X-Post from Wisconsin: Walker & company legislating liberal justice off the State Supremes

[Scuba]

In my email, from former Wisconsin Atty General Peg Lautenschlager ...

Hello, FdL Democrats.

You may have read the various articles about Wisconsin Republicans' latest attempts to stifle the will of voters.

Despite laws to prohibit and deter voters from going to the ballot box--voter ID, limited early voting, limited registration opportunities, etc.--Wisconsin voter still spoke loudly in 2009 and resoundingly reelected Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson to an additional ten year term.
At 81, Shirley is still twice as smart and works twice as hard as most of us, yet extremist legislators are forwarding a bill that creates a mandatory retirement age for judges to force her from the bench. If they can't manipulate the electorate, they will simply spit on the electorate.

Please share this, the link below, and other articles with all of those who are committed to an independent judiciary and respect for the will of the voters in Wisconsin. And, of course, email or write your legislators now.

Thanks, peg

More ...

http://www.prwatch.org/news/2015/01/12700/wi-gop-targets-respected-chief-justice-abrahamson

For almost 40 years, Wisconsin's judges have been working without a mandatory retirement age. But all of a sudden, some state GOP leaders have decided that this is a major problem.

As the Wisconsin Supreme Court prepares to take up multiple cases involving the “John Doe” criminal investigation of potentially illegal campaign coordination between Governor Scott Walker and the "independent" issue ad groups that have bankrolled the Republican party, Rep. Dean Knudson (R-Hudson) has decided that the time has finally come to put senior judges out to pasture, saying that he plans to introduce a bill in early January. "75 is the age that I would set, however, there are 132 legislators here. There may be some that would prefer to set that at 77. I wouldn't be surprised if there's discussion about 78 or 80," Knudson told Madison's WKOW TV.

...



Today, (Abrahamson) is 81 and as sharp as a tack. In recent years, as right-wing justices have taken the majority, she has authored a series of important dissents. On Wisconsin's voter ID law, Abrahamson wrote that: “Today the court follows not James Madison — for whom Wisconsin’s capital city is named — but rather Jim Crow, the name typically used to refer to repressive laws used to restrict rights, including the right to vote of African-Americans."

On a challenge to the passage of Walker's Act 10, which overturned Wisconsin's 50 year tradition of good faith bargaining with public sector workers, she chided the majority for giving in to political pressure, writing that: "Trust and confidence in the integrity of the judicial branch as an institution is critical at all times but especially when a case has high public visibility, is mired in partisan politics, and is emotionally charged . . . There is no liberty if the power of judging be not separated from the legislative and executive powers."

This is a blatant and power grab. These radical right-wingers are destroying our state at an astonishing pace.

[postulater]

1. Maybe we should make it mandatory that a governor has to finish college. Or

not run for a federal office while still in a state office.

[Fred Sanders]

2. Creeping fascism...creeping, creeping...it has to be stealthy otherwise folks may take notice, even

when you control the media.

[atreides1]

3. But, those radical right wingers....

...won, which means this is what the majority of the voters who went to the polls wanted!

I sympathize with you, but most Wisconsin voters wanted this kind of government...and now unfortunately you and others like you are stuck with it!

The worst part is that in the next election cycle, it'll happen again and again.

[ananda]

4. Yes, it will happen again and again until...

... enough families are disrupted or destroyed.

Then there will be a large enough movement for change.