Republican Attorney General JB VanHollen's request to withdraw his appeal of the TRO against publishing the "Budget Repair Bill" has been denied, with a seeming beyotch-slap.
You might recall that VanHollen maintained that the appeal was no longer needed as the law was legally published. Luckily, there are more reasonable and more highly trained members of the Wisconsin Bar available to interpret laws than JB VanHollen. More after the jump, including a link to the .pdf.
First, Let Mr. Fantastic give you the option of looking at the freshly minted document from the 4th district court of appeals here
The short (snarky) summary of the document is simply this:
Your union-busting bill is highly irregular, probably illegal in some sense, and both your attempts to jam it down the throats of the public AND to do an and-run around the legal system are emblematic of your amateur-hour tactics.
The real summary is:
1) AG VanHollen has failed to recognize that once a motion is filed to the 4th district court of appeals, it lacks the basic authority to simply forget about it, even if the filer of the original motion wants (in the parlance of the school yard...seeming appropriate for these nincompoops) "takebacks" or a "do-over". Indeed, once filed, he has to wait/hope that the Supreme Court might see the case for any remedy. You can't just say to the CoA..."just kidding". Too many potential courses of action (all legally binding) are set in motion. The AG should have known that.
2) The AG is assuming that the addition of the Act 10 on the LRB website is legal. The CoA is saying in this denial, "poppycock", saying that by requesting his "takeback", that he is in essense asking for a ruling on an entirely different matter not addressed in the original appeal. The AG should have recognized this as well.
So what do we know?
1) It's amateur hour in the Executive Branch, at the leadership level of the Legislative Branch, AND NOW with the AG's office. This is the proverbial gang that can't shoot straight, and seemingly has all the patience of a 6 year old on Christmas morning. They quickly unwrap each box they spy, and hope its contents will fill them with glee. Fonrtunately, they keep finding socks and shirts rather than shiny legal victories.
2) They don't have ANY forsight whatsoever. David Prosser is going to lose because of this. The more these pikers try to game the legal system, the more obvious it becomes to anyone with as much on the ball as my lab/shep mix mutt that the Supreme Court of WI needs a judge who isn't in the hip pocket of the Koch Brothers, ALEC, and Walkers other puppeteers. They are hoisting Prosser on the pitard of their own hubris.
Kinda fun to watch, but danger lurks. It's rather like watching a one or two drunk frat boys picking on one another. It's obvious that they are both totally stupid, but if YOU snicker too loudly...they might notice and turn on YOU.
UPDATE #1: Arrogance on display during a budget hearing, which relates to our initial diary: from Wispolitics.com's budget blog:
Rep. Tamara Grigsby, D-Milwaukee, said she is concerned about the "significant power grabs" by the Walker administration, citing changes to state energy policy and medical assistance. But she also questioned Huebsch about the budget proposal to move duties of the secretary of state to the DOA.
"How is that legally appropriate?" she asked, noting that current controversy over the publishing the collective bargaining bill.
Under Walker's budget proposal, notary duties of the secretary of state would be transferred to the Department of Financial Institutions, and other assets of the office would be moved to the Department of Administration. The budget shifts $214,200 and one secretary of state job to DFI, and deletes another position from the office.
Other “assets, liabilities and tangible property (including records) of the Secretary of State office are transferred to the Department of Administration,” the LFB document says.
Huebsch said statutes have been followed in publication of the law, but admitted that the "question will be interpreted in the courts."
"You may not like the law, but it doesn't change the fact that it's the law," he said.