After a campaign season full of headlines like “Ziegler faces conflict questions: Husband on bank board; she made rulings anyway”, and after hearing Annette Ziegler argue that, despite state laws to the contrary, she can use her own private “gut check” to determine if there are any conflicts of interest, and after she was censured by the state judicial commission for “inexcusable neglect of her responsibilities as a judge”, I’m not really all that convinced of Ziegler’s ability to administer fair and impartial justice.

So this news comes as no surprise:

Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce spent $2.2 million “educating the public” about the Washington County Circuit Court judge’s strengths and what it said was the lack of experience and wrongheaded philosophy of her opponent, Madison attorney Linda Clifford.

On Thursday, Ziegler, the newest member of the Supreme Court, sat with her six colleagues on an appeal financed by WMC that could save Wisconsin businesses $350 million a year. Justice Louis Butler also took part, even though a member of his campaign’s finance committee was the attorney for Menasha Corp., the company involved in the tax dispute with the state.

WMC may be a pernicious, reactionary force in our state’s political debate, but they know a good investment when they see one.

Posted by Ben Brothers at 11:13 am, 3 December 2007 and filed under Wisconsin News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.