Judge Sumi

So today Judge Sumi reminded the Walker administration and Attorney General Van Hollen that her original temporary restraining order from last week was still in effect and that no further action of ANY kind to enact Walker’s “Budget Repair Bill” was allowed in reference to the Walker administration’s bullying of the Legislative Reference Bureau to publish the bill.  Her exact quote was:

“Now that I’ve made my earlier order as clear as it possibly can be, I must state that those who act in open and willful defiance of the court order place not only themselves at peril of sanctions, they also jeopardize the financial and the governmental stability of the state of Wisconsin.”

You can read more about today’s activities in the Wisconsin State Journal’s article titled “Judge bars further implementation of collective bargaining law, threatens sanctions”.

Now, the right wing is all upset about this (naturally) and are accusing the Judge Sumi of bias and saying that she should recuse her self because of past dealings with unions.  If you can stomach the vitriol you can read about it with what Andrew Breitbart is serving up at his Big Government Web site.  I’d like to remind these right wingers of a couple of points here:

1. The current case that Judge Sumi is presiding over actually has NOTHING TO DO WITH COLLECTIVE BARGAINING NOR UNIONS.  How can that be you ask?  Well it’s because it’s the lawsuit filled by Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne about the violation of Wisconsin’s Open Meetings Laws.  The actual topic of whatever was voted on in the offending Legislative session is irrelevant.  Judge Sumi has no conflict of interest with Open Meetings Laws, so she’s free to rule on this.
2. Judge Sumi actually has donated small amounts of money to both Republicans and Democrats.  Also, she was appointed to the court by Republican Tommy Thompson.  Click here for more details.

Besides, if you want to argue about judges and recusing themselves one needs look no further than US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his Republican activist wife Virginia Thomas who up until November 2010 worked for the Tea Party group called Liberty Central.  Or one could look at how Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser has said he doesn’t recuse himself either, even though he was the former Republican leader in the Wisconsin Legislature.  Click here for more details.