Good morning.
Saturday in Whitewater will see patchy fog this morning; otherwise, the day will be mostly cloudy with a thunderstorm this afternoon and a high of 73. Sunrise is 5:15 AM and sunset 8:33 PM for 15h 17m 44s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 87.8% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1935, Inventor Edwin Armstrong gives the first public demonstration of FM broadcasting in the United States at Alpine, New Jersey.
Michael Gableman is a special counsel (a genuine if unnecessary position under law) charged to investigate the 2020 presidential election in Wisconsin.
Perhaps the world has forgotten, but he used to be a judge, and served, in fact, as a justice on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. (It’s true. Really.)
As Mitchell Schmidt reports in Michael Gableman’s office held in contempt over records case, former justice refuses to testify in court, the former justice looks like he’s auditioning to be a future rodeo clown:
Remington reminded Gableman that he was under oath to answer questions from American Oversight attorney Christa Westerberg, and not to make a speech, but Gableman refused.
“You have a right to conduct and control your courtroom, judge, but you don‘t have a right to act as an advocate for one party over the other,” Gableman said. “I want a personal counsel if you are putting jail on the table. I want an attorney to represent me personally. I will not answer any more questions. I see you have a jail officer here. You want to put me in jail, Judge Remington … I’m not going to be railroaded.”
Gableman’s heated comments came two days after Remington ordered the former justice to answer questions under oath about how his office handled requested documents related to the ongoing probe. Near the close of that Wednesday hearing, Remington cautioned Gableman and his staffer Zakory Niemierowicz to consider seeking independent legal counsel, noting that remedial sanctions for contempt could include jail time.
….
“At no time did I suggest that that was a sanction that I intended to impose,” Remington said Friday. “Indeed, it was a question that was left for today’s proceeding to be determined based on the evidence and the request from American Oversight.”
The question of sanctions was left unanswered Friday. After finding Gableman’s office in contempt for not fully and completely complying with the court’s previous order to not delete requested records, Remington said he would issue a written order and sanctions at a later date.
Gableman’s made himself, through his grandstanding, more of the story than the supposed subject of his banana-republic-quality investigation.
As it turns out, real rodeo clowns require impressive agility. Gableman might want to re-think the prospect. A day in the life of a rodeo clown:
I can envision Robin Vos stumbling into his bathroom the first thing in the morning, gazing into his toilet bowl, like Hamlet contemplating the skull of Yorik, discovering a turd that didn’t flush with the visage of Michael Gableman, and thinking to himself: “I gotta get more fiber in my diet”.
Gableman is now facing possible jail time for contempt and is taking the fifth to avoid incriminating himself. Vos continues to pour tax money approaching a megabuck into him, with no end in sight. Vos doesn’t dare snuff Gableman’s sham of an “investigation”, as the uber-trumpers are baying at his heels, so he is locked into continuing to humiliate himself.
Sucks to be Robin. I’m not sad about that…
Too funny — Vos’s morning as a Shakespearean hell.