KOHL, FEINGOLD RECOMMEND NY ATTORNEY, THREE LOCALS FOR WISCONSIN SEAT ON APPEALS COURT

Three are Noble Sons of Wisconsin and Members of its Bar Association

The Fourth Owes  Her Allegiance to the State of New York --

-- And is Daughter-In-Law of Wealthy Appeals Judge
Her Ties to Biden Extend 20 Years

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New UWM Chief Cans Neighborhood Liaison Officer

Special to the Readers of Milwaukeeworld 

By Michael Horne

And The Milwaukee World Hound Dog Team Judicial Division 

MAKIN' THE BACON

VICTORIA F. NOURSE, ESQ.

(MRS. RICHARD DICKSON CUDAHY, JR.) 

Sens. Kohl and Feingold forwarded four names for the president's consideration to replace retiring Judge Terence T. Evans [Marquette U '67] on the United States Court of Appeals Seventh Circuit today, Friday, January 22nd, 2010.

The four are:

• U. S. District Court Judge Lynn Adelman [Columbia U. '65], 
• Atty. Dean Arthur Strang [U Virginia '85], 
• Judge Richard J. Sankovitz [Harvard U '86] and 
• Victoria F. Nourse [U C Berkeley, '84].

The first three are proud members of the Wisconsin Bar Association, as is the retiring Judge Evans.
Nourse, however, was admitted to the New York Bar in 1986 and apparently never bothered to join Wisconsin's noble order of admitted attorneys, being content with her Empire State carpetbagger status.
Her father-in-law, Richard Dickson Cudahy, Sr.is a member of the Wisconsin Bar -- and of the very same court of appeals to which she aspires.

Also, Cudahy, Sr.[Yale '55], the father of Nourse's husband Richard D. Cudahy, Jr., is one of the wealthiest members of the judiciary, with a personal fortune far exceeding all members of the United States Supreme Court combined.
His assets include two in the $1 - 5 million range, and one in the over $5 million range with numerous others of smaller denomination. He was cited in Door County Circuit Court for a private sewage system violation last year, a charge to which he pleaded "not guilty." Charges were dismissed without prejudice, which means that sewage system could get back on the docket some day.

Ms. Nourse is no stranger to the courts herself, specializing in failure to obey this state's laws on vehicular registration and speed -- the very sorts of cases that sometimes ultimately lead to appearances in Federal Appeals Court for narcotics traffickers and other dangerous criminals.

So she knows what it's like on both sides of the bench.

Nourse was busted in Madison in 2005 for operating her vehicle after suspension or revocation, probably on her way to the University of Wisconsin to deliver a lecture on obeying the law as part of her duties as the Burrus-Bascom Professor of Law.

Nourse was picked up by the Milwaukee County Sheriff in September 2009 for exceeding the lawful speed limits of the State of Wisconsin and fined $204, and was fined another $178 from the same stop for driving an unregistered vehicle.

With the money she spent on fines, Ms. Nourse could easily have afforded membership in ours, the nation's pre-eminent Bar Association. Yet she did not. Is this the sort of person we want serving alongside such distinguished jurists as Diane Sykes?

SENT $7,100 TO OBAMA CAMPAIGN IN 2008

Nourse may be the most politically connected of the four finalists, if you consider her campaign donations. She gave $7,100 to the Obama campaign in 2008. Judges Adelman and Sankovitz made no contributions, as is appropriate, or as used to be appropriate before God-Knows-What situation the Supreme Court has established for us with its ruling last week in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission. Strang also made no campaign donations.

BIDEN ONCE TOOK CREDIT FOR NOURSE'S WORK ON VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN ACT

The group Accuracy in Media called then-presidential candidate Joe Biden a "Senate Embarrassment" in a 2007 post, saying the then-Delaware senator took full credit for authoring the 1994 "Violence Against Women Act" legislation he sponsored.

Of the legislation, Biden was quoted as saying:

“What I’m most proud of in my entire career was writing the Violence Against Women’s Act because it is evidence we can change people’s lives, but the change is always one person at a time.” 

Later, Biden was quoted on p. 240 of his book, "Promises to Keep," as saying he had the help of a staffer in drafting the legislation:

“'The staffer, Victoria Nourse, and I wrote' the legislation, says Biden."

Nourse is rather circumspect about the matter on her website at UW:

In 1990, she returned to the Senate as Special Counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee. From 1991-1994, Professor Nourse was the chief attorney advising the Committee's chairman on criminal law matters. While serving in that capacity, Professor Nourse assisted the committee in drafting the Violence Against Women Act and in managing two omnibus crime bills.

But, Biden, by then Vice President, and Nourse got together on April 22nd, 2009 to deliver a joint speech about their experiences at a Georgetown University forum. Her work with Biden on the legislation is the subject of the final two chapters of "Equal: Women Reshape American Law" by Yale professor Fred Strebeigh.

An excerpt, taken from a Strebeigh article about his book in The New Republic:

In the spring of 1990, a new staffer in the offices of the Senate Judiciary Committee received a surprise project from her boss. Joe Biden wanted her to figure out what Congress should do to reduce violent crimes against women. Victoria Nourse, the staffer, was then just six years out of law school ... 

Biden posed a challenge to Nourse: figure out what Congress should do, and start by looking at the marital-rape issue he had tried to tackle a decade earlier. In the legal reading room of the Library of Congress, Nourse found a twist that shocked them both. Some states had extended the marital-rape exemption to become a date-rape exemption that downgraded a rape charge if a woman was a man's "voluntary social companion." One state that had done so was Delaware, where Joe and Jill Biden were raising a young daughter.

 -- Michael Horne


UWM NEIGHBORHOOD LIAISON REASSIGNED

Oscar Perez, the popular UWM neighborhood liaison officer was reassigned to other duties today. The move comes just after Michael Marzion took over as Chief of the University Police on January 18th 2010. I suppose the two events might be related.


http://wispolitics.com/1006/100122Kohl_Feingold_release.pdf