3/8/2008
Gableman/Butler race featured - and it isn't pretty
Check it out. FactCheck.org, a highly reputed fact police web site sponsored by the Annenberg Foundation, Friday featured the Gableman/Butler race in the first installment of its Court Watch series. Titled “Judgment Day in Wisconsin,” the piece doesn’t paint a pretty picture.
Our first report deals with falsehoods, misleading statements and unproven innuendo about corruption, rape and murder
Ok, fine and dandy. Aside from FactCheck making a critical error, calling the WJCIC “an independent watchdog group,” they cover the high-pitched campaign pretty well.
The article takes the point of view that Judge Gableman’s fundraising letter describing Justice Butler as an "’activist liberal’"… soft on crime” is a “dubious dispatch.” FactCheck.org describes the referenced court case pretty completely.
FactCheck talks too of the Butler ad that ends “Tell Mike Gableman we need higher ethical standards for our judges.”
This ad is chock-full of facts, but they don't necessarily lead to the conclusion implied by the closing line, that Gableman’s appointment was unethical.
Again, FactCheck is thorough in its description of the facts surrounding Gableman’s appointment.
Then it’s on to lambaste the Coalition for American Families for its recent pro-Gableman ad.
This 30-second spot gives a distorted, cartoon-like description of a tangled murder case that could easily be the basis for a 60-minute Law and Order episode. The real story involves recanted testimony from a colorful witness, an absurd police line-up and a conviction based in part on semen and hair that were later proved not to have come from the accused.
Then follows a long, detailed recounting of the crime and trial in question.
Stand Down?
Not Likely
When the Greater Wisconsin Committee ran its first ad attacking Gableman, Butler called for the group to stop running it, asking third party groups to "stand down" in the Supreme Court campaign. He has repeated his appeal more than once.
Good luck with that. Political cognoscenti in Wisconsin expect millions of dollars to be spent on ads in the Butler-Gableman contest. Two other groups with deep pockets, the Club for Growth and Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce (WMC), already have begun airing television and radio ads supporting Gableman.
(WISC-TV did their own Reality Check yesterday, picking apart a Club for Growth ad favoring Gableman.)
Overall, pretty good stuff. FactCheck.org needs to see work by Rick Esenberg and Daniel Suhr, explaining the lack of independence of the Wisconsin Judicial Campaign Integrity Committee, a group Factcheck has seemingly relied on as a “watchdog” group. A big fancy name does not bring with it “watchdog” status. I’ll send them the links...…
COMMENTS
There's a lot of information in this article to comment on, but this was close to the end:
***...the campaign sent us a link to a Wisconsin Law Journal piece showing that in the 2006-2007 term, Butler voted with the majority on criminal cases 89 percent of the time, the second highest percentage of the seven justices***
The only thing that wasn't pointed out was that we have a liberal-leaning Supreme Court in Wisconsin.
C.R. Stevenson (Mon Mar 10 14:54:49 2008)
|
