So the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, which frequently asserts its corporate constitutional rights to press freedom, has come out in favor of abridging the constitutional rights of the citizens of Wisconsin.
The Journal-Sentinel didn't appreciate this summer's recall elections, the right to which is guaranteed by the State constitution, arguing against along two fronts: 1) Elected officials shouldn't be recalled simply over policy disagreements and 2) The recall elections were too costly.
Journal Communications, Inc.'s business side can't possibly endorse the latter jusification. A huge portion of that $44M spent on advertising ended up as JRN revenue and the Journal-Sentinel's online edition's page views were through the roof, satisfying and attracting advertisers. In fact JRN has an affirmative duty to its shareholders to lobby for more and more and more recall elections and their attendant political gossip.
Nevertheless this morning the Journal-Sentinel supports Republican Assemblyman Robin Vos's proposal to amend the constitution, requiring specific grounds upon which to initiate the recall process — "higher standards," it says, as in, the commission of crimes by elected officials or findings by the Government Accountability Board of ethical violations.
Fine, then, let's accept that for the sake of argument. However, the Government Accountability Board is not responsive to ethical complaints against members of the judiciary which, as we have been observing for the last several years, suits the definition of "elected officials" better even than the elected officials in the political branches of government.
Thus there is no more reason to absorb the Government Accountability Board into the proposed rejiggered recall process than there is to absorb the Wisconsin Judicial Commission, the GAB's corollary for the judicial branch. And as we learned, the statutory framework for the processing of complaints against members of the judiciary proved ineffective in 2010, when the WJC's complaint against a justice of the Supreme Court, Mike Gableman, reached the impasse of an evenly divided tribunal.
The statutes direct the Commission to follow the rules of civil procedure to the best extent possible but at the same time the statutes thwart that goal. It doesn't happen in civil procedure that courts divide on motions for summary judgment (dismissal) because motions for such judgment are brought in trial courts, where a single judge presides.
Recall that, procedurally, the three-judge panel in the Gableman action convened on Gableman's motion for summary judgment. While the panel recommended dismissal, its recommendations are toothless, as they are subject to review by the Supreme Court, which retains the discretion to ignore them completely. And then that court, necessarily Gableman-less and reduced to six members, failed to reach a majority disposition.
Wherefore does the Gableman complaint remain pending to this day.
Which, according to both Robin Vos's and the Journal-Sentinel's own reasoning, presents a classic case for the recall of an elected official in strict conformance with their proposed constitutional amendings.
In other words since the system currently in place failed to get the job done, the remaining recourse is for the people to exercise their right to recall and one expects Vos and the Journal-Sentinel to lead the charge.
Earlier: Robin Vos clears the way for Mike Gableman recall
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Journal-Sentinel. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Journal-Sentinel. Sort by date Show all posts
September 23, 2011
January 8, 2012
The Journal-Sentinel's Rick Esenberg Disclaimer
I see David Haynes and the mandarins on the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel editorial board have added a disclaimer to Marquette University Law School professor Rick Esenberg's attempt at defending Mike Gableman's reported acceptance of a gift or favor from Michael Best & Friedrich, to the effect that Esenberg recently presented oral argument before the court on which Gableman sits. Judges are prohibited by the Wisconsin Code of Judicial Conduct from accepting gifts or favors from lawyers or firms if they have or are likely to come before the judge.
That's a relatively innocuous disclaimer compared to Esenberg's prior relationships with the Gableman political campaign. Esenberg appeared in a video produced by Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce which was distributed at a series of WMC luncheons in 2008. Rick Esenberg's former research assistant at Marquette, Daniel Suhr, assembled a "white paper" criticizing the record of former Justice Louis Butler — perhaps the only actor deserving of the appellation "honorable" in this whole sordid affair — the misrepresentations of law contained in which Esenberg strenuously defended at his blog, where Esenberg also repeated and purported to rationalize some of the sleaziest accusations against Justice Butler.
And Rick Esenberg's Bradley Foundation-funded Kulturkampf boutique law firm, the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, hired Tom Kamenick, a former clerk of Gableman's, as an associate. It's like incest but without the sex. Given the foregoing, the Journal-Sentinel's disclaimer is a bit of a joke. The fact that Esenberg argued a case before the Supreme Court isn't such a big deal, unless you realize what case it was, which the Journal-Sentinel's disclaimer doesn't identify.
The case is Wisconsin Prosperity Network v. Myse and Esenberg presented the argument instead of James "Carried ... feet first" Troupis, who represented Justice David Prosser during the latter's political campaign last spring. It's also the case from which Prosser disqualified himself in September, 2011 apparently after being pressured by the Journal-Sentinel's reporting, even though this blog had pointed to the potential conflict of interest as early as the previous April.
Speaking of which case, Prosser and Gableman literally rewrote the Wisconsin constitution to grant an injunction in 2010 in favor of the plaintiffs, a who's who of conservative Republican activists, the granting of which was executed even before the court had decided whether to take jurisdiction of the case. A decision is forthcoming in Myse but a date hasn't been announced. This blog wondered several weeks ago how a divided court is going to address the posture of that injunction.
The Journal-Sentinel is a wholly owned subsidiary of Journal Communications, Inc., which itself is in effect a wholly owned subsidiary of the WISGOP. The transparency of these relationships is remarkable.
But yeah, thanks for the illuminating disclaimer. Great public service.
That's a relatively innocuous disclaimer compared to Esenberg's prior relationships with the Gableman political campaign. Esenberg appeared in a video produced by Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce which was distributed at a series of WMC luncheons in 2008. Rick Esenberg's former research assistant at Marquette, Daniel Suhr, assembled a "white paper" criticizing the record of former Justice Louis Butler — perhaps the only actor deserving of the appellation "honorable" in this whole sordid affair — the misrepresentations of law contained in which Esenberg strenuously defended at his blog, where Esenberg also repeated and purported to rationalize some of the sleaziest accusations against Justice Butler.
And Rick Esenberg's Bradley Foundation-funded Kulturkampf boutique law firm, the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, hired Tom Kamenick, a former clerk of Gableman's, as an associate. It's like incest but without the sex. Given the foregoing, the Journal-Sentinel's disclaimer is a bit of a joke. The fact that Esenberg argued a case before the Supreme Court isn't such a big deal, unless you realize what case it was, which the Journal-Sentinel's disclaimer doesn't identify.
The case is Wisconsin Prosperity Network v. Myse and Esenberg presented the argument instead of James "Carried ... feet first" Troupis, who represented Justice David Prosser during the latter's political campaign last spring. It's also the case from which Prosser disqualified himself in September, 2011 apparently after being pressured by the Journal-Sentinel's reporting, even though this blog had pointed to the potential conflict of interest as early as the previous April.
Speaking of which case, Prosser and Gableman literally rewrote the Wisconsin constitution to grant an injunction in 2010 in favor of the plaintiffs, a who's who of conservative Republican activists, the granting of which was executed even before the court had decided whether to take jurisdiction of the case. A decision is forthcoming in Myse but a date hasn't been announced. This blog wondered several weeks ago how a divided court is going to address the posture of that injunction.
The Journal-Sentinel is a wholly owned subsidiary of Journal Communications, Inc., which itself is in effect a wholly owned subsidiary of the WISGOP. The transparency of these relationships is remarkable.
But yeah, thanks for the illuminating disclaimer. Great public service.
August 23, 2008
Bestest of the Bestest Wisconsin Blogs
One thing I invariably look forward to on Saturday evenings is finding out what complete nonsense the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's editorial board, in its collective wisdom, has deemed fit to enshrine at the weekly "Best of the Wisconsin Blogs" featurette.
Tonight is certainly no disappointment, nor should it be for readers of tomorrow's hard copy edition, where this stuff actually appears.
This week's "Best of the Blogs" memorializes the mostly pointless meanderings of one Christian Schneider, who resides at a "free market think tank," the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, also storied home to such profoundly compelling cogitators as the local medium-wave radio "personality" Charlie Sykes.
Evidently Mr. Schneider was quite disturbed and alarmed by outgoing University of Wisconsin Chancellor John D. Wiley's deliciously trenchant kiss-off to the State's legislative and executive branches, and especially to Wiley's smacking around of the dishonest partisan apparatchiks dwelling at Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce.
Skipping beyond the more blathery portions of Schneider's screed, what seems to be some hard number crunching appears forthwith:
System-wide enrollment alone, meanwhile, rose by nearly 9%, to say nothing of other many and varied rising costs.
So how did UW pick up the State funding shortfalls? For one thing, it had to increase tuition. Drastically. In 2003, for example, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee bumped tuition almost 19%. The next year, it raised undergraduate tuition another 16%.
Since I first attended UWM in 2000, tuition has nearly doubled. The increases at the main campus in Madison, where enrollment is around 40,000 souls — roughly twice that of Milwaukee — are almost identical. And that's just resident tuition. I'm afraid to look at the figures for out-of-State tuition, which I paid for three or four semesters. From my own free market pocket, incidentally.
Of course, not even the "think tank" denizen Christian Schneider mentions any of that, let alone the Journal-Sentinel. Because then he'd actually have to address Chancellor Wiley's central point, instead of barely nibbling flaccidly around its nether edges, which is all he's apparently capable of doing.
But here's what Chancellor Wiley was saying: The less funding the State provides, the more difficult it is for Wisconsin individuals and families to receive college educations. And the more difficult that becomes for Wisconsinites, the less competitive the State becomes, academically, at business, and at research.
It's as simple as that and not really all that tough to follow.
And, forgive me the appeal to authority, but I'm prepared to defer to the head of the university on these matters rather than to an ideological bosom buddy of Charlie Sykes. The fact of beatification as a Journal-Sentinel "Best of the Bloggers" notwithstanding.
Yet Schneider has the unmitigated gall to say of Chancellor Wiley's missive, "The entire vitriolic commentary smacks of typical academic elitism — if you disagree with him, you are either evil or stupid."
Evidently Schneider counts himself among those who disagree with Wiley, and the reader is left to decide and pronounce upon which disjunctive side of Schneider's puerile false dichotomy applies to he.
But by disagreeing with Wiley one is forced to perpetuate academic elitism itself. Obviously when tuition doubles every few years, then pretty damn soon only the elite can afford academics.
Rocket science or even Econ 101, it ain't.
Occasionally I have to wonder why the Journal-Sentinel reproduces babblings like Schneider's in the truncated manner that it does. It's hard to tell whether Schneider's piece is excerpted thus as a means of positive recognition, or to make him look at least doubly foolish.
Because what it reproduced of Schneider's blog post is about 90% abusive rant and 9% misleading figures (the remainder is ellipses inserted by the paper's editors, including one set substituted for a quotation from Chancellor Wiley's original article).
And even at that, that's about all Schneider has to say about the University of Wisconsin's budget in his own original blog post. The balance of his deep thoughts, and not just the substanceless blithering selected by the Journal-Sentinel's editorial board, is all devoted to weeping the blues for poor little put-upon Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce. Cry us a river, won't you please.
"Think tank." "Best of the Blogs." It is to laugh.
Tonight is certainly no disappointment, nor should it be for readers of tomorrow's hard copy edition, where this stuff actually appears.
This week's "Best of the Blogs" memorializes the mostly pointless meanderings of one Christian Schneider, who resides at a "free market think tank," the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, also storied home to such profoundly compelling cogitators as the local medium-wave radio "personality" Charlie Sykes.
Evidently Mr. Schneider was quite disturbed and alarmed by outgoing University of Wisconsin Chancellor John D. Wiley's deliciously trenchant kiss-off to the State's legislative and executive branches, and especially to Wiley's smacking around of the dishonest partisan apparatchiks dwelling at Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce.
Skipping beyond the more blathery portions of Schneider's screed, what seems to be some hard number crunching appears forthwith:
First, Wiley trots out the old canard that the UW System is underfunded:What the Journal-Sentinel doesn't tell you is that but a portion of those figures is derived from State government contributions, which only increased by less than 2.2% annually over that same decade. And during two of the most recent annual periods, State funding was slashed, in one of them, by 10%. And cut again the next.
According to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, the total UW budget was $2.5 billion in 1996-97. By 2006-07, just 10 years later, the total system budget had ballooned to $4.3 billion, an average increase of 5.7% per year over a decade.
System-wide enrollment alone, meanwhile, rose by nearly 9%, to say nothing of other many and varied rising costs.
So how did UW pick up the State funding shortfalls? For one thing, it had to increase tuition. Drastically. In 2003, for example, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee bumped tuition almost 19%. The next year, it raised undergraduate tuition another 16%.
Since I first attended UWM in 2000, tuition has nearly doubled. The increases at the main campus in Madison, where enrollment is around 40,000 souls — roughly twice that of Milwaukee — are almost identical. And that's just resident tuition. I'm afraid to look at the figures for out-of-State tuition, which I paid for three or four semesters. From my own free market pocket, incidentally.
Of course, not even the "think tank" denizen Christian Schneider mentions any of that, let alone the Journal-Sentinel. Because then he'd actually have to address Chancellor Wiley's central point, instead of barely nibbling flaccidly around its nether edges, which is all he's apparently capable of doing.
But here's what Chancellor Wiley was saying: The less funding the State provides, the more difficult it is for Wisconsin individuals and families to receive college educations. And the more difficult that becomes for Wisconsinites, the less competitive the State becomes, academically, at business, and at research.
It's as simple as that and not really all that tough to follow.
And, forgive me the appeal to authority, but I'm prepared to defer to the head of the university on these matters rather than to an ideological bosom buddy of Charlie Sykes. The fact of beatification as a Journal-Sentinel "Best of the Bloggers" notwithstanding.
Yet Schneider has the unmitigated gall to say of Chancellor Wiley's missive, "The entire vitriolic commentary smacks of typical academic elitism — if you disagree with him, you are either evil or stupid."
Evidently Schneider counts himself among those who disagree with Wiley, and the reader is left to decide and pronounce upon which disjunctive side of Schneider's puerile false dichotomy applies to he.
But by disagreeing with Wiley one is forced to perpetuate academic elitism itself. Obviously when tuition doubles every few years, then pretty damn soon only the elite can afford academics.
Rocket science or even Econ 101, it ain't.
Occasionally I have to wonder why the Journal-Sentinel reproduces babblings like Schneider's in the truncated manner that it does. It's hard to tell whether Schneider's piece is excerpted thus as a means of positive recognition, or to make him look at least doubly foolish.
Because what it reproduced of Schneider's blog post is about 90% abusive rant and 9% misleading figures (the remainder is ellipses inserted by the paper's editors, including one set substituted for a quotation from Chancellor Wiley's original article).
And even at that, that's about all Schneider has to say about the University of Wisconsin's budget in his own original blog post. The balance of his deep thoughts, and not just the substanceless blithering selected by the Journal-Sentinel's editorial board, is all devoted to weeping the blues for poor little put-upon Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce. Cry us a river, won't you please.
Wiley goes on to blame WMC for the "toxic" political environment in Wisconsin, as if there has never been tension between those who want to raise taxes and lower them.Ah, yes. Like complaining that the DVDs stocked by the Milwaukee Public Library aren't highbrow enough. Pretty tense stuff, that.
"Think tank." "Best of the Blogs." It is to laugh.
April 29, 2012
Prosser complaint "has gone on long enough" — MJS
Even though it's barely gotten started
Drop the Wisconsin Judicial Commission complaint against Supreme Court Justice David Prosser, urges the deep thinkers at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel editorial board. "Under normal procedure, the court would appoint a panel of three appeals court judges who would hear the case," they claim. What is "normal procedure"? Well, they don't say.
Presumably the edit board is relying on unsubstantiated claims made by Justice Prosser and his attorneys and reported by the Journal-Sentinel. In fact those are the main premises underlying the Journal-Sentinel's argument, if indeed one can straighfacedly call it an argument at all.
But the Wisconsin statutes clearly say that the chief judge of the court of appeals shall appoint the panel. And apparently the Journal-Sentinel couldn't care less for the law, so often has its falsehood been repeated.
Prosser is a Republican whose reelection the Journal-Sentinel supported.
Because, as the edit board offered at the time, "he is a good writer."
October 23, 2011
Can't get enough WPRI? Try the Journal-Sentinel.
Today's Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has not one but two columns by Wisconsin Policy Research Institute "senior fellows," neither of which identify WPRI for the right-wing Bradley Foundation-funded Republican Party/Scott Walker shill that it is. In fact the president of the Bradley Foundation, Michael Grebe, was Scott Walker's campaign chairman.
WPRI also has a magazine of its own, which is edited by right-wing radio shouter Charlie Sykes. Charlie Sykes is also an employee of Journal Communications, Inc., which owns the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.
And the Journal-Sentinel endorsed Scott Walker for governor of Wisconsin, despite the paper's occasional quarter-hearted editorial page objections to Walker and his henchpeople's policies. Just so you know.
WPRI also has a magazine of its own, which is edited by right-wing radio shouter Charlie Sykes. Charlie Sykes is also an employee of Journal Communications, Inc., which owns the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.
And the Journal-Sentinel endorsed Scott Walker for governor of Wisconsin, despite the paper's occasional quarter-hearted editorial page objections to Walker and his henchpeople's policies. Just so you know.
August 3, 2011
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel gets selective
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's editorial board mandarins have seen fit to denounce Democratic candidate for Senate Sandy Pasch's failure to have her name removed from a third-party outfit's website, where she is listed among its board of directors. The third-party group is active in campaigning against Pasch's political rival, the incumbent Republican Alberta Darling, and coordination between candidates and third-party outfits is unlawful. The Journal-Sentinel's concern was apparently raised by complaints filed with the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board by the State Republican Party. However the complaints do nothing more than note the appearance of Pasch's name on the third-party's website.
Those complaints present no evidence whatsoever of any coordination between Pasch's campaign and the third-party, yet they don't hesitate in directly accusing Pasch of breaking the law. In fact the two complaints, filed on Monday and Tuesday respectively, are sterling examples of piling inference upon inference upon innuendo to reach their fallacious conclusions. Yes, obviously Sandy Pasch's name on the website looks bad.
But that isn't evidence of anything other than a name on a website.
Meanwhile the Koch front group Americans For Prosperity sent mailers to liberal Democratic voters advising them to be sure and get their absentee ballots in by two days after the August 9 elections, but the Journal-Sentinel has not been so moved to condemn that sleazy ploy.*
And Alberta Darling has been ignoring the left/liberal advocacy group One Wisconsin Now's open records requests for months, whereas the Wisconsin statutes command ORR recipients to respond "without delay." OWN filed an actual complaint, in court, containing substantive allegations, as compared with the WISGOP complaints to the GAB, whose allegations are groundless. Yet the MJS mandarins decide the first of these three situations is what merits their finger-wagging treatment.
Our librul media and the choices it makes, I guess is what that is.
* The MJS happily publishes AFP's op-ed pieces, however.
Those complaints present no evidence whatsoever of any coordination between Pasch's campaign and the third-party, yet they don't hesitate in directly accusing Pasch of breaking the law. In fact the two complaints, filed on Monday and Tuesday respectively, are sterling examples of piling inference upon inference upon innuendo to reach their fallacious conclusions. Yes, obviously Sandy Pasch's name on the website looks bad.
But that isn't evidence of anything other than a name on a website.
Meanwhile the Koch front group Americans For Prosperity sent mailers to liberal Democratic voters advising them to be sure and get their absentee ballots in by two days after the August 9 elections, but the Journal-Sentinel has not been so moved to condemn that sleazy ploy.*
And Alberta Darling has been ignoring the left/liberal advocacy group One Wisconsin Now's open records requests for months, whereas the Wisconsin statutes command ORR recipients to respond "without delay." OWN filed an actual complaint, in court, containing substantive allegations, as compared with the WISGOP complaints to the GAB, whose allegations are groundless. Yet the MJS mandarins decide the first of these three situations is what merits their finger-wagging treatment.
Our librul media and the choices it makes, I guess is what that is.
* The MJS happily publishes AFP's op-ed pieces, however.
February 28, 2011
What a difference 300,000 protesters makes
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, February 12, 2011:
So shouldn't it be thanking the 14, or even praising them?
Meanwhile at the National Review Online, Wisconsin Policy Research Institute "senior fellow" Christian Schneider asks himself, "Have the Madison protests made a difference?" and answers himself, "No."
At least the Journal-Sentinel is paying attention, and not creepily leering over "impressionable college girls" under the Capitol dome.
Maybe he's why they were bolting the windows shut there today.
* It also endorsed him for governor in the first place. The local daily hasn't yet gone so far as to enunciate the topsy turvy buyers' remorse reflected in the latest Public Policy Polling survey (.pdf; 5 pgs.).
That could be next.
Restoring Wisconsin to fiscal health is not for the squeamish. The medicine is going to be bitter. Gov. Scott Walker's proposals to strip state employee unions of much of their bargaining power illustrates just how bitter.Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, February 28, 2001:
But Walker is right to do this. He must insist that state workers pay a bigger share of their benefits. And he's right to take steps to compel them to do so.
Gov. Scott Walker's budget-repair bill is flawed. We support the governor's aim to rein in labor costs but cannot support this bill as written. . . .In the latter editorial, the authors criticize as "reckless" the 14 Democratic State Senators for retreating to Illinois to avoid forming the quorum required to pass the so-called budget repair bill. But had it not been for the action of those 14, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel wouldn't even be in the position of reconsidering its former wholesale endorsement for Gov. Scott Walker's union-busting proposals.*
But no matter how deep the budget hole, Walker and his Republican allies in the Legislature were wrong to try to bust public-employee unions. Workers have a fundamental right to organize, even when it's inconvenient for the rest of us.
So shouldn't it be thanking the 14, or even praising them?
Meanwhile at the National Review Online, Wisconsin Policy Research Institute "senior fellow" Christian Schneider asks himself, "Have the Madison protests made a difference?" and answers himself, "No."
At least the Journal-Sentinel is paying attention, and not creepily leering over "impressionable college girls" under the Capitol dome.
Maybe he's why they were bolting the windows shut there today.
* It also endorsed him for governor in the first place. The local daily hasn't yet gone so far as to enunciate the topsy turvy buyers' remorse reflected in the latest Public Policy Polling survey (.pdf; 5 pgs.).
That could be next.
May 27, 2011
Maintaining a political blog in Wisconsin
Is like banging your head against a [scuffed limestone] wall:
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.
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.
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?
[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?
June 28, 2011
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.
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.
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:
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.
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:
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.
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.
April 18, 2012
Full disclosure at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
Er, not quite.
"Walker returns $170,000 to business group's PAC," it says here: "Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce says it misunderstood GAB guidance on giving." Did you know that Steven J. Smith, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Journal Communications, Inc., which owns both the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and the insufferable dissembler Charlie Sykes, and whose local teevee station plays weekly host to sleazy hacks like Brian Sikma of Media Trackers, is also an officer on the board of directors with the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce? Well, you may have known it but you wouldn't have known by reading the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.
And it's not the first time you wouldn't have known it either.
Incidentally MMAC chairman Ulice Payne, Jr. conducted a panel I attended during orientation week at Marquette University Law School which turned out to be devoted exclusively to Payne's glorifying "how much money you will make." Payne, who at the time was a partner at Foley & Lardner, brought along a new associate with the firm and recent graduate of MULS. Payne instructed the young woman to tell the audience what her starting salary was and warned her that if she didn't provide this information then he would. It was a display so unseemly that I had to leave the hall and thence avoid the rest of orientation week.
That's an ostensibly Catholic institution, by the way, so perhaps Payne was emphasizing "how much money you will make" so you can give lots of it to charity. But I doubt it because Payne further emphasized that $10K of the new attorney's compensation was in clothing allowance, and the young associate wasn't exactly dressed in sackcloth (nor was Payne).
This while the State Bar of Wisconsin labors to disabuse the popular perception of attorneys as money-grubbing. Deftly played, Mr. Payne.
Teach those baby lawyers well.
"Walker returns $170,000 to business group's PAC," it says here: "Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce says it misunderstood GAB guidance on giving." Did you know that Steven J. Smith, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Journal Communications, Inc., which owns both the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and the insufferable dissembler Charlie Sykes, and whose local teevee station plays weekly host to sleazy hacks like Brian Sikma of Media Trackers, is also an officer on the board of directors with the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce? Well, you may have known it but you wouldn't have known by reading the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.
And it's not the first time you wouldn't have known it either.
Incidentally MMAC chairman Ulice Payne, Jr. conducted a panel I attended during orientation week at Marquette University Law School which turned out to be devoted exclusively to Payne's glorifying "how much money you will make." Payne, who at the time was a partner at Foley & Lardner, brought along a new associate with the firm and recent graduate of MULS. Payne instructed the young woman to tell the audience what her starting salary was and warned her that if she didn't provide this information then he would. It was a display so unseemly that I had to leave the hall and thence avoid the rest of orientation week.
That's an ostensibly Catholic institution, by the way, so perhaps Payne was emphasizing "how much money you will make" so you can give lots of it to charity. But I doubt it because Payne further emphasized that $10K of the new attorney's compensation was in clothing allowance, and the young associate wasn't exactly dressed in sackcloth (nor was Payne).
This while the State Bar of Wisconsin labors to disabuse the popular perception of attorneys as money-grubbing. Deftly played, Mr. Payne.
Teach those baby lawyers well.
June 6, 2011
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.
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.
August 22, 2011
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel quote of the day
All I know is what I read in the papers. — Will Rogers
The federal Constitution does not have right-to-vote provisions.Also, Justice Roggensack begs to differ (in the Journal-Sentinel).
It is beyond cavil that "voting is of the most fundamental significance under our constitutional structure."Whatever/wherever cavil is.
February 26, 2009
Spare us the sanctimony
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's editorial board member David Haynes reiterates Jefferson County Circuit Judge Randy Koschnick's false dichotomy by demanding that Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson return campaign contributions from attorneys for a law firm set to argue a case before the State Supreme Court next month.Either return the money or recuse herself, they say. Mr. Haynes then goes on to inaccurately compare the situation to that of Justices Annette Ziegler and Michael Gableman, who in January heard and will this summer rule on a case where one of their biggest political and financial supporters had actually filed an amicus brief on behalf of one of the parties. And by financial support, we're talking millions.
Neither recused, nor repudiated any benefits — those being their very own comfortable, high backed leather chairs — received from the amici, our good friends at Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce.
Judge Koschnick, who makes much of his so-called "clean campaign pledge," would do well to recall that that pledge refers to "parties" in suits before the court. Instead, he's conveniently expanded the definition of parties to include their lawyers, private actors with a constitutional right to donate to whichever candidate they choose.
So much for "strict constructionism."
Sorry, people. Conservatives have been howling for years against campaign finance reform initiatives as an abridgment of free speech and so long as Wisconsin adheres to its regime of privately funded popular elections to the appellate courts, this is what you get.
As mentioned here previously, Koschnick's whole campaign is based on accusations of Shirley Abrahamson's alleged ideological tilt toward the likes of plaintiffs in medical malpractice cases.
That is, his entire politically motivated premise assumes that the Chief Justice is already predisposed toward this plaintiff. Therefore, if the plaintiff's attorneys really wanted to procure themselves a judge, they'd distribute their money elsewhere. Now he wants it both ways, just as he wants a number of other things both ways.
At a forum in Madison on Tuesday he again derided the Chief Justice's use of "psychological manuals" to decide a case and in the next breath made reference to "psychological manuals" in support of his own self. No mention of that in the Journal-Sentinel's account.
Furthermore, lawyers for Foley & Lardner, which is representing the adverse party in the suit, have contributed stacks of cash money not only to the Chief Justice but to the rest of the court. So why the selectively chosen focus on Abrahamson and Cannon & Dunphy?
F&L, it stands to reason, would be the most troubled by the contributions in question, since they have an equal and opposite stake in this particular dispute's outcome. And, as the Chief Justice suggested on Tuesday, if F&L wanted her off the case, they'd file a motion for recusal with the court. Which they haven't done.
The Journal-Sentinel, in the meantime, is content to simply reproduce Koschnick's internally contradictory political talking points bereft of even the slightest attempt at searching analysis.
How about pressing Judge Koschnick on his charges of "intellectual dishonesty," or report that he's sent out fundraising letters that misrepresent the law, instead of griping about an alleged flaw in the electoral system that virtually everyone claims to support.
I won't be holding my breath.
August 25, 2010
What is wrong with the Milwaukee daily paper?
Science reporting or legal reporting, I don't know which is worse. Here's the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's latest dismal effort:
Now, if what Ron Johnson had said is that sunspots "played a role" in global climate, nobody would have batted an eyelash. Obviously solar activity contributes to changes in the Earth's climate over time.
It's the Earth's primary source of energy.
But that isn't what Ron Johnson said at all. What he said was — after dismissing "absolutely" the science of anthropogenic global warming in its entirety, something he'd earlier termed "crazy" and "lunacy" — "it's far more likely that it's just sun spot activity or something just in the geologic æons of time where we have changes in the climate."
That's from Johnson's own website.
As noted here previously on more than one occasion, those are unequivocal declarations. Recall: Johnson dismissed "absolutely" any scientific evidence in support of anthropogenic global warming. "Absolutely": that was his word. There's no mistaking its meaning.
Thus, according to Ron Johnson, it's all the result of otherwise natural processes. Not anthropogenic. So, advises Ron Johnson to mankind, just keep doing what you're doing, burning carbon in unprecedented quantities to your hearts' content. It's all good.
Anyway, the alleged direct causal correlation between solar activity and more recent rising global temperatures is debunked. So it's not even "far more likely," as the Fox News Senate candidate put it.
Secondly, if Ron Johnson had said merely that 'some southern areas of what we now know as Greenland and that are now covered in kilometer-thick ice actually were green at one time,' then nobody would have batted an eye either. Again, as pointed out at this space earlier, scientists have discovered in a southern Greenland ice core (Dye 3) the genetic remains of creatures that dwell in forested areas.
Ergo, there must have been "a northern boreal forest ecosystem" in order for those particular creatures to thrive. That is an inference drawn from the genetic evidence, and it relates only to a specifically defined area in the southern portion of the island.
But that isn't what Ron Johnson said. This is: "There's a reason Greenland was called Greenland. It was actually green at one point in time. And it's been, since, it's a whole lot whiter now."
Except Greenland was only called "Greenland" about 1100 years ago, whereas the DNA recovered from the Dye 3 ice core (third from the west) by Eske Willerslev* et al is approaching one million years old.
Erik the Red, it may be safely assumed, was unfamiliar with Dye 3.
Is it really that difficult for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel to perceive those crucial distinctions? Willerslev et al's 2007 paper is online. For free (so the J-S does not have to cut into Patrick McIlheran's salary for pricey subscriptions to scientific journals).
Furthermore several contemporary press accounts of Willerslev's paper completely misrepresent its relatively cautious conclusions.
Never — ever — trust the popular press to report reliably on scientific research papers. It exaggerates, and sensationalizes. That's where Ron Johnson and his denialist friends get their information, and it's why they apparently have barely a clue what they're talking about.
This is dreadful news reporting by the Journal-Sentinel, and moreover containing an exoneration of Ron Johnson's ill-informed views of the science that he most certainly does not deserve.
* Prof. Willerslev is an evolutionary biologist, by the way, whose work is unlikely to appear in the local creationist curricula candidate Ron Johnson enthusiastically approved to the Rock River Patriots.
[Ron] Johnson's recent comments about sunspots playing a role in global warming, as well as Johnson's more recent comment that Greenland was actually green at one time ...Emphases added. Why is the J-S downplaying Johnson's own claims?
Now, if what Ron Johnson had said is that sunspots "played a role" in global climate, nobody would have batted an eyelash. Obviously solar activity contributes to changes in the Earth's climate over time.
It's the Earth's primary source of energy.
But that isn't what Ron Johnson said at all. What he said was — after dismissing "absolutely" the science of anthropogenic global warming in its entirety, something he'd earlier termed "crazy" and "lunacy" — "it's far more likely that it's just sun spot activity or something just in the geologic æons of time where we have changes in the climate."
That's from Johnson's own website.
As noted here previously on more than one occasion, those are unequivocal declarations. Recall: Johnson dismissed "absolutely" any scientific evidence in support of anthropogenic global warming. "Absolutely": that was his word. There's no mistaking its meaning.
Thus, according to Ron Johnson, it's all the result of otherwise natural processes. Not anthropogenic. So, advises Ron Johnson to mankind, just keep doing what you're doing, burning carbon in unprecedented quantities to your hearts' content. It's all good.
Anyway, the alleged direct causal correlation between solar activity and more recent rising global temperatures is debunked. So it's not even "far more likely," as the Fox News Senate candidate put it.
Secondly, if Ron Johnson had said merely that 'some southern areas of what we now know as Greenland and that are now covered in kilometer-thick ice actually were green at one time,' then nobody would have batted an eye either. Again, as pointed out at this space earlier, scientists have discovered in a southern Greenland ice core (Dye 3) the genetic remains of creatures that dwell in forested areas.
Ergo, there must have been "a northern boreal forest ecosystem" in order for those particular creatures to thrive. That is an inference drawn from the genetic evidence, and it relates only to a specifically defined area in the southern portion of the island.
But that isn't what Ron Johnson said. This is: "There's a reason Greenland was called Greenland. It was actually green at one point in time. And it's been, since, it's a whole lot whiter now."
Except Greenland was only called "Greenland" about 1100 years ago, whereas the DNA recovered from the Dye 3 ice core (third from the west) by Eske Willerslev* et al is approaching one million years old.
Erik the Red, it may be safely assumed, was unfamiliar with Dye 3.
Is it really that difficult for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel to perceive those crucial distinctions? Willerslev et al's 2007 paper is online. For free (so the J-S does not have to cut into Patrick McIlheran's salary for pricey subscriptions to scientific journals).
Furthermore several contemporary press accounts of Willerslev's paper completely misrepresent its relatively cautious conclusions.
Never — ever — trust the popular press to report reliably on scientific research papers. It exaggerates, and sensationalizes. That's where Ron Johnson and his denialist friends get their information, and it's why they apparently have barely a clue what they're talking about.
This is dreadful news reporting by the Journal-Sentinel, and moreover containing an exoneration of Ron Johnson's ill-informed views of the science that he most certainly does not deserve.
* Prof. Willerslev is an evolutionary biologist, by the way, whose work is unlikely to appear in the local creationist curricula candidate Ron Johnson enthusiastically approved to the Rock River Patriots.
June 1, 2009
McIlheran enjoys unargued assertion also
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's "right-wing guy" and editorial board member Patrick McIlheran, who was among the most disgracefully complicit in publicizing character assassination and lies:
McIlheran's favored candidate, meanwhile, has been for months under investigation by the Wisconsin Judicial Commission. He faces suspension or expulsion from the Supreme Court, either of which is considerably more damaging than having lost an election.
Where is the Journal-Sentinel's antidote to Patrick McIlheran?
I mean, apart from any sort of actual basic reasoning.
Best quote is from former Journal-Sentinel columnist and now law professor Rick Esenberg:Patrick McIlheran, whose credibility is virtually non-existent on this subject, is referring to this, wherein Prof. Esenberg alludes to the availability of an argument but conveniently doesn't make one.
"While one could argue that a person who has twice lost a statewide judicial race ought not to be elevated to the federal bench, I doubt that argument will carry a great deal of weight with the senators or the White House."
McIlheran's favored candidate, meanwhile, has been for months under investigation by the Wisconsin Judicial Commission. He faces suspension or expulsion from the Supreme Court, either of which is considerably more damaging than having lost an election.
Where is the Journal-Sentinel's antidote to Patrick McIlheran?
I mean, apart from any sort of actual basic reasoning.
August 5, 2011
"The charges are nonsense."
Citizen Action of Wisconsin's Robert Kraig writes:
Theirs is a sleazy game, and the Journal-Sentinel a willing accomplice.
This week, the Republican Party leveled charges that the nonprofit grass-roots organization I lead has "coordinated" with Sandy Pasch's campaign. The accusation has been backed up with not one shred of evidence of the charge as it is defined in campaign law. Nonetheless, many media outlets ran with the story, and it even rated an editorial in the Journal Sentinel. The charges are nonsense and will be dismissed after the election.This is true. The WISGOP's complaints are laughable for their lack of substance. What is less laughable is the Journal-Sentinel helpfully regurgitating every baseless claim served up by paid conservative Republican operative/hacks masquerading as objective news sources like the MacGyver Institute, Media Trackers, and Wisconsin Reporter.
Theirs is a sleazy game, and the Journal-Sentinel a willing accomplice.
June 29, 2009
Reading helps
True, it does. Writes law professor Rick Esenberg:
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.
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.
February 10, 2011
Wisconsin Supreme Court: As I was saying
It was highly irresponsible for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel to have portrayed Supreme Court candidates Marla Stephens and JoAnne Kloppenburg as parties to the inflammatory denunciations of Justice Michael Gableman articulated by a third candidate, Joel Winnig.
There are impressionable, easily duped minds among us who swallowed the Journal-Sentinel's negligently misleading headline hook, line, and sinker including — not at all surprisingly — top Wisconsin conservative blogger Boots (or is he Sabers?) who refers to all three Supreme Court challengers collectively as "jokers" and "tools" that all collectively put forth "stupid and irresponsible BS."*
Both Kloppenburg and Stephens have raised the Gableman case in a legitimate and substantive manner, and the ongoing controversy is relevant because the incumbent Justice David Prosser joined an opinion (or "writing," as it has come to be known) exonerating Gableman from any wrongdoing based on an arguably misguided take on the relationship between the First Amendment and accepted principles of ethical conduct among members of the judiciary.
Winnig's comments on the other hand are easily distinguishable, whereas Stephens's and Kloppenburg's disagreements with the "writing" are no different than might be their views of any other prior decision of the court. The Journal-Sentinel should in fairness clarify these distinctions, if only for the benefit of the impressionable right.
* I assume that stands for "bullshit" and not "Boots & Sabers."
There are impressionable, easily duped minds among us who swallowed the Journal-Sentinel's negligently misleading headline hook, line, and sinker including — not at all surprisingly — top Wisconsin conservative blogger Boots (or is he Sabers?) who refers to all three Supreme Court challengers collectively as "jokers" and "tools" that all collectively put forth "stupid and irresponsible BS."*
Both Kloppenburg and Stephens have raised the Gableman case in a legitimate and substantive manner, and the ongoing controversy is relevant because the incumbent Justice David Prosser joined an opinion (or "writing," as it has come to be known) exonerating Gableman from any wrongdoing based on an arguably misguided take on the relationship between the First Amendment and accepted principles of ethical conduct among members of the judiciary.
Winnig's comments on the other hand are easily distinguishable, whereas Stephens's and Kloppenburg's disagreements with the "writing" are no different than might be their views of any other prior decision of the court. The Journal-Sentinel should in fairness clarify these distinctions, if only for the benefit of the impressionable right.
* I assume that stands for "bullshit" and not "Boots & Sabers."
April 22, 2011
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:
eta 03 Jon Entine returns for some more:
* McIlheran was not "reporting" and Stanley didn't "criticize" him.
eta 04 And yet still more additional Jon Entine:
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?
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?
February 21, 2009
Journal-Sentinel editorial board funnies
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's resident funnyman Patrick McIlheran on federal warrantless wiretapping:"Hey, if it’s fascism when the CIA tracks cell phone calls to al-Qaida suspects ..."Well no, that's hardly reflective of the objections to the Bush administration's surveillance program. It was the fact that the net was cast so widely that it was intercepting non-al-Qaeda non-suspects, a.k.a. private, law abiding American citizens.
You know, ends versus means, a crucial distinction with which Mr. McIlheran would do well to familiarize himself if he intends on invoking questions of constitutional doctrine (or, for that matter, the world as it exists beyond the feverish delusions of BDS sufferers).
"Patty," as he is known by his anti-fan club, goes on to compare — via one of his highly trusted sources: some anonymous right-wing blogger, who in turn sources the barely competent National Review "editor" Kathryn Jean Lopez — Bush's constitutionally questionable practices with some offhand remark by a Republican member of Obama's cabinet, the substance of which Obama rapidly kiboshed.
And lest we forget, none other than then-U.S. Senator Obama voted in favor of an amendment to the very Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act which Patty sarcastically derides as "fascism."
All of which appears in the immediate wake of Patrick McIlheran's colleague, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel editorial board member David Haynes's irony-infused admonition to "bloggers who deliberately twist the facts to try to make their opponents look stupid."
Rhetoricians, heal thyselves.
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