Justice Rebecca Bradley

<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">appt by walker</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://ballotpedia.org/Rebecca_Bradley</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ntbc w. anne, the good witch
</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">how catholic?
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see voter suppress</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gerry?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">stay at home</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/wisconsin-supreme-court-judge-wikipedia/">https://www.alternet.org/wisconsin-supreme-court-judge-wikipedia/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx an 8 23</font></font></font></font></div><div>
</div><div><b>Right-wing Wisconsin Supreme Court judge’s edits to Wikipedia page may be 'conflict of interest': watchdog</b></div><div>
</div><div>Maya Boddie August 15, 2023</div><div>Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley recently logged into her personal Wikipedia page and made a few edits, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel watchdog columnist Daniel Bice reports.</div><div>
</div><div>According to the report, @arizonasunblock on Twitter last week wrote, "Conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court justice @JudgeBradleyWI is currently engaging in an edit war on her Wikipedia page under an anonymous username that she also uses in her personal email. You cannot make this stuff up."</div><div>
</div><div>Bice discovered the Twitter user was correct, with the username "rlgbjd," standing for "Rebecca Lynn Grassl Bradley, J.D."</div><div>
</div><div>The columnist writes:</div><div>
</div><div><b>In her email to the Journal Sentinel, Bradley said she had to make these changes because members of the media aren't doing their job.</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">"Clearly, the media has made no effort to report honestly so public officials have no choice but to correct the record for them,'" Bradley said.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">"I hope this clears up the great Wikipedia issue facing our state and allows you to focus on the constitutional crisis created by my colleagues," she concluded, referring to actions taken by the new liberal majority on the court.</span></div><div>
</div><div>POLL: Should Trump be allowed to hold office again?</div><div>
</div><div><b>"Republicans have become the party of book banning, but as always, Rebecca Bradley goes one step further and wants to erase the Internet," Scot Ross, former executive director of the progressive group One Wisconsin Now told the news outlet.</b></div><div>
</div><div>Bice writes:</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">According to her Wikipedia page, in May 2020, </span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Bradley "compared the state's stay-at-home orders to the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II,</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">" a case known as Korematsu v. the United States.</span></div><div>
</div><div><b>Here is what Bradley actually said, according to video of the teleconference of the May 5, 2020, oral arguments:</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">I'll direct your attention to another time in history, the Korematsu decision, where the court said the need for action was great and time was short and that justified, and I'm quoting, "assembling together and placing under guard all those of Japanese ancestry in assembly centers" during World War II.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Could the secretary (of the Wisconsin Department of Health Services), under this broad delegation of legislative power, or legislative-like power, order people out of their homes into centers where they are properly socially distanced in order to combat the pandemic? . . . The point of my question is, what are the limits, constitutional or statutory? There have to be some, don't there, counsel?</span></div><div>
</div><div><b>Bradley replaced the words from her original oral argument</b>, writing, "Although headlines may sensationalize the invocation of cases such as Korematsu, the point of citing them is not to draw comparisons between the circumstances of people horrifically interned by their government during a war and those of people subjected to isolation orders during a pandemic. We mention cases like Korematsu in order to test the limits of government authority, to remind the state that urging courts to approve the exercise of extraordinary power during times of emergency may lead to extraordinary abuses of its citizens."</div><div>
</div><div><b>According to Bice, the judge made two additional changes<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">,</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> including editing "the description of her majority opinion in the 2021 redistricting case aimed at setting new political boundary lines in the state," and amending "a summary of her 2022 decision outlawing the use of drop boxes to cast absentee ballots in Wisconsin."</span></div><div>
</div><div>READ MORE: Wisconsin Republicans threaten to impeach newly elected Democratic State Supreme Court justice: report</div><div>
</div><div><b>The columnist notes Bradley received backlash from a Wikipedia editor who says the judge may have generated a conflict of interest.</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Wikipedia informed Bradley, "Editors with a conflict of interest may be unduly influenced by their connection to the topic," noting the website's guidelines, "which suggested users 'avoid editing or creating articles about yourself, your family, friends, colleagues, company, organization, clients, or competitors.'"</span></div><div>
</div><div>READ MORE: Liberal victory in Wisconsin Supreme Court race is a 'five-alarm warning to Republicans': WSJ editorial board</div><div>
</div><div><b>Daniel Bice's full column is available at this link.</b></div><div>
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/donald-trump-boasts-path-reinstatement/">https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/donald-trump-boasts-path-reinstatement/</a>
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/donald-trump-boasts-path-reinstatement/">https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/donald-trump-boasts-path-reinstatement/</a>
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Wisconsin State Supreme Court on Friday ruled 4-3 that drop boxes for

absentee ballots were illegal and declared that President Joe Biden's

victory over former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election was

illegitimate.</font><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Biden won the popular vote in the Badger State and was thusly awarded its 10 Electoral College votes.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The

decision "has critical implications in the 2024 presidential race, in

which Wisconsin will again be among a handful of battleground states," </b><a href="https://apnews.com/article/2022-midterm-elections-biden-donald-trump-wisconsin-supreme-court-05166e3f3ef970b5cde8ac15cd30e18b" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked">noted the Associated Press</a>. </font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[READ MORE: <a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/boris-johnson-accountability-donald-trump/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="self" title="view post: Boris Johnson couldn’t escape accountability – unlike Donald Trump: journalists" class="rm-stats-tracked">Boris Johnson couldn’t escape accountability – unlike Donald Trump: journalists</a></font></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tony

Evers, Wisconsin's incumbent Democratic governor who is seeking

reelection, condemned the court's transparently partisan opinion.</font></span></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Politicians

should not be able to abuse their power to prevent eligible voters from

casting their ballots or cheat by changing the rules just because they

didn’t like the outcome of the last election,” <a href="https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/WIGOV/bulletins/31fb716" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" title="" class="rm-stats-tracked">he said</a>.

“Today’s decision is another in a long line of Wisconsin Republicans’

successes to make it harder for Wisconsinites to exercise their right to

vote, to undermine our free, fair and secure elections, and to threaten

our democracy.”</font></span></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Justice Rebecca Bradley,</b> who sided with the

majority, asserted that the court was acting to prevent fraud, which she

baselessly claimed had impacted the results of past contests –

including the race in 2020.</font></span></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Thousands of votes have been cast via

this unlawful method, thereby directly harming the Wisconsin voters,”

Bradley wrote. “The illegality of these drop boxes weakens the people’s

faith that the election produced an outcome reflective of their will.

The Wisconsin voters, and all lawful voters, are injured when the

institution charged with administering Wisconsin elections does not

follow the law, leaving the results in question.”</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[READ MORE: <a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/donald-trump-mourning-shinzo-abe/" target="_self" title="view post: Right-winger wants January 6th hearings nixed 'out of respect' for Donald Trump 'mourning' Shinzo Abe" class="rm-stats-tracked">Right-winger wants January 6th hearings nixed 'out of respect' for Donald Trump 'mourning' Shinzo Abe</a> shackleford]
</font></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump's

attorney Christian Bobb expanded on this false narrative and went so

far as to proclaim that the outcome of the 2020 election could be

reversed.</font></span></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Joe Biden cheated, so they could either withdraw their

electors or they could actually decide to award Trump electors, although

I would anticipate they would just withdraw the electors," <a href="https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1545560958524919817?s=20&t=lMHOaelyFKQc8AVABvOn5A" target="_blank" class="rm-stats-tracked">she said on the Right Side Broadcasting Network</a>.

"If that happens from three different states, three different

resolutions go into Congress – and I'm sorry I'm sort of summarizing

this, it's a complicated issue – but it would have to <b>go into the US

Congress whether they want to accept the resolutions</b>, whether they want

to act on them or not. So it's a complex issue that needs to be handled

complexly by different state legislatures and the US Congress."</font></span></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bobb

then suggested that if "many many elected officials" sign on, Team

Trump's dream of overturning the 2020 election can be realized.</font></span></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Bobb's

hot take on RSBM motivated Trump on Saturday to boast on his Truth

Social app that he will be president again if the GOP retakes Congress.</span>
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[READ MORE: <a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/russian-propagandists-whine-donald-trump/" target="_self" title="view post: Russian propagandists whine that 'the way we elected' Donald Trump is impossible in Great Britain" class="rm-stats-tracked">Russian propagandists whine that 'the way we elected' Donald Trump is impossible in Great Britain</a></font></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The

Wisconsin Supreme Court has just declared the 'Unlock' Boxes, or Ballot

'Stuffing' Boxes, to be ILLEGAL. <b>Everybody knows</b> what went on with the

$417,000,000 that <b>little </b>Mark Zuckerberg 'INVESTED' in the corrupt 2020

Presidential Election, and that doesn’t even include the big Wisconsin

Nursing Home Scandal where close to 100% of the residents voted (always

is MUCH lower number). It’s now up to <b>Robin Vos </b>to do what everybody

knows must be done. We need FAIR and HONEST Elections in our Country," <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/108618473968521952" target="_blank" class="rm-stats-tracked">Trump rambled</a>.</font></span></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Other

States are looking at, and studying, the amazing Wisconsin Supreme

Court decision declaring Ballot Boxes ILLEGAL, and that decision

includes the 2020 Presidential Election," <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/108618553547048798" target="_blank" class="rm-stats-tracked">he continued</a>.

"Speaker Robin Vos has a decision to make! Does Wisconsin <b>RECLAIM the

Electors,</b> turn over the Election to the <b>actual winner (by a lot!</b>), or

sit back and do nothing as our <b>Country continues to go to HELL? Brave

American Patriots already have a Resolution on the Floor!"</b></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There

is no mechanism in the Constitution that provides a framework for

nullifying a duly completed and certified election, let alone installing

a loser back into power. Even if Republicans retake control of the

House of Representatives and the Senate in the November midterms,

impeaching and removing Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris

(requiring 67 Senators to agree) would hand the presidency to whomever

the House Speaker is at that time. In theory, that person could tap

Trump to be their veep and immediately resign, but the Senate would

first have to approve of Trump's nomination.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Granted, Republicans

could indeed drum up some cockamamy scheme to petition the right-wing

United States Supreme Court to consider its position to oust Biden in

exchange for Trump, in a manner similar to the North Carolina

"independent legislature theory" case that the Court has agreed to hear

in the fall session. Notably, the courts have so far thrown out Trump's

challenges to the 2020 election, including his invocations of executive

privilege to prevent evidence of his coup from surfacing.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong>READ MORE: <a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/donald-trump-wont-need-mob/" target="_self" title="view post: Why Donald Trump may not 'need a mob' to steal the 2024 election: columnist" class="rm-stats-tracked">Why Donald Trump may not 'need a mob' to steal the 2024 election: columnist</a></strong></font></p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nevertheless,

one must contemplate the possibilities, no matter how implausible they

seem. Is what Trump wants impossible? No. Is it far-fetched? Quite,

although it is, without question, on par with this current timeline. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">----</font></div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">----</font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">comn dr no twt</font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">julia c</font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">p</font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong>olitical observers on Friday</strong> were alarmed by a

Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling restricting the use of drop boxes for

absentee election ballots—not just because the decision will make it

harder for many residents to vote, but also because the high court's

right-wing majority openly embraced in its ruling former President

Donald Trump's lies about the 2020 election.</font></span></font></font><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the 4-3 decision, the court's conservative justices <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/08/us/politics/wisconsin-drop-boxes.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" class="rm-stats-tracked">argued</a>

that the use of ballot drop boxes is unlawful because the boxes are not

explicitly mentioned in the state's laws, which allow for absentee

ballots to be returned to a municipal clerk.</font></span></font></font></p><p><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The return of a

ballot "does not mean nor has it been historically understood to mean

delivery to an unattended ballot drop box," wrote <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Justice Rebecca

Bradley </span>in the majority opinion.</font></b></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bradley continued that the

state's longtime use of hundreds of drop boxes "directly" harmed

Wisconsin voters in 2020, when President Joe Biden won the state by

about 20,000 votes, beating former President Donald Trump.</font></span></p><p><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump

and his allies took aim at the drop boxes after the election, saying

their use is not explicitly allowed under state law and filing a number

of lawsuits.</font></span></b></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bradley suggested that anyone who used a drop box for

an absentee ballot did not qualify as a "lawful" voter and said their

method of voting "weakens the people's faith that the election produced

an outcome reflective of their will."</font></span></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The Wisconsin voters, and

all lawful voters, are injured when the institution charged with

administering Wisconsin elections does not follow the law, leaving the

results in question," she<a href="https://twitter.com/mjs_DC/status/1545402661557649409" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" class="rm-stats-tracked"> wrote</a>,

adding that "throughout history, tyrants have claimed electoral victory

via elections conducted in violation of governing law" and <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">comparing

Biden's win to that of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un</span>.</font></span></p><p><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><em>Slate</em> journalist Mark Joseph Stern called the language used in Bradley's opinion "outrageously irresponsible."</font></b></p><div class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="21d040b1fd7246e6047259e35aebca5d" id="e1eb6">

</div>

</div><b>

</b><p><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">With the ruling, said journalist John Nichols, the right-wing

majority "is not acting as a court. It's a political cabal with a

partisan agenda."</font></b></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Wisconsin Democrats <a href="https://twitter.com/benwikler/status/1545452812171190272" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" class="rm-stats-tracked">called</a>

the ruling "a slap in the face to democracy itself" and warned that the

absence of ballot drop boxes that many voters have used for years will

"impact people with disabilities, seniors, people living in rural

communities, people with limited means, few transport options, and

inflexible work schedules, who are disproportionately young people and

people of color."</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"For decades throughout Wisconsin, municipal

clerks have used drop boxes to collect documents like tax returns,

municipal bills—and absentee ballots," <a href="https://twitter.com/benwikler/status/1545464929922482176" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" class="rm-stats-tracked">said</a>

Ben Wikler, chair of the state Democratic Party. "It's always been

safe, secure, and convenient. Drop box use expanded dramatically in

2020, in red and blue areas alike."</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"But then after the GOP lost

Wisconsin in 2020, the GOP decided that the issue wasn't that they

couldn't convince voters to support them—it was that people who didn't

support them were able to vote," he added.</font></p><p><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The three justices who dissented in the ruling denounced Bradley's claims of rampant illegal voting in 2020 as "nonsense."</font></b></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"There

is no evidence at all in this record that the use of drop boxes fosters

voter fraud of any kind," they wrote. "None... But concerns about drop

boxes alone don't fuel the fire questioning election integrity. Rather,

the kindling is primarily provided by voter suppression efforts and the

constant drumbeat of unsubstantiated rhetoric in opinions like this one,

not actual voter fraud."</font></span></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The court's right-wing justices also <a href="https://www.wpr.org/wisconsin-supreme-court-chooses-evers-least-changes-redistricting-plan" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" class="rm-stats-tracked">ruled</a>

in November that a new redistricting plan should make the least amount

of changes possible to maps drawn by the Republican-led Legislature in

2011, ensuring a map that will favor GOP majorities in Wisconsin for at

least another decade.</font></span></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Former state Supreme Court Justice Michael

Gableman is also overseeing an investigation into the 2020 election and

has suggested that state lawmakers should try to decertify the results.</font></span></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Friday's ruling came "from what might be the most rogue and vehemently anti-democratic state court in the nation," <a href="https://twitter.com/Taniel/status/1545429653195816960" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" class="rm-stats-tracked">said </a>Daniel Nichanian, editor-in-chief of Bolts.</font></span></p></div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></font></font></p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /></font></font></div></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /></font></font><h1 class="TitleDetailsHeading-title " aria-label="Title details for Coronavirus Criminals and Pandemic Profiteers by John Nichols - Wait list" tabindex="-1" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; margin: 0.2rem 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-weight: 300; line-height: 34px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; outline: 0px; display: inline-block; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);" lang="en"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4">Coronavirus Criminals and Pandemic Profiteers</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></h1><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><div class="TitleSeries" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><p class="subtitle" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.6; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; outline: 0px;" lang="[object Object]"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Accountability for Those Who Caused the Crisis</font></p></div><div class="TitleDetailsHeading-creator" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">by <a aria-label="Search by author, John Nichols" href="https://ppld.overdrive.com/search/creatorId?query=639398&sortBy=newlyadded" class="TitleDetailsHeading-creatorLink secondary-color" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: transparent; line-height: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 2px solid rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.3);" lang="en">John Nichols</a></font></div></span></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; outline: 0px; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);">furious denunciation of America’s coronavirus criminals</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);" /><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);">Hundreds of thousands of deaths were caused not by the vicissitudes of nature but by the callous and opportunistic decisions of powerful people, as revealed here by John Nichols. </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);" /><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);">On March 10, 2020, president Donald Trump told a nation worried about a novel coronavirus, “We’re prepared, and we’re doing a great job with it. And it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.” It has since been estimated that had Trump simply taken the same steps as other G7 countries, 40 percent fewer Americans would have died. </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);" /><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);">And it was not just the president. His inner circle, including Mike Pence and Jared Kushner, downplayed the crisis and mishandled the response. Cabinet members such as Betsy DeVos and Mike Pompeo undermined public safety at home and abroad to advance their agendas. Senators Ron Johnson and Mitch McConnell, governors Kristi Noem and Andrew Cuomo, judges such as</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 102);"> <b style="">Wisconsin Supreme Court justice Rebecca Bradley a</b>ll promulgated public policies that led to suffering and death</span><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);">. Meanwhile, profiteer Pfizer (and anti-government propagandists such as Grover Norquist) fed at the public trough, while the billionaire Jeff Bezos added pandemic profits to a grotesquely bloated fortune. </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);" /><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);">John Nichols closes with a call for a version of the Pecora Commission, which took aim at what Franklin Delano Roosevelt called the “speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, and profiteering” that stoked the Depression. There must be accountability.</span></font></div><div><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p></div></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://wisconsinexaminer.com/2021/07/29/the-organized-takeover-of-wisconsin-courts/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div><b>
</b></div><div><b>The organized takeover of Wisconsin courts</b></div><div><b>How big money has eroded a core democratic institution</b></div><div>Ruth Conniff</div><div>RUTH CONNIFF</div><div><b>JULY 29, 2021 </b></div><div>     </div><div>
</div><div>It barely rated a mention in the news when, on June 28, the Wisconsin Supreme Court issued an order relieving Court of Appeals Chief Judge Lisa Neubauer of her leadership duties. </div><div>
</div><div>Neubauer ran for the Supreme Court in 2019 with the support of Democrats and progressives, in an election won by a razor-thin margin by conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn. </div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">The bland-sounding order ending her tenure as chief judge made it seem as though, since Neubauer’s second term had expired, after six years of service, replacing her was a routine matter. The new chief judge, William Brash, will start on August 1, the Court announced.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">But, in an email objecting to Neubauer’s removal, Justices Ann Walsh Bradley, Rebecca Frank Dallet and Jill Karofsky pointed out that “never before has this court limited the number of terms that can be served as Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals.”</span></div><div>
</div><div>Nuebauer’s predecessor served eight years as chief, and each of the two chief judges before him served nine years, the justices added in their email. They also objected to “the timing and lack of process employed by a majority of this court in the appointment process” and said they had not had an opportunity to weigh in.</div><div>
</div><div>“It sort of smells like retribution, doesn’t it?” says a source close to the Court.</div><div>
</div><div>For the general public, it wasn’t a very big story. Most people didn’t even know there is such a thing as an appeals court chief judge. It’s not a particularly powerful position; the chief mainly deals with handling the court’s budget and other administrative matters.</div><div>
</div><div>It's not how we want democratic institutions to work. It’s a little Banana Republic-y.</div><div>
</div><div>– Attorney Jeffrey Mandell</div><div>
</div><div><b>But from the point of view of some legal experts, Neubauer’s removal was a bad sign — part of an insidious pattern of politicization of Wisconsin’s courts. </b></div><div>
</div><div>Lawyers and other judges describe Neubauer as hardworking, courteous and an effective and efficient chief judge. Her removal raises questions about the way the courts are run, says Jeffrey Mandell, a Wisconsin attorney and founder of the progressive firm Law Forward. Mandell has never appeared before Neubauer or her appointed successor, Brash, and says he has no reason to doubt that Brash will do a good job as chief judge. Still, he says, “It does start to look less like a policy decision and more like some sort of personal issue, which is not how we want democratic institutions to work. It’s a little Banana Republic-y.”</div><div>
</div><div>Mandell sees Neubauer’s demotion as part of a pattern of lack of transparency that includes the court’s failure to set clear rules of recusal when justices have conflicts of interest, and its move to stop holding public meetings on administrative matters, including ethics and recusal, shrouding the court’s business in secrecy. </div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Banana Republic-y is also a good description of Justice Rebecca Bradley, who compared Gov. Tony Evers’ stay-at-home order during the pandemic to the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II. She also recently diagnosed her colleagues with “‘hoplophobia’ — i.e. an irrational fear of guns,” after they sanctioned a Winnebago Co. judge who pulled a loaded Glock pistol out from under his robes during a court hearing.</span> </div><div>
</div><div>How did we get here?</div><div>
</div><div><b>The court has never resolved — or recovered from — the embarrassing 2011 incident in which then-Justice David Prosser was accused of trying to choke his colleague Ann Walsh Bradley in her office during a dispute about Wisconsin’s epic battle over collective bargaining rights. That sordid affair came to symbolize the decline of our state’s democratic institutions. </b></div><div>
</div><div><b>But the erosion of the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s reputation goes back at least to 2008, when Michael Gableman defeated Wisconsin’s first African American supreme court justice, Luis Butler, in a campaign that made national news for its sheer ugliness </b>— Gableman ran misleading <b>Willie Horton-style ads against Butler —</b> and for the<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 0);"> flood of out-of-state money that poured into the race. Outside groups spent $4.8 million — a record that was not broken until this year.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">The ideological makeup of the court flipped to a 4-3 conservative majority when Gableman, who had the backing of<b> rightwing and pro-corporate groups</b>, replaced Butler. </span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 0);">Gableman refused to recuse himself from cases involving his campaign contributors and helped usher in an era of ethical laxness on the court. He and his colleagues worked to undermine the late, distinguished Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson, who was pushed out as chief, her tenure ended prematurely by a referendum put forward by Republicans that allowed the justices to elect their own chief instead of appointing the chief based on seniority. Conservatives on the court chose Patience Roggensack as their new chief.</span></div><div>
</div><div>Nobody is seeing the urgency because it’s a lot of small potatoes stuff. But it still adds up to a larger, disturbing picture.</div><div>
</div><div>– Retired Dane County Judge Richard Niess</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">A few years later, the same justices chose to<b> name the state law library after Prosser </b>(who once made the news when he called Abrahamson a “bitch” and said he would “destroy” her) — not the late Abrahamson, who, unlike Prosser, was considered for the U.S. Supreme Court and widely regarded as one of the country’s great legal minds.</span></div><div>
</div><div>“A lot of it is inside baseball,” retired Dane County Circuit Court Judge Richard Niess says of the way the current court conducts its business. “Nobody is seeing the urgency because it’s a lot of small potatoes stuff. But it still adds up to a larger, disturbing picture.”</div><div>
</div><div><b>That larger picture is a push to remake Wisconsin courts by moneyed interests. Former Republican Gov. Scott Walker helped that effort along when he appointed three Supreme Court justices who were members of the Federalist Society — Daniel Kelly, Rebecca Bradley and Brian Hagedorn</b>. The Federalist Society is arguably the most powerful legal organization in the country, made up of conservative and libertarian lawyers and formed in the early 1980s to fight “liberal orthodoxy,” and, according to its homepage, dedicated to “reordering priorities within the legal system to place a premium on individual liberty, traditional values, and the rule of law.” The group has chapters of law school students, faculty and practicing lawyers around the country and deep ties to the U.S. Supreme Court. It is also part of a nationwide network aiming to create more conservative, pro-corporate courts that has poured money into Wisconsin. “All of this is the national scene writ on a smaller stage,” says Niess.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">In 2016, Craig Mastantuono, president of the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy’s Milwaukee chapter, told the Wisconsin State Journal that the Federalist Society is engaged in “an organized takeover” of state and federal judiciaries. The effect, he said, is that big business and the wealthy will benefit from decision making in the courts.</span></div><div>
</div><div><b>Controversy around the Federalist Society’s influence in Wisconsin erupted in 2018, when Brian Hagedorn, then still an the appeals court judge, sent an email to judges around the state encouraging them to attend a Federalist Society conference and indicating that mileage and meals would be reimbursed by the state as well as offering continuing legal education credits to lawyers who attended.</b></div><div>
</div><div>Fifteen Wisconsin judges wrote to Hagedorn and the state’s judicial education committee in protest. Niess was among them.</div><div>
</div><div><b>Niess also sees Chief Justice Patience Roggesack’s pilot program in Dane County to create a separate, business court as part of a dangerous rightward drift. </b>“<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Special business interests now collaborate with our Chief Justice to hand pick those judges they want to decide their cases,” </span>he wrote in an email to local lawyers. “The Dane County Circuit Court will now be required to implement a two-tiered system of justice; one for the privileged few and one for the rest of us.”</div><div>
</div><div>Mandell takes a more sympathetic view of the concept of the business court, saying he understands the logic for his business clients of separating forums for different types of lawsuits. Still, he agrees with Niess about a general erosion of democracy in Wisconsin courts.</div><div>
</div><div>The power of a shadowy network of rightwing groups working against the public interest is evident in the coordinated effort to undermine public health orders during the pandemic by taking cases against them to the Supreme Court.</div><div>
</div><div><b>AJL is actively working to track and support right-wing legal challenges to upend COVID-19 health restrictions, fight workers’ rights to unionize, and coordinate legal strategies</b></div><div>
</div><div>– Center for Media and Democracy</div><div>
</div><div>Earlier this year, the Center for Media and Democracy reported on a new rightwing legal center called <b>American Juris Link </b>that is “actively working to track and support right-wing legal challenges to upend COVID-19 health restrictions, fight workers’ rights to unionize, and coordinate legal strategies”</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">The group was “incubated by the State Policy Network” — a network of rightwing think tanks in all 50 states — CMD reported. Its founder and president, Carrie Ann Donnell, is the director of the Federalist Society’s pro-bono center.</span></div><div>
</div><div>The Wisconsin-based Bradley Foundation provided American Juris Link with $100,000 in start-up funds in 2020, and CMD identified the <b>Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL</b>) among the recipients of the group’s assistance.</div><div>
</div><div>Not only does the Bradley-financed Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty continually file lawsuits seeking to champion rightwing interests in the courts, a parallel effort, funded by the same group of allies that supports WILL, is transforming those courts into a friendlier forum for such lawsuits. </div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">The tool for transforming the courts is money. As the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign’s former director Mike McCabe pointed out back in 2008, after the Gableman race opened the floodgates to cash in state court races, buying state supreme court seats is a relative bargain, compared with congressional races. And much of the business that concerns corporations, including environmental regulations and labor protections, happens at the state level.</span></div><div>
</div><div><b>Thus, the Republican State Leadership Committee poured more than $1.2 million into last-minute ads to help Hagedorn beat Neubauer by less than 1% of the vote in 2019.</b> The Republican State Leadership Committee also spent heavily to help elect Rebecca Bradley.</div><div>
</div><div>“Wisconsin is not the only state where RSLC is flexing its multi-million-dollar muscle to place corporate-friendly or right-wing judges on state courts in order to advance its funders’ interest,” CMD’s Lisa Graves writes, reeling off spending on court races in Arkansas, West Virginia, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.</div><div>
</div><div>Predictably, in recent years the influx of outside money has been making Wisconsin judicial races more and more expensive, according to data collected by the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. Candidates and outside special interest groups spent a record-shattering $10 million in the last Wisconsin Supreme Court race in April 2020, the Democracy Campaign reported. </div><div>
</div><div>And it has become an arms race, with money pouring in on both sides.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">Top outside spenders in the latest Supreme Court race were A Better Wisconsin Together Political fund, which spent $1.87 million, mostly on ads supporting Karofsky, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, which spent $1.1 million to help Walker appointee Daniel Kelly (mostly with anti-Karofsky ads), the Republican State Leadership Committee, which spent $897,499 on Kelly, and Americans for Prosperity, which spent $479,463 on Kelly.</span></div><div>
</div><div><b>Karofsky, who won, set an all-time record for spending by an individual candidate at $2.7 million. And there is no end in sight.</b></div><div>
</div><div>“The 2023 election is absolutely critical,” says Neiss. “A lot of outstate money will come in on both sides.”</div><div>
</div><div>As a judge, I was not at liberty to freely comment on these disturbing trends without the potential for retribution from the Court</div><div>
</div><div>– Retired Dane County Judge Richard Niess</div><div>
</div><div><b>Niess says he became frustrated and decided to retire, in part, due to the “increasing threats to the integrity and independence of the Supreme Court by overt and covert right wing influence over its legal decisions and operating procedures.”</b></div><div>
</div><div>“The mounting secrecy surrounding the Court’s operating procedures, the sneaky imposition of the unnecessary business court on Dane County by the chief justice, and the clandestine manner in which the <b>highly respected Judge Neubauer was summarily sacked as chief judge</b>, are just three examples,” he says.</div><div><b>
</b></div><div><b>
</b></div><div><b>Outside group spending in Wisconsin Supreme Court races</b></div><div>2003: Ed Brunner vs. Pat Roggensack $27,200</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">2007: Linda Clifford vs. Annette Ziegler $3.1 million</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">2008: Louis Butler vs. Michael Gableman $4.8 million</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">2009: Shirley Abrahamson vs. Randy Kschnick $577,000</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">2011 David Prosser vs. JoAnne Kloppenburg  $4.5 million</span></div><div>
</div><div>2013 Pat Roggensack vs. Ed Fallone $1.2 million</div><div>
</div><div>2015: Ann Walsh Bradley vs. James P. Daley $171,000</div><div>
</div><div>2016: Rebecca Bradley vs. Janne Kloppenburg $3.43 million</div><div>
</div><div>2018 Rebecca Dallet vs. Michael Screnock $2.8 million</div><div>
</div><div><b>2019: Brian Hagedorn vs. Lisa Neubauer $4.5 million</b></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">2020: Jill Karofsky vs. Daniel Kelly $5 million</span></div><div>
</div><div>source: Wisconsin Democracy Campaign</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div><b>Niess also had a run-in with the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2014 when the Court ordered him to dismiss a challenge to the voter ID law by the League of Women Voters. He refused,</b> instead recusing himself, writing that he believed following the court’s order would violate his oath to uphold the state constitution. He then was threatened with sanction in an unsuccessful complaint before the state Judicial Commission.</div><div>“As a judge, I was not at liberty to freely comment on these disturbing trends without the potential for retribution from the Court,” he says.</div><div>
</div><div>To Wisconsin attorney Dean Strang, the biggest loss to Wisconsin courts as they become increasingly politicized is not so much ideological as it is a more general decline of integrity.</div><div>
</div><div>“The consistent media fallacy in discussing the Wisconsin Supreme Court is that there is a liberal minority on it. There is not,” he says. “There is a conservative, often retrenching, majority. And then there is a moderate, pragmatic minority.”</div><div>
</div><div>Conservatives and reactionary populists have shifted the ideological spectrum so far to the right that mere moderation now is mistaken as a leftist threat</div><div>
</div><div>– Attorney Dean Strang</div><div>
</div><div><b>After Abrahamson, “the court no longer has any liberal voice at all,” he says.</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">He sees the media shorthand, citing “liberal” and “conservative” justices, as part of a broader, dispiriting trend. “Conservatives and reactionary populists have shifted the ideological spectrum so far to the right that mere moderation now is mistaken as a leftist threat,” he says.</span></div><div>
</div><div>The proxy partisan warfare in court races has also endangered intellectual honesty and the unbiased assessment of the facts — hallmarks of a good appellate judges, Strang adds. </div><div>
</div><div>That’s not to say that he agrees with<b> doctrine of “originalism” promoted by the Federalist Society</b>, which he describes as “the claim that judging is like archaeology: that judges simply dig carefully through books until they ‘find’ the law, as if it were some buried shard of ancient pottery.”</div><div>
</div><div><b>Instead, a good judge is like an architect, he says, constrained by the text of the law and by precedent the same way an architect is constrained by the laws of physics and engineering, and using the facts of a case </b>“as the site for a construction of law that features the highest ideals that our constitution and legal culture profess.”</div><div>
</div><div><b>Instead, our current judicial system seems to be moving in the opposite direction, digging for money, eyes on the ground.</b></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ggl grab 921</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The organized takeover of Wisconsin courts - Wisconsin ...https://wisconsinexaminer.com › 2021/07/29 › the-orga...</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div>Jul 29, 2021 — Gableman refused to recuse himself from cases involving his campaign ... The Federalist Society is arguably the most powerful legal ...</div><div>
</div></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">you could say that Interim Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley, Gov. Scott Walker’s handpicked candidate in April’s general election for a 10-year term on the court, had a very bad week.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">The watchdog group <a href="http://onewisconsinnow.org/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-decoration: none;">One Wisconsin Now</a> revealed that as a student at Marquette University, Bradley—then known as Rebecca Grassl—had written a series of hate-filled editorials in which she called gays “degenerates,” argued that those living with HIV/AIDS deserved none of her sympathy, likened abortion to the Holocaust and took aim at feminists and Democrats.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What shocked most was not that Bradley was a conservative—it was the vitriol in her essays.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bradley apologized for her comments and said that she had changed since then—without pointing to any specific examples of how she has now come to embrace the LGBTQ community, women who have had abortions, feminists and those who simply disagree with her politically.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bradley didn’t include her incendiary op-eds in her three applications to her three judicial appointments since 2012, although she listed other articles she has published. And we can’t be sure that <a href="http://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2016-03-09/walker-embattled-state-supreme-court-justice-go-way-back" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Walker, whose last year at Marquette overlapped with Bradley’s freshman year,</a> as the Associated Press noted, didn’t know about his Wauwatosa neighbor’s ultra-conservative writings. But he has promoted Bradley at every turn—appointing her to the Milwaukee County Circuit Court in December 2012, to the Appeals Court in May 2015 and to the Wisconsin Supreme Court in October 2015. That raises questions about how thoroughly Walker vetted Bradley before promoting her career as judge.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bradley faces Appeals Court District 4 Presiding Judge JoAnne Kloppenburg in the April 5 election for a 10-year term on the court.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The <i style="margin: 0px;">Shepherd </i>obtained Bradley’s three applications for her judicial appointments to see how Bradley presented her background so successfully that she obtained an unheard-of three judicial appointments in three years. What we found was an ambitious and unmistakably conservative lawyer who used her connections and selectively disclosed her political affiliations as she rose to power.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bradley’s campaign didn’t respond the <i style="margin: 0px;">Shepherd</i>’s request to comment for this article.<o:p style="margin: 0px;" xmlns:o="o" /></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><o:p style="margin: 0px;" xmlns:o="o"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left; margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" align="center"><b style="margin: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bradley Touted Campaign as Reason for Appointment</font></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After Justice Patrick Crooks died in September 2015, <a href="http://shepherdexpress.com/article-26542-preserve-justice-crooks%E2%80%99-legacy-on-the-supreme-court-expresso-shepherd-express.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-decoration: none;">good government groups asked Walker</a> not to appoint a declared candidate to fill his seat until his term officially ends in July 2016. Allowing a declared candidate to temporarily take the bench would add to the divisiveness on the court, argued Common Cause in Wisconsin, the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign and Wisconsin Voices. Besides, the interim justice would be seen to have an advantage during the spring election cycle, since he or she could claim to be an incumbent justice. Thus, both Appeals Court Judge JoAnne Kloppenburg and Milwaukee Circuit Court Judge Joe Donald—then, like Bradley, declared candidates for the primary election—declined to apply for the interim appointment.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rebecca Bradley, on the other hand, seized the moment. Not only did she apply, but in her application she touted her campaign for Supreme Court justice, launched after Crooks announced he’d retire, as a reason why Walker should appoint her.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The application’s final question asks for “any other information you feel would be helpful to your application.” In response, Bradley wrote, “My ability to win a contested primary election in Milwaukee County against two opponents, as well as the general election against a challenger who spent approximately $250,000 in the race, establishes that I can be successful in retaining this seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, should I earn the governor’s appointment.” After detailing her Supreme Court campaign operations already underway, she wrote, “I thoroughly understand the work required to launch and maintain a successful campaign to retain a judicial seat as an incumbent appointee.”</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Of course, just months before Bradley applied for the Supreme Court seat, she had applied for a place on the Appeals Court freed up by the death of Judge Ralph Adam Fine.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bradley highlighted her electoral success in her January 2015 application for the Appeals Court, writing, “I thoroughly understand the work required to launch and maintain a successful campaign to retain a judicial seat as an incumbent appointee.” Those were the words she’d repeat later that year as she sought a Supreme Court appointment. Walker appointed Bradley to the Appeals Court in May 2015.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler told the <i style="margin: 0px;">Shepherd</i> that Bradley had a right to seek the appointment, but he questioned Walker’s decision to appoint an interim justice so close to the April election.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Here we are on the eve of an election and the governor thought it appropriate to appoint someone to replace Justice Crooks right away, right after he passed away, knowing an election was coming up,” Butler said. “But when you look at what’s going on with the United States Supreme Court, where you have a president who is going to be serving until January 2017, and all of the opposition to whoever he nominates to the Supreme Court and not even granting a hearing—I see that as a stark contrast.”</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Marquette Law School Associate Professor Edward Fallone said he didn’t think Bradley’s promotion of her campaign in her applications was unusual or out of line, since any governor would want to appoint a justice who could retain the seat in an election.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I think that’s a factor that governors take into consideration,” Fallone said. “They don’t want to appoint someone who is not going to run hard and end up losing a campaign.”</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause in Wisconsin, said Bradley’s appointment was another sign of just how ideological the court has become.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“There are so many people who seem to me to be so much better qualified to be on the Wisconsin Supreme Court than Rebecca Bradley in the sense that there’s more maturity, more sense of impartiality, there’s more experience on the bench,” Heck said. “This seems like kind of a situation where you have someone who we now know was extremely conservative in college and stepped into the legal profession and was almost on a track to rise through the ranks through various judgeships to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.”<o:p style="margin: 0px;" xmlns:o="o" /></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><o:p style="margin: 0px;" xmlns:o="o"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left; margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" align="center"><b style="margin: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Right-Wing Federalist Society Ties</font></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">In her applications, Bradley also highlighted her prominent roles in the <a href="http://www.fed-soc.org/chapters/detail/milwaukee-lawyers-chapter" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Milwaukee Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society</a>, where according to the application she serves on the <a href="http://fswi.blogspot.com/p/milwaukee-chapter-leadership.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-decoration: none;">board of advisors</a> and has held leadership positions in the past.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Federalist Society is a group of very conservative attorneys, law professors and judges formed in the early 1980s who disagreed with the Supreme Court decisions that gave their blessing to legal abortions, the right to privacy, affirmative action, desegregation, Miranda rights for those under arrest, and a strong federal government. Among its initial leaders were Robert Bork—whose appointment to the high court was torpedoed in 1987 because of his ultra-right-wing views—as well as the recently deceased Antonin Scalia, whom President Reagan appointed to the court in 1986.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Federalists argue in favor of judicial restraint and against “judicial activism” and “legislating from the bench.” But as <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14384753" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Jeffrey Toobin wrote</a> in his book about the Supreme Court, <i style="margin: 0px;">The Nine</i>, “Indeed, they did not believe in judicial restraint, and they represented a new kind of judicial activism themselves.”</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Although the Federalist Society began as a fringe group of disaffected conservatives, it gained traction during the Reagan administration and is now firmly in the mainstream of Republican legal circles, showing just how far conservatives have moved to the right.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bradley’s three applications to her judicial positions highlight her Federalist Society connections and list her leadership positions dating back to 2005, although she told the <i style="margin: 0px;">Shepherd </i>during her 2013 campaign that she joined the group while in law school at UW-Madison in the 1990s.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>In addition, Bradley secured letters of recommendation from two legal experts who highlighted her Federalist Society connections—Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Annette Ziegler, who wrote on Bradley’s behalf in February 2015 for her appellate court appointment, and Richard Esenberg, president and general counsel of the right-wing advocacy group Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, which is primarily funded by the uber-conservative Bradley Foundation, which itself is a funder of the Federalist Society.</b></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2012, when Bradley was seeking her circuit court appointment, Esenberg wrote, “I fully understand that any governor will be concerned about the political viability of a potential appointee. Rebecca is well respected in the Milwaukee legal community and can expect to receive the strong support of conservatives.”<o:p style="margin: 0px;" xmlns:o="o" /></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><o:p style="margin: 0px;" xmlns:o="o"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left; margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" align="center"><b style="margin: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Public and Private Disclosures<o:p style="margin: 0px;" xmlns:o="o" /></font></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><o:p style="margin: 0px;" xmlns:o="o"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Also to be noted are the views and affiliations that Bradley discloses in public and what she scrubs from the record.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For example, in last week’s Milwaukee Bar Association-sponsored forum with Kloppenburg, Bradley wouldn’t state her favorite and least favorite U.S. Supreme Court decisions, saying that the issues in these cases could come before her as a justice. She did, however, say that her<b> favorite justices were Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas</b>—the two most conservative justices on the current high court.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">But Bradley was more forthcoming in her judicial applications to be reviewed by Walker. Each time, she wrote that the “best” Supreme Court decision was one authored in 2001 by Clarence Thomas in <i style="margin: 0px;">Good News Club v. Milford Central School</i>, which gave an evangelical Christian group permission to use a school cafeteria for after-school Bible lessons for elementary school students. Her “worst” decision was <i style="margin: 0px;">Kelo v. City of New London</i> in 2005, which permitted local elected officials to use eminent domain to seize private property for a private development.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That said, there are some glaring omissions in Bradley’s applications. Bradley failed to mention her involvement in the Republican National Lawyers Association (RNLA), even though the application asks for the candidate’s partisan or nonpartisan political involvement. <a href="https://www.rnla.org/about/default.asp" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-decoration: none;">According to its website</a>, the RNLA “builds the Republican Party goals and ideals through a nationwide network of supportive lawyers who understand and directly support Republican policy, agendas and candidates.” In addition, these lawyers come to the party’s aid during elections. The group’s website states that it “provides election law training from preeminent election law professionals.” <a href="http://www.alternet.org/story/153435/republican_lawyers_group%27s_own_study_undercuts_vote_fraud_claims/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-decoration: none;">The Republican Party and the RNLA argue that there’s widespread voter fraud, a belief that has been thoroughly debunked,</a> of course, but it’s led to restrictive voting regulations around the country, including Wisconsin’s GOP-backed voter ID law.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the time of Bradley’s appointment to circuit court in 2012, her online Super Lawyers listing included this partisan affiliation, according to reporting at the time by the <i style="margin: 0px;">Milwaukee Journal Sentinel</i>. Now, all trace of it is gone. The <i style="margin: 0px;">Shepherd </i>contacted the RNLA to verify Bradley’s involvement but hasn’t gotten a response.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bradley has current connections to the Republican Party. She has used Republican Party resources in her current campaign, an anomaly in this nonpartisan race, and Joint <b>Finance Committee Co-chairs Sen. Alberta Darling (R-River Hills) and state Rep. John Nygren (R-Marinette)</b> were <a href="http://wispolitics.com/index.iml?Article=365058" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-decoration: none;">scheduled to host a fundraiser for her on March 14</a>, another sign of Bradley’s partisanship.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Bradley is also playing cat and mouse with her involvement in <a href="http://www.wisconsinforum.org/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-decoration: none;">the Wisconsin Forum</a>, a libertarian group that hosted in January Wisconsin Club for Growth head Eric O’Keefe,</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> who is caught up in the John Doe investigation into Scott Walker’s campaign finance improprieties. The Wisconsin Supreme Court shut down the John Doe investigation last summer, although the prosecutors in the case are seeking U.S. Supreme Court review of the Wisconsin high court’s decision. </span><a href="http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/milwaukee-county-court-race-focuses-heavily-on-scott-walker-2v9bit0-200655541.html" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Wisconsin Club for Growth spent $167,000</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> on Bradley’s behalf in her election in 2013.</span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bradley’s campaign website makes no mention of her involvement in the Wisconsin Forum, and neither does the group’s website, but her judicial applications state that she is a “Wisconsin Forum chairman and board member” without listing any dates. <a href="http://www.wisconsinforum.org/category/audio-video-archives/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-decoration: none;">The group’s website displays photos of her at a September 2015 event</a> with South African businessman Herman Mashaba. <b>It’s unclear if she attended O’Keefe’s talk on the John Doe investigation in January.</b> The<i style="margin: 0px;"> Shepherd</i>contacted the Wisconsin Forum for clarification but hasn’t received a response.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">That said, Bradley did include on her application her service on the </span><a href="http://stmls-wi.blogspot.com/p/leadership.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">board of governors of the</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> St. Thomas More Lawyers Society of Wisconsin</span></a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">, a group of Catholic attorneys, as well as <a href="http://shepherdexpress.com/article-26963-justice-rebecca-bradley%E2%80%99s-curious-anti-birth-control-stance-expresso-shepherd-express.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-decoration: none;">her 2006 op-ed advocating for a conscience clause for pharmacists</a> who seek to deny women doctor-prescribed contraceptives, equating birth control with abortion. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Her anti-birth control op-ed directed readers to Pro-Life Wisconsin, a “100% pro-life” organization that is advocating for a personhood amendment to give constitutional rights to fertilized eggs and end abortion, most forms of contraception and embryonic stem cell research.</span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pro-Life Wisconsin hasn’t endorsed Bradley in this race, but the more mainstream anti-abortion group <a href="https://www.justicerebeccabradley.com/endorsements/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Wisconsin Right to Life is supporting her campaign</a> for a full term on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">hmmn</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://shepherdexpress.com/article-27492-a-closer-look-at-wisconsin-supreme-court-justice-rebecca-bradley%E2%80%99s-record-news-features.html</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">==</font></div>