Ah, Wisconsin

I can't get over the Wisconsin Republican Party's current consideration of impeaching newly elected Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz, who was elected by a clear majority of the voters only a few months ago. 

I don't have links because I expect readers will have heard about this, and if not, it's easy to look up. 

This party has gone completely off the rails. 

This is even surprising in a state so gerrymandered that Republicans have a veto-proof majority in one house of the legislature and almost as many seats in the other, even though they didn't even get a majority of the overall votes in legislative races, and carried only one statewide race (narrowly reelecting the execrable Ron Johnson to the U.S. Senate after his racist campaign). 

It is even surprising in a state where the fake elector saga took place and attempts to manufacture "investigations" of the 2020 election were among the most extreme.

They want to impeach Protasiewicz because she acknowledged what has been said by many objective observers, including other judges: that Wisconsin's legislative and congressional maps are gerrymandered. I'm sure she put it more judiciously than I just did, too. And she won't recuse herself on any cases that come before the court about apportionment because she said it.

The Republican-appointed justices — who all support the current boundaries, to be sure — are not to be questioned, of course.

This is one more time that I shake my head and have to thank Minnesota's former governor Mark Dayton* for his last name, because he wouldn't have won his first term in 2010 without it. That's the year Scott Walker won in Wisconsin, and that downturn in Wisconsin was the beginning of Minnesota's upturn from the Tim Pawlenty years.

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Update: Jonathan Capehart (filling in for Lawrence O'Donnell) on The Last Word had a great segment on this tonight with Milwaukee Congresswoman Gwen Moore and Ben Wikler, head of the Wisconsin Democratic Party. A few additional facts I omitted: Protasiewicz didn't just win the election, she won by an 11-point margin... I only mentioned the gerrymandering case, but Republicans are also protecting an 1849 forced-birth bill that is being challenged... Protasiewicz was sworn in about a month ago and has not even heard a case yet in her new job... Republican political machinations are even more vile than I had heard...

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* For those not from these parts, Dayton's was the dominant department store in the Twin Cities for much of the 20th Century. Dayton-Hudson was the founding company of Target. So Mark Dayton's name recognition has always been a boost to his political career.