Local Reporting of Coronavirus Crisis Thrives — Wisconsin State Journal Shines in Madison, Wisconsin

Madison, Wisconsin — Not the creativity of bio-catastrophe writers, Richard Preston, Daniel Kalla and Robin Cook, can dream-up the economic, psychological and sociological consequences of the new coronavirus hitting the world, (CDC, World Health Organization, Madison, Wisconsin, Dane County Public Health).

Humanity is fighting back against this biological entity, the virus, COVID 19.

The medical community, restaurants, and bio-research communities are shining as white knights. So, are workers at grocery and liquor stores.

But it is a seemingly imperiled institution that has improbably seen a reemergence here during this public safety crisis — local journalism.

Local journalism isn't dead, though it perhaps looked that way not too long ago.

Since the coronavirus COVID 19 crisis unfolded mere weeks ago, this phenomenon has spurned a rebirth of local journalism.

The Wisconsin State Journal daily in Madison is leading the way, and its sister journal, The Capital Times, is also surging.

Public relations consultants around theses parts pitching stories are finding a common response — ' we just ran a piece on that.'

From coverage of innovation and persistence of local restaurants to the shockingly corrupt action of Wisconsin Gov Tony Evers refusing to halt elections in the middle of an unprecedented public health emergency, local journalism is alive and well.

One hopes it lives forever.
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Also, Richard Preston, Daniel Kalla and Robin Cook have new books out.

Republicans Renew Attack Against Matt Flynn in Wisconsin Gov Race

Matt Flynn at NextGen America forum for
Democratic Party candidates in July 2018

Updated - Madison, Wisconsin — The Republican daily, Wisconsin State Journal (Madison), ran a banner headline this week for a piece fed by state Republicans against gubernatorial candidate, Matt Flynn, who is running for the Democratic Party nomination.

The latest in a string of Republican troll attacks is bogus as Republican attacks tend to be.

These political hits are revealing of whom the Republicans and their Party press fear in the general election campaign: Matt Flynn, a Milwaukee progressive.

Matt Flynn stands alone among the eight candidates for the Democratic nomination in vowing to litigate Foxconn out of Wisconsin.

Foxconn is so unpopular in the northern two-thirds of the state that Gov. Scott Walker (R) refuses Foxconn photo-ops.

Not just Republicans and Foxconn fear Flynn.

State Democratic Party insiders who rigged the 2016 nomination for Hillary Clinton against Bernie Sanders are working an inside game against Flynn, who is often irreverent toward Party flunkies, and rightfully so.

The Democratic Party of Wisconsin has done nothing to discourage the stealth campaign against Flynn.

Misplaced in Party machinations is the Lost Decade (2010-2019), an unmitigated disaster for the Wisconsin people.

The Wisconsin disaster required the small number of incompetent and patronage-happy Democratic Party followers to abandon the people, leaving future generations in the lurch, many of whom ridicule Democrats as a force for change.

Take a trip to the Meadowood Shopping Mall on the southwest side of Madison and ask young and minority folks for whom they are voting.

Most folks whom this writer has contacted the last five years are not voting.

Matt Flynn pitches for support at
NextGen America forum for Democratic
Party candidates in July 2018

Expressing political sentiment by fleeing the ballot box is music to Republicans who maintain their voter obstruction work against the vulnerable segments of the population who want to throw in the towel.

At a NextGen America forum for Wisconsin Democratic Party candidates for governor this week, Matt Flynn outlined an agenda demanding tuition relief, legalizing marijuana, implementing mass use of the governor's pardon power and a comprehensive reform of the criminal justice system.

Thanks @nextgenamerica WI #youthvote for a great forum! We discussed everything from legalizing marijuana, the governor's pardon power, providing 2yrs free tuition at Wisconsin colleges and universities, and why a hot dog IS a sandwich (if it's in a bun). https://t.co/mm4lsqo7yG pic.twitter.com/s70ZCyoVEF

— Matt Flynn (@ForwardWFlynn) July 24, 2018

If you're in Wisconsin, consider: When is the last time you've read anything from a Democratic Party of Wisconsin member publicly questioning their Party's performance during the Lost Decade?

From 2007-2010 Wisconsin Democrats had gubernatorial and legislative control of state government. But when Democrats considered legal use of medical marijuana, for example, the Party allowed one Democratic state senator to block a vote on the popular reform.

There was no strategic reformist legislation passed. Rather, the Democratic Party, as with insiders today, follows the golden rule of Democrats: Groupthink rules and don't rock the boat.

The Dems could have passed at least some manner of legalization of marijuana, reforms against gerrymandering, strengthened the rights of organized labor, locked in funding for the UW System and public schools, codified local control of government, reformed the criminal justice system, strengthened voting rights, among a host of initiatives not dreamed of among Party bureaucrats.

It's not like the writing was not on the wall spelling out what Republicans would do upon taking power. But few Democrats think, even less act.

Republicans do think and act in the current campaign for governor.

The GOP is not trolling Tony Evers, the white bureaucrat from east-central Wisconsin who will animate young and minority voters with all the passion generated by a baseball score from last Spring.

The GOP and Paul Ryan are trolling Randy Bryce, Democratic candidate for Ryan's seat, and Flynn.

August 14 Wisconsin Partisan Primary

There are too many X factors for anyone to make a data-drivien prediction on who wins the Democratic Party nomination for governor.

Early voting and registration in Madison are picking up and will accelerate in late July. Informed sources say they expect a 45-percent turnout in Madison, thanks to the municipal government's pro-voter initiatives. Other municipalities continue to contact Madison City Hall for tips, after being pushed by their local voting rights workers.

Does Madison Mayor and candidate for governor, Paul Soglin benefit from this massive turnout relative to the rest of the state? No doubt Soglin will benefit, but the question is to what degree, and speculation elicits wild disparities among observers.

Among a strong field of candidates, I predict post-air wars that Matt Flynn overtakes Tony Evers, and the Democratic  establishment takes another shot on their collective chin, not that this bothers Party bureaucrats who are still lined up at the trough, like so many pigs and cows at a factory farm.

Scott Walker is vulnerable.

Canceling Our Wisconsin State Journal Subscription

South-central Wisconsin daily chooses ideology over facts and evidence

This household will receive its last hard copy issue of the Wisconsin State Journal this week. We are canceling our subscription. Our original subscription was for the Capital Times, and we were led to the State Journal kicking and screaming as it was the last resort of a print daily in Madison.

The State Journal has increasingly nixed local coverage like many print dailies, but the State Journal stands out in this regard especially after it axed veteran writers Doug Moe and sports writers Andy Baggot and Dennis Semrau last June, deciding profits are more interesting than people and local policymaking (Lueders, Isthmus).

Unlike other dailies, the State Journal can't blame its dispensing with community coverage on corporate media consolidation, social media, and the Internet (Peck, Editor and Publisher and George, Mediashift).

The State Journal made its decision, and chose hard-right ideology over facts, evidence and analysis; stenography over investigation and reporting. This echoes the rest of the corporate press.

The lifeblood of print dailies, local coverage, appears a quaint memory today.

There is a group of talented reporters still at the State Journal but their copy is almost always slanted toward the Republican Party of Wisconsin by copy editors (they write the headlines), and the perverse conventions of modern journalism, refusing to note as fact the duplicity of political office holders and their paymasters during this period of unprecedented corruption and lawlessness.

As an aside, we note with appreciation the tenacity and outstanding performance of our newspaper carrier.

More important than the depletion of local coverage—a hole being filled in Dane County in part by Woodward Communications, Inc.'s Unified Newspaper Group based in Verona and the weekly Isthmus—is the undeniable fact the State Journal is and has been a propaganda sheet for the rightist Republican Party in its slanted news and disingenuous editorial page.

The State Journal has followed the crazed Republican Party of Wisconsin right off the cliff, damn the consequences for the state.

Its refusal to endorse Scott Walker last year was an act of self preservation, yet even this editorial omits the myriad scandals and economic, social, and environmental disasters that Walker has inflicted onto Wisconsin.

Instead in the milquetoast endorsement of Walker's opponent, Mary Burke, the State Journal describes Walker as divisive and his tenure in chairing his signature 'jobs' agency as sloppy and disappointing.

Corrupt, vindictive, spiteful, destructive and betraying of generations of Wisconsinites would have been more appropriate language in describing Scott Walker, as the editors of the State Journal are aware.

Our household is no longer prepared to support this Republican propaganda organ and the pamphleteers producing it. We'll pick up our free print edition of the local Capital Times, (delivered to subscribers on Wednesdays with the State Journal), at the Meadowridge library.

On a final note, the subscription price of the State Journal varies widely and depends on little known and seemingly arbitrary ways to sign up. Last year we found out that we paid nearly double of what others paid for the same service. This after paying that high fee for over 18 years. There have been many times since the Capital Times became a weekly that we have considered canceling our subscription to the State Journal, but now with all these factors piling up, it seems a wiser choice to get our local news from more locally minded sources, such as WKOW and WISC television.

So-called Merit Selection Is GOP Fraud

The Wisconsin State Journal continues its years-long advocacy of 'merit selection' of Wisconsin supreme court justices, to replace direct citizens' election.

The State Journal's idea is deceitful, and the text even in its latest editorial belies the intent to install more GOP justices onto the Court.

Writes the State Journal: "(J)udicial elections are turning Wisconsin’s best judges into the worst of politicians. The candidates routinely take campaign money from the same attorneys and special interest groups that eventually will come before the court, seeking favorable decisions. That creates conflicts of interest and deep distrust in court decisions."

Yes, GOP judicial candidates take campaign money from special interests in obvious conflicts of interests on whose cases the GOP justices rule—that's the "Roggensack Rule," in which the four GOP justices alone "accepted verbatim a rule suggested by Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce and the Wisconsin Realtors Association, which stated that a campaign donation by itself could never require a recusal." (Murphy)

Yet, the State Journal editors refuse to advocate the defeat of the GOP justices.

Ed Fallone has campaigned against the Roggensack Rule, so the State Journal will endorse Fallone, right?

No. The State Journal wants Roggensack and the other three GOP justices and their rubber stamp votes on Scott Walker's agenda. Where's the merit in that?

If the State Journal were really concerned about conflict of interests and money, they would be opposing the four GOP perpetrators on the court.

The State Journal's editorial is composed mostly of criticism of all the special interest money in the race.

Not surprisingly, Scott Walker and the GOP killed public financing for candidates to the state Supreme Court in 2011, a move that nevertheless earned the GOP the State Journal's editorial support.

The State Journal's editorial is entitled the "The no-comment campaign," because the candidates rightfully refuse comment cases in which they are likely to rule ... sometimes.

But even the title is misleading as Roggensack has made clear her intention to uphold the GOP's Act 10 (passed with unanimous GOP support and no Democratic support) and the GOP's voter obstruction law (again passed with unanimous GOP support and no Democratic support): "Roggensack said that if Fallone is elected he would 'chip away' at the powers of the other two branches of government (currently held by the GOP in secretly gerrymandered districts)," notes Jud Lounsbury.

Chip away. How's that? By overturning unconstitutional laws?

The four GOP justices are corrupt. The State Journal editors know this, and refuse to point out the GOP corruption.

The State Journal had rather adopt a reformist pose and advocate taking away public scrutiny of the third branch of Wisconsin government.

Transparency is not the GOP and State Journal's way.

By the way, Chief Justice Abrahamson's proposal for open deliberation of the Supreme Court was opposed four-to-three with all four GOP justices voting to block transparency to the State Journal's approval.

Fallone opposes secrecy. Roggensack voted for secrecy. Where's the merit in that?

Wisconsin State Journal Hits GOP for Voter Obstruction Efforts

The editorial page editor of the Wisconsin State Journal came out with an editorial hitting the Wisconsin GOP initiatives in which "Republicans keep pushing for partisan advantage."

Firstly, good job, Scott Milfred.

Defending the Wisconsin Constitution, Article III, Section 1 ought not to be a partisan exercise as the news and editorial editors of the leading GOP dailies apparently believe.

Still, a few omissions from the State Journal's news and editorial coverage of GOP voter obstruction efforts deserve mention.

1. With respect to the voter GOP's photo identification card legislation, it's misleading to state the legislation is "tied up in the courts."

GOP-crafted photo ID is permanently enjoined from taking effect because it is unconstitutional, and has been found to be unconstitutional by two different judges. No one, who is objective, seriously disputes that the GOP's voter ID is unconstitutional under Wisconsin's expansive right to vote.

Ask any constitutional law professor, besides the GOP's Rick Essenberg.

Nowhere in the editorial is the word Constitution found.

2. Yes, the Republican Party is pushing for partisan advantage. But that's a sterile description for violating the constitutional rights of Wisconsin citizens. This attack on voting is an attack on fundamental rights, the very foundation of the state of Wisconsin. No need for the State Journal's Milfred to let the GOP off so easily. Nowhere in the editorial are the words civil rights found either.

3. Finally, the Republican Party has lied about its mission, objectives, and aims of the voter obstruction program. The editorial again lets off the Republican Party by omitting the fact the GOP's elected officials routinely lie to the Wisconsin people. When someone lies over and over, it follows that the person is a liar. Seems a compelling syllogism. Nowhere in the editorial are the words lie, mislead or misrepresent found either. Corrupt is also strangely omitted.

Nice job. But as the GOP attacks Wisconsin's foundation, and the moment is gravely serious because the four GOP justices on the Wisconsin Supreme Court still could render an outrageous ruling upholding the photo ID-obstruction legislation [voted in by the GOP in a straight, party-line vote], I have to give the editorial an B-minus.

Wisconsin State Journal Flubs Own Pultizer News

Kudos to the Wisconsin State Journal's news staff for its nomination for breaking coverage of the people of Wisconsin petitioning their government last year.

Unfortunately, the State Journal decided to report the news of its being a Pulitzer finalist with the page one sub-headline this morning: "Its coverage of last year's chaos at the state Capitol is recognized."

Just couldn't resist pushing the GOP line that people exercising their right to assemble and petition our government is engaging in "chaos," a perverse view of the Wisconsin Constitution, Article I (section 4) and of what actually transpired last year:

The right of the people peaceably to assemble, to consult for the common good, and to petition the government, or any department thereof, shall never be abridged.

The Pultizer board describes the State Journal's nomination for "Breaking News Reporting" as follows:

Staff of the Wisconsin State Journal, Madison

For its energetic coverage of 27 days of around-the-clock protests in the State Capitol over collective bargaining rights, using an array of journalistic tools to capture one breaking development after another.

Maybe if the State Journal's copy editors had stuck to the facts, the news staff might have won.

State Journal Buries GOP Senate Candidate Tax Scandal

Update: Rightwing radio pans Terrence Wall.

"Republican U.S. Senate candidate Terrence Wall has not paid personal state income taxes in nine of the last 10 years (because Wall had no tax liability), according to state Department of Revenue figures obtained from the liberal group One Wisconsin Now (OWN) (last week)." (Wisconsin State Journal, Jan 23, 2010; Mary Spicuzza)

But the editors of the State Journal placed the story on the bottom of page three of the Local section in the hard copy of this morning's (Saturday) newspaper. WisPolitics ran the story on Jan 16 and an online Politics Blog report by Spicuzza ran on Jan. 18, last Monday.

Let's hope for some more prominent campaign coverage in the State Journal even if the coverage puts leading GOP candidates in an unfavorable light.

OWN's campaign exclusive last week comes as the GOP aggressively tries to redefine Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Middleton) from maverick to publicity seeker and Democratic Party lackey.

Here are the pieces the State Journal editors front-page today instead of the politically damaging Wall scandal:

- L'Etoile restaurant will move and broaden its menu

- Middleton developer wants a 10-foot-high sculpture in corporate park, complete with two pictures, including an 8 1/2"- 5" shot, and some 129 words in three cutlines (picture captions)

- And a legit front-page story about a possible uptick in heroin use among Wisconsin youth

Wisconsin DP Opponents Take Hit

Opponents of Wisconsin’s new domestic partner benefits registry took a political and legal hit when it was revealed that their current position is contradicted by their own statements three years ago.

Wisconsin’s chief anti-marriage equity group, Wisconsin Family Action, publicly announced in 2006 that their successful effort to implement a constitutional ban on gay marriage would not affect state, municipal, and private domestic partner benefits, a position that legal observers say could doom their DP challenge.

In July, Family Action and their legal team, the Alliance Defense Fund, filed suit at the Wisconsin Supreme Court, claiming the domestic-partnership enacted last week violates the 2006 constitutional amendment approved by voters banning both gay marriage and unmarried individuals’ being granted legal status that is “identical or substantially similar to that of marriage.”

A piece in the August 9, 2009 GOP-leaning Wisconsin State Journal, by Charles Brace points out that, “in 2006, members of the group and other supporters of the constitutional ban said the measure would not affect domestic partner benefits, according to public statements reported in the media and on their websites.”

Brace writes, “Family Action president Julaine Appling, for example, told the Associated Press on December 8, 2005, that courts wouldn’t strike down domestic partner benefits for couples if the amendment were passed by voters in a referendum later that year. ‘If the state Legislature wants to take up adoption and inheritance rights, it can do that,’ she said. ‘Nothing in the second sentence … prohibits that.’

As Wisconsin’s gay marriage ban is imperiled by an authoritative legal challenge in the Wisconsin Supreme Court, the state’s existing domestic partner benefits registry now appears on safer ground, receiving a boost from the contradictions of DP’s main opponents.

Facts and Law v. Corruption

The foundation upon which we elect judges to Wisconsin's top appellate court is impartiality and committed application of the law and facts, right?

Wrong again.

With the notable exception of Shirley Abrahamson, this year's supreme court campaign between Judge Randy Koschnick and incumbent Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson again demonstrates the utter lack of fidelity to the above principles, with virtually all of journalism blindly following along the circus (disappointingly journalist Dee Hall joinied in the no-thinking chorus).

Last night's debate and coverage are emblematic of the know-nothing judicial campaigns of Wisconsin.

Consider Hall's reporting.

Hall makes no reference to Wisconsin's Code of Judicial Conduct that mandates "'(impartiality' (meaning) the absence of bias or prejudice in favor of, or against, particular parties, or classes of parties, as well as maintaining an open mind in considering issues that may come before the judge."

Hall, instead, gives readers a he-said, she-said reporting of the debate:

In what is becoming a replay of previous Wisconsin Supreme Court races, Judge Randy Koschnick, a self-declared 'judicial conservative' and 'choice of law enforcement,' sought to paint incumbent Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson as a liberal who favors defendants over victims and the police.

Abrahamson retorted that 'a judge is not supposed to be pro- or anti-anything.' Calling such labels 'meaningless' and 'name-calling,' Abrahamson insisted that she decides cases on facts and law — not her personal feelings.

[Note Stacy Forster's reporting in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is no better than Hall's, quoting Abrahamson's reference to a "fair, impartial, independent judiciary" without mention of the fact that an impartial, independent judiciary is the law.]

Only one candidate's campaign, Abrahamson, is in compliance with Wisconsin's Code of Judicial Conduct mandating impartiality and application of facts and law.

This campaign is a replay certainly (like the Butler-Gableman race last year), but the culprits are know-nothing journalism such as Hall's and Koschick's campaign, in stark contrast to Abrahamson's.

Koschnick outright promises to be biased in favor of a class of litigants (what he terms law enforcement) while Abrahamson promises fidelity to facts and law.

This routine per se breaking of the foundation of judicial policymaking in judicial campaigns escapes Hall's reporting (and all that I've read), though Koschick has said, in effect: 'Elect me, I'm corrupt.'

Isn't this worth a graf or two?

Doyle on Right Track on Early Release

Update: Wisconsin budget: Prisoner proposal defended

"They hate us for our freedom," George W. Bush used to bellow, except for that one-in-100 people in jail thing.

Gov. Jim Doyle is calling for a cost-effective and sensible initiative in his state budget that would cut the sentences of non-violent and low-risk Wisconsin inmates, a modest proposal that is bound to draw Republican howls. (see Mark Pitsch, WSJ)

Sen. Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau is calling the proposal "alarming".

Writes Adam Liptak in a NYT piece last year:

Criminologists and legal scholars in other industrialized nations say they are mystified and appalled by the number and length of American prison sentences. ... (T)he United States leads the world in producing prisoners, a reflection of a relatively recent and now entirely distinctive American approach to crime and punishment. Americans are locked up for crimes — from writing bad checks to using drugs — that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. And in particular they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations.

Gov. Doyle should be commended for this first step towards sanity in finding alternatives to the jailing of our fellow citizens.

Let's hope state policy follows the direction that Doyle has set and not the direction of increased criminalization and bashing of civil rights that Dane County Exec Kathleen Falk is proposing in her War on Drinking Culture.

"Beyond Thin" Judge Draws Notice for a SC Vacancy

Justice Diane P. Wood is drawing attention as a leading candidate to fill the first vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Wood is famous in some circles (especially in Wisconsin) for her judicial equivalent of voiced disgust shown towards Stephen Biskupic, former U.S. Atty for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, who launched several political prosecutions during his tenure with the Bush administration's Department of Justice, including the repulsive political prosecution of an innocent woman, Georgia Thompson.

Wood was nominated to serve as an appellate judge by President Clinton and confirmed in 1995.

As Mark Pitsch notes in a State Journal piece in 2007 [largely an it's-not-what-Biskupic-did-that-really-matters piece]:

Georgia Thompson, a state purchasing agent for Doyle's Department of Administration, was indicted in January 2006 and convicted six months later in the midst of a heated gubernatorial election.

She spent four months in prison before the federal appeals panel reversed the conviction and ordered her immediately set free - with one judge saying the evidence was 'beyond thin.'

The same judge, Diane P. Wood of the 7th U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, also had harsh words when the panel rejected a 2005 voter fraud conviction won by Biskupic's office against a woman who voted despite having a felony record, The New York Times reported.

'I find this whole prosecution mysterious,' Wood said. 'I don't know whether the Eastern District of Wisconsin goes after every felon who accidentally votes. It is not like she voted five times.'

Biskupic said he hasn't prosecuted for political reasons.

The evidence for the conclusion that Biskupic was an apolitical US atty is beyond thin, and Wood was not shy about pointing out the many deficiencies in Biskupic's prosecutions.

Wood's name has been mentioned in numerous news reports on President Obama's likely leaning toward appointing a woman to the court, and Wood came up again today in a piece in the Washington Post by Carrie Johnson:

At the White House, advisers already had begun drafting a short list for the court in case one of the several aging justices decided to retire this summer. Speculation has been that the list includes Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan, who has been nominated to serve as solicitor general; Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit; Judge Diane Wood of the 7th Circuit; and Stanford University law professor Kathleen M. Sullivan.

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via mal contends

Dane County Exec Kathleen Falk’s Tenure Should End

Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk has joined the let’s-set-up-police-roadblocks-(sobriety checkpoints) bandwagon.

See, Falk—she of the let’s-cover-our-asses-fast reaction to the Dane County 911 Center’s widely reported screw-ups leading to the murder of Brittany Zimmermann—says she wants to change the attitudes towards and culture of Wisconsin drinking.

Gee, changing the culture, that's an interesting if unenlightened, proposed role for politicians and elected officeholders.

Anyway, let’s set up “checkpoints,” she advises our governor.

After thinking you see, Falk “… quickly realized that steps must be taken on the level of state policy to help curb the tide of alcohol abuse," Falk writes to Gov. Doyle, it is reported in the State Journal (Matthew DeFour) this morning.

A “tide” in the culture that we must address by draconian measures like "checkpoints" and criminalization?

Is this the precise, sober analysis that we can expect if we reelect Falk?

How about some checkpoints between Kathleen's Falk's administration, Dane County citizens and the 911 Center; you know that emergency thing that is supposed to work during, like, emergencies?

What I see from Falk is a tide of incompetence and bad judgement that led to a young woman’s murder, and now proposed opportunistic police measures better suited to the roadblock-loving folks of Indiana and the Fourth Amendment-hating Bush Department of Justice.

Maybe she’s hoping her tough-on-drinking stands will cover her incompetence and that of her lackey, Joe Norwick, her political appointment, whom she handpicked to run the 911 center in the first place. But Falk says her opponents should not make "political hay" of the Zimmermann tragedy.

Falk, a liberal with whom I generally agree on policy stands, is displaying either an ignorance or apathy of the propriety of checkpoints and criminalization (we need more people in jail), but I think her long screw-up on the Zimmermann case alone earns her the boot.

And I wish the Zimmermann family well in its wrongful death lawsuit against Falk, which I'm sure Falk will go to considerable lengths to dispute. It's Falk political career that's really important, don't you know?

In any event, much as I despise Nancy Mistele’s (Falk's likely opponent this spring) policy stands and am appalled at the thought of at seeing Mistile for four years in the Exec's seat, it’s time to dump Kathleen Falk, because what's really important is the death of a young woman and the liberties and safety our community exists to defend.

On that score, Falk has fallen down on the job.

Wisc Judge Tosses GOP Vote Suppression Lawsuit

Update IV: Opinion - Order and Hearing Transcript (Case No 08CV4085)

Update II: GOP AG to appeal. Hoping to get to the Wisconsin Supreme Court where the GOP enjoys a 4-2-1 majority, though the case (J B Van Hollen vs. Government Accountability Board et al, (Dane County Case Number 2008CV004085)) is so clear-cut, even the WI SC might rule against the GOP. In any event, this will not result in any new voter suppression rules that the GOP had hoped for.

Update: Judge: "Nothing in state or federal law requires that there be a data match as a prerequisite for a citizen's right to vote," Judge Maryann Sumi said in dismissing Van Hollen's lawsuit that tried to use the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) as a voter suppression tool.

Dane County Judge Maryann Sumi has "dismissed a lawsuit by Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen to require the state elections agency to check voter registrations against other state databases dating to 2006, which critics said could have thrown hundreds of thousands of registrations into doubt," the Wisconsin State Journal reports.

Nationwide, the GOP is attempting to suppress Democratically leaning voters to stave off a landslide defeat, and is unquestionably attempting to use HAVA to this purpose.

The case deals a political and legal body blow to Wisconsin Attorney General and John McCain co-chair J.B. Van Hollen, and delivers a victory to the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board and other voting rights advocates.

Lester Pines, a lawyer for the board, called the ruling 'an absolute validation of the position of the board.' 'Judge Sumi's decision was exceptionally scholarly, well-reasoned and supported by law,' Pines said.

Similar voter suppression efforts by Republicans are under way in Ohio and numerous other states.

The opinion will likely be posted soon at Election Law-Moritz.

Van Hollen's Voter Suppression Set to Fail

In this day and age we're still fighting off voter suppression?

Yes, it's the age of the ahistorical GOP.

But Wisconsin citizens can take solace in the fact that Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen's scheme that forgets that the civil rights movement ever happened (and fails to appreciate the immorality of suppressing voters) looks doomed to fail.

Dane County Judge Maryann Sumi will not rule on a dismissal motion until a couple of weeks out from the election.

Van Hollen and Wisconsin GOP will play Chickenlittle running around telling everyone that an implied conspiracy of fraudulent voters will corrupt the election, but the GOP's proposed remedy to this election conspiracy fantasy, voter suppression, will not be implemented in time to impact the November 4 election. That's the take-away of Judge Sumi's hearing yesterday.

This ditches Van Hollen's scheme to run Wisconsin's voter registration list with the DOT database in the hope those voters with less time and money on their hands will be knocked off the voting rolls, or prevent as many as possible from voting in a forced two-day, provisional-voting process amid long lines and confusion.

GOP Chair Met Van Hollen at Convention, Talked 'Follow-law' Shop

Interesting piece in the State Journal by Mark Pitsch this morning.

Reince Priebus, the Wisconsin GOP party chairman, confirms that he

had multiple conversations with Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen's top aide before Van Hollen filed a lawsuit against the state election agency to compel expanded voter registration checks.

But Reince Priebus, the party chairman, defended his contacts with Deputy Attorney General Ray Taffora, his comments in Van Hollen's presence this month at the Republican National Convention criticizing the election agency, and meetings between GOP lawyers and the Justice Department lawyers handling the lawsuit. ... 'It's important that in my comments to the delegation and even standing around in the breakfast room or the staff room with J.B., there was nothing more I said than the continuation of my general feeling that the Government Accountability Board needs to follow the HAVA law,' Priebus said. 'There was no strategizing.'

No strategizing, just following the law?

The problem is the GOP's view of following the law led to its voter suppression efforts. Must have been a fun party though.

The GOP knows fully well it's trying to suppress turn-out in what it hopes will be a close race this November.

Can't have too many of those non-driving blacks voting.

Does this piss off everyone?

But maybe it went down like this:

Reince Priebus: Hey JB, you know: We really to need to follow the law and stuff.

J.B. Van Hollen: Yep, we need to follow the law; just have to. Protect voters.

Reince Priebus: Yep.

US Secret Service and Dane County's 911 Center

by globalgirl and mal contends

Madison, WI - We have heard numerous comments in conversation from friends and family fearful that there are just too many bigoted idiots in America to let Barack Obama live to be president.

Our common response is that: Though I do not know it for a fact, the United States Secret Service, created after the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901, is surely a dynamic, continuously improving organization. A would-be assassin's shot like that taken at Ronald Reagan in 1981 is undoubtedly nearly impossible today. It would take a military assault to get to Obama, I bet, I hope.

Dane County 911 Center

Closer to home another public service and protection agency, the Dane County 911 Center apparently doesn't have a lessons-learned, dynamic approach to quality improvement.

Matthew Defour's piece in Sunday's Wisconsin State Journal reveals that:

Dane County's emergency dispatch center has kept incomplete and disorganized records of police complaints about its shortcomings, limiting its ability to prevent potentially life-and-death mistakes such as those that happened at the 911 center the day Brittany Zimmermann was killed.

Local police, fire and emergency medical workers are part of the problem -- many do not file formal complaints about 911 mistakes, instead relying on casual communication with center officials to correct shortcomings.
But even problems that are communicated in writing are not systematically being recorded, which experts say would allow dispatch center managers to spot troubling patterns and intercede with training.

No one expects the 911 center to have the sophisication of the Secret Service, but Jesus H., the only apparent dyanmic, lessons-learned phase in place has been the reporting of Bill Lueders and Jason Shepard at Isthmus and the Wisconsin State Journal.

Exclusive: Alleged Gruesome Kidnapper Described as “Outgoing and Friendly” by Former Coworker

© 2008 Michael Leon
A man charged with 12 felonies for "allegedly kidnapping ... two men, stripping them, chaining them up in his home, beating them and sexually assaulting them several times" (Wisconsin State Journal, July 15) outside Wisconsin Rapids is described by a former coworker interviewed by mal contends as "friendly, with a good sense of humor."

Edward Lanphear is also being investigated for possible links to the murder of UW-Madison student, Brittany Zimmermann, the Wisconsin State Journal reports, though police say at this time that there is no direct connection other than the facts that Lanphear and Zimmermann are both from Wood County, and that Lanphear had a newspaper article about the Zimmermann case at his residence.

In this exclusive interview conducted by phone, the former coworker, who worked with Lanphear for some eight years in the 1980s and 1990s at the then Consolidated Papers Inc., a paper company based in Wisconsin Rapids, now known as NewPage Corporation, said of Lanphear, "He never, ever gave you the impression of being violent, or even being capable of things like that."

The coworker, who asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the topic in the small town of Saratoga where the coworker lives, said, upon reading of the story in the Wisconsin Rapids Tribune online, "I was dumbfounded. I mean this is completely out of character of the guy I remembered. ... He was outgoing and a big hunter. ... He invited me to go hunting with him once at the Arctic Circle."

Constitutional Incompetence

Dane County's response to the lawsuit filed by the parents of the murdered UW-Madison student, Brittany Zimmermann, is mystifying: the U.S. Constitution "does not require municipalities to rescue persons in distress."

The suit will likely get tossed, but so what?

A young woman was killed, and Dane County failed her.

Settle the suit, and help put this tragedy behind the grieving family. There may not be a constitutional right mandating that our community protects our citizens, but there is an uncontroversial public policy imperative.

Ed Treleven in the Wisconsin State Journal reports:

A federal civil rights lawsuit filed against Dane County and a former 911 dispatcher by the parents of homicide victim Brittany Zimmermann should be dismissed because the county has no constitutional obligation to protect individuals from the acts of others, a response to the lawsuit states.

The response, written as a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, was filed late last month by private attorneys representing Dane County and former dispatcher Rita Gahagan. They were sued last month by Kevin and Jean Zimmermann in U.S. District Court over the response of the 911 center to a call made from their daughter's cell phone around the time of her death on April 2.

For more information, see:

- Falk apologizes to Zimmermann's family, fiance (Capital Times, May 6)
- County Board chair wants answers on 911 problems (Cap Times, May 6)

- Falk apologizes to Zimmermann's family, fiance (Capital Times, May 6)

- Soglin: We all failed Brittany Zimmerman.

***Note*** Contributions in memory of Ms. Zimmermann may be sent to:
The “Dollars for Brittany” scholarship fund
Care of the Brittany Zimmermann Memorial Fund
Marshfield Medical Center Credit Union
P.O. Box 279
Marshfield, WI 54449

Anti-Catholic Nut Tom Reynolds' Guys to Be Revealed Next Week

Clean Sweep Wisconsin's foray into the state Assembly races is being fronted by former state senator Tom Reynolds (R-Outer Reaches).

Reynolds has created Clean Sweep Wisconsin's PAC and is recruiting numerous rightwing candidates to run in the Democratic primaries of Milwaukee state representatives.

The Wisconsin State Journal's Mark Pitsch politely describes Reynolds as "eccentric".

But with Reynolds, politeness obscures reality.

The Milwaukee Shepherd-Express' Lisa Kaiser leads her piece from June thusly:

Former state Sen. Tom Reynolds—the kooky right-wing legislator who allegedly asked his staffers if they were virgins, and who superimposed the faces of his family on Mary and Joseph on their Christmas cards—is attempting a comeback.

Just how kooky is Reynolds? And why would any candidate associate him/her self with this guy?

He's indescribably kooky: Reynolds is an anti-Catholic, homophobic nut. From Waxing America's profile on Reynolds from 2005:

Wisconsin State Senator Tom Reynolds needed his own post about his cavorting with the anti-Catholic crowd. To set the record straight, in 2003 Reynolds attended the International Conference on Homo-Fascism. These are the folks who brought us 'An Urgent Plea to Roman Catholics'. Since that conference (Homo-Fascism) in 2003, Reynolds has refused to disavow these religious bigots ...The purpose of the post is look at what Reynold's buddies say about the Roman Catholic Church:

An Urgent Pleas to Roman Catholics
The Word of God and the word of the Roman Church are at direct odds with each other on many foundational issues including, most critically, how one receives forgiveness and salvation from God. It is impossible for one to be obedient to both the Roman Church and the Bible, just as it is impossible to follow both the pope and Jesus. ...

It will be enlightening to list Reynolds' slate of candidates next week (July 8 is the filing date for Assembly candidates) and see who will carry out the political vision of Reynolds' Clean Sweep Wisconsin.

Wonder if that means all Catholics and non-virgins will be swept away this election cycle.

Wisconsin Flood Victims Can't Get Aid

From bad to worse: Residents may not get flood coverage, it's just people, let's send the money to Iraq instead.