It can now be reported that Justice Bradley says this case shouldn’t be tried in the press:
“The facts are that I was demanding that he get out of my office and he put his hands around my neck in anger in a chokehold,” she said. “Those are the facts and you can try to spin those facts and try to make it sound like I ran up to him and threw my neck into his hands, but that’s only spin.
“Matters of abusive behavior in the workplace aren’t resolved by competing press releases,” she said.
“I’m confident the appropriate authorities will conduct a thorough investigation of this incident involving abusive behavior in the workplace.”
In other words, if Prosser now goes to the media and denies it, he’s trying it in the press, whereas she’s only getting the facts out. For starters, I’d like to know what Prosser said that caused her to demand he leave her office.
Reading the whole piece at AmericaBlog is like taking sticky mouthfuls of cotton candy innuendo, and just about as nutritious. Once again, as in honesty-challenged Alex Pareene’s account at Salon, there’s no presentation of the counter-charge, sourced outside of Prosser himself, that Justice Bradley charged Justice Prosser with her hands raised.
Also missing from these accounts is the information that Justice Bradley’s account, that of the woman who now finds it unseemly to try these allegations in the press, was first broken by one Bill Lueders, employee of the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, whose major donor is George Soros. I mention this particularly because “Gaius Publius” seems to think that it’s only conservatives in Wisconsin whose views are affected by money, despite the oodles of union boodle that have flowed into the state over the past year.
An enterprising reporter at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel managed to track down the comments of a Marquette University Law Prof whose insights track remarkably well with the “workplace abuse” language of non-publicity hound Justice Bradley:
“Perhaps the most troubling aspect of this stunning development is how given all that we have learned about the court in recent years how untroubling many (people) are likely to find this,” said Marquette Law School professor Peter Rofes. “Entirely apart from the obvious violent nature of this act – and the fear it engendered in a female member of the court – as each day passes the people of Wisconsin have less reason to believe that there is very much legitimacy left in this incredibly important institution.”
Do you hear that? If you’re not troubled by the violence of this act–not this alleged act–then you are not aware of how little legitimacy this court has as long as it is controlled by “Movement Conservatives.” No, there’s nothing radical about these liberal justices. Kloppenburger, who declared victory on the strength of an apparent 200-vote uncertified margin but fought to the finish to try to overturn a 7000-vote loss, wasn’t embarrassing at all. Marquette Law School Prof Peter Rofes ought to be fired.
Hey, remember when Prosser’s refusal to admit defeat just after the election was having the effect of delegitimizing the Wisconsin Supremes? Good times, good times.
I want to point out what Bradley’s statement to the Journal-Sentinel does not do, namely, deny the allegation that she charged Prosser with her fists raised. What she didn’t do is run at him and fling her neck into his hands. I didn’t poop and find a diamond in the toilet, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t poop. Now it’s in the hands of the police, where it should have been in the first place.
There’s a simple rule of thumb that’s being applied here: whatever Progressives don’t like is illegitimate.
UPDATE (JM): Ann Althouse has a discussion going about this that riffs off of some observations Darleen made at Protein Wisdom.
Asks Althouse: “I would truly like to know who made the decision to go public with this accusation. Was it one of the judges or someone lower down, with less awareness of the mess it would make, like a law clerk or summer intern?”
Professor Jacobson declares that one of those two WI Supreme Court Justices will be out, after the multiple investigations are complete. Yes.
- Excited
- Angry
- Not as Angry
- Bored
- Indifferent
- Sad
My own intuition is this was a pre-meditated confrontation. Regardless of the subject matter, I suspect that Bradley and the other progressives on the court were looking for an opening to enact a high-drama scene along these lines. It would serve a couple of purposes.
1) It would allow for the incremental diminishing of Prosser’s public image
2) If it played out to their preference, it could provide an avenue to nullify the last election in some fashion.
3) Regardless of the outcome, it will serve to help keep the progressive base motivated through the conclusion of the Senate recall elections.
As always, the hypocrisy and double standard is breathtaking, as is the near pathalogical mendaciousness of the progressives in the legacy media and in elected office.