And now ladies and gentlemen, the moment you've all been waiting for ... This week's "What A Maroon" award goes to...

WISCONSIN SUPREME COURT JUSTICE ANN BRADLEY

When the Wisconsin State Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality Gov. Scott Walker’s curtailing public employee unions’ collective bargaining power by a 4-3 vote, Bradley was one of the dissenting justices. Bradley and Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson retired to her office to write their dissenting opinion.

Justice David Prosser and two other justices of the majority opinion visited Bradley’s office to learn when the dissent would be ready so the entire court decision could be published. An argument ensued and Prosser told Abrahamson that he’d lost faith in her ability to lead the court.

Bradley said she ordered Prosser out of her office and that he responded by putting her in a “chokehold.” Bradley immediately filed a complaint against Prosser, demanded he attend anger management classes and called him to resign.

Aside from the issue of who leaded the incident to the press, is the fact that Bradley’s version apparently bears little resemblance to the truth.

A special prosecutor investigated the incident. It was learned that all witnesses stated that Bradley charged Prosser and two witnesses said she had her fists raised. Prosser put up his hands in defense and pushed her away. No one, except Bradley, said there was choking.

All the witnesses agreed that Bradley was the aggressor, not Prosser. Bradley explicitly accused Prosser of putting her in a chokehold, both in a press release an in her written complaint. A chokehold has a specific legal definition in Wisconsin and is a felony. As she is a supreme court justice, she presumably knows this. She also apparently knew enough that in the report to the police, she did not use the term “chokehold.” That would have constituted filing a false police report, also a felony.

The special prosecutor ruled there was no case against Prosser.

Justice Bradley should know that if she’s going to falsely accuse someone of a felony, don’t do it in front of witnesses, especially if they are state supreme court justices. Don’t fly into a rage and then demand others need anger management. Don’t call for another justice to step down from office for the very traits you yourself exhibited in front of witnesses.

In short,

WHAT A MAROON!

In honor of the great American philosopher Bugs Bunny who first coined the phrase, I've decided to present the "What a Maroon" award each week to the politician, organization or celebrity who makes the most sand-poundingly stupid statement of recent days.
In honor of the great American philosopher Bugs Bunny who first coined the phrase, I've decided to present the "What a Maroon" award each week to the politician, organization or celebrity who makes the most sand-poundingly stupid statement of recent days.

Bad Luck

President Obama is on a bus tour of America's heartland, explaining how his economic policies really are working, despite persistently high unemployment, a skyrocketing deficit and downgrade of the country's credit rating.

He told a crowd in Decorah, Iowa,

We had reversed the recession, avoided a depression, gotten the economy moving again. But over the last six months we’ve had a run of bad luck.

Bad luck. Hmmm. The late author Robert Heinlein had some thoughts on "bad luck."

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as “bad luck.”