Scott Walker-appointed Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley is, without a shadow of a doubt, one of America’s worst judges.
First off, Bradley is completely neglecting her duties as a state supreme court justice. In one instance, Bradley left the state supreme court chamber while the court was hearing oral arguments in a case before Wisconsin’s highest court to attend an event hosted by a right-wing political organization:
Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley cut out of oral arguments last week so she could give a political speech to the state’s chamber of commerce — a group that has spent heavily in the past backing conservative candidates.
Bradley refused an interview request, but a spokeswoman for her argued it was routine for justices to leave arguments early. So far, her campaign has not been able to cite an instance of another justice stepping out of arguments for campaign reasons.
[…]
(Former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Janine) Geske, who served on the court from 1993 to 1998, said (to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) justices rarely left arguments early while she was on the bench.
If a justice leaves a state supreme court chamber, it better be for a good reason, such as illness, illness or death in the family, or something along those lines. What Rebecca Bradley did was the moral equivalent of a child staying home from school so that the child could play in the sandbox at home. If the people of Wisconsin don’t tolerate schoolchildren being truant from school, they shouldn’t re-elect a truant state supreme court justice.
Earlier today, the progressive group One Wisconsin Now uncovered multiple newspaper columns that Bradley wrote for the Marquette Tribune, a Marquette University student newspaper, in which Bradley, among other things, referred to LGBT people as “queers” and claimed that people who contract AIDS are effectively committing suicide:
Newly appointed state Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley in student newspaper columns 24 years ago said she had no sympathy for AIDS patients because they had effectively chosen to kill themselves, called gays “queers” and said Americans were “either totally stupid or entirely evil” for electing President Bill Clinton.
In one column, she wrote people were better off getting AIDS than cancer because it would get more funding.
“How sad that the lives of degenerate drug addicts and queers are valued more than the innocent victims of more prevalent ailments,” she wrote.
You can read more about the Bradley columns here.
The truth of the matter is that not all people who are affected by HIV and AIDS are homosexual, in fact, former NASCAR driver Tim Richmond, who was heterosexual, died as a result of AIDS three years before Bradley wrote those columns. Furthermore, hurling hate speech at LGBT people is a form of bigotry, and that is absolutely unacceptable. Regarding her remarks about Bill Clinton, claiming that Clinton burned the American flag is, to my knowledge, absolutely false.
Bradley’s remarks about LGBT people in 1992 are eerily similar to homophobic remarks that Michael Savage made on an MSNBC program in 2003:
If MSNBC could fire Michael Savage for making homophobic remarks about a prank phone caller, then the people of Wisconsin should fire Rebecca Bradley for making homophobic remarks about LGBT people. The people of Wisconsin will have that opportunity on April 5, and Bradley’s opponent is JoAnne Kloppenburg.
The Progressive Midwesterner 