Gerrymandering case begins, and Becky Bradley gets another chance to be a whiny fool

Last Tuesday a big day in Wisconsin, and one a lot of us have awaited for many years.

Good morning from the Wisconsin Capitol, where people are waiting outside the state Supreme Court ahead of oral arguments in a case challenging the existing legislative maps pic.twitter.com/arejRC9Uxo

— A.J. Bayatpour (@AJBayatpour) November 21, 2023

And not surprisingly, it didn’t take long for one "Justice" to be an arrogant lowlife.

Just seconds into oral arguments Tuesday, conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley interrupted attorney Mark Gaber, who is with the Campaign Legal Center and representing the Democratic voters in the case, to ask why the lawsuit was not filed until shortly after Protasiewicz joined the court.

"Everybody knows that the reason we're here is because there was a change in the membership of the court," Bradley said, alleging that the parties would not have filed the case if Protasiewicz had lost. Bradley also pointed to comments Protasiewicz made while a candidate in which she described the existing maps as "rigged."

Well, that is a result of elections, Becky. The results of those elections allow for laws to be changed by changing the people pass and interpret the laws. Most of us understand that in elementary school.

That wasn’t enough the Bad Bradley, as she also gave this “down in up” statement.

Bradley drills down on the remedy those challenging the maps. Says she can't imagine something "less democratic" than forcing the entire Assembly and 17 of the state's 33 senators to go back up for re-election

— A.J. Bayatpour (@AJBayatpour) November 21, 2023

So forcing legislators to face the voters and increasing the chances of them being held accountable is the OPPOSITE of democracy? Maybe in Right-Wing Bubble World, where winning one election in 2010 gives you the right to have maps and laws to be slanted in WisGOP’s favor for the next 20 years, “consent of the governed” be damned. But not in any Wisconsin most of us want to live in.

It’s especially rich hearing proud Federalist Society member Rebecca Bradley saying this. And fellow Marquette graduate Charlie Pierce called her out this weekend in Esquire on her FedSoc BS.

Bradley deserves attention here. She has no business being a supreme court judge anywhere, let alone in Wisconsin, and she has no business discussing the politics of being a justice at all. She has been a product of the wingnut terrarium her whole life. While a student at my alma mater (Rock chalk this, beeyotches!), she wrote columns for the Marquette Tribune, for which, in the years 1974-75, I was the editorial page editor. Even in my callow, First Amendment-loving youth, I wouldn't have let this kind of inhumane crapola see print.

"How sad that the lives of degenerate drug addicts and queers are valued more than the innocent lives of more prevalent ailments...But the homosexuals and drug addicts who do essentially kill themselves and others through their own behavior deservedly receive none of my sympathy...Heterosexual sex is very healthy in a loving relationship; homosexual sex, however, kills."

She since has apologized for the columns, but her rise through the ranks marks her as a lifetime beneficiary of the wingnut welfare system. She was on the board of advisers for the local Federalist Society, back when that particular blight was merely a home for wayward extremists. She was cagey about her political connections on her applications for her various judgeships, but she did cop to involvement with the Wisconsin branch of the St. Thomas More Lawyers Society, a gathering of ultramontane Catholic legal beagles. Ultimately, she was appointed to a Circuit Court and then as an interim appointment to the state supreme court by former Governor Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to run its midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin. She was subsequently elected (by an eyelash) to a 10-year term of her own.

She is a completely political creature and has no standing at all to complain about the political nature of the court one way or another. (She's also something of a self-revisionist. In August, she got caught editing her own Wikipedia page.) And, as a good conservative, her political principles are made of taffy. When the court flipped, she demanded that Protasiewicz recuse herself from any gerrymander case based on statements the latter made during her successful campaign.....

Of course, in a previous situation, Bradley's outrage over political money was somewhat tempered.

The issue dates back to 2017, when a group of retired judges asked the Wisconsin Supreme Court to enact a ban barring justices from ruling on cases involving an individual or organization that had donated to a justice’s campaign.

At the time, a 5-2 conservative majority controlled the court. Bradley joined her right-wing colleagues, which included current Chief Justice Annette Ziegler, to kill the proposed recusal rule.

The real reason Becky Bradley and the rest of the righties are so snippy is because they rigged a system to try to keep power in their hands, and tried to insulate themselves and their allies from consequences as much as possible. Now that WisGOPs have lost control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, and will be on the losing side of decisions, and the currently gerrymandered GOP Legislature isn't going to be gerrymandered anymore, they don’t like it.

Hey, that’s the system you Republicans made – use elections to get into power, and then you get to rule. Now that Wisconsin Dems have stopped “going high”, played to win and have consistently beaten GOPs in statewide elections for the last 7 years, WisGOPs are crying that all of their rigging will be unwound.

Maybe they should have spent the last 12 years listening to voters and actually making this state better instead of trying to cheat and come up with new and elaborate ways to avoid accountability and changes that the people demand. But that takes work and effort, and when you’re Robbin’ Vos and you have a million-dollar taxpayer-funded staff, isn’t it easier to jet off to Brazil over doing real work and having to produce positive results for anyone beyond your inner circle?

TICK TOCK, MFers! You’re going to have to care about the Real Wisconsin next year. Good luck on that.