WJI's Daily Reads for May 23, 2022

Waupaca County News: Although court of appeals denies sheriff's petition to withdraw finding of a constitutional violation, sheriff claims vindication.

According to the report sent to the district attorney’s office, “It was also decided that Peter’s red Pontiac would be towed and taken to the Manawa evidence garage to be inventoried and searched.”

(District Attorney Veronica) Isherwood later learned that Stephens’ original report read that the vehicle was searched “for any possible evidence related to past thefts with Peter.”

Such a search would be unconstitutional and failure to report it would violate the Brady Rule.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin Supreme Court holds that conviction under disorderly conduct statute does not cause disqualification for concealed carry license.

Writing for the majority, Justice Brian Hagedorn said a disorderly conduct conviction in Wisconsin can’t disqualify someone from holding a concealed carry license in the state.

“In short, the crime of disorderly conduct ... does not require the use or attempted use of physical force or the threatened use of a deadly weapon as an element, even if that conduct could serve as the basis for a disorderly conduct conviction,” Hagedorn wrote. “It is therefore not a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence under federal law.”

Wispolitics.com: Daniel Kelly angling toward another Supreme Court race.

Kelly, who lost a bid two years ago to retain his seat on the bench, has been working toward another run for the court in 2023, when fellow conservative Pat Roggensack is leaving the bench.

Kelly was at the GOP state convention on Friday working the crowd.

Wisconsin Examiner: Republican legislators see more police as only solution for violent crime.

Republican lawmakers are continuing to hammer gun violence and homicide rates in the southeastern Wisconsin cities of Milwaukee and Racine. Disregarding calls to tighten gun laws and support violence prevention strategies, the GOP has anointed law enforcement as Wisconsin’s only solution.

CNN: How Donald Trump's lawyer Cleta Mitchell now advises a government elections commission.

The emails, obtained by CNN through a Freedom of Information Act request, show conservatives were working even before the 2020 election to gain a seat for an ally on the advisory board of the Election Assistance Commission, an independent government agency that provides voluntary election guidelines for states. 

The story of how Cleta Mitchell -- the legal adviser who took part in Trump's phone call where he asked Georgia's secretary of state to "find" enough votes for him to win -- was appointed to that board underscores how a core faction of Republicans has focused on pushing unsupported claims of widespread voter fraud even before Trump convinced much of the Republican Party to buy into his election lies that the 2020 election had been stolen.

Reuters: How U.S. Soccer's new chief legal officer helped the federation settle players' labor disputes.

The new collective bargaining agreements call for the men's and women's teams to pool their 2022-2023 and 2026-2027 World Cup winnings, which will then be divided equally, minus a cut for U.S. Soccer. The U.S. women's team has won four World Cup titles, including in 2015 and 2019. The men have never won.
Still, the pooling arrangement is a big deal, given the sharp disparity in men's and women's World Cup prize money, which U.S. Soccer can't control.

Slate: More thoughts on the leak and one justice's activities since then.

(Justice Clarence) Thomas understands, I believe, that when he dumps all over the chief justice, or the current members of the court, or all liberal protesters, he is polarizing and undermining. He is destroying the reputation of the court as a neutral institution that operates above political partisanship. So does whoever leaked the Dobbs draft. So does whoever offered more leaks in the wake of the Dobbs draft. So does every justice who agrees to speak at a partisan political event in the present moment. This is the opposite of shoring up the court’s prestige. Any justice, any leader, any leaker, and any public figure who genuinely worries about “how long we’re going to have these institutions at the rate we’re undermining them” doesn’t pick up a shovel to joyfully begin digging at the same time.

And yet they do. And so the real underlying mystery of the Dobbs leaks, and the speeches that followed? They stand as irrefutable proof that despite the chief justice’s best efforts, despite the justices’ own rhetoric to the contrary, some of the members of the current court actually prefer airing grievances and scoring points in public, and in the press, to bolstering their own fading authority. But if the court can’t be bothered to fight for its own legitimacy, it’s hardly a surprise that there will soon be nothing left to protect.