Even though he's now a justice on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, David Prosser still has temper tantrums.

It's been 15 years since, while serving as Republican minority leader, he went ballistic on the Assembly floor because a photographer was there to film our legislators in action. He suspected the photographer, who was in the visitors gallery, was working for the Democrats - and even though Assembly rules permit cameras, Prosser made sure that everyone knew he didn't like it.

In the process, he got into a heated argument with the acting speaker at the time, Milwaukee Democrat Tim Carpenter, and wound up rushing the speaker's podium screaming and shouting irrationally, pounding the podium and accusing Carpenter of being a liar.

He behaved similarly last Thursday when the Supreme Court, on a 4-3 vote, opted to adopt rules written by two powerful special interests - Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce and the Wisconsin Realtors Association - that permit justices to hear cases even if a litigant in the case has been a big contributor to the justice's election campaign.

Prosser joined Justices Annette Ziegler and Michael Gableman, who received millions from WMC during their campaigns, and Justice Pat Roggensack in dismissing a petition from the nonpartisan Wisconsin League of Women Voters that would have required judges and justices to recuse themselves when one of the litigants had contributed more than $1,000 to their election campaign within the past two years.

But Prosser wasn't satisfied just siding with the big money interests. He used the occasion to berate and hassle one of the speakers who had come to testify on behalf of the league's petition, Mike McCabe of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. McCabe is one of the state's leading voices for campaign finance reform and the need to get the taint of money out of the political process, something Prosser and his three colleagues obviously don't understand.

In what were clearly shots out of the blue, Prosser accused McCabe of calling him a thief. He added further that McCabe has been responsible for concerns the citizenry has about the court's impartiality these days and then accused McCabe of humorously suggesting that people ought to consider poisoning Justice Ziegler.

It's bad enough that a Supreme Court justice sees fit to badger a citizen who takes the time to appear at a hearing, but Prosser's accusations were based on comments taken completely out of context. First of all, McCabe didn't suggest someone poison Ziegler, he commented on a statement by Judge Ralph Adam Fine, who said of Ziegler that the best people sometimes make mistakes but a "cup of hemlock" may not be the proper remedy.

As for the "thief" assertion, McCabe wrote a commentary on Prosser's willingness to testify on behalf of former Assembly Speaker Scott Jensen's misconduct in office trial, a move that startled the state's law enforcement community. Jensen was convicted, but the conviction was overturned and he's still awaiting a new trial years later.

"Another former speaker who now is a sitting Supreme Court justice, David Prosser, is prepared to testify he stole from Wisconsin taxpayers by engaging in the same illegal campaigning that Jensen is accused of orchestrating," McCabe wrote back in February 2006.

"A claim that 'other guys were doing it' is a confession, not a defense," commented Dane County District Attorney Brian Blanchard at the time.

As for the assertion that McCabe is responsible for raising concerns about the Supreme Court, I hope the justice gets a clue - McCabe doesn't have to raise concerns, the actions of Prosser and his soulmate justices raise enough concern all by themselves.

Dave Zweifel is editor emeritus of The Capital Times. dzweifel@madison.com

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