NYT Slams Walker, GOP Justices over Killing Public Integrity Law

Those wondering how a low-life politician like Scott Walker could ascend to the governorship of Wisconsin need note the silence after Walker and his Party killed the John Doe law last week.

Silence is in large part what allowed Walker to squeak out electoral wins.

The John Doe law was used to investigate Walker twice: During his tenure as Milwaukee County Executive (2002-10), and in the period when Walker fended off the 2011-12 Recall campaign when Walker coordinated $ millions in independent expenditures and his campaign funds in violation of campaign finance law.

So, naturally Walker caught acting at the center of a criminal scheme colluded with state legislative Republicans to gut the law.

As today's New York Times notes:

Only weeks after giving up on his lackluster presidential campaign in the face of national indifference, Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin is back to making mischief in his home state. Last Friday, Mr. Walker signed a bill to protect public officials like himself from an effective and well-established tool for rooting out political corruption.

The tool, known as the John Doe law, lets prosecutors conduct secret investigations into possible crimes by executing search warrants and compelling people to testify.

It wasn't just the Republican legislature that gave Walker a pass.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court's four Republicans, [they pretend to be non-partisan], issued an infamous decision last summer corruptly protecting Walker from criminal investigation, making up law as they did, the Times notes:

[A] deeply split Wisconsin Supreme Court — several of whose justices were backed by the same groups in their election campaigns — shut down the investigation, adopting an unprecedented reading of the state’s campaign-finance laws to find no problem with the activities in question. Mr. Walker was not charged in either case.

Silence is not the best strategy at this point.

To understand the Republicans on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, note this piece on David Prosser representing well Court's abdication of judicial ethics.