Iron County Judge Steps Aside in Anti-mining Barrel Bob Gollubske Case

Penokee Range

A request for a new judge has been granted for Robert Gollubske, known locally as "Barrel Bob" Gollubske, a 76-year-old farmer from Kimball.

Iron County Judge Patrick Madden, known as a pro-mining judge, and notorious as the corrupt jurist who presided over the 1997 trial and 2012 hearing of Donald Miller, has agreed to step aside in this matter in a rare recusal for Madden.

Gollubske, a farmer in the Town of Kimball, Wisconsin, in Iron County, has drawn the enmity of Iron County officials for complaining about explosions near his farm.

He warns about the dangers of the proposed Gogebic Taconite Mine, blasting and dynamiting and ruining an environment.

For his complaints, Iron County officials have accused Gollubske of  (threatening) words, and causing "a public furor," as Madden has said publicly.

Few believe in this sparsely populated county that Judge Madden possesses the ethics to preside over the Gollubske trial, which ought to be dismissed with prejudice very quickly if anything like justice exists in Iron County.

Gollubske has also retained the services of renown civil rights attorney, Jeff Scott Olson, in addition to Peter Bear of Madison.

Gollubske did not endear himself to Madden (aka Madman) and DA Lipske at the DNR Public Hearing on G-Tac Bulk Sampling and pre-Application Notice held on August 15th in Hurley, Wisconsin (see below).

Gollubske also spoke against Mathy Construction company and the Northwoods Paving company that he blames for damaging his farm and home by their use of dynamite in the area. Mathy Construction is doing blacktopping work.

Gollubske says the same type of damage he attributes to Mathy will be wrought by Gogebic.

In 2009, Gollubske sued Mathy Construction Company of Onalaska, Wisconsin, and Northwoods Paving Co. (a division of Mathy Construction) of Ashland for damage to his home and farm, fearing his family is getting poisoned, an assertion he repeated at the Aug. 15 DNR hearing.

Gollubske called the FBI in May and made a rhetorical comment about blowing up the courthouse as an analogy (if not well-formulated) to the damages the Mathy Construction Northwoods Paving blacktop plant has caused at his farm.

At least Madden has stepped aside from this case, though even a perusal of the Don Miller case should cast doubt over, and taint any case over which Madden has presided.

Barrel Bob Gollubske is just a townie, a nice 76-year-old man about to find out how what a corrupt DA Lipske is.

Gollubske's friends in the community a few weeks before he was arrested said he is a just a harmless, gentle farmer who is upset about developers and now the proposed Gogebic Taconite Mine destroying the Penokee Range.

Gogebic has secured the mineral rights for a "22-mile, 22,000-acre stretch of the Penokee Range from southwest of Hurley to about six miles west of Mellen," notes The Nature Conservancy.

Said one neighbor, "He (Gollubske) was really angry with the blacktop company, and he claims they and the Iron County cops blew up his barns. When I looked in the news archive there was two articles about Kimball residents complaining of big explosions shuddering their houses. And ya know what the cops tried to tell the paper? We had reports some kids were shooting a cannon off. Cops said they told the kids to knock it off. I'm not kidding. Imagine cops going to a house full of kids that had a cannon big enough to fire something off to shudder houses for a few miles around and just telling them to knock it off?!"

No wonder Gollubske called the FBI.

Does even DA Martin Lipske, replete with incompetence and corruption, believe Gollubske is a terrorist?

Here's video of Robert (Barrel Bob) Gollubske at the DNR Public Hearing on August 15th held in Hurley.

- A version of this piece appeared August 18, 2013 -