By and with the Advice and Consent of Ron Johnson

Senate candidate Ron Johnson maturing quickly

— Wisconsin State Journal, 08/01/10

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's Craig Gilbert has more on Ron Johnson's intransigence. In a nutshell, Johnson wants to undo literally two years of work by the Wisconsin Federal Nominating Commission, and is moaning because he can't pick four instead of three members to the 12-member Commission. One minute Ron Johnson is saying nobody knows who Victoria Nourse is, and the next he's calling her "extreme."

The current vacancy became effective on January 7, 2010, one year before Johnson became a Senator. The entire process devoted to filling the vacancy took place while Johnson was still shipping plastic from his federally funded rail spur and extolling the economic virtues of China.

Johnson campaigned on promises to cut government spending. Now he wants to waste another two years reviewing applicants for a position that became a judicial emergency on July 7 due to the number of case filings that have accumulated with the Seventh Circuit in the meantime.

The Federal Nominating Commission as constituted prior to Johnson's arrival in the Senate consisted of four members each chosen by Sen. Herb Kohl and former Sen. Russ Feingold, two chosen by the State Bar, and the deans of the University of Wisconsin and Marquette University law schools. Now Johnson tells the MJS he wants a re-do, and he wants to pick the four members in place of those chosen by Sen. Feingold.

Eleven applications to the vacancy were received by September, 2009, and two months later, six of those were presented to Obama. From those six, Obama selected Prof. Nourse. Apparently Ron Johnson wants us to believe that if he got to pick four members of the Commission, then the six prospective judges presented to Obama would be different, or else Obama would have selected a prospective judge more in keeping with Ron Johnson's comically harebrained views of the judiciary.*

Either of which scenario is nonsense, obviously. In fact if Obama had a sense of humor, he'd nominate Ron Johnson to the Seventh Circuit.

What Johnson is pulling is obstruction, pure and simple. He's crying like a baby because a vacancy on the court was announced, prospective candidates were solicited and reviewed by a committee of competent professionals, their recommendations were forwarded to the president, and the president made his nomination, all before Ron Johnson even arrived on the scene. Now Johnson wants to put it off until July, 2013.

And at the moment, Ron Johnson unilaterally will not even allow Prof. Nourse a hearing before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, a hearing from which Johnson could clearly stand to learn a great deal, including about the qualifications of the nominee, who Johnson declares either unknown or extreme, depending upon which day you ask him.

The Seventh Circuit presides over Illinois and Indiana as well, so those folks can also thank Sen. Ron Johnson for his pointless recalcitrance.

The Wisconsin seat Johnson is presenting them is his Wisconsin backside.

* With which Ron Johnson recently hired former MJS right-wing calumnist Patrick McIlheran — whose own views of the judiciary are not only equally harebrained but downright dishonest — to assist him.

Ron Johnson alleges "dubious premises"

Here's Fox News/Republican/Tea candidate Ron Johnson's latest Fisk-begging statement to the press:

This [federal] grant was secured in March of 1979 by Wisconsin Industrial Shipping Supplies ...

WKOW's report mentioned that, so it's not dubious, it's affirmed.

... in exchange for a substantial business investment for the City of Oshkosh.

"For" the City of Oshkosh. Clever.

But that's generally the way these things work, isn't it? The federal grant to build a spur from the (Canadian-owned) Soo Line is on the larger view an investment in the local economy, based on a presumption that the grantee will prosper and her prosperity will in turn attract more business to the community. Econ 101, I reckon.

And Ron Johnson is coming dangerously close to suggesting the rail spur was somehow a burden on his business, an act of purest civic martyrdom, a sacrifice he endured "for" the City of Oshkosh. Absurd.

A rail siding is a great benefit to a shipper especially. You can fit more stuff on a rail car, and it's cheaper than trucking.* Plus you don't have to warehouse the finished product, you just stick it on the rail car and keep filling it up the next shift. There's nothing like a rail siding run right into your building, particularly a free gummint one.

You know what this rail siding is? Stimulus, which Ron Johnson rails against, and is currently spending much of his life attacking Russ Feingold for supporting similar initiatives all over the country and especially in Wisconsin. So how come it's good for Ron Johnson but it's an assault on Ron Johnson's Freedoms when it's for anybody else?

Ron Johnson moved to Wisconsin in June of 1979 and started Pacur, which has become a true Wisconsin success story.

Nobody, I expect, disputes the latter, although it is less of a premise than a conclusion with at least one missing premise. Dubious.

Gummint

Yet first Ron Johnson affirms he signed on only a couple of months after the grant was "secured" — it's not clear which moment in the procedure that refers to; it might be any one of several — whereas WKOW had simply said "months." Where's the "dubious premise" there; I don't see it. One could easily have read it as October.

You can take a look at the rail spur on teh Google maps. If it was "secured" in March, it sure wasn't completed by June. They had 12 months to build it and if Ron Johnson is so adamantly opposed to these sort of government handouts, then he should have stopped it, as he was in control of his company since "day one" In June, 1979.

But of course he didn't stop it. It's a pretty sweet deal. And there seems little question the rail siding benefited Johnson's company financially. That's likely even quantifiable, but we can leave that exercise to Ron Johnson, as he's the one with the accounting degree.

Nonetheless, these allegations from WKOW are based entirely on dubious premises.

All premissary dubiousness is to Johnson's account. He is the one yelling at Tea Parties — 'Leave us conservatives alone!' — and elsewhere about the evil gummint and now here he is running a business with a free rail siding, courtesy the federal government.

And $4M in state-facilitated loans at up to 2-1/2 points below market interest rates. Why shouldn't somebody else accrue such benefits similarly? That's the question Ron Johnson needs to answer now.

Randian

If your own premises are that government grants and subsidies to business are unwanted and unneeded and indeed, a malicious affront to the hallowed Randian dystopia, then you render those premises dubious when you lobby for and accept so much of them.

How is that not outright hypocrisy, or outright lying,** given Ron Johnson's prior claims about subsidies and stimulus packages?

We have highways, railroads, post offices, water and electrical services among other public services that businesses rely on each day.

Now he sounds like a liberal defending Feingold's vote on the stimulus package. Who knows what Ron Johnson will come up with tomorrow.

It's not any "dubious premises" Ron Johnson objects to, it's the fact that he got himself rather amusingly busted by inquisitive reporters.

Again.

In the meantime, where is Dave Westlake? Westlake has economic principles too, but he doesn't appear to have betrayed any of them. Republican primary voters, who go to the polls here in about two weeks, should take another look at him, as I understand they're in the market for someone who can actually beat Feingold in November.

* More so when you've got your own rail siding.

** Not to worry. It's most likely protected political speech in Wisconsin (pending a successful motion for summary judgment).

eta: More observations from the always astute Chief of Oshkosh.
[Welcome WisOpinion readers. They won't link to him but I will.]

Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson is a hypocrite

Somebody's ghostwritten an item in the Washington Post on behalf of Wisconsin's Republican U.S. Senator Ron Johnson, complaining — that's pretty much all he ever does is complain — about a change to the Senate rules doing away with a requirement for supermajority votes. Because, you see, Democrats control the Senate, but only by a narrow margin, and abandoning the supermajority requirement would restrict Johnson and his colleagues' ability to obstruct the majority party's initiatives.

But that's not the remarkable bit. It's Johnson's fatuous claim that "our Constitution was established to protect the rights of a single individual — the ultimate minority." Obviously it's not a fatuous claim on its face; what makes it fatuous is that it's Ron Johnson who's making it. Because there's nothing in the U.S. Constitution about individual rights. Those references appear in the Amendments to the Constitution and most of them are to the individual rights of criminal suspects and defendants, like it or not (and most people don't like it, when they figure it out).

What specifically makes Ron Johnson's claim fatuous is the fact that Johnson is blocking one of the President's judicial nominees who has a record of protecting and enforcing the very rights that Johnson is suddenly celebrating. And it was that record that Ron Johnson's pals and allies among Wisconsin Republicans used as a weapon to falsely portray Louis Butler as overwhelmingly sympathetic to criminal defendants.

(Indeed, Butler's challenger in the 2008 State Supreme Court election, Mike Gableman, depicted the sitting justice as an accessory to rape.)

Johnson's fellow travelers at Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, for example, ran thousands (literally) of broadcast ads attacking Louis Butler for his lone dissent in a case called State v. Mark Jensen, wherein Butler objected to the admission as evidence of certain statements made by the deceased, an alleged spousal homicide victim. The Sixth Amendment guarantees that "in all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right ... to be confronted with the witnesses against him."

Subsequent to Butler's opinion, a similar case arose in California which made it to the United States Supreme Court. In a decision authored by Justice Antonin Scalia and joined by the other conservative members of the Court, Butler's legal and historical reasoning in his Jensen opinion was almost identically reproduced. To my knowledge, conservative special interest groups in Wisconsin never once acknowledged this fact.

And why would they? It would be an admission of their dishonesty.

So to now hear Johnson crying out for the constitutional "rights of a single individual" while blocking the nomination of a judge with precisely the record that Johnson's Wisconsin Republican buddies had previously criticized is both comical and pathetic. And it's especially hypocritical.

Speaking of Scalia, Ron Johnson claimed during his campaign that he was an admirer of "strict constructionists" like the celebrated Justice. Except Scalia is not a "strict constructionist" and moreover would surely scoff at Johnson's reliance on what Johnson himself admits is a "legend" in Johnson's attempt to determine the original intent for the Senate, an anecdote attributed to Washington and Jefferson about a tea saucer.*

And of course there was Ron Johnson's ridiculous insistence — which was supported by a bevy of conservative Milwaukee attorneys — that he, as a Senator, retains the power to nominate judges to the federal courts, a power which the Constitution clearly confers on the President. During his campaign Johnson admitted to only having read the Constitution a couple of times. Nothing has changed since then except that Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson has become an even bigger hypocrite.

* By way of the late former Klansman, West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd.

What is wrong with the Milwaukee daily paper?

Science reporting or legal reporting, I don't know which is worse. Here's the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's latest dismal effort:

[Ron] Johnson's recent comments about sunspots playing a role in global warming, as well as Johnson's more recent comment that Greenland was actually green at one time ...

Emphases added. Why is the J-S downplaying Johnson's own claims?

Now, if what Ron Johnson had said is that sunspots "played a role" in global climate, nobody would have batted an eyelash. Obviously solar activity contributes to changes in the Earth's climate over time.

It's the Earth's primary source of energy.

But that isn't what Ron Johnson said at all. What he said was — after dismissing "absolutely" the science of anthropogenic global warming in its entirety, something he'd earlier termed "crazy" and "lunacy" — "it's far more likely that it's just sun spot activity or something just in the geologic æons of time where we have changes in the climate."

That's from Johnson's own website.

As noted here previously on more than one occasion, those are unequivocal declarations. Recall: Johnson dismissed "absolutely" any scientific evidence in support of anthropogenic global warming. "Absolutely": that was his word. There's no mistaking its meaning.

Thus, according to Ron Johnson, it's all the result of otherwise natural processes. Not anthropogenic. So, advises Ron Johnson to mankind, just keep doing what you're doing, burning carbon in unprecedented quantities to your hearts' content. It's all good.

Anyway, the alleged direct causal correlation between solar activity and more recent rising global temperatures is debunked. So it's not even "far more likely," as the Fox News Senate candidate put it.

Secondly, if Ron Johnson had said merely that 'some southern areas of what we now know as Greenland and that are now covered in kilometer-thick ice actually were green at one time,' then nobody would have batted an eye either. Again, as pointed out at this space earlier, scientists have discovered in a southern Greenland ice core (Dye 3) the genetic remains of creatures that dwell in forested areas.

Ergo, there must have been "a northern boreal forest ecosystem" in order for those particular creatures to thrive. That is an inference drawn from the genetic evidence, and it relates only to a specifically defined area in the southern portion of the island.

But that isn't what Ron Johnson said. This is: "There's a reason Greenland was called Greenland. It was actually green at one point in time. And it's been, since, it's a whole lot whiter now."

Except Greenland was only called "Greenland" about 1100 years ago, whereas the DNA recovered from the Dye 3 ice core (third from the west) by Eske Willerslev* et al is approaching one million years old.

Erik the Red, it may be safely assumed, was unfamiliar with Dye 3.

Is it really that difficult for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel to perceive those crucial distinctions? Willerslev et al's 2007 paper is online. For free (so the J-S does not have to cut into Patrick McIlheran's salary for pricey subscriptions to scientific journals).

Furthermore several contemporary press accounts of Willerslev's paper completely misrepresent its relatively cautious conclusions.

Never — ever — trust the popular press to report reliably on scientific research papers. It exaggerates, and sensationalizes. That's where Ron Johnson and his denialist friends get their information, and it's why they apparently have barely a clue what they're talking about.

This is dreadful news reporting by the Journal-Sentinel, and moreover containing an exoneration of Ron Johnson's ill-informed views of the science that he most certainly does not deserve.

* Prof. Willerslev is an evolutionary biologist, by the way, whose work is unlikely to appear in the local creationist curricula candidate Ron Johnson enthusiastically approved to the Rock River Patriots.

Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson is unconstitutional

Deep commitment to separation of powers inconvenient in this case

Seven conservative lawyers, including Governor Scott Walker's choice to head up his own judicial selection committee, are complaining about a Journal-Sentinel editorial, and misconstrue the U.S. Constitution.

The subject editorial criticizes Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron "Sunspots" Johnson for obstructing the president's power to nominate federal judges, as this space had done previously here and here.

Article II of the Constitution describes the president's powers along with those powers he (it says "he") shares with Congress. Where it comes to federal judicial vacancies, the president has two separate powers: the power to nominate, and the power to appoint. The appointment power he shares with Congress. The nominating power he shares with nobody.

In order to facilitate the nominations in Wisconsin's federal jurisdictions, the State's two Senators instituted a commission to solicit and review applicants, and then make its recommendation to the president. The Constitution does not require the commission, but nor does it forbid it.

The commission is purely a courtesy.

The Constitution places no restrictions on the president's nominating power, and is silent on the matter of how the president goes about discovering a suitable nominee. The present vacancy in question, on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago, was notified in July, 2009. By November the commission had made its recommendation. The president is not bound by the recommendation, and in fact he can ignore it altogether and nominate somebody else. Say the lawyers:

The nomination was apparently placed on Johnson's desk two days after he took office, in disregard of a senator's duty of "advice and consent" under Article II section II of the U.S. Constitution.

This is a remarkable complaint, coming from these seven experienced attorneys — led by a former judge — because there is absolutely no constitutional basis — read: legal basis — for it. Moreover they don't even know whether they can support the factual bases for their complaint, and acknowledge that "the White House may dispute [our] account."

I should say so.

The president's nomination power is plenary, so the president can put whatever she/he wants on Johnson's desk, whenever he/she wants (assuming there's a judicial vacancy, which there was). The president makes the appointment with the advice and consent of the Senate.

And not with the advice and consent of Ron Johnson. But Johnson has had his say, and in fact used it to say nothing at all, except to complain about his own personal woes, having nothing to do with the nominee.

Ron Johnson, who ran on a devotion-to-the-Constitution platform — despite barely having read the damn thing — should appreciate that, regardless of the establishment and formation of the nominating commission, no such commission is any requirement of the Constitution.

Some of [Victoria Nourse's] supporters now rush to point fingers and assign blame to a senator who just wants to be heard and fulfill his constitutional duty of "advice and consent."

Aw. Poor Ron Johnson. And they call this an argument?

How can he fulfill that duty in the first place if he's preventing Nourse from getting a hearing before the Senate? There is no constitutional "duty" of Johnson's to vet the president's nominees, nor is there any constitutional "duty" of the president's to run nominations by Johnson.

Ron Johnson's duty is to stand aside and release his unconstitutional hold on the nomination and let the appointment process proceed. Then he can come up with some substantive reason (Advice) and then provide or withhold his Consent by voting along with the Senate. The Constitution isn't as difficult to understand as Ron Johnson says he found it to be.

However, its provisions appear to elude some FedSoc disciples. It's amazing such a fundamental first principle got by seven lawyers. Seven.

[The president] shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint ...

The president shall nominate. Comma.* And appoint. Discrete powers.

And the president did exercise his nomination power. Now Ron Johnson seeks to intermeddle in the nomination, and indeed to intermeddle ex post facto. Ron Johnson hasn't the power to do so, and what Ron Johnson is doing is unlawful and in clear violation of the Constitution.

Why are these lawyers — who should know better — egging him on?

* Not even a forward slash.

Ron Johnson's judicial heliology

[Ron Johnson] said he preferred justices who would strictly follow the Constitution in their rulings.

How would he know whether they were or not? Ron Johnson has admitted himself that he's barely even read the damn thing:

I will say, y'know, prior to doing this,* I've sat down and read the Constitution probably, thoroughly, three ... probably about five or six times. It is not an easy document to read. It is not, unless you study it in detail, it's hard to study. — Ron Johnson

Better:

[Ron Johnson] said he would have voted against both of President Obama's Supreme Court appointees, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, as well as both appointees of President Clinton — Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

I would like to hear why, in detail. Did the J-S think of asking? Is it not significant that the imaginary Senator Ron Johnson would have attempted to block four of the last six Supreme Court appointees?

No other Senator has done that, but only because Jesse Helms didn't live long enough. So here we have this Ron Johnson receiving the torch from Jesse Helms; by God, it's the North Carolina of the North.

Did the J-S ask Johnson about Harriet Miers? Does Johnson think she's a "strict constructionist"? What about Justice Scalia, are his constructions to the appropriate degree strict (a highly effective b.s.-detector question)? If they asked, they didn't print the answers.

Sunspots are behind climate change, Ron Johnson says

How can people actually read this stuff and not laugh out loud. Or else how can they write it with a straight face.

Senate candidate Ron Johnson maturing quickly

— Wisconsin State Journal, 08/01/10

* Answering Dick Morris's plea for a "rich guy from Wisconsin."

Ron Johnson disciple: "He is not a fool."

"Sunspot" Willie can't come Soon enough

Via RonJohnsonForSenate.com, possibly the lamest apologetic ever:

Claim: Johnson believes sunspots are the cause of global warming.

Truth: Johnson’s quote was used in the broader context of his argument against passing legislation such as cap and trade that would raises taxes and put tens of thousands out of work in Wisconsin. Several reports however focused only on a single remark rather than the true intent of the answer.

* Johnson’s full quote read: "I absolutely do not believe that the science of man-caused climate change is proven. Not by any stretch of the imagination. I think it's far more likely that it's just sun spot activity or something just in the geologic eons of time where we have changes in the climate."

So what if Ron Johnson was speaking in "the broader context"?

Ron Johnson's "I think it's far more likely that it's just sun spot activity or something just in the geologic eons of time where we have changes in the climate" is clearly a stand-alone proposition. Moreover, when the speaker "absolutely" dismisses the science, then the alleged qualifier "far more likely" becomes superfluous verbiage.

The fact of the matter is, Fox News candidate Ron Johnson does not think about what it is that he is saying. That much is quite evident.

And everybody is always speaking in some "broader context."

See also: Ron Johnson, he is not a crazy, either.
Earlier: How green was Ron Johnson's Arctic island.
And: Ron Johnson's exhalations sucked down by trees.

"Wisconsin, don't let me down. You really want to replace one of the most principled, distinguished Senators, Senator Feingold, with this yahoo? Seriously? All of his answers are straight out of the failed politics of the Bush era — you really want to go back to that?"

— packerfanatic

"[Nevada's Sharron] Angle is a truly unique talent at creating problems for herself merely by revealing what she really thinks."

— Greg Sargent

Less unique now, given Wisconsin's own Ron Johnson. Backward!

At PolitiFactWisc, where false means true

This morning's key premises and conclusion:

Ron Johnson says Russ Feingold supported stimulus plan that allowed [a Texas] company to create 3,000 jobs in China.

Note the past tense, indicating the jobs have already been created.

Then PolitiFactWisc itself states:

The Texas project has not applied for or received any stimulus funding to date, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

Therefore, pronounces PolitiFactWisc:

We rate Johnson’s claim Barely True.

So Johnson's claim that some event took place is false, as confirmed by PolitiFactWisc, which nonetheless "rates" Johnson's claim true.

Whatever.

The point is this: China is beating the U.S. in clean energy engineering and manufacturing precisely because of people like Ron Johnson, who insist on denying the harmful effects of burning ever-increasing quantities of carbon into the Earth's atmosphere.

Yet Ron Johnson, who has no formal training whatsoever in the physical sciences, actually claimed that excess carbon dioxide so produced "gets sucked down by trees and helps the trees grow."

In other words, Ron Johnson would do nothing to address the environmental prognosis, which is supported by mountains of empirical evidence, simply because he doesn't "believe" it.

And now, on top of all that, Ron Johnson is going to complain in a political ad that it might be less costly for U.S. manufacturers just now getting in the clean energy racket to procure sub-components from offshore, where they have already been designed and built thanks to people less willfully ignorant than Ron Johnson, rather than re-design and re-manufacture those sub-components themselves.

Finally, when it turns out that if the U.S. manufacturers are required to commit capital to reinventing the Chinese wheel and thereby increasing the cost of the finished product to end users, Ron Johnson supports trade agreements that would encourage those end users to just go ahead and buy the whole shooting match from China anyway.

Supposedly this is the so-called accounting and manufacturing expertise that Johnson touts as his main qualification to the Senate.

Not only does Johnson not have any solutions — he doesn't even "believe" there's a problem — his non-solutions don't make any sense.

But he'd make a pretty good creationist.

WISGOP de-authorizes Ron Johnson gaffe-fest

When a WisOpinion reporter asked Ron Johnson if he would drill for oil in the Great Lakes, Ron Johnson replied, Yeah, we've got to get the oil where it is. Later, Ron Johnson claimed he hadn't heard the question. When a Tea Party group requested Ron Johnson's views on the Second Amendment, Ron Johnson said he would like to license firearms exactly like they do with cars and stuff. Later, Ron Johnson claimed he'd merely chosen the incorrect terms to describe his support for concealed carry.*

And only hours after Ron Johnson told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that global warming is most likely caused just by floating sun spots and that centuries of continually increasing burning of the Earth's carbon helped the trees to grow, he hired a new press secretary.**

Now, as Xoff notes, the WISGOP has found an easier way out.

* So unconscionably depraved a non sequitur that it nullifies any points Ron Johnson had accrued for uttering what is easily the best line of the campaign, 'Atlas Shrugged is not long enough.'

** Communications directors, as they are known in hifalutin circles.

Ron Johnson is an embarrassment to Wisconsin

Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, who admitted to only having read the U.S. Constitution three or four times and finding it difficult to understand, suddenly purports to expertise on federal judicial qualifications and is unilaterally blocking, on no stated grounds whatsoever, the nomination of Victoria Nourse, a highly regarded scholar and practitioner, to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.

It might be different if someone who knew what they were talking about was opposed to Prof. Nourse's nomination, but it's Ron Johnson.

A letter from some folks who do know what they're talking about:

Dear Chairman Leahy & Ranking Member Grassley ...*

Among its 53 signatories: Professors Janine P. Geske, Michael M. O'Hear, Chad Oldfather, and Peter K. Rofes, Marquette University School of Law; Professor Akhil Amar, Yale Law School, a constitutional scholar of the highest rank; and, perhaps most notably, Professor Randy Barnett, Georgetown University Law Center, who has been the most dedicated and prolific libertarian opponent of what Ron Johnson calls "Obamacare," which the Senator himself describes as the single biggest assault on Ron Johnson's personal freedom in Ron Johnson's lifetime.

Over and over and over again. In fact it was tedious a year ago.

However, Johnson is likely immune to irony as well, as Barnett has made Johnson's case considerably more forcefully than Johnson is capable of.

Ron Johnson remarked that he found the very notion of the president's powers to nominate and appoint judges "depressing," so it's clear that Johnson's blue slip is motivated by nothing except the cheapest of cheap partisanship, or precisely what the Constitution was designed to avoid.

He should be ashamed.

* Pleased to see Sen. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III got demoted. Hopefully Sen. Grassley is more capable of reason and less of idiocy.

Your Wisconsin Republicans in the news

Johnson calls on Weiner to resign — actual Associated Press headline

First up, embattled State Senator Dan Kapanke is a comical liar. The absurd claims of Wisconsin Secretary of Building Maintenance Mike Huebsch were thoroughly debunked ages ago, yet Kapanke repeats the lies to members of his Tea Party constituency, which is even insulting to the intelligence of the Tea Party constituency, because at least the Tea Party constituency pays attention and follows the political news.

Next, James Troupis, Republican lawyer-for-hire, participates in a panel devoted to restoring the appearance of civility on the Supreme Court, reports @WisPolitics. Troupis filed a frivolous suit in Oconto County he had no chance of winning, and then mischaracterized the court's order in a legal memorandum to Republican State Senator Scott Fitzgerald, who Troupis & Friends advised to capture a seven-months-pregnant woman and have her "carried ... feet first" into the Capitol building. Then Troupis billed the State $27K for his and his associates' labors.*

Incidentally Fitzgerald did indeed issue 14 ersatz "arrest warrants" pursuant to Troupis's legal advice, which none other than Dan Kapanke endorsed. No word on whether Kapanke voiced concerns over scuffing a limestone pier with the prone body of a seven-months-pregnant woman.

Finally our old pal Oshkosh millionaire Ron Johnson, who's raised some eyebrows with millions in "virtually interest free" loans Ron Johnson's company made to Ron Johnson, but before Ron Johnson decided to run for the U.S. Senate. Johnson got famous last year when it was learned he'd secured millions more in government-underwritten bonds, which also guaranteed Ron Johnson favorably below-market interest rates.

Then Ron Johnson got more famous as a gigantic hypocrite when he attacked his political opponent, Sen. Russ Feingold, for favoring precisely the same type of government largesse from which Johnson's plastics company benefited, and within precisely the same industry as Johnson's.

(Johnson's staff now includes erstwhile JRN calumnist Patrick McIlheran.)

This has been your Wisconsin Republicans in the news.

Boehnerus: Ohio Republican who "tested positive for Viagra" in the news

Visit the Archiv:
Huebsch
Troupis
Industrial revenue bonds

* Never did find out what the heck's the difference between a $290-an-hour Republican lawyer and a $295-an-hour Republican lawyer.

Dave Westlake seizes the Tea

Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Dave Westlake leaped into the breech Wednesday, understudying for his missing GOP primary election rival Ron Johnson at a Tea Party affair in Madison, WI.

Westlake stressed his hard-right credentials by calling for the repeal of the Patriot Act, a position staked out by Russ Feingold in 2001.

(Dave Westlake's "blaze orange" campaign theme also appropriates Senator Feingold's position with respect to the Second Amendment, which is slightly to the right of the National Rifle Association's.)

Ron Johnson had canceled the Madison Tea Party engagement after disappearing earlier in the week when a set of YouTubes emerged showing Johnson struggling defensively to explain fundamental policy perspectives to a local group called the Rock River Patriots.

Candidate Johnson, 55, admitted to the Patriots he'd only been through the U.S. Constitution "five or six times" and that he discovered it to be "not an easy document to read." Yet almost simultaneously, he assured them he'd "take to Washington a very deep reverence for the genius of the Founding Fathers."

But the Patriots were skeptical.

Westlake is one of two Republican candidates whose election posters were torn down from the wall by Ron Johnson and his posse at the Party's State convention in Milwaukee last month, where Johnson received the Official Establishment Republican Party Endorsement.

At the time, nobody knew anything about Johnson except that he reportedly had $10-$15 million to spend and his "foundational book" was Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged (not — oddly — the Bible).

Whereas Dave Westlake had been campaigning assiduously for months, and must have chafed at seeing his poster crumpled and discarded so that Johnson might have a blank wall to stand in front of for the teevee cameras.

Johnson said he decided to run when beloved Fox "News" personality Dick Morris put out a random call for "some rich guy in Wisconsin."

Meanwhile abortion outfit Wisconsin Right to Life endorsed Ron Johnson yesterday, despite Johnson's consent to a broad range of exceptions for the procedure, including the "true life" of the mother. Candidate Westlake said he would allow for no such exceptions.

WRtL determined that Johnson was the more "electable" candidate, proving the abortion opponents' devotion to situational morality. Moreover, situational morality in service of political expediency.

On principle, WRtL's embracing Westlake seems the correct choice.

Ron Johnson remains in hiding, assessing his troubled candidacy.

Ron Johnson requires you to license your guns

And submit to government-mandated functionality testing in order to receive the benevolent granting of those licenses' annual renewal:

Like we license cars and stuff. I don't have a real problem in minimal licensing and stuff. I mean, I don't.

— Republican candidate Ron Johnson, June 11, 2010

So it comes as a bit of a surprise to read Ron Johnson's blog post essentially accusing Senator Russ Feingold of dishonesty for his Second Amendment positions. But thanks to Russ Feingold, Ron Johnson's licensing proposals are probably unconstitutional.

While Ron Johnson was just another multi-millionaire from Wisconsin lolling on his divan hypnotized by Bill O'Reilly and Dick Morris's snow jobs, Russ Feingold was affixing his name to Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison's amicus brief in McDonald v. City of Chicago.

Senator Feingold and the others filed the brief with the U.S. Supreme Court to urge the Justices to make their holding in a prior decision, D.C. v. Heller, applicable to all State and local governments. The Court agreed with Feingold, and cited the brief numerous times during the course of its majority opinion, authored by Samuel Alito.

Ron Johnson, for reasons best understood by only he and his crack team of legal researchers, apparently finds that incongruous because Russ Feingold opposed the confirmation of Justice Alito in 2006.

Gun buffs

Except Russ Feingold's opposition to the confirmation of Samuel Alito had nothing to do with the Second Amendment. As a career conservative Republican, Alito could certainly be depended upon to sympathize with the attitudes prevailing among Larry Pratt, Wayne LaPierre, and the rest of the nationally prominent gun buffs.

Rather, Feingold's opposition had to do with Alito's record of support for unilateral executive encroachments on the individual liberties enshrined in the Bill of Rights, specifically, the Fourth Amendment.

For but one example, substantive questions raised by Alito's celebrated dissenting opinion as a Third Circuit Court of Appeals judge in the 2004 case of Doe v. Groody, in which Alito defended the strip-search of a ten-year-old girl in her home, even though the executive authorities' warrant did not "particularly describ[e] the place to be searched," as the U.S. Constitution requires.*

Nor had Feingold's opposition to Alito's nomination anything to do with the then-president. Had Johnson been paying attention to someone other than Fox lawyers Megyn Kelly and Andrew Napolitano, he would have known that Senator Feingold was similarly vigilant throughout the Clinton era, and remains so during the Obama years.

Intrepid

If candidate for Senate Ron Johnson really is as devoted to "freedoms" as he claims he is, his attentions should be in perfect consonance with Senator Feingold's principled defense of individual constitutional protections as against any broadening of executive branch power over the liberties guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.

And perhaps some intrepid reporter might ask candidate Johnson why he's so cool with subsuming the right to keep and bear arms — which Senator Feingold recently succeeded at incorporating into the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment — within a DMV-like regime of state approval and registration. At the least, it will give the GOP candidate an opportunity to perform another about-face.

* The majority opinion was written not by some wild-eyed Warren Court devotee, but by Michael Chertoff, appointed to the Third Circuit by George W. Bush (with Sen. Feingold's advice and consent) and later named to head up the Department of Homeland Security.

Tea Party candidate praises Russ Feingold

And unwittingly affirms a prophetic Feingold press release

Tea Party Republican Ron Johnson, who heeded the Fox "News" Channel's principled call for a "rich guy from Wisconsin" to run against Senator Russ Feingold, is off to a compelling and convincing start, appearing over the weekend on Up Front with Mike Gousha:

Mike Gousha: Does Russ Feingold get any credit for voting against TARP, in your opinion?

Ron Johnson: Sure. Yeah, I'll give him credit for that. He was right on that issue.

Then, having done only less than half his homework, this complaint:

Ron Johnson: As a matter of fact, three days before [Feingold] voted for the [federal stimulus package], he issued a press release saying that in the first year, there'd be 2.4 million jobs created.

Feingold's figures relied on the Congressional Budget Office, and what Feingold wrote on February 10, 2009 was that the ARRA "was expected to create up to 2.4 million jobs in the first year."

Mike Gousha: I know you're a reader of the Wall Street Journal.* They did a story this week on the latest study by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office which said in the first quarter of 2010 the stimulus package had created between 1.3 and 2.8 million jobs. It was more than they expected when they passed the bill, seeming to say that the stimulus had worked. Do you think they're wrong when they say that? This non-partisan budget office?

Ron Johnson: First of all I haven't seen that study. Where's the evidence?

Lo and behold, it's right here on the internets.

Video: Ron Johnson blows his Fox News dog whistles on WISN-12

Mike Gousha's subtle eviscerations are quite entertaining, although it's too bad he didn't ask Ron Johnson what was up with Johnson and his posse's tearing down off the wall the campaign signs of his two political rivals at a recent Republican jamboree in Milwaukee.

Also, "Obamacare" is an "assault on our Freedoms," says Ron Johnson. Johnson claims they don't have our Freedoms in Canada, which is why a fellow rich guy from Newfoundland had no Freedoms to travel to the U.S. for a cardiac procedure and then recuperate comfortably at his Miami condo in a Freedom-ly rich guy fashion.

* Most likely a reader solely of the WSJ's bias-confirming right-wing op-ed pages and not any of the paper's actual reporting.

Open democracy, Ron Johnson-style

'The Senate is not an entry-level job.' ― Erick Erickson

According to today's Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Ron Johnson's most pointed comments were directed at Senator Russ Feingold, saying that when [Feingold] and other senators "come out and start demanding a U.S. pullout and that kind of thing in public, it just undermines what our troops are trying to do."

Said Johnson: "That's not saying if you have real grave concerns as a member of Congress you should not be talking to the administration. It's just extremely harmful to our nation when it's all done in public."

But a few days ago, according to WisPolitics.com, "GOP U.S. Senate candidate Ron Johnson [said] he wants to restore the tradition of Congress declaring war before the military is sent abroad."

So all those committee and subcommittee hearings, to which members of the public are invited to testify and inform Congress, and all those floor debates and votes, they should be held in private?

Just between Ron Johnson and Barack Obama, or maybe just Ron Johnson and one of Obama's underlings? An Obama "czar" or two?

Free and open and public debate in and out of Congress is "extremely harmful to our nation," according to Johnson. That's good to know.

Each House shall keep a Journal of its Proceedings, and from time to time publish the same, excepting such Parts as may in their Judgment require secrecy ... [art. I, sec. 5, cl. 3.]

It sounds as if Ron Johnson wants to turn an exception into a rule. Then again, Ron Johnson did say he found the U.S. Constitution "difficult" to read, after the three or four times he attempted it.

Ron Johnson's tribe of academic super-elites

Three generations of imbeciles are enough. — OWH, Jr.

Remember back in June when the Oshkosh Northwestern reported that candidate for U.S. Senate Ron Johnson invited Charles Murray, the author of The Bell Curve, to town? At the time, Johnson told the paper he was not familiar with Murray's other Social Darwinist views.

This morning the paper reports that Murray's appearance was the culmination of a year-and-a-half of wrangling between Johnson and his colleagues on the Oshkosh Partners in Education Council.

In spite of the other council members' objections, Ron Johnson ended up personally footing the bill for Murray's speaking fee, having found Murray's views of champion academic super-elites* compelling after reading what he's elsewhere claimed is his primary source of information, the Wall Street Journal's right-wing op-ed pages.**

The Northwestern report was composed after delving into "hundreds of e-mails" between Ron Johnson and the education council. So does Ron Johnson still expect anyone to believe he was not familiar with The Bell Curve, Murray's signature Social Darwinist publication?

Whiteman's biotch, please. Obviously Ron Johnson is entitled to his oddball opinions, but in a debate about intelligence, don't insult it.

Not even the children Charles Murray and Ron Johnson want to discourage from attending college are going to buy that bill of goods.

* So much for Scott Walker.

** Those and Fox News's Dick Morris, of course.

Candidate Ron Johnson's oil and (mostly) gas

Item: Millionaire Fox News Republican heavily invested in BP

Campaign manager Juston Johnson said Ron Johnson thought it was inappropriate to focus first on BP's negligence before the spill was capped and a cleanup was under way.

What a load of bollocks.

Because it was none other than candidate Ron Johnson who was announcing "the fact" of BP's negligence last month, based on an article he'd read in the Wall Street Journal. The article said nothing of negligence; it compared BP's and other oil companies' use of two different engineering techniques for undersea drilling. Johnson took the report as fodder for speculation, and leaped to a legal conclusion during, ironically, a colloquy on his reverence for the "rule of law."

Accusing a firm in which you're heavily invested of negligence does not smack of acting in one's rational self-interest. Suspicions about the company's carelessness are among the reasons why its share price lost more than half its value throughout May and June (it's on a rebound as of late, closing the week at 34.05 after sinking to 26.75).

Also during the same discussion candidate Ron Johnson declared BP's voluntary $20 billion escrow fund "not good for America," thus igniting Friday's hubbub over whether Johnson was speaking to cover his assets, which reportedly include up to $325K worth of BP stock.

On the other hand, Johnson's individual stock portfolio is almost entirely blue chip — he owns shares in a number of the Dow Jones 30 industrials: Alcoa, Caterpillar, DuPont, GE (Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, and Keith Olbermann's boss), IBM, Pfizer, P&G* — so it's hardly surprising he's got a whole whack of BP stashed in there too.

Naturally, much political hay is being generated by Johnson's financial disclosure, but what seems more significant are the candidate's incoherent pronouncements, now made even less credible with Johnson's oddball self-renunciation of his finding of BP's negligence.

* As well as Big Tobacco concerns Philip Morris and Altria.

Amusingly, Johnson also owns stock in the Bank of Montreal and Royal Bank, two venerable Canadian financial institutions. Those are solid investments, as the True North socialists have managed the recession far better than has the U.S. economy, and in spite of Ron Johnson's ridiculous attacks on that country's health care system.

A Milwaukee paper's Bizarro World PolitiFact®

So the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's PolitiFact® team has today stepped into the fray over Russ Feingold's teevee ad, "His Own Words."

The ad contrasts Fox News/Republican candidate Ron Johnson's alleged freewheeling Randian marketeer persona with whether Johnson's Oshkosh plastics company, Pacur, ever got a leg up by dint of federal/State/municipal intervention in the economy.

The "His [Ron Johnson's] Own Words" bit is this:

"I have never lobbied for some special treatment or for a government, government payment."

— said Ron Johnson, emphasis his.

The J-S first complains that Johnson was taken out of context:

For instance, the ad creates the false impression Johnson is responding directly to revelations that his business got government help. The question he was answering was whether a Milwaukee-area company deserved tax credits touted by President Obama.

And ... so what of it? When a speaker speaks, "I have never [X]," what difference does the context make? It is the negation of an existential quantifier, as they say in predicate logic: "It is not the case that there was lobbying for special treatment."

All the context in the world can't rescue the statement. It's unequivocal, no matter what inquiry it was in response to.

The J-S is rather bold in its evaluation of the ad's presentation:

There is no question the ad is misleading in its presentation.

But obviously there are plenty of questions, otherwise the J-S wouldn't be performing its review. There are always questions.

Isn't every ad "misleading" to some extent in its presentation? Of course every ad is, because there is necessarily always some missing context. There has to be. Thirty-second advertisements can't possibly deliver the entire universe of potentially relevant information.

The pertinent question is whether the ad is deliberately misleading in its presentation. One may be of that opinion, but there are always a variety of defenses available. WKOW-27 in Madison, which was the source for some of the film clips in the ad, similarly complained.

But that was more WKOW's problem than anyone else's. The Feingold ad is merely presenting the press accounts. All candidates do this, based on the premise that press reports are credibly accurate.

Look at any political candidate's website for myriad examples.

Sure, that may be a dubious premise, but the press is supposedly the professionally trained reporter of facts (notwithstanding the existence of, for example, the Journal-Sentinel's own Patrick McIlheran, who could do with his own PolitiFact® inspection, although in that case the team would be unlikely to get any other work done).

WKOW asked Feingold to "take down the ad," but even WKOW's own counsel acknowledged that the Feingold campaign was within federal copyright law's fair use doctrine. So that was a bit self-defeating.

WKOW never admitted that perhaps it was its own reporting that might have been misleading. Maybe that is the problem here.

As to the gist of the ad, however, it's the J-S that's misleading:

When it comes to describing Johnson's company as getting "government aid," the Feingold ad is correct. Independent experts and the federal government itself label the industrial revenue bonds a government subsidy. So the message about Pacur getting government help is on target.

We've been through this weeks ago,* so it's nice to see the paper finally catching up to a blog. Okay. Now, how about the rail spur?

The $75,000 grant is clearly government aid. And the rail line it helped create clearly has helped Pacur from its earliest days.

Those are the two main items under consideration: The $4M worth of government-facilitated and government-administered industrial revenue bonds which saved Johnson's company hundreds of thousands of dollars in interest payments and the $75,000 grant. And what is the Journal-Sentinel's PolitiFact® conclusion about Feingold's ad?

We rate the statement about government aid Half True.

So the industrial revenue bonds, which Johnson's company got, are government aid. Check: True. And the $75,000 grant is "clearly" government aid. Check: True. Thus, that makes Feingold's statement about Johnson's company getting government aid "Half True"?

Say wha? There are only the two propositions to substantiate. And the PolitiFact® team just got done substantiating both of them.

Which half of them is not true? Even if one accepts that the ad is "misleading" in some way — as any ad is bound to be — how does that detract from the veracity of its core assertions, that Johnson's company benefited from government aid in spite of his "principles"?

If the PolitiFact® mandate is to clear away confusion, it's failed here.

* See, e.g., Ron Johnson: It's not a subsidy; Ron Johnson challenges professor of economics; Dick Leinenkugel's guide to industrial bonds; Feingold has a built-in attorney at WKOW; et peter cetera.

Now Ron Johnson wants BP to drill for free

Ron Johnson would have voted to approve relief from royalty payments on BP's lease in Mississippi Canyon Block 252, where crude oil has been spewing into the Gulf of Mexico for nearly three months, described as the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history.

Republican/Fox News/BP/Onetime-but-since-spurned Tea Party candidate for Senate Ron Johnson is running a teevee ad complaining about how he was totally for oil & gas drilling in the Great Lakes until a couple of days later, when he suddenly became adamantly opposed to it. Now apparently he's angry with himself for saying addlepated things and therefore he's lashing out against Russ Feingold.

Makes sense. If you're a Dick Morris protégé, that is. Which he is.

Another thing Ron Johnson is upset with Russ Feingold about is that Feingold opposed the Texas-driven Energy Policy Act of 2005, which contained tens of billions of dollars worth of subsidies and tax breaks to the hard-done-by oil & gas industry, including relief from paying royalties on deepwater oil drilling leases in the Gulf of Mexico.

No wonder Ron Johnson would have voted with Texas representative and official British Petroleum apologist Joe Barton to relieve British Petroleum of its American public mineral rights obligations: Ron Johnson owns as much as $325K worth of British Petroleum stock.

Perhaps if you're going to lambaste somebody for opposing certain legislation, you might want to take a look and see what's in it.

After all, Ron Johnson has the bigtime political researcher now.

How about a pink slip for Ron Johnson

Recent con law scholarship corner

Ron Johnson opposes their nominations and has not returned "blue slips" on either to the [Senate Judiciary] committee.[*]

You remember Ron Johnson, he's the woefully unqualified Oshkosh millionaire** who read the U.S. Constitution three times in his entire life, and found it difficult to understand. Now he's pronouncing on the qualifications of the president's nominees to the federal judiciary.

I'd like to see a committee of lawyers grill Ron Johnson on his qualifications to assess those qualifications. Even one lawyer.

Frightening, comical (your humble correspondent tends strongly toward the latter, for the sake of his personal sanity), or both.

"We know what needs to be done to try to get out of a deep hole. First you have to start digging." — Ron Johnson

Of course there are no "blue slips" in the Constitution but evidently Ron Johnson has taken it upon himself to avail himself of these "blue slips." I guess that means Ron Johnson reckons there's a right to privacy and a right to have an abortion in the Constitution as well.

Hell, there may even be an individual insurance mandate in there.

* Which members of the president's political party controls.

** With much thanks to federal, State, and local government.