'Heck of a First Week for Bill Lueders'

According to the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism on Twitter:

Well, as I reported earlier, Lueders may be the one who "should be held responsible for what should be recognized as a truly evil attack," according to Ann Althouse.

And that's because not only is Lueders the author of the main hit piece against Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser, but he's also now basically pulled his initial report on the alleged altercation, replacing it with a version featuring a disclaimer:

10:15 p.m.: This story is updated to reflect reports of a statement from Prosser denying the allegations.

Yet there is no "update" at the bottom of the report. It's been airbrushed, and Althouse is demanding answers this morning, "How stupid/evil was Bill Lueders's attack on Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser?"

The first thing I want to note is the common sense angle. The story's extremely fishy, mainly because it's impossible to envision Prosser administering a deadly choke-hold to Justice Ann Walsh Bradley. As I noted before, "The idea that Prosser got Bradley in a 'choke hold' is outlandish, and perfectly suited to the left's progressive thuggery agenda." And as Althouse writes today, agreeing with progressives that Prosser should resign if the allegations were true:

But I wanted to know the whole story. It seemed to me that Lueders had given us "just the snapshot of one hard-to-comprehend instant within the longer event." I was skeptical about the version of the story Lueders had put out, because there had been no arrest and because I found it hard to picture an elderly, dignified man suddenly grabbing a (somewhat less elderly) woman by the neck.

That's a big point for me, because it's not just an age thing, but that here are two people who essentially represent the epitome of the legal profession at the state level. It's inconceivable to me that a sitting judge would try to choke a judicial colleague in her chambers, but again, leftists don't think logically, despite endless claims to being "reality-based."

Another thing to note is that the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism is funded by George Soros, the messianic multi-billionaire behind such neo-communist attack outfits as the Center for American Progress. These people do not "report." They destroy. And that's the context for understanding Bill Lueders, whose deed pushes the evil meter way over to the right.

But read Althouse's entire indictment. For example, Althouse reads the various news reports and determines that two independent sources say Justice Bradley came at Justice Prosser with "fists raised." That's a lot of information to be left out of initial reports, and Althouse notes:

Now, we've just reviewed the stories of various unnamed sources, as reported by Lueders and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. What I want to know is: What is the total number of sources? Is it 6? 5? 4? Or is it 3? It could be only 3! That is, 2 of Lueders's sources could have been the sources who gave the fuller context, with Bradley as the aggressor. What did Lueders know and when did he know it? Did Lueders have the fists-of-fury version of the story and deliberately leave it out? Did he leave it out when he contacted Prosser for a response and recited "the particulars of the story," the "reconstructed account" that he referred to in his article.

I told you this was going to be a little journalism class. Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, will you investigate your own journalism?

More discussion, and then she continues:

In my last post of the day, commenting on the Journal Sentinel article, I said:

I want to know not only what really happened at the time of the physical contact (if any) between the 2 justices, but also who gave the original story to the press. If Prosser really tried to choke a nonviolent Bradley, he should resign. But if the original account is a trumped-up charge intended to destroy Prosser and obstruct the democratic processes of government in Wisconsin, then whoever sent the report out in that form should be held responsible for what should be recognized as a truly evil attack.

When I wrote that, it did not cross my mind that the "truly evil" person might be Lueders himself. That's something occurred to me when I woke up this morning and began thinking about the possibility that the total number of unnamed sources was only 3.

Well, actually that did occur to me when I quoted Althouse last night, and I went to sleep knowing that truth would come out. And the truth is still coming out, but of course it's no surprise that we're finding apparently evil deeds here: Progressives are evil!

And more at Althouse:

Lueders needs to tell us whether or not he knew the Bradley-as-the-aggressor story when he presented his original work of investigative journalism under the name of the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism. If he knew it, why didn't he present the whole context at first? And what was in the "reconstructed account" that got Prosser to decline comment? If Lueders didn't know the alternate version of the story, in which Bradley was the aggressor, why on earth didn't he know? The story he presented is so weird that any thinking person would demand to know more of the context. Did Lueders keep himself willfully ignorant of the more complicated version of the story, and if he did, why? What kind of journalism is that? Truly evil?

Precisely.

And again, read the full post, because Althouse is going Alinsky on the left, especially Ian Millhiser's, "Four Ways Justice David Prosser Can Be Removed From Office." Check the link, but Althouse turns the table:

Finally, it must be said: If Lueders had the larger context of the story — including the allegation that Bradley was the aggressor — and he suppressed it in his original account, what he did was not only evil, shameful journalism, it was freaking stupid. All sorts of bloggers and tweeters like Millhiser committed themselves to the firm, righteous position that if Prosser did what is alleged, he must leave the court. Lueders's article lured them into stating a firm and supposedly neutral principle about physical aggression. With that principle in place, they are bound to call for Bradley's ouster, if Bradley really did take the offensive and transform the verbal argument into a physical fight.

More at Memeorandum. And Instapundit.