Who can forget the union protests in Wisconsin over Gov Scott Walker's controversial anti-union bill. Whats happening now? Republicans started recall petitions against all eligible Democrats who left the state to block the bill from being passed. Democrats responded by starting recall petitions against all eligible Republicans who voted in favor of the bill. Nine of the petitions were successful, resulting in 3 Democrats and 6 Republicans facing recall elections this summer. The recall electiions for the Reublican senators will begin July 12th, with Democratic primaries forced by Republicans running fake "democratic" candidates in order to delay the general elections by a month. The first general election will occur July 19th in the recall of Dem. senator Dave Hansen, as well as real Republican primaries in the other two recalls of Democrats. All other general elections will be held one month after the corresponding primary.
As for the fate of the collective bargaining bill itself, Madison liberal judge Maryann Sumi ruled that the Senate violated the state open meetings law when they passed the bill without proper notice of the vote while the Democrats were in Illinois, after stripping spending provisions out of it so they didn’t need a quorum. The state Supreme Court voted 4-3 to overturn that decision on the grounds that senate rules trump the open meetings law, and the conservative majority insisted the ruling be issued by June 14th which was the date the Republicans in the legislature had requested as a deadline for a decision. Liberal chief justice Shirley Abrahamson said her dissenting opinion would not be ready by then and indicated that it might take up to a month. This angered the conservatives, who went to liberal justice Anne Bradley's office where they encountered Bradley and Abrahamson and a heated argument ensued which turned into a physical altercation between Bradley and conservative justice David Prosser. The ruling was subsequently issued on the 14th, as the conservatives requested, and the bill has now been published and has taken effect, with the reductions in public employees' checks to begin August 1st.
Details of what exactly happened between Prosser and Bradley are unclear and various "sources" have made conflicting statements. Bradley claims that Prosser put his hands around her neck and choked her, while Prosser claims he will be exonerated, with other "sources" claiming Bradley charged at him with fists raised and he raised his hands in self defense, making contact with her neck. Prosser has been in the news for this sort of thing before, calling Abrahamson "a bitch" and saying he "would destroy her." Investigation of the incident between Prosser and Bradley is ongoing and the public statements of the 6 justices present, if any are forthcoming, should be of great interest to the public. If Wisconsin's Supreme Court justices can't even agree on what they saw when they were in the same room together, how can we expect them to mete out impartial justice? If this ends up going the route of justice testifying against justice in a simple case, then I have to assume that most or all of them are willing to perjure themselves, making themselves unfit to be witnesses in a court proceeding, much less preside over the highest court in the state of Wisconsin.
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