Good morning.
Dr. King Day in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of 3. Sunrise is 7:22 and sunset 4:46 for 9h 24m 15s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 23.2% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1943, The Pentagon is dedicated in Arlington County, Virginia.
Readers will recall that after the Wisconsin Supreme Court had a new majority in August, that majority dismissed then-Courts Director Randy Koschnick. The dismal received some news coverage (Journal Sentinel Focuses on a Minor Wisconsin Supreme Court Story), the Court hired a Walker appointee to replace Koschnick (Wisconsin Supreme Court’s Liberal Majority Hires a Walker Appointee), but the conservative Koschnick filed a complaint over his firing nonetheless.
These months later, one predictably reads that Complaint against Supreme Court liberals over state courts director appointment dismissed:
The Wisconsin Judicial Commission has dismissed complaints filed against the four liberals on the state Supreme Court over their decision to install a new director of state courts when the body’s majority flipped in August.
The complaints had been filed by Judge Randy Koschnick, the previous director of state courts, who was removed from his post days after Justice Janet Protasiewicz was sworn into office. Koschnick and the Court’s conservatives speculated that the firing was due to his right-leaning political views.
The episode marked the beginning of an ugly first few weeks for the Court, with several conservative justices and Koschnick airing their grievances against the newly empowered liberals in the media.
After Koschnick was removed, the Court installed Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Audrey Skwierawski as the new director of state courts. Koschnick then filed the complaint against Skwierawski and the four justices — Protasiewicz, Ann Walsh Bradley, Rebecca Dallet and Jill Karofsky — alleging she was unable to hold the post because she was still serving as a circuit court judge. He said Skwierawski was unable to accept the position until 2025 because of a state law that prohibits judges from holding nonjudicial offices as long as they are still serving their terms. .
In a letter to each of the four justices, the commission’s director, Jeremiah Van Hecke, wrote that the commission determined there was no misconduct in the hiring of Skwierawski. In a letter to Skwierawski, Van Hecke wrote that the complaint against her was being dismissed because she resigned as a judge on Dec. 31 and is therefore no longer subject to the commission’s jurisdiction.
At the time of Koschnick’s dismissal, I wrote that Koscchnick’s replacement, Audrey Skwierawski, was “easily as qualified as Koschnick, and in any event appointee Koschnick wasn’t entitled to permanent public employment.”
That was, however, only half of the matter. Koschnick (a lawyer and former Jefferson County judge) would have known (as would any other lawyer) that his complaint to the Wisconsin Judicial Commission would be dismissed procedurally the moment after Skwierawski resigned as a judge (which, of course, she would and now has done).
Koschnick’s complaint was a political, but never a serious legal, grievance.
Whale lifts head out of water, surprises tourists: