Judge has now re-blocked the order. The Assistant Atty General has said, screw you, Judge, it’s in effect.
Judge seems… upset.
On the other hand, the government is saying that the Department of Administration is not a party and can dance around the judge saying ‘you’re not touching me’.
I don’t think that’s a very wise decision, myself.
Yes. At least insofar as there’s a specific command about publishing, anyway.
It may not be; the judge may well sua sponte add the LRB and any other agencies as defendants if you piss her off like this.
But wise or not, the fact remains that the law was published and the judge’s original decsion did not enjoin the agency that published it. I don’tblame her for being upset, but she certainly cannot impose a contempt charge on anyone so far, and that’s her own fault for not knowing exactly who does what under Wisconsin law.
Her decision is very explicit, that this thing not go forward. Period. If it is not to go forward, whoever does or does not publish it makes no difference, as that is a function of something that is going forward, not something that the judge has just shot in the head.
My favorite quote from today’s proceedings (this one’s for you, Bricker!):
See, Bricker, the fact that her original order was:
which is, you’ll notice, a sentence that ends with a period. That means the sentence ends. That means that your attempt to append the qualifier “Secretary of State Doug LaFollete” is just as devious and backhanded a manuever as what I said the Wisconsin Republicans are doing: subverting democratic processes.
There’s really no other conclusion to be drawn, but that many, perhaps most, Republicans do not want to follow the law or the judiciary. They show contempt for the system and a desire to have their own way, no matter who or what they have to trample on to get it. The fact that many, perhaps most, call themselves “patriots” when they act in so many ways to bring down the systems we as a nation have taken hundreds of years (and millions of lives) to build up is shameful. Shameful.
The judge cannot enjoin non-parties.
Or else some judges do not care about the separation of powers.
Regards,
Shodan
Bullshit. I quoted from her order:
Read it. Those are her words.
It’s also the case that she can’t enjoin anyone who’s not a party before her without notice to that party. I’ve cited that. That’s the law.
Now, I’m sure she wishes she had enjoined the LRB, but she didn’t. She is is thuis out of luck. You’ll notice that absnet from her angry words are any mention of “contempt of court” charges. Why do you think that’s so?
I’ll tell you why: because no one violated her order. The fact that she was too fucking stupid to enjoin the right party cannot transform into an obligation of a non-party to follow her order.
No, the correct conclusion to draw is: liberals are so fucking stupid they can’t read. Liberal judges are so used to eing able to ignore the plain text of the law and implement their desired agenda with “penumbras” and “emanations” and recourse to “the spirit” that they sometimes completely forget that the law is actually words, printed on paper. And in this case, the liberals desperately seeking to undo the legally passed legislation have been bitten in the ass by it. Happy to engage in technicalities when it helps their side (“Quorum, eh? We’ll see about your quorum!”) they are utterly dismayed when the same tactic is used against them. They bray like injured donkeys about how democracy is thwarted, while at the same time they’re happy to thwart democracy when it aligns with their cause.
Nor do I claim the Republicans are any better in this regard.
But this is why we have written rules – to establish a neutral framework for the operation of government, and to forestall either side from arguing from indistinct and malleable principles when the moment happens to favor their goal.
The Dems fled to deny a quorum; the Republicans protested this slap in the face of democracy. I sided with the Dems, because the written rules permitted them to do what they were doing. You sided with the Dems, and you claimed it was fo rthe same reason.
Now the shoe is on the other foot. It’s the Repubs who use the written rules to accomplish their goal. Predictably, the same Dems now cry foul.
And predictably, you do too. You care about advancing your side. I care about the neutral application of the rules. If I were a blind partisan, I would have joined in the chorus criticizing the Dems flight from the capitol. I did not. In each case, I side with the party that has conformed their conduct to the rules.
You don’t. Your affection for the rules goes only as far as how they help your side. THAT is “shameful.”
Man up. The judge and the DA were too stupid, or too liberal, to notice what the law says. They fucked up. If the judge thinks she can enjoin a non-party, let’s see her try.
Bricker demonstrates, once again, that the main reason we need lawyers is lawyers.
Sure. Because without laws, life would be just peachy.
Tell you what. I’ll spring for a one way ticket for you, from anywhere in the United States to Mogadishu. It’s a pretty lawless country, Somalia. Lawyers aren’t needed there; warlords control swaths of territory without recourse to pesky laws and pesky lawyers.
Let me know where I should send the ticket, and don’t forget to drop us a postcard from your new paradise of lawyer-free living.
And I hope, in the fullness of time, you go to Heaven, another equally lawyer-free environment.
If Heaven is lawer-free, it’s only because it would take a celestial environment of purified souls, presided over by the Almighty Himself, to make a workable environment where we don’t need laws to manage our conduct, but can safely rely on the good will and generous nature of our neighbor, supported by the immediate and infalliable judgement of a universally-recognized supreme authority. I grant you that the heavenly kingdom is such a place… but if you believe such can be found on Earth, you are succumbing to the naiveté that is the sterotype of the wishful liberal.
I’d saying believing in heaven in the first place is a little higher on the wishful thinking scale. 
On topic for the thread: I’d assume that the reason the judge said that:
Is that the judge didn’t expect Walker’s administration to publish the law (for instance) in some school newspaper and pretend that’s good enough.
Are you seriously thinking that the judge should have added, “Oh yeah, and even though it has always been done by the Sec. of State, I should also mention that if you xerox the law and post it at a Starbucks corkboard, that doesn’t count either!”
That’s completely misconstruing what happened.
What the judge should have done is taken time to understand the process of what happens after a law is passed and enjoined the other relevant parties. She did not do that.
No.
But I see you and the judge subscribe to the same method of legal study.
Wisconsin 35.095 says that the legislative reference bureau shall publish every act passed by the legislature. It used to be done by the Secretary of State, true. That’s why the Wisconsin Supreme Court case saying that you can’t challenge a law until it’s published and effective (Goodland v. Zimmerman, 243 Wis. 459, 10 N.W.2d 180 (1943)) had the Secretary of State as its named defendant.
But Wisonsin changed the law, making the Legislative Reference Bureau the one that publishes the law, not the Secretary of State.
I have previously cited Wis. State § 35.095 for the truth of that proposition.
So why did you imagine the judge saying, “Oh yeah, and even though it has always been done by the Sec. of State, I should also mention that if you xerox the law and post it at a Starbucks corkboard, that doesn’t count either!”
You know, or should know, that it’s not true that it’s always been done by the Secretary of State. The law in Wisconsin is that publication is done by the Legislative Reference Bureau. All the Secretary of State does is supply the date to the LRB. Which he did, and then notified them that the date was no longer valid after the judge issued her order.
You also say the “Walker administration” as though it’s one entity. In fact, the LRB is not a part of the Walker administration; it’s part of the legislature, and they did the publishing.
So why did you say that publishing has always been done by the Secretary of State, when that’s not a true statement? Did you know it wasn’t true?
I doubt that, since I have the advantage of not attending law school.
So, in your legal opinion the Sec of State no longer needs to supply the date after the date he previously supplied is no longer valid?
By the Walker administration I mean to include the toady right-wing morons walking lockstep with him. Like saying the Bush Administration took us into a shitty war, or the Clinton Administration balanced the budget. Obviously congress helped in those cases too. I’m happy that I could assist you in mastering basic English conversation.
Is it your opinion that the publication isn’t contingent on Sec. of State providing the date? As I say, I’m not a lawyer, so I certainly could be wrong, but you appear to be raising semantic and obfuscatory arguments rather than addressing what I wrote. Protip: When you throw up chaff and try to confuse the issue with trivialities, you don’t *actually *win the argument.
Yes. In fact, the LRB published the act without a date, because the SecState withdrew his notification to them.
OK. So in Lobohan-speak, any government official, regardless of working for the legislature or the executive branch, is part of the administration. I’ll be watching with interest how you incorporate that in comments about the Obama administration.
Needless to say, I reject that sort of shorthand as utterly useless. It’s fair to call the Secretary of State part of the Walker administration, since he’s part of the executive branch. But to call an arm of the legislature “the administration” is nothing more than intellectual laziness (or something more rooted in the desire to deceive, but I give you the benefit of the doubt here).
What is your basic claim, then?
Mine is very simple, and not obscuring anything. Here it is:
**The law becomes effective when published by the Legislative Reference Bureau. The judge enjoined the Secretary of State from publishing it, but that was a mistake, since the Secretary of State doesn’t publish the law. Since the judge didn’t enjoin the LRB, it published the law, and now it’s effective.
**
What’s your argument?
Bricker, are you, a lawyer who practiced primarily in Virginia, saying that you can interpret the laws of Wisconsin more accurately than an actual Wisconsin judge?
It seems like the Sec. of State loads the gun and the LRB fires it. If the Sec. of State removes the bullet, what exactly is happening?
Sorry, but you haven’t managed a gotcha here, this is the result of you not understanding things said plain.
The Walker Administration is the driving force behind this law. It was his, [jack_bauer]We need to vote on this NOW, NOW, NOW![/jack_bauer] that got this moving. The republicans in the legislature are simply following mama-duck without a thought in their empty little heads.
Laws need the Sec. of State to give a date. The Sec. of State has withdrawn it. Herp-Derp? Got it?
Than this particular Wisconsin judge?
On this particular issue?
I don’t need to say that, jay jay, because this judge is not saying anything I disagree with. She’s not, for example, charging anyone with contempt of court. She’s not saying anyone specific violated her order.
I think she made a mistake. But if she didn’t, then she’s been remarkably silent about who did anything contrary to her order.
So no – I’m not saying I am a better authority on Wisconsin law than she is. But I am saying she screwed up, and the law is now in effect, and if she had included the LRB in her order, that wouldn’t have happened.