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Uppity Wisconsin - Progressive Webmasters

« Mr. Gableman: It Is Not Over Until We Say It Is Over | Main | Ready To Drop the Supreme Court Race. Not »

April 06, 2008

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Fraley

Paul,

Gee, your favorite...I'm so honored!

And, yes, I am accusing the State Journal and anyone else advocating for 'merit selection' of not trusting the voters.

Attempts to take their franchise away shows a lack of trust, I believe.

And my assertion still stands. The collective whine of those who supported Butler can be broken down into those who think the voters are either racist, stupid, or shouldn't be able to vote for judges in the first place.

jim guilfoil

I hope professional ethics is not an oxymoron. The money in judicial campaigns is unquestionably a contradiction to a rule of law. We now have a rule of monied persons who pay for the laws and those who judge them in an untrammeled pursuit of special interests. Democracy is a slogan for electioneering made legitimate by PR and advertising.
Waxing is waning more and more in the newspeak and groupthink of money.

nonheroicvet

For my part, I haven't seen an honest conservative since Warren Knowles died.

nonheroicvet

For my part, I haven't seen an honest conservative since Warren Knowles died. If there are any remaining, they are awfully quiet or maybe embarrassed by what passes for conservative these days. ( oops - looks like I hit the wrong button there)

ARS - expat cheesehead

The "collective whine" responding to these posts seems to come uniformly from the right wing. The "get over it", "winners win" name calling ("lefty stooges") and other clichéd aphorisms remind me more of the sandbox chatter among six year olds than constructive thoughts from adult members of our society.

Is this what passes for political discourse back home in Wisconsin these days?

ARS - expat cheesehead

The "collective whine" responding to these posts seems to come uniformly from the right wing. The "get over it", "winners win" name calling ("lefty stooges") and other clichéd aphorisms remind me more of the sandbox chatter among six year olds than constructive thoughts from adult members of our society.

Is this what passes for political discourse back home in Wisconsin these days?

Brian

Elections in Wisconsin are just like they are in any state in America: auctions about a set of perceived personality traits generating by (mostly television) advertising. Issues are practically irrelevant as poll after poll has shown that voters cannot correcly identify ANY policy position their preferred (or their opponent's) candidate holds. And since elections are about personalities, that usually guarantees that when you have new leadership you roughly have a new quarterback running essentially the same play. There are exceptions, but those are usually at the margins.

This is why you can have a state like Wisconsin elect an eminently qualified progressive like the excellent Russ Feingold at the same time it has a stunningly average right wing hack like Tommy Thompson as governor.

raul

Let's face it. Louie Butler lost because he was a soft on crime liberal loser, just like you Paul.

Katrina

I look forward to a waxing america discussion on public financing of elections vs. merit appointment of judges.

Michael J. Cheaney

Here is what I am finding interesting.

In 2000 and 2004 the Democrats were running around stating that "Every vote should count" and that millions upon millions of voters were "disinfranchised"

Fast Forward to 2008 and now the battle cry appears to be we need to appoint our Supreme Court Justices.

So which way do you want it?

Tim

Michael, you know that one has nothing to do with the other. Thousands were intentionally disenfranchised in the first election. In the second instance, both conservatives and liberals are rethinking how Supreme Court justices are selected.

Peter

Hey conservative types - comparing the apples of 2000 and 2004 presidential election voter fraud with the oranges of Supreme Court elections betrays your simplistic conception of the world around you. Also, you should spell "disenfranchised" correctly when arguing from a point of alleged intellectual superiority.

Seriously? We're *electing* justices? How would conservatives like it if there were a national popular vote referendum on Antonin Scalia or Clarence Thomas? That probably wouldn't turn out so well for you guys.

I would bet you $1000 that an overwhelming majority of Wisconsin voters from last Tuesday couldn't tell you what kind of issues the State Supreme Court handles. They couldn't tell you the difference between two philosophical approaches to jurisprudence. And they couldn't tell you why Mike Gableman is qualified or unqualified to be a judicial scholar on the high court.

Electing legislators and executives (and by proxy, their appointees) is very different than electing judges. They handle different parts of the system of democratic republican governance. Democracy does not simply equal voting. It is also about the protection of fundamental rights and liberties, which is subject to the auctioneering system of "elections" we have in this state and this country. When future historians of another era excavate the figurative rubble of our society, they will look at the actions of conservatives, Big Business, and the theocrats in the realms of public affairs and peg the dates of our downfall.

The Supreme Court "election" of 2008 is another example of the shortcomings of our democracy - not the will of the people. We are still obligated in this Constitutional system to protect the rights and liberties of minorities (no conservatives, I'm not talking about literal minorities like scary black and brown people). Majority rule only works with the protection of the minority - and that is guaranteed through the courts. Mob rule through simplistic auctioning of seats on the high appellate court to the higest bidder, democracy this is not.

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