Wisconsin: Ozanne v. Fitzgerald — A preview

Must. Destroy. Union. Dirty hippies blargh. — Shorter WISGOP

Action resumes this morning in the courtroom of Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi. The key elements of plaintiff Dane County District Attorney Ismail Ozanne's latest brief reduced to three tweets:

Dane County DA Ozanne concurs, Fitz pulled nothing but a Kinko's job, and he also wants the Kinko's job declared null and void. Ozanne further argues the LRB is bound by the TRO in addition to the SoS on account of the LRB's statutory proximity to the SoS.* And of course Ozanne argues the AG's attempt to moot the case is groundless and absurd (in so many words).

This new wrinkle to the case shouldn't be terribly difficult for Judge Sumi to dispose of. It's not even a close question. Think of it this way: If I can figure out in ten minutes what's since been affirmed by everybody from Ed Fallone to the Legislative Reference Bureau, it can't be rocket surgery. I cite Fallone** and the LRB as authorities because: Fallone's area of expertise is constitutional law, and the LRB has the nonpartisan, dispassionate, objective cred as few others do.

Rotating

The AG's argument is mostly bluster and about the furthest thing you'd expect from a self-advertised judicial conservative. It's bordering on the painful to follow its logic (such as it is) and is incoherent compared to the parsimonious Kinko's Amendment theory.

It's enough to send William of Ockham to rotating violently in his crypt, which is inadvisable because there are sharp objects in there.

It truly is astonishing that Fitz Van Walker would go to these lengths and is perhaps the best indicator yet that Walker and Fitzgerald are terrified to run this bill past another vote in the legislature.

Hockey sock

The bill likely wouldn't succeed this time around because they've since pissed off nearly everybody in the State, placed their own colleagues in serious danger of recall, and perhaps most importantly, imperiled their conservative majority on the Supreme Court. They're on the verge of nullifying the 2008 election of Michael Gableman — which alone justifies a vote for Kloppenburg — the one that cost Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce one king hell hockey sock full of dough.

And now warding off the FitzWalker taint from the incumbent conservative Justice David Prosser is going to cost WMC & Friends the other sock. But FitzWalker keeps pushing. It's pure madness.

Harrumph

As for the merits, two crucial points: 1) The Department of Justice admitted as much as three minutes less than two hours notice was given in advance of the Fitzgeralds' twilight ramble and 2) The DoJ conceded that the constitutional and statutory requirements of the Wisconsin Open Meetings Law override the legislature's immunity from judicial branch scrutiny of its internal procedural minutiae:

"Correct. . . . Absolutely correct."

Oh dearie, dearie me.

* This is an especially compelling argument because it puts to keen use a slightly modified version of AG Van Hollen's claim that the LRB's and the Secretary of State's "publications" are identical. If it is the case they are identical, then the LRB is likewise bound by Judge Sumi's restraining order. Slightly modified in the sense that although Van Hollen's claim is false, if Van Hollen wishes to assert its truth, then he must by the same reasoning concede that the TRO enjoins the LRB, which AG JBVH must deny. But JBVH can't have it both ways.

Nevertheless, Ozanne can demonstrate that the LRB was subject to the TRO without availing himself of any of Van Hollen's assertions.

** I also cite Fallone because Fallone said: "I do not see my analysis as differing in any significant way from the analysis previously set forth in this blog," meaning this blog, the one you're reading now.

No love for an old alumnus at the MULS webpage though! Harrumph.

Right-wing condescension in Wisconsin, Day Two

CAPITOL KAOS, Agent Rick reporting for Faux News duty

I finally had a chance to listen to Joy Cardin's March 30 interview with Marquette professors of law Ed Fallone and Rick Esenberg, discussing the events unfolding in Judge Maryann Sumi's courtroom in Madison. The link is here, and it's about 35 minutes. Prof. Fallone has got it together, and you'll hear little more from him than you've already read on this here blog over the past week, starting last Friday.

Esenberg, on the other hand, is priceless, so desperately does he want it to be 1943, when the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that a dicey procedure* in a political branch might not be enjoined.

But much has changed since then, most importantly the enactment of the Open Meetings Law, which set in place a number of directives to the courts that make Prof. Esenberg's 1943 case considerably less significant than he makes it out to be. But Prof. Esenberg is having none of it, and literally sneers at anyone who thinks differently.

But first, Esenberg has apparently forgotten about the chicanery perpetrated by the Republican Senate leader Scott Fitzgerald, who Esenberg helped advise that a six-months-pregnant woman might be "carried ... feet first" over that legislative chamber's threshold:

The mess that we find ourselves in now is because, I believe, that the circuit court failed to give adequate attention to whether or not this was a morass into which she should have plunged in the first place.

It's laugh-out-loud stuff, and the gist of Esenberg's complaint is that Judge Sumi hasn't explained to Esenberg every step of her reasoning up to this point: Rick is "extremely disappointed" that Judge Sumi hasn't acknowledged Rick's concerns, which is absolute nonsense because the one case upon which Rick hangs his hat is referenced throughout documents filed with the court, including, significantly, the District IV Court of Appeals certification of Ozanne v. Fitz to the Supreme Court. Rick suggests Sumi is simply ignoring it. Poor guy.

And unfortunately for Prof. Rick, it isn't the only case.

Another thing that bothers Rick is that Dane County District Attorney Ismail Ozanne didn't sue the Legislative Reference Bureau along with the secretary of state. But if your objective is to enjoin publication, which is a legal term of art and is what is required by the constitution and the statutory framework, then why would you sue the Kinko's kiosk?** This concern catapults Prof. Esenberg into full sneer-mode:

The one thing I think should have happened here is that a lawyer who read the law, and I'm talking about the statutes and, y'know, not a publication that is sent to schoolchildren to explain to gradeschoolers how, y'know, a law goes into effect, but actually read the law ...

And if you think "sneering" is an exaggeration, go to 32:45 of the interview. Evidently invoking "schoolchildren" is a rhetorical specialty of Rick's, because he pulled the same stunt on me when I pointed out that Michael Gableman's ethics case was still pending after the Supreme Court delivered its opinions — or "writings," as they have become known — in the matter. Rick told me I needed to consult something other than "horn book" civil procedure, which is like accusing someone of only having read the CliffsNotes version of The Brothers Karamazov or, as Rick would put it: "[G]o read Sartre."

But then, lo and behold, Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice N. Patrick Crooks, who has been a trial judge and an appellate judge for 30-plus years, appeared before a special committee of the legislature to point out that, yes, the complaint against Gableman is still pending because — just as this space had explained earlier — Gableman failed to win his motion for summary judgment, which is the question an appeals court panel had convened to hear in September of 2009.

So, yes, I had certainly consulted something other than a horn book: I consulted something called the law prior to making the claim, as did Justice Crooks prior to affirming it, as has, obviously, Judge Maryann Sumi. She's not conducting this hearing — and they call them hearings for a reason — for the special benefit of Marquette's Rick Esenberg.

Rick has a right to his argument — which is wrong, as it turns out — but he has no cause to sneer and especially no business sneering at a presiding trial judge simply because she hasn't acknowledged Prof. Rick's existence. The hubris, as they say, is strong with this one.

But the truly depressing thing is, the local nut-right simply accepts Prof. Esenberg's words as Gospel, and his sentiment find its way into the appalling personal attacks against Judge Sumi among the basest dregs of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's comments threads.

Meanwhile what Judge Maryann Sumi is doing is an exemplary job and she's clearly — crystal clearly — been doing her homework.

* There is procedure and there is substance, a fundamental distinction in all law, and a very important distinction in this case. It's why the Justices of the SCOTUS were moved to devise the intuitively redundant expression, "procedural due process."

** No disrespect to the LRB, but it's the best metaphor I can think of to describe a core question of the case. Amusingly, Esenberg accuses the LRB of injecting politics into the proceeding when in fact the LRB is the least political party, named or unnamed, to the proceeding.

Edward Fallone: What Price Protest?

On Scott Walker's new 'Rules For Radicals':

The legitimate state interest in safeguarding public safety is not advanced by charging advance fees for groups of such small size. The state cannot demonstrate that a group of four persons will of necessity require the assignment of any extra security at all.

Prof. Fallone's stuff at the MULS faculty blog has been invaluable.

It does not bode well for those provisions of Governor Scott Walker's administrative rules — which prohibit beets, the vegetable, and helium balloons (which merit three separate mentions) from the Wisconsin State Capitol facilities — that serve no legitimate state interest.

Failure to demonstrate the latter spells death by constitution.

Procedure is the true conservative's polestar

Here's Ed Fallone and Rick Esenberg talking about Petition of Walker.

Prof. Fallone is foursquare on the money: the Gableman court usurped procedure, invented jurisdiction, and unwarrantedly scapegoated a circuit court judge who followed both the spirit and the letter of the law (in fact the Open Meetings Law's spirit is clearly delineated in its letter).

There are also a couple of hilarious moments of vintage Esenberg, once where he perishes figuratively at the thought of anybody impugning the competence of any circuit court judge, himself having literally sneered on public radio at Judge Sumi not that long ago, and another where Esenberg, who once upon a time complained mightily that Judge Sumi failed to sufficiently explicate her temporary restraining order to Rick Esenberg, now merely sighs and handwaves away the Mike Gableman court's inability to properly elucidate its judical fiat. I'm not sure how to characterize Prof. Rick's comical disingenuousness, but whatever it is it lies somewhere between naked double standards and pure hypocrisy.

No wonder Esenberg's broken into Fox News. He makes the perfect fit.

And maybe we can help get Gableman his own show on Fox Business.

Forward [Slash]!

Baby don't get hooked on statutory language

More Judge Mac "Big Righty" Davis from Edward Fallone:

[T]here are no explicit provisions in the statutes that direct the GAB to look for and eliminate duplicate, fictitious or unrecognizable signatures. Just a direction not to count signatures that are insufficient under Section 9.10(2)(e).

My friend Jay Bullock's post, cited by Fallone, was indeed a fine one.

Strict constructionists my honkey keister.

Marquette law school's honorary faculty, Daniel Suhr

I see our friend Daniel Suhr is up to his risible tricks* at the Marquette University Law School faculty blog, accusing me of "fail[ing] to note" that the Wisconsin Supreme Court is a court of appeals, or something.

In a nutshell, and in reference to this post, Mr. Suhr claims Wis. Stat. § 809.51 applies only to these courts of appeal and thus does not direct attentive readers of the law to §§ 809.70 and 809.71, which distinguish between the two types of jurisdictional authority, supervisory and original (the two that Gableman & Co. conjoined with a forward slash).

The hapless Mr. Suhr is either unaware that the Supreme Court is itself a court of appeals or else failed to read the set of definitions provided at the outset to Chapter 809 of the Wisconsin Statutes and Annotations:

"Court" means the court of appeals or, if the appeal or other proceeding is in the supreme court, the supreme court.

It's a mystery why the faculty continues to publish Mr. Suhr's claptrap.

Frankly, it's embarrassing to other, competent MULS alumni.

At least he might read the law prior to leveling his absurd accusations. I most certainly do, and furthermore see no need to reiterate each and every jot and tittle of it in a blog post, particularly those provisions that are so blindingly obvious to everyone save the "research assistant" Suhr.

Lord, make me a vessel of Your patience.

* See also Ed Fallone's comment. My own is "awaiting moderation."

Here it is, just in case:

Thanks Prof. Fallone.

Evidently Mr. Suhr himself "failed to note" § 809.01(4): "[In this chapter] 'Court' means the court of appeals, or if the appeal or other proceeding is in the supreme court, the supreme court." So clearly § 809.51 does indeed "carry forward" to §§ 809.70 and 809.71, contrary to Mr. Suhr’s unique rationalizations. Now perhaps Mr. Suhr would be so kind as to withdraw his accusation that I misapplied § 809.51.

Daniel is Suhr tenacious, I'll give him that much

[Good grief man.]

Mr. Suhr, thank you for taking the time. I must say I have always found kibbutzing with you on the internets a source of considerable amusement and I am sincerely grateful for that as well.

However, please have a look one more time at § 809.71, which refers back to and incorporates by that reference § 809.51. A person seeking a supervisory writ under § 809.71 (e.g., petitioner Mike Huebsch [a.k.a. Scott Walker] who, incidentally, ended up getting something he never sought by dint of the punctuational jurisdiction invented by Justice/Gableman) must file "in accordance with s. 809.51." Thus does "the court" in § 809.51 mean the Supreme Court, in perfect consonance with the wise and premonitory guidance set forth in § 809.01(4).

So to continue to insist, as you are doing above, that "the court" in § 809.51 can mean "only" the Court of Appeals is, as the saying goes, absurd. Again: I am not misapplying § 809.51 but rather reading it in its alternate context, following the direction of § 809.71.

The only thing in § 809.51 that § 809.71 does not incorporate by reference is, obviously, the former's language, "or its original jurisdiction," which is where your superfluity analysis would apply, as the Supreme Court's original jurisdiction is addressed separately, in § 809.70.

And these have been my contentions from the outset: that original and supervisory jurisdiction are separate and distinct forms of judicial authority, and that there is no constitutional basis for Justice/Gableman's creation of an alternatively convenient source of judicial power by forward slash.

(Setting amusement aside for a moment, your main post here at the Marquette University Law School faculty blog embodies an unwarranted criticism of my writing and I can only hope that your readers continue on throughout this comments thread for the fuller explication. However, experience teaches me that that is not something upon which I can depend, if you're picking up what I'm throwing down.)

By the way, a not dissimilar question of construction arose at the time the Walker administration attempted vainly to claim publication of 2011 Wisconsin Act 10 while publication was temporarily enjoined. A provision might have two different meanings, or two different applications, depending upon how it may be incorporated by reference into other statutory provisions.

You can read all about that little brouhaha at my own wildly popular blog, illusory tenant, in a post entitled, "Wisconsin statutes, a couple three of them," of March 26, 2011. Or, if you prefer, Prof. Fallone's compelling epistle of March 28, at this present location, [*] which covers much of the same ground (as Prof. Fallone was most generous to acknowledge).

Have a good one, Mr. Suhr, and keep those FedSoc recruits coming.

* That is, the Marquette University Law School faculty blog, to whence the above comment was submitted. Should be posted in a day or two.

Wisconsin — Your recalls begin Tuesday

Ed Fallone: The Original Intent of the Recall Power

Great stuff, as usual, required reading from Prof. Fallone.

More on Big Fitz's Kinko's Amendment

From the estimable MULS professor Edward Fallone.

I do not see my analysis as differing in any significant way from the analysis previously set forth in this [here awesome illusory tenant] blog. — Ed Fallone, prof. of constitutional law

Yess! [/marvalbert]

Incidentally, this blawg was posted Friday evening before the Legislative Reference Bureau — or anybody else — had weighed in.

Just sayin'.

Ed Fallone on Wisconsin Eye

This is about 28 minutes, as they say on C-SPAN.

Wisconsin: It's about time to fire Franklyn Gimbel

Dear sir, your account is net 60 days in arrears.

Admits veteran Milwaukee attorney Franklyn Gimbel, who the Wisconsin Judicial Commission retained to "assist in the prosecution of [the] formal action" against State Supreme Court Justice David Prosser:

“Even though there's nothing in the statutes that requires [an order from the Supreme Court], apparently there's some past practices where that's happened,” Gimbel said.

Apparently?!

This guy filed a formal complaint against Prosser two months ago and he's still stuck on "apparently"? "Apparently," Mr. Gimbel's done little more than look at the Supreme Court's online dockets for a few prior Judicial Commission cases — including two which were filed against Prosser's Republican Party colleagues, Justice Annette Ziegler and Mike "Peppercorn" Gableman; that makes three out of four Republicans* on the court being the respondents in formal disciplinary actions — and was seeing the word "order" at the left hand side of the docket notations.

That isn't law. That isn't even doctrine. And it isn't even past practice, as former Justice Janine Geske points out in the same Shepherd Express article, it's a "referral," a mere acknowledgement. It's like an entry on an accounting ledger. According to Mr. Gimbel, Richard S. Brown, the chief judge of the Court of Appeals who is mandated by State statute to convene the three-judge panel which is to hear the Commission's case, is "waiting for an order from the Supreme Court before proceeding."

I hope he's not holding his breath because there ain't no such thing. The Supreme Court has no authority anywhere to withhold an order that doesn't exist in — nor is even contemplated nor implied by — the law.

The operations of the Wisconsin Judicial Commission's investigations and prosecutions in both ethics and disability cases are at arm's length from the Supreme Court and that arm is a detachable, detached prosthetic.

Seriously, if Gimbel hasn't gotten to the bottom of this after 60 days, it's time for the Commission to hire somebody who will do it. Hell, if David Prosser's Republican buddy Scott Fitzgerald can conjure up fake arrest warrants based on bogus premises derived from frivolous lawsuits, then somebody can compel Judge Brown to obey the clear directive of the State statutes and get on with entertaining the Prosser prosecution.

A prosecution that is separately mandated by State statute — it's one thing to disobey the law, it's another to obstruct its progress on a distinct procedural track: Here now we have both happenstances.

And Ed Fallone is correct, as usual: "[M]y guess is that they do not want to have a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals issue a negative ruling against Prosser." Quite so. And they'll ignore the law to avoid it.

Even the chief judge of the Court of Appeals will ignore it. "Apparently."

What a travesty. Of the law. Courtesy of alleged judicial conservatives.

The latter phony pretense being the grandest farce of them all.

"Your precious belief that we have a government of laws in Wisconsin never fails to amuse." — @BrewCityBrawler

Fortunately that's still funny, but admittedly a little less so this morning.

* The fourth Republican is "hypocritical" and makes stuff up.

Slimy Scott Fitzgerald

Ends justify the means?

Like them or not, our courts exist for a reason — to resolve legal disputes. That's what was in the works when [Wisconsin Republican Senate leader Scott] Fitzgerald jumped the gun and tried to do an end run around the judicial process.

True dat. The author, Atty. Richard A. Ginkowski, is a conservative Republican and an assistant DA in Kenosha County, Wisconsin.

And, from Marquette professor of law Ed Fallone:

[Wis. Stat. § 35.095] deals with the LRB's job to print and make available copies of the laws. . . . Attempting to bypass the constitution's requirement of official publication is an unconstitutional action.

Section 35.095's popular name is the Kinko's amendment.

Nowadays it's news when Big Fitz is not violating the constitution.

Fallone on popular sovereignty and federalism

Excellent essay here.

And a reminder that governments don't have rights; people have rights. Governments have powers but only those given to them by the people, which they may expand or retract from time to time. One of those rights — in Wisconsin, at least — is the right to recall elected officials. Nine such elections took place this summer. Democrats won five of them while Republicans won four.* In their wake, one Republican, Robin Vos, is spearheading an attempt to restrict the right of recall. As I mentioned earlier, this is purely a move by Republican politicians to abridge the rights of the people, and nobody should let them get away with it.

Another right Wisconsinites possess is the right to vote. The Wisconsin constitution says that the legislature may enact laws "[d]efining residency." Recently the Republicans in power enacted a law requiring photo identification. What's your picture got to do with residency?

We'll find out soon enough.

* A less mentioned aspect of this summer's political jamboree is that Republicans filed formal notice of recall against seven other Democratic incumbents, and failed to collect the required number of signatures in every instance. Yet the Republicans keep telling us they are "winning."

Wisconsin papers create false equivalencies

Glad somebody exposed these silly propagandas for what they are.

Here's my favorite risibly false equivalency from — where else — the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

In more signs of the national attention, both the National Review and The New York Times Magazine are running lengthy stories about the June 5 recall race.

Yeah, one by an actual reporter and the other by a complete hack.*

* Ed Fallone made short shrift of the WPRI buffoon earlier, here.

Reading helps

True, it does. Writes law professor Rick Esenberg:

Contrary to the uninformed speculation of this blogger, I am familiar with Sotomayor's record and, as I said in the column (reading helps), it is conventional if "liberal."

Except I didn't say he wasn't.

I said the contrast between the two columns that appeared on the front of a section in yesterday's Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel was that one was based on an examination of her record and the other discussed what Esenberg calls Sonia Sotomayor's "political assumptions" (although the political assumptions in evidence are primarily Esenberg's own, derived as they are from a couple of offhand remarks made by the judge in informal settings).

Since Judge Sotomayor hasn't yet been afforded the opportunity to explicate her comments, in the meantime Esenberg's personal speculation remains exactly that: a set of political assumptions.

More to the point, I was sarcastically observing that it was pleasant to discover the Journal-Sentinel soliciting an opinion column for once from some lawyer other than Rick Esenberg.

The icing on that cake was that the other lawyer, Edward Fallone, appropriately focused on Sotomayor's record and accomplishments rather than the aforementioned offhand remarks, which have elicited a cri de guerre — however tenuous and speculative itself — from conservative Republicans in search of any justification to oppose Sotomayor's nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In spite of her record and in spite of her accomplishments.

Now this morning Esenberg claims he isn't all that interested in Sotomayor's 16-plus-year record as a federal judge anyway — she is merely "conventional," sniffs the professor — but only in those decisions of hers that reached the Supreme Court on appeal.

I'll leave it for the actual uninformed speculators to divine why that, then, wasn't the subject of Esenberg's Journal-Sentinel column, instead of its being yet another rehearsal of the now-familiar conservative Republican talking points.

Speaking of the relatively miniscule number of cases where the Supreme Court accepted an appeal from one of Sotomayor's decisions, the Court will shortly rule on Ricci v. DeStefano, the celebrated firefighter "discrimination" case out of New Haven, CT.

The case has inspired some of the most ridiculously incoherent and ill-informed commentary from miscellaneous conservative Republicans, who normally demand that judges defer unwaveringly to the "will of the people," as expressed by statutory language and promulgated by the executive branch through administrative law.

That is what Sotomayor and the other judges did, in determining that New Haven scrupulously and in good faith adhered to the requirements of federal law. Suddenly and with suspicious convenience, doing so is practically grounds for impeachment.

Talk about your political assumptions.

In the event that Sotomayor and the Second Circuit are reversed, and barring any earth shattering upheaval of federal affirmative action policy — a.k.a. "judicial activism" — the district judge who originally ruled in Ricci will likely be admonished for not according due weight to a certain set of evidentiary facts presented in the initial lawsuit.

The Court's conservative judges shall accomplish this by enforcing judicial policy, policy fabricated by conservative judges and today reiterated and perhaps even strengthened by conservative judges.

And conservative Republicans will applaud heartily, even as they continue to deride Sonia Sotomayor for informally and impertinently alluding to the very process about to be revealed.

Shorter Scott Walker v. Dane County Cir. Ct.

From here:

[S]ix hours of oral argument before the Wisconsin Supreme Court has failed to identify any factual or legal finding of the circuit court that was plainly wrong. — Marquette law prof Ed Fallone

Exactly so. And indeed the closest any of the justices came to implying that Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi had done anything even approaching abusing her discretion came from Justice Annette Zeigler, who asserted elements of Judge Sumi's disposition were "unusual."

Well, it's an unusual case. The disposition is straightforward as can be.

Hardly grounds for the Supreme Court to exercise its supervisory authority over the trial court. Mr. Huebsch's petition* must be denied.

* It's actually Scott Walker's petition, as we shall see momentarily.

Borking Sotomayor

Some astute observations from Prof. Edward Fallone of Marquette University Law School:

In the Manichean world view of strict constructionists, all of those who do not share their views are "judicial activists." Therefore, that label has been affixed to Judge Sotomayor by her critics despite the fact that her record demonstrates a conscientious effort to decide cases in accord with established precedent. This characteristic, once considered a hallmark of judicial restraint, is apparently a defect when the precedent is not of one’s liking. The key difference between Judge Bork and Judge Sotomayor is that the former challenged the status quo while the latter seeks to perpetuate it.

Bork Reconsidered, Part I

In Bork's defense, it's also true that judges swear to support and defend the Constitution, not the Court's precedents.

And here's an entertaining review of Bork's collection of irascible reminiscences, Slouching Towards Gomorrah. Prof. Bork has a self-effacing habit of decorating his books with Biblical innuendo. His latest is A Time To Speak, the title borrowed from Ecclesiastes 3:7, which tradition holds was dictated to King Solomon by God Hisself.

Many of the essays within purport to affirm a similar pretense.

Rand Paul still hiding from David Gregory

While the lolbertarian/Tea Party/Republican superstar Rand Paul remains secluded in his 13th floor fortress at the Heart of Atlanta Motel, some commentary from Marquette law prof Edward Fallone.

And, it's official:

Louisville Democratic Sen. Gerald Neal introduced the resolution last Friday during a special session on the state budget. It was adopted without objection in the predominantly Republican chamber. Neal said that [official Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Rand] Paul's extreme beliefs have made Kentucky "a laughing stock."

Earlier: Lolbertarian disgrace to libertarians

Photo ID legal challenge unlikely to succeed

Concludes Marquette law professor Edward Fallone.

Shorter version: The law authorizes Republicans to make it more difficult for Democrats to vote but does not require Republicans to present any evidence of what it is they claim they're seeking to prevent.* And for that you can thank — of all people — Justice Stevens.

That authorization is closer to what's known as the Original Intent of the Framers of the U.S. Constitution, who did not want anybody to vote.

* Which is fortuitous for them because no such evidence exists.

Justice Roggensack is hardly a conservative judge

Once again, much is being made in the newspapers these days of the altercation which took place in the chambers of Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Ann Walsh Bradley back in June, 2011.

One reason for that is because there is an impending general election* for the seat of incumbent Justice Patience Roggensack and another reason is that Justice Bradley removed herself last week from the case of Wisconsin Judicial Commission v. David T. Prosser, Jr.

It was an altercation that Justice Roggensack had "almost nothing to do with," says risibly lies one of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's several in-house right-wing Bradley (no relation) Foundation propagandists.

Unless authoring a meanspirited, lawless order and then leading her little posse of alleged "conservatives" into Justice Bradley's chambers to insist on its immediate publication to allay the concerns of Republican allies in the Wisconsin legislature counts as having "almost nothing to do with" the subsequent confrontation among justices.

Meanspirited in the sense that the order is practically a personal attack on Dane County Circuit Court Judge Maryann Sumi, in whose courtroom the Republican legislators' attorneys freely admitted they had violated both the Wisconsin statutes and the Wisconsin constitution.

Lawless in the sense that Justice Roggensack and her Republican pals invented a jurisidictional authority for the Wisconsin Supreme Court that not only is not found in the State constitution but is explicitly contraindicated in the rules of appellate procedure: There is no such thing as "supervisory/original jurisdiction." They represent separate grounds for a party having her case heard by the Supreme Court.

In fact, there is no such thing as "supervisory" jurisdiction among the Wisconsin Supreme Court's panoply of constitutional powers, but there is superintending jurisdiction. Therefore if Roggensack and her fellow Republicans wanted to dream up the law more accurately, they should have invented "superintending/original" jurisdiction.

Furthermore in Justice Roggensack's own granting of her motion for recusal, she cites a Wisconsin statute she apparently believes requires her recusal. Except the statute refers to "any civil or criminal action or proceeding," whereas WJC v. Prosser is neither a criminal nor a civil case, thus the statute upon which Roggensack depends is irrelevant.

And they call her a "conservative" judge? Hardly. To top it all off, the same alleged conservatives then utterly contradicted themselves.

Where has this been reported? Nowhere, except at this here space.

* The primary election is Tuesday, February 19.

The only conservative on that ticket is Ed Fallone.