Good morning.
Father’s Day in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 84. Sunrise is 5:16 AM and sunset 8:36 PM for 15h 20m 22s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 67.1% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1865, enslaved people in Galveston, Texas are officially informed of their freedom. The anniversary, now a federal holiday, was celebrated in Texas and other states as Juneteenth.
Michael Gableman’s role as a legislatively-appointed special counsel has been a political embarrassment, but it should not continue as an embarrassment to the legal profession. Gableman (a lawyer and former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice) should receive discipline from Wisconsin’s Office of Lawyer Regulation for recent courtroom insults against a sitting judge and an attorney in a civil action. The Associated Press and Rich Kremer report Dane County Judge calls for disciplining Michael Gableman over ‘misogynistic comments’ (Special counsel probing 2020 election also to be fined $2K per day for not following open records law):
A Dane County judge said former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman should face disciplinary action for disrupting a hearing and making “misogynistic comments” about a fellow lawyer.
The recommendations were contained in a ruling that comes nearly a week after Gableman’s Office of Special Counsel probing 2020 election results was found in contempt for not following the state’s open records laws.
In a scathing written ruling, Dane County Circuit Court Judge Frank Remington said Gableman’s conduct during a June 10 contempt hearing and court recess was “an affront to the judicial process” and an insult to Attorney Christa Westerberg.
Westerberg is representing liberal watchdog American Oversight in its lawsuit demanding records from the special counsel’s 2020 election investigation.
During a June 10 court hearing in which Gableman was to answer questions about his office’s refusal to provide records to American Oversight, he refused to testify.
Gableman then accused Remington of abandoning “his role as a neutral magistrate” and “acting as an advocate” during the hearing. Gableman was caught on a live courtroom microphone during a subsequent court recess insinuating that Westerberg could not do her job without consulting on strategy with the judge in his chambers.
“The Court will ignore the personal insult,” Remington wrote. “However, the Court cannot ignore Gableman’s disruptive conduct and misogynistic comments about a fellow lawyer.”
See Gableman’s remarks on audio and video. Gableman (1) complains childishly about adverse rulings from the judge, (2) baselessly implies illicit conduct between judge and counsel as the cause of those adverse rulings, and (3) claims that he, Gableman, never acted improperly as a judge when, as anyone can see, he’s acting improperly as an attorney and as special counsel when he’s knowingly speaking this way on an open microphone in court.
Gableman is bound by the rules of a profession that has a duty to review and, if he is found culpable, punish him for his misconduct. The Legislature may be stuck with Gableman for eons yet to come, but the legal profession should no longer endure his breaches of professional duty.
New Arrivals at Minnesota Zoo: