Nobody knows what the hell McIlheran does

For his ninety-three thousand federal dollars per annum

"I bet debunking Climategate is going to be huger."

A total of 24 seconds of cable news coverage — The Daily Show

Locally, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel ran near-daily the hysterics of its then-calumnist wing-nut, Patrick McIlheran. These days, nary a word.

McIlheran, coincidentally, got hired by warming denializer Ron Johnson.

I got Jack Craver's back

Jack Craver of the Isthmus is attacked by a wing-nut:

"Attempting to give this state the worst possible legal environment for business (see Loophole Louie [sic] Butler and lead paint) isn't anti-business?" — McIlheran BFF Steve Prestegard

Prestegard's WMC propaganda is so tiresome. Here we go again:

It's also noteworthy that the two dissenters in Thomas v. Mallett, [so-called conservative] Justices Wilcox and Prosser, "recognize[d] the validity of the risk-contribution theory of recovery articulated by this court in Collins [v. Eli Lilly & Co.]." What they objected to was its extension and application to the facts in Mallett.

Even the two [so-called conservative] dissenters — who were as forceful as could be — affirmed only that the pigment manufacturers "can be held liable for a product they may or may not have produced" and only then as one (potential) "result" of the majority's reasoning. Emphasis added. And in fact they weren't, because the action the Mallett court allowed the child to continue against those manufacturers was ultimately dismissed.

01.06.11: WMC pet outrage tops list of "tort reforms"

And:

Oppose the doctrine, but there's no need to lie about it. On the other hand, if and when WMC launches its advertising campaign in support of Justice Prosser, some attentive reporter might ask WMC why it is endorsing such an enthusiastic proponent of risk contribution theory.

01.27.11: WMC: Still dissembling after all these years

(No reporter did ask WMC that question, by the way.)

By and with the Advice and Consent of Ron Johnson

Senate candidate Ron Johnson maturing quickly

— Wisconsin State Journal, 08/01/10

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's Craig Gilbert has more on Ron Johnson's intransigence. In a nutshell, Johnson wants to undo literally two years of work by the Wisconsin Federal Nominating Commission, and is moaning because he can't pick four instead of three members to the 12-member Commission. One minute Ron Johnson is saying nobody knows who Victoria Nourse is, and the next he's calling her "extreme."

The current vacancy became effective on January 7, 2010, one year before Johnson became a Senator. The entire process devoted to filling the vacancy took place while Johnson was still shipping plastic from his federally funded rail spur and extolling the economic virtues of China.

Johnson campaigned on promises to cut government spending. Now he wants to waste another two years reviewing applicants for a position that became a judicial emergency on July 7 due to the number of case filings that have accumulated with the Seventh Circuit in the meantime.

The Federal Nominating Commission as constituted prior to Johnson's arrival in the Senate consisted of four members each chosen by Sen. Herb Kohl and former Sen. Russ Feingold, two chosen by the State Bar, and the deans of the University of Wisconsin and Marquette University law schools. Now Johnson tells the MJS he wants a re-do, and he wants to pick the four members in place of those chosen by Sen. Feingold.

Eleven applications to the vacancy were received by September, 2009, and two months later, six of those were presented to Obama. From those six, Obama selected Prof. Nourse. Apparently Ron Johnson wants us to believe that if he got to pick four members of the Commission, then the six prospective judges presented to Obama would be different, or else Obama would have selected a prospective judge more in keeping with Ron Johnson's comically harebrained views of the judiciary.*

Either of which scenario is nonsense, obviously. In fact if Obama had a sense of humor, he'd nominate Ron Johnson to the Seventh Circuit.

What Johnson is pulling is obstruction, pure and simple. He's crying like a baby because a vacancy on the court was announced, prospective candidates were solicited and reviewed by a committee of competent professionals, their recommendations were forwarded to the president, and the president made his nomination, all before Ron Johnson even arrived on the scene. Now Johnson wants to put it off until July, 2013.

And at the moment, Ron Johnson unilaterally will not even allow Prof. Nourse a hearing before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, a hearing from which Johnson could clearly stand to learn a great deal, including about the qualifications of the nominee, who Johnson declares either unknown or extreme, depending upon which day you ask him.

The Seventh Circuit presides over Illinois and Indiana as well, so those folks can also thank Sen. Ron Johnson for his pointless recalcitrance.

The Wisconsin seat Johnson is presenting them is his Wisconsin backside.

* With which Ron Johnson recently hired former MJS right-wing calumnist Patrick McIlheran — whose own views of the judiciary are not only equally harebrained but downright dishonest — to assist him.

Your Wisconsin Republicans in the news

Johnson calls on Weiner to resign — actual Associated Press headline

First up, embattled State Senator Dan Kapanke is a comical liar. The absurd claims of Wisconsin Secretary of Building Maintenance Mike Huebsch were thoroughly debunked ages ago, yet Kapanke repeats the lies to members of his Tea Party constituency, which is even insulting to the intelligence of the Tea Party constituency, because at least the Tea Party constituency pays attention and follows the political news.

Next, James Troupis, Republican lawyer-for-hire, participates in a panel devoted to restoring the appearance of civility on the Supreme Court, reports @WisPolitics. Troupis filed a frivolous suit in Oconto County he had no chance of winning, and then mischaracterized the court's order in a legal memorandum to Republican State Senator Scott Fitzgerald, who Troupis & Friends advised to capture a seven-months-pregnant woman and have her "carried ... feet first" into the Capitol building. Then Troupis billed the State $27K for his and his associates' labors.*

Incidentally Fitzgerald did indeed issue 14 ersatz "arrest warrants" pursuant to Troupis's legal advice, which none other than Dan Kapanke endorsed. No word on whether Kapanke voiced concerns over scuffing a limestone pier with the prone body of a seven-months-pregnant woman.

Finally our old pal Oshkosh millionaire Ron Johnson, who's raised some eyebrows with millions in "virtually interest free" loans Ron Johnson's company made to Ron Johnson, but before Ron Johnson decided to run for the U.S. Senate. Johnson got famous last year when it was learned he'd secured millions more in government-underwritten bonds, which also guaranteed Ron Johnson favorably below-market interest rates.

Then Ron Johnson got more famous as a gigantic hypocrite when he attacked his political opponent, Sen. Russ Feingold, for favoring precisely the same type of government largesse from which Johnson's plastics company benefited, and within precisely the same industry as Johnson's.

(Johnson's staff now includes erstwhile JRN calumnist Patrick McIlheran.)

This has been your Wisconsin Republicans in the news.

Boehnerus: Ohio Republican who "tested positive for Viagra" in the news

Visit the Archiv:
Huebsch
Troupis
Industrial revenue bonds

* Never did find out what the heck's the difference between a $290-an-hour Republican lawyer and a $295-an-hour Republican lawyer.

"Same propaganda, different name on paycheck."

Patrick McIlheran to leave MJS for spot Ron Johnson's staff

Nice government job, and with a hypocrite too. Perfect.

Make room for up-and-coming wing-nut Steve Prestegard.

Please visit the Patrick McIlheran archive / jamboree of dissembling

Club for Grothman files complaint against Sumi

Reports the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

It would be nice if the Journal-Sentinel reported Sumi was ordered to submit the legal brief the Club for Grothman is complaining about.

(The link is to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's calumnist Patrick McIlheran flat-out lying about Judge Maryann Sumi's decision and order.)

It's a ridiculous complaint filed by ridiculous people, going nowhere.

Here's another one:

Barca's attorney says GOP intended to break meetings law

But Robert Jambois said no such thing. In fact the trial court's record showed that the Republicans in the legislature tried to cut the Open Meetings Law requirement of two hours notice as close to the bone as possible. Which is actually worse, because it demonstrates that the Republicans knew they had to provide a minimum of two hours notice and then they screwed up big time. The rest is post hoc rationalization.

Read the (non-wingnut) blogs, not the paper.

How Patrick McIlheran lies for the WISGOP

Perfect example right here:

One Dane County judge rules that collective bargaining reform is unacceptable ...

This is your Journal Communications, Inc. brand of journalism.

But as one Dane County judge very clearly explained, both the federal Constitution and the Wisconsin constitution confer the judicial power equally to both higher and lower courts.* And as one Dane County judge very clearly explained, her ruling was directed at "the March 9, 2011 action of the Legislature's Joint Committee of Conference" and not whether the Walker administration's policy was acceptable or not.

Journal Communications, Inc.'s Patrick McIlheran is flat-out lying.

On the other hand, the Wisconsin Department of Justice, which is "representing the Republicans," makes repeated explicit defenses of Republican political policy in its latest filing with the Supreme Court pursuant to its attempt to have that court legislate from the bench.

The DOJ, on behalf of Scott Walker's infamous building maintenance supervisor Mike Huebsch, has gone so far as to suggest that the one Dane County judge, Maryann Sumi, violated the State code of judicial ethics by responding to the DOJ's petition for a supervisory writ (it's not an appeal, as has been widely reported). Now that is remarkable.

The Supreme Court, which does indeed have superintending authority over the (lower) circuit courts, on May 4 ordered Judge Sumi to file a response to the Huebsch/DOJ petition. Yes, ordered. The DOJ suggests that Judge Sumi should have exercised her option not to respond. The Wisconsin Rules of Appellate Procedure, at Wis. Stat. § 809.51(2), allow that a respondent to a petition for supervisory writ "may file a letter stating that he or she does not intend to file a response."

In other words, a respondent is not exempt or excepted from the Supreme Court's order but may disobey an order of the Supreme Court. Respondents to petitions for a supervisory writ are not limited to "court[s] and the presiding judge[s]," but the petition may be filed against "other person[s] or bod[ies]." And clearly Judge Sumi is in a different position vis-à-vis the Supreme Court than other persons or bodies not courts and presiding judges. Yet the Wisconsin Department of Justice suggests she should have disobeyed the Supreme Court's order.

Obviously Judge Sumi did not disobey an order of the Supreme Court.

And for not disobeying the Supreme Court's order, the Department of Justice is now veiledly threatening to file a motion for recusal against Judge Sumi, despite the fact that the ultimate determination for Judge Sumi's disqualification from the case of Ozanne v. Fitzgerald resides with Judge Sumi, once again, according to the black letter State law.

So at this point the Department of Justice is merely throwing stuff against the wall to find out if any of it will stick, in the course of its "representation of the Republicans." Thus whose impartiality is under question here is pretty obvious. And it sure ain't Judge Sumi's.

All of which demonstrates at least three things: (1) the ideological zealotry of Deputy Attorney General Kevin St. John, (2) Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen's acquiescence to Mr. St. John getting on this breakaway, and (3) the WISGOP Republicans' abject terror at attempting to have their union-busting bill passed by a non-illegal procedure.

McIlheran's bald lie is put forth in service of advertising his appearance tomorrow morning on another Journal Communications, Inc. buffoon's teevee show, Charlie Sykes's Sunday Insight [sic], which runs on Journal Communications, Inc.'s teevee station, TMJ-4. And of course Sykes is also an employee of Journal Communications, Inc.'s radio station, WTMJ.

There you have it, Journal Communications, Inc.'s corpo-blanketing of Milwaukee media with conservative Republican talking points. Because I wouldn't expect a discussion of the Rules of Appellate Procedure among Charlie Sykes and his guests tomorrow, who also include one of the most absurd conservative Republican political hacks in Wisconsin, Brian Fraley.

Roughly as absurd as the political hacks at Journal Communications, Inc.

* Matter of fact the same principle was invoked here in defense of J.B. Van Hollen, which days of defending JBVH at this space are long gone.

Maintaining a political blog in Wisconsin

Is like banging your head against a [scuffed limestone] wall:

[Dane County Circuit Court Judge Maryann] Sumi argues that the state senate violated the open-meetings law by failing to provide 24 hours' notice of a legislative meeting — in this case, the conference committee meeting that forwarded the bill to the full senate. Yet, in her order, she doesn’t address the clear exemption to the rule provided in Senate Rule 93, which allows for no notice of proceedings for conference committee bills. The state statutes clearly give precedence to legislative rules in the case of conflict; Sumi simply believes no conflict exists, ignoring the fact that the bill was, in fact, a conference committee bill.

The rest is blargh blargh dirty hippies blargh union thugs blargh. This is in the National Review (which once upon a time preluded its founder's teevee chat show with the second Brandenburg: these days Old Bach is spinning in his crypt like Frank Luntz on methamphetamines) and its own rather less meticulous composer is the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute "senior fellow" Christian Schneider. WPRI is another outfit wrapped up with Journal Communications, Inc. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel not infrequently features WPRI "policy research" as front page news (the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit is considerably less impressed), Christian Schneider is an oft-featured columnist, and Mike Nichols, another WPRI "senior fellow," is a regular columnist.

And Charlie Sykes, another of Journal Communications, Inc.'s marquee performer/clowns, edits WPRI's own magazine and so on and so forth.

They're every single one of them cuddled together in bed.

They also generally don't know what they're talking about and the above is a useful case in point. In fact Judge Sumi found that the defendants failed to give two hours notice of the meeting, whereas the statute is as clear as clear can be: "in no case may the notice be provided less than 2 hours in advance of the meeting." In. No. Case. Judicial conservatives, "strict constructionists," "plain meaning textualists," are you listening.

Hypocrite

Moreover the violation concerned the Republicans' selection of a tiny venue for the conference committee meeting, which served to disallow members of the public from attending, where larger accommodation was available. This the WPRI "senior fellow" Schneider simply ignores, despite its being among the crucial connections between the Open Meetings Law and the Wisconsin constitution at the heart of the action.

Schneider then hypocritically claims that Judge Sumi "doesn’t address the clear exemption to the rule provided in Senate Rule 93." Well of course she does, as this invalid argument was among the Fitzgeralds' defenses to the complaint. And there is no such "clear exemption" because Senate Rule 93 addresses the manner of notice required, and not the time of notice required. We've been through this months ago, after Ellen Nowak, chief of staff to the Waukesha County executive, had published at WisPolitics dot com her tissue of defamatory misrepresentations.

Judge Sumi doesn't "simply believe" no conflict exists: The unrebutted evidence that witnesses presented during the court's hearings demonstrated that no conflict exists. And the cherry on the backside of Schneider's remarkable cluelessness is his appeal to a Senate Rule for guidance on what he admits was a conference committee, for which Joint Rules of procedure exist, and which Judge Sumi also addressed.

Senior fellow: The law "allows for no notice." Pure b.s.

In short, WPRI's Schneider is hopeless, uninformed, and flat wrong.

Perfesser

Meanwhile in Journal Communications, Inc.'s daily organ the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, the equally addled Patrick McIlheran appeals to yet another Journal Communications, Inc. frequent columnist, Marquette's professor of #rwnj law Rick Esenberg,* to whom McIlheran laughably attributes a "most enlightening insight," linking to the prof's blog post.

McIlheran claims Esenberg "dismantled Sumi's understanding." Except Esenberg did no such thing and in fact repeats the travesty of law committed by the WaukCo. executive's chief of staff. And indeed if one follows the comments thread at Esenberg's blog you will discover your humble correspondent reiterating precisely the evidence and law which yesterday appeared as among the bases for Judge Sumi's decision, and which Esenberg either simply handwaves away or ignores completely.

And has never addressed, as far as I know. Because it's best to remain silent when you are wrong, I suppose, and allow your quasi-colleagues at Journal Communications, Inc. to wallow in their misunderstandings and present long-since-debunked "arguments" as alleged "journalism."

And, naturally, WPRI/Journal Communications, Inc.'s Charlie Sykes will repeat this complete nonsense once again this morning. We discussed similar situations at our panel event in Madison on May 12, and the Journal Communications, Inc. family is making us look like prophets.

Now maybe if we were to predict the Rapture, it will happen for sure and then all the JRNers will fly off to ... somewhere. It really is a joke.

* Esenberg is also trundled out as an expert "who has followed the case closely" in the Journal-Sentinel's straight news report of yesterday's decision. Did you know that he's the only lawyer in the State who has?

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.

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.

What did Herb Kohl ever do to Patrick McIlheran?

Probably nothing. [eta: See below*]

You've stooped to new levels, dude. Taking shots at the guy walking out the door ... I expect this from McIlheran, but I'm surprised by the J-S edit board for allowing this to happen.

I'm not. Funny, the premise to Patrick McIlheran's cheap and bitter sarcasm is his assumption that Sen. Kohl did nothing, period. Which is why Herb Kohl couldn't have done anything to Patrick McIlheran.

According to Patrick McIlheran's own reasoning (such as it is).

Even F. James Sensenbrenner, Scott Walker, and Ron Johnson honored Sen. Kohl for his long service to the State of Wisconsin.

You know you're hurting bad when you've got less class than them.

* Aaand, this comment was deleted by the MJS by Sunday morning. There was nothing particularly offensive about it, except it began, "Just when I thought McIlheran couldn't possibly be a bigger dick ... "

Why don't the editors delete Patrick McIlheran's posts, if they're that concerned about causing offense? After all, McIlheran is the dick.

MJS buries the lead

Headline: GOP wins 2 of 3 Assembly elections. Further down: "Democrats [won] a seat held by Republicans for 16 years." And the latter seat belonged to Mike Huebsch, who is these days trying to have Wisconsin's Open Meetings Law declared unconstitutional and whose own flagrant actions in barring the public from the State Capitol were themselves found unconstitutional by a circuit court.

Kind of important points, and which go unmentioned. But then, the MJS editorial board did endorse Scott K. Walker for governor.

Your librul media (a.k.a. Journal Communications, Inc., home of Patrick McIlheran, Charlie Sykes, Michael Savage, and Cal Thomas).

The MJS has a new comments policy in place, incidentally, which requires logging in via Facebook. This may discourage the racist, right-wing trolls from commenting at the MJS — which is the MJS's goal — but will likely encourage them to chase other users over to Facebook to learn their personal information. It's how they roll.

MJS home to "worst" political pundit

No, not Patrick McIlheran. Syndicated goof Cal Thomas.

But having them both is a special coup.

MJS edit board calls Patrick McIlheran "silly"

"Will the silliness end?" pleads the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, calling Donald Trump "pathetic" and "birther-in-chief." "The birthers will never accept Obama's legitimacy," say the board, and they're probably right. Meanwhile the J-S's unintentionally comic wing-nut calumnist Patrick McIlheran allowed Tuesday that he "f[e]ll in the 'probably' camp" where it came to Obama's U.S. natal provenance.

And in any event he was "exhausted" by all the talk of Obama's birthplace (it's Hawaii, have you heard). There, there, get your blankie and have a nice lie-down. Let's warm you up some milk.

Oh, but not too exhausted, apparently:*

Suppose, just for the sake of argument, that we come to learn that Obama really was born outside the United States. Suppose he were born in Kenya ...

Followed by some other typically phantasized nonsense.

Then of course the next day Obama finally decided he'd had enough and Patrick McIlheran just went about busying himself along his merry wing-nut way. He must have a pretty strong union steward.

* McIlheran's I'm-not-saying-Sonia-Sotomayor's-a-racist-but move.

eta: McIlheran flogged some more with another Bisphenol A editorial.

McIlheran burned some more, on the front page

Remember the other day when Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel managing editor George Stanley hopped into calumnist Patrick McIlheran's thread to point out that the authors of a German study McIlheran was trumpeting had ties to the industry their own study was protecting?

Stanley wasn't done.

The scientists were reported to be testing the efficacy of Bisphenol A as a flame retardant additive to Patrick McIlheran's underpants.

You can only get away with being a hack for so long.

And in comments, a daring corporate apologetic. Follow the logic:

The only people who care to know the truth are connected to the industries. They have an actual financial interest in the product and therefore will care about the results.

:headdesk:

Today on Sunday INCITE! with Charlie McIlheran

The GOP's David Prosser Dilemma:
Is recounting votes a gigantic, waste-of-time pain in the ass, or is it a gratuitously expensive, gigantic, waste-of-time pain in the ass?
TMJ-4's Sunday INCITE! with Charlie McSykes is a Journal Communications, Inc. Joint

Patrick McIlheran gets his hack bum spanked

Ouf.

George Stanley is the Journal-Sentinel's managing editor. It's about bloody time somebody in-house corrected Patrick McIlheran's drivel.

Good on Stanley.

eta 01 OWN's Scot Ross concurs in part, dissents in part:

Two cents: I think it's incredibly hypocritical of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel to point this out, when it pays [McIlheran] to churn out this right-wing, pro-corporate propaganda on a regular basis without any consistent voice of opposition. Until he strays from the company line ...

eta 02 Jon Entine responds. Mr. Entine, a journalist and American Enterprise Institute (Scaife, Bradley, etc.) "fellow," wrote the article from which Patrick McIlheran produced the pregnant children:

Mr. Stanley ... is flat out 100% wrong. He lied to his readers.

P. McIlheran hisself next appears in-thread. Flamewar!

eta 03 Jon Entine returns for some more:

For the record, Mr. McIlheran did not contact me. I noticed this article on Google News and read the comments. Frankly, Mr. Stanley's comment is so undeniably wrong and irresponsible, I believe he should be publicly reprimanded by the publisher and perhaps even fired. It's so antithetical to the established canons of journalism. Moreover, he criticized his own reporter[*] in public, which is as unprofessional as it gets. And he was wrong to boot. He should start with a public apology. And I would suggest an independent review of the Journal Sentinel's reporting on BPA and chemicals as it is apparent that his judgment is polluted beyond repair. What a disgrace for the JS.

Good Day Sir!

* McIlheran was not "reporting" and Stanley didn't "criticize" him.

eta 04 And yet still more additional Jon Entine:

For example, Health Canada's ban came after its science advisory panel concluded, starkly: "Bisphenol A does not pose a risk to the general population, including adults, teenagers and children." It was then overruled by the political arm of Health Canada, which said in its news release that "decisions have to be made to meet society's expectations" — in other words, in response to hysteria generated by the likes of the JS.

I don't know where the AEI "fellow" Jon Entine's quote comes from, but Health Canada's website reads:

Health Canada's Food Directorate has concluded that the current dietary exposure to BPA through food packaging uses is not expected to pose a health risk to the general population, including newborns and infants.

Emphasis added. Health Canada then goes on to note its steps were/are taken to protect "this sensitive segment of the population."

So why does Jon Entine hate Canadian newborns and infants?

(By the way, positive and approving appeals to "This is how Canada does it!" are something you hear quite often from journalist Patrick McIlheran when he's on the healthcare warpath, aren't they. Oh yes.)

And: Medium wave howler Charlie Sykes to the rescue!

Well, there's at least one common denominator emerging here: The Bradley Foundation. Can law perfesser Rick Esenberg be far behind?

What do you know, but it was Patrick Roggensack!

Calumniates the justifiably notorious Journal Communications, Inc. calumnist Patrick McIlheran:

[T]he union ... got a judge — what do you know, but it was Marilyn Sumi!

First of all, it's Maryann Sumi, but I guess you can't really blame the award-winning journalist Patagonia McIlheran, as Judge Sumi's not really been in the news much lately. Evidently Patrice McIlheran finds it comical that Judge Sumi was presiding. He doesn't give any reason why; he doesn't need to. As per usual, he's pandering to his little audience of ill-informed wing-nuts. Here's something else for them.

Supreme Court Justice Patience Roggensack — who comprises that court's hard-right conservative bloc together with Justices Ziegler and Gableman and more often than not Justice David Prosser — was once a judge on the District IV Court of Appeals, which presides over Dane County, which is where Judge Maryann Sumi sits. In that capacity then-Judge Roggensack heard 13 appeals of Judge Sumi's decisions.

Roggensack affirmed 11 of them, affirmed in part and reversed in part one of them, and reversed the one other. The reversal in part had to do with that portion of Judge Sumi's domestic restraining order prohibiting a stalkerish man from possessing a firearm.

However it was pure clerical, and not judicial, error:

It appears from the trial court's statements from the bench that it also found the evidence insufficient on this point, and that the firearm prohibition box was checked on the final written order by mistake. — Per curiam [by the court]

In other words, Judge Maryann Sumi was correctly non-reversible in her judicial findings, but somebody ticked the wrong box on a form.*

In her lone reversal of Judge Sumi, then-Judge Roggensack concluded that while the information provided to a defendant by an arresting officer "created some confusion," it was not erroneous information, and thus Judge Sumi had erred in determining that the defendant's demand for a blood test instead of a breath test was reasonable.

And whenever reasonableness is an issue on appeal, it's a close call.

You know that saying, "reasonable minds can disagree."

So just don't expect to be informed by the award-winning Journal Communications, Inc. journalist Patricio McIlheran that Judge Sumi was affirmed 12 out of 13 times by the most conservative justice on the State Supreme Court, as that would explode his and his disciples' disturbed political fantasies. However you will hear it here, and not through Journal Communications, Inc., which doesn't do corrections.

But thanks for all you do do, JRN.

* Not quite as erroneous as a "journalist" calling a Maryann "Marilyn."