Sunday, June 26, 2011

NY Times picks up Prosser chokehold story

It didn't take long for the story about Walker clone Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser attacking a fellow judge to hit the mainstream media.

The New York Times picked up the story about the judge putting his hands around Justice Ann Walsh Bradley's neck during an argument about Wisconsin's collective bargaining law.

Here's the Times' take on it:
...signs of a strong philosophical debate within the court reached a different level with a report published on Saturday suggesting that the argument had, shortly before the release of the ruling on collective bargaining, turned physical.
The report by the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism and Wisconsin Public Radio described an episode in which three unnamed sources said that Justice David T. Prosser had grabbed another justice, Ann Walsh Bradley, around the neck during an argument in her chambers this month.
Now of course the Koch-backed Tea Party front groups are claiming Justice Bradley attacked Prosser. Um, there were three witnesses who said that didn't happen.

And Here's what Bradley said late Saturday:
The facts are that I was demanding that he get out of my office and he put his hands around my neck in anger in a chokehold. Those are the facts and you can try to spin those facts and try to make it sound like I ran up to him and threw my neck into his hands, but that's only spin.
Matters of abusive behavior in the workplace aren't resolved by competing press releases.
I'm confident the appropriate authorities will conduct a thorough investigation of this incident involving abusive behavior in the workplace.
The Tea Party plans a singalong in the Wisconsin Capitol on Monday to counter the 15 weeks of enthusiastic Solidarity Singalongs by union members and their allies. (You'll recall a Tea Partier slugged a Solidarity Singer last week. What is it with these people?)

Tweeted @joevittie:
Tea Party Singalong to open with David Prosser leading Ted Nugent cover version of "Stranglehold"