Sumi's Son has a Life of His Own! How Dare She Rule Against the Troika and its New Wisconsin Order!

Krakatoa, East of Java




Andrew Breitbart, a national conservative commentator, supports a blog called "Big Government" that has uncovered earthshaking news.  I mean Krakatoa stuff.  It exposes Judge Maryann Sumi for having a son who once worked for a union!!!   Can you imagine anyone more incomprehensibly venal than a judge who refuses to recuse herself from a case in which unions are not involved as litigants because her son once worked for a union back in 2008?  Here is the damning evidence cited by Mr. Breitbart's editor:

This is a problem. Judge Maryann Sumi should have recused herself entirely from the Wisconsin battle due to her inability to be neutral in this case. You see, Maryann Sumi has a clear conflict of interest. Her son is a political operative who also happens to be a former lead field manager with the AFL-CIO and data manager for the SEIU State Council. Both the SEIU and the AFL-CIO have members who are public-sector employees in Wisconsin. In fact, as a federation, the AFL-CIO can boast of several member-unions that represent public-sector employees. Maryann Sumi is hardly an unbiased judge in the matter. . . .

one ironic twist to this whole sordid affair is that Maryann Sumi apparently gave a speech in 2007 entitled “Judicial Decision Making: Activism or Accountability?”

No reference to any code of judicial ethics that supports the assertion that she should have recused herself.  The rule on self-recusal is SCR 60.04(4) and you can read it for yourself, but common sense, generally from which such rules and laws are derived, tells you it does not apply to Judge Sumi.   The blog post is just the typical right-wing ranting in an effort to have its readers hang their common sense in the hall closet and sit around bemoaning the evil world of liberalism that surrounds them.  Judging from the comments on the post, it works wonders at achieving that result.

Those who publish this kind of faux expose, and those they fire up with it, are walking testimonials for the need to be spending more money rather than less on public education.