Wisconsin GOP Gonna IMPEACH Justice Janet Protasiewicz For High Crime Of Public Liberalness
Wisconsin GOP Gonna IMPEACH Justice Janet Protasiewicz For High Crime Of Public Liberalness
She can stay as long as she sits in a corner and doesn't vote on anything.
Wisconsin Republicans have talked about impeaching Justice Janet Protasiewicz ever since she won April’s state supreme court election. Protasiewicz is a liberal who’ll probably make liberal rulings and Republicans just can’t have it. They are not very good at democracy.
Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos has demanded that Protasiewicz recuse herself from all cases where she might’ve expressed a general opinion on the subject. This is obviously an absurd standard that conservative justices are not expected to uphold. Protasiewicz’s far-right opponent and former justice himself Daniel Kelly literally worked for an anti-abortion group, and we doubt Vos would’ve expected him to recuse from every abortion case that came before the court.
We repeat: These are overtly partisan elections, which Republicans normally love in states like North Carolina and, yes, Wisconsin because they can turn out the vote with typical partisan appeals. This isn’t a Senate confirmation where conservative nominees can just obfuscate and outright lie. Voters expect to hear what candidates believe about relevant issues.
During an interview last month with WSAU Radio, Vos said it’s obvious that Protasiewicz can’t function as an impartial judge on certain issues. For instance, she’s referred to Wisconsin’s jacked-up electoral maps as “rigged,” which they are. Take the Wisconsin Assembly — please! — where in the last election Democrats won 54 percent of the vote, and yet Republicans won 63 of the 99 seats, nearly a supermajority.
“They do not reflect people in this state. I don’t think you could sell any reasonable person that the maps are fair,” Protasiewicz said at a January campaign forum. “I can't tell you what I would do on a particular case, but I can tell you my values, and the maps are wrong."
This is a reasonable position, as judges should rule on the law, not their personal opinions. It’s also silly to suggest that members of the supreme court, who can still vote in elections and even read the newspaper, don’t have opinions on political matters. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito won’t shut up about his political positions.
Nonetheless, Vos whined to conservative host Meg Ellefson, “If there’s any semblance of honor on the state supreme court left, you cannot have a person who runs for the court prejudging a case and being open about it, and then acting on the case as if you're an impartial observer.”
Vos later conceded that “the idea that we're going to immediately start an impeachment process is probably too radical.” However … “I want to look and see, does she recuse herself on cases where she is prejudged? That to me is something that is at the oath of office and what she said she was going to do to uphold the constitution. That, to me, is a serious offense.”
It’s not a “serious offense.” It’s not even an offense with a sad clown face. A Wisconsin supreme court justice has been impeached “for corrupt conduct in office, or for crimes and misdemeanors” just once, in 1853, and he was later acquitted. Although Republicans have enough votes in the state Senate to remove Protasiewicz if she’s impeached, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers would just replace her with another liberal. In theory, this seems like a lot of bluster, but in sinister practice Republicans could effectively marginalize Protasiewicz.
The Bulwark’s Charlie Sykes, who knows what evil lurks in his former party, laid out how Republicans could get their way with what we’ll call the Mitch McConnell Maneuver.
Under Wisconsin’s constitution, after the Assembly vote, the justice would be immediately suspended. “No judicial officer shall exercise his office, after he shall have been impeached, until his acquittal.”
But — and here’s the rub — the state’s senate GOP has no intention of holding any trial, or taking any vote on the impeachment. There will be no conviction. Or acquittal.
As a result, Protasiewicz would be in a sort of permanent limbo. The court, which is already thoroughly dysfunctional, would be deadlocked 3-3.
“This is actually a more potent tool to dismantle the liberal majority by having an impeachment vote in the Assembly, which is just a majority vote, and then having the Senate do nothing. She basically is removed from office and can’t rule on any cases,” said David Canon, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Protasiewicz could go down fighting — rule to reject the rigged maps and resign so Evers could replace her — but the new justice would have to stand for re-election again in spring 2024.
It’s clear, though, that Republicans must lose this unearned supermajority. Otherwise, Wisconsin will remain a failed state.
[The Bulwark / PBS]
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She must resign and be replaced.
The voters who stormed to the polls for her will then do so even moreso for her replacement.
Republicans would then have to do a second impeachment farce but the chances of that are much less - a generic rinse-and-repeat makes them foolish in the eyes of the Indies they need in a purple electorate and Democrats would have already shown that they hardball back.
Seriously, Wisconsin Dems - now is the time to commit politics.
She will have to be rewarded for her sacrifice, but the rights of women and girls to own their bodies and of voters to meaningfully vote cannot be sacrificed to her if her presence changes from an asset to a liability.
Weird how the Republicans are so sure the majority of the country thinks like them yet they go out of their way to stifle the vote in any way, shape or form imaginable
Used to be a time in Kentucky where the Governor could replace a Senator- now suddenly after a Democrat was elected governor, they changed that law. Didn’t North Carolina and Wisconsin legislators both act to curtail the Governor’s power after a Democrat was elected? People on these states need to wake up. While some of these areas are gerrymandered to maximum effect, you hear stories like in Tennessee where the Democrats didn’t even field a candidate because they didn’t think they’d win. If the opposing party doesn’t run a candidate is it really an election? Daley was mayor of Chicago most of the time I lived there. No one was going to beat him but he always had a challenger.