Pat Lucey resigns as Co-Chair of Justice Prosser's Re-Election Campaign and endorses Joanne Kloppenburg

WISC Channel 15 in Madison reported tonight at 8:30 that former Wisconsin Governor Pat Lucey has resigned as co-chair of David Prosser's reelection campaign and is now endorsing Joanne Kloppenburg.

National Tea Party Rally in DC Today - Don't Blink. You Might Have Missed It.

Rep. Michelle Bachman (R) Minnesota










The Tea Party Patriots Movement held its Continuing Revolution Rally on the east side of the Capitol building in Washington, DC today at noon.  Here is the report from the Christian Science Monitor:

Money Quotes with my comments interspersed:

It was a chilly, drizzly day in the middle of the week, but tea party activists still turned out a couple of hundred supporters Thursday at a rally near the Capitol.

Hey, Tea Party Patriots, check out the picture below from Wisconsin's Capitol on February 26th, Snowstorm and 17 degrees, 65,000 protestors.  The Weather Channel had it at 42 degrees and mostly cloudy in Washington today just before the Tea Party rally began.

The Tea Party Caucus organizer – and possible presidential candidate – Rep. Michele Bachmann (R) of Minnesota showed off her crowd-rallying skill in a rousing pep talk.

She is such a big draw as well because of her crowd-rallying skills.

“It’s so wonderful to see that all of you are still fighting,” Congresswoman Bachmann said. “There are people here in Washington, D.C., who thought after the November election that you were all going to go home and go back to sleep. Is that true?”

“No!” the crowd shouted back.

"No" thundered the crowd of 200, which according to Politco, included speakers, news people, and probably some passersbys. One reporter said Mike Pence, a Republican congressman from Indiana, who's a Tea Party favorite, admitted to a reporter that news crews made up about half the crowd estimated at 200. Just check out the picture above.

On the nascent 2012 presidential race, tea partyers interviewed at Thursday’s rally were all over the map. One attendee from Washington, D.C., who declined to give his name, said he was initially excited about former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R), but was now interested in billionaire Donald Trump, because of his focus on President Obama’s birth certificate.

Now there is a really strong new issue issue to run on, Obama's birth certificate. Trump is like a plant for the Dems. Kind of seems like Alvin Greene in the U.S. Senate race in South Carolina in November.  Trump makes the GOP look goofy everytime he opens his mouth.  Even Bill O'Reilly found himself throwing up in his mouth interviewing the guy recently. But Trump is what passes for a Republican candidate in the Tea Party era.

The turn-out was so patheticly small  in Washington for the Tea Party event, I first suspected it was a Washington or Virginia based chapter only.  But not so.  I Googled the event and found dozens of states' Tea Party organization exhorting their membership to go to Washington today.

The Capitol Square has been very quiet for the last several weeks.  With Judge Sumi declaring that Act 10 has not been properly published, and is not in force, perhaps it is time for another Tea Party Rally on the Capitol Square to support the Walker administration.  Come on Tea Party, show us your numbers!  But don't use any painter's tape.

Brief Hiatus (Maybe not brief enough?)

I am leaving early tomorrow to drive to sunny South Carolina.  I will be taking a break from the adventures and misadventures in Wisconsin and adding my two cents here.

Hope both of you notice.

Back on Sunday.

KG

Classiest Politicians in America - Installment 3 - Scott Fitzgerald

Senator Scott Fitzgerald, (R) Juneau
Senate Majority Leader












Senator Scott Fitzgerald's Statement today on the revised TRO issued by Judge Sumi this morning:

“Once again, one Dane County judge is doing everything she can to stand in the way of our efforts to improve the economy and create jobs. The fact that the prosecution didn’t even request an amended TRO makes it clear: this is judicial activism at its worst.

“There are 17 branches of the Dane County Circuit Court. To say that any one of them has more authority to make laws in Wisconsin than the elected Legislature is ridiculous.”

It's amazing that a politician can be so inane in just two very short paragraphs of two sentences each.  It's almost difficult to know where to start in addressing how bone-headed the statement is.  It's as if some reject from Rush Limbaugh's radio staff had been hired to come up from Florida and author these statements for Sen. Fitzgerald unaware that the vast majority of Wisconsinites can still reach up and find that the backs of their heads are there.

Let's start with the last paragraph first.  It is cleverly worded (In all likelihood by dumb luck, like the proverbial 1,000,000 monkeys sitting at keyboards and eventually replicating Hamlet.)  In one sense Senator Fitzgerald can be seen as saying none of those 17 liberal Dane County Judges has the power that is being exerted here.  There is presumably a wide spectrum of political beliefs on the Dane County bench and, under this reading, once again Sen. Fitzgerald has deliberately chosen to try to paint the Dane County Circuit Court with the liberal bias brush.  Lawyers seldom have a reliable picture of what they are going to get in terms of philosophical bents in their cases in Dane County, so I doubt very much that Scott Fitzgerald has the solid scoop on Dane County judges.

Judge are temperate, not intemperate. They work hard at being non-partisan.  Thus, it's hard to imagine any Dane County judge, or judge in any other county, saying something publicly on the order of:  "Gee, if the Republicans hadn't had their heads firmly up their keisters when they rushed things through the conference committee on March 9, 2011, poor Judge Sumi wouldn't be having to put up with all the abuse she is taking."  But I wouldn't put it past them to be thinking it, regardless of political leaning, since it is such a rational thought to have. 

In another sense, the last paragraph can be viewed as singling Judge Sumi out as the one judge of 17, or in a small subset of 17, who would be prone due to liberal bias to act unlawfully.  I posted earlier about the public attacks on Judge Sumi, both dopey and comical.  I won't go back over that ground.  What I will say is that Judge Sumi took substantially the same oath of office that Scott Fitzgerald took, to act in defense of the state's constitution.  If it is determined ultimately in the lawsuit that the Open Meetings Law is grounded in the Wisconsin Constitution, as I believe will surely happen, then we will ultimately know whether Judge Sumi or Senator Fitzgerald has done a better job living up to the oath of office.  We already know which person is showing more respect for a co-equal branch of govenrment.

Now to paragraph one.  Judge Sumi has repeatedly made clear that she is not addressing whether Act 10 is a good law, a bad law, or a middling law.  That's clearly not her job. I doubt that Senator Fitzgerald is right when he says that Judge Sumi wants to see the economy remain in the doldrums.  Frankly, the possibility of cuts to funding for the staffing of the judicial branch, of DA's and public defenders, should have all sane judges saying prayers for a rapid improvement in the state's economy. Judge Sumi is a sane judge.

Senator Fitzgerald claims the TRO wasn't even requested.  I don't know as I sit here whether DA Ozanne asked  for the modification of the TRO, or whether Judge Sumi acted after seeing all the press releases from GOP sources indicating that no one wearing red ties intended to pay any heed to her March 28th order.  I will accept the premise that she acted sua sponte, after hearing her order was in the process of being ignored.  If you don't know the meaning of sua sponte, it means the court takes an action on its own authority, rather than at the request of a party to the lawsuit.  That's the formal Black's Law Dictionary definition.  In the context of this case, sua sponte is more aptly defined as:  "If you folks in charge of state government are going to keep acting like a law unto yourselves, I am going to at least make it crystal clear to the citizens of this state what you are doing."  Judge Sumi did not have to have anyone ask her to modify her order.  She had the inherent authority, and frankly duty, to act in order to protect the authority of and respect for the judicial system.

The GOP has screwed up the effort to put the budget repair bill in place from start (springing it on the public after not campaigning on it) to middle (banging the gavel down on poor Peter Barca at the improperly noticed conference committee meeting) to finish (directing the LRB to publish Act 10, thinking there was some loophole in Judge Sumi's original TRO to exploit).  Scott Fitzgerald is continuing to try to take the focus off his own inadequacies as a majority leader by attacking Judge Sumi.  Through his new attacks, here is what he want Wisconsinites to forget:

Green Bay Press Gazette endorsed Joanne Kloppenburg Today.

Green Bay Press Gazette endorsed Joanne Kloppenburg today.





Money Quotes:

During her campaign, Kloppenburg has made every effort — sometimes, almost to a fault — to articulate and emphasize her independence, a quality we agree is critical for justices to rule fairly. During an interview with the Green Bay Press-Gazette editorial board, the assistant attorney general expressed a reluctance to discuss certain cases that have come before the high court — or that might — ostensibly for fear of betraying any inkling of preconceived bias. And while we understand and appreciate this emphasis on independence, Kloppenburg's reticence puts her in danger of coming across as uninformed. We do not believe this is the case.

Further, Kloppenburg strikes us as the more levelheaded candidate, and frankly we have been troubled by some of Prosser's statements throughout the campaign. During a meeting with the Press-Gazette editorial board, Prosser said repeatedly the Impartial Justice Act, which provides public funding for state Supreme Court candidates, was designed to oust him from office. At one point, he went so far as to call it "a law designed to get Dave Prosser," and said he had "a target on my back." His insistence that this is the case is unsettling.

During a tense March 21 debate at Marquette University, Prosser made an unnecessarily awkward statement about a posting on Kloppenburg's Facebook page, inquiring whether he was the "turd" to which a poster referred. Any legitimate point Prosser, a former Republican lawmaker, may have had about the nature of the campaign was lost in this odd exchange, which we also find troubling. Taken together, statements such as these indicate Kloppenburg is the more levelheaded of the two candidates. This, combined with her experience and insistence on independence, make Kloppenburg this newspaper's preferred candidate for the state's high court.

The Judicial Hammer Falls On The Walker Administration: Judge Sumi revises her TRO from Monday

Here is Judge Sumi's order from Monday.

Everyone and their sister on the right side of the political spectrum pointed out that the judge had crossed out the last paragraph of the order presented her by the Dane County DA when she signed it on March 28.

Then the Walker Adminstration thumbed the judge's eye by saying it intended to go forward implementing Act 10.

Here is what Judge Sumi ordered today.

Act 10 is not currently the law of Wisconsin because it has not been published as required under the law.

Judge Sumi's order is not a final order. It is possible that she could finish the hearing in the lawsuit, decide that the Open Meetings Law was not violated in the conference committee meeting, or that the violation didn't warrant declaring Act 10 invalid, and then decide that the law can go into effect after it is properly published by the Secretary of State. Moreover, there may be other actions she takes with respect to the alleged Open Meetings Law violation, such as forfeitures, after she finishes the hearing.  But she seems clearly to have decided with finality that the law was not properly published so as to be an effective law right now.
 
The saga continues, and this order may spur the Supreme Court to accept the certification of the interlocutory appeal from the Court of Appeals.

Capitol Building Repairs - The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight - Part 2

In an article published yesterday,The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported on the results of an open records request it made for calculations done by the Walker Adminstration before they paraded Cari Anne Renlund. a DOA attorney, into Judge Albert's courtroom on March 3 in the effort to keep access to the Capitol building restricted to the public.  Ms. Renlund testified that the building had suffered significant damage due to the presence of the protester in February and March, then put a whopping $7,500,000 price tag on the clean-up and restoration.

The basis for Ms. Renlund's testimony?  A one page hand-written note by Dan Stephens, a state architect, dated the same day as her testimony.  I didn't hear or read details about her testimony, but let me imagine the pre-courtroom preparation:   "What if the protestors' attorneys ask me if I have seen any written estimates backing up that number?"  "Here, let me write some numbers down, but don't take this into the courtroom."

At least the estimate wasn't on a bar napkin. 

The $7,500,000 estimate went viral, and caused the right-wing press and blogosphere to rant about the destructive protestors in Madison.  The Lieutenant Governor posted the figure on her Facebook page that generated considerable outrage.  It served the Adminstration's political purpose, and the Adminstration quickly backed off the number the next day.   DOA Secretary Mike Huebsch wrote a letter on March 9 telling Judge Albert the number was the best he could do under the circumstances when he testified on March 3.

 Politifacts has rated the $7,500,000 claim in the "Pants on Fire" Liar category.  To the best of my knowledge, that is the worst rating on the Politifacts' scale of political mendacity .

Presumably, Dan Stephens and anyone he wanted to bring in as an expert in stone restoration could have walked through the Capitol building the night before Ms. Renlund's testimony. The Adminstration could then have come up with an honest estimate based on the physical facts existing at the building.