Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it is not glory.

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

Hell hath no fury like a farmer bankrupted.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

Jesus watching the most hateful people claiming to be his followers

I am pretty sure these ‘journalists’ were not always such a bootlicking sycophants.

Washington Post Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

Anne Laurie is a fucking hero in so many ways. ~ Betty Cracker

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

Disagreements are healthy; personal attacks are not.

All hail the time of the bunny!

Let there be snark.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

“Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.”

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

You are here: Home / Politics / Great News Out of Wisconsin – Judge Janet!

Great News Out of Wisconsin – Judge Janet!

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Good News Out of Wisconsin – Judge Janet!

Great news out of Wisconsin!  (Though “signaled” isn’t as strong as I would like!)  h/t Omnes for sharing the news.

Wisconsin Republicans signaled on Thursday that they were retreating from their threats to impeach a recently seated liberal State Supreme Court justice, Janet Protasiewicz, before the newly left-leaning court could throw out the gerrymandered legislative maps that have cemented the G.O.P.’s hold on power in the state.

Robin Vos, the powerful Republican speaker of the State Assembly, said at a news conference in Madison that he would not seek to remove Justice Protasiewicz based on the argument he and fellow Republicans had been making for two months — that statements she made calling the maps “rigged” during her campaign for office this year compelled impeachment if she refused to recuse herself from a case challenging them.

Now, Mr. Vos said, the focus would be on what Justice Protasiewicz does “in office.” He said that if the court ruled against the Republican-drawn maps and other conservative causes, he would appeal its decisions to the U.S. Supreme Court. Impeachment, he said, remained “on the table” but was not something Republicans would pursue now.

“If they decide to inject their own political bias inside the process and not follow the law, we have the ability to go to the Supreme Court and we also have the ability to hold her accountable to the voters of Wisconsin,” Mr. Vos said.
His remarks came after nearly two months of drama about how Republicans would respond to the prospect that the State Supreme Court, now controlled by liberals for the first time in 15 years, will act as a check on conservative control of the state’s government. Mr. Vos had first floated the possibility of impeachment in August, and the potential move was embraced by other top Republicans in the state, including Senator Ron Johnson and former Gov. Scott Walker.

Gift link to NYT article.

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

73Comments

  1. 1.

    MattF

    It’s possible that the uproar over the WISGOP’s obvious distaste for democracy had some effect. Good.

  3. 3.

    WaterGirl

    The NY Attorney General is not letting Trump do all of the outside-the-courtroom talking.

  6. 6.

    WaterGirl

    Adam Klasfeld
    @KlasfeldReports
    Big: NYAG’s counsel Louis Solomon digs in to the terms of Allen Weisselberg’s $2 million severance agreement, including this section on “Employee Promises.”
    He had to promise not to voluntarily cooperate against Trump.   How can that possibly be legal?
    (He gets the last of his 2 million dollars in December of 2024.)
  10. 10.

    Cameron

    @WaterGirl: Just one more example of what a vile, petty little man he is.  His whole problem is that Bibi congratulated Joe on actually winning the election.  Praising people who slaughtered civilians because your feelings were hurt.  What a guy!

  11. 11.

    pat

    “If they decide to inject their own political bias

    I had to laugh out loud at that. She was elected because she said she was against the gerrymandering and now she gets to decide and maybe that’s what the VOTERS wanted.

  12. 12.

    dmsilev

    Meanwhile, the House GOP continues its descent (further) into madness. How far gone are they? So far, that they’re even floating the possibility to …work with Democrats.

    Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.), who has been a prominent supporter of Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), said repeatedly that Scalise has no chance of winning with only Republican support, and that the only way to reopen the House would be with Democratic support — if not by voting outright for the Republican nominee then by voting “present” to lower the threshold of votes required to win a simple majority.

    (left unspoken are the key questions of what the Democrats would want in return for this favor and what it would take for any D to trust that the Republicans would follow through)

  13. 13.

    cain

    @WaterGirl: Fucker deserves it – he and his wife should go straight to jail.

    It’s probably even more important now.

    Wish we could go with the gusto against GOP traitors.

  14. 14.

    cain

    @dmsilev:

    What they are saying is that they want them some corrupt Dems to finagle.

    I hope no Dem goes for it without approval from leaders. But that support isn’t coming for free and we know that the condition is UKR spends and a clean vote to fund the govt.

    The more important part is that – if the speaker wants to keep his position he’s going to need continual dem support. We are in a good position.

  15. 15.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @WaterGirl:

    Trump goes after Israel, saying Prime Minister Netanyahu “let us down” and needs to “straighten it out” before praising the terrorists who attacked them as “smart”

    Holy fucking shit! How did he think that was a good idea to say that?! Republicans and evangelicals are incredibly pro-Israel

  16. 16.

    cain

    @WaterGirl:

    Such good social media game.

    They need to start putting this out there in NYC and other places where this would work against GOP. Trump continues to fuck with their game.

    The whole smart thing is Trump basically saying that it takes someone smarter (him). Love the fact that he’s dumping on his good friend Bibi.

  18. 18.

    cain

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    It’s embarrassing because to many he is literally their God figure. Evangelical have projected divinity into him. They’ll probably just ignore what he said – but it’s great video to give to Trump supporters. But they’ll likely just pass it off as ‘locker conversation’

    They give the man a pass for everything. They don’t want to show him accountability.

  19. 19.

    Barbara

    @WaterGirl: I started looking at this, and it’s not clear to me how the timing works. The case in question involves a different statute, but the essence is that the defendant filed liens against individuals after they were no longer acting in their capacity as federal officials.  Therefore, charges filed against him under a statute that outlaws taking certain actions against a government official could not be maintained because they were not officials at the time he took those otherwise prohibited actions.

    The fact that Clark et al. were prosecuted after they left government employment might not be as important as whether the alleged crimes occurred while they were employed by the federal government.

    I don’t know the answer but I am not convinced that the opinion really sheds much light.

  20. 20.

    jonas

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):   How did he think that was a good idea to say that?! Republicans and evangelicals are incredibly pro-Israel

    Even though it’s right there on tape, they’ll just say he didn’t say it, and it’s all fake news, and screw you!

  21. 21.

    jimmiraybob

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): “Holy fucking shit! How did he think that was a good idea to say that?! Republicans and evangelicals are incredibly pro-Israel”

    They think that he is playing 12-dimensional chess ….. like the stable genius that he is.  Clearly he is outsmarting Hamas and Hezbollah with his god-anointed powers.

  23. 23.

    eversor

    @Cameron:

    Another funny thing came out today.

    https://washingtonmonthly.com/2023/10/12/why-is-trump-trashing-netanyahu/

    Money quote:

    [i]After saying, “We will stand with Israel 100 percent,” he digressed: “I did have a bad experience with Israel, though, when we took out [Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps General Qasem] Soleimani” on January 3, 2020.

    As he told the story, he said, “I don’t think this has ever been told. They’ll say, ‘Oh, it’s classified information.’ Well, maybe it is, but I don’t think so.”

    He said Israel and the U.S. government were “working together” on plans to kill Soleimani before he could launch attacks on American military installations. (In The Divider, Peter Baker and Susan Glasser report that Trump “gave shifting explanations” for the assassination, and that claims of imminent “attacks of four American embassies” were not “backed up in briefings with congressional leaders” by military and intelligence officials.)

    But “the night before it happened,” according to Trump, “I got a call that Israel will not be participating in this attack … I said, I don’t like that, that’s not good.”

    Trump said he ordered the American military to proceed without Israel. “We did it, but I’ll never forget that Bibi Netanyahu let us down, that was a very terrible thing … We did the job ourself [sic] and it was absolute precision—magnificent, beautiful job. And then Bibi tried to take credit for it … That didn’t make me feel too good.”[/i]

  25. 25.

    smith

    @Barbara: IANAL, but I thought the Willis’ argument  against removal for Meadows and Clark (with which Judge Jones agreed) is that what they did while employed by the federal government was outside the scope of their duties, so that whether they were employed by the feds at the time  wouldn’t really be relevant.

  26. 26.

    jonas

    @cain:  Evangelical have projected divinity into him. They’ll probably just ignore what he said – but it’s great video to give to Trump supporters. But they’ll likely just pass it off as ‘locker conversation’

    That’s my guess, too — they’ll just brush it off. The narrative evangelicals have settled on is that Trump isn’t “perfect”, but God has raised him up to do His Will regardless. Except that’s not how anything works — in the Bible or anywhere else. But that’s what they’re going with and there’s no convincing them otherwise.

    It’s so ironic that fundamentalists and evangelicals in the 80’s (when I was growing up among them) were so smugly condescending towards religions they described as brainwashed “cults” like Jehovah’s Witnesses or New Age groups like the Rashneesh outfit — and now here they are, a bunch of barefoot bean pickers waving ecstatically at their guru and crying tears of joy as he drives by in his Rolls Royce.

  27. 27.

    catclub

    @WaterGirl: He had to promise not to voluntarily cooperate against Trump.

     

    I see that as just another non-compete clause and completely legal.

    Don’t many Internet titans promise to only release your data to law enforcement if subpeonaed? Similar.

  28. 28.

    lowtechcyclist

    @dmsilev:

    Rep. Steve Womack (R-AR):

    if not by voting outright for the Republican nominee then by voting “present” to lower the threshold of votes required to win a simple majority.

    Fuck that shit – let some of them vote “present” to lower the threshold of votes required to win a simple majority so that Jeffries can win.

    It’s really simple: the Rethugs are incapable of organizing a two-(clown-)car funeral.  Why should the Democrats, who are capable of governing, give a Rethug enough votes to screw things up until his own party gets tired of him?

    A number of them have already acknowledged that they’re the fuckups. I say it’s time for them to act on this, and do what it takes to put Jeffries in the Speakership so that the House can function.

    They’ll still have a majority, so they’ll still be able to vote stuff down if they’re unified.  But Jeffries could at least put bills on the floor where they could get an up-or-down vote.  Bills like aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, and an extension of the CR into early 2024, if not the whole fiscal year.

  32. 32.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @japa21:

    At least it potentially creates a wedge issue and makes the GOP look even crazier to the normies

    @Barbara:

    Very true. He’s a very sick person

  33. 33.

    Cameron

    @eversor: A “magnificent, beautiful” assassination.  Got it.  And wasn’t Soleimani on a diplomatic trip trying to reconcile Iran with some of its Arab neighbors when this went down?  Maybe he was planning on attacking American embassies, but something about that doesn’t ring quite right.  The Israelis have never been shy about taking a whack at Iran; if President Pinhead really did propose this to them and they didn’t like it, it’s probably because they thought it was a really  bad idea.

  34. 34.

    patrick II

    @pat:

    Nice name.

    Anyhow, I agree and I will add that most Republicans actually believe that it is partisan to draw neutral lines because they honestly believe that lines optimized for Republicans are the default, and straying from that is partisan.

  37. 37.

    Mike S

    Vos says impeachment of Protasiewicz is still ‘on the table’ 

    MADISON – Assembly Speaker Robin Vos is leaving open the possibility of initiating a process to remove a newly elected Wisconsin Supreme Court justice should he disagree with her handling of a lawsuit before the high court that challenges the state’s legislative maps that favor the GOP.
    Vos told reporters Thursday that while he is not moving forward with impeaching Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz on the floor today, it’s possible lawmakers will make the unprecedented move in the future.

  38. 38.

    WaterGirl

    @smith: I think the defendants were arguing it both ways.  First the prosecution argued that what they did was outside the outer perimeter of their duties.  So then the defendants came back with the “but we were employed by the federal government, so even if it was out of our duties, we can still move to federal court because of that.

  42. 42.

    WaterGirl

    @catclub: Not exactly related, but maybe in the same zip code.

    I saw this last night:

    So all of Trump’s non-disclosure agreements have essentially been voided!  Who knows what will come out of that, but I bet it will be a lot of stuff.  How many women has Trump sexually assaulted?

  46. 46.

    Alison Rose

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): First, come on Goku. You know Trump well enough by now to know he doesn’t give a shit whether or not anything he says is “good” or not. In his tiny little mind, anything and everything he wants to say is not only good but perfect and the best words anyone has ever said.

    Also, as others noted, Repubs are NOT pro-Israel, they are pro-Jews-as-Sims-characters-in-their-Rapture-ideology.

  47. 47.

    cain

    @jonas:

    It’s so ironic that fundamentalists and evangelicals in the 80’s (when I was growing up among them) were so smugly condescending towards religions they described as brainwashed “cults” like Jehovah’s Witnesses or New Age groups like the Rashneesh outfit — and now here they are, a bunch of barefoot bean pickers waving ecstatically at their guru and crying tears of joy as he drives by in his Rolls Royce.

    What they are practicing isn’t even Christianity – some performance art and worship of Mammon.

  48. 48.

    smith

    @WaterGirl: That was their argument, but the judge sided with the prosecution. We’ll see what the circuit court says, and maybe SCOTUS, if they want to push it that far.

  50. 50.

    Gravenstone

    @Mike S: That’s okay. If the Supremes rule against the gerrymander, it will be Vos closing the barn door after his horse has fled should he try and impeach her then.

  52. 52.

    JML

    @Mike S: this is just classic cover for the fact that they’re surrendering on the impeachment issue. They know it will kill them politically, but they can’t say it out loud or ever admit defeat, so they toss this vague threat on the table to their base while slinking off with their tails between their legs.

  53. 53.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Mike S: They’ve been told by a shitload of conservative lawyers and judges that they have no grounds for impeachment at this time.  They may try it after the decision, but we can’t control that.  It is off the table for now with a stern warning that they’ll be watching her.  Oooh, scary.  They backed down and are trying to put the best face on it.

  54. 54.

    smith

    @JML: Impeachment will kill them electorally either way. If they don’t impeach, the WI Goobers will feel betrayed. If they do impeach, the voters who elected Judge Janet by an 11 point margin will feel seriously disrespected, and could bring those same margins to the polls in 2024. It’s a rock and a hard place of their own making, and couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch.

  57. 57.

    wjca

    @WaterGirl: As long as I am talking to myself,

    As long as you aren’t arguing with yourself,  and losing those arguments, you don’t really have to worry.

  59. 59.

    smith

    @Eolirin: Gerrymandering has led them to think they can always act with impunity, with no political price to pay for extreme behavior. Even a little bit of purpling in those conditions can easily leave them stuck on an island with nothing but sharks all around.

  61. 61.

    RaflW

    @pat: Our political bias is okay, injecting their own political bias inside the process is bad.

    It’s all but saying IOKIYAR out loud to reporters. Do they notice?

  63. 63.

    eversor

    @Cameron:

    Our military was against it as well.  The logic being that while the Soleimani did orchestrate many attacks on coalition forces and was running assinsation squads he wasn’t crazy.  There were a lot crazier and more blood thirsty forces in line behind should he be replaced and he was oddly a moderating figure on Irans fuckery in the region.  He’d jump at the chance to get some kills and cause chaos but he wasn’t a risk taker and was in no mood to kick off a region wide super war and see how it all ended.  He was also recognized as someone would could actualy cut deals with.

    Which is why our military and the Israeli’s were both against taking him out.  It was a stupid fucking idea.  It also wasn’t that hard.  We could have taken him out for years but everyone agreed it was dumb.

  66. 66.

    Geminid

    @ljdramone: Haaretz is a really good source for news on the current war. They typically have a paywall but it seems to be suspended for now. They are very anti-Netanyahu and always have been.

  67. 67.

    Geminid

    @eversor: I always figured Pompeo drove that decision. Generally, Trump’s motto was “talk loudly but carry a small white flag.” I think he was talked into that one and I thInk it was Pompeo who did the talking.. Pompeo had his own political ambitions, and that could have played a part.

    That incident might not be over. Solemeini had huge prestige among the Revolutionary Guard Corps, and they may take their revenge some day.

  68. 68.

    Viva BrisVegas

    It’s just as well Janet Protasiewicz didn’t speak out against murder, because then the Republicans would have required her to recuse herself from any cases involving homicide.

    If a gerrymander weren’t rigging an election, there wouldn’t be any point in doing it.

  69. 69.

    CaseyL

    @Geminid: It’s like whiplash going from Haaretz to the Jerusalem “Netanyahu Can Do No Wrong” Post.  Unfortunately, I think JPost is more widely read in Israel.

  70. 70.

    Geminid

    @CaseyL: The Jerusalem Post probably is more widely read, in this country too. So is the Times of Israel. But Haaretz is the go-to site for serious information on security matters, I think.

    But I’ve read the Jerusalem Post a lot and I’ve never thought they were especially pro-Netanyahu. They just try to stay neutral. They remind me of USA Today or NPR.

    One thing Haaretz is much better at is reporting on human rights abuses in the West Bank. They will have a detailed story on a serious incident the J. Post and the Times of Israel will ignore or barely mention. Haaretz seems not to paywall these stories.

  72. 72.

    wjca

    @Geminid: Solemeini had huge prestige among the Revolutionary Guard Corps, and they may take their revenge some day.

    Call me petty, but I really hope that, if the do, they focus in on the guys in charge then, rather than hitting all the rest of us.

  73. 73.

    Roger Moore

    @Eolirin:

    Losing their maps will kill them too, so they really don’t have any good options.

    Losing their maps is the biggest deal; everything else is a side issue.  There’s no way they would have a big enough majority in either house to run roughshod if they were competing on fair maps.  They might even wind up in the minority, especially if they do something especially obnoxious after the old maps have been thrown out.

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