Republican Writer Hits Scott Walker for Anti-First Amendment Edict

Wisconsin Constitution, Article One

Will Scott Walker begin listening (and stop lying) now that a Waukesha-based PR consultant, James Wigderson, is telling Walker to back off the new Capitol rules mandating: Groups of four or more no longer have First Amendment rights?

"Free speech at the Capitol should not be about which interest group has the financial backing necessary to overcome the capriciousness of any governor or his Administration Secretary," writes Wigderson.

Though Wigderson can't resist taking shots at the Wisconsin families protesting Scott Walker, even this Republican now sees that Scott Walker lacks the values enshrined in First Amendment liberties.

The United States and Wisconsin constitutions are to be defended, not subverted. That truism is kind of a biggie for the executive branch.

GOP PR Operative: "No chance" Randy Hopper Survives Recall

Update: Randy Hopper (R-Empire (formerly Fond du Lac)), defeated in recall election by Democratic nominee, Oshkosh Deputy Mayor Jessica King, on August 9, 2011.

Recall Election Results
Jessica King ,   28,187  51%
Randy Hopper 26,937  49%
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Well-known (and well-liked) writer and PR specialist James Wigderson at Wigderson Library and Pub says recall target State Sen. Randy Hopper (R-Fond du Lac) is toast.

A head faint? No.

There is no chance Hopper can win the recall election. Is he watching Weiner get roasted? Hopper’s randy behavior makes him toasted. (It’s funnier because it rhymed.)

Blogger and Republican activist Kevin Binversie has suggested Hopper resign now to give the party a fighting chance to save the seat. My only addition to that would be that the Republican Party would have to be stupid to try to save him.

Newest Fool on Voter Suppression Case: Wigderson

What happened to all the voter fraud nonsense from which our intrepid Attorney General was going to protect us?

With the great number of people casting votes that saw Wisconsin at number two in voter turnout in the nation, the GAB reports that the elections were "virtually problem-free."

Now, another rightwinger, Wigderson from Waukesha, plays the fool on the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board's (GAB) maintenance of its statewide registered voter list (SVRS) and the Van Hollen v. Government Accountability Board case.

The GAB, as it said it would, will ask for checks of SVRS against other existing databases, and it is now doing so, per its authority and responsibility and discretion.

The rightwing was right all along, say the know nothings.

Is this ignorance deliberate? It must be, no one can be that dumb.

Unless the GAB makes the database match (between the statewide voter registration list (SVRS) and the DOT, DOR and Social Security databases) a precondition to voting, it is in compliance with Wisconsin’s constitutionally protected right to establish its voter eligibility standards in accordance with existing law, as the text of Judge Sumi's decision to dismiss reads.

The text in HAVA mandates that Wisconsin takes due care to see that eligible voters are not thrown off the voter rolls. The GAB has been and is exercising that care. If it does not exercise that care, we should seek administrative and judicial remedies

For example, the GAB refused to mandate the checks on election day and force widespread provisional voting.

The GOP wanted the GAB to work on the GOP's timeframe, and to see that the checks became determinative to voting, stopping the dreaded "voter fraud." Voter fraud, that's what experts call: Bullshit.

So Attorney General Van Hollen's staff met with GOP politicos and confirmed that it would file the lawsuit.

Though Van Hollen said that the Wisconsin Attorney General was the ultimate decider on administering Wisconsin elections in this case as he sought his writ of mandamus to stop voter fraud and preserve the integrity of the election, his and the GOP's view was panned and the case was tossed.

The problem was that forcing re-registrations on Election Day would have created very long lines, confusion, generally suppressing votes. That's what Van Hollen and the GOP wanted and that's what they did not get.

So again, what happened to all the voter fraud nonsense from which our intrepid Attorney General was going to protect us? Where did voter fraud occur when the GAB was acting outside the law, as Van Hollen said it was?

James Wigderson: Like All Libby Defenders Ignores the Facts

James Wigderson of Wigderson’s Library & Pub, a generally thoughtful rightwing website out of Waukesha, takes issue with the perceived inconsistency from two of my pieces on Paris Hilton and Lewis Libby.

On Paris Hilton (06/09), Wigderson accurately notes my reaction to her incarceration, quoting, “Taking away someone’s liberty should be a last resort of a society to inflict upon its citizens. But in America, it’s done with appalling frequency: By prosecutors looking to inflate their win-loss record, by judges for whom taking away someone’s liberty can make them look tough, and by spectator citizens for whom watching Hilton is a sick sideshow.”

And on Scooter Libby (07/02),
If there were any doubt that this administration believes that laws and rules are for other people, and that this government is theirs' to rule as they please, such doubts must be cast aside.

We can no longer credibly assert that this is our government; this is a cabal accountable to no one; we do not live a democracy under this administration.

Wigderson scoffs at this perceived inconsistency in the treatment of these two defendants, jeering: “We put too many people in prison, unless they're Republicans solely guilty of having a different memory of a phone conversation than Tim Russert. Maybe if Libby appeared in porn films.”

Actually, the two cases are clearly different, and Wigderson’s flippant comment echoes rightwing talking points on Libby revealing a tendentious disdain for facts.

Libby is guilty on a five-count federal indictment of obstruction of justice, false statements, and perjury committed in the criminal investigation of the blowing of a CIA operative’s cover who was working on keeping weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of terrorists.

Revealing Valerie Plame’s identity was done in retaliation for her husband’s knocking down the lie that uranium was smuggled out of Africa for use in Saddam’s nuclear weapons program, an alleged program now discredited by all but the most partisan of commentators.

Of-course Hilton was convicted of reckless driving and violation of parole; somehow I just cannot see the equivalence of her misdemeanor with his five federal felonies that protected the outing of a NOC CIA agent and obstructed the CIA-requested DoJ investigation into this act of treason.

In Wigderson’s mind and those of many Republicans’, I guess that makes me an anti-Republican partisan, along with the CIA, elements of the FBI and the DoJ, the jurors, the Bush-appointed federal district judge, and the three-member appellate panel.

Though Libby’s misrepresentations about NBC reporter Tim Russert were included in the 22-page indictment, I suggest that Mr. Wigderson read the indictment in full; other journalists like Miller and Cooper were more central to the case, and Libby’s lies made to the Grand Jury and FBI were many and obvious.

Bush gave Libby his commutation even as Libby was appealing his case and had not served any of his 33-month prison sentence. As a NYT editorial reads, “Mr. Bush did not sound like a leader making tough decisions about justice. He sounded like a man worried about what a former loyalist might say when actually staring into a prison cell.”

Political cover-ups like the extraordinary Libby commutation committed outside of DoJ guidelines do trouble me.

They ought to trouble Wigderson, no matter the political party involved.
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