Green Lake, Wis. — On the frozen lip of sprawling Big Green Lake, local Republicans gathered in a small hotel ballroom this afternoon for their annual Lincoln Day dinner. Mark Slate, a 39 year-old candidate for county judge, was decked in a stovepipe hat, but the real attraction was state supreme-court justice David Prosser, who gave a rousing speech, urging conservatives to support him on Tuesday, when he faces JoAnne Kloppenburg, an environmental lawyer, at the polls.
In his remarks, Prosser noted that the race has gone national. Union-friendly groups are pouring millions into the contest, hoping to tilt the ideological balance of the bench to the left. If Prosser is defeated, Gov. Scott Walker’s budget-repair bill could face a rocky future, since a state appellate panel has asked the high court to weigh in on the legislation’s legality.
“Seven weeks ago, this looked like a very sleepy campaign,” Prosser said. “This race is now the most significant judicial race in the country. It is full of symbolism.”
“What is capturing national attention is the fact that one candidate is trying to ride a wave to the Wisconsin supreme court on behalf of resentment against another political figure, and resentment against a piece of legislation that is likely to come before the court,” he continued. “This is the wrong way to determine who should serve on the supreme court for the next ten years.”
Prosser argued that the court must preserve the right of other branches of government to enact law. “Our job is not to substitute our views for the policy decisions made in other branches of government,” he said. “That is what this race has become in the eyes of some people. If [Kloppenburg] succeeds, that will be a direct assault on the independence of the Wisconsin judiciary.”
Prosser faces an uphill climb in campaign’s final hours. Progressives, he observed, have swarmed the state, making Kloppenburg’s candidacy their cause célèbre. “Sometimes I feel like David against the whole empire of the Wisconsin left, and the left from other parts of the country who are coming into this state to try to determine this race.”
Tuesday will be the first time voters mark ballots since Walker’s bill passed last month. Turnout for these springtime, nonpartisan elections usually hovers around 10 to 15 percent, but GOP sources tell me that it could hit nearly 20 or even 30 percent, depending on a variety of factors, from the weather to the level of turnout in liberal Dane County versus more conservative areas upstate.
Outside groups are dominating the political scene, since both candidates have accepted public campaign funds, limiting their ability to raise coin. On the right, the Wisconsin Club for Growth, the Tea Party Express, and Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, a chamber of commerce-type group, have together thrown nearly $1 million into pro-Prosser ads. Those organizations, however, are being heavily outspent by the Greater Wisconsin Committee, a lefty outfit with deep union ties.
The "will of the majority" is not what a freakin' Supreme Court seat is about. It's about the interpreting law as written, and when necessary, to check and strike down legislation that violates the state or U.S. Constitution. It is NOT about pulling your own policy preferences out of thin air or arbitrarily invaliding laws you don't like.
You want to defend the anti-Walker arguments in any of these weak lawsuits, please do so, I haven't heard a coherent one yet. But the judiciary is not intended to be a second legislature, and Kloppenburg has all but pledged to Rich Trumka's sock puppet.
It would be a refreshing bit of honesty if you liberal trolls would just admit that you want a lackey and cut the pretense about "independence."
Yeah. Kloppenberg has made it clear that the seat may be occupied by her should she win, but it will be owned by the unions and so-called Progressives who are buying it for her and will expect her to do their bidding. This just helps expose the idea of "non-partisan" offices as the joke they've become. And tell me again why she shouldn't have to recuse herself on any case that her owners will be bringing during her term.
a “total b” and that he would “destroy” her. Prosser has blamed Abrahamson, whom he said bullied and embarrassed him, for goading him to anger.
Is this the legal mind you want representing you in Supreme Court decisions? If he’s that weak that he blames bullying by a fellow justice on his bigoted outbursts, I am pretty sure his decisions may be more based on emotional interpretation.
Adding that outside interests are only about him. What about the outside interests mounting out of the local UPS station against Kloppenburg?
Seems like his biggest flaw is he does not know how to take ownership of a situation when HE put himself in the limelight with an outburst of a childish tantrum and then blames someone else.
Justices are supposed to be well read and make decisions based on the Laws, not circumvent them when your emotions get the better of you.
When your endorser recommends anger management classes, something in decent people with common sense should tell you this man does not deserve this coveted position.
a “total b” and that he would “destroy” her. Prosser has blamed Abrahamson, whom he said bullied and embarrassed him, for goading him to anger.
Is this the legal mind you want representing you in Supreme Court decisions? If he’s that weak that he blames bullying by a fellow justice on his bigoted outbursts, I am pretty sure his decisions may be more based on emotional interpretation.
Adding that outside interests are only about him. What about the outside interests mounting out of the local UPS station against Kloppenburg?
Seems like his biggest flaw is he does not know how to take ownership of a situation when HE put himself in the limelight with an outburst of a childish tantrum and then blames someone else.
Justices are supposed to be well read and make decisions based on the Laws, not circumvent them when your emotions get the better of you.
When your endorser recommends anger management classes, something in decent people with common sense should tell you this man does not deserve this coveted position.
Yes, let the will of the union thugs bussed in from all over the country prevail. Let the will of those who stand outside grocery stores and yell and spit at the customers going in and out prevail. Let the will of the thug unions who are demanding support from small businesses in Union Grove or else face a boycott prevail. Let the will of the thugs who literally spat on Republican State Senators prevail. Let the those who threatened to turn Senate Chambers into a WWF rage match prevail.
And by all means let the will of those teachers with mammoth generous pensions, far beyond what us citizens who pay for it have, and who -- lets face it --are working in a catastrophically failing educational system which will doom our entire country to third world status prevail
As opposed to walker who has pledged to be the puppet for Walker and has also called one of his fellow justices a "b*%#@" and promised to destroy her.. Even if I agreed with Prosser or thought he was the best person for the position initially his actions over the campaign have been more then enough to convince me to support Kloppenburg
"Our campaign efforts will include building an organization that will return Justice Prosser to the bench, protecting the conservative judicial majority and acting as a common sense complement to both the new administration and Legislature."
So if the leftie is elected to the court and all the protaxpayer laws are overturned, where will the pot of magic money come from to fund court mandated union thug benefits? Union members should be concentrating on how to hold onto some portion of what they have, rather than trying to fly their plane into the ground with everyone getting nothing (remember that town in the south that hasn't made a pension payment in months, or the bankrupt town in California that paid out ten cents on the dollar towards their union obligations? That fate is coming for all delusional government union thugs).
Not a liberal here! If the majority of voters in an election decide that one case or a string of cases or an entire judicial philosophy (e.g., "sock puppet") is unconstitutional, and they elect a new justice, then how is that not the will of the majority? Shawn decides what the constitution says about the role of the court, whether a particular law is constitutional, and which candidate best matches Shawn's criteria. If enough people agree with Shawn, then Shawn's candidate wins. Majority rules. Was Shawn or Shawn's candidate right about any or all of those factors? Irrelevant. Majority rules. Might this affect how the Court (however constituted with whichever candidate) rules in the future? Irrelevant. Majority rules.
My apologies for the assumption, but I would suggest that "majority rules" as a sancrosanct principle is a little inconsistent with a coherent Constitutional, limited government philosophy.
The Founders correctly saw that pure democracy - i.e. "majority rules" was two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner. Hence the judiciary's role in checking the legislative and executive branches' potential excesses and protecting the rights of the minority, whether they had popular support or not.
If you embrace that the majority should get its way always and everywhere, dragging the judicial branch into the process just 6 months after they had their chance to express a preference for who gets to make laws, I'd say that violates conservatism at least in spirit.
"If you embrace that the majority should get its way always and everywhere, dragging the judicial branch into the process just 6 months after they had their chance to express a preference for who gets to make laws, I'd say that violates conservatism at least in spirit."
I don't embrace majority rules and do believe the judiciary should protect minority rights. But if we're going to elect our judges, then I don't know how we'll get courts that protect minority rights. If the court rules one way and believes it is both upholding the constitution and protecting minority rights, but then the majority of voters toss out one or more judges because the majority disagrees with what the court has done, then we are left with majority rules.
W/r/t your sentence (quoted above), I'm not understanding who you're saying has dragged the judicial process in and who has had a chance to express their preferences.
I was in that room and heard this speech and several others. I've been to the facebook pages and websites and hear all the Madison and Milwaukee talk shows and have seen the ads. I've also called people asking them to vote for Prosser.
What may not be apparent to DCDynamo OR Shawn is that this race has become nothing about Kloppenburg OR Prosser OR the judiciary, independent or otherwise. It is about one thing: get Walker.
DCDynamo- one pretty large difference between this and Iowa is that in Iowa, the court had already made a ridiculous decision invalidating a law, whereas here, the court as composed right now would presumably uphold the law, but voters are trying to change the court to invalidate a law. Voters have other ways to get rid of a bad law -elections of legislators and the governor- but a court decision requires an amendment. In Iowa, voters were saying that a democratically-enacted law should be upheld; in Wisconsin, they are trying to say it should be invalidated. Conservatives, then, are embracing deference to the legislature by taking the positions most of us have taken in these races; it involves no objection in principle to judicial elections.
1. Robert Costa, I wish that the kind of energy your recent posts describe had been evident throughout the entire campaign. Hopefully it's in time to propel common-sense Wisconsinites to the polls.
2. "On the right, the Wisconsin Club for Growth, the Tea Party Express, and Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, a chamber of commerce-type group, have together thrown nearly $1 million into pro-Prosser ads. Those organizations, however, are being heavily outspent by the Greater Wisconsin Committee, a lefty outfit with deep union ties."
I made a donation, but where are the resources from the Republican Establishment, i.e. from the people we count on for dealing with matters like off-year elections? Maybe nuances like thuggery, boycotts, death threats, and thousands of demonstrators swarming the WI capital are too subtle to alert the GOP that the Left perceives this as a highest-priority battle.
If the rights of the minority trump the will of the majority, then elections are irrelevant and the American people should go straight to the courts for their marching orders. Of course, there's no way to guarantee that the handful of judges who decide on behalf of 300 million people - whether elected or appointed - are fair-minded finders of fact and interpreters of the law and not paid-for political hacks with agendas to promote.
Minority rights prevail seems an odd way to operate a society of more than 300 million people since minority rights and interests differ depending on the minority and would, in some instances, be detrimental to the majority. And when the minority has power and influence the majority does not have, is it still the minority?
This judge is the rogue that nullifies the will of majorities and gives radicals their way.
The Minority Senators packed up and left town.
In the mean time local municipalities, states and Washington are debt riddled and will not have the wherewithal to fulfill the promises public union workers have extracted from the pro-union democrats they put into power. Governments will be compelled to lay off workers en masse for lack of funds and taxpayers will rebel against tax increases to fill the void.
We are already taxed enough. The so called Wealthy already pay far far more than their share. You keep taxing them, they simply leave the state or country or take their business elsewhere.
Walker has it right, the people should wake up and support him.
Now, now, settle down you all. The people will decide. We who are voting in Wisconsin are well informed, and no attempt to bias the decision by last minute advertising will make the difference.
Now, now, settle down you all. The people will decide. We who are voting in Wisconsin are well informed, and no attempt to bias the decision by last minute advertising will make the difference.
Reminds me of last year's election that tossed out 3 Iowa supreme court justices. Let the will of the majority prevail!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe "will of the majority" is not what a freakin' Supreme Court seat is about. It's about the interpreting law as written, and when necessary, to check and strike down legislation that violates the state or U.S. Constitution. It is NOT about pulling your own policy preferences out of thin air or arbitrarily invaliding laws you don't like.
You want to defend the anti-Walker arguments in any of these weak lawsuits, please do so, I haven't heard a coherent one yet. But the judiciary is not intended to be a second legislature, and Kloppenburg has all but pledged to Rich Trumka's sock puppet.
It would be a refreshing bit of honesty if you liberal trolls would just admit that you want a lackey and cut the pretense about "independence."
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYeah. Kloppenberg has made it clear that the seat may be occupied by her should she win, but it will be owned by the unions and so-called Progressives who are buying it for her and will expect her to do their bidding. This just helps expose the idea of "non-partisan" offices as the joke they've become. And tell me again why she shouldn't have to recuse herself on any case that her owners will be bringing during her term.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJust one question to the voters:
a “total b” and that he would “destroy” her. Prosser has blamed Abrahamson, whom he said bullied and embarrassed him, for goading him to anger.
Is this the legal mind you want representing you in Supreme Court decisions? If he’s that weak that he blames bullying by a fellow justice on his bigoted outbursts, I am pretty sure his decisions may be more based on emotional interpretation.
Adding that outside interests are only about him. What about the outside interests mounting out of the local UPS station against Kloppenburg?
Seems like his biggest flaw is he does not know how to take ownership of a situation when HE put himself in the limelight with an outburst of a childish tantrum and then blames someone else.
Justices are supposed to be well read and make decisions based on the Laws, not circumvent them when your emotions get the better of you.
When your endorser recommends anger management classes, something in decent people with common sense should tell you this man does not deserve this coveted position.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJust one question to the voters:
a “total b” and that he would “destroy” her. Prosser has blamed Abrahamson, whom he said bullied and embarrassed him, for goading him to anger.
Is this the legal mind you want representing you in Supreme Court decisions? If he’s that weak that he blames bullying by a fellow justice on his bigoted outbursts, I am pretty sure his decisions may be more based on emotional interpretation.
Adding that outside interests are only about him. What about the outside interests mounting out of the local UPS station against Kloppenburg?
Seems like his biggest flaw is he does not know how to take ownership of a situation when HE put himself in the limelight with an outburst of a childish tantrum and then blames someone else.
Justices are supposed to be well read and make decisions based on the Laws, not circumvent them when your emotions get the better of you.
When your endorser recommends anger management classes, something in decent people with common sense should tell you this man does not deserve this coveted position.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAnd Prosser aligning himself with Walker was okay? How different?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYes, let the will of the union thugs bussed in from all over the country prevail. Let the will of those who stand outside grocery stores and yell and spit at the customers going in and out prevail. Let the will of the thug unions who are demanding support from small businesses in Union Grove or else face a boycott prevail. Let the will of the thugs who literally spat on Republican State Senators prevail. Let the those who threatened to turn Senate Chambers into a WWF rage match prevail.
And by all means let the will of those teachers with mammoth generous pensions, far beyond what us citizens who pay for it have, and who -- lets face it --are working in a catastrophically failing educational system which will doom our entire country to third world status prevail
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAs opposed to walker who has pledged to be the puppet for Walker and has also called one of his fellow justices a "b*%#@" and promised to destroy her.. Even if I agreed with Prosser or thought he was the best person for the position initially his actions over the campaign have been more then enough to convince me to support Kloppenburg
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHow "independent" is this:
"Our campaign efforts will include building an organization that will return Justice Prosser to the bench, protecting the conservative judicial majority and acting as a common sense complement to both the new administration and Legislature."
- Brian Nemoir, Prosser's campaign director
External Link
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSo if the leftie is elected to the court and all the protaxpayer laws are overturned, where will the pot of magic money come from to fund court mandated union thug benefits? Union members should be concentrating on how to hold onto some portion of what they have, rather than trying to fly their plane into the ground with everyone getting nothing (remember that town in the south that hasn't made a pension payment in months, or the bankrupt town in California that paid out ten cents on the dollar towards their union obligations? That fate is coming for all delusional government union thugs).
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNot a liberal here! If the majority of voters in an election decide that one case or a string of cases or an entire judicial philosophy (e.g., "sock puppet") is unconstitutional, and they elect a new justice, then how is that not the will of the majority? Shawn decides what the constitution says about the role of the court, whether a particular law is constitutional, and which candidate best matches Shawn's criteria. If enough people agree with Shawn, then Shawn's candidate wins. Majority rules. Was Shawn or Shawn's candidate right about any or all of those factors? Irrelevant. Majority rules. Might this affect how the Court (however constituted with whichever candidate) rules in the future? Irrelevant. Majority rules.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMy apologies for the assumption, but I would suggest that "majority rules" as a sancrosanct principle is a little inconsistent with a coherent Constitutional, limited government philosophy.
The Founders correctly saw that pure democracy - i.e. "majority rules" was two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner. Hence the judiciary's role in checking the legislative and executive branches' potential excesses and protecting the rights of the minority, whether they had popular support or not.
If you embrace that the majority should get its way always and everywhere, dragging the judicial branch into the process just 6 months after they had their chance to express a preference for who gets to make laws, I'd say that violates conservatism at least in spirit.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"If you embrace that the majority should get its way always and everywhere, dragging the judicial branch into the process just 6 months after they had their chance to express a preference for who gets to make laws, I'd say that violates conservatism at least in spirit."
I don't embrace majority rules and do believe the judiciary should protect minority rights. But if we're going to elect our judges, then I don't know how we'll get courts that protect minority rights. If the court rules one way and believes it is both upholding the constitution and protecting minority rights, but then the majority of voters toss out one or more judges because the majority disagrees with what the court has done, then we are left with majority rules.
W/r/t your sentence (quoted above), I'm not understanding who you're saying has dragged the judicial process in and who has had a chance to express their preferences.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI was in that room and heard this speech and several others. I've been to the facebook pages and websites and hear all the Madison and Milwaukee talk shows and have seen the ads. I've also called people asking them to vote for Prosser.
What may not be apparent to DCDynamo OR Shawn is that this race has become nothing about Kloppenburg OR Prosser OR the judiciary, independent or otherwise. It is about one thing: get Walker.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDCDynamo- one pretty large difference between this and Iowa is that in Iowa, the court had already made a ridiculous decision invalidating a law, whereas here, the court as composed right now would presumably uphold the law, but voters are trying to change the court to invalidate a law. Voters have other ways to get rid of a bad law -elections of legislators and the governor- but a court decision requires an amendment. In Iowa, voters were saying that a democratically-enacted law should be upheld; in Wisconsin, they are trying to say it should be invalidated. Conservatives, then, are embracing deference to the legislature by taking the positions most of us have taken in these races; it involves no objection in principle to judicial elections.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse1. Robert Costa, I wish that the kind of energy your recent posts describe had been evident throughout the entire campaign. Hopefully it's in time to propel common-sense Wisconsinites to the polls.
2. "On the right, the Wisconsin Club for Growth, the Tea Party Express, and Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, a chamber of commerce-type group, have together thrown nearly $1 million into pro-Prosser ads. Those organizations, however, are being heavily outspent by the Greater Wisconsin Committee, a lefty outfit with deep union ties."
I made a donation, but where are the resources from the Republican Establishment, i.e. from the people we count on for dealing with matters like off-year elections? Maybe nuances like thuggery, boycotts, death threats, and thousands of demonstrators swarming the WI capital are too subtle to alert the GOP that the Left perceives this as a highest-priority battle.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf the rights of the minority trump the will of the majority, then elections are irrelevant and the American people should go straight to the courts for their marching orders. Of course, there's no way to guarantee that the handful of judges who decide on behalf of 300 million people - whether elected or appointed - are fair-minded finders of fact and interpreters of the law and not paid-for political hacks with agendas to promote.
Minority rights prevail seems an odd way to operate a society of more than 300 million people since minority rights and interests differ depending on the minority and would, in some instances, be detrimental to the majority. And when the minority has power and influence the majority does not have, is it still the minority?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis judge is the rogue that nullifies the will of majorities and gives radicals their way.
The Minority Senators packed up and left town.
In the mean time local municipalities, states and Washington are debt riddled and will not have the wherewithal to fulfill the promises public union workers have extracted from the pro-union democrats they put into power. Governments will be compelled to lay off workers en masse for lack of funds and taxpayers will rebel against tax increases to fill the void.
We are already taxed enough. The so called Wealthy already pay far far more than their share. You keep taxing them, they simply leave the state or country or take their business elsewhere.
Walker has it right, the people should wake up and support him.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNow, now, settle down you all. The people will decide. We who are voting in Wisconsin are well informed, and no attempt to bias the decision by last minute advertising will make the difference.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNow, now, settle down you all. The people will decide. We who are voting in Wisconsin are well informed, and no attempt to bias the decision by last minute advertising will make the difference.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse