April 12, 2008
Civility? We don't need no stinking civility.*
Over at folkbum's rambles 'n' rants, Jay and capper have been addressing this question of "civility" in the blogosphere. I have to wonder of some of these people (not Jay or capper) who thrive on shedding crocodile tears over so-called civility: Is this your first day on the internets, or what?
Because it most definitely ain't mine, and much of what I do here is certainly both a product and reflection of internet culture, which is unique. And if you don't appreciate it, then don't read it. More to the point, if you don't read it, then don't make absurd generalizations about it. The latter is generous advice, in that those who do only make themselves look foolish.
Case in point.
What amazes me the most is that a few apparently humorless and (unsurprisingly) conservative bloggers seem to believe that my subtitle, "The Champagne of Hate Blogs," is actually a serious advertisement for myself. I assumed such people knew about Bill O'Reilly. Anybody who's observed that clown performing knows that one of his favorite schticks is raving about the so-called "hate left" and their internets bloggers, whom he calls Nazis and so forth. Nazis!
Full disclosure: Bill O'Reilly is a determinedly fatuous buffoon and "The Champagne of Hate Blogs" is a facetious, self-deprecating acknowledgment of his tremendous idiocy and, as should be blindingly obvious to just about any self-respecting Wisconsinite (and beyond), it's a nod to the advertising slogan of a very famous and legendary Milwaukee brand.
Milwaukee is my adopted home and I happen to love it here, and I'm grateful for all the wonderful friends I've made, "hate bloggers" and otherwise. And there isn't a "hater" in the lot, I should add. Quite the opposite. They're fine people.
Which reminds me — as do many things — of a joke told to me decades ago by a late and beloved uncle of mine. It seems the Mudhens and the Athletics were engaged in an epic Triple A struggle upon the verdant sward, and the Mudhens were down three runs in the bottom of the ninth with two out and the bases loaded.
The Athletics' manager signaled to Mel Famey, ace reliever, to get in the game and save the day. Unfortunately that day had been mighty warm and Mel Famey had a powerful thirst, and he'd spent the afternoon slaking it by drinking beer in the dugout and tossing the empty cans over his shoulder onto the ground outside the park.
Having therefore some considerable difficulty negotiating the strike zone, Mel Famey proceeded to walk the next four batters in a row, and the Mudhens prevailed by a run. Later, as the Mudhens were leaving the ballpark, one of the last four batters noticed the pile of beercans behind the Athletics' dugout. "Hey, look," he notified his colleagues, "That's the beer that made Mel Famey walk us."
Yes, yes, I know. That was terrible. Fortunately my uncle — whose unquestionable awesomeness was cemented in the 1950s when he drove to Buffalo, NY to hear Charlie Parker play in a nightclub — had a million more better ones. My uncle, who was also a scratch golfer, taught me how to swing a club and took me 'round to all the local links when I was a kid.
One time we were playing with my older brother, just a threesome. There was a foursome in front of us, playing very slowly, and nobody in front of the foursome for several holes. The laws of golf etiquette dictate that they let us play through, because we were playing much, much faster than they were. You shouldn't have to ask them.
Being patient and civil fellows ourselves, we let this go on for a few holes until finally, it being obvious that this quartet of weekend turf hackers was etiquette-averse, my uncle approached them on one of the tees: "Say, fellas, would you mind very much if we played through? I have to be at my wife's funeral in 45 minutes."
I thought that was the funniest thing I ever heard in my life and is likely the root source of both my lifelong appreciation for golf jokes as well as my unrepentant misogyny. (In fact you have to be an unrepentant misogynist to appreciate golf jokes, e.g., "Hey, I got a nice set of Taylor Made irons for the wife." "Good trade!")
* The Treasure of the Sierra Madre was my uncle's favorite movie.
Because it most definitely ain't mine, and much of what I do here is certainly both a product and reflection of internet culture, which is unique. And if you don't appreciate it, then don't read it. More to the point, if you don't read it, then don't make absurd generalizations about it. The latter is generous advice, in that those who do only make themselves look foolish.
Case in point.
What amazes me the most is that a few apparently humorless and (unsurprisingly) conservative bloggers seem to believe that my subtitle, "The Champagne of Hate Blogs," is actually a serious advertisement for myself. I assumed such people knew about Bill O'Reilly. Anybody who's observed that clown performing knows that one of his favorite schticks is raving about the so-called "hate left" and their internets bloggers, whom he calls Nazis and so forth. Nazis!
Full disclosure: Bill O'Reilly is a determinedly fatuous buffoon and "The Champagne of Hate Blogs" is a facetious, self-deprecating acknowledgment of his tremendous idiocy and, as should be blindingly obvious to just about any self-respecting Wisconsinite (and beyond), it's a nod to the advertising slogan of a very famous and legendary Milwaukee brand.
Milwaukee is my adopted home and I happen to love it here, and I'm grateful for all the wonderful friends I've made, "hate bloggers" and otherwise. And there isn't a "hater" in the lot, I should add. Quite the opposite. They're fine people.
Which reminds me — as do many things — of a joke told to me decades ago by a late and beloved uncle of mine. It seems the Mudhens and the Athletics were engaged in an epic Triple A struggle upon the verdant sward, and the Mudhens were down three runs in the bottom of the ninth with two out and the bases loaded.
The Athletics' manager signaled to Mel Famey, ace reliever, to get in the game and save the day. Unfortunately that day had been mighty warm and Mel Famey had a powerful thirst, and he'd spent the afternoon slaking it by drinking beer in the dugout and tossing the empty cans over his shoulder onto the ground outside the park.
Having therefore some considerable difficulty negotiating the strike zone, Mel Famey proceeded to walk the next four batters in a row, and the Mudhens prevailed by a run. Later, as the Mudhens were leaving the ballpark, one of the last four batters noticed the pile of beercans behind the Athletics' dugout. "Hey, look," he notified his colleagues, "That's the beer that made Mel Famey walk us."
Yes, yes, I know. That was terrible. Fortunately my uncle — whose unquestionable awesomeness was cemented in the 1950s when he drove to Buffalo, NY to hear Charlie Parker play in a nightclub — had a million more better ones. My uncle, who was also a scratch golfer, taught me how to swing a club and took me 'round to all the local links when I was a kid.
One time we were playing with my older brother, just a threesome. There was a foursome in front of us, playing very slowly, and nobody in front of the foursome for several holes. The laws of golf etiquette dictate that they let us play through, because we were playing much, much faster than they were. You shouldn't have to ask them.
Being patient and civil fellows ourselves, we let this go on for a few holes until finally, it being obvious that this quartet of weekend turf hackers was etiquette-averse, my uncle approached them on one of the tees: "Say, fellas, would you mind very much if we played through? I have to be at my wife's funeral in 45 minutes."
I thought that was the funniest thing I ever heard in my life and is likely the root source of both my lifelong appreciation for golf jokes as well as my unrepentant misogyny. (In fact you have to be an unrepentant misogynist to appreciate golf jokes, e.g., "Hey, I got a nice set of Taylor Made irons for the wife." "Good trade!")
* The Treasure of the Sierra Madre was my uncle's favorite movie.
April 11, 2008
Blogging while white
One of the funniest guys on the Milwaukee internets is John McAdams, who is apparently a professor of political science at Marquette University. McAdams tells the tale of a philosophy student being "forced" to apologize by his instructor for comments made during a class discussion on law enforcement and ethnicity.
Personally, I don't think university instructors should "force" students to apologize for comments made during class discussions, if that is really what happened.
I remember a discussion in one of my own political science classes at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee a few years ago during which a student insisted that gay people were really heterosexual, and that homosexuality was a deliberate and conscious choice on their part. I remarked that if that were true, then I would have chosen it back when I was about 15, because I would have gotten laid a hell of a lot more (since anything is more than none).
When the laughter had died down (which was what I was after, obviously, humor being often the best means to the end of making a point), the instructor chastised me mildly for implying that gay people were more promiscuous than any other group, and that I was reinforcing an invidious stereotype. Of course I was aware of that already, and that was indeed part of the joke. And I'm sure those laughing the heartiest were the gay students in the class.
Anyway, the hapless McAdams can barely get through three paragraphs without contradicting himself. First the "forced" apology becomes a "suggested" one. Then McAdams gives away the game by revealing a little agenda of his own, in that his central defense of the student in question turns on the McAdams-endorsed truism that the "truculent attitudes of many minorities are part of the problem."
Quips McAdams parenthetically:
Why anybody takes this character seriously is a complete mystery to me. One who does, predictably, is local vocal yokel and obnoxious crusader for (almost) all things "politically incorrect," Charlie Sykes, who this morning labels McAdams's poorly disguised tribute to our munificent Caucasian overlords as today's "hot read."
It's a hot read alright — for the yuks.
Personally, I don't think university instructors should "force" students to apologize for comments made during class discussions, if that is really what happened.
I remember a discussion in one of my own political science classes at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee a few years ago during which a student insisted that gay people were really heterosexual, and that homosexuality was a deliberate and conscious choice on their part. I remarked that if that were true, then I would have chosen it back when I was about 15, because I would have gotten laid a hell of a lot more (since anything is more than none).
When the laughter had died down (which was what I was after, obviously, humor being often the best means to the end of making a point), the instructor chastised me mildly for implying that gay people were more promiscuous than any other group, and that I was reinforcing an invidious stereotype. Of course I was aware of that already, and that was indeed part of the joke. And I'm sure those laughing the heartiest were the gay students in the class.
Anyway, the hapless McAdams can barely get through three paragraphs without contradicting himself. First the "forced" apology becomes a "suggested" one. Then McAdams gives away the game by revealing a little agenda of his own, in that his central defense of the student in question turns on the McAdams-endorsed truism that the "truculent attitudes of many minorities are part of the problem."
Quips McAdams parenthetically:
Two of the blacks in class complained about how they had been stopped because of their race (although they had not been asked to get out of their cars, had not been ticketed and their cars had not been searched).Well, hey, ain't nothing wrong with getting pinched for driving while black, so long as the cops don't shoot 'em, eh Perfesser?
Why anybody takes this character seriously is a complete mystery to me. One who does, predictably, is local vocal yokel and obnoxious crusader for (almost) all things "politically incorrect," Charlie Sykes, who this morning labels McAdams's poorly disguised tribute to our munificent Caucasian overlords as today's "hot read."
It's a hot read alright — for the yuks.
April 10, 2008
New penis in Journal-Sentinel controversy
Recently, we endured the unseemly spectacle of a cadre of self-righteous conservatives, trolling the internets looking for ways to be religiously offended and finding one in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's banner advertisements touting an antipodean variety show called "Puppetry of the Penis."
The penis, according to reliable sources, is a popular and versatile body part with a mind of its own, found on slightly less than half of all humans (and occasionally in the other half, or so I've been told).
Notorious Milwaukee Marxist-Leninist Jay Bullock provides more details in the course of his strenuous defense of the free market rights of the venerable Miramar Theatre in this here blog post. (Sixty-two comments and counting, some of which are [unintentionally] hilarious.)
Then, this morning, as I conducted my daily consultation with the J-S's weather page — because it's easier than unbolting the opaque, bulletproof shutters behind which I ply my grisly trade — I found not just an advert for a theater production but an actual penis: the walking, talking, top model-judging prepuce Ben Stein, who's reportedly lent his considerable gravitas and scientific expertise to the forthcoming documentary exposé, Expelled.
You might have to refresh the page a few times to view the penis but if it takes more than three hours to produce the penis, consult a population geneticist.
Coincidentally, my good friend Michael Mathias of Pundit Nation fame sent me this link, according to which even the reviewers at Faux News pronounce Expelled an unmitigated piece of crap.*
For much, much more on Expelled, please visit Prof. PZ Myers's wildly successful blog, Pharyngula. Myers, along with his friend and Oxford don Richard Dawkins, are in the "film" but Myers was physically barred from attending its premiere. Just as comically, Prof. Dawkins, the militant atheist's militant atheist, was granted entry unscathed.
* "[Ben Stein] is either completely nuts or so avaricious that he’s abandoned all good sense to make a buck." — Roger Friedman.
"Teach the (penis) controversy."
See also Expelled Exposed.
The penis, according to reliable sources, is a popular and versatile body part with a mind of its own, found on slightly less than half of all humans (and occasionally in the other half, or so I've been told).
Notorious Milwaukee Marxist-Leninist Jay Bullock provides more details in the course of his strenuous defense of the free market rights of the venerable Miramar Theatre in this here blog post. (Sixty-two comments and counting, some of which are [unintentionally] hilarious.)
Then, this morning, as I conducted my daily consultation with the J-S's weather page — because it's easier than unbolting the opaque, bulletproof shutters behind which I ply my grisly trade — I found not just an advert for a theater production but an actual penis: the walking, talking, top model-judging prepuce Ben Stein, who's reportedly lent his considerable gravitas and scientific expertise to the forthcoming documentary exposé, Expelled.
You might have to refresh the page a few times to view the penis but if it takes more than three hours to produce the penis, consult a population geneticist.
Coincidentally, my good friend Michael Mathias of Pundit Nation fame sent me this link, according to which even the reviewers at Faux News pronounce Expelled an unmitigated piece of crap.*
For much, much more on Expelled, please visit Prof. PZ Myers's wildly successful blog, Pharyngula. Myers, along with his friend and Oxford don Richard Dawkins, are in the "film" but Myers was physically barred from attending its premiere. Just as comically, Prof. Dawkins, the militant atheist's militant atheist, was granted entry unscathed.
* "[Ben Stein] is either completely nuts or so avaricious that he’s abandoned all good sense to make a buck." — Roger Friedman.
"Teach the (penis) controversy."
See also Expelled Exposed.
Demonstration at Marquette today
I'm shocked and appalled at Marquette Law School Prof. Rick Esenberg's implication that judges, in their written opinions, should not engage in public debates questioning the constitutionality or general wisdom of certain laws while at the same time voting to uphold those laws. Prof. Esenberg refers to these debates as "occasional indulgences,"* but they are often better known as "concurring opinions" and sometimes "dissents."
Careful readers may have noticed that one of my favorite books is Freedom and the Court: Civil Rights and Liberties in the United States, by Henry J. Abraham and Barbara A. Perry. FATC is a marvelous work, although I have thus far resisted purchasing it. The reason for that is there is always a copy of the 8th edition on hand at the Milwaukee Public Library. As a matter of fact, if you take a look at it in MPL's central branch (342.085 A158 2003), you will find about eleventeen date stamps going back more than three years on the white strip affixed to the back jacket. Those are all me.
And if you also find the $100 (CDN) bill that I use as a bookmark, kindly leave it where it is. I'll be back for it.
A large portion of FATC deals with the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution, and the question of whether the Due Process Clause of that Amendment has the effect of making the first eight Amendments (a.k.a. the Bill of Rights) applicable to the States. As everyone knows (I hope), the First Amendment begins with the words, "Congress shall make no law." Congress, of course, being the federal government and not the States. Beginning at least as far back as 1833, the debate has raged over whether the Bill of Rights is a restriction not only on the powers of Congress but also on those of the States.
In 1833, the legendary Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court John Marshall determined that it restricted the federal government only. After the ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868, a number of attempts were made to obtain a ruling from the Court affirming that the 14th Amendment did indeed "incorporate" the provisions of the Bill of Rights against the States, but no clear success was realized until 1925, when the Court declared that freedom of speech, as guaranteed by the First Amendment, was also something that the States could not abridge.
Since then, nearly every provision of the Bill of Rights has been incorporated one at a time, a practice known as "selective incorporation." The debate over incorporation has involved some of the greatest Justices of the Supreme Court, including Hugo Black, who was something of an absolutist when it came to reading the text of the Constitution. Justice Black argued, in a series of "occasional indulgences" which ultimately failed to produce a majority among his colleagues, that the entire Bill of Rights should be incorporated all at once, in what is known as "total incorporation."
The debate over incorporation is arguably the most fascinating aspect of constitutional law — not to mention American history generally — and it rages until this day. Recently, Justice Clarence Thomas, in an "occasional indulgence" of his own, suggested that the First Amendment's Establishment of Religion Clause, which is among those Bill of Rights provisions that have been incorporated, should not restrict the States from establishing their own religions, or at least that the restriction against the States should be relaxed to some extent.
I don't know why; probably so Governor Jim Doyle can finally convert you to Islam or something, further to the Democrat playbook.
This brings to mind the gifted historian and constitutional scholar Leonard Levy, in contemplating an Establishment Clause opinion by the late Chief Justice and graduate of Shorewood High School William H. Rehnquist, who wondered aloud how exactly the Chief got from "No Law" to "Some Laws." Many of us wonder still.
In any event, Prof. Esenberg's outlandish insinuations call for a strong action of radical protest, and I intend to demonstrate in his Marquette Law School office in the form of a sit-in (chair permitting) sometime this afternoon. The length of the demonstration will depend on how busy he is and whether I make the proper selection from Dunkin' Donuts, where I need to pass by anyway, because the Milwaukee Public Library just alerted me to the fact that I have finally made it to the front of the queue for Curb Your Enthusiasm: Season Three, and Dunkin' Donuts is right across the street.
While I'm there, maybe I will add another date stamp to Freedom and the Court, and direct Prof. Esenberg's attention to the "occasional indulgences" of Justices Black, Frankfurter, Harlan, et al.
I also intend to determine whether he really does have a halo.
* I thought Martin Luther did away with those at Wittenberg.
Careful readers may have noticed that one of my favorite books is Freedom and the Court: Civil Rights and Liberties in the United States, by Henry J. Abraham and Barbara A. Perry. FATC is a marvelous work, although I have thus far resisted purchasing it. The reason for that is there is always a copy of the 8th edition on hand at the Milwaukee Public Library. As a matter of fact, if you take a look at it in MPL's central branch (342.085 A158 2003), you will find about eleventeen date stamps going back more than three years on the white strip affixed to the back jacket. Those are all me.
And if you also find the $100 (CDN) bill that I use as a bookmark, kindly leave it where it is. I'll be back for it.
A large portion of FATC deals with the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution, and the question of whether the Due Process Clause of that Amendment has the effect of making the first eight Amendments (a.k.a. the Bill of Rights) applicable to the States. As everyone knows (I hope), the First Amendment begins with the words, "Congress shall make no law." Congress, of course, being the federal government and not the States. Beginning at least as far back as 1833, the debate has raged over whether the Bill of Rights is a restriction not only on the powers of Congress but also on those of the States.
In 1833, the legendary Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court John Marshall determined that it restricted the federal government only. After the ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868, a number of attempts were made to obtain a ruling from the Court affirming that the 14th Amendment did indeed "incorporate" the provisions of the Bill of Rights against the States, but no clear success was realized until 1925, when the Court declared that freedom of speech, as guaranteed by the First Amendment, was also something that the States could not abridge.
Since then, nearly every provision of the Bill of Rights has been incorporated one at a time, a practice known as "selective incorporation." The debate over incorporation has involved some of the greatest Justices of the Supreme Court, including Hugo Black, who was something of an absolutist when it came to reading the text of the Constitution. Justice Black argued, in a series of "occasional indulgences" which ultimately failed to produce a majority among his colleagues, that the entire Bill of Rights should be incorporated all at once, in what is known as "total incorporation."
The debate over incorporation is arguably the most fascinating aspect of constitutional law — not to mention American history generally — and it rages until this day. Recently, Justice Clarence Thomas, in an "occasional indulgence" of his own, suggested that the First Amendment's Establishment of Religion Clause, which is among those Bill of Rights provisions that have been incorporated, should not restrict the States from establishing their own religions, or at least that the restriction against the States should be relaxed to some extent.
I don't know why; probably so Governor Jim Doyle can finally convert you to Islam or something, further to the Democrat playbook.
This brings to mind the gifted historian and constitutional scholar Leonard Levy, in contemplating an Establishment Clause opinion by the late Chief Justice and graduate of Shorewood High School William H. Rehnquist, who wondered aloud how exactly the Chief got from "No Law" to "Some Laws." Many of us wonder still.
In any event, Prof. Esenberg's outlandish insinuations call for a strong action of radical protest, and I intend to demonstrate in his Marquette Law School office in the form of a sit-in (chair permitting) sometime this afternoon. The length of the demonstration will depend on how busy he is and whether I make the proper selection from Dunkin' Donuts, where I need to pass by anyway, because the Milwaukee Public Library just alerted me to the fact that I have finally made it to the front of the queue for Curb Your Enthusiasm: Season Three, and Dunkin' Donuts is right across the street.
While I'm there, maybe I will add another date stamp to Freedom and the Court, and direct Prof. Esenberg's attention to the "occasional indulgences" of Justices Black, Frankfurter, Harlan, et al.
I also intend to determine whether he really does have a halo.
* I thought Martin Luther did away with those at Wittenberg.
April 9, 2008
Who's your fundie daddy?
It's hard to tell, according to news reports of the government raids on a Mormon splinter group in Texas at the "Yearning For Zion" ranch, where DNA testing may be required to sort out who's who.
The raids came after a 16-year-old girl called a family violence center from the ranch to report sexual assault, beatings, and being forced to become the seventh wife of a man more than three times her age.
The girl has an eight-month-old child and another on the way.
Since then authorities have removed hundreds of children and described practices at the Mormon sex farm whereby teenagers were groomed for and arranged to have intercourse with one another.
The girl said she was warned by churchers that if she left the ranch, she'd be coerced by "outsiders" to have sex with lots of men.
Some choice.
The raids came after a 16-year-old girl called a family violence center from the ranch to report sexual assault, beatings, and being forced to become the seventh wife of a man more than three times her age.
The girl has an eight-month-old child and another on the way.
Since then authorities have removed hundreds of children and described practices at the Mormon sex farm whereby teenagers were groomed for and arranged to have intercourse with one another.
The girl said she was warned by churchers that if she left the ranch, she'd be coerced by "outsiders" to have sex with lots of men.
Some choice.
April 8, 2008
CFAF "deemed" criminally inept: Part 11
As promised — or, depending on one's perspective, threatened — the next entry in that which has now become what singer/songwriter Paul Simon, in his most severe bowl-haircut days, might have called "a simple desultory philippic." We last left off at the Coalition for America's Families [sic] (CFAF) case 60., State v. Stuart.
I'm going to skip the next case, State v. Richard A. Brown, just because. I figure if CFAF can simply arbitrarily and capriciously exclude it from "its" list of cases, which it did, then so can I.
Unlike CFAF, however, I will get back to it.
If there is any justice or truth, then CFAF these days is hiding its collective head in abject shame. Not so, incidentally, for CFAF's leading cheerleader, chief helper-elf in legal analysis and statistics, and alleged "journalist," who has lately taken to not just lying, but lying through her teeth, rather than check up on a handful of easily verifiable facts. And this is apparently what they're teaching in university Reporting 101 classes nowadays. Given the choice, I'm inclined to humor, but that's just sad. Profoundly so.
So evidently in certain quarters, there not only exists neither justice nor truth, there exists in their stead a willful, deliberate, and determined effort to avoid both at any costs.
On a less serious but equally pathetic note, the next case, State v. Hale, is the final case on the list of 62 Wisconsin Supreme Court decisions that CFAF appropriated from the Butler campaign upon which to perform its extravagant litany of nefarious hijinks.
I quote directly from the CFAF document in my possession:
62. State v. Hale 2003AP417-CR
Rick Esenberg of Marquette Law School wrote recently, "[She] says that she has the 'against' and 'for' numbers. Let's take her at her word." The statement is by turns astonishing and laughable. State v. Hale is yet another fine example of why.
Hale contains five separate opinions: the majority opinion by Justice Bradley, and concurring opinions by Chief Justice Abrahamson, Justice Wilcox (joined by Justices Crooks and Prosser), Justice Prosser (joined by Justices Wilcox and Roggensack), and Justice Butler.
When judges write concurring opinions, it means they join the majority opinion's central ruling, which in this case was the unanimous affirming of Hale's three criminal convictions, but they would have reached that result through different reasoning, based on their interpretation of the underlying numerous and varied legal questions that lead to the result.
I don't mind admitting that it would probably take me at least two days of close analysis, research, and writing to tease out each separate legal question from Hale (and there are many other multi-opinion examples like Hale) and assign each judge's disposition on each question as either "pro-defendant" or "pro-State." And, even then, such assignments would be subject to reasonable review and objection from the likes of Rick Esenberg. Moreover, he would still need to present his own analysis as to why any such assignment was misapplied by your humble reviewer. And then rebuttal and so forth.
At the same time as imploring us all to take a demonstrable prevaricator "at her word," Esenberg has himself suggested a number of alternative denominators — other than the criminal convictions themselves — by which "for" or "against" the constitutional rights of criminal defendants might be assessed. Some of these suggestions certainly have merit.
But if somebody imagines that the prevaricator in question — or anybody — could have performed a similar task on 70 decisions in two days, well, then that somebody needs their head examined, not to put too fine a point on it (or on the examined head).
To be fair, Esenberg did at least distance himself from the term "pro-criminal" at one point during his series of discursive academic vacations before allowing, "I think someone tried very hard to get a very low number and may have allowed that desire to get in the way of his or her better judgment."
One might accept this as the Understatement of the Millennium with respect to both CFAF and its helpful elf's now-thoroughly debunked projects, but Esenberg was referring to the Butler campaign(!).
It's abundantly clear now that the Butler campaign did not "cook" any number. The cooking, frying, baking, basting, broiling, barbecuing, and sauce-reductioning occurred entirely in the comedy kitchens of CFAF and its prevaricating elf.
If the Butler campaign committed any misstep at all, it issued from Justice Butler himself during his interview with the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel editorial board when he said, "I voted to uphold the convictions 75% of the time." I recall immediately thinking, on hearing this, 'Wait until Esenberg gets a hold of that one, he'll be on it like a dog with a bone.' Which is exactly what happened.
What Butler should have said — and I'm fairly certain, without even asking him, what he meant to say — was that in 75% of the cases involving criminal convictions, his vote did not disturb the existing conviction, which remained completely intact. And that is correct to within less than two percentage points, as I've shown, through my laborious presentation of each individual case to which Butler was making reference.
"Laborious," incidentally, is a reference to the impositions made on the kind reader, and not to those happily engaged by the writer.
Nevertheless, CFAF didn't "deem" State v. Hale "w/ Criminal," but rather passes it by without comment.
Thus ends the list of cases that not only couldn't CFAF produce itself, instead relying on material produced by the Butler campaign, it manipulated and twisted and otherwise transparently schemed and scammed the cases into confirming beyond a shadow of any doubt its own sleazy machinations informed by profound incompetence: its own and, as it turns out, that of its helpful prevaricating elf.
Considered separately, sleazy machinations and profound incompetence are bad enough. But profoundly incompetent, sleazy machinations are a quite remarkable addition to the panoply of preexisting "family values." A remarkable and singularly unwelcome addition, in my own considered estimation.
I'll get to CFAF's remaining seven (or is it six? Math hurts!) cases after State v. Richard A. Brown.
ttfn
I'm going to skip the next case, State v. Richard A. Brown, just because. I figure if CFAF can simply arbitrarily and capriciously exclude it from "its" list of cases, which it did, then so can I.
Unlike CFAF, however, I will get back to it.
If there is any justice or truth, then CFAF these days is hiding its collective head in abject shame. Not so, incidentally, for CFAF's leading cheerleader, chief helper-elf in legal analysis and statistics, and alleged "journalist," who has lately taken to not just lying, but lying through her teeth, rather than check up on a handful of easily verifiable facts. And this is apparently what they're teaching in university Reporting 101 classes nowadays. Given the choice, I'm inclined to humor, but that's just sad. Profoundly so.
So evidently in certain quarters, there not only exists neither justice nor truth, there exists in their stead a willful, deliberate, and determined effort to avoid both at any costs.
On a less serious but equally pathetic note, the next case, State v. Hale, is the final case on the list of 62 Wisconsin Supreme Court decisions that CFAF appropriated from the Butler campaign upon which to perform its extravagant litany of nefarious hijinks.
I quote directly from the CFAF document in my possession:
There are 6 cases missing from [the Butler campaign's] analysis, a yes is where CFAF deems Butler w/ the criminal.Thereupon follows, I kid you not, the names of seven cases. How manifestly not surprising and what a classic examplar of CFAF's relentlessly desperate fumbling and bumbling. As I've observed previously, you simply cannot make this stuff up.
62. State v. Hale 2003AP417-CR
Rick Esenberg of Marquette Law School wrote recently, "[She] says that she has the 'against' and 'for' numbers. Let's take her at her word." The statement is by turns astonishing and laughable. State v. Hale is yet another fine example of why.
Hale contains five separate opinions: the majority opinion by Justice Bradley, and concurring opinions by Chief Justice Abrahamson, Justice Wilcox (joined by Justices Crooks and Prosser), Justice Prosser (joined by Justices Wilcox and Roggensack), and Justice Butler.
When judges write concurring opinions, it means they join the majority opinion's central ruling, which in this case was the unanimous affirming of Hale's three criminal convictions, but they would have reached that result through different reasoning, based on their interpretation of the underlying numerous and varied legal questions that lead to the result.
I don't mind admitting that it would probably take me at least two days of close analysis, research, and writing to tease out each separate legal question from Hale (and there are many other multi-opinion examples like Hale) and assign each judge's disposition on each question as either "pro-defendant" or "pro-State." And, even then, such assignments would be subject to reasonable review and objection from the likes of Rick Esenberg. Moreover, he would still need to present his own analysis as to why any such assignment was misapplied by your humble reviewer. And then rebuttal and so forth.
At the same time as imploring us all to take a demonstrable prevaricator "at her word," Esenberg has himself suggested a number of alternative denominators — other than the criminal convictions themselves — by which "for" or "against" the constitutional rights of criminal defendants might be assessed. Some of these suggestions certainly have merit.
But if somebody imagines that the prevaricator in question — or anybody — could have performed a similar task on 70 decisions in two days, well, then that somebody needs their head examined, not to put too fine a point on it (or on the examined head).
To be fair, Esenberg did at least distance himself from the term "pro-criminal" at one point during his series of discursive academic vacations before allowing, "I think someone tried very hard to get a very low number and may have allowed that desire to get in the way of his or her better judgment."
One might accept this as the Understatement of the Millennium with respect to both CFAF and its helpful elf's now-thoroughly debunked projects, but Esenberg was referring to the Butler campaign(!).
It's abundantly clear now that the Butler campaign did not "cook" any number. The cooking, frying, baking, basting, broiling, barbecuing, and sauce-reductioning occurred entirely in the comedy kitchens of CFAF and its prevaricating elf.
If the Butler campaign committed any misstep at all, it issued from Justice Butler himself during his interview with the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel editorial board when he said, "I voted to uphold the convictions 75% of the time." I recall immediately thinking, on hearing this, 'Wait until Esenberg gets a hold of that one, he'll be on it like a dog with a bone.' Which is exactly what happened.
What Butler should have said — and I'm fairly certain, without even asking him, what he meant to say — was that in 75% of the cases involving criminal convictions, his vote did not disturb the existing conviction, which remained completely intact. And that is correct to within less than two percentage points, as I've shown, through my laborious presentation of each individual case to which Butler was making reference.
"Laborious," incidentally, is a reference to the impositions made on the kind reader, and not to those happily engaged by the writer.
Nevertheless, CFAF didn't "deem" State v. Hale "w/ Criminal," but rather passes it by without comment.
Thus ends the list of cases that not only couldn't CFAF produce itself, instead relying on material produced by the Butler campaign, it manipulated and twisted and otherwise transparently schemed and scammed the cases into confirming beyond a shadow of any doubt its own sleazy machinations informed by profound incompetence: its own and, as it turns out, that of its helpful prevaricating elf.
Considered separately, sleazy machinations and profound incompetence are bad enough. But profoundly incompetent, sleazy machinations are a quite remarkable addition to the panoply of preexisting "family values." A remarkable and singularly unwelcome addition, in my own considered estimation.
I'll get to CFAF's remaining seven (or is it six? Math hurts!) cases after State v. Richard A. Brown.
ttfn
April 7, 2008
The cable guy
Long ago in a land far away I worked for a few years in the power transformer division of Westinghouse, a U.S. company doing business in Canada. My job was winding the insulated copper wire into the coils that are installed over the series of laminated steel sheets that form each transformer's core. Some of them were big buggers, bigger than a house; the coils themselves were anywhere from two to nine feet in diameter, and most of the transformers contained three coils.
One time one of them fell off a train car and made a dude into a pancake. They shipped the transformer back to the plant for repair and the guy's blood and guts were still all over the side of it.
Winding was a fairly complex job because you're winding about 20 separate flat copper wires at the same time onto a cylindrical mold, and by the time the coil is done, each wire has to be the same length, so you're doing a lot of measuring and cutting and bending and welding and hammering along the way to ensure that. Licensed electricians were, if I recall correctly, labor grade 12 and us winders were grade 10, so it was as close as you could get to being an actual tradesman. And I was making as much per hour then as I make at one of my part-time jobs today.
In retrospect, it amazes me still because normally I'm doing well to successfully replace a flat tire or a light bulb.
Each transformer coil was a custom job, so it came with its own work order containing detailed technical instructions and, it being a union shop, the required "quota" per eight-hour shift of turns on the coil. In other words, each job was rated by agreement between the union and management and the coil, which was installed on either a gigantic horizontal or a gigantic vertical lathe, had to turn so many times, with completed windings on it, during the shift.
At my first day on the job the union steward, who was called Art, introduced himself and informed me that these quotas were very important, and even though in many cases it wouldn't take a lot of extra effort to exceed them, one mustn't — ever — because to do so would clearly identify me as a go-getting running lackey dog of the corporate plutocracy, and then the local members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers would make life very difficult for me.
That isn't exactly what Art said, but that was the obvious gist of it. Most of the quotas were pretty fair anyway, and in any event, because of the complex nature of the tasks and the high cost of the product, you had to be careful and take your time regardless. But there were a couple of go-getters and they were shunned. Not by me though, I figured it was all a bit silly. I always made the quota to within a tiny bit either more or less. More importantly I made a lot of great friends down there among both labor and management although one of the latter used to refer to me as "Lover," which I found a bit disconcerting.
On a few rare occasions, we got a "cable job." 95% of the coils were produced by winding individual strands of copper fed from individual spools at the same time, hence the skillz requirement in making sure all the strands were the same length by the time the finished coil was removed from the lathe and sent on to the next step in the transformer manufacturing process. But a cable was a thick, insulated bundle of individual strands which were already pre-transitioned so that each individual strand was already the same length from one end of the cable to the other.
The first time I saw the quota of turns on the "cable job" work order, I thought it had to be a typographical error. Because you only had to do about ten turns per eight-hour shift on a cable job, and that amount of work could be completed in about 30 minutes, tops. Because with a cable job, all you had to do was set up the spool of cable in a metal rack, stand in front of the lathe with your rubber mallet, and step on the pedal that turned the lathe. That's it.
The "cable job" meant that I spent a lot of time wandering around the plant, shooting the shit with the other workers, hiding, or researching that week's NFL pool picks with a couple of newspapers in the washroom. I don't think I ever actually went and found a comfortable spot to nap for a few hours, but some of the other guys did, especially when they had a "cable job." Then they could get a good night's sleep and make the quota. Hard to beat, or resist, that.
So one time very early on in my transformer coil winding days, I found myself working at the lathe next to Sanjeet, who had been winding coils for about ten years. Sanjeet, who, like most of the IBEW sisters and brothers would only ever do slightly less than the required quotas, was a very easy going guy, and a character. He would always joke with Benny, the company shift supervisor, about how Westinghouse was a slave driver, and how it was cruel and unusual to make us do so much work.
Benny got the joke — but would never acknowledge it — because he was one of the few management supervisors who was recruited from the same department where he worked on the production floor for 15 years himself, because coil winding was so complicated, the company needed bosses who knew the job intimately. But one day Benny had to haul a bunch of us, including me and Sanjeet, into his office and tell us to shape up on the cable jobs. He was going to tell us we needed to do more work than the quotas called for.
I don't know who was more nervous, me or Benny, Benny because he had to ream some of his old union buddies a new one or me because, being a callow youth unfamiliar with such delicate negotiations, I thought I was going to get fired or something. The one guy who wasn't nervous was Sanjeet, who slouched in a chair in front of Benny's desk and with deliberately unconcealed mirth assured Benny, "I'm so sorry, Benny, and we will all try to do our very best in the future, we really, really will."
For his part Benny chain smoked incessantly, clearly uncomfortable with his role in conflict resolution. Me, I was just happy I wasn't getting fired and never wanted another "cable job" again, since they placed us in a really contentious spot at the nexus between management and labor relations, which was a place I didn't want to be in those days.
Another place I didn't want to be was commenting on global politics, but I found myself there one time too. I had noticed that dozens and dozens of transformer coil work orders were tagged with the word "Libya," which I at least knew was a country in North Africa. I asked Benny about that one time, and he said that Westinghouse had just received a substantial order from the government of that country, and that was one of the reasons we had just gone on three shifts, cranking the suckers out 24 hours a day.
Coincidentally, and probably because I had already read the sports section in the washroom about seven times while hiding out from a "cable job," I noticed a story on the front page of the Toronto Globe and Mail about how the U.S. government — this was during the early days of the first Reagan administration — had imposed a complete trade embargo against Libya, thanks to the shenanigans of its military dictator, Moammar Gaddafi (I think that spelling was the Globe and Mail style, which it most likely took a special editorial board meeting to establish, given the wide range of variants).
Also coincidentally, a top kahuna from Westinghouse was visiting that week to give the boys a little pep talk. This wasn't a Westinghouse Canada big wig, this was one of the ones from corporate HQ in Pittsburgh. I don't remember whether he was the top dog corporate exec or not, but he was definitely way, way up in the hierarchy. A heavy hitter.
After his little speech to the gathered laborers, the said corporate honcho fielded a few questions from the floor, which mostly involved details of the collective bargaining agreement, potential changes to benefit packages, and so forth. At one point, abandoning caution to the wind, your humble and intrepid nascent political observer raised his hand and posed the following question:
"Sir, I recently learned that the U.S. government, in retaliation to the aggressive posturings of the dictator of Libya, has imposed a complete trade embargo against that country, according to which all American corporations are ordered to cease shipping manufactured goods there.
"Our product is not simply destined for private companies operating in Libya, these power transformers are an integral part of Libya's civil and potentially military infrastructure, and the product is shipping directly to the Gaddafi regime. How is it, then, that Westinghouse can manufacture and ship these products under the circumstances? Isn't it a flagrant violation of the trade embargo?"
Came the terse reply: "Westinghouse will build and ship power transformers to anyone, anywhere in the world. Next question."
I think that was the last attention I paid to Ronald Reagan until the Ramones put out a single called Bonzo Goes To Bitburg.
One time one of them fell off a train car and made a dude into a pancake. They shipped the transformer back to the plant for repair and the guy's blood and guts were still all over the side of it.
Winding was a fairly complex job because you're winding about 20 separate flat copper wires at the same time onto a cylindrical mold, and by the time the coil is done, each wire has to be the same length, so you're doing a lot of measuring and cutting and bending and welding and hammering along the way to ensure that. Licensed electricians were, if I recall correctly, labor grade 12 and us winders were grade 10, so it was as close as you could get to being an actual tradesman. And I was making as much per hour then as I make at one of my part-time jobs today.
In retrospect, it amazes me still because normally I'm doing well to successfully replace a flat tire or a light bulb.
Each transformer coil was a custom job, so it came with its own work order containing detailed technical instructions and, it being a union shop, the required "quota" per eight-hour shift of turns on the coil. In other words, each job was rated by agreement between the union and management and the coil, which was installed on either a gigantic horizontal or a gigantic vertical lathe, had to turn so many times, with completed windings on it, during the shift.
At my first day on the job the union steward, who was called Art, introduced himself and informed me that these quotas were very important, and even though in many cases it wouldn't take a lot of extra effort to exceed them, one mustn't — ever — because to do so would clearly identify me as a go-getting running lackey dog of the corporate plutocracy, and then the local members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers would make life very difficult for me.
That isn't exactly what Art said, but that was the obvious gist of it. Most of the quotas were pretty fair anyway, and in any event, because of the complex nature of the tasks and the high cost of the product, you had to be careful and take your time regardless. But there were a couple of go-getters and they were shunned. Not by me though, I figured it was all a bit silly. I always made the quota to within a tiny bit either more or less. More importantly I made a lot of great friends down there among both labor and management although one of the latter used to refer to me as "Lover," which I found a bit disconcerting.
On a few rare occasions, we got a "cable job." 95% of the coils were produced by winding individual strands of copper fed from individual spools at the same time, hence the skillz requirement in making sure all the strands were the same length by the time the finished coil was removed from the lathe and sent on to the next step in the transformer manufacturing process. But a cable was a thick, insulated bundle of individual strands which were already pre-transitioned so that each individual strand was already the same length from one end of the cable to the other.
The first time I saw the quota of turns on the "cable job" work order, I thought it had to be a typographical error. Because you only had to do about ten turns per eight-hour shift on a cable job, and that amount of work could be completed in about 30 minutes, tops. Because with a cable job, all you had to do was set up the spool of cable in a metal rack, stand in front of the lathe with your rubber mallet, and step on the pedal that turned the lathe. That's it.
The "cable job" meant that I spent a lot of time wandering around the plant, shooting the shit with the other workers, hiding, or researching that week's NFL pool picks with a couple of newspapers in the washroom. I don't think I ever actually went and found a comfortable spot to nap for a few hours, but some of the other guys did, especially when they had a "cable job." Then they could get a good night's sleep and make the quota. Hard to beat, or resist, that.
So one time very early on in my transformer coil winding days, I found myself working at the lathe next to Sanjeet, who had been winding coils for about ten years. Sanjeet, who, like most of the IBEW sisters and brothers would only ever do slightly less than the required quotas, was a very easy going guy, and a character. He would always joke with Benny, the company shift supervisor, about how Westinghouse was a slave driver, and how it was cruel and unusual to make us do so much work.
Benny got the joke — but would never acknowledge it — because he was one of the few management supervisors who was recruited from the same department where he worked on the production floor for 15 years himself, because coil winding was so complicated, the company needed bosses who knew the job intimately. But one day Benny had to haul a bunch of us, including me and Sanjeet, into his office and tell us to shape up on the cable jobs. He was going to tell us we needed to do more work than the quotas called for.
I don't know who was more nervous, me or Benny, Benny because he had to ream some of his old union buddies a new one or me because, being a callow youth unfamiliar with such delicate negotiations, I thought I was going to get fired or something. The one guy who wasn't nervous was Sanjeet, who slouched in a chair in front of Benny's desk and with deliberately unconcealed mirth assured Benny, "I'm so sorry, Benny, and we will all try to do our very best in the future, we really, really will."
For his part Benny chain smoked incessantly, clearly uncomfortable with his role in conflict resolution. Me, I was just happy I wasn't getting fired and never wanted another "cable job" again, since they placed us in a really contentious spot at the nexus between management and labor relations, which was a place I didn't want to be in those days.
Another place I didn't want to be was commenting on global politics, but I found myself there one time too. I had noticed that dozens and dozens of transformer coil work orders were tagged with the word "Libya," which I at least knew was a country in North Africa. I asked Benny about that one time, and he said that Westinghouse had just received a substantial order from the government of that country, and that was one of the reasons we had just gone on three shifts, cranking the suckers out 24 hours a day.
Coincidentally, and probably because I had already read the sports section in the washroom about seven times while hiding out from a "cable job," I noticed a story on the front page of the Toronto Globe and Mail about how the U.S. government — this was during the early days of the first Reagan administration — had imposed a complete trade embargo against Libya, thanks to the shenanigans of its military dictator, Moammar Gaddafi (I think that spelling was the Globe and Mail style, which it most likely took a special editorial board meeting to establish, given the wide range of variants).
Also coincidentally, a top kahuna from Westinghouse was visiting that week to give the boys a little pep talk. This wasn't a Westinghouse Canada big wig, this was one of the ones from corporate HQ in Pittsburgh. I don't remember whether he was the top dog corporate exec or not, but he was definitely way, way up in the hierarchy. A heavy hitter.
After his little speech to the gathered laborers, the said corporate honcho fielded a few questions from the floor, which mostly involved details of the collective bargaining agreement, potential changes to benefit packages, and so forth. At one point, abandoning caution to the wind, your humble and intrepid nascent political observer raised his hand and posed the following question:
"Sir, I recently learned that the U.S. government, in retaliation to the aggressive posturings of the dictator of Libya, has imposed a complete trade embargo against that country, according to which all American corporations are ordered to cease shipping manufactured goods there.
"Our product is not simply destined for private companies operating in Libya, these power transformers are an integral part of Libya's civil and potentially military infrastructure, and the product is shipping directly to the Gaddafi regime. How is it, then, that Westinghouse can manufacture and ship these products under the circumstances? Isn't it a flagrant violation of the trade embargo?"
Came the terse reply: "Westinghouse will build and ship power transformers to anyone, anywhere in the world. Next question."
I think that was the last attention I paid to Ronald Reagan until the Ramones put out a single called Bonzo Goes To Bitburg.
April 6, 2008
An Esenbergian interlude
Would you forsake your house and home,Now, I don't know whether Blackjack Davey was a lawyer or not, but he sure as hell did some pretty effective persuasive arguing, judging from the way things turned out betwixt he and the lady of the house.
Would you forsake your baby?
Would you forsake your husband too,
To go with Blackjack Davey?
Ride off with Blackjack Davey?
Well I'll forsake my house and home,
And I'll forsake my baby.
I'll forsake my husband too,
For the love of Blackjack Davey,
Ride off with Blackjack Davey.
— Blackjack Davey — Traditional (a.k.a. Child Ballad #200).
I'm going to get back to my series on the Coalition for America's Families' hatchet job against Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler, but since there's no longer any sense of urgency, I'm going to take a little bit more time over it, and hopefully the individual posts won't be so long.
But first I want to say something about my friend Prof. Richard Esenberg of Marquette Law School, who I've mentioned throughout this series, and who I'm going to be mentioning some more. Anyone who's been following over the past several weeks knows that Prof. Esenberg has also spilled a lot of virtual ink on questions related to the recent State Supreme Court election campaign. He's done so not only in response to many of the things I've written here but also to raise and argue a number of other points, many of which have considerable merit. Not necessarily definitive, but considerable.
But ultimately I've been focused only on one or two central themes, and a lot of what Esenberg has written doesn't engage those themes as directly as I have. That's not a criticism, or even a suggestion that Esenberg would prefer not to directly engage those themes. Of course he's free to write about what he wants, or what he considers more important, and he often does so quite compellingly.
Nevertheless, let's just say that there are several things upon which Prof. Esenberg and I fundamentally, and perhaps even irreconcilably, disagree. And not only do we disagree on a number of conclusions, I occasionally object strongly to the methods of reasoning he uses to reach those conclusions. And furthermore, I think some of the premises he puts to use in furtherance of that reasoning in order to reach those conclusions are deeply flawed. Deeply.
And I believe strongly that, given the time and the opportunity, I could convince Prof. Esenberg on a number of those questions, or at least show him why some of his conclusions, in the end, cannot be legitimately defended.
Prof. Esenberg knows what I think; he's no dummy. More importantly, Prof. Esenberg welcomes criticism like mine. In fact he invites it, and he enjoys engaging it, if only for the enervating intellectual exercise. Much like Justice Butler, as a matter of fact, who continually invited Mike Gableman to engage the substantial elements of Butler's opinions for the Supreme Court. Except Gableman wouldn't — and, I'm practically convinced, is unable to — engage that debate.
More recently, Prof. Esenberg — who I trust I can fairly call Rick now — and I have exchanged a small volume of private correspondence. And I'm not going to go into the details of that, because much of it involves stuff that's nobody else's business but ours.
I have no idea how many thousands of people I've met during my life. It's been lots. And I've met, conversed with, fought with, partied with, worked with, people from every station in life. From homeless women in the streets of Soho and beggars in Tangier to the CEOs of companies doing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business every year. And just about everyone in between. I don't exaggerate.
I've also spent a lot of time thinking about ethics, and morality, and religion. The latter is another subject upon which Prof. Esenberg and I disagree fundamentally, but I certainly don't presume to persuade him on that account. I wouldn't even try and I totally respect his personal views within that particular bailiwick of inquiry.
The haiku version is, I think that by this point in my life I know what I'm talking about when I say the following.
I want to say now, as clearly as I can — and I hope Esenberg forgives me for employing the traditional vernacular of my former incarnation as a construction manager — that Rick Esenberg is a fucking mensch, of the highest order, and he has justly earned my unequivocal respect as a person. Absolute and unequivocal.
Now back to the hardball presently.
April 5, 2008
The swan songs of Andreas Delfs
Last night and this evening at Uihlein Hall, the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra undertakes Igor Stravinsky's 1913 masterpiece, Le Sacre de Printemps (The Rite of Spring), together with Beethoven's Symphony No. 6 in F Major, the "Pastoral." The concerts are among the final ones in conductor Andreas Delfs's series of Beethoven's nine symphonies before he leaves us for Hawaii and is replaced by Edo De Waart.The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's superb classical music critic, Tom Strini, talks about Beethoven's Sixth here.
The MSO's performance of both works — together with George Antheil's 1955 A Jazz Symphony — was outstanding. If there are tickets available for tonight's performance, snap them up. Mr. Delfs's departure will be a huge loss to the community although, fortunately, Mr. De Waart is equally accomplished.
Stravinsky's jarringly dissonant and rhythmically complex, groundbreaking masterwork notoriously inspired a riot at its Paris premiere in 1913, a far cry from last night's enthusastic reception and ovations. I've heard it performed before on a couple of occasions, including by the London Symphony Orchestra at Royal Albert Hall. For my money, Delfs and the MSO's brilliant and sonically perfect reading was the best yet.
Stravinsky hadn't intended to cause a riot, but many of his contemporaries and mutual admirers did, and several years ago during a course in music history at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, I submitted a written assignment to another Milwaukee institution, Dr. Timothy Noonan, which is reproduced below.
Dr. Noonan is almost literally a walking encyclopedia of music. Among many, many memorable anecdotes proceeding from the two courses I took with Dr. Noonan, one is especially so. A classmate was asking Dr. Noonan in somewhat vague terms about a particular theme from a particular string quartet of Franz Joseph Haydn, the now-underperformed Austrian genius and one of Beethoven's most profound formal and stylistic influences.
Haydn wrote nearly 70 string quartets (he practically invented and perfected the form), nearly all of which contain four separate movements, and each movement contains a number of different musical themes. In other words, Dr. Noonan was being asked to specify a theme from among hundreds, but only those hundreds contained in the works of one specific composer writing in one particular form, the string quartet.
Dr. Noonan thought for a minute and then walked over to the piano and proceeded to play a theme from one of the Haydn quartets. "Is that the one?" Dr. Noonan asked. "That's it!" said the student.* I've never seen anything like it in my life. While Dr. Noonan's scholarly specialty is the 18th century composer Luigi Boccherini, his prodigious expertise extends from the birth of Western music in ancient Greece through the most contemporary of contemporary musicians. His knowledge truly is phenomenal.
In addition, Dr. Noonan is one of the most self-effacing, generous, and kind gentlemen I've ever had the pleasure of meeting. I need to drop by UWM and see him again one of these days.
* It wasn't the German national anthem, either. It was something considerably, considerably less familiar.
You can read about some of Igor Stravinsky's precursors, friends, and inheritors right here:
Part 1
Part 2
eta: Strini's review of last night's performances, including of
the ferocious, relentlessly focused reading of "The Rite." The rhythmic bite and drive of the allegros overwhelmed, and the dark mystery of the static moments crackled with suspense. They didn't really feel like pauses; they felt ominous, as if massive energy were being restrained. This was shocking music in 1913 and it's shocking music today. The enormous orchestra played with monumental force and total discipline, for a conductor who knew exactly what he wanted.Whew. I'm glad he agrees with this here amateur.
Music v. Noise Part 1
The idea that composers would produce music expressly to irritate and annoy audiences is generally a 20th century one. Whether consisting of the production of organized or disorganized noise, pure silence, or something in between, the plain objective of several practitioners was to aggravate and irritate. Many celebrated early 20th century works have had the effect of annoying audiences. The twelve-tone compositions of Arnold Schoenberg, for example, likely continue to irritate concert-going audiences to this day. The notorious riot at the Paris premiere of Igor Stravinsky's Le Sacre de Printemps (The Rite of Spring) in 1913 is probably the most celebrated example of widespread annoyance with a large-scale musical work.But it was not Stravinsky's express intent to cause such a ruckus; indeed, he was rather pained at the reaction, and in fact within a week of the premiere was hospitalized with typhoid fever. Nor was Schoenberg's motivation that of intentionally alienating listeners, but rather to discover a new tonal landscape with which to express deep emotional content.
Yet the notion of a composer writing music to intentionally irritate his listeners may be traced at least to the late 18th century. As the story goes, Joseph Haydn wrote the opening movement of his Symphony No. 94 in G major, the "Surprise" Symphony, and its abrupt, unheralded dominant chord fortissimo, with the intention of waking the easily distracted among the powdered wig set that might be caught napping during his concerts.
But no one really began systematically attempting to irritate listeners until just prior to World War I and the emergence in Italy of what was primarily an artistic and literary movement called Futurism. However, unlike another European artistic movement often invoked to describe contemporary musical endeavors, Impressionism, the Futurists did in fact include among their ranks actual composers.
Italian Futurism essentially arose amid the culmination of a century of heavy industrial development, a European social revolution by turns despotic, socialist, and anarchic, and several decades of Italian military adventurism in Africa. Also, the latest discoveries in theoretical physics, by Max Planck, Albert Einstein, and Niels Bohr, among others, were proving to have a profound effect on previously Newtonian conceptions of the universe, which contemplated stability and mechanical order.The founder of the Futurist movement, the wealthy poet and sometime resident of Paris, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, had evidently also been considerably influenced by the 1896 performances in that city of the play Ubu Roi, by the poet and cycling enthusiast Alfred Jarry. The first ten minutes of the play consisted of Jarry, in white face, sipping from a glass, and eventually announcing, "The action … takes place in Poland, that is to say, nowhere." Finally the actor playing the title character appears and intones the opening dialogue of the play: "Merdre." Despite the coy addition of an additional "r," pandemonium and violence immediately ensued.
Marinetti had authored "The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism." Marinetti's Manifesto, which appeared on the front page of the French newspaper Le Figaro on February 20, 1909, included a paean to "the anarchist's destructive gesture" and "the fine ideas that kill."
"There is no more beauty except in strife," wrote Marinetti. "No work without an aggressive character can be a masterpiece. Poetry must be conceived as a violent attack on unknown forces to reduce and prostrate them before men."
The earliest of the Futurist composers was Francesco Balilla Pratella, an associate of Marinetti's. Pratella, a formally trained and award-winning composer born in 1880, penned several manifestos of his own, in which he railed against "the academicism of the conservatories, the impotence of Italian composers in the face of symphonic form, and their banal belief in the virtues of bel canto." Pratella directed his most withering criticism at the Italian opera establishment, "that heavy and suffocating crop of our nation," which he alleged was nourished by a publishing mafia, and was responsible for the "base, rickety and vulgar operas of Giacomo Puccini and Umberto Giordano."
Yet Pratella's musical career was less successful than his Futurist polemics, and the most celebrated, and perhaps most disappointing event of his career occurred at the premiere of his Musica futura for orchestra, an otherwise unremarkable, repetitive assemblage of whole-tones. While achieving the desired restlessness among the patrons at Rome's Teatro Costanzi in February, 1913, it is recorded that Pratella, in the midst of the tumult, rushed backstage to tell Marinetti that "half the orchestra had disappeared," only to be informed that the piece had in fact ended five minutes earlier.
A more successful and influential Futurist "composer" (although he was primarily a painter) was Luigi Russolo. Inspired by Pratella's Teatro Costanzi debacle, Russolo penned his own Manifesto, The Art of Noises. In it, Russolo explained that throughout the development of industrial machinery in the 19th century, "noise was born," and that noise had come to "reign supreme over the sensibility of men."Dissatisfied with what he considered the limited arsenal of traditional instruments, Russolo set about designing and building a series of "noise intoners," rectangular wooden boxes containing various motors, operated by cranking handles and amplified by cone-shaped metal speakers fitted to one side. Russolo organized his instruments based on four basic categories of noise: "Exploders, Cracklers, Buzzers, and Scrapers," and set about preparing for the first public performance of three original compositions, The Awakening of a City, Luncheon on the Kursaal Terrace, and Meeting of Automobiles and Airplanes, on April 21, 1914, in Milan.
Marinetti staged a dry run at his Milan estate the preceding August, which was attended by various luminaries, among them Igor Stravinsky, who was said to have "leapt from the divan like an exploding bedspring with a whistle of overjoyed excitement" at the sound of one of Russolo's "Cracklers."
At the rehearsal for the premiere, the police arrived and attempted to cancel the festivities on the grounds that it would create a disturbance, which undoubtedly was Russolo's primary intention. But the concert went ahead as scheduled thanks to the intervention of two Italian parliamentarians with whom Marinetti was acquainted. During the concert, Russolo was arrested for punching an unsympathetic journalist.
Marinetti, satisfied with the general outrage engendered by the cacophonous premiere, likened the demonstration of the new instruments to an incredulous public to "showing the first steam engine to a herd of cows." Afterwards, Russolo and company prepared to take London by storm, and a series of concerts were scheduled for June of 1914. The Times reviewed the English premiere in typically understated fashion: "Weird funnel shaped instruments … resembled the sounds heard in the rigging of a channel-steamer during a bad crossing, and it was perhaps unwise of the players — or should we call them 'noisicians'? — to proceed with their second piece … after the pathetic cries of 'no more' which greeted them from all the excited quarters of the auditorium."
However, the subsequent concerts in the series were greeted with increasing levels of enthusiasm, and even warm applause. This eventual public acceptance may have partially accounted for the demise of Russolo's musical career, after which he returned to painting and philosophy. A disciple of Russolo, Franco Casavola, staged several concerts during the 1920s in Paris using Russolo's machines, which, although inspiring the requisite controversy, nonetheless impressed several leading composers of the day, including Maurice Ravel, Darius Milhaud, Arthur Honegger, and Edgard Varese, who attempted to fit the noise intoners with a keyboard.
Part 2 ...
Music v. Noise Part 2
The first Futurist opera, Victory Over the Sun, was presented in St. Petersburg in October, 1913, with music by the Russian composer Mikhail Matyushin, and with sets and costumes designed by the Constructionist artist Kasimir Malevich. Essentially a collection of incomprehensible nonsense, the opera concerned a group of "Futurecountrymen" attempting to conquer the sun. The librettist, Alexei Kruchenykh, demanded that the performers, attracted by a casting call that stated, "Actors, do not bother to come, please," pronounce the words with pauses between each syllable: "The cam-el-like fac-to-ries al-read-y threat-en us …" which had the effect of "getting on everyone's nerves."While the premiere was generally a success attended by like-minded artists and students and guarded by large numbers of policemen, the critics were uniformly unkind, causing the composer Matyushin to deride their "herd mentality." However, Victory Over the Sun is notable for representing a "comprehensive collaboration by the poet, the musician and the artist, setting a precedent for the years to come."
Nor was ballet immune from the assault of the merry pranksters. A new group of iconoclasts had arisen after the First World War that called itself the Dadaists, a loosely knit assembly of poets, painters, amateur boxers and hangers-on that included the Frenchman Marcel Duchamp. Duchamp had first gained notoriety with his 1911 painting Nude Descending a Staircase, a work very much influenced by the Italian Futurist painters. Duchamp's general irreverence and nuttiness were to have a profound effect on 20th century art. (In fact many years later Duchamp and his wife Teeny were to participate in a composition by the American composer John Cage, in which the production of tones was linked to a chess game played by Cage and Duchamp.)
In 1917 Duchamp submitted to an art exhibition in New York a porcelain urinal, which he had purchased from a plumbing shop, laid on its back, signed in black pen, "R. Mutt 1917," and titled, "Fountain." Although it was rejected by the selection committee, its status as a "found object" is legendary, and represents the first instance of an everyday object ostensibly elevated to the status of art merely by the act of it having been selected by the artist.
On December 4, 1924, the Dadaists presented their ballet Relâche — which means both "relaxation" and is the theatrical expression for "no performance tonight" — based on a scenario instigated by Duchamp's accomplice in hijinks, Francis Picabia. Relâche had been commissioned by Rolf de Maré, director of the Parisian Ballets Suédois. The production began with a man dressed in firefighter's gear, chain smoking in direct contravention of the theatre's building code, who continued shifting a quantity of water between two buckets throughout the evening.The ballet is in two parts, with a film, Entr'acte, projected between "acts." The film begins with shots from various angles of a bearded man dressed in a ballerina's costume jumping up and down on a glass pane, and ends with a grinning corpse emerging from a coffin that had been dropped on the ground, and features music by the eccentric French composer Erik Satie: "Satie's exasperatingly minimalist music, whose repetitions recall nothing so much as a needle stuck in the groove of a phonograph record … was claimed as the first music written expressly for a film."
The second act continues the absurdist provocation, and includes the prominent display of a large sign that reads, "Satie is the greatest musician in the world." The production concluded with its authors, including Satie, driving onto the stage in a tiny five horsepower Citroën. "They were greeted with catcalls, and the Ballet Suédois was dissolved forever." As de Maré put it: "Relâche was too much for all of us." The 58-year-old Satie was savaged in the press. "Adieu, Satie," read the headlines, and the scandal was attached to his name until his death less than a year later.
Satie was no stranger to balletic shenanigans. In 1917, he had been involved in another production in Paris, Parade, with a text by Jean Cocteau and sets and costumes by Pablo Picasso. Satie worked for an entire year on the score, which incorporated many of Cocteau's suggestions for instrumentation, such as "typewriters, sirens, aeroplane propellers, Morse tappers, and lottery wheels." Parade, which features characters dressed as ten-foot-high skyscrapers and teams of acrobats performing to frenetic waltzes played on xylophones, predictably attracted widespread derision. Satie was denounced, and replied to one conservative critic, "Vous n'êtes qu'un cul, mais un cul sans musique," which translates roughly as, "You are only an ass, but an ass without music." Satie was actually fined heavily for making this remark.
All of this cacophony and calculated outrage inevitably led to, of all things, silence, and John Cage's 1952 composition 4'33". Yet Cage was perfectly aware that complete silence was physically unachievable, which he had proven to himself the year before by sequestering himself in an anechoic chamber at Harvard University. There he became aware of two remaining sounds: those of his own nervous and circulatory systems. 4'33" is comprised of three sections, each of which was demarcated by its original performer, the pianist David Tudor, by successive opening and closing of the keyboard lid.Although one might expect Cage's watershed composition to mark, in some sense, the end of music and the beginning of postmodern sensibility, the idea of non-music involving instruments never played was extended by the American composer LaMonte Young, who in the early 1960s wrote a number of pieces that reflect both Cage's ideas and those of his Dadaist precursors. The "score" for Young's Piano Piece for David Tudor #1 reads as follows: "Bring a bale of hay and a bucket of water onto the stage for the piano to eat and drink. The performer may then feed the piano or leave it to eat by itself. If the former, the piece is over after the piano has been fed. If the latter, it is over after the piano eats or decides not to."
Or Young's Composition 1960 #7, which consists simply of the simultaneous sounding of a B and an F#, with the direction, "to be held for a long time."
But the record for the most demonstrably irritating piece of music ever written must go to Terry Riley's In C, a relentlessly minimalist piano piece composed in 1964. The piece consists of nothing more than various permutations of a C major scale, repeated over 15 hours.
Of its New York premiere, a contemporary reviewer observed that halfway through the piece most of the audience had long since disappeared. Near the end of the performance, there was nobody left in the auditorium save for a handful of masochists, and when the piece finally concluded, one sado-masochist rose to his feet and shouted, "Encore!"
April 4, 2008
On a personal note
I've been around the block more than a few times over a fairly long period of time and I've made more than my share of poor judgments, some excessively poor. I've overcome a lot of obstacles, including many that I've ill-advisedly placed in my own way. I've also accepted complete responsibility for every bad judgment I've made and in all cases invited and accepted and paid the punishment along with the suffering, and I continue to suffer for many of my mistakes.
I don't expect that suffering to ever go away, because it's a necessary part of accepting responsibility and I, naturally, can never abdicate from that responsibility. But I tend not to dwell on the past.
I have no idea what James Wigderson is trying to prove, but if it's an attempt to make me suffer some more, he's by definition doomed to failure, because it can't be done. And if he gets a kick out of it, then more power to him. After all, we could all use some things to brighten our lives on occasion. I suppose that even Wigderson needs something too, and simply wants to express his satisfaction.
Maybe he isn't perfect, either. If not, then he's just like me. But I'm grateful he reads my blog, and I'm glad he enjoyed Jane Hampden's interview with me so much that he had to listen to it twice.
I can't blame him for that. I've listened to it twice too. At least.
She's that good.
I don't expect that suffering to ever go away, because it's a necessary part of accepting responsibility and I, naturally, can never abdicate from that responsibility. But I tend not to dwell on the past.
I have no idea what James Wigderson is trying to prove, but if it's an attempt to make me suffer some more, he's by definition doomed to failure, because it can't be done. And if he gets a kick out of it, then more power to him. After all, we could all use some things to brighten our lives on occasion. I suppose that even Wigderson needs something too, and simply wants to express his satisfaction.
Maybe he isn't perfect, either. If not, then he's just like me. But I'm grateful he reads my blog, and I'm glad he enjoyed Jane Hampden's interview with me so much that he had to listen to it twice.
I can't blame him for that. I've listened to it twice too. At least.
She's that good.
Strict construction, huh; what is it good for
I'm done with strict construction. When lawyers and judges and legal academics talk about strict construction, they're talking about giving the words that appear in the law narrower meanings, as opposed to broad ones.It's about how strictly a reader 'construes' those words. The narrower, or stricter, the interpretation of those words, the better, so our conservative friends tell us. I respectfully dissent.
A good friend of mine had the idea to set up a limited liability company (LLC). He'd already reviewed his other options with his accountant, and the accountant, being also a good and wise man, suggested that my friend have a lawyer prepare the required documents.
Of course, anybody can prepare the documents; there's not much to it. And you can even prepare them online, using the forms helpfully provided by the Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions. But there are at least two good reasons why it's sensible to have a lawyer do it: (1) because the applicant has to affirm that the LLC is organized under Wisconsin Statutes Chapter 183, which presumes the applicant has at least read Chap. 183, and nobody except a lawyer wants to do that and (2) I was nearly out of Kraft Dinner, and was grateful to be able to lay in another week's supply. Just in time.
The heart of the LLC is the articles of organization. These are the six required items, a couple of which may not be applicable, depending on a number of other considerations. Chap. 183 is very specific about this: "The articles of organization shall contain all of and only the following information." I've emphasized the operative language for the would-be strict constructionists scoring along at home.
Then the six required items are described, each numbered in sequential order. Now, another lawyer would have whipped this job off in about ten minutes. But I wanted to learn a bit more about LLCs anyway, so I read Chap. 183 two or three times, and went down to the law library where I consulted the annotated statutes, reviewed a number of practitioner's guides, and even read a few of the Wisconsin Supreme Court cases dealing with some disputed LLCs. Naturally I didn't bill my client for any of this time, only the time it took to actually prepare the documents, which amounted to about a case of Kraft Dinner.
Among several other considerations, I thought about using the forms helpfully provided by the Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions. In fact I specifically looked at whether or not I must use them, as opposed to preparing my own articles of organization, building on a blank sheet of paper. Not only did I bear in mind the 'all of and only' language noted above, I paid particular attention to Wis. Stat. § 183.0109, which is entitled, "Forms."
I noted that for some other aspects of documenting activities related to LLCs, and also for other types of LLCs that weren't the type of LLC my friend wanted to be, the preparer must use the forms mandated by the statute. So, I knew that the document bearing the articles of organization was not among those other things, therefore use of a government form was not required. I also knew this because the statute goes on to say, "The department [of Financial Institutions] may prescribe, and furnish on request, forms for other documents required or permitted to be filed under this chapter, but use of these forms is not mandatory."
Score two for the strict constructionists. So, bearing all of this in mind, I prepared the articles of organization myself. I did take one liberty with the statute, in that I placed a nice bold title at the top of the document, "Articles of Organization — Limited Liability Company," and a brief affirmation that the document was "Executed by the undersigned for the purposes of forming a limited liability company under Chapter 183 of the Wisconsin statutes."
Indeed, the latter statement is not a liberty taken with Chap. 183, but rather a requirement of Chap. 182, which refers to documents executed in the State of Wisconsin generally.
Finally, in accordance with yet another provision of Chap. 183, I included an optional name for the LLC, just in case the preferred name for the LLC was deemed conflicting with another preexisting, or pending, LLC (which, in my opinion, it didn't, since I had researched this question too). But I placed this optional name at the bottom of the page, beneath a line drawn across it, and preceded by the word "optional" in italics.
'A fine looking document,' I said to myself upon its completion, and in strict accordance with the requirements of Chap. 183, which I personally was certifying the documents were prepared in accordance with. Then I presented it, along with a set of copies and a stamped envelope addressed to the Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions, to my friend. "Thanks," he said, "Looks great!" "Darn tootin'," said I.
About a week later, I ran into my friend again. "I don't suppose you've heard back about the LLC yet, have you?" I asked him. He grinned a little sheepishly, because he is a really nice guy and he really didn't want to tell me what had happened. "Actually," he said, "they sent everything back and told me to transfer all the information to their own form."
"They what?!" said I. And, it turns out, not only did the department mandate its own expressly non-mandated form, but because the six items comprising the articles of organization appear in different numerical order on the non-mandated form than they do in the mandatory statute, my friend had to adjust for that as well. "That's insane," I said to my friend. "No biggie," he said, "It only took me a few minutes and cost me another stamp." "Yabbut," said I, "You were inconvenienced and delayed and not only that but I put my name on that document, and if anybody wasn't in conformance with Chap. 183, it was the Department of Financial Institutions. And that was the whole point of my being involved in this exercise, to certify that your LLC was organized in accordance with Chap. 183!"
So he is going to bring me a copy of the letter he received from the department, because I really want to see that. I mentioned all of this to another lawyer friend of mine and he shrugged and said, "Fuggedaboutit." Well, I don't know about that, speaking as a sometime dedicated strict constructionist and a devotee of the constitutional separation of powers who objects to the implication by the executive branch that he made an error in following the clear instructions of the people of this Great State of Wisconsin as expressed through their elected representatives in the legislature.
And that even includes Glenn Grothman. And I bet you he is a strict constructionist. Oh yes indeed.
We'll see how much longer I remain a strict constructionist, at least with respect to the foregoing narrow question of statutory interpretation, albeit one with dire constitutional consequences.
April 3, 2008
Today's top headline
Extremist left wing hate blogger outs self
Please don't tell any of my pre-teen piano students, lest they get all a-skeered of my horrific, true self. On the other hand, maybe
The Fear would get them to practice more! Hmm ...
Jane Hampden, I must say, absolutely rules. Big, big ups, Jane.
Please don't tell any of my pre-teen piano students, lest they get all a-skeered of my horrific, true self. On the other hand, maybe
The Fear would get them to practice more! Hmm ...
Jane Hampden, I must say, absolutely rules. Big, big ups, Jane.
Creationism's "powerful new weapon"
And soon to be dramatically revealed as comedian and judge of top fashion models* Ben Stein. It's hard to tell whether the quoted description is serious or not, let alone obtain a confirmable measurement of monogenic resistance betwixt cheek and tongue.
* In one segment, the dumbest model proved smarter than Ben Stein.
* In one segment, the dumbest model proved smarter than Ben Stein.
April 2, 2008
WUWMJD?
I was on my way to Linens 'n Things this morning to pick up some doilies and a tea cosy when I ran into my good friend, the lovely and talented Jane Hampden. Sure hope the mic wasn't on.
Where they know them best
JSOnline:
I had the great pleasure of meeting and speaking with Erin Celello, Jay Blakeley, and Sachin Chheda, the three principals who ran Justice Butler's campaign. Not once did they ever stoop to the disgraceful netherworld where Gableman and his enablers descended.
Shame on the local press for repeatedly suggesting that they did.
Gableman, who was criticized widely for an ad attacking Butler's work as a public defender, said he was "very proud of the fact we ran a positive [sic] campaign."Truly, a campaign of which one can be justly proud.
"You don't get a more stark contrast or clear contrast than that between a prosecutor and criminal defense attorney," Gableman said. "Therefore, I don't view it as a negative ad. I view it as an ad that illustrates the real differences of our professional backgrounds."Gableman was the district attorney in Ashland County, which he lost last night, and Butler practiced in Milwaukee County, where he won.
I had the great pleasure of meeting and speaking with Erin Celello, Jay Blakeley, and Sachin Chheda, the three principals who ran Justice Butler's campaign. Not once did they ever stoop to the disgraceful netherworld where Gableman and his enablers descended.
Shame on the local press for repeatedly suggesting that they did.
April 1, 2008
March 31, 2008
Help prevent a tragedy — II
Continued from Part I ...
Remember Jeffrey Dahmer, who committed some of the most deplorable acts that anyone is even capable of imagining? So incapable of imagining, I suspect, that if Jeffrey Dahmer hadn't committed them, and people hadn't heard about them, then probably hardly anybody would have ever imagined them themselves? That Jeffrey Dahmer, right.
Well, even Jeffrey Dahmer had a criminal defense attorney. What entitled Dahmer to a criminal defense attorney is the United States Constitution, which Burnett County conservative Republican Mike Gableman's loudest and deepest-pocketed hooters and hollerers, Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, calls a "needless technicality."
Which is funny, because WMC can get away with disgorging malodorous effluent like that because the United States Constitution allows it to, because political speech is arguably the most protected speech of all. So WMC can actually deliberately vomit and expectorate on the United States Constitution whilst claiming the very protections afforded to it by the United States Constitution. How's that for dramatic irony.
Lately, Charlie Sykes and his fellow one-trick caged orangutans are making much of the nickname that Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler earned when he worked for the State Public Defender 25 years ago. Sykes and Co.'s pick to replace Justice Butler, the barely coherent Mike Gableman, has for all intents and purposes made it the defining aspect of his definitively sleazy campaign.
Clyde Winter will tell you more, if you don't already know.
When many people hear that an attorney defended a child molester, they say, "Oh my god, he defended a child molester? How can anybody defend a child molester?!" But just because a lawyer defended a child molester, that doesn't mean that the lawyer defended child molestation. No, the lawyer defended the child molester's constitutional rights to a fair trial and a number of other specific protections enumerated in the United States Constitution.
Lawyers, in addition to most real humans, know what it means to "defend" the accused, or even the convicted, on appeal. They understand that even child molesters have constitutional rights. But those rights have more to do than with just defending child molesters, they also have to do with prosecuting child molesters, which is what we all want.
Furthermore, people who prosecute child molesters not only know that, but they know that the best defenders of child molesters make for the most solid and effective prosecutions of child molesters. Because a good defense lawyer makes the prosecutor work hard to prove her case. And the best prosecutors want to work hard to prove their case because they want to do good work. And the best defense lawyers make the best prosecutors do their best work.
On the other hand, the last thing prosecutors want to face is a bad defense lawyer. Because the bad lawyer forces the prosecutor to work hard too, but in those instances that hard work is not good hard work, it's annoying and frustrating hard work, and, most importantly, inefficient hard work, which makes for potentially the least effective prosecutions.
Because prosecutors have a big caseload, and they want to devote their best, hardest work to all of those cases. And they can only do their best, hardest work when a good defense lawyer forces them to. And that's what prosecutors want. Prosecutors take pride in their work, just like every other self-respecting, hard working attorney.
Nobody knows that better than Dodge County District Attorney Steven G. Bauer, who actually withdrew his support for Mike Gableman. Not only that, but DA Bauer announced in print that he wouldn't even vote for Mike Gableman. Because DA Bauer knows the score, and he knows how the system works, and he was revolted by the way that Mike Gableman and his lieutenants were misrepresenting that system, and especially distorting the role that people like DA Bauer play in that system, not just Louis Butler's former role in that system, as a public defender 25 years ago.
You may find an equally good argument against the candidacy of Mike Gableman, but I bet you you can't find a better one. And DA Bauer stated it, right out there in the public press, as forcefully and as eloquently as anyone could have. And I don't care whether DA Bauer is a conservative Republican or a card carrying member of both the ACLU and PETA. That doesn't matter one bit. Because he nailed that sucker, and what he wrote is a powerful indictment of the disgraceful campaign Mike Gableman has run, and is running, in his quest to appease his monied backers and quasi-intellectual supporters.
Think about that. When Louis Butler was a public defender 25 years ago, he earned a nickname that wasn't just complimentary and in recognition of his skills as an attorney, that nickname contained a little needling joke, because Butler was — and continues to be — held in the highest esteem by his colleagues and peers.
Because if his colleagues and peers wanted to needle Louis Butler in an uncomplimentary way, they would have needled him in private, not in public, and not even in Justice Butler's presence. Trust me on this. So really, that particular nickname, containing as it does an element of good-natured needling, is a double-plus-good compliment.
And think about that when you're considering the idiotic simian jabberings of Charlie Sykes and his pals among the Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce crowd.
Not only are they missing the point by an astronomically wide margin, they're parading their fundamental ignorance for all to regard. But that's their job, and it's a free country, and everyone's entitled to make a living.
But that's not the reason Sykes and the rest are playing on Butler's nickname. They're weaselly, but they're not stupid. They're playing on it because they know that a lot of people don't quite get the substance, and the meaning, of how the nickname came about in the first place. So essentially what they're doing is exploiting people who may not know any better for political goals. That's right, they're exploiting people for their own selfish purposes.
And, I can't help thinking, a lot of these people who are exploiting other people will at the same time tell you that they're religious, and devout, and righteous, that they're followers of a man who dedicated — some will tell you gave — his life for propositions entirely at odds with the idea of exploiting other people. Think about that.
Louis Butler is one of the smartest and best judges in Wisconsin. Having recently plowed through dozens of Butler's written opinions, there is no doubt about that. And he's not just one of the smartest and best judges in Wisconsin, I'd argue he's one of the smartest and best in the country. Mike Gableman is ... well, unfortunately, Mike Gableman. Gableman's entire campaign has been premised on falsehoods and personal attacks intended to tear down the personal and professional integrity of a good man. It's clear he could only fail spectacularly on that account. And it's equally clear that that's the best he could come up with.
What is certain is that Mike Gableman has definitely earned one thing. He has earned your best efforts to get to the polls tomorrow, Tuesday, April 1. And the reason why Gableman has earned those efforts is not so much so you can vote against Gableman, although that certainly is a major consideration, given the contemptible conduct of his political campaign.
The main reason that the effort should be made is to vote for Louis Butler for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, so he can return and continue the public service he has been performing for the last 15 years, which is as a judge that plays it straight down the middle, meting justice where it is warranted and required by law, and not in response to any third-party monied interests or out-of-state concerns that are shamelessly trying to outright buy our courts.
The choice could not possibly be more obvious, or simple.
Remember Jeffrey Dahmer, who committed some of the most deplorable acts that anyone is even capable of imagining? So incapable of imagining, I suspect, that if Jeffrey Dahmer hadn't committed them, and people hadn't heard about them, then probably hardly anybody would have ever imagined them themselves? That Jeffrey Dahmer, right.
Well, even Jeffrey Dahmer had a criminal defense attorney. What entitled Dahmer to a criminal defense attorney is the United States Constitution, which Burnett County conservative Republican Mike Gableman's loudest and deepest-pocketed hooters and hollerers, Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, calls a "needless technicality."
Which is funny, because WMC can get away with disgorging malodorous effluent like that because the United States Constitution allows it to, because political speech is arguably the most protected speech of all. So WMC can actually deliberately vomit and expectorate on the United States Constitution whilst claiming the very protections afforded to it by the United States Constitution. How's that for dramatic irony.
Lately, Charlie Sykes and his fellow one-trick caged orangutans are making much of the nickname that Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler earned when he worked for the State Public Defender 25 years ago. Sykes and Co.'s pick to replace Justice Butler, the barely coherent Mike Gableman, has for all intents and purposes made it the defining aspect of his definitively sleazy campaign.
Clyde Winter will tell you more, if you don't already know.
When many people hear that an attorney defended a child molester, they say, "Oh my god, he defended a child molester? How can anybody defend a child molester?!" But just because a lawyer defended a child molester, that doesn't mean that the lawyer defended child molestation. No, the lawyer defended the child molester's constitutional rights to a fair trial and a number of other specific protections enumerated in the United States Constitution.
Lawyers, in addition to most real humans, know what it means to "defend" the accused, or even the convicted, on appeal. They understand that even child molesters have constitutional rights. But those rights have more to do than with just defending child molesters, they also have to do with prosecuting child molesters, which is what we all want.
Furthermore, people who prosecute child molesters not only know that, but they know that the best defenders of child molesters make for the most solid and effective prosecutions of child molesters. Because a good defense lawyer makes the prosecutor work hard to prove her case. And the best prosecutors want to work hard to prove their case because they want to do good work. And the best defense lawyers make the best prosecutors do their best work.
On the other hand, the last thing prosecutors want to face is a bad defense lawyer. Because the bad lawyer forces the prosecutor to work hard too, but in those instances that hard work is not good hard work, it's annoying and frustrating hard work, and, most importantly, inefficient hard work, which makes for potentially the least effective prosecutions.
Because prosecutors have a big caseload, and they want to devote their best, hardest work to all of those cases. And they can only do their best, hardest work when a good defense lawyer forces them to. And that's what prosecutors want. Prosecutors take pride in their work, just like every other self-respecting, hard working attorney.
Nobody knows that better than Dodge County District Attorney Steven G. Bauer, who actually withdrew his support for Mike Gableman. Not only that, but DA Bauer announced in print that he wouldn't even vote for Mike Gableman. Because DA Bauer knows the score, and he knows how the system works, and he was revolted by the way that Mike Gableman and his lieutenants were misrepresenting that system, and especially distorting the role that people like DA Bauer play in that system, not just Louis Butler's former role in that system, as a public defender 25 years ago.
You may find an equally good argument against the candidacy of Mike Gableman, but I bet you you can't find a better one. And DA Bauer stated it, right out there in the public press, as forcefully and as eloquently as anyone could have. And I don't care whether DA Bauer is a conservative Republican or a card carrying member of both the ACLU and PETA. That doesn't matter one bit. Because he nailed that sucker, and what he wrote is a powerful indictment of the disgraceful campaign Mike Gableman has run, and is running, in his quest to appease his monied backers and quasi-intellectual supporters.
Think about that. When Louis Butler was a public defender 25 years ago, he earned a nickname that wasn't just complimentary and in recognition of his skills as an attorney, that nickname contained a little needling joke, because Butler was — and continues to be — held in the highest esteem by his colleagues and peers.
Because if his colleagues and peers wanted to needle Louis Butler in an uncomplimentary way, they would have needled him in private, not in public, and not even in Justice Butler's presence. Trust me on this. So really, that particular nickname, containing as it does an element of good-natured needling, is a double-plus-good compliment.
And think about that when you're considering the idiotic simian jabberings of Charlie Sykes and his pals among the Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce crowd.
Not only are they missing the point by an astronomically wide margin, they're parading their fundamental ignorance for all to regard. But that's their job, and it's a free country, and everyone's entitled to make a living.
But that's not the reason Sykes and the rest are playing on Butler's nickname. They're weaselly, but they're not stupid. They're playing on it because they know that a lot of people don't quite get the substance, and the meaning, of how the nickname came about in the first place. So essentially what they're doing is exploiting people who may not know any better for political goals. That's right, they're exploiting people for their own selfish purposes.
And, I can't help thinking, a lot of these people who are exploiting other people will at the same time tell you that they're religious, and devout, and righteous, that they're followers of a man who dedicated — some will tell you gave — his life for propositions entirely at odds with the idea of exploiting other people. Think about that.
Louis Butler is one of the smartest and best judges in Wisconsin. Having recently plowed through dozens of Butler's written opinions, there is no doubt about that. And he's not just one of the smartest and best judges in Wisconsin, I'd argue he's one of the smartest and best in the country. Mike Gableman is ... well, unfortunately, Mike Gableman. Gableman's entire campaign has been premised on falsehoods and personal attacks intended to tear down the personal and professional integrity of a good man. It's clear he could only fail spectacularly on that account. And it's equally clear that that's the best he could come up with.
What is certain is that Mike Gableman has definitely earned one thing. He has earned your best efforts to get to the polls tomorrow, Tuesday, April 1. And the reason why Gableman has earned those efforts is not so much so you can vote against Gableman, although that certainly is a major consideration, given the contemptible conduct of his political campaign.
The main reason that the effort should be made is to vote for Louis Butler for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, so he can return and continue the public service he has been performing for the last 15 years, which is as a judge that plays it straight down the middle, meting justice where it is warranted and required by law, and not in response to any third-party monied interests or out-of-state concerns that are shamelessly trying to outright buy our courts.
The choice could not possibly be more obvious, or simple.
CNN gets it partly right
A conservative [Republican] group, Coalition for America's Families, ran its own spot criticizing Butler for writing an opinion overturning [a] rapist's conviction. The group also claimed he had "sided with criminals nearly 60 percent of the time," a statistic it has not substantiated.The missing right part is that it's deliberately fabricated bullshit.
Link to CNN report.
Help prevent a tragedy — I
I'm doing my part. And I'm not talking about this here blog, which has been pretty much devoted since December to debunking as many misrepresentations and falsehoods emanating from Burnett County conservative Republican Mike Gableman's election campaign and its supporters and professional apologists as was humanly possible.
Of course, some people are beyond all hope. An otherwise respectable local conservative blogger announced this morning he was voting for Gableman based on Gableman's "honesty." File that one under 'lost cause.'
Another said, 'I don't care if Louis Butler is a cross between Antonin Scalia and Solomon and Mike Gableman rode the short bus to Hamline Law School, I hate Jim Doyle so I'm voting Republican.' Parse that.
But I caught one yesterday, and in person. I have been teaching piano in Milwaukee two days a week for more than four years. A gentleman named James was my very first student here, and he's with me to this day. He's both highly motivated and dedicated, the perfect student. I can't recall him missing more than two or three appointments. I don't know all that much about James but I know he's a great guy, and he's becoming a pretty good pianist.
James, who I'm guessing is in his early 50s or so, had never played an instrument in his life before we met. He's long since taken to selecting his own music to read and learn on his own, often hymns that he plays at his church. (I had to encourage the hell out of him to do that, because he was nervous about performing in public, but I understand he's been a great success there.)
Lately we've been working at learning how to play out of what we call "fake books," which notate only the one-line melody of each tune, accompanied by chord symbols. They're a very basic representation of each song, and you need some theoretical and analytical skillz to realize each tune's performance. To my unending delight, James has taken a keen interest in music theory and jazz composition, two topics about which I could ramble on forever.
Whenever he starts learning a new piece from his fake book, he reads through the chord changes and marks each one with the Roman numerals musicians use to analyze the harmony. It's outstanding that he does this. James is one of my favorite piano students of all time, and I'm extremely, extremely proud of his achievements.
At the end of our weekly session yesterday, I told James to make sure he votes on Tuesday. He turned to me and said, "Oh, don't worry, I can't wait to vote against Louis Butler."
"Wait a minute, James," I said, "What?" And I am not exaggerating much when I say that James told me that Justice Butler was dedicated to shutting down all business activity in the State of Wisconsin and releasing every child molester onto the streets.
"James," I asked, knowing full well the answer, "Where in the world are you hearing this stuff?" "Charlie Sykes," came the depressingly predictable reply. "Hang on James," I said, and went to see my next waiting student to refund his money, because I was going to be a few minutes. Fortunately that young fellow travels with James, a really cool kid who I think some friends at James's church have adopted.
"Okay, James," I said, returning to my studio and closing the soundproof door, because I anticipated doing some yelling. "Tell me exactly what you've heard Charlie Sykes saying about Louis Butler. Everything."
I must say James had learned quite a bit from Charlie Sykes, and described some of the details of several of the cases Justice Butler has participated in fairly accurately. James was also disturbed by Sykes's incessant and idiotic harping at Justice Butler's ancient and complimentary nickname, earned more than two decades ago in a completely different context and capacity.
For the next 25 minutes I carefully debunked each and every one of Charlie Sykes's falsehoods. I talked about State v. Knapp. I talked about Butler's lone dissent in State v. Jensen and the likelihood of Butler's complete vindication by the most conservative members of the U.S. Supreme Court later this year.
I talked about products liability, and how Americans at least deserve to have access to the courts to try and make their cases when manufacturers market consumer goods that cause people to be injured or killed. Those same businesses shouldn't be allowed to buy the courts, and voters like James can easily stop them.
Most importantly, however, I talked about the genius of the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights and specifically the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments and how they afford protections to all Americans and not just to those under investigation and prosecution for crimes by the government.
I told him about Mike Gableman's campaign and, using a number of very specific examples, described to James that Gableman has been waging the most blatantly partisan and underhanded and despicable election campaign quite possibly in the history of Wisconsin.
It must have been a decent speech, because James left my studio promising to vote for Justice Butler and, almost equally importantly, against Mike Gableman. James trusts me, and he knows that I would never steer him wrong about the American system of constitutional democracy, and the role of the courts, and yes, even the role of public defenders in the adversarial legal scheme.
Because James knows I would never steer him wrong about music theory and harmony, so I certainly wouldn't bullshit him when it comes to the foundations of this ingenious and successful experiment in democracy and freedom.
Unlike Charlie Sykes, who would, and will, and does.
So, many thanks James, my man, and I'll see you next Sunday. Far from regretting the vote you cast tomorrow, you can be as justly proud of it as your touching version of Richard Rodgers' My Funny Valentine that you learned to play for your daughter when she was visiting from out of town that one time. Trust me on this, brother.
And a word for Charlie Sykes. I understand you're given to bellyaching about the state of education in this country. If you really do care for that, then you'd best stop poisoning the minds of my own most valued and decent students with your insidious, vicious lies.
Continued ...
Of course, some people are beyond all hope. An otherwise respectable local conservative blogger announced this morning he was voting for Gableman based on Gableman's "honesty." File that one under 'lost cause.'
Another said, 'I don't care if Louis Butler is a cross between Antonin Scalia and Solomon and Mike Gableman rode the short bus to Hamline Law School, I hate Jim Doyle so I'm voting Republican.' Parse that.
But I caught one yesterday, and in person. I have been teaching piano in Milwaukee two days a week for more than four years. A gentleman named James was my very first student here, and he's with me to this day. He's both highly motivated and dedicated, the perfect student. I can't recall him missing more than two or three appointments. I don't know all that much about James but I know he's a great guy, and he's becoming a pretty good pianist.
James, who I'm guessing is in his early 50s or so, had never played an instrument in his life before we met. He's long since taken to selecting his own music to read and learn on his own, often hymns that he plays at his church. (I had to encourage the hell out of him to do that, because he was nervous about performing in public, but I understand he's been a great success there.)
Lately we've been working at learning how to play out of what we call "fake books," which notate only the one-line melody of each tune, accompanied by chord symbols. They're a very basic representation of each song, and you need some theoretical and analytical skillz to realize each tune's performance. To my unending delight, James has taken a keen interest in music theory and jazz composition, two topics about which I could ramble on forever.
Whenever he starts learning a new piece from his fake book, he reads through the chord changes and marks each one with the Roman numerals musicians use to analyze the harmony. It's outstanding that he does this. James is one of my favorite piano students of all time, and I'm extremely, extremely proud of his achievements.
At the end of our weekly session yesterday, I told James to make sure he votes on Tuesday. He turned to me and said, "Oh, don't worry, I can't wait to vote against Louis Butler."
"Wait a minute, James," I said, "What?" And I am not exaggerating much when I say that James told me that Justice Butler was dedicated to shutting down all business activity in the State of Wisconsin and releasing every child molester onto the streets.
"James," I asked, knowing full well the answer, "Where in the world are you hearing this stuff?" "Charlie Sykes," came the depressingly predictable reply. "Hang on James," I said, and went to see my next waiting student to refund his money, because I was going to be a few minutes. Fortunately that young fellow travels with James, a really cool kid who I think some friends at James's church have adopted.
"Okay, James," I said, returning to my studio and closing the soundproof door, because I anticipated doing some yelling. "Tell me exactly what you've heard Charlie Sykes saying about Louis Butler. Everything."
I must say James had learned quite a bit from Charlie Sykes, and described some of the details of several of the cases Justice Butler has participated in fairly accurately. James was also disturbed by Sykes's incessant and idiotic harping at Justice Butler's ancient and complimentary nickname, earned more than two decades ago in a completely different context and capacity.
For the next 25 minutes I carefully debunked each and every one of Charlie Sykes's falsehoods. I talked about State v. Knapp. I talked about Butler's lone dissent in State v. Jensen and the likelihood of Butler's complete vindication by the most conservative members of the U.S. Supreme Court later this year.
I talked about products liability, and how Americans at least deserve to have access to the courts to try and make their cases when manufacturers market consumer goods that cause people to be injured or killed. Those same businesses shouldn't be allowed to buy the courts, and voters like James can easily stop them.
Most importantly, however, I talked about the genius of the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights and specifically the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments and how they afford protections to all Americans and not just to those under investigation and prosecution for crimes by the government.
I told him about Mike Gableman's campaign and, using a number of very specific examples, described to James that Gableman has been waging the most blatantly partisan and underhanded and despicable election campaign quite possibly in the history of Wisconsin.
It must have been a decent speech, because James left my studio promising to vote for Justice Butler and, almost equally importantly, against Mike Gableman. James trusts me, and he knows that I would never steer him wrong about the American system of constitutional democracy, and the role of the courts, and yes, even the role of public defenders in the adversarial legal scheme.
Because James knows I would never steer him wrong about music theory and harmony, so I certainly wouldn't bullshit him when it comes to the foundations of this ingenious and successful experiment in democracy and freedom.
Unlike Charlie Sykes, who would, and will, and does.
So, many thanks James, my man, and I'll see you next Sunday. Far from regretting the vote you cast tomorrow, you can be as justly proud of it as your touching version of Richard Rodgers' My Funny Valentine that you learned to play for your daughter when she was visiting from out of town that one time. Trust me on this, brother.
And a word for Charlie Sykes. I understand you're given to bellyaching about the state of education in this country. If you really do care for that, then you'd best stop poisoning the minds of my own most valued and decent students with your insidious, vicious lies.
Continued ...
zOMG Correction!!!1
Damn, I keep meaning to add this dude to the blogroll, but every time I think to do it, I can never come up with a shorter version of "What did [Wisconsin Whackjob State Senator] Glenn Grothman get wrong this week" that doesn't run across into two lines of text, because I'm so anal about having a clean website layout.
Finally — and I can't believe I didn't think of this before — I give you:
Grothman, WTF?
You can't have too many philosophy professors on your side.
Finally — and I can't believe I didn't think of this before — I give you:
Grothman, WTF?
You can't have too many philosophy professors on your side.
More sleazy CFAF innuendo
Stacy Forster reports on CFAF's latest robocalls.
Talk about desperate. I understand politics well enough and cheating and lying is pretty much expected, I suppose. But cheating and lying while pretending to be some righteous "family values" outfit is just despicable. How can anybody condone, let alone repeat, such trash.
CFAF's rampant scumbaggery is akin to spitting on the Constitution.
Talk about desperate. I understand politics well enough and cheating and lying is pretty much expected, I suppose. But cheating and lying while pretending to be some righteous "family values" outfit is just despicable. How can anybody condone, let alone repeat, such trash.
CFAF's rampant scumbaggery is akin to spitting on the Constitution.
CFAF "deemed" criminally inept Part 10
The following is relatively brief, since there remain few points of disagreement between CFAF and Justice Butler's lists, yet the ones that do remain are as goofy and negligently inept as any of those preceding, if not necessarily quite as reprehensible. And even in those instances, I pledge to keep my observations brief, since I've pretty much already said all that needs be said.
Furthermore, if I haven't convinced you yet of my two theses, (1) that CFAF's (and that of at least one other) entire project is a phony and disingenuous house of GOP cards erected on rotten stilts and (2) that statements from the Butler campaign further to the question of Justice Butler's recorded disposition in cases involving currently and formerly designated offenders are substantially correct (in fact, to within less than two percentage points, even if you add two cases to Butler's list of 70 that have purely to do with sentencing questions and nothing to do with either convictions or even procedural issues related to the convictions at all) then not only should I give up now, I should have given up long ago. But I started the job and I intend to finish it.
I take care to stress that last proposition in any event, just in case any potential employers and/or clients have been stopping by for a gander, in which case my little series may hopefully be the most elaborate job application and résumé ever constructed in the whole history of biological evolution on our fair and fertile planet.
Thus, as we say in this great and privileged State of the Union, Forward!
51. State v. Raye 2004AP770-CR
Justice Butler joins in its entirety another unanimous opinion reversing a drunk driving conviction. No concurring opinions are issued; in other words, Butler is in complete, unequivocal agreement with the most "conservative" members of the court.
CFAF, having disgorged nearly the entire contents of its briefcase full of trickery, assents.
At what point do we get to call CFAF and Friends, "Loophole Republicans," by the way? A long, long time ago, I reckon. Except in another ancient context, it was as a compliment. So scratch that idea.
52. State v. Wagner 2003AP1878-CR
Another terse, per curiam opinion of the court dismissing Wagner's petition for review of the court of appeals decision, which had affirmed his judgment of conviction in the circuit court for armed robbery. CFAF once again desperately seeks to remove an example of Justice Butler's ultimately "siding with law enforcement" simply because Wagner failed to make the case he had promised to make when the court originally granted review, called for written briefs, and even heard oral argument.
CFAF wants you to think that simply because the Supreme Court did not address the merits of whatever claim Wagner was making, that either his conviction was not effectively affirmed by Justice Butler and the rest of the court (which it was) or else was loosed by Justice Butler and at this moment outside lying in wait in your front yard hedge seeking to relieve you of your Karl Lagerfeld handbag at gunpoint.
Either way, CFAF can go pound sand you-know-where, and it's entirely legitimate for Justice Butler to count Wagner for the reason set forth above: The convicted defendant got nothing from any of the courts, including the one on which Butler sits, in the course of challenging his conviction. CFAF's goofball shenanigans do not even rise to the level of being a nice try. Oh, and, don't forget to check out the overwhelmingly significant -CR suffix beside the docket number.
53. State v. Moeck 2003AP000002-CR
54. State v. Anderson 2003AP3478-CR
55. State v. Reed 2003AP1781-CR
56. State v. DeLain 2003AP1253-CR
57. State v. Sykes 2003AP1234-CR
None of the currently interested parties disagree over any of the immediately preceding five cases, and a splendid family values-laden time was had by all.
Nonetheless, special attention is afforded the last of the five, arising as a contemplated action further to a certain identically-named defendant's repeated and ongoing intentional assault and battery against the Truth, the successful prosecution of which often figures prominently and occasionally causatively in the nocturnal emissions of local lefty bloggers.
58. State v. Trujillo 2003AP1463-CR
59. State v. Tucker 2003AP1276-CR
These are the two sentencing cases referenced above, in which Justice Butler wrote identical dissents. More correctly, the dissent in Tucker simply says, in essence, 'See my dissent in Trujillo.' Or is it the other way around. I don't remember. Because it doesn't matter anyway, again, as noted above.
60. State v. Stuart 2001AP1345-CR
See cases 53. through 57., inclusive. Won't you please kiss a family (values) member today (unless they're a conservative Republican, in which case, pretend you don't even know them).
Okay, that's enough for now.
Usinger's Bratwurst, meet Frank's Polish Kraut.
ttfn
To part 11 ...
Furthermore, if I haven't convinced you yet of my two theses, (1) that CFAF's (and that of at least one other) entire project is a phony and disingenuous house of GOP cards erected on rotten stilts and (2) that statements from the Butler campaign further to the question of Justice Butler's recorded disposition in cases involving currently and formerly designated offenders are substantially correct (in fact, to within less than two percentage points, even if you add two cases to Butler's list of 70 that have purely to do with sentencing questions and nothing to do with either convictions or even procedural issues related to the convictions at all) then not only should I give up now, I should have given up long ago. But I started the job and I intend to finish it.
I take care to stress that last proposition in any event, just in case any potential employers and/or clients have been stopping by for a gander, in which case my little series may hopefully be the most elaborate job application and résumé ever constructed in the whole history of biological evolution on our fair and fertile planet.
Thus, as we say in this great and privileged State of the Union, Forward!
51. State v. Raye 2004AP770-CR
Justice Butler joins in its entirety another unanimous opinion reversing a drunk driving conviction. No concurring opinions are issued; in other words, Butler is in complete, unequivocal agreement with the most "conservative" members of the court.
CFAF, having disgorged nearly the entire contents of its briefcase full of trickery, assents.
At what point do we get to call CFAF and Friends, "Loophole Republicans," by the way? A long, long time ago, I reckon. Except in another ancient context, it was as a compliment. So scratch that idea.
52. State v. Wagner 2003AP1878-CR
Another terse, per curiam opinion of the court dismissing Wagner's petition for review of the court of appeals decision, which had affirmed his judgment of conviction in the circuit court for armed robbery. CFAF once again desperately seeks to remove an example of Justice Butler's ultimately "siding with law enforcement" simply because Wagner failed to make the case he had promised to make when the court originally granted review, called for written briefs, and even heard oral argument.
CFAF wants you to think that simply because the Supreme Court did not address the merits of whatever claim Wagner was making, that either his conviction was not effectively affirmed by Justice Butler and the rest of the court (which it was) or else was loosed by Justice Butler and at this moment outside lying in wait in your front yard hedge seeking to relieve you of your Karl Lagerfeld handbag at gunpoint.
Either way, CFAF can go pound sand you-know-where, and it's entirely legitimate for Justice Butler to count Wagner for the reason set forth above: The convicted defendant got nothing from any of the courts, including the one on which Butler sits, in the course of challenging his conviction. CFAF's goofball shenanigans do not even rise to the level of being a nice try. Oh, and, don't forget to check out the overwhelmingly significant -CR suffix beside the docket number.
53. State v. Moeck 2003AP000002-CR
54. State v. Anderson 2003AP3478-CR
55. State v. Reed 2003AP1781-CR
56. State v. DeLain 2003AP1253-CR
57. State v. Sykes 2003AP1234-CR
None of the currently interested parties disagree over any of the immediately preceding five cases, and a splendid family values-laden time was had by all.
Nonetheless, special attention is afforded the last of the five, arising as a contemplated action further to a certain identically-named defendant's repeated and ongoing intentional assault and battery against the Truth, the successful prosecution of which often figures prominently and occasionally causatively in the nocturnal emissions of local lefty bloggers.
58. State v. Trujillo 2003AP1463-CR
59. State v. Tucker 2003AP1276-CR
These are the two sentencing cases referenced above, in which Justice Butler wrote identical dissents. More correctly, the dissent in Tucker simply says, in essence, 'See my dissent in Trujillo.' Or is it the other way around. I don't remember. Because it doesn't matter anyway, again, as noted above.
60. State v. Stuart 2001AP1345-CR
See cases 53. through 57., inclusive. Won't you please kiss a family (values) member today (unless they're a conservative Republican, in which case, pretend you don't even know them).
Okay, that's enough for now.
Usinger's Bratwurst, meet Frank's Polish Kraut.
ttfn
To part 11 ...
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