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Today is the second day of voting in Egypt for the People's Assembly, which has 508 seats. All told, 24 days of polling will take place over the next few months. In January, elections will begin for Egypt's upper house, the Shura Council, which has 264 seats. After that election concludes, voting will take place to choose a president.

Before the revolution, Islamic parties were banned from public office in Egypt. Now the Al-Nour party claims to have 300,000 active members, each of whom donates £10 (about $1.60) a month to maintain the party’s political and humanitarian outreach operations. Their Alexandria headquarters is an office suite on the second floor of a block concrete residential building. Inside, fresh candidate banners are strung along the walls of hastily decorated rooms with recently delivered black foam office chairs, still in their plastic wrapping.

Before the revolution, Nader Bakr was a project manager in the health care industry with a business and economics degree from the University of Alexandria. Now, at 28 he is the head spokesmen for the Nour party. His frequent appearances on Egyptian television have made him one of this election's more recognizable faces.

In a country of abysmal dental care, Bakr’s set of unnaturally white and perfectly straight teeth are almost distracting. This same meticulous care is paid to each detail of his appearance; his trimmed black beard and crisp cream suit and silver cufflinks. It is a presentation which seems engineered to defy Western preconceptions of how a fundamentalist should appear.

The Awl: How would you define the term Salafi?

Bakr: The main concept behind Salafi is that there was a time when the Islamic societies were the best ones, all over the world.

The Awl: You mean the Uma?

Bakr: Yes. Salifism is an attempt to recover this best state of Islam itself.

The Awl: You are referencing a pan-Arab, Islamic kingdom. Is the model for the Uma the same today?

Bakr: No.

The Awl: So what would this look like today?

Bakr: Our strategy for Egypt and for Tunis and Libya is for a modern society—a modern country that has the newest scientific advances, but at the same time is conservative about its religion, instruction and duties. By conservative, we mean the keeping of the origins of Islam, not as extremism. It would be something like the European Union.

The Awl: What are the differences between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafi groups?

Bakr: They are both talking about the same point when it comes to Islam. They are both Muslims, they’re both Sunna. They both have the same overall strategy. The only difference between them and the Muslim Brothers is the tools through which to reach their goal in going back and keeping the origins of Islam.

The reason why before the revolution you never heard the term Salafi was because the old regime did not allow for democracy. This is why the Muslim Brothers—they were not a part of the old regime, but they were trying to be involved in politics. [The Muslim Brotherhood held 88 seats in the People's Assembly elected in 2005, but only one seat in the Assembly elected in 2010, which was dissolved in February of this year.]

The Salafis felt they would be more of hypocrites if they got involved—and as only as decoration. They’d rather step back and not be involved because they see it as misleading. But the overall strategy is the same—

The Awl: Of spreading the Uma.

Bakr: Yes, restructuring the whole of society. We wanted to change, so the overall picture of Egypt at this time was not enabling us to change.

The Awl: With the control the National Democratic Party had over elections, it would not allow you to create change? [The NDP, founded by Anwar El Sadat in 1978, was dissolved in April of this year.]

Bakr: Corruption was everywhere. Corruption in the election process. Corruption in all the ministries.

The Awl: So now you are participating. The Muslim Brothers are also participating, but there are currently four Salafi parties in addition to the Muslim Brothers. How are they different?

Bakr: This is the first time we have had a real election, and this is why there are many Islamic parties running. The parties all have the same principle, which is the restoration of Islam. But priorities are different, and this is for the benefit of the public.

The Awl: When we look at the Middle East today, there are many different interpretations of Islamic societies. What is your vision of this correct interpretation of the proper Islamic society for Egypt?

Bakr: The official language of Egypt will be Arabic. Islamic Sharia is the main source for the Constitution—the main source of judgment and main source of law in Egypt. Also, the third point is to reserve all the rights for the minorities in Egypt, which are Christians. The fourth point is to preserve the origins of Egyptian culture; literature and art.

The Awl: When Americans see the Middle East, they see a wide range of interpretations of Islamic states—with Saudi Arabia on one end of an extreme and Turkey on the other. Where should Egypt fall?

Bakr: The Iranian regime we completely refuse. This regime is not an Islamic one. They have a king or ruler whose authority is not questioned. The ruler or king must be questioned—people must question him. Also, the Saudi model is not one that we would want to pick. We disagree with the absolute power that the king has. In terms of ethics, there is no current example of a nation that represents Islam in its purest form.

The Awl: How would foreign policy be guided in a Salafi government?

Bakr: Before we were following in Western footsteps, but not our own. We would like to have a connection with the West, but with our own independent identity. We will respect all international treaties. We would strengthen our relationships with Islamic countries, especially with those in Africa.

The Awl: Does this extend to the peace treaty with Israel?

Bakr: We will follow the treaty between Egypt and Israel, except when it comes to exporting natural gas. We will not follow these aspects of the treaty because this was an under-the-table deal made by the old regime.

When I say we will respect the treaty between us and Israel, that does not mean that we will not support Palestine, Lebanon and Syria if those countries were attacked by Israel. We will respect the treaty but on the other hand, we will respect the legal right of Palestine, the legal right of Lebanon and also of Syria.

The Awl: So in the event of a conflict between other Arab countries and Israel, Egypt would support the Arab countries.

Bakr: We will support those countries in an international, diplomatic way.

Christian Vachon lives in Cairo. He posts regularly to Twitter.

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So, I've been talking a lot tonight about fighting for America's middle class. I grew up on the ragged edge of the middle class, a family that scraped by, until my father had a heart attack, the medical bills piled up, and we lost our car, my mother went to work at Sears so that we could hold on to our house. Like a lot of people in this audience, I worked hard for everything I got. But I grew up in an America that was full of opportunity. We have lost our way. We now live in a world where America's middle class is getting hammered, and Washington doesn't get it. Washington is ran for the big guns, the ones who can afford lobbyists and lawyers. That's not right. We have a choice. We can either choose to give more tax subsidies to those who have already made it big, or we can take that money and invest in opportunities for the next kids who are going to make it big. That's our choice right here in Massachusetts.

Impossible to tell! Left, right, in-between? Sure! Overall, she came off as extremely pro-business, which is not what one might have expected.

(The other best part of the debate is that someone was either breathing or snoring like Darth Vader by the Herald's livestream camera? Bizarre!)

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Along the way, how Wisconsin politics works has been laid bare. Last week, a supporter of Republican Senator Robert Cowles came out to say that Cowles had told him that the only reason he voted for Scott Walker's anti-union budget bill was that "the governor's office told us if we didn't give them our support, they would run a tea party candidate against us." Well, well, well.

With $30 million spent on six state senator recall elections—really a staggering amount of money—we begin to see what all that cash being around means in practice: "To stay in office, Alberta Darling, a lifelong moderate, took up the rhetoric of the tea party. She was rewarded with a gravy pipe of national money from those sympathetic to taxes-are-sin dogma. A perfect example of this ideological polarization was how Darling received the full-blown endorsement of the powerful anti-abortion organization Wisconsin Right To Life even though she sat on the board of Planned Parenthood for years."

Neato. But then you knew all this back in June.

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• Diane Black

• Mark Begich

• Michael Conaway

• John Boehner

• Michael Burgess

• David Lee Camp

• John Cornyn

• John Culberson

• Jim Costa

• Cory Gardner (whose homepage currently features a call for more drilling.)

• Peter Visclosky

• Orrin Hatch

• Richard Lugar

• Kevin McCarthy

• Jerry Moran

• Peter Visclosky

• Roger Wicker

• Eric Cantor

Plus!

• National Republican Congressional Committee

• National Republican Senatorial Committee

And! Related.

Abe Sauer can be reached at abesauer at gmail dot com.

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The Horseshoe: IL-04

To create a Hispanic-majority district in the Chicagoland suburbs, the state of Illinois combined a Puerto Rican neighborhood with a distant Mexican neighborhood via a nonresidential strip of Interstate 294. The problem? The highway is eight miles west of either enclave.

The Court Case: NC-12

Pro tip: If you're looking at a long, narrow district, you're probably looking at some gerrymandering. When North Carolina gained a seat in the House of Representatives following the 1990 census, the state set out to create a black-majority district in NC-12. The twelfth initially followed Interstate 65 from Gastonia to Durham. Durham is 160 miles south north of Gastonia, at its widest the district was less than 20 miles across. The current version is the result of a 1993 Supreme Court ruling that the shape of the district violated the Equal Protection Clause. What you're looking at now is actually considered acceptable.

The Snake: MD-03

How do you create a Democratic-leaning district out of a smattering of Republican neighborhoods? You carve yourself Maryland's 3rd. Drawn to its current extent after the 2000 reapportionment, MD-03 appears barely cohesive. [We formerly credited the elections of Barbara Mikulski and Ben Cardin to this redrawing; Mikulski was first elected to the House in '77 and to the Senate in '87.]

The Claw: CA-11

Gerrymandering doesn't always work out, especially if the candidate is particularly terrible. Take California's 11th. When it was reapportioned in the early 2000s, GOP incumbent Richard Pombo was barely hanging on to his swing state seat. Even though it was drawn very precisely to excise the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and surrounding scientist-filled neighborhoods, Democrat Jerry McNerney emerged victorious in a 2006 less-close-than-you'd-think race despite never having held elected office. Flash fact, when ranking all 435 districts by area, CA-11 is the median in size. Flash fact II, Pombo is now running for office in CA-19. He is not a resident of CA-19.

The Pie: Columbus, Ohio

A gerrymander isn't always used to favor a specific candidate or voting bloc. Sometimes you just want to disenfranchise some folks. Spreading a voter group through several districts, also known as 'cracking,' can deny fair representation to a large constituency. The liberal center of Columbus, Ohio, is divided into three individual districts, each including a small slice of the urban area and a wide swath of the generally more conservative suburbs.

The Nonpolitical Gerrymander: AZ-02

Similar to the Hopi/Navajo time zone pickle mentioned last time, the Hopi and the Navajo have had such major conflicts that Arizona lawmakers thought it best to separate their tribal lands into different districts. The blob of Hopi land to the northeast, which is completely surrounded by Navajo land, is connected to the rest of AZ-02 via a narrow strip of labyrinthine riverbeds. Navajo voters cast their ballots for candidates running in AZ-01.

The Meatwad: CA-18

Not particularly gerrymandered, but it looks like meatwad.

Districts are reapportioned in the years following the decennial census. This time around, Texas is gaining four seats and Florida is gaining two. Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, South Carolina, Utah and Washington will each gain one. Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey and Pennsylvania are losing one seat. New York and Ohio are each losing two seats. North Carolina, with no change in seat allocation, is shaping up to be a doozy. Definitely a state to watch as the lines are redrawn. If watching isn't enough, may I recommend the Redistricting Game?

Victoria Johnson's hometown district, NY-27, looks like a bow tie.

Maps of Ohio and post-census reapportionment from the Census Bureau; all others from nationalatlas.gov.

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The state's residents have been robocalled so often in the last 24 hours that many are just not bothering to answer the phone anymore. Each side accuses the other of being the candidate propped up by outside money—even as both have had millions spent on their behalf by outside money. Sarah Palin, a resident of Alaska, has made an endorsement in another state's supreme court election. Wisconsin's election has become maybe the greatest single argument for not electing justices.

And yet, one element of the election is dirtier and shadier, grosser and more confusing than all others.

A few weeks ago, the "Greater Wisconsin Committee" began running an ad against incumbent Justice David Prosser. It alleges that when Prosser was Outagamie County District Attorney in 1978, he refused to prosecute a Catholic priest accused of sexually molesting two boys, Todd and Troy Merryfield. The ad uses quotes from the Merryfields, from years later, when Prosser's role was revealed. Prosser called the ad “sleazy beyond belief."

News hit a week later that one of the brothers, Troy, who now lives in Suffolk, Virginia, was upset with the ad.

Then, another week after that, an anti-Kloppenburg ad featuring Troy Merryfield, made its stunning debut, managing the extraordinary feat of cutting through the flotsam of election ads. The ad is moving in its simplicity. A grown man, alone, looking into the camera and explaining he was a victim of sexual abuse, adding that "my brother and I" are "being victimized again" by Joanne Kloppenburg. Pow!

How his previous harsh criticism of Prosser jibes with his current support for the justice, Merryfield told the Journal Sentinel, "I don't want to get back to different things that were reported in the past."

For its part, the mainstream press in Wisconsin has refused to even question the motivations of Troy Merryfield, probably because he's a clergy sex abuse victim and nobody wants to be "that guy."

But Troy Merryfield is in Virginia, insulated from any consequences of the Wisconsin Supreme Court election. Of late, Walker and Prosser have both been very vocal about "out of state" influence in Wisconsin elections, which makes the Virginia Merryfield's support pretty rich. But it didn't have to be this way. Why wouldn't Troy's brother Todd, who lives in Port Washington, WI, star in the ad? As Troy himself said, it was Todd, not Prosser's campaign, that alerted him to the original ad that used the abuse case against Prosser.

Todd Merryfield, who posted his brother's ad to his Facebook page with the comment "I hope people are paying attention…" probably doesn't want to experience the fallout such involvement would bring.

Todd confirmed this. "I would love to be more vocal in my support for my brother," he told me, "but the toxic political environment in Wisconsin prevents me from commenting any further than offering my support. No matter how loudly we speak of this being a non-political objection to the despicable ad put out by the Greater Wisconsin Committee...."

Todd is the co-owner of the The Learning Shop, a chain of six stores across Wisconsin that does a great deal of its business supplying… teachers. The store even offers special "Teacher Resources." Coming out against the candidate that teachers have put their hopes in to save collective bargaining, while at the same time needing those teachers' business, might create the kind of "toxic political environment" that Merryfield fears. Residents of Virginia have no such worries. (It's noteworthy that his profile "likes" both the "Tea Party Patriots" and Rush Limbaugh guest host "Mark Belling," meaning Todd may not be altogether apolitical.)

Todd further told us: "We are going to be painted as getting involved in the political process here and that is a sad mischaracterization of our involvement."

He's right. But not because of the content of the ad, but the partner that Merryfield chose to fund his message.

The ad, which is running in heavy rotation in major state markets, is funded by the group Citizens for a Strong America, about which almost absolutely nothing is known, except that its bare bones website was registered to the same address as Americans for Prosperity by an AFP employee. Americans for Prosperity is, of course, the activism group started and funded by David Koch. The Center for Media and Democracy also notes that the registering employee in question once "interned for Walker and worked on his campaign."

"Citizens for a Strong America" is such a vanilla name it was used in the 1989 Frederick Forsyth novel The Negotiator for, yes, a shady conservative think tank.

Todd told us, "[I] can't tell you anything about that organization," adding, "Their refusal to [pull the ad] after my brother's public plea obviously garnered support from an outside organization."

As the Center rightly notes, the Citizens for a Strong America is "a virtually anonymous group ... running ads on the eve of a major election with no public disclosure of who runs the group or who funds the group." Sure, Kloppengburg's deep pockets come from a front group for national union interests (fully admitted on its website), but Prosser's bag men are front groups for front groups for front groups.

We could not reach Troy Merryfield for comment.

(The group the Merryfields have teamed with in their nonpolitical message is currently running another ad in Wisconsin. This one claims Prosser challenger Kloppenburg "put an 80-year-old farmer in jail for refusing to plant native vegetation on his farm." It's a claim so untrue Politifact's truth meter burst into "pants on fire" flames with the fact-checking organization noting the commercial's claim "is ridiculously false.")

One other detail that's fallen through the cracks in the unwillingness to question the (powerful) Merryfield ad. Both Todd and Troy are plaintiffs in a still-pending civil suit filed in 2008 against the Green Bay Archdiocese. In February, 2011, just before the Walker bill drama geared up, their attorney added a new punitive damage claim. The suit is based on similar California litigation, alleging fraud that saw an award in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Merryfield's suit was only allowed to go forward in Wisconsin after the state supreme court, that included Prosser, ruled in 2007 in John Doe 1 v Milwaukee Archdiocese of Milwaukee that "Decades have elapsed since the alleged wrongful conduct of the archdiocese occurred. But that should not prevent the plaintiffs from having their day in court." The ruling paved the way to bypass existing statutes of limitations on lawsuits against the church—but only in the cases where fraud had occurred. A year later, the Merryfield's filed their suit against the Green Bay Diocese seeking undisclosed damages.

With this ruling in mind, Troy's original statement gains much more context. He writes, "In retrospect, I do not believe that some of the diocese officials were honest with Prosser."

To follow the stipulations of the 2007 supreme court ruling, the Merryfields' case must prove fraud on the part of the archdiocese. Not being honest with Prosser would be just that kind of fraud. Merryfield writes further that Prosser "offered helpful insights" during Priest Feeney's successful 2004 conviction, another moment that paved the way for the lawsuit. Merryfield's lawyer may want to consult him about the advisable "cannot comment on that" behavior typical of plaintiffs in pending civil cases potentially worth millions of dollars.

This conflict of interest is not disclosed in the ad any more than is the funding of the group paying for the ad.

So, just to be clear, the two most powerful ads in service of two completely opposed candidates for Wisconsin's supreme court are both Catholic priest sexual abuse-themed and feature statements from the same victim. It's prototypical of the animal sentiment that will carry the day in Wisconsin.

Abe Sauer can be reached at abesauer at gmail dot com.

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Meanwhile, with an election approaching on April 5, Wisconsin finds itself in an absolute fit over partisanship.

The same partisans that are pushing Attorney General JB Van Hollen to challenge the federal heath care reform bill in the courts are criticizing the lawsuits that challenge Governor Walker's budget bill. The same partisans who blame Wisconsin's economic woes on the last eight years of a Democratic governor also blame President Obama for America's current economic crisis.

Walker's supporters are scurrying to separate the upcoming state supreme court election from the partisan politic gut punch. After using no nuance whatsoever to gin up support, by characterizing union workers as thuggish tapeworms infecting the intestinal tract of society, the pro-Walker camp is insisting on absolute ideals of impartiality and nonpartisanship in the April 5th supreme court election. And so conservative incumbent David Prosser is trying desperately to pull free the lynchpin that until quite recently hitched his wagon to the Governor's train.

Like germs, partisanship can now be found wherever the paranoid happen to want to find it—even with the Green Bay Packers Super Bowl win, the one thing in the state that all Wisconsinites probably agree should be bipartisan. In February, Walker attended the event in Texas not on the state dime, but at the cost of his campaign. While the spin is that this saved the "broke" state money (the state still paid for his security), what partisans see is an opportunity for the Governor to legally fundraise and politic without accountability, while at the same time pretending to represent the Green Bay Packers and all the people of Wisconsin.

It's become so bad that pretty much anything labeled independent or nonpartisan should pretty much be assumed to be a lie. For example, the effort in Green Bay to recall Democratic Senator David Hansen is billed as independent. On the Green Bay Tea Party website, a banner bills the recall as an "independent effort by a group of Wisconsin's citizens." Except, RecallDaveHansen.com, the website of the "independent" recall, shares a registration address with that of the Kewaunee County Republican Party and Party Chairman Ron Hauer, who does normal "independent" citizen things like attend the January swearing-in ceremony of Senator Ron Johnson in Washington D.C.

After Dane County judge Maryann Sumi ordered a restraining order that blocked the publishing of Walker's bill pending a hearing, Red State noted that Sumi's son operates a company handling political campaigns. They concluded "Clearly, both Sumi and her son are activists, which is why Sumi should be removed from the entire Wisconsin matter."

Forget for a moment that the same Red State was mum when the Wisconsin state patrol was called in to handle Madison protesters, an organization under the control of Walker appointee Stephen Fitzgerald, the father of the two most powerful Republicans in the legislature and primary supporters of the bill. What Red State is essentially arguing here is that a parent should be held accountable for any of the work or politics of their children. Shades of Milo Radulovich.

The voices decrying Judge Sumi as an activist are the same voices saying Supreme Court Judge David Prosser is a judicial independent campaigning against an activist... even though both Sumi and Prosser were appointed to their respective court positions by the same Republican Governor, Tommy Thompson, in the same year (1998).

This insistence on impartiality despite all evidence to the contrary is most on display in the campaign of incumbent state Supreme Court Justice David Prosser.

In December, Prosser's campaign released a statement declaring that "Our campaign efforts will include building an organization that will return Justice Prosser to the bench, protecting the conservative judicial majority and acting as a common sense compliment [sic] to both the new [Republican] administration and legislature."

"I never saw that statement. I wouldn't have written it that way." That was Prosser's excuse for that statement in a recent Wisconsin Public Television interview. That's typical of the kind of statement he's been making recently in an attempt to distance himself from the Walker administration before the election.

A day after Prosser released the "compliment" statement, he met with the Wisconsin Federation of Republican Women. His schedule has seen him at Republican-only events ever since. On an interview with the Dane County GOP on a show called "Who's Right?" the host says things like "We need you on the court… especially if this budget repair bill is coming up on the supreme court for a vote," while Prosser winks.

In February he was the keynote speaker "on behalf of" the Outagamie County Republican Party at its annual Lincoln Day dinner. A video posted on the Rock County Republican Party Facebook Page shows Prosser at its dinner mocking his challenger about how, as a prosecutor for the Dept. of Natural Resources, she has wasted her time… charging those violating environmental regulations. Prosser said: "She's very concerned about individuals who violate the rules on docks." The crowd laughs. "And she wants some people not to have any docks at all!" The crowd laughs more.

There are legitimate questions about the depth of experience of challenger and Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg. Kloppenburg has no judicial experience, a point Prosser's campaign has repeatedly made. That's how people become judges: they were previously not judges. At the time of his appointment in 1998, Prosser had only four years of any kind of official justice experience under his belt, two of them in Washington D.C.

Prosser's dismissive, mocking posture is sadly typical. In February, responding to ethics concerns about the court by one of his challengers, Prosser said, "I think Joel has been smoking some of the stuff he wants to legalize."

At the Walworth County GOP Lincoln Day Dinner, Prosser raised the specter of Jesse Jackson, and, in typical fashion, mocked him by addressing the crowd "My brothers and sisters…"

Prosser's scorn for what is essentially a prosecutor doing her job is stunning, considering Prosser's own history as a prosecutor. In 2008, Prosser was forced to recuse himself from a case involving sexually abused minors and the Catholic Church because, while serving as district attorney of Outagamie County in 1979, Prosser had refused to prosecute a Green Bay priest accused of sexually molesting two brothers. His reasoning? It would have been too hard on the boys. (In 2004 the priest, then 81, was imprisoned after abusing an unknown further number of children.) In 2008, the victim told the Journal Sentinel, "[Prosser] said it would be too embarrassing for a kid my age and said what jury would believe a kid testifying against a priest? Then he said, what really makes it bad is that [the priest's] brother, Joe, sang on the Lawrence Welk show and everybody watched that back then."

So which former district attorney would you rather have on the high court bench: the anal retentive prosecutor charging people with extending their lake docks two feet longer than allowed by the law or the guy who doesn't prosecute a child molester because the priest's brother was once on the Lawrence Welk Show?

Last week, emails leaked in which it was revealed that Prosser had, in addition to saying he would destroy her, called Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson a "bitch." Prosser had good reason to question the motivations behind the timing of the leaked emails, but he did not deny his behavior. In fact, his she-made-me-do-it justification at times tilted scarily near "she deserved it."

After calling the chief justice a "bitch," Prosser went on Wisconsin Public Television to say, no kidding, that his most satisfying case was one which involved "a victory for a young woman who had been sexually harassed in the workplace."

Despite Prosser's complete lack of compunction about insulting others, he himself is extremely sensitive to insult. During a recent debate he made a long point of getting to the bottom of whether or not a comment posted to a challenger's Facebook page by some unknown user referred to him as a "turd."

Prosser is the first to admit that his background is far from impartial. In the interview with WPT, he admitted, "I have the most partisan background of any member of the court," adding, "so when I became a member of the court I wanted to leave that behind and be known as a truly impartial justice." In all of his recent speaking engagements, Prosser has addressed his past years of stringent partisanship in this fashion, declaring that, essentially, when he was appointed to the high court he just gave up his prior belief system—as if a career as a Republican lawmaker was just a substance abuse problem from which he recovered.

That's funny, because in 1990, after Wisconsin Circuit Court Judge Patricia McMahon ruled that a law placing a 60-day waiting period on welfare was unconstitutional, then-Minority Leader Prosser, who also happened to be sponsor of that portion of the law, accused Judge McMahon of judicial bias... because she had years earlier worked with the plaintiffs, Legal Action of Wisconsin.

This level of the respect for the impartiality of the judicial system was standard for Prosser before he himself became part of it and began pitching himself as impartial. As with the McMahon case, if a ruling didn't go Prosser's way, he wouldn't submit a legal argument for his case, but instead would raise accusations of bias. For example, also in 1990, when the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled to uphold a campaign finance law that limited campaign contributions, then Rep. Prosser called the court "tainted," saying, "I question whether there was an impartial hearing."

Prosser was a right wing fundamentalist before right wing fundamentalism was what America had for breakfast with its Corn Flakes. In 1996, as assembly speaker, Prosser shepherded a bill through the legislature that would have required a 24-hour waiting period for women seeking an abortion. Beside maybe being unconstitutional, the bill's exemption for cases of rape and incest required a two hour wait—and only if a criminal complaint had been filed. Except, such a report is only issued by a district attorney and can take weeks to file, basically nullifying the bill's rape and incest exemption. Prosser's response to reporters' questions about the legal knot? "It was just a mistake."

This circumventing of the legal right to abortion was a good compliment to the lawmaker's earlier support for an age-old "blue law" that made adultery a Class A misdemeanor. In 1989, he reasoned that adultery "is very likely to jeopardize the future of the marriage, to humiliate the non-offending spouse, to take away money from the family unit or lead to abortion." Get that? A sitting state supreme court judge argued that adultery equals abortion.

Few have noted that Walker and Prosser served together in the legislature for three years as part of the Republican majority.

Prosser now will not directly answer specific questions about his beliefs on the grounds that he doesn't want to prejudge a case. That's fine: his beliefs on all of the most important kinds of cases are already part of the public record. For example, in 1994 he said that, yes, he did support the death penalty.

In numerous interviews and at debates, Prosser has invited potential voters to review his judicial record. But on Prosser's own campaign site, the only judicial achievement he openly highlights is a ruling (made rightly) against former Democratic Governor Doyle. The "Judicial Record" section of Prosser's own campaign site is still "under construction"—a dozen days before the election.

When Prosser was appointed to the court in 1998, he had not served one minute as a judge. When Prosser was appointed, he had not even served as a organ of any courtroom in 20 years. Prosser served as the Outagamie district attorney from only 1977 and 1978. Prior to that, he served two years as an adviser in the Dept. of Justice. Prosser was elected to the Wisconsin State Assembly in 1979 and never again served in any justice capacity whatsoever. After leaving elected government in 1996, Prosser made judgments for the Wisconsin Tax Appeals Commission, a state agency that resolves taxpayer disputes with the state, but he was not a judge. This means Prosser's official entire justice system experience consist of just the two years.

Prosser is now warning that out of state money is flooding in to support his opponent.

Following the huge pooch-screw judicial elections in 2007 and 2008, in which more than ten million dollars came in from God-knows-where for seats on the court, a new campaign finance scheme promotes public funding. For three candidates, the new finance law grants $100,000 for the primary and $300,000 for those advancing to the general election. If candidates with private funding spend heavily against publicly-funded candidates, the law supplies more money. As Prosser has pointed out, it's a law of best intentions that provides zero incentives to not accept public funding.

Until Walker's shenanigans launched the supreme court election into the spotlight, Prosser was trouncing his opponents in outside party spending. For example, during the primary election—when all publicly-funded candidates had $100,000 to spend—Prosser benefited from $408,000 worth of supporting ads bought by the Club for Growth. That spending by the organization (founded by the Koch brothers) alone accounted for 69 percent of all TV ad spending during the primary. What's more, the Brennan Center for Justice notes: "Club for Growth paid an average of about $400 for each of its ads, while Winnig paid less than $200 per ad, and Kloppenburg less than $150 per ad—indicating that Club for Growth’s ads were disproportionately placed in larger markets or during programming with larger audiences than the ads placed by Prosser’s challengers."

The Club for Growth's Prosser ads proclaimed that the man who let a known child molester go free instead of embarrass a Laurence Welk Show performer has "helped keep dangerous criminals behind bars."

Spending by the Club for Growth did not trigger matching amounts for Prosser's publicly-funded challengers, because it was very careful not to use the trigger words "support, "vote for," or "elect." (It did not go unnoticed that the Club for Growth's Prosser ad was not dissimilar to a 2008 Club for Growth ad supporting conservative supreme court judge Michael Gableman, which hinted at the misinformation campaign regarding Gableman's challenger. Eventually Gableman was accused of violating the state's judicial ethics code, a charge from which he was eventually released after a deadlocked state supreme court decision—in which, surprise, Prosser sided with Gableman.)

There's also money from Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, a Chamber of Commerce lobbying organization that heavily funded the Walker campaign. Sensing Prosser's campaign suddenly in danger, it has opened its significantly thick wallet to spend in support of Prosser. (The new Koch Industries head lobbyist has previously been a lobbyist for WMC.) Prosser was also a guest of honor in March 2010, along Walker, at a Tea Party event sponsored by Americans for Prosperity.

Kloppenburg herself has suddenly seen a lot of financial support from outside groups as well. In a March 22nd fundraising email to members, the WMC warned of "The Greater Wisconsin Committee" purchasing millions of dollars of TV time to attack Prosser. The WMC letter called the committee "a union front group," while the Wall Street Journal called it a "liberal front group." Both descriptions are largely true.

In the end, any candidate who truly believes in his or her heart that today's Wisconsin Supreme Court is a fully impartial body, devoid of politics, probably does not lay claim to the perceptive mental powers required to sit on the state's most challenging court.

The whole election is a turd sandwich, and Wisconsin is being forced to take a bite. No matter how you chew, it tastes the same. Prosser's campaign itself has summed it up better than anyone. A February 9th email to Wispolitics subscribers quoted Brian Nemoir, Prosser's campaign manager, saying “This election is about a 4-3 commonsense conservative majority vs. a 3-4 liberal majority, and nothing more.”

And if Prosser goes down as a result of a referendum on Walker, it will hardly be some great victory for democracy. Many who vote for JoAnne Kloppenburg will know nothing about her beyond the fact that she is not David Prosser.

A final review of the behavior of all involved leaves only one conclusion: If candidates for the court, incumbent or otherwise, are only going to pay lip service to impartiality and nonpartisanship, why should the electorate be expected to act any differently?

Abe Sauer can be reached at abesauer at gmail dot com.

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