Surprise: Right Wing Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Accused of Judicial Misconduct in run for Seat.

The damage has been done, and Wisconsin has another pro-business, conservative zealot on the Supreme Court bench. Justice Michael Gableman's dirt ball campaign appealed to the downtrodden picked on white guys who can't separate their own best interest from the interests of big business. You know, it's a world where lawsuits against corporate malfeasance are brought by freeloaders trying to hit the jackpot

According to the Wisconsin State Journal:

Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman is being accused of judicial misconduct when he was a Burnett County circuit court judge, according to a formal complaint filed by the Wisconsin Judicial Commission in the Supreme Court.

The commission found probable cause to believe Justice Gableman willfully violated the Wisconsin Code of Judicial Conduct because of a TV ad that ran in March 2008 in support of Gableman's campaign to unseat incumbent Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler. If the Supreme Court finds merit in the complaint, Gableman would face one of four penalties: reprimand, censure, suspension or removal.

PORTION OF THE MICHAEL GABLEMAN AD AGAINST LOUIS BUTLER:

"Louis Butler worked to put criminals on the street. Like Reuben Lee Mitchell, who raped an 11-year-old girl with learning disabilities. Butler found a loophole. Mitchell went on to molest another child. Can Wisconsin families feel safe with Louis Butler on the Supreme Court?"

The complaint says the ad "directly implied and was intended to convey the message that action or conduct of Louis Butler enabled or resulted in Mitchell's release and Mitchell's subsequent commission of a criminal molestation. Each of these statements of fact constituting the message is false,” the commission said in the complaint. "The misrepresentation was made knowingly or with reckless disregard for the truth by Judge Gableman."

The ad drew widespread condemnation at the time, in part because it showed Butler and Mitchell's faces side-by-side. Both are African-American.

After the ad began airing last March, 35 Wisconsin judges said in a statement that the ad "falsely implies that Mitchell was able to commit the second crime because Butler got Mitchell released from prison."

In a letter to the State Journal before the election, Dodge County District Attorney Steven Bauer, who prosecuted the Mitchell case, said the ad led him to rescind his endorsement of Gableman, who he said was "unfit for the Supreme Court."

Of course, a story like this wouldn’t get much national play except for the fact that we’re seeing another instance of “down the rabbit hole” politics. I just love this statement form Darrin Schmitz, a Gableman campaign consultant, who said the complaint was baseless.

"The commission chose to ignore the plain language of the ad, which is factual," Schmitz said. "Instead, the complaint alleges that the ad contains false statements on the basis of inference and implication. The First Amendment does not allow a claim to be made on that basis."

I assume because the First Amendment doesn’t deal specifically with lying or “falsely implying” something, that it must be okay then. As for Gableman's backers, they're finding out it can be dangerous hitching your wagon up to another Republican trash talker.

So it goes for a conservative business lobbyist. For them, if you own the courts, literally, you own democracy. Wisconsin Manufacturing and Commerce targeted incumbent Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler, so they could install Michael Gableman. They won that fight easily and chalked up their second “bought and paid for” Supreme Court Justice in the last two years.

Now the wheels are falling off, and their candidate isn't reflecting well on WMC's judgement to back this shameless loser.