Music to my ears! Teachers Unions and Trial Lawyers lose their liberal judge on the court in Wisconsin. We need to do a little house cleaning in Tennessee, too.

From KansasCity.com:

A little-known county judge has narrowly defeated a Wisconsin Supreme Court justice with a law-and-order message and a barrage of third-party ads in a race that will go down as one of the state’s nastiest.

Burnett County Circuit Judge Michael Gableman captured about 51 percent of Tuesday’s vote to edge Justice Louis Butler for a 10-year term, the first time an incumbent justice has been defeated in 41 years.

Writes John Fund at the Wall Street Journal:

Teacher unions, trial lawyers and Indian tribes (which had benefited from the court’s controversial expansion of casino gambling) poured money into third-party ads attacking Judge Gableman. They were matched by business groups such as Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, which ran ads noting that Justice Butler had earned the nickname “Loophole Louie” from fellow public defenders for winning reversals of his clients’ criminal convictions. Justice Butler made the mistake of embracing the nickname, claiming it was “affectionate.” Voters weren’t amused.

In the wake of Justice Butler’s defeat, some liberals have declared that elections for the state’s supreme court should end, and its members be appointed by the governor. Tom Basting, president of the Wisconsin Bar, claims that “judges are different from other elected officials” and “that means some of the standards voters typically use when evaluating candidates don’t apply to judges.”