Bopp protected from Gableman's views: FedSoc

Hard to believe the stuff these Gableman apologists dream up.

Here's something,* objecting to negative reactions to statements made by Indiana lawyer James Bopp, statements made while representing and on behalf of his client, Michael Gableman:

The first big assumption is that every word said by an attorney automatically and verbatim represents the exact personal thoughts of the client.

Nobody even remotely suggested such a thing but, anyway ...

The [Wisconsin] Rules of Professional Conduct state that an attorney’s representation of a client does not constitute an endorsement of the client's "views or activities" (SCR 20:1.2(b)).

Here's how SCR 20:1.2(b) reads:

A lawyer's representation of a client, including representation by appointment, does not constitute an endorsement of the client's political, economic, social or moral views or activities.

In other words, the rule purports to insulate the attorney from having attributed to him the client's views. For obvious reasons, such as a lawyer providing representation to a white supremacist, or to a doctor who performs abortions (as is explained in the Comments published below SCR 20:1.2(b)).

The purpose of the rule is to help ensure that even clients "whose cause is controversial or the subject of popular disapproval" may secure legal representation. Exactly opposite of what the Federalist Society's student recruiter is trying to show, which is that the client is protected from the attorney's political, etc., views. Baloney.

To be sure, SCR 20:1.2(b) protects Bopp against being ascribed the opinions of Gableman by dint of Bopp's legal representation, not the other way around. But what Wisconsin law says, as the learned counsel William Tyroler (who, to the best of my knowledge, is neither from Indiana nor on the FedSoc payroll) put it here some time ago:

"Surrogates" — client Gableman and counsel Bopp enjoy a principal-agent relationship (as do all attorneys and their clients). State v. Divanovic, 200 Wis. 2d 210, 224-25, 546 N.W.2d 501 (Ct. App. 1996) ("The attorney-client relationship is one of agent to principal, and as an agent, the attorney must act in conformity with his or her authority and instructions and is responsible to the principal if he or she violates this duty.") In a word, Bopp is Gableman's mouthpiece. We can assume that Bopp, the agent, utters words approved by and therefore attributable to Gableman, the principal.

Yet the FedSoc official soldiers on nevertheless:

In a similar way, an attorney’s unscripted response to a reporter’s question should not be treated as though it came from the mouth of the attorney’s client as an exact representation of his personal thoughts on the matter.

Nothing but hyperbole here and in any event not similar to the present situation. Moreover, Bopp made substantially identical remarks in court, on the record, in the course of directly presenting Gableman's defense to a panel of three Wisconsin appellate judges.

Live and in person.

Agent Jim Bopp's statements are reasonably understood as those of his principal, Michael Gableman. That's what the law says.

And I clearly recall a number of occasions when Gableman promised to follow the law (as opposed to following the rules, which seems to have been an endeavor more distinguished by its arbitrariness).

* Intriguing too, is the Federalist Society employee's own objection to Justice Butler's disposition toward the accused's right to present evidence in his defense at trial: Forest Shomberg is innocent.

Is it any wonder, then, that he would champion Bopp's strategeries?

Yeah, this is the Big Bopper speakin'

David Ziemer is a bit more upset with the Capital Times than I was.

Ziemer, who contributes exemplary reportage and analysis to the Wisconsin Law Journal, thinks it was pretty irresponsible of the Cap Times to suggest that Mike Gableman shares the personal views of his attorney.

To be sure, Ziemer is correct and the more firmly grounded assumption is that Gableman retained Indiana lawyer James Bopp, Jr. on account of the latter's enhanced competence and expertise in that field where election law and freedom of speech intersect.

But that doesn't mean his selection is insignificant. Because Bopp probably wanted the case as much as Gableman wanted him on it. Bopp is into challenging these restrictions all over the country.

Bopp is also lead counsel in another action currently pending before a federal court in Wisconsin, Siefert v. Alexander.

John Siefert is a Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge who is likewise challenging the constitutionality of several provisions of the State's Supreme Court Rules, the ones pertaining to partisan political activities and direct fundraising by judicial candidates.

The adverse party, James Alexander, is the executive director of the Wisconsin Judicial Commission, which administers the SCRs.

Judge Siefert will be up for reelection in 2011, and he wants to participate in those activities which the Rules currently forbid. He (and Bopp) argues that judges can maintain those associations while not compromising their ability to remain fair and impartial in deciding cases. It's a not unreasonable suggestion.

But the provision Gableman is attacking, SCR 60.06(3)(c), is different from the ones Judge Siefert is going after. It has to do with defaming one's electoral rivals, which is probably something self-respecting candidates for the State's highest court shouldn't be engaging in and maybe even face sanctions when they do.

Defamation is generally not found among the absolutely protected categories of speech (such as virtual child pornography, American flag burning, and conservative talk radio).

Indeed, Gableman/Bopp expressly acknowledge that aspect of the Rule's intent, except they claim that its language isn't crafted narrowly enough to achieve that goal and that the Rule serves to capture and proscribe non-defamatory statements as well.

Maybe so, but that's why there's a judicial commission to evaluate and assess individual complaints arising under the Rules.

This is one among Gableman/Bopp's numerous objections, of course, including their defense that the "allegedly" misleading advertisement was simply an innocent and informative collection of disconnected, objectively true statements in no sense meant to suggest or imply anything further about Gableman's political opponent.

Yeah, right. As if the ad wasn't making a broader statement, the sum of its parts so to speak, supported additionally by the insidious visual and aural elements. It was also frankly demeaning and insulting to its intended audience and others, but that's a separate question and there's no Rule against overtly cynical, grasping political ambition.

Rather, it occasionally merits both encouragement and reward.

As Isthmus news editor Bill Lueders puts it,

Gableman wants the rule struck down, so future judicial candidates can more freely lie their way into office. What a fitting legacy that would be for Justice Gableman.

That's not an entirely unfair assessment, if you ask me.

Yet Justice Gableman's detractors had better start to brace themselves. If I were a betting man, I'd wager SCR 60.06(3)(c) will not survive First Amendment scrutiny, if this case happens to get that far. Nor would I consider it much cause for celebration.

But for Bopp/Gableman, it would be victory and vindication. Which is, to co-opt from the thrust of Gableman's legal attack against the Rule, also both prima facie wrong and especially wrong as applied.

Quote of the day II: Gableman edition

Remarkable:

"Attorney Bopp's comments are irrelevant to the disciplinary proceeding ... " — Marquette professor of law Rick Esenberg

This is a unique perspective, considering the Attorney Bopp comments at issue were delivered before three appeals court judges last September during the disciplinary proceeding.

That is, they're part of the record of the disciplinary proceeding, which is slated to go before the Wisconsin Supreme Court on April 16 and they go directly to the question of Gableman's willfulness to violate the Wisconsin code of judicial conduct, precisely the manner of behavior the Wisconsin Judicial Commission alleges.*

In fact Bopp's mini-jeremiad issued forth in response to questions from the panel of judges requesting Bopp, the legal agent of Gableman, to explain the rationale behind Gableman's teevee advertisement, the very object of the disciplinary proceeding.

Perhaps Prof. Esenberg is distinguishing between Bopp's presentation on the record and his presentation to reporters after the hearing.

But not even Gableman, in his motion to recuse another Supreme Court justice from hearing oral arguments in the disciplinary proceeding, distinguishes between the two sets of commentary:

In [his separately authored concurrence], Justice Crooks condemned statements made by Attorney James Bopp, Jr. ... during oral argument before the Judicial Conduct Panel and to the press afterward.

Gableman seems to think they're mighty relevant indeed, as he's clearly out to protect his own bacon from the ill-advised public declarations of own attorney.

More specifically, he's looking to insulate himself from the perception Attorney Bopp's commentary created in a member of the tribunal before whom Gableman is to be judged, which is certainly one of the broader ironies to have emerged pursuant to this whole escapade.

Here, by the way, is a useful quote from Liteky v. United States, the sole case Gableman cites in his motion to recuse Justice Crooks:

The judge who presides at a trial may, upon completion of the evidence, be exceedingly ill disposed towards the defendant, who has been shown to be a thoroughly reprehensible person. But the judge is not thereby recusable for bias or prejudice, since his knowledge and the opinion it produced were properly and necessarily acquired in the course of the proceedings, and are indeed sometimes (as in a bench trial) necessary to completion of the judge's task.

That's Justice Scalia, writing for a majority of the Court, supposedly in support of Gableman's efforts to un-preside Patrick Crooks.

Gableman's disciplinary proceeding is currently in its third year.

* The WJC has said repeatedly that Gableman "lied."

Gableman recusal motions keep piling up

This one comes from prominent defense attorney Dean A. Strang.

We have not seen this latest motion, which was filed Monday, but Prof. Richard Esenberg of Marquette Law School assures us their "rationale" is "primarily (though not quite entirely) based on the now infamous Reuben Mitchell ad and certain statements made by Gableman's lawyer, Jim Bopp, in the course of defending Justice Gableman on ethics charges stemming from the ad."

Those two things. "Not quite entirely" = certain understatement.

Bopp: It is a loophole, that had nothing to do with [Mitchell's] guilt or innocence.

Judge Snyder: "Loophole" has kind of an emotional ring to it. It wasn't so much a loophole as it just was a properly argued application of the rape shield law, was it not?

Bopp: Well, uh, it turned out to be, yes.

Yes, somehow the argument was magically transformed from "a loophole" to "not a loophole." Please. Either it was or it wasn't.

The law didn't change. Nay, not one jot nor tittle, as they say.

And we have yet to hear Mr. Bopp explain how the admission or non-admission of evidence* — upon which juries base their findings of guilt or innocence — has nothing to do with guilt or innocence.

Apparently had a jury found Mitchell not guilty, Mr. Bopp would have nevertheless found him guilty and yet accused others of a "willingness to subvert our system." In the course of defending Mike Gableman.

Of course Bopp has a First Amendment right to mouth absurdities.

Coincidentally, a notorious and "shadowy" third-party Mike Gableman fan club, the Coalition For America's Families, brazenly courted a defamation suit for pulling a similar stunt, pronouncing guilty a defendant whose conviction had been reversed. With friends like these, etc.

This is how these people think, and every indication is that Mike Gableman thinks this way too. And that is what these motions for recusal are primarily based upon, not simply two discrete events.

* In this case, evidence that is barred by the Wisconsin legislature, a fact both acknowledged and affirmed by a unanimous Supreme Court.

Thanks, conservative Republicans!

For taking credit where there is none to be had:

Mark Block, State director for Americans for Prosperity, said his group's filing forced the board to back down more quickly in the case it agreed to settle Tuesday.

Makes sense. That explains why One Wisconsin Now, and not Americans For Prosperity, is party to the proposed settlement.*

And here's our old pal Jim Bopp:

The proposed settlement "indicates that (the GAB) feels they are really concerned that the rule was unconstitutional, or they would be mounting a vigorous defense," Bopp said.

I doubt that. More likely, OWN demonstrated successfully that the rule would apply to some speakers that the rule wasn't necessarily formulated to reach. That doesn't make the rule unconstitutional, it only makes its application in certain situations unconstitutional.

The rule itself may still survive — and perhaps even many of its applications. (Atty. Bopp knows this, obviously. It's just that he's a bit less of a constitutional lawyer than he is a professional Republican rabble-rouser.)

Mr. Bopp is perhaps best known in Wisconsin for his representation of State judge Michael Gableman. The Wisconsin Judicial Commission filed an ethics complaint against the judge in 2008, which Gableman and Bopp fought unsuccessfully to have dismissed.

* An Obama appointee is expected to confer his blessing today. Conservatives can (and probably will) take credit for this as well. It goes as follows: 'See, if we hadn't arbitrarily and capriciously obstructed Obama's nomination of Louis Butler, he'd have got this case and shut us all up and confiscated our firearms in the process.'

Gableman's revisionist "success"

Says the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

[James Bopp] successfully argued in 2009 that State Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman could not be disciplined for a campaign ad that said opponent Louis Butler "found a loophole" while representing a sex offender appealing his conviction.

If by successfully argued you mean failed to win your motion to dismiss, sure. More generally, success is measured by succeeding.

Once again: the party arguing the "loopholes" was the State. Butler's position obtained from the plain language of the Wisconsin statute which barred the victim's prior sexual history from being introduced as evidence at trial.* And ten out of ten appellate judges agreed.

Under different circumstances self-described conservatives assert their faithful devotion to the law's plain language, except when as a matter of political expediency hypocrisy is more convenient.

And all three judges who heard Bopp's oral presentation — convened on Gableman's motion, it's important to emphasize — nevertheless found that Gableman violated the State code of judicial ethics.

So it's not clear to me where success enters into any of this.

The entire parade of ugly circumstances, initiated by Michael Gableman and carried forward by James Bopp, was a blight.

* Atty. Bopp: It is a loophole, that had nothing to do with [the defendant's] guilt or innocence.

Judge Snyder: 'Loophole' has kind of an emotional ring to it. It wasn't so much a loophole as it just was a properly argued application of the rape shield law, was it not?

Atty. Bopp: Well, uh, it turned out to be, yes.

No, it didn't "turn out to be." It was all along, right from day one.

Gableman's wise counsel

Indiana's James Bopp, Jr. is the point man for Michael Gableman's ongoing legal defense against charges Gableman violated a Wisconsin statute by engaging in willful judicial misconduct during his election campaign for the State Supreme Court in 2008.

James Bopp, Jr. is a member of the Republican National Committee (Yo My Little Homies) and in that capacity has drafted a resolution to rename the Democratic Party the "Democrat Socialist Party."

James Bopp, Jr. is also a bit of a nut:

Wrote Bopp, "Just as President Reagan's identification of the Soviet Union as the 'evil empire' galvanized opposition to communism, we hope that the accurate depiction of the Democrats as a Socialist Party will galvanize opposition to their march to socialism."

Or how about renaming the Republican Party the "Axis of Crazy."

Politico.com.

GOP leader less than 79-⅞% pure Republican

Bopp's resolution would require Republican candidates to agree to at least 8 of 10 positions — on issues including abortion, immigration, same-sex marriage and health care — or face an automatic cutoff in financing and institutional support from the Republican National Committee.

Said Bopp of the Republican elected to the Senate from Massachusetts, "Scott Brown passes the test with flying colors."

Steele's eyes widened when told of Mr. Bopp's assertion. "Mr. Bopp is sort of fudging the descriptions there a little bit," he said, reflecting a view that Mr. Brown would not pass the test.

Dateline Honolulu

Wisconsin's award-winning justice

Albeit not a particularly coveted award:

Lying Hypocrite of the Year: Michael Gableman
The most recent inductee into Wisconsin's once-honorable Supreme Court isn't a great legal mind or even especially qualified. But he got elected in 2008 with big-time help from big business and a campaign ad falsely suggesting his opponent found a loophole to let a child molester re-offend. Faced with a Judicial Commission complaint, he argued that the deliberately misleading ad couldn't be punished because its component parts were true. In other words, noted one judge who recommended tossing the charges, he found a loophole! Here's a 100% true statement: Justice Gableman is a disgrace.

Bill Lueders, making me feel chaste and demure by comparison.

Jim Bopp [Gableman's defense lawyer*]: It is a loophole, that had nothing to do with [Mitchell's] guilt or innocence.

Judge Snyder: "Loophole" has kind of an emotional ring to it. It wasn't so much a loophole as it just was a properly argued application of the rape shield law, was it not?

Bopp: Well, uh, it turned out to be, yes.

That little exchange is always good for a mordant chuckle. Atty. Bopp is no dummy; he knows what total bullshit it is he's defending.

* Who hails not from Wisconsin but from Terre Haute (which — irony of all ironies — translates roughly as "higher ground"), Indiana.

It's a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it. And it's funny, because Reuben Lee Mitchell had a constitutional right to Louis Butler's representation, whereas Gableman has none to Jim Bopp's, his current and ongoing predicament being a civil controversy (although there's nothing at all civil about the cheap sleaze at the heart of it).

Gableman's restatement of the law

An Indiana lawyer, speaking on behalf of a Wisconsin Supreme Court justice, reveals his view of the adversarial system of American law:

Reporter: Let me ask you first of all, [regarding] the contention from [the Wisconsin Judicial Commission], that it really hinges on that final statement, 'Mitchell went on to rape again.' Without the argument that using the word 'loophole' implies that he was set free because of Justice Butler in some way, what does that final statement have to do with Louis Butler?

Jim Bopp: Well, it's the type of person that he was willing to represent, and the type of person that he was willing to find a loophole for. It had everything to do with Justice Butler's, uh, judgment, that he was willing to find a loophole to let such a heinous — or to relieve — such a heinous criminal from responsibility for his crime. Whatever that meant, in terms of finding a loophole.

Justice Butler at the time, as a criminal defense lawyer, was urging that Mitchell get, be released. In fact the Court of Appeals ordered him to be released* based upon this loophole. And so it has to do with [Butler's] judgment and his willingness to subvert our system of criminal, uh, bringing criminals into account. That's what it has to do with.

Can a judge who sits on Wisconsin's Supreme Court possibly agree with this proposition, that exercising the constitutionally guaranteed right to effective counsel in criminal matters is "subversion"?

Is this an accurate reflection of Michael Gableman's own attitude when he's sitting in judgment of an appeal in a criminal case?

I'm not aware that the United States Constitution distinguishes among the "types of person" that are entitled to representation.

And I hardly think that seeking a new trial for a defendant against whom evidence was admitted in contravention of the plain language of a Wisconsin statute has anything to do with a willingness to "relieve" the defendant from responsibility for a particular charge.

Whatever one might derive from or say about Gableman's defense against his ethics charges, it is not an especially admirable one. Indeed, it's offensive, in at least two separate senses of the word.

Yesterday when the WJC's counsel was asked, "Who is really harmed?" by Gableman's celebrated television advertisement, counsel responded that it was primarily "the institution of the courts."

That may well be but I believe a far better argument could be made that the individual who suffered the most harm in this affair is Michael Gableman himself. And he continues to suffer harm by way of this manner of statement made by his attorney.

Of course the correct answer to the reporter's question is: Nothing. It's only there in support of the claim-by-implications that Louis Butler's actions were in some way causally connected with the crime.

But the correct answer would not serve Michael Gableman's past — and apparently current and perhaps even future — purposes.

* In fact, this is false. That court made no such order.

It's more than a little ironic that Mr. Jim Bopp would make such an obviously false statement of the record in a case where he's defending the "literal truth" of each and every of his own assertions.

Clearly, Mitchell's "release" and subsequent offense were meant to be causally connected by Gableman to Butler's having "found a loophole," which is what the Judicial Commission's allegations are all about.

Yet Mr. Bopp claimed yesterday, on the record:

There is no effort to attribute the finding of the loophole to his release and subsequent molestation of a child. There is no claim made that that is the sequence of events or the result of the finding of the loophole.

It's extremely difficult to imagine anyone actually believing this.

Whosoever does believe it perhaps could be summoned from among Mr. Jim Bopp's speculative collection of speculative persons who would find nothing morally objectionable about raping 11-year-old children with learning disabilities.

Unfortunately yesterday's proceedings dwelt more on the individual veracity of particular "statements" — English sentences removed from context — than the "statement" so obviously conveyed by the advertisement itself in toto, complete with visual and aural effects.

Bopplicity

Madison's Capital Times this morning runs a couple of paragraphs about James Bopp, Jr., the Indiana lawyer who is handling the Wisconsin Judicial Commission's complaint against Mike Gableman.

Beneath the headline Gableman hires anti-abortion attorney to fight ethics charges, the Cap Times reporter infers:

If there was any question as to where newly elected Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman stands on abortion or, for that matter, on a host of other social issues, his choice of attorney should provide some clues.

I don't know about that. Obviously abortion has nothing to do with the present action* and Bopp, Jr. is one of the go-to guys nationally on any number of right-wing causes célèbre.

Rather, it was Gableman himself who telegraphed his stances with the magic phrases "judicial conservative" and "plain language of the law," recited ad nauseam throughout his campaign (as if only "judicial conservatives" begin their inquiries with the "plain language of the law" — the point is, the plain language of two laws conflicting often creates ambiguities, which are what appeals courts are called upon to resolve, notwithstanding Gableman's sloganeering).

In any event, so long as the Roe v. Wade line of cases stands and Democrats control both Wisconsin legislative bodies, Gableman's legal opinion on abortion is unlikely to see the light of day.

Then again, if Gableman manages to survive his ten-year term and the tail end of it is served under President Sarah Palin along with Chief Justice Joe the Plumber, that could change.

Miles Davis — Boplicity (1949)

* Although some of the cases Bopp is likely to rely on in support of his First Amendment argument do. Not abortion per se, but the right of electioneering judges to speak about their views during campaigns.

What does Gableman think of this lawyer?

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports that Albert Earl Ellis, who is charged with the serial killing of seven local women, has retained defense counsel.

Attorney Russell J.A. Jones announced Ellis, 49, is not responsible for the deaths.

On Wednesday Gableman's own lawyer, Mr. Jim Bopp of Terre Haute, IN, criticized another former defense attorney's "judgment" for being "willing to relieve a criminal from responsibility for his crime."

Mr. Jim Bopp, who represents Michael Gableman in an ongoing judicial ethics investigation in which Gableman stands accused of lying during the course of a political campaign, characterized the activities of defense attorneys as the "willingness to subvert our system of bringing criminals into account."

Where is the subversion exactly, one can't help but wonder.

Does it reside with lawyers performing obligations that are constitutionally guaranteed to criminal defendants, or with a State Supreme Court justice who holds such disparaging views of them?

Or maybe Gableman needs to distance himself from the opinions of his attorney.* After all, he's sitting in judgment of criminal appeals.

In the meantime, it makes even more sense today why a Milwaukee lawyer is seeking Gableman's recusal from his own criminal appeal.

Perhaps his recusal should be sought in every single one of them.

(Amusingly, Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen called the motions for recusal "an attack on our system of electing judges." Van Hollen may wish to reconsider who is launching an attack on what.)

* As in, by publicly and unequivocally denouncing them. Although that may be problematic, as Mr. Bopp's views were expressed in service of explaining the message of Judge Gableman's political campaign.

Speaking as the agent of Michael Gableman. In court. On the record.

Who's paying Mike Gableman's lawyer Viet Dinh?

Or, for that matter, his "Master of Disaster"?

Gableman's attorney, Viet Dinh of Washington, D.C., said the resolution was nothing more than a partisan political attack that "reveals the underlying motivation and insidious nature of the attacks against Justice Gableman." — via the AP's Scott Bauer

I hope it's not much, if that's the best he can come up with. Poor Gableman. He's being attacked. What goes around comes around dude.

Mike Gableman attacks his own current colleagues fer chrissakes.

And who paid the infamous out-of-State agitator Jim Bopp? Bopp, Esq. of Terre Haute did the heavy lifting in Gableman's ethics case.* So effective was Bopp's counsel that he actually caused Justice N. Patrick Crooks to change his mind from favorable to adverse pursuant to a motion for disqualification filed against Gableman in a criminal appeal.

* And who paid Federalist Society member Anita Y. Woudenberg?

Mike Gableman is a walking make-work project for Republican lawyers.

Reporters need to read legal opinions

Or else ask somebody who has. According to the Badger Herald:

Crooks said that Bopp's comments "startled and appalled many in the legal community," and he called on Gableman to distance himself from the lawyer's views.

No, Justice Crooks did not "call on Gableman to distance himself from the lawyer's views." Justice Crooks simply observed that a recent statement of Gableman's pledging to treat "all persons fairly" did not include a repudiation of Bopp's comments. That's just a plain fact.

Justice Crooks's overarching point was that Gableman's lawyer Bopp's remarks turned up in supplemental filings to Aaron Antonio Allen's initial request to have Gableman recused from hearing his criminal appeal and the court was giving short shrift to those additional factors by refusing to order additional briefing on the matter.

A reporter should know the difference between reporting and advocacy, a particularly crucial distinction in this instance, where no such advocacy exists. Gableman also claims that Justice Crooks's observation is a "rebuke" and a "gratuitous personal attack," but neither of these hyperbolic accusations is supported by the record.

Gableman set his own table. He sure ain't no victim.

"Shut up," free speech advocate explained

Idea was "ridiculous ... nuts," the plainly annoyed Bopp was told

Wouldn't Bopp be more welcome among the Tea faction?

Walker judicial team brings the Gableman defense

Governor Scott Walker's judicial selection committee (.pdf; 3 pgs.) includes Michael Best & Friedrich partner Eric McLeod, who represented Supreme Court Justice/Gableman in the latter's unsuccessful bid to have a Wisconsin Judicial Commission ethics complaint against him dismissed.

Gableman was accused of lying in a Statewide election in 2008, Year of Our Lord. McLeod and Jim Bopp, a lawyer from Indiana, prepared Gableman's defense. I understand it's fallacious to attribute the client's views to his counsel — after all, that's what Justice/Gableman did in his unprecedentedly sleazy teevee ad* — but the judiciary is all about politics for the Walker administration, so why shouldn't it be for everybody else?

Put another way, you don't want to be cynical, but they force you.

Therefore if this is the message Walker wants to send, good for him, and if it energizes his detractors, all the better. Go for it, by all means.

On the other hand when three of the four self-described "conservative" justices who recently invented a novel form of judicial authority — which otherwise is supposed to derive from the State constitution, by the way, a connexion claimed yet ironically denied by the four "conservatives" to both the State's elected representatives and the trial judge in that case — are subject to ethics investigations and/or formal ethics complaints, it's presumed that Walker's selection committee couldn't do much worse.

Scott Walker's team also includes a fellow Gableman alumnus of Hamline University who, Walker's crack communications specialists advise us, "is currently practicing in the area of . . . Land Lord Tennant Law."

Good grief.

* Moreover, McLeod's co-counsel went so far as to malign the integrity of his client's rival by belittling him as the "type of person" who would take on a criminal case. In fact Bopp, Esq.'s remarks** were so offensive to those concerned with professional ethics that they induced Justice Patrick Crooks to switch his vote from dismissing a set of motions to have Justice/Gableman recused from criminal cases to granting those motions. That alone is a big deal and an even bigger deal that Crooks decided to make public his decision and his reasons for making it.

And it's why Lester Pines ruefully opined that nobody whoever practiced criminal defense — the right to which is guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution — could ever be a Supreme Court justice, which is most probably true, thanks to the cynical manipulation of Wisconsin's system of electing them by dishonest Republican politicians like Mike Gableman.

As was noted here in April, 2008, it's not the voters who can't be trusted when it comes to electing Supreme Court judges. It's the candidates.

** And it's not fallacious to attribute the counsel's views to the client.

Ronald Reagan denied GOP blessings

What madcap antics has Gableman's lawyer got up to now

Bopp, James Bopp.

Bopp forgets who client is

A real piece of work:

Bopp said he never said anything disparaging the right to counsel and that the State Bar was hypocritical because his comments came as part of his defense of Gableman.

"They are criticizing me for the zealousness of my representation," he said.

When you are speaking for a justice of the Supreme Court it does not diminish the zealousness of one's defense of him to refrain from disparaging the justice system itself. On the contrary.

There are many strategies, all at least equally zealous, which do not include for presenting a justice of the Supreme Court as harboring animosity against a certain class of defendants and their counsel.

You'd think this would be self-evident.

Gableman lawyer vs. Michael Steele

According to Politico.com, national Republicans are planning an "extraordinary special session" next week to officially rebrand the Democratic Party the "Democrat Socialist Party."

The resolution is, it will be recalled, the brainchild of one James Bopp, Jr., who is currently retained to defend the beleaguered Wisconsin judge Michael Gableman against State ethics charges.

When asked if such a resolution would force Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele to use that label when talking about Democrats in all his speeches and press releases, an RNC member replied: "Who cares?"

You'd think the GOP might be a little more concerned with its own sense of party unity in advance of a ridiculous attempt to tar its opponents as a bunch of Marxist-Leninists. But no.

Meanwhile the leader of the actual Democratic Socialists of America, Frank Llewellyn, appears to have a much firmer grip on rudimentary political theory than does the zany James Bopp:

"It’s objectionable," said Llewellyn, "because they’re giving socialism a bad name by associating it with the Democrats, who are the second-most capitalist party in the world. The election of this president, sadly, hasn’t changed that."

Washington Independent

Who, exactly, is to blame?

Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser writes:

The Allen motion ... has been followed by nine additional recusal motions against members of this court [seven of which are "against" Gableman]. The Wisconsin State Public Defender's office has invited the entire defense bar to file recusal motions against [Gableman] in criminal cases. The number and savagery of these motions is unprecedented and amounts to a frontal assault on the court. The court should have denied Allen's motion quickly, without comment. This would have avoided exposing controversy within the court.

Or, alternatively, Gableman should have anticipated the controversy that he engendered by engaging in scurrilous political subterfuge.

Savagery, indeed. Sorry, but it's mighty hard to sympathize.

That the court today divided 3-3 on Allen's motion to disqualify Gableman (who did not participate*) means the motion is neither granted nor denied.** Notably, Justice Patrick Crooks wrote separately to indicate that he was fully prepared to deny Allen's motion, thus providing a fourth and decisive vote in that direction, had it not been for Atty. James Bopp's shenanigans as Gableman's defense lawyer during and after Gableman's hearing on ethics charges in September.

So beware those nasty unintended consequences. Heckuva job, etc.

* Which may seem obvious, but according to the lead opinion, Gableman was undecided for some time over whether to participate on the more impersonal question of whether the court, as an institution, had the authority to overrule an individual judge of that court's own decision not to disqualify himself from a case.

** Rather, the motion is "not granted." Furthermore, as Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson put it: "As a practical matter, Justices Prosser, Roggensack, and Ziegler are implicitly telling all litigants in Wisconsin that they need to go to the federal courts to seek relief from a Wisconsin justice who they believe is biased."

Perhaps that's another clue as to the meaning of "Federalist Society."

Earlier: Bopp's demagoguing was completely unnecessary.