"Somewhere, someone needs to create a 'Ridiculous Legal Document Hall of Fame.'"

"It would proudly house the contract visitors have to sign to enter Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. And it would feature the $416 million lawsuit filed against Michael Jordan in 2006 by an old man who complained that he suffered harassment because he looked too much like the basketball star (despite being six inches shorter). Last week, Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Ann Walsh Bradley produced a legal document so preposterous it would warrant its own wing. Bradley's recusal from a state Judicial Commission case against fellow Justice David Prosser is a nakedly partisan hit job."

Opines Christian Schneider in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. (Read the whole thing.)

Did you watch the Tammy and Tommy debate?

I did, and one of the things I said out loud while watching it was: "I'm glad I didn't blog that I was going to live-blog this." I had, however, blogged to predict that it would be boring, which it mostly was.

We did get some laughs, especially when Tommy said "I built Wisconsin," which he later modifed to "We built Wisconsin." I lost count of the number of times he said he was governor "for 14 years," which was nearly always followed by the statement that he lowered "taxes 91 times," which tied to Tammy having no "record to run on" and being "a taxer and a spender." Those were his talking points.

Tommy was all about how we here in Wisconsin already know him. He's Tommy — call me Tommy — and she's Tammy — you don't know her, but let me tell you she's the biggest liberal in the House, ranked #1 biggest taxer/spender, and that's not an easy achievement, to actually be #1.

Christian Schneider writes:

Tommy was, well, Tommy.  He, too, jumbled a few sentences, but Wisconsin has been bearing witness to his sporadic malapropisms for decades.

Hilarious video of Tommy at the 1997 Super Bowl embedded. 

But Tommy seemed comfortable and confident.  When he got rolling, he seemed fiery and knowledgeable.  While Baldwin tried to wade through the weeds of issues, Thompson spoke over the moderators and to the eight people watching at home, using broader themes and more hopeful language.

The best part of the debate, however, was when the topics moved to foreign affairs.  When I realized Thompson was going to attempt to say the name "Ahmadinejad," I squealed with joy like a little girl.  It was a remarkable feat of courage - like the sprinter with no legs who made it to the Olympics.  What came out of his mouth sounded more like an ancient spell than the Iranian leader's name - I had to check to see that I hadn't turned into a toad.

Toad?! I used that word out loud while watching the debate last night. I said Tommy looked like a toad. He's not a pretty man. (Wisconsin rejected the pretty man — Eric Hovde — in the primary.) But everyone looked awful in the lighting at that public-TV studio. Tammy has a shot at looking so much better than Tommy, but Wisconsin was getting its first long look at her in an extremely unflattering light, and that cut Tommy a break.

Also entertaining was watching Tommy answer a question about gay marriage.  At one point during his answer, he paused for a good five seconds to navigate all the land mines that were likely lodged in his mind.  It was evident he had a vision of Tammy Baldwin dancing with Wonder Woman floating around in his head and needed a quiet moment to suppress it.

But Baldwin really disappointed.  At one point, she preposterously tried to paint herself as "bipartisan," which is like a cheetah trying to pass itself off as a vegetarian. 

Yeah, she made a reference to some bill she had co-sponsored with Scott Walker back when she was a state legislator. She smiled primly, but said nothing of the subject matter of the bill, and Meade made up some title for the most uncontroversial and inconsequential piece of legislation ever, something like proclaiming Wauwatosa High School Marching Band the High School Marching Band of the Week.

Scott Walker says "They are so desperate... they have to make crap up..."

"It is sickening… I think this will backfire, and I think there are a lot of Democrats across the state that will say that this is what is exactly what is fundamentally wrong about politics in America today."

And he predicts that he'll win "by a large margin"... because "voters have had it — they’re disgusted and they’re ready to move on."

Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch — who faces a recall election on June 5th — makes a great joke, apparently by accident..

Christian Schneider reports from a Tea Party rally in Caledonia, Wisconsin:

Kleefisch, who is facing a recall challenge on Tuesday from Madison firefighter Mahlon Mitchell, began her fiery speech by invoking David and Goliath. She likened the “big union bosses from out of state” to Goliath, accusing them of coming to Wisconsin to “pick a fight with David.” Kleefisch pointed out that in the story, David had five stones, then rattled off a number of the reforms Governor Scott Walker enacted, calling them her “stones.”

Pausing briefly, Kleefisch raised her voice, and said, “Our opponents, despite their money and their muscle, don’t have the stones!” After a few seconds of stunned laughs and cheers, she continued. “I was in the middle of a sentence,” she cautioned. “Our opponents don’t have the stones to move Wisconsin forward like you do,” she clarified.

Later, Kleefisch would tell me that her timely pause wasn’t intentional. “I was in the middle of telling a Bible story and people just started laughing. I can’t explain it,” she said.

Did Kleefisch intend/notice her own joke?
	It was totally planned.
	It was accidental but she noticed it and pretended she didn't get it.
	It was accidental and she didn't even get it when nudged to see it.
pollcode.com free polls

ADDED: I need to expand the permutations of the first option:

Did Kleefisch intend/notice her own joke?
	It was totally planned and she understood it all along and pretended she didn't.
	It was planned, but not by her, and she got it later but pretended she didn't.
	It was planned, but not by her, and she never got it.
	It was accidental but she noticed it and pretended she didn't get it.
	It was accidental and she didn't even get it when nudged to see it.
pollcode.com free polls

"2011 was a year when unions said 'it wasn't about the money'..."

"... before many of them (including Madison city workers) rushed back to the bargaining table to 'Walker-proof' their benefits before the new collective bargaining law went into effect."

While statewide unions said they would accept the increases in health and pension contributions, many local unions clearly weren't reading from the same playbook.

Speaking of money, during the summer, unions spent over $20 million to [try to] unseat six Republican state senators who voted for Walker's plan. This exposed exactly why it's about the money. Government employees merely serve as conduits for taxpayer funds to work their way to the unions, who then spend money electing obeisant legislators to negotiate favorable contracts. Shockingly, lefty "good government" groups appear not to have a problem with this blatant purchase of favors.

Christian Schneider in Isthmus, "The Wisconsin left made a spectacle of itself in 2011." Read the whole thing.

"More Details Emerge in Wisconsin’s ‘Chokegate.'"

A very interesting article by Christian Schneider at The National Review:

The week before the legislature was set to re-pass the collective-bargaining provision, three of the four conservative justices were ready to issue a ruling reinstating the union law as originally passed. Prosser, on the other hand, wanted to wait longer, to avoid the appearance that the court was rushing their decision through. Prosser thought he had an agreement with liberal Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson to delay release of the opinion until Tuesday of the following week.

As Monday arrived, there was no word from Abrahamson on whether the decision would be issued the next day. At 5:30 p.m., Prosser and the other conservative justices marched around the chambers, looking for Abrahamson, who was found in Justice Bradley’s office. Prosser stood outside Bradley’s door, talking to the justices in Bradley’s office. The discussion got heated, with Prosser expressing his lack of faith in Abrahamson’s ability to lead the Court.

That sounds like Schneider interviewed Prosser, but we're only told that he had "multiple sources with first-hand knowledge."

According to one witness, Bradley charged toward Prosser, shaking her clenched fist in his face. Another source says they were “literally nose to nose.” Prosser then put his hands up to push her away. As one source pointed out, if a man wants to push a woman who is facing him, he wouldn’t push her in the chest (unless he wants to face an entirely different criminal charge). Consequently, Prosser put his hands on Bradley’s shoulders to push her away, and in doing so, made contact with her neck.

At that moment, another justice approached Bradley from behind and pulled her away from Prosser, saying, “Stop it, Ann, this isn’t like you.” Bradley then shouted, “I was choked!” Another justice present replied, “You were not choked.” In a statement following the incident, Bradley maintained Prosser “put his hands around my neck in anger in a chokehold.”

On Monday night, Bradley called Capitol Police Chief Charles Tubbs to talk to him about the incident. On the morning of Wednesday, June 15, Tubbs joined the justices in a closed-door meeting, where he discussed “issues relating to workplace violence.”

During the meeting, Chief Justice Abrahamson actually reenacted the incident on Chief Tubbs... During her demonstration, Abrahamson emphasized that Prosser had exerted “pressure” on Bradley’s throat.

“There was no pressure,” interrupted the justice who had initially broken up the incident between Bradley and Prosser. “That’s only because you broke us apart,” shot back Bradley. This exchange led several meeting attendees to believe Bradley was making up the charge, as they took her rejoinder as an admission that there was no pressure applied to her neck.

Indeed, if we believe Bradley said "That’s only because you broke us apart" when someone pulled her back from behind, it would seem that the "pressure" that would have occurred but didn't would have been the result of her forward movement toward Prosser. That's the evidence a criminal defense lawyer would milk if there were an actual trial here.

During the Wednesday meeting, Bradley urged the justices present to take a vote on whether Prosser should be forced into anger-management counseling. The threat was implicit — if they didn’t vote her way, she would be forced to “take the next step” against Prosser, which they took to mean filing a restraining order against him. The other justices balked, wondering whether they even had the authority to order Prosser into any type of counseling. Some thought it would be “demeaning” to Prosser to have to go to counseling when he had done nothing wrong. In the end, Bradley realized she didn’t have enough justices on her side and no vote was taken.

Bizarre.  What an immense breakdown of collegiality! And given this horrible, complicated incident, why did anyone choose to incur the damage to the court's reputation by dumping it into the press? As Schneider notes, if Bradley had initiated any kind of formal criminal procedure, Prosser would have had procedural protections. Instead, "the story was leaked to the George Soros–funded Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, who used three anonymous sources to back up Bradley’s story." Who were the 3 sources? We don't know whether all (or any) of the 3 sources were eyewitnesses, but if they were, it's hard not to conclude that they were Bradley and Abrahamson. There would still need to be one more source antagonistic to Prosser. Maybe all the sources were court personnel who heard about it second hand, and the Center for Investigative Journalism based its story entirely on hearsay. I hope so.