GOP Legislators Again Twisting Legal System For Partisan Advantage

Republican legislators are out to again use the law itself to tilt basic separation of power protections for partisan purposes.

This time it's a plan to strip citizens of their right to go to first-step circuit courts to seek review of the laws that the legislature has passed.

Decoded, this means shutting off challenges heard in Dane County Circuit Courts where judges have ruled against right-wing power grabs, like Voter ID restrictions and Act 10 road blocks to union organizing and worker representation.

They ought to call it the "Bad Legislating Enabling Act."

Such appeals would now go straight to appeals courts, so the Legislature, in effect, is assuming some of the powers of circuit courts to hamper independent review of their handiwork and further fix questions of fairness and constitutionality.

If legislators want to be judges, too, they should go to law school and run for the bench.

This power play and judicial manipulation is reminiscent of the law passed a few years ago that transferred the prosecution of legislators' ethics violations committed in Dane County, where state governance takes place. to legislators' more friendly home fields.

Talk about self-dealing.

The change enabled former GOP assembly powerhouse Scott Jensen to move his retrial to his home county of Waukesha after having been convicted of felony misconduct in Dane County during the caucus scandal.

Usually, trials are held where crimes are alleged to have occurred, but the Legislature rewrote the law in 2007 to say politicians charged with ethics violations will be tried in their home counties. 

Jensen invoked that law in a court filing the day the law took effect. 

Jensen's case was settled in Waukesha County with a plea bargain in which the felony charges were dropped.

Republicans already control the Governor's office and Legislature, and the non-partisan State Supreme Court is usually a big-business tool that ratifies the GOP agenda without having to put (R_ after the majority's names.

GOP control on behalf of corporate special interests and Scott Walker's re-election and national political ambitions would get a further boost if the Legislature forbids circuit court judges from reviewing in open court the Legislature's handiwork - - often the product of lobbyists - - even donors - - behind closed doors.

This is one-party rule at its worst.