Can’t our robed masters behave themselves?
According to one witness, Bradley charged toward Prosser, shaking her clenched fist in his face. Another source says they were “literally nose to nose.” Prosser then put his hands up to push her away. As one source pointed out, if a man wants to push a woman who is facing him, he wouldn’t push her in the chest (unless he wants to face an entirely different criminal charge). Consequently, Prosser put his hands on Bradley’s shoulders to push her away, and in doing so, made contact with her neck.
At that moment, another justice approached Bradley from behind and pulled her away from Prosser, saying, “Stop it, Ann, this isn’t like you.” Bradley then shouted, “I was choked!” Another justice present replied, “You were not choked.” In a statement following the incident, Bradley maintained Prosser “put his hands around my neck in anger in a chokehold.”
On Monday night, Bradley called Capitol Police Chief Charles Tubbs to talk to him about the incident. On the morning of Wednesday, June 15, Tubbs joined the justices in a closed-door meeting, where he discussed “issues relating to workplace violence.”
During the meeting, Chief Justice Abrahamson actually reenacted the incident on Chief Tubbs — no doubt an amusing sight, as the diminutive Abrahamson mimicked choking the tall, portly police chief. During her demonstration, Abrahamson emphasized that Prosser had exerted “pressure” on Bradley’s throat.
“There was no pressure,” interrupted the justice who had initially broken up the incident between Bradley and Prosser. “That’s only because you broke us apart,” shot back Bradley. This exchange led several meeting attendees to believe Bradley was making up the charge, as they took her rejoinder as an admission that there was no pressure applied to her neck.
My guess: Bradley is making something out of not very much in order to knock Prosser and the WI GOP back on their heels. In other words, it’s political and just one more of the other side’s pitiful efforts to defend union largesse by any means necessary. They’ll flee the state, they’ll lay siege on the capitol, they’ll threaten businesses that refuse to toe the union line, they’ll hand down silly rulings, they’ll stage recounts for no reason, and so forth — why wouldn’t they try smearing a judge they’ve already shown that they despise? Perhaps they’re reaching back to the old Clarence Thomas playbook, with a dash of Alinsky thrown in. The fact that, thus far, Bradley hasn’t pressed any actual charges, and instead sought to force Prosser into some kind of anger management training/re-education that would have stained his reputation forever but would not have brought a police investigation to bear, gives the game away as far as I’m concerned. This is political.
Hey, if keeping police away worked for the Weiner…or, even though it didn’t…
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