the fact of the matter is, Wis. Stat. § 809.51 also distinguishes between supervisory and original jurisdiction, presenting as it does a choice to prospective petitioners as to whether they will proceed in accordance with one or the other form of authority.

But the distinction is not so much germane to Huebsch, where the majority conjured a petition for an original action from a petition for a supervisory writ, and Huebsch doesn't get to § 809.51 except by way of § 809.71, which is the Supreme Court rule exclusive to its supervisory jurisdiction. While § 809.51 presents both options, the presence of two separate statutory provisions, § 809.71 and § 809.70, reinforces the contention that "supervisory/original jurisdiction" makes as much sense as "disorderly/theft" or "sexual assault of a/moveable property."***

On the other hand, the Supreme Court helpfully disabuses the absurdist notion that the only court referred to in Wis. Stat. § 809.51 is the court of appeals, a notion published in apparent seriousness on, of all places, the front page of the Marquette University Law School's faculty blog.

* And which the Supreme Court dismissed on June 14 — unanimously.

** Publici juris simply means "public right." The public also retains a couple of more fundamental rights: the right to draft constitutions and enact rules that define and delineate the powers of the courts and the right to not draft constitutions and not enact rules which authorize courts to combine those powers into new, judicially manufactured ones.

*** Notwithstanding Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch's table/marriages.

Angry Wisconsin left should be jubilant

And merry and gay even.

I noticed a number of my friends on the left were angered by the news that Wisconsin governor Scott Walker is withdrawing completely from defending the State's domestic partnership registry against a suit brought by Julaine Appling, a Madison spinster and bit of a nut.

They should be overjoyed, as anytime Walker's lawyers step the hell away from anything is a victory. They've done little more than create havoc and lawlessness since Walker became governor in January.

Appling attempted to have the Supreme Court hear her case (such as it is) directly in 2009, but the court declined. So Appling turned to a Dane County circuit court, which is where the action sits these days.

As Wisconsin has a constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriage, Ms. Appling and her fellow travelers argue that the domestic partnership registry creates situations "substantially similar to marriage" and therefore violates the State constitution.

The law was, ahem, published under the previous Democratic administration and Republican attorney general J.B. Van Hollen refused to defend it, alluding to some religious scruples, so then-governor Jim Doyle hired the capable attorney Lester Pines.

The registries allow same-sex couples to take family and medical leave to care for a seriously ill partner, make end-of-life decisions and have hospital visitation rights.

Yes, certainly those religious objections are understandable.

Scott Walker fired Lester Pines in March. Now he wants out of the case completely, which is great news. Some on the left are angry because Walker's refusal is yet another indication of his agenda to tear down whatever progress in social justice the domestic partnership registry represents. But this should come as no surprise.

Don't forget Scott Walker's running mate and now his lieutenant governor Rebecca Kleefisch, a fundamentalist Christian, on a fundamentalist Christian teevee station famously asked of the domestic registry, "Can we marry dogs? This is ridiculous."

So we already knew which Santorum-world this gang is coming from.

In the meantime Fair Wisconsin, an advocacy group specializing in these things, was granted intervening defendant status by the circuit court and will do just fine without Walker's attorneys' participation.

The less we hear from Scott Walker's lawyers the better.*

* Comic relief excepted.

P.S. Do not google Santorum.

It's the Hump Day of National Marriage Week

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has declared this to be National Newt Gingrich's Third Marriage Week. Blogger Jim Arndt has been celebrating the festivities. Scott Walker and his pals like (spinster) Julaine Appling revere the sacrament of marriage so ardently they helped pass a State constitutional amendment preventing a substantial cohort of Wisconsinites from enjoying its benefits.

Here are some of the couples that Walker, Appling, and their fellow travelers worked tirelessly to deny equal protection of the law:

Alicia Toby and Saundra Heath, who reside in Newark, have lived together for seventeen years and have children and grandchildren. Alicia is an ordained minister in a church ...

Mark Lewis and Dennis Winslow reside in Union City and have been together for fourteen years. They both are pastors in the Episcopal Church.

Diane Marini and Marilyn Maneely were committed partners for fourteen years until Marilyn's death in 2005. The couple lived in Haddonfield, where Diane helped raise, as though they were her own, Marilyn’s five children from an earlier marriage.

Karen and Marcye Nicholson-McFadden have been committed partners for seventeen years. ... [T]hey are raising two young children conceived through artificial insemination, Karen having given birth to their daughter and Marcye to their son.

Suyin and Sarah Lael have resided together in Franklin Park for most of the sixteen years of their familial partnership. ... They live with their nine-year-old adopted daughter and two other children who they are in the process of adopting.

Cindy Meneghin and Maureen Kilian first met in high school and have been in a committed relationship for thirty-two years. They have lived together for twenty-three years in Butler where they are raising a fourteen-year-old son and a twelve-year-old daughter. Through artificial insemination, Cindy conceived their son and Maureen their daughter.

Recently, Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch in an interview with a fundamentalist Christian radio station likened gay couples to dogs.

Every argument that so-called "traditional marriage" proponents have presented to courts throughout the country has been debunked, leaving little else to their positions except homophobia and bigotry.

In America, religious adherents, who can switch or even reverse their sectarian affiliation at the drop of a hat, enjoy more heightened legal protections for their various beliefs than do those whose sexual orientation differs from the majority. That situation shouldn't stand.

The Silence of the WPRI Hypocrites

Sykes & Co. too busy think-tanking nonpartisanly
No surprises there, but do check out Cory Liebmann.*

There is no evidence in the WPRI report — 7th Circuit

* Speaking of whom, this is an item Cory dug up quite a while ago, but I haven't seen him given any credit now that it's hit the papers.

On the other hand, Kleefisch's likening gay people to one of the lower animals is typical conservative Christian twaddle, and not surprising.

Nor is it surprising why Kleefisch has been kept hidden away since becoming Scott Walker's running mate. One smart move there.

Hard to say why Kleefisch won't debate

"If we don't stay Christ-centered then who are we to say we should lead?" — Jews for Kleefisch PAC

The local paper manages to profile the lieutenant governor candidates without mentioning that one, Rebecca Kleefisch, refuses to debate the other, Tom Nelson. But it does leave a clue:

Nelson received a bachelor's degree from Carleton College in 1998 and a master's degree in public administration from Princeton University in 2004. He has served [on nine standing committees] in the state Assembly for six years and was the Assembly majority leader in the last session.

Kleefisch was a teevee reporter who contributed some homemade YouTubes to Charlie Sykes's blog and and worked in "marketing."

Kleefisch dereligionized, undebatable

"Arrogance ... total disregard for the voters of Wisconsin."

The Walker camp has quickly taken over Kleefisch's scheduling and media relations. Even the "issues" page on Kleefisch's campaign website now links to Walker's website instead of her original content, which incorporated more religious flavoring in her pro-life and marriage-protection stances.

Lt. gov. candidate refuses to debate

"Can we marry dogs? This is ridiculous." — Rebecca Kleefisch

Walker referred calls to media relations specialist Rich in retail.

One very determined candidate

I am not a fan of what Rebecca Kleefisch has to say but I sure as hell hate to hear when somebody has to go through this. And enduring it all in that electoral pressure cooker, that's impressively tenacious.

Kleefisch is unlikely to need any chemotherapy or other treatments. She said her doctor pronounced her cancer-free.

Let's all of us hope so.

Rebecca Kleefisch: The buck starts here

When we called and e-mailed the Rebecca Kleefisch for lieutenant governor campaign, we were promised a response on where the $5 billion figure came from. We tried again the next day, but again got no reply. Finally, Kleefisch campaign spokeswoman Jeanne Tarantino referred us to the campaign of Scott Walker, the Republican nominee for governor.

True Conservatism™ is all about taking responsibility, you see.

Rebecca Kleefisch likens gay couples to dogs

Don't Google 'santorum'

Republican candidate for Wisconsin lieutenant governor Rebecca Kleefisch discusses the State's domestic partnership registry with Jim Schneider of WVCY, Milwaukee's fundamentalist radio station:

At what point are we going to okay marrying inanimate objects? Can I marry this table? Or this, y'know, clock? Can we marry dogs? This is ridiculous. And biblically, again, I'm gonna go right back to my fundamental Christian beliefs . . .

Yes, and please stay there.

h/t Cory Liebmann.

On teh web: Kleefisch's dog whistle homophobia

Most Lt. Gov. candidates amoral heathens

Kleefisch, though, seemed surprised to hear that one Jewish recipient of the flier was offended by it.

Reports Daniel Bice.

Earlier: King for Wisconsin Secretary of Jesus
Also: Milwaukee sheriff says what?