Justice Brennen Rolling Over in His Grave
On the heels of last week's election of conservative Judge Mike Gableman to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, groups are coming out of the woodwork to change the way we select future justices. Naturally, had liberal incumbent Louis Butler won, the calls for reform would barely be audible. One of the groups decrying the notion that the voters should choose the people who decide what their laws mean is the Brennan Center for Justice, which has vowed to eliminate "big money" involvement in court races. In other words, they intend to shut down any political speech unflattering to liberal judges. The Wisconsin Government Accountability Board (GAB) has enlisted the legal services of the Brennan Center in their effort to regulate independent advertising (i.e., political speech) during campaigns. The Brennan Center, which boasts of such intellectual heavyweights as Alec Baldwin and Arianna Huffington on its advisory board, believes too much political speech during elections is "discouraging" voting. (Apparently, in Wisconsin, the way to get people more involved is to take away their vote altogether, as is being proposed.) The Government Accountability Board has accepted the notion that the Brennan Center is an independent, non-partisan public policy institute founded by the New York University Law School. In fact, the Brennan Center is funded by the George Soros-financed Justice at Stake, the leading organization in opposing judicial elections. From the Brennan website: "The Democracy Program seeks to change the ways in which citizens participate in their government by fixing the systems that discourage voting, hinder competition and promote the interests of the few over the rights of the many." Inspiring. Perhaps the Brennan Center should purchase a copy of the Federalist Papers and read Federalist #10, which explicitly warns about the tyranny of the majority. The reason we have a system of checks and balances is to protect the rights of minorities (i.e., "the interests of the few") from the will of "the many" (those who are in power). Memo to the Brennan Center: The less advertising that is done during a campaign, the fewer people tend to vote. Limiting expenditures and free speech during campaigns leads to the ultimate voter suppression. If people don't know anything about the candidates, nobody shows up to vote. Apparently, the Brennan Center plan to encourage voting is to keep the public in the dark about who's on the ballot. In fact, it might aid the Brennan Center to go back and read a few quotes from Justice William Brennan himself. It appeared Brennan recognized the value of the First Amendment, a concept that clearly has been lost on his followers: "If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable."
- Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397, 414, 1989 "...debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open and it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials."
- New York Times v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 270, 1964 Is it irony or mere hypocrisy that George Soros embraced Brennan's opinion more than 40 years later to fund a caustic and unpleasantly sharp attack against General Petraeus in the New York Times? Got it. Criticizing military leaders during time of war is good. Criticizing judges seeking re-election is bad. | 
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There are two kinds of lawyers, those who know the law and those who know the judge.
One need not be a conspiracy theorist to notice the very real and troubling pattern that has developed over the last decade when liberals don't win contested Supreme Court elections.