Palin promotes reelection of Wisconsin justice who called female colleague a 'b*tch'

In a somewhat confusing endorsement Friday, Fox News employee Sarah Palin urged her online supporters to vote for Wisconsin Justice David Prosser, who recently stirred up controversy when he called a female fellow Justice a "bitch" and threatened to "destroy" her.

For Palin, whose experience with media sexism is at the heart of her use of the term "lamestream media," the move seems out of character, and will lend credence to those critics who suggest her critiques of sexism are more opportunistic than she would have the public believe.

What is abundantly clear, however, is that when it comes to the Republican fight against unions in Wisconsin, Palin seems to be placing politics over principle -- and a male Republican candidate over a woman qualified for the office.

"I probably overreacted, but I think it was entirely warranted," Prosser reportedly told The Mulwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel, regarding his remarkably sexist outburst. "They [two female judges] are masters at deliberately goading people into perhaps incautious statements. This is bullying and abuse of very, very long standing."

The admission that he one called the chief justice a "bitch" follows a spotted history on women's isssues.

In 1990, while serving as a Wisconsin state Representative, Prosser argued that teen women would lie about being raped to get an abortion.

As a Supreme Court justice in 2010, he voted to uphold a circuit court decision that said the City of Milwaukee’s Paid Sick Leave Ordinance did not adequately disclose that leave could be used related to domestic and sexual violence.

While District Attorney of Outagamie County in 1979, Prosser had also refused to prosecute a priest that had allegedly sexually abused two children.

The conservative Prosser is facing Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg in a re-election battle which could change the makeup of the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

With additional reporting by David Edwards.