With the upcoming retirement of Lori Gildea, Governor Klink yesterday promoted Justice Natalie Hudson to the Chief Justice slot.
Much more troublingly, he appointed Karl Procaccini to replace Hudson as associate justice.
And to my mind, Procaccini has all the makings of the very worst kind of judge (emphasis added by me):
Procaccini, 40, took a lead role in drafting the executive orders that Walz used to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic.
Walz said Procaccini exhibited “steadiness, humility and an exceptional legal mind” during that difficult period.
“There is no one more prepared for the rigors and challenges that come with this important position,” Walz said.
A justice who conjured up the rationale to make let Governors Klink and Flanagan play Mussolini and Evita for almost two years?
“With the departure of Justice Gildea, Governor Walz had an opportunity to select a pragmatic voice and ensure Minnesotans have a diverse set of views on the Minnesota Supreme Court,” said House Minority leader Lisa Demuth, R-Cold Spring. “Instead, he picked the chief architect of the 2020 lockdowns and mandates that destroyed businesses and kept our kids out of the classroom with zero judicial experience to serve on the state’s highest court.“
The last Republican appointee, G. Barry Anderson, will hit mandatory retirement age right in the middle of Klink/Flanagan’s current term.
Sweet dreams, all who care about limited government.
I’m sure he’ll have a great notion of what “separation of powers” and “limited government” means. Along the same lines, he’s also going to have a great idea of “how to weigh evidence” and “what happens when government authorities ignore and suppress evidence that contradicts their narratives.” Really, what more can you want out of a jurist than to have a weak view of evidence and Constitutional limitations? What could possibly go wrong?
One of the reasons that MN state government is so much more liberal then Wisconsin’s is that Wisconsin’s supreme court is elected. Minnesota’s supreme court is elected, in theory, but in MN if a state SC judge resigns, the governor appoints his/her successor. Since in MN, state wide elections are almost always won by the DFL, that means that the 51% of the electorate effectively controls 100% of the MN supreme court. SC judges time their retirement so that a governor of their party can select their replacement.
Remember this when you hear Democrats drone on about the importance of preserving “our democracy.” They really mean “our racket.”
The identity of the new appointee has escaped me. Thanks for pointing it out. I was grimly amused at Klink acting as though promoting a DFL loyalist to Chief Justice was on the order of Branch Rickey hiring Jackie Robinson. Or Truman desegregating the military.
I was shocked, shocked I say, to learn that the Governor would replace a Black Woman with a Cis-Male Person of Pallor.
He couldn’t have promoted somebody from the Court of Appeals – say, Judge Wheelock (member of Meskwaki tribe), or Judge Reyes (Latino), or Judge Ross (Black man), or dipped down to the trial court bench to find an Asian judge?
Why, it’s almost as if Democrats’ famous commitment to diversity isn’t even skin deep.
Outside observers worry the election in Zimbabwe may be tainted. Ballots printed late, roads around polling places blocked, voters being stopped by police and questioned. No mention if any toilets flooded.
https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/zimbabwe-braces-close-election-early-parliamentary-results-come-2023-08-25/
What are they worried about? It’s like, impossible to steal an election. And if you say it is, you’ll be prosecuted for it.
Cool conspriacy.
One week before Tim Pawlenty appointed her Chief Justice, Gildea dissented from a majority decision in a tax case in favor of Pawlenty.
And Christopher Dietzen was Tim Pawlenty’s campaign lawyer before Pawlenty appointed him.
But you are free to vote for whomever Procaccini runs against in the next election to end this outrageous political appointment.
Judicial appointments are always political favors to some extent. That was certainly the case when republican Pawlenty nominated the relatively unknown Gildea back when he was governor.
For someone who hasn’t served as a judge, It’s hard to have a better resume than Karl Procacinni. Two degrees—including a law degree—from Harvard, and an international law degree from Egypt? Then he was chief lawyer helping us through the pandemic and all it’s issues?
And Gildea retiring long before mandatory age? She and her late husband were very active republicans. Doing so and given a democrat governor the chance to not only replace her but name the chief justice says a lot about what old school republicans think about their party today.
And here comes Bot Boy with his support of Commandant Klink and his corrupt cabal, just like his ChiCom masters instructed him to. But hey, bb brain, keep serving your role as another ventriloquist dummy for the pervert party. Oh, and make sure you get your Trump mug shot T shirt!
As the U.S. Supreme Court is now packed with Federalist Society “100 percenters,” you are just noticing an element of politics in judicial appointments? Just ask McConnell and the billionaire donors to the Federalist Society — it is all politics for them.
Emery, regarding Procaccini’s resume/CV, that would also include, ahem, his most recent work, in which he ignored best practices in epidemiology as well as the limitations of law imposed by federalism, and enacted a regime of controls that really has a better home in Cuba than in the United States.
You might as well argue that having a law degree from Yale ( which does outrank Harvard, by the way) and an undergraduate degree from Georgetown commends someone to that rank–ignoring that two people I can think of with that pedigree include a man who’s been disbarred (Bill Clinton) and a man who’s never held an honest job in his life without being shown the door (Hunter Biden). You don’t want either one of those clowns anywhere near the bench, let alone that of the Supreme Court. Or, for that matter, an undergrad from Columbia and a Harvard Law degree–that being Barack Obama.
Come on, if you indeed had a good long career, you know better than to simply go by one’s educational institutions listed on their resume. This guy is a menace.
Minnesota courts upheld Walz’s actions — you are simply wrong. Minnesota Republicans should focus on nominating competitive candidates rather than grousing from the sidelines.
Thanks to the troll, blather quotient is increasing. The needle in the gauge is in the red, and trembling. Soon the glass dial shall break.
There is literally no world where “Emery” has an opinion worth listening to. He was wrong about the Brexit vote, wrong about Hillary defeating Trump in a landslide in 2016. Wrong about Trump colluding with colluding with Putin to steal the 2016 election from Hillary. Emery is a a grade-A, top of the shelf idiot.
It is a sort of monument to the idiotic nature of mankind that Emery still shows up here to post his misreasoned and sometimes utterly incomprehensible opinions on topics about which he knows nothing.
“Minnesota courts upheld Walz’s actions”–um, yes, after two Democrats spent time filling the courts with their appointees, yes. And certainly no court ever overturned previous precedent in a case like Brown v. Board of Education, Roe, Dobbs, or the like. Never, ever. Judges always get it right.
Minnesota courts upheld Walz actions on the grounds that the state legislature passed a state statute which gave a state governor the authority to suspend The United States Constitution for as long as he liked.
No serious constitutional scholar believes that. But there are none in the state court system. The fix is in.
Woolly’s ad hominem never gets old …
Ooooh, a Crimson Degree. Two of them! Surely, that qualifies him to serve as Philosopher King.
Maybe not. I agree with this guy . . .
“I am obliged to confess that I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University. Not, heaven knows, because I hold lightly the brainpower or knowledge or generosity or even the affability of the Harvard faculty: but because I greatly fear intellectual arrogance, and that is a distinguishing characteristic of the university which refuses to accept any common premise.”