Wisconsin's Corrupt Attorney General's Quest to Block Marriage Equality

Wisconsin has a wide collection of Republican officeholders today making national headlines that would do Mississippi proud.

There's Wisconsin's "dumb Ron Johnson," a U.S. senator who likes to run political interference on behalf of child molesters.

Wisconsin's crooked and extremist governor, Scott Walker who is so afraid of the Wisconsin people, he has failed to hold one listening session, after campaigning his would be the most transparent and open administration in Wisconsin history. "I attended a (Mary) Burke question-and-answer meeting in Waunakee," writes Nila Frye in a letter to the editor in today's Wisconsin State Journal, making the score: Burke: Many; Walker: Zero.

Wisconsin's fake budget numbers guy, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Janesville), who is scaring away Republicans as he explains why Social Security and Medicare are un-American.

Then there is Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, a corrupt jurist who went to court in 2008 claiming all of the state bureaucracies' databases' names of Wisconsin residents had to exactly match as a precondition to vote. Seriously.

Van Hollen's charge now, in his mind, is to defend all manner of unconstitutional laws such as the Wisconsin same sex marriage ban and the GOP photo voter obstruction law.

Van Hollen foolishly declared in June there would be "legal repercussions" for county clerks marrying couples after U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb held Wisconsin's ban on same sex marriage unconstitutional in Wolf v. Walker.

Now, instead of allowing marriage equity to proceed, Van Hollen along with Scott Walker announced yesterday they are appealing Judge Crabb's decision, despite widespread and growing sentiment for marriage equality. (Marley, Ferguson; Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel)

In typical Walker and Van Hollen fashion both Republicans do not have the courage of their bigoted convictions, and both officials refrain from explaining why denial of two people of the same sex getting married is constitutional.

Had Walker and Van Hollen not appealed, Judge Crabb's declaration and injunction against enforcement of gay marriage bans would have gone into effect.

Van Hollen can read case law, and the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has fast-tracked a similar case from Indiana where the appellate Court ordered Indiana on July 1 to allow one couple to marry because one of the spouses has terminal cancer.

"It is time for the State of Indiana to leave Niki (Sandler) and Amy (Quasney) in peace and not subject them and their marriage to any more stress and uncertainty as this case proceeds," Lambda Legal staff attorney Paul D. Castillo said in a statement.

Congratulations to Ms. Sandler and Ms. Quasney.

Shame on the bigots and their infantile rants.

Equal protection under the law is the Republican nightmare, and the outgoing J.B. Van Hollen leaves behind a legacy of partisanship, corruption and obstruction of the right to vote and even get married as his legacy.

UN Committee Against Torture Summons Vatican on Priests' Sexual Violence

Update: See also U.N. Panel on Torture Presses Vatican Envoy on Abuse (Cumming-Bruce, New York Times):

"In the hearing, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican’s representative in Geneva, immediately found himself at odds with members of the panel, the Committee Against Torture, over the Holy See’s view that it is responsible for applying the treaty only to the few hundred inhabitants of the Vatican City state."

The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) reports the Vatican has been summoned to appear to before the United Nations Committee Against Torture to address the torture and rape of children by Catholic priests, covered up by the Catholic Church hierarchy.

Today, the Vatican was summoned to appear before the United Nations Committee Against Torture to report on its record in preventing, punishing and redressing torture, which necessarily included its record addressing widespread sexual violence within the Catholic Church.  Members of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) and their attorneys from the U.S.-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) were in attendance.  In April, CCR, representing SNAP, filed a report with the Committee documenting the long-term harms suffered by survivors of sexual violence by Catholic clergy, and filed a supplemental report thereafter focusing primarily on Latin America.  This is the second time in four months that top Catholic officials have been called before the U.N. to account for the Vatican’s human rights record on addressing the ongoing worldwide crisis of sexual violence and cover-ups within the Catholic Church.

The next time we read of Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York meeting with, and praising Jeb Bush (CBS News), or Sen, Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) running interference for the child rape and molestation scandal in opposition to the Child Victims Act (Bice, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel), we should consider why.

The Republican Party and the Catholic Church hierarchy have formed a repulsive alliance out of political and legal necessity.

Dolan, the entire hierarchy of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee - past and present - should be summoned as well.

Scott Walker, Sen. Ron Johnson Are Amoral

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin)
Protector of rape and sexual battery

Update: See So, Just How Upset Are The Republicans With Bill Kramer? and Kramer cover-up a telling glimpse into right-wing world and Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson has a history of protecting institutions where sex assault is concerned.

Wisconsin Republicans are holding firm against launching expulsion proceedings against this serial predator, now finally facing two criminal charges of sexual assault.
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Facing Constitutional obstacles against GOP schemes obstructing Wisconsin voters, Scott Walker announced he would call lawmakers into a special session to pass another photo voter ID law before his reelection bid in November.

Walker called a photo voter ID law the most "pressing" election-related issue Wisconsin faces. (Spicuzza and DeFour. WSJ)

Walker also suggested the Constitutional guarantee of the right to vote should be conditioned on his  view of what the majority of Wisconsin citizens believe, an unusual doctrine on Wisconsin Suffrage.

Plumbing the depths of Republican politics, we learn preventing people from voting is surpassed in venality by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) who knew of and did nothing to stop or even report to police a sexual assault victim of serial perpetrator, Rep. Bill Kramer (R-Waukesha), three years ago (Stein, Marley and Bice. MJS). The woman was an aide to Johnson at the time.

Even as two other recent sexual assault victims of Kramer's have come to light in the last few weeks, Wisconsin Republicans refuse to commence expulsion proceedings to remove the former State Assembly Majority Leader.

Protecting sexual assault perpetrators and actually injuring their victims is a habit of Ron Johnson's.

Uppity Wisconsin reports "when Johnson was running for U.S. Senate (the) purportedly family-values, law-and-order Republican testified against the Wisconsin Child Victims Act, which would have eliminated the statute of limitations on lawsuits brought by victims of Catholic priest sexual abuse. The measure failed," because of Republican opposition protecting the hierarchy of the Catholic Church and its internal molestation protection outfit.

Back to Scott Walker.

Scott Walker did his worst in late March by signing a Republican bill obstructing Mesothelioma cancer victims, many of whom are veterans.

Reports Eoin Cottrell:

Advocacy groups representing over 100,000 Wisconsin veterans insisted the state Legislature amend a bill that will now affect thousands of veterans suffering from mesothelioma, according to Jason Johns, executive director of the Wisconsin Asbestos Victims Network.

Gov. Scott Walker signed the bill Thursday [March 27] that will create more hurdles for Wisconsinites seeking compensation for mesothelioma, a rare form of cancer contracted after repeated exposure to asbestos that disproportionately affects veterans.

Veterans make up 8 percent of the population but account for an estimated 30 percent of all mesothelioma deaths, according to the Wisconsin Military Order of the Purple Heart.

I guess if Scott Walker's former top aide and appointees embezzle from veterans, Walker's logic leads to the conclusion he signs legislation inflicting misery onto veterans suffering from mesothelioma cancer. That's a rule of inference I must have missed.

If you want to know to know how Democratic candidate for governor Mary Burke feels about all this, Burke spokesman Joe Zepecki is sticking to his innovative communications strategy of going dark in the apparent hope the campaign's silence will somehow obliterate Scott Walker's reelection bid.

Vatican Conspired to Hide $Millions from Sexual Assualt Victims

U.S. Senator (R-Wisconsin), Ron Johnson
Opposed Wisconsin Child Victims Bill giving
legal protection against Predator Priests

Update: Two facts to keep in mind about the Milwaukee Archdiocese documents released on July 1

U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) testified before the Wisconsin State Senate in 2010 against state legislation, the Child Victims Act, to eliminate the statute of limitations for sexual abuse crimes, making it easier for victims of sexual abuse to seek damages from the Catholic Church or any other culpable institution, Talking Points Memo, Dan Bice, Daily Kos, Uppity Wisconsin, and many other online journals reported.

In 2009, Johnson, a private citizen, also traveled from Oshkosh to Madison to deliver additional testimony opposing the Child Victims Act.

Johnson was successful in his efforts.

In Johnson ready now to recant his testimony?

Today would be a good time.

Not sure how often Johnson reads the New York Times, but today's report that "documents reveal that Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, as Milwaukee’s archbishop, moved to protect $57 million in church assets from sexual-abuse victims," is the kind of news that might result in a Johnson re-think.

And today, State Sen. Julie Lassa (D-Stevens Point) has reintroduced the Child Victims Act, noting that the "National Clearinghouse on Child Abuse and Neglect estimates that only about 3 percent of child molesters are ever caught. That raises the specter of hundreds of pedophiles walking the streets of Wisconsin towns, safe in the knowledge that they are protected by the law from ever being held accountable for their crimes."

Whose side is Ron Johnson on?

His friends hide $57 million and he helps kill legislation that would offer a chance of some measure of healing for sexual assault victims.

From a policy perspective Johnson takes the side of the perpetrators, against the children.

With allies like Sen. Ron Johnson, the Vatican, Cardinal Dolan and the molesters must believe they are untouchable.

They are not.

That smoke wafting from the Vatican and Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan's New York plush offices today is not white smoke signaling the election of a new Pope.

This smoke is emitting from a smoking gun; or perhaps more justifiably described as a decades-long smoke screen the Catholic Church hierarchy has emitted to cover up the sexual abuse of its clergy against children.

Out of Milwaukee, we are treating to the news reported by Laurie Goodstein (NYT) that documents reveal Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, as Milwaukee’s archbishop, moved to protect $57 million in church assets from sexual-abuse victims. [See also Michael D'Antonio's and M.L. Johnson's reporting on the Catholic Church's shanda.]

Why should people traumatized for life by the Catholic Church hierarchy, with the complicity of the Vatican, be compensated?

It's called decency, a human trait apparently absent from Cardinal Dolan, regarded by some as a reformer—in Catholic Church holy nomenclature, this means a church official who has beseeched the hierarchy to stop shielding predatory priests, stop molesting children, but works against legislation stopping victims from receiving funds from the Church to help treat sexual trauma.

Not surprisingly, the Republican legislature didn't slip in the Child Sexual Abuse Victims Act into the state budget (lamely opposed by the Democratic Party). I guess sexual abuse victims don't make for sympathetic players in Scott Walker's Wisconsin. Open for business, and that includes you, sexual predators, just don't get caught and then you're home free.

Writes Goodstein:

But the documents lift the curtain on [Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan's] role as a workaday church functionary concerned with safeguarding assets, persuading abusive priests to leave voluntarily in exchange for continued stipends and benefits, and complying with Rome’s sluggish canonical procedures for dismissing uncooperative priests who he had long concluded were remorseless and a serious risk to children. In one case, the Vatican took five years to remove a convicted sex offender from the priesthood.

“As victims organize and become more public, the potential for true scandal is very real,” he wrote in such a request in 2003 to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the head of the Vatican office charged with handling abuse cases until he became Pope Benedict XVI in 2005.

Victims on Monday called for a federal investigation into the actions of Cardinal Dolan and his predecessors, but the cardinal sought to deflect criticism by saying in a statement Monday that he welcomed the release of the documents.

The current archbishop of Milwaukee, Jerome E. Listecki, had announced his decision to release the documents in April, one day before a judicial hearing. Lawyers for abuse victims had asked a judge to compel their release.

Archbishop Listecki released a letter last week warning Catholics in his archdiocese that the documents could shake their faith, and trying to explain the actions of church leaders while offering apologies to victims.

“Prepare to be shocked,” he wrote. “There are some graphic descriptions about the behavior of some of these priest offenders.”

Shocked by "true scandal?" No shit.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests '(SNAP) reaction is to seek the hidden $ millions and award the money to the 1,000s of victims.

New York Cardinal conspired with Vatican while in Milwaukee to transfer nearly $57 million into new corporation for the “protection” of funds “from any legal claim and liability”

Milwaukee Archdiocese filed for bankruptcy in January 2011 not claiming Dolan’s transferred funds as assets.

Survivors asking US attorney to investigate Dolan for criminal charges of “fraudulent conveyance”

Statement by Peter Isely, SNAP Midwest Director (Milwaukee) CONTACT: 414.429.7259

Click here for Dolan letter to Vatican.

See Below for Ron Johnson Testifing Against Child Abuse Victims; Opposing Child Victims Act in Wisconsin