Predictable Republican decount hypocrites

Well well, looky here.

On teh web: Kloppenburg + decount.

Kloppenburg will celebrate at Greenbush

"[It's] to celebrate the fact that there is no other candidate on the ballot," says Kloppenburg campaign manager Melissa Mulliken.

An odd thing to celebrate but they always were oddballs.

Ellen Berz for Dane County Circuit Judge

No brainer.

Republicans love to politicize judicial elections* and when April rolls around, being a "Walker appointee" will not be the most enviable thing in the world. As for Mr. Remington, do you think being an assistant attorney general will be a premise for heaping scorn, as it was for Mike Gableman and Charlie Sykes when they criticized JoAnne Kloppenburg?

Me neither.

* "Non-partisan," by law. That's a laugh.

Bomb thrower still celebrating Prosser election

Officers found that the rock was thrown just above a sign supporting the recall of Scott Walker. In addition, there was a note taped to the rock making reference to voting for last spring's Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate JoAnne Kloppenburg.

Sore losers are common, derangedly obsessive sore winners much less so.

Mark Block disputes Prosser attorney Troupis's fees

Interesting tale from Daniel Bice in the Journal-Sentinel this morning.

Wisconsin Prosperity Network is one of the right-wing outfits that's suing the Government Accountability Board over a financial disclosure rule the wingers claim abridges their freedom of speech. The case is notable for at least two other reasons as well, in that alleged conservative Supreme Court justices David Prosser and Mike Gableman literally rewrote the Wisconsin constitution to prevent the GAB from implementing the rule and then a year later, Prosser disqualified himself from the case after certain parties raised a ruckus over the fact that Prosser had hired Wisconsin Prosperity Network's counsel, the ubiquitous James Troupis, to help him keep his seat on the court after the challenger in the April election, JoAnne Kloppenburg, exercised her right to a recount of votes.

Anyway, one of Bice's attached documents is a rough balance sheet showing $87,339.50 worth of Troupis in accounts payable/committed costs with the notation, "per Mark [Block] should have been $50,000."

That's rather a wide discrepancy.

Another entry reads "Troupis owed by [Americans For Prosperity] 5,000" followed by "probably won't receive." Troupis's co-counsel in the Supreme Court action — Wisconsin Prosperity Network v. Myse — is into the outfit for another $20,658.07. Nothing for the other co-counsel, however.

Also, Wisconsin Prosperity Network "hired" local wing-nut blargher K. Maichle on a $500/mo. retainer, amusing if only for the fact that it was Wisconsin Prosperity Network which put the scare quotes around "hired."

Wonder what that's supposed to mean.

Wisconsin Supreme Court on civility and public trust

This Thursday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court will convene in public for a conference devoted to, among other things, Civility and Public Trust and Confidence. The court has been in the news lately because some of its members don't get along too well. Some observers have wondered why.

Here's a clue. This is Mike Gableman, who lied during his political campaign in 2008, and who still has a civil complaint alleging ethics violations pending against him, speaking to a rubber chicken event in Racine County last March. Much of Gableman's harangue is devoted to praising controversial Justice David Prosser, who Gableman claims is "slow to anger" and only gets mad "when there is some unjustness."

Around 7:20, Gableman gets to insulting his fellow justices:

A judge or a justice should not misuse their position, their office, their temporary office of the court, to supplant or replace the law with their personal, political, or social views. I saw that happening in Madison four years ago when I decided way up in Burnett County that it wasn't me who was failing to understand what Shirley Abrahamson, Ann Walsh Bradley, Pat Crooks and Loophole Louie [sic — it's Louis, rhymes with Lewis; as you can see and hear, Gableman is unrepentant of his judicial ethics violations] Butler were doing to the law [laughter]. It was they who were failing in their sacred vow to follow the law as written and not substitute their own political, social, and personal views for what they think the law ought to be. Thank you [applause].

Notice how Gableman says "Thank you" before the applause starts.

This is not Gableman the political campaigner, this is Gableman the justice of the Supreme Court — where he claims to preside "by the grace of God" — although the roles are indistinguishable in Gableman's case.

So there there you have Gableman accusing his colleagues of "failing" in their professional obligations, and yet some people are still wondering why there is personal tension among certain factions within the court.

And ironic accusations they are, considering Gableman's own behavior.

Gableman returns to praising Prosser, who defended Gableman's ethical violations and indeed told the people of Wisconsin to "get over it" during a debate with JoAnne Kloppenburg, who challenged Prosser for his seat on the court and came within half a percentage point of winning it:

Former [Wisconsin] governors Tommy Thompson and Patrick Lucey, two who you probably cannot find with more divergent political views, are the co-chairmen of his campaign.

Which is funny because just a couple of days later:

Lucey "resigned as honorary co-chair of Justice David Prosser's re-election campaign and endorsed his opponent, State Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg. Lucey said in a statement that he has followed Prosser's campaign "with increasing dismay and now alarm," adding that "Prosser has lost that most crucial of characteristics for a Supreme Court Justice — as for any judge — even-handed impartiality." Lucey also cited Prosser's "disturbing distemper and lack of civility that does not bode well for the High Court in the face of demands that are sure to be placed on it in these times of great political and legal volatility."

That's right, Prosser's own campaign chairman abandoned ship.*

More recently Gableman came up with a tale that Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, whose neck Prosser admitted putting his hands around during a disagreement in her office on June 13, 2011, had "struck" him on the back of the head either in 2008 or 2009 (Gableman told Dane County police detectives it was 2008, then changed the year to 2009 after Wisconsin State Journal reporter Dee Hall noticed that there were no meetings of the court on the date Gableman had alleged in 2008).

Following Gableman's testimony to the Dane County police detectives, he apparently forewarned his other "conservative" colleagues on the court that he had so testified. Justices Prosser and Annette Ziegler both told the detectives they had no other knowledge of the alleged incident, despite Gableman's assurances that all seven justices were present. Three other justices have affirmatively denied such an event took place. The remaining justice, Patience Roggensack, has declined to comment.

This space has wondered — as there was a criminal investigation undertaken into the alleged physical altercation between Justices Bradley and Prosser — why there hasn't been a separate investigation into Gableman's allegations. Or whether the Dane County Sheriff's Office would take notice that Mike Gableman may have been misleading them.

Still wondering.

* Somewhat reminiscent of then-Dodge County district attorney and now-Circuit Court Judge Steven G. Bauer's abandoning of Gableman.

Here we go again

JoAnne Kloppenburg for District IV Court of Appeals.

eta: In case you're wondering what I meant by here we go again.

Stay tuned for Charlie Sykes to get his miserable Wizard Of Oz jollies.

Prosser, J., did not participate.

Apparently there's been a flurry of motions in the case of Wisconsin Prosperity Network v. Myse, a challenge to a campaign finance disclosure rule propagated by the State Government Accountability Board, which oversees Wisconsin's electoral processes.* This space noted back in April that the petitioners' lead attorney, ubiquitous Republican activist James Troupis, was hired by Justice David Prosser to defend the latter's 0.46% margin of victory over challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg.

Four months later, the local press finally took notice, contacted some experts in legal ethics, who unanimously cast Prosser's continued participation in the case in a dim light, and Prosser was forced to issue a public statement and formally request of the parties their views as to whether or not he should disqualify himself from hearing the case (oral arguments are scheduled for next Tuesday, September 6). It appears WEAC, the teachers' union that was granted intervenor status on behalf of the respondent Government Accountability Board, filed a motion requesting Prosser's disqualification, which Mr. Troupis countered.

On August 18 the court ordered all of the parties to respond to a set of ten questions, the tenor and substance of which might incline one to believe there is a strong possibility that this case — which is an original action, meaning the petitioners went straight to the State Supreme Court, bypassing both the trial court and the court of appeals — will be dismissed. Justice Prosser did not participate in that August 18 order.

And yesterday the court granted WEAC's request to respond to Troupis's response on the question of Justice Prosser's recusal. Obviously Prosser did not participate in that order either but another component to yesterday's directive addressed the continuing written arguments pursuant to the August 18 order; that is, the substantive elements of the case as opposed to the ancillary question of Prosser's participation.

So while Justice Prosser has made no announcement** as to whether he'll sit in on Troupis's presentation next Tuesday, he's at least in some sort of holding pattern with respect to taking part in the court's continuing deliberations. And since the parties now have until this Friday at 5:00 p.m. to file their next collection of papers, we probably won't hear anything of Justice Prosser's disqualification until nearly the last minute.

The present action dates back one year, when Justice Prosser and his mutual admirer Mike Gableman issued a temporary injunction against the Government Accountability Board prior to their determining whether the Supreme Court even had any judicial authority at all over the case.

I admit I'm far from the sharpest knife in the drawer, but that's still a bit of a head-scratcher to me, injunctive power without the jurisdiction.

See also: Koch outfit friend of the [Wisconsin Supreme] court

* Gordon Myse is a former member of the Board and in fact weighed in on the recusal controversy, telling the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's Patrick Marley, "I think the fact that [Prosser's election] lawyer appeared in a case before him is objectively a conflict in almost anybody's book."

** Contrary to last week's ill-sourced Think Progress assertion. In the spirit of "Know thine enemy," you'd expect TP to have apprehended the fact it was relying on another one of these right-wing "news services" — in this case a Chamber of Commerce front — but it was not to be.

How many sharks can one Shark jump?

Clearly, an infinite amount.

Sometimes I swear WisOpinion.com, the local aggregator of Wisconsin's "opinion leaders," links to stuff just for giggles, much like Jerry Falwell used to get invited on the Sunday morning chat shows so the producers and news editors could chuckle at him. Case in point, Rick Esenberg's pretend lament at the state of affairs on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Recall that Bill Lueders broke the story Saturday morning. None of Lueders's sources were named, but he obviously had them. By Saturday evening, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel had managed to obtain a statement from Ann Walsh Bradley, a justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, confirming the substantive details of Lueders's story. The Journal-Sentinel also obtained a statement from the accused, David Prosser, that did not deny some physical altercation had taken place, but rather simply varied from the perspective of Justice Bradley's account.

Peake fantasy

Furthermore the Journal-Sentinel obtained statements from two anonymous sources — who remain anonymous as of this writing — neither of which deny some physical altercation but, as does Prosser, present a different perspective of the alleged altercation. So what does Rick Esenberg, an actual professor of the law, make of all this?

Well, first of all, he denounces Lueders for "an embarrassingly bad piece of work" despite the fact that Lueders's report was confirmed by a justice of the Supreme Court who went on the record to confirm it.

What's embarrassing or bad about it exactly, he doesn't deign to reveal, but the professor's unsupported assertions suit perfectly the obfuscatory narrative Esenberg and his fellow travelers are seeking to forward.

And despite even the fact of Justice Bradley's affirmations, Esenberg pronounces her allegations "fantastical," conveniently overlooking Justice Prosser's self-admitted history of aggressiveness toward Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson, whom he had previously threatened to "destroy," and who is relatively small in stature and who is nearly a decade the elder of Prosser. Moreover Bradley had warned against Prosser's behavior in emails she released to a Journal-Sentinel reporter months ago.*

Now all of a sudden the latest in an apparent pattern of reckless and intemperate behavior is "fantastical," like a Mervyn Peake novel.

Justice/Gableman

But what is most remarkable — outrageous, really — about Esenberg's own reckless missive is that he suggests the Wisconsin Judicial Commission back off from carrying through its investigation:

[T]he worst thing, I think, would be to frustrate the will of the voters by the imposition of discipline based upon controverted allegations. That would smack of a coup. It would undermine the legitimacy of the Court. [**]

Let's review a couple of things here.

Justice Prosser would be the third consecutive Wisconsin Supreme Court justice subject to an investigation by the Wisconsin Judicial Commission, all of them self-advertised "conservatives," and all of them members of the court that just two weeks ago abandoned bedrock principles of legal procedure, invented from whole cloth a novel fabrication of the court's jurisdictional authority, imported into its written order and opinions alleged facts that were never even mentioned by any party or court as the case wended its way toward the Michael/Gableman Four, and for all intents and purposes untenably reprimanded a careful, review-proven conservative circuit judge for — ironically — supposedly abusing her authority, a reprimand meted out by the same court that had just moments before whipped into existence its own purported authority.

The allegations Esenberg is talking about are those of Justice Bradley who, it bears again repeating, went on the record to confirm the pertinent details of Lueders's "embarrassingly bad" report. And the "controversions" Esenberg is talking about are those anonymous sources quoted by the Journal Communications, Inc. flagship daily newspaper.

Blinka job safe

Not only does Esenberg accord the latter equal weight, he accords them such countervailing authority that, Esenberg reasons, they should not only drive the Wisconsin Judicial Commission's investigation but in fact discourage the Commission from proceeding. All one might say to that is, thank gods Esenberg is not teaching the law of evidence over there.

Esenberg's "will of the voters," it needs also to be recalled, is Justice Prosser's 0.46% margin of victory over challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg, who for her part realized double-digit (not double-decimal point) surges in popular support between February's primary contest and the April 5 general election — especially in the State's most conservative counties.

Thus would it "smack of a coup" were the Wisconsin Judicial Commission, which is charged by State statute to investigate unprofessional behavior among the State judiciary, to pursue its mandated obligations.

It's quite the amazing performance by Rick Esenberg, who has a long and fairly well documented history of amazing performances. It's . . .

Ta Da! Ol' Prof. Rick is right about one thing though:

Lawyers have been worried about the divisions on the Court [**] for some time now. ... No one likes to say too much about it in public for fear of alienating the people who may decide their clients' matters.

Oh, but I'm sure they would like to say plenty about it, and what they would mostly say Esenberg probably wouldn't want to hear. Because the current divisions on the court are directly traceable to Mike Gableman, who none other than Rick Esenberg championed by defending some of the most disgraceful attacks on former Justice Louis Butler's reputation, character, and professionalism, and whose own then-research assistant's gibberish Esenberg is still publishing at the Marquette LS faculty blog.

Esenberg's "worried lawyers" ain't going to forget. It's one thing to get along — and a good thing — but it's quite another to abandon principles because some partisan ideologue is boo-hooing like a sad crocodile.

Your humble correspondent may not be the disinterested academic ivory tower dweller Rick Esenberg is presented as by Journal Communications, Inc.'s panoply of media dispensaries but I surely do know that much.

* There was some considerable right-wing pearls-clutching over Justice Bradley's handing over the emails to the reporter. However, go have a look in the WisconsinEye.org video archives for the court's open administrative conferences and you will find both Justices Prosser and Roggensack releasing sheafs of interchambers emails to the press.

The political right's shameless hypocrisy is quite the spectacle to behold.

** You do not capitalize court here. Capitalizing court here would be a signal for the United State Supreme Court. This from a professor of law.

Ann Althouse, like Justice Prosser, sniffs a turd

According to alleged professor of law Ann Althouse, Bill Lueders, who broke the story Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser allegedly seized a colleague, Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, by the neck with both hands, Governor Scott Walker's momentous budget-singing ceremony "was overshadowed by the gigantic turd Lueders felt moved to drop at exactly that moment." Althouse seems hell-bent on discrediting Lueders's reporting, despite the fact Justice Bradley herself has since affirmed it.

Most rational actors would reverse course at that point.

Perhaps Althouse is too demure to outright call Justice Bradley a liar and instead has been busying herself with attempting to discredit Lueders's confirmed reporting and failing rather spectacularly at that project.*

The alleged law professor's scatological metaphor is especially entertaining when one recalls Prosser's election-time fauxtrage at coming upon a reader post at Supreme Court candidate JoAnne Kloppenburg's Facebook, which read, "Stop the turd, vote Kloppenburg."

"Now, am I the turd?," Justice Prosser had actually inquired.

Apparently so, albeit not Althouse's "gigantic turd," as Althouse also assures us Justice Bradley is "significantly larger" than Justice Prosser.

I've heard students at the University of Wisconsin Law School go out of their way to avoid enrolling in Althouse's classes. That's not surprising.

* WPRI's Christian Schneider lauds Althouse for doing "yeoman's work."

eta 01: Fortunately for the rest of us Ann Althouse is not in charge of the Dane County Sheriff's Office. Justice Bradley's allegations may constitute a felony charge. They need to be taken seriously, contra the alleged professor of law's wild and frivolously idiotic speculations.

eta 02: As they are taken by the Wisconsin Judicial Commission.

As mentioned here previously, the Supreme Court is charged with overseeing the ethical behavior and education of the State's attorneys, an authority that is becoming less and less possible to take seriously.

And I don't believe it was ever possible to take Ann Althouse seriously.

How much did the Kloppenburg recount cost again?

Because this WISGOP dishonesty is setting the State back $428K.

Where's all yer big fauxtrage at now, WISGOP?

JRN's Charlie Sykes, Father of Twits

"MikeTateWatch" is the Twitter account of some kook up north who's obsessed with stalking the Democratic Party of Wisconsin chair and devoted to posting his own deranged fantasies on the internets. There is exactly as much truth to the above claim as there was to Charlie Sykes's repeated insistence that the WI Dems were behind JoAnne Kloppenburg's demand for a Statewide recount of the April general election ballots.

That is, none whatsoever. But look to the far-right of the retweeters and see who was the first to spread this falsehood among his wing-nut discipleship: None other than the so-called "blogfather," Charlie Sykes.

Not that it wouldn't be a fine idea, mind you.

And that Mike Gableman gave anybody a lesson in the law, harsh or otherwise, is as ridiculous as law professor to the wing-nuts Rick Esenberg alleging this space's legal knowledge is limited to "horn books."

I happen to be aware of several readers prominent in the Wisconsin legal community who would say and indeed have very kindly said otherwise.

Incidentally, Charlie Sykes has your humble correspondent "blocked" on Twitter, despite my not even "following" him, the poor paranoid sod.

As if I would, although Sykes is probably why they named it "Twit-ter."

Glossary: JRN = Journal Communications, Inc.

No ethics complaint forthcoming for Justice Prosser

In the Isthmus, Bill Lueders noted the other day that former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice Donald Steinmetz filed an ethics complaint with the Office of Lawyer Regulation against Joel Winnig, the Madison attorney who lost to JoAnne Kloppenburg in the February primary.

Steinmetz is upset Winnig referred to Mike Gableman as "a cancer on the body politic" who "continues to pollute the Wisconsin Supreme Court." (This space strongly condemned the remarks as "not helpful.")

It may be recalled that Gableman himself was found in late 2009 by a three-judge panel to have violated two separate provisions of the State code of judicial ethics for his antics in the 2008 Supreme Court election.

Joel Winnig's harsh comments are pure opinion, obviously. On the other hand, what to make of Justice David Prosser's rejoinder:

"I think Joel has been smoking some of the stuff he wants to legalize," Prosser said, referring to Winnig's position on marijuana.

Isn't Justice Prosser accusing Joel Winnig of committing a crime? That's damaging to Winnig's reputation, even if Justice Prosser was kidding.

So where is the OLR ethics complaint against Justice Prosser?

Fair's fair.

Assuming they'd have me

If JoAnne Kloppenburg files suit tomorrow I'm joining the WISGOP.

Election so nice they made Prosser win twice

Item: Wisconsin Supreme Court decount certified

Finally, that stupid charade of a Supreme Court recount is over. So tired of getting updates from Kloppenburg campaign.

Haha. At least I didn't have the latter problem.

But where was Jack Craver (or anybody) five weeks ago?

I've been mighty lonely.

This is funny too. An online "troll" is someone who pretends to sympathize with positions they actually oppose:

@wiunion You know what we all need to do? Contact Kloppenburg to demand a lawsuit. Please rally around this folks. We win! Solidarity.

That's a pretty good troll (although you can sense the halfheartedness).

Decount timeline:
April 8: Anomaly, question
Early April: Prosser, Scott Walker in secret midnight Capitol meeting
Late April: Widespread anomalies and questions about election conduct
Early May: Anomalies and questions about election conduct
Mid May: Anomaly, question (See April 8)
May 23: kthxbai

Maybe.

There is one bright spot, however, in that the GAB has collated and archived an enormous amount of data for the scrutiny of Journal Communications, Inc.'s two political science professors and one lawyer.

Oh noes: Is Kloppenburg lying about our Shark?

Alleges local right-wing perfesser of the law Rick Esenberg:

I understand the Kloppenburg campaign has been claiming that I "work for" [Wis. S. Ct. Justice David] Prosser. Not true. I have nothing to do with the Prosser campaign or the recount effort.

Prof. Rick proffers no evidence. I wonder how many layers of hearsay it would contain, if he had any. Maybe Kloppenburg got Esenberg mixed up with James Troupis, who is working for Prosser, because both Esenberg and Troupis were working for State Senate Republican majority leader Scott Fitzgerald, which you'd never know when Journal Communications, Inc. proffers Rick Esenberg as the disinterested academic observer.

Which he most certainly is not. He is a partisan political operator.

By the way, can somebody explain to me how come a Journal-Sentinel reader might have published by that organ a reference to Kloppenburg as "Kloppenpig," which subsequently receives 82 122 (as of this writing) "thumbs up," more than almost any other comment in this thread, but when another J-S reader calls the organ's right-wing calumnist Patrick McIlheran a "dick" (with good cause), the latter observation disappears with nary the opportunity to garner even one solitary "thumb up"?

Apparently you get to write your own rules in a one-newspaper town.

Statement of Melissa Mulliken

Via Kloppenburgmedia@four.pairlist.net:

Statement of Melissa Mulliken, Kloppenburg for Justice Campaign Manager on Supreme Court Recount

Melissa Mulliken, Campaign Manager for JoAnne Kloppenburg, today issued a statement on the conclusion of the recount process in Waukesha County:

Clerks around Wisconsin have done hard and good work on this recount and all Wisconsin residents owe them thanks. We also thank the hundreds of volunteers across the state who have served as observers. The recount has uncovered numerous anomalies and irregularities. Vote tallies have changed in every county. Now, as the process calls for, we will review the record and we will determine, based on the facts, the evidence and the law, whether to request judicial review.

Lord help us. Poor old Brad Blog's going to have an aneurysm.

h/t A little birdie.*

* Melissa Mulliken wouldn't add me to the Kloppenburg campaign email list despite two requests, the first on February 28, the other in late March. Meanwhile I find myself on email lists of politicians who I've never even heard of, let alone not put in any direct requests to.

Isn't that how politicians usually operate? I would have thought so.

Kloppenburg Supreme Court decount ends today

It says here:

The Government Accountability Board's Kevin Kennedy says a court challenge of the final results is possible. "The grounds for changing the outcome based on a legal challenge are very slim."

Now that's the understatement of the year. Because the grounds for changing the outcome based on the decount were already very slim. I hear Republicans are waiting to hire Kloppenburg's campaign manager.

She's done such a good job at making the left look like fools.

Wisconsin BREAKING: Please give generously

How shall we go on?
Althouse troubled Kloppenburg "consuming [Althouse's] precious time"
Is greatest personal tragedy since Herb Kohl bored Patrick McIlheran

MJS edit board not entitled to own facts

Sez JoAnne Kloppenburg:

The recount has uncovered significant and widespread errors and anomalies in the securing of ballots and recording of votes on election day. There have been changes to vote totals in every county due to miscounted or missing votes.

But neither is JoAnne Kloppenburg entitled to her own facts, and the latter claim is untrue. The recount did not change the vote totals in several Wisconsin counties. Moreover in many, many other Wisconsin counties, the changes in vote totals were so negligible, or exactly what you'd expect in any Statewide recount,* that they are hardly evidence of any "significant and widespread errors and anomalies."

Just a thought, but if you're going to take the MJS to task for drinking the wing-nut Kool-Aid — and there are a number of legitimate reasons for doing so — it's probably best not to accuse the paper of inventing its own facts whilst inventing facts of one's own.

Now please make it stop. Dissipation of sympathy is near complete.

* And they'd change negligibly again if they were counted again. Perhaps the MJS could call up the one or two professors of political science it keeps in its Rolodex to confirm the foregoing observation, which is already more than well confirmed in the academic literature.

eta:

Thanks kloppy-choppy, for identifying yourself as the most pathetic and worthless person in the state. And, that is saying a lot when you consider the last few months, you are perhaps the most despicable and rotten human being in the western hemisphere. To think that your worthless backside could be on the bench is enough to scare the beegesus out of most civil minded wisconsinites. Thanks again, for being such a incredible whack-job.

This is acceptable reader commentary** at the MJS, but don't dare call the newspaper's dissembling calumnist Patrick McIlheran a "dick."

** Complete with 29 "thumbs up" as of this writing.