Rick's nature trick: Hide the denial

So Professor Esenberg doesn't care for certain descriptive English words, as he indicates in his latest missive on what he's christened "Climatequiddick," which is apparently a light-hearted and cute allusion to the tragic drowning of Mary Jo Kopechne in 1969.

The careful reader will note that what has got Prof. Esenberg's dander up was this post, highlighting his false claim that compilers of a chart on the cover of a 1999 report of the World Meteorological Organization "combin[ed] two different measurements and pretend[ed] they are the same thing and mischaracteriz[ed] what data show."

This is the claim of Prof. Esenberg's with which I took issue. Except he avoids this and instead inventories a collection of vocabulary employed from time to time at this blog (which is part of the internets and tends occasionally to adopt its vernacular, although I don't believe I have ever used Ms. Kopechne as a figure of fun):

"Teabagger", "wingnut", "not very smart", "moron", "calumnist" "ignorant," "fraud," "dishonest," "lying," etc. You'd think that arrogance, if it must be expressed, should be earned, but I guess that "denializer" is not so bad.

This is supposed to be an argument, I guess, so please feel free to use the search function at the upper left corner to determine whatever context they were used in and if it was even me that was using them and not as part of a quotation from somebody else.

For example, "teabag," the verb, was coined by a Fox News reporter.

"Morons," as Prof. Esenberg conveniently overlooks, is what his friend Charlie Sykes called some Milwaukeeans who held a vigil at North Ave. and Oakland on Friday night to commemorate the conference on climate change currently underway in Copenhagen.

It's my understanding that Charlie Sykes is not exactly a shrinking violet himself when it comes to colorful language describing his perceived political adversaries (in this case, the youthful idealists that Sykes so abhors and mocks at every available opportunity).

So how come Prof. Esenberg doesn't similarly take Sykes to the woodshed, if it's so terribly not nice to call people morons? Evidently it's acceptable as long as you're Charlie Sykes, whose obsequious consideration of Prof. Esenberg is as a "renaissance man."

(Perhaps he'd settle for just "medieval warming period man.")

"Calumnist" is a term coined by yours truly (I think [eta: not]) to characterize the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's self-described "right-wing guy" Patrick McIlheran, because that's exactly what he is.

"Calumny," in fact, is a relatively mild description for McIlheran's fatuous rhetorical efforts, e.g., to falsely tie one of Obama's advisers in the Department of Education to the notorious North American Man-Boy Love Association, which is what McIlheran did.

As a matter of fact, it was McIlheran's series of gross distortions, risible misunderstandings, and deployment of so-called "experts" like the Third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley that inspired a number of posts here on the topic of "Climategate."

I personally find it more than a little appalling that the biggest daily newspaper in the State of Wisconsin would see fit to publish such pure nonsense, but that's just me. It's a crazy expectation, I know.

Call me a youthful idealist (and see you at Pizza Man).

As for frauds, "dangerous frauds" is how McIlheran described scientists whose private correspondence was unlawfully uploaded to a computer server in Russia last month.

And "dangerous frauds" is how McIlheran has described those scientists despite being comically unaware* that the much-celebrated "decline" referenced in one of those e-mails was not a decline in measured temperatures but rather a decline in sensitivity to changes in temperature observed within a particular collection of a particular species of tree in a particular location in the Northern Hemisphere.

Except I have never seen Prof. Esenberg condemning Mr. McIlheran for his hysterically reactionary "opinions," which are themselves in turn grounded on his not even knowing what the hell he's talking about. No, instead Prof. Esenberg rambles away about Al Gore, who has nothing to do with any of this, as far as I'm concerned.

Ironically, it was none other than Prof. Esenberg who wrote:

On the left, bloggers like Illusory Tenant are redefining the term "denialist." There is, they say, nothing to see here and "wing nuts" who say other things are so stupid — not at all like us smart people.

Now suddenly he affects to be troubled because I placed him in the denialist camp (for good, empirical reason, as opposed to faux-trage at choice of the same nouns and adjectives his local right-wing colleagues use), an awfully slippery double standard on his part.

While I never said there is nothing to see here, I did predict very early on that the political right would attempt to construct fallacious bales of straw from what seemed to me little more than scientists "sharing around some catty messages with each other."

Which is precisely what has happened. And, despite Prof. Esenberg's continuing use of his own coined expression "Climatequiddick," he's yet to address the question I'd put to him more than once: "So I'll ask again: Is this really all you guys have? 'Hide the decline'?"

Still waiting.

* For two weeks, after which he dismissed as a "subtlety" the somewhat fundamental question of whether temperatures were rising or declining. I'm not kidding. "Renaissance man" notwithstanding, it hardly comes as a surprise that Mr. McIlheran looks up to Prof. Esenberg as he "whom I want to be as smart as someday."

To be sure, Prof. Esenberg is in fact very smart indeed, which makes some of the positions he stakes out that much more questionable.

Like this one, for example:

The rationale behind the recusal motions filed against Michael Gableman are [sic] primarily (although not quite entirely) based on the now infamous Reuben Mitchell ad and certain statements made by Gableman’s lawyer, Jim Bopp, in the course of defending Justice Gableman on ethics charges stemming from the ad.

While Attorney Rob Henak is a talented advocate, I don't believe he's quite mastered time travel, as his original motions were filed in April, and Jim Bopp didn't deliver his statements until September.

Wrong wing-guy

Poor old Patrick McIlheran, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel calumnist who still can't come to grips with the free market's invisible hands throttling his hero Rush Limbaugh. Fine. But why does he have to lie?

Didn't like the way Sonia Sotomayor said Latinas just made better judges than white guys? Then you're a racist.

Except that isn't what she said and, to her credit, she never backed away from what she did say. But Sotomayor did acknowledge that axe-grinding hacks like Patrick McIlheran may have misunderstood.

Subtlety and mindfulness of context not being among your garden-variety conservative Republican calumnist's strongest suits.

Blatant hypocrisy is, however. Exhibit A: Witness McIlheran's complaints that Limbaugh was pilloried for things he never uttered.

Moreover, contrary to Patrick McIlheran's revisionist victimology, it was Rush Limbaugh who loudly condemned Sotomayor as a racist.

And for this they laid off Tom Strini?

Patrick McIlheran's drooling idiocy

Simply won't stand for this slight against Glenn Palimbaugh

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's award-winning calumnist Patrick McIlheran complains that Leonard Pitts doesn't blame Democrats enough for their opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964:

[B]ack when King actually was marching, it wasn't political conservatives hating on him. It was Robert Byrd (D-W.V.), an ex-Klansman and the only current member of the Senate to have voted against the Civil Rights Act. And it was, by and large, Democrats who opposed the bill and civil rights.

In fact it was southern political conservatives of both parties, including Byrd and his, which Leonard Pitts clearly acknowledges:

[I]n the century after the Civil War, ... conservative Southern Democrats violently repressed would-be black voters, made a shadow government of the Ku Klux Klan, turned a deaf ear to the howling of lynch mobs and lynch victims.

You'd expect a journalist of McIlheran's stature could calculate that those 100 years extended even beyond the CRA's enactment.

(Depending on your construction of "stature," of course.)

The civil rights bill "would dictate to private businessmen who they must do business with," said ex-Mississippi Gov. J.P. Coleman. It "would further impinge on the right of private property in this country," said Georgia Sen. Richard Russell.

The latter are the corollaries to Rand Paul's recent sentiments, which were first announced to the editorial board of the Louisville Courier-Journal, not when "left-wing talk show hosts" were "baiting him."*

Both J.P. Coleman and Richard Russell were Democrats. Russell was a powerful leader for decades in the U.S. Senate,** and a white supremacist. Calumnist Patrick McIlheran, obviously, is the drooling idiot, who doesn't even read the articles he purports to criticize.

Then McIlheran cites approvingly Bruce Bartlett, who just said:

In short, the libertarian philosophy of Rand Paul and the Supreme Court of the 1880s and 1890s gave us almost 100 years of segregation, white supremacy, lynchings, chain gangs, the KKK, and discrimination of African Americans for no other reason except their skin color.

Look, there's those 100 years again. (Speaking of the Supreme Court, who wrote Shelley v. Kraemer? FDR-appointed liberals, is who.)

So it's fine and dandy for Bruce Bartlett to point that out, but not for Leonard Pitts,*** according to the award-winning Patrick McIlheran, all because Pitts insulted poor little race-hustling Rush Limbaugh.

* "Baiting" = posing a simple question. McIlheran's contempt for journalism is usually only manifested in his alleged practice of it.

** Where he actually has a building named after him.

*** Pitts is black, by the way; McIlheran is the oppressed white man.

Woman escapes kitchen, imperils GOP support

Republican candidate for governor Mark Neumann is finished, Journal-Sentinel political calumnist Patrick McIlheran can now report, based on the findings of an anonymous goof calling himself "Dad."

Why? Because Neumann, filling in for a local radio bloviator, brought his wife along into the studio. Worse, gawd forbid, Neumann "frequently asked for her input and/or approval on his thoughts."

Meanwhile, an April Rasmussen poll showed Mark Neumann having gained ground and running neck-and-neck with his Republican rival.

Mr. McIlheran's impeccable reportage is award-winning.

Oh noes: Is Kloppenburg lying about our Shark?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

P. McIlheran, provider of irony

"Right-wing" Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel calumnist Patrick McIlheran guides to good reading, hilariously oblivious to the dismal, hack quality of his own "journalism" on the subject of judges:

Real time and energy are required to respond to the specifics of an argument or perspective in a rational and thoughtful manner.

h/t folkbum.

Your Wisconsin Republicans in the news

Johnson calls on Weiner to resign — actual Associated Press headline

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

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

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

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

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

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

This has been your Wisconsin Republicans in the news.

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

Visit the Archiv:
Huebsch
Troupis
Industrial revenue bonds

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

McIlheran is a serious journalist, really

P. McIlheran "blogs":

James T. Harris notes who didn't know Vladimir Putin had changed his job title. No, it wasn't Palin.

You might remember James T. "Hip Musings" Harris. Following is the particular musing Mr. McIlheran apparently finds rather hip.

Shut up! Just shut up....

"President..eh.. Prime Minister Putin." He doesn't even know who the president is!

Dude, you're in Russia! Who are you there to see?

What a rube.

Et cetera.*

The quote would be Obama momentarily, mistakenly calling Vladimir Putin "President," and then immediately catching himself.

A couple of things. Obama met with Dmitry Medvedev yesterday, so he quite obviously knows who the President of Russia is. Vladimir Putin was President of Russia for nearly ten years, and as such the honorific might tend to have become a hard habit to break. And neither Harris nor McIlheran are much interested in mentioning the several hundred times Obama has called Putin Prime Minister Putin.

Yet here is Patrick McIlheran, a member of the editorial board and a calumnist for a major American daily newspaper, claiming Obama didn't know that Putin had become Prime Minister of Russia last year.

These two characters are allegedly a pair of the brightest right-wing intellectual luminaries in Milwaukee. Hard to believe, isn't it.

Or maybe not.

* "How dumb are these people? Who was running the telepromter?"

Likely not so dumb that they can't even spell it.

Monckton of Brenchley goes Gamma 9 Godwin

Meet your Premier League denialists: Monckton of Brenchley

Infamous climate denializer Christopher the 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, one of the battiest swimmers in a batty gene pool (the English aristocracy), has gone fully 'round the twist in Copenhagen, chasing some American students through the United Nations convention halls and berating them as "Hitler Youth" and "Nazis."

That's the spirit, old chum. Pip pip.

Locally, Monckton is a favorite peer-reviewed* scientific source of Patrick McIlheran, the brilliant calumnist and resident dendroclimatologist at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Wisconsin's largest daily newspaper. McIlheran's esteem is so great, in fact, that the journalist insists on the highest honorific, "Lord Monckton."

A professional courtesy, I guess.

Anyway, thoroughly sordid details here.

Americans For Prosperity which, it may be recalled, is the Republican "astroturf" organization that engineered countless rude and dyspeptic invasions of town hall meetings last summer, evidently has itself a harsh inflammation of the vapors after some student activists crashed one of their Danish jamborees with a banner and a chant.

Fortunately there's no sympathy for shameless, pandering hypocrites.

Third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, who the conservative weekly Spectator called a "swivel-eyed maniac," accosted a Jewish student and accused him of being responsible for more murders than Hitler.

And, yes, they refer to their detractors as "alarmists."

* Geddit?

McIlheran demands Walker's political unraveling

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's award-winning calumnist Patrick McIlheran is rather excited by a trivial observation he found in the National Review, pointing out that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's plan to strip public employees of their collective bargaining rights is not a "fiscal bill" for the purposes of the State constitution.

As such, its passing does not require the three-fifths quorum currently being denied the governor by the 14 Democratic Senators reportedly ensconced in Illinois (there are 33 seats in the Senate; Republicans hold 19 so Walker only needs one of the 14 Democrats).

Everyone already knows the CBA-stripping provision is not a "fiscal bill" — nobody more so than Walker, who has continually and practically to an irrational extent insisted that it is, for one obvious reason: If he acknowledged its true intent and purpose, which is to bust public employee unions, the jig is up and the ruse exposed.

Sometimes you almost want to feel sorry for McIlheran.

Perhaps not coincidentally, the NR piece is authored by one Prof. Jim Lindgren, who also wrote the unwarrantedly smug criticism of a couple of Madison lawyers we had a look at here.

McIlheran inadvertently lauds atheist philanthropy

"I don't believe in God." — Andrew Carnegie

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's wrong-wing calumnist Patrick McIlheran noisily praises "religious people" (like himself, presumably) because they "make better givers," then links to a list of the top ten richest philanthropists, at least five of whom are not religious at all.

In fact neither of the two original organizers of The Giving Pledge, billionaires Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, are "religious people."

Mr. McIlheran is an award-winning journalist and occasional teevee personality, whereby he works his schtick for an outfit that kicked in 15 grand to the political campaign of governor-elect Scott Walker.

He's also a passionate defender of the persecuted minority of "religious people," who comprise a mere 85% of the U.S. population.

h/t Jim Spice.

Joe the Plumber, McIlheran share highest awards

AFP will honor SE Wisconsin's Edward R. Murrow of hyperlinking

To the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's political calumnist and perennial laughingstock Patrick McIlheran, goes a Teabag Pulitzer.

Sadly, Mr. McIlheran was passed over for the Nobel Prize in Dendrochronology. McIlheran is to receive his distinguished award from a fellow constitutional scholar, Wisconsin State lawmaker Leah Vukmir, who famously pronounced United States Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor even dimmer than David Souter.*

Patrick McIlheran, a.k.a. "Mr. Science," is the gold standard bearer for the conservative Republican intelligentsia in Milwaukee.

Earlier: Plumber don't owe John McCain sheeit.

* If this is dim, then I don't want to be smart.

Calumnist McIlheran presumes to instruct us

Sez Milwaukee Magazine's Bruce Murphy:

His silly swipe at the alderman makes you wonder if Patrick McIlheran has ever made any attempt to understand what is going on in city government. That seems like a prerequisite for anyone presuming to instruct us on how it works.

Or anything else he puts his comically propagandizing mind to. And don't forget, Wisconsin's newly minted Senator-elect Ron Johnson is likewise committed to "re-educating" all of you sorry ignoramuses.

MJS edit board not entitled to own facts

Sez JoAnne Kloppenburg:

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

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

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

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

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

eta:

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

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

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

McIlheran reporting from the wing-nut Louvre

Striking a Philistine pose calculated to arouse his wing-nut admirers, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's award-winning calumnist Patrick McIlheran titters at his pal Charlie Sykes's suggestion that an urban fixture since 1982,* Mark Di Suvero's The Calling, be deposited in Lake Michigan. Two other works by di Suvero, Poland and Lover, are among the collection at the Bradley Foundation's sculpture garden.

So do you think you'll catch Patrick McIlheran or Charlie Sykes or Mark Belling publicly lampooning the aesthetic predilections of their own conservative Republican fellow travelers and popular benefactors?

Me neither.

But this is the journalism that wins awards.

* Older than the "historic" National Day of Prayer.

Patrick McIlheran is not a Nazi

Well, that's good to know. Then again, nobody ever said he was.

But Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel calumnist McIlheran's affirmative denial is typical of the curiously aggressive defensiveness that's lately arisen among a couple of local right-wing commentators/brethren.

They are upset because two opinion columns appeared in the New York Times over the weekend purportedly connecting causally the screaming, weeping outrage pimps at Fox News and elsewhere with some recent celebrated acts of apparently political violence.

That the NYT columnists attempt to make the connection (their success on that account is what's debatable) is in fact evidence of the columnists' own incitement of general animus against conservatives.

Or so the argument goes, as framed by Patrick McIlheran and his intellectual idol, Marquette law professor Rick Esenberg.

In particular, McIlheran & Friends don't much appreciate the references to James von Brunn — an 88-year-old unreconstructed British Israelist-style nutcase who staged an attack on the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. with a Father Coughlin-vintage blünderbüss — connecting him with right-wing ideologies.

Because Esenberg and McIlheran would have you know that they don't wish to be associated with those ideologies. Or something.

Here's McIlheran, approvingly quoting Esenberg on their insipid "Weekly Standard" talking point once again:

[James von Brunn] is also a self avowed socialist whose alternative target was apparently the offices of The Weekly Standard.

The implication, of course, is that because the Weekly Standard is reputed to be a conservative magazine, von Brunn's distaste for it must then spring from a well of leftist (read: socialist) hate.

But that's false. For the extreme right, the magazine and its proprietor, William Kristol, stand for Zionism, and its targeting is perfectly in accord with white supremacism and anti-Semitism.

This is obvious to most observers, I would have imagined, but apparently it isn't, at least to these two, who keep repeating that. The evidence is easy enough to locate, although I'm not placing a link to the renowned liberal David Duke's website on this blog.

For von Brunn the neoconservatives, most of whose movement founders were and are Jewish, are of a part with an ancient and giant Jewish conspiracy "to destroy Western civilization and the Aryan Nation that created it." It says so right in his 189-page manifesto.

Mayhap McIlheran and Esenberg should actually read it, before they start ascribing to von Brunn's views a leftist bent.

In fact according to von Brunn, liberalism, Marxism, and international "Jewry" are synonymous, and he equates the three throughout his deranged screed. A self-avowed socialist? Not exactly.

Prof. Esenberg thinks it's simply "ankle biting" to point this out. Of course he would, since it's central to his alleged debunking of Mike Plaisted's own opinion piece, whose author the demonstrably oblivious Patrick McIlheran ironically describes as "dimwitted."

If your argument that James von Brunn isn't a classic right-wing extremist rests on the false claim that von Brunn opposes the goals of the Weekly Standard crowd with respect to their Israel policy because Kristol et al are conservatives, then you have no argument.

These objections bring to mind the self-obsessed self-righteousness emanating from the political right when the Obama administration released a pamphlet (assembled largely during the Bush II administration) warning of potential right-wing extremist violence.

If they're not talking about you, Ms. Malkin, then why worry about it?

But with regard to the murders of George Tiller and Stephen Johns, the security guard at the Holocaust Museum, that DHS report was right [sic] on the money. (Oh, and James von Brunn hates the Anti-Defamation League as well, and we all know how popular and beloved the ADL is among contemporary American conservatives.)

By and with the Advice and Consent of Ron Johnson

Senate candidate Ron Johnson maturing quickly

— Wisconsin State Journal, 08/01/10

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

McIlheran burned some more, on the front page

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

Stanley wasn't done.

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

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

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

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

:headdesk:

Come to think of it that's not such a bad idea

JRN, Inc. calumnist McIlheran, cornered, warns:

If lawmakers concede the case by starting the bill over (complete with bucket-banging mobs and 61-hour debates), it will encourage Democrats to haul every piece of Walker's agenda into court the moment it passes.

Can't hardly wait.

Governor Scott Walker's latest legal gambit as filed by his latest petitioner,* Department of Administration Secretary Mike Huebsch, is to suggest the Open Meetings Law itself is unconstitutional.

While not overtly stated, the implication's sub silentio whisper** is inescapable, when viewed** in light of the existing evidence and the petitioner's presentation of the relevant Supreme Court precedent.

They'll likely come right out and say it in due time. More tomorrow.***

* Petition for Supervisory Writ, April 7 (.pdf; 37 pgs.).
Shorter Huebsch: We're suing everyone and everything, everywhere.

** Sorry for the mixed metaphor. Poetry is not my main bag.

*** -ish.