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Stipulated: College students make mistakes. But there are mistakes like drinking too much or growing a goatee, and there are mistakes like what Rebecca Bradley wrote for her student newspaper.

Back in 1992, Ms. Bradley, whom Wisconsin governor Scott Walker appointed to the state’s supreme court in October, and who is running for a full 10-year term in an election next month, had some pretty nasty things to say about gay people, Bill Clinton and nearly half of the American electorate.

In various columns and letters to the editor of the Marquette Tribune, Ms. Bradley called gays “degenerates who basically commit suicide through their behavior,” and said they “deservedly receive none of my sympathy.” She wrote that the election of President Clinton — a “tree-hugging, baby-killing, pot-smoking, flag-burning, queer-loving, bull-spouting ‘60s radical socialist adulterer” — “proves the majority of voters are either totally stupid or entirely evil.”

The writings were uncovered by the liberal advocacy group One Wisconsin Now, which announced them at a press conference Monday morning.

Ms. Bradley apologized for what she wrote, said she was “embarrassed” by its content and tone, and sought to assure voters that “those comments are not reflective of my worldview,” and that they “have nothing to do with who I am as a person or a jurist.”

She called the release “a blatant mudslinging campaign” — an interesting choice of words, since the only mud here seems to have been slung by Ms. Bradley herself.

Governor Walker, who picked Ms. Bradley to fill the vacancy created by the death of Justice N. Patrick Crooks, said he had not known about the columns when he chose her, even though he had already appointed her to two previous judgeships.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has had no shortage of controversy and drama in recent years — including a lawsuit by the court’s former chief justice against her colleagues after they removed her from her post; and a special prosecutor’s request that, because of “ethical concerns,” as many as four justices recuse themselves from hearing a case involving alleged campaign-finance violations by Governor Walker.

Meanwhile, conservative groups backing Ms. Bradley’s run for a full 10-year term on the court are attacking her opponent, a state appeals court judge named JoAnne Kloppenburg, for voting, along with two of her colleagues, to allow a man convicted of sexually assaulting a child the opportunity for a hearing to argue for withdrawing his guilty plea.

How much should it matter what a public official wrote nearly a quarter-century ago in a school paper, when she was, as she describes it, “a very young student”? Because Wisconsin has chosen to elect its judges, that’s a question for voters to decide.