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.

Did professor of law just accuse Feingold of theft?

It's less than clear but he's left few options:

"It really is hard to see this as an honest mistake. Ad agencies and campaigns are lousy with lawyers and no lawyer or agency in business for more than a week and a half would have failed to recognize this issue."

It was a boneheaded mistake, is what it was, not a dishonest one. Some mavericky type decided to play the enormous spread against the National Football League's taking umbrage at the Feingold campaign's use of the three-second clip.

If the professor of law is right that no marginally conscious attorney would have failed to recognize the issue and copyright and fair use concerns were indeed considered, then the decision wasn't a matter of "Let's steal it," it was "Let's see if the NFL fails to object."

Copyright protections are not inviolate and as a matter of fact (and law) the Constitution directs Congress to regulate their limitations.

Esenberg is correct, at least, in that nobody should have seen that deliriously hopeful prophecy as anything other than a caffeine-inspired phantasm. And the chances subsequently that the Feingold campaign would battle the NFL's cease and desist letter — the appearance of which likewise should have been factored into the calculus from the outset as a 100% proven statistical inevitability — are Nil, for a whole host of obvious political and financial reasons.

And why not: They wore ersatz Bears uniforms

What gets me is why the Feingold campaign mandarins, after procuring and assembling a film crew and a troupe of football actors on the Nicolet High School gridiron, didn't deck a couple of them out in faux Minnesota Vikings garb and reenact Randy Moss's infamous this-is-me-showing-you-my-bum scene. There's likely not a single Wisconsinite who wouldn't both recognize and be amused by it.

They could have even mimicked the voiceover: "That's disgusting!"

Then the campaign wouldn't have been forced to edit the offending sequence, and rerun an ad* that just looks ridiculous, especially in light of the recent uproar. I reckon the best thing Feingold can do at this point is to stop running it, bury the thing, and forget about it.

Charlie Sykes's criticism of Russ Feingold's use of NFL footage in his ad is [not] partisan hyperbole.

Yeah right.

* By the way, speaking of being lousy with lawyers, it isn't celebration per se that draws a flag, it's "prolonged, excessive, or premeditated celebration," the rule thanks to Mark Gastineau and the Fun Bunch.

@PolitiFactWisc had best blow that sucker out of the water.

eta: Predictably, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's lemming-like right-wing calumnist Patrick McIlheran has crawled on board with Prof. Esenberg's intimations of lawbreaking aforethought:

[Feingold] got nailed within hours by the NFL for an ad that illicitly used footage and commentary that he didn't have permission to use.

You don't need permission to put to certain prescribed uses copyrighted material in lots of instances, and it doesn't make a difference how many times the NFL repeats its familiar admonition.

The league's protective rights would be every bit as enforceable without the announcement. It just so happens that this particular league is notoriously vigilant over its intellectual property domain and it can afford the required small army of silk-stockinged combatants.

The Feingold camp can't, which is why it was such a dumb move.

Of all people to chide Feingold over this episode, the last should be a newspaperman who apparently spends much of his time copying and pasting copyrighted material onto the virtual pages of the Journal-Sentinel without the copyright holders' "express written permission."

That "illicit" stuff is no more or less protected than is the NFL's.

Johnson misrepresents Feingold Senate vote

Being the first of many misrespresentations to come, undoubtedly.

Not so long ago, Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Dave Westlake served as last-minute understudy for missing GOP rival Ron Johnson at a Madison, Wisconsin Tea Party affair.

Johnson disappeared after his notoriously "disastrous" performance last week, a YouTubed excursion to a deep woods Patriot clubhouse where Johnson dismayed Tea Party sympathizers not only with his inability to address specific Tea concerns, but with his failure to even recognize their most cherished constitutional ideals.

Some were led to wonder: Was he Tea or wasn't he GOP?

Yesterday morning Johnson emerged in the affluent Milwaukee suburb of Brookfield presumably after days of relentless murder-boarding with his new internets research specialist to face Westlake and WisPolitics.com's intrepid presenter Steven Walters.*

U.S. legal system derived from Bible stories

Seizing another opportunity, Westlake went on Full Tea Mode in Brookfield, calling for the abolition of the federal Departments of Education and Energy along with the IRS. He announced that in every Biblical story, one "undeniably" finds a little bit of Constitution, some Declaration of Independence, and a treatise on patent and trademark prosecution, and that the Second Amendment "defines who we are."

He proclaimed the Federal Reserve "a consumer threat," denounced Obama for performing "nothing more than a shakedown" on British Petroleum yachtsman-in-chief Tony Hayward, whose industry's safety record Westlake deemed "impeccable," and demanded that obese, sedentary tobacco smokers accept responsibility for their own poor health and stop insisting everybody else pay to take care of them.

Westlake also spoke emotionally of values and morality and especially moral hazards (to wit, federal unemployment benefits extended for another week or two, and their resultant Devilish temptation of the beneficiary to remain unemployed in perpetuity, in accordance with Tea Party psychology and prophesy).

Mr. Ron Johnson was less than truthful

Candidate Johnson came armed with new quips researched and served up from the deep recesses of the Googles, including one about how Senator Russ Feingold "voted for funding a sanctuary cities [sic]." Which sounds a lot like, "Feingold voted directly in support of something having to do with funding whatever thing it is that makes a sanctuary city a sanctuary city," doesn't it?

Except Johnson's implication is just a bit wide of the mark. Last October, Feingold voted to table (kill) a one-liner nuisance amendment advanced by wingnut Republican Sens. David Vitter and James Inhofe to withhold funding from COPS, a program in place and duly appropriated for since 1994. COPS is devoted to assisting selected local law enforcement engaged in specialized challenges.

For example, combating the social blight and attendant crime of methamphetamine addiction in distressed communities where State or municipal resources are otherwise unavailable.

There wasn't any connection between any particular city's so-called sanctuary ordinance — which discourages municipal employees from participating in immigration investigations except where required by the law — and COPS. Save that connection fabricated inside the roiling medullae oblongatae of Messrs. Vitter and Inhofe.

In fact a number of Republicans joined Sen. Feingold in opposing Vitter and Inhofe's transparent, regressive grandstanding.

Johnson said of immigration, which he claimed "is one of the weakest issues [Feingold's] on," that Feingold "has a zero rating from a group that basically calls for open borders." But wouldn't that be a good thing? Perhaps it will take Johnson a few more days to properly digest all of that newly discovered internets research.

Elena Kagan already "probably disqualified"

In a similar vein, Johnson also asserted that Feingold "voted for partial birth abortion seven times." Obviously nobody votes for "partial birth abortion." But Russ Feingold has certainly voted against placing onerous federal restrictions on women's access to what is and has been for decades — whether Ron Johnson likes it or not — a legal and constitutionally protected right: "the settled law of the land."

Johnson's embedded accusation that supporters of abortion's safe and legal availability are by definition active proponents of infanticide may be the most disingenuous of conservative Republican fallacies.

Among other freshly released Johnson zingers, the candidate determined that Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan** was "probably disqualified" for "actually den[ying] access to military recruiters at Harvard" (another falsehood) and that the very thought of Obama having the authority to appoint federal judges was "depressing."

And he repeated his nonsense about knee replacements in Canada, adding a new twist: that it's not unusual to wait one year to receive a coronary bypass in Germany, which sounds equally preposterous.

WisconsinEye supplies the video.

* Sample Walters inquiry: "Do you support President Obama's move to require BP to set up a $20 million [sic] trust fund for oil spill damage that came ahead of any formal finding of criminal or civil negligence?" Both candidates answered "No" based almost entirely on the response Walters had thoughtfully provided in the question.

** Said Dave Westlake of Elena Kagan: "I don't have a whole lot of confidence in nominee Kagan. She's never served in any capacity similar to what she'd be experiencing on the federal court." But neither has Westlake served in any capacity similar to what he'd be experiencing in the federal legislature. As such, not among the most compelling or tactical objections to Elena Kagan's qualifications.

Feingold in "deep trouble"

Salivates Fred Barnes in Bill Kristol's organ, the Weekly Standard:

Republican businessman Ron Johnson is two points behind (Rasmussen) Democratic Senator Russ Feingold. The tightness of these contests is especially worrisome to Democrats because once seemingly safe incumbents are now in deep trouble.

Rasmussen's is so far the only poll available for the Feingold/Johnson matchup. Nobody's ever heard of Ron Johnson. He has no platform other than "Obamacare is an assault on our Freedoms," whatever that's supposed to mean, and he's pledged to repeal it as his Senate Job One, which is akin to a hellbound snowball's entreaties.

He appeared on Fox & Friends (literally, his most appropriate venue) yesterday to mouth the identical vacuous Tea Party platitudes that WISN-TV's Mike Gousha subtly undermined over the weekend.

And he unreservedly commends Russ Feingold's opposition to one of the most significant and costly pieces of legislation forged by the 111th Congress, the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program.

If the theory is that Wisconsin voters will choose anybody — even an unknown — over the incumbent Feingold, then why did the same pollster show Feingold trouncing the other competing Republican hopefuls Terrence Wall (since withdrawn) and Dave Westlake?

Expect Rasmussen Reports' tiny sample size/wide margin of error* science to achieve outlier status in a hurry, just as several of Rasmussen's other U.S. Senate polls already have.

And somebody please hand Fred Barnes a tissue. Or a box of them, just in case Johnson gets an opportunity to debate Feingold.

Johnson's sense of civic and political responsibility is certainly admirable, but he better start boning up on some substance.

Further reading.

* According to which Johnson is actually leading Feingold.

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.

Russ Feingold's biggest fan: Ron Johnson

For only those most dedicated of masochists, a 30-minute interview with Tea Republican Ron Johnson, the Manhattan-based Fox News Channel's hand-selected "rich guy from Wisconsin" reportedly seeking to challenge U.S. Senator Russ Feingold.

Fast forward past internets "vlogger" Ed Morrissey's nearly equal measure of introductory self-love (the host's host is the aptly-named "Hot Air"); Johnson gets on the blower around the 28:00 mark.

Further to the obligatory "Obamacare is an assault on our Freedoms," Johnson is asked about carbon emissions trading proposals, and specifically a bill currently under consideration in the Senate.

Ron Johnson: As a manufacturer myself who uses electricity, in the Midwest where we use basically fossil fuel-based electricity, we would be put at a huge economic disadvantage to even competitors on the East Coast and certainly competitors globally.

If that sounds familiar:

WisBusiness.com: "I'm not signing onto any bill that rips off Wisconsin," Feingold declared, arguing the bill's mandatory caps on greenhouse gas emissions could put the coal-dependent Badger State at an economic disadvantage compared to other regions and nations.

"Western Wisconsin is particularly strong in being concerned about this because of their reliance on coal," Feingold said of the bill, which has already passed the House. "There is a real possibility ... that it will be unfair to Wisconsin and Wisconsin ratepayers."

In sum: 'Thanks, Senator Feingold, for maintaining vigilance over me and my business' interests. Keep up the good work, just like you did with that other massive federal government undertaking, the TARP.'

Mind you, Johnson thinks air pollution, the reduction of which is the objective of cap and trade plans generally, is a "problem that doesn't exist," a position shared neither by Feingold nor

military officials, including retired admirals and generals, [who] concur with the intelligence community that climate change acts as a threat multiplier for instability and presents significant national security challenges for the United States.

— S.1733

I believe even the most assiduous Randian Tea drinkers* would concede that challenges to national security are of legitimate interest to the federal government. And it's borderline pathological to contend that the deleterious effect of increasingly rapidly burning the contents of the Earth's crust into the atmosphere "doesn't exist."

Next, somebody needs to ask Ron Johnson about that madcap liberal Russ Feingold and the Second Amendment or whether he's on board with those Marxist-Leninist zanies over at the Rutherford Institute.

* See also: Wisconsin's John Galt or 'Who is Ron Johnson?'

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.

@PolitiFactWisc does it again

This thing has gotten ridiculous, as if it hadn't already.

PolitiFactWisc purports to evaluate this claim of Senator Russ Feingold's:

"According to independent analysis, unfair trade deals have resulted in the loss of over 64,000 jobs in Wisconsin."

First, the PolitiFactWisc team independently audits Feingold's source for the figure, and finds it ... dead nuts accurate.

PolitiFactWisc then questions the independence of the source, and finds its independence lacking because its compilers support Senator Feingold's stance on free trade deals (which doesn't make it any less independent or accurate) so the PolitiFactWisc team checks with an alternative source that supports the free trade deals in question.

That source confirms:

Gary Clyde Hufbauer, a Peterson Institute expert, said the data [Feingold uses] is commonly used by researchers as the best available for showing how trade can close factories.

Emphasis added.

Indeed, asserts the PolitiFactWisc team, 64,000 "may vastly understate the number of jobs lost" due to the free trade pacts.

Vastly: enormously. Immensely. Colossally.

Finally, says PolitiFactWisc, "those numbers leave out the other side of the equation — jobs created through the deals."

Yet PolitiFactWisc doesn't cite a single source — independent or otherwise — for any "jobs created through the deals." And for all of this, PolitiFactWisc determines Feingold's claim, "Half True."

Even though the PolitiFactWisc team hasn't the foggiest notion of whether those "jobs created through the deals" would simply be offset by the "vast understatement" of jobs lost represented by the 64,000 figure, and doesn't even bother trying to find out.

So why, exactly, is Senator Feingold's claim "Half True"?

Wisconsin lost over 81,958 manufacturing jobs (or 15.6 percent) during the NAFTA-WTO period (1993-2009), according the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This figure is for TOTAL manufacturing employment, so takes into account both jobs created by exports and jobs displaced by imports, among other factors.

Because it's too conservative?

We (generously) rate PolitiFactWisc's latest entry, "Half Assed."*

Moreover, as both Jay Bullock and Mike Plaisted have correctly pointed out, PolitiFactWisc has lately taken to "evaluating" the claims of various (Republican) candidates that nobody had even challenged.

What on Earth is the point of that?

* We also fault Feingold for using "over" instead of "more than."

Earlier: A Milwaukee paper's Bizarro World PolitiFact®

WisDems take aim at guy who isn't running

24/7/365 campaign cycle broaches Fourth Dimension

Video via Cory Liebmann.

Republicans will say, 'This proves beyond any doubt that Russ Feingold is running scared from Tommy Thompson.' But I don't know about that. Thompson, despite his legendary profile in Wisconsin, is laden with baggage, much of which he's collected since he left the State (literally and figuratively: most significantly, the latter) to saddle up with the fondly remembered G.W. Bush administration.

For example, Secretary of Health and Human Services Thompson was cited by the Union of Concerned Scientists for rejecting a nominee — a Nobel recipient — to a department position because physiologist Torsten Wiesel had signed letters to the editor critical of Bush. (And as conservative Republicans teach nowadays, criticizing the President of the United States, well, that just isn't done in polite society.)

On the other hand it's not completely unreasonable that an individual of Tommy Thompson's entrenched position has long since lost count of how many corporations he's been serving in Washington, D.C.

Wait ... no, that's the same hand.

Feingold has been taunting Thompson ever since the "nonpartisan" (spare me) Wisconsin Policy Research Institute released "polling data" showing Feingold trailing significantly in a hypothetical match-up. WPRI, whose principals are closely connected to Thompson's career and fortunes, could scarcely contain its glee, and issued a statement for which they were "scolded" by UW Prof. Ken Goldstein, the academic-on-contract who'd collected the underlying numbers.

Comes now the result of a Rasmussen tally, showing Thompson and Feingold in a dead heat. Further, adjusting for Rasmussen's demonstrated historical propensity to skew conservative and Republican, that makes Feingold actually a polling favorite to beat not only Thompson, but also Feingold's two current (allegedly) non-hypothetical challengers Terrence Wall and Dave Westlake.

Thompson "hasn't ruled out" — as the saying goes — challenging Feingold so the WisDems campaign isn't so much one of fear but rather simply preparedness. Besides, they've got money to spend (good for the economy) and since neither T. Wall nor D. Westlake are serious candidates, they've got to spend it on something.

Bill Lueders gets up on right side of bed

Why in the world is Bill Lueders complaining about Russ Feingold's reaction to Fox News/Republican/Tea candidate Ron Johnson's wanting to treat firearms "like we license cars and stuff"?

More importantly, how about Ron Johnson acknowledging that his retooled stance — following on the heels and toes of podiatric extraction — as practically a Second Amendment absolutist wouldn't even be possible without the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision in McDonald v. Chicago, a result that Senator Feingold had urged, in a writing submitted to and considered affirmatively by that very Court.

Feingold has a record on those questions and of course he's going to — and should — reflect it off of Johnson's ill-conceived meanderings.

"I believe it's an essential American freedom," says Ron Johnson, suddenly. "Fundamental right" is the constitutional term of art impressed upon the Court by Feingold and which the Court accepted.

Senator Feingold and his fellow amici argued that the right to keep and bear arms predates the drafting of the Second Amendment itself, which should tickle even the devoutest natural law aficionados.

"The people of Wisconsin can trust me not to play politics with their Constitutional Rights while protecting our right to keep and bear arms," Johnson announces, now. But Wisconsinites were unable even to assert capital-C Constitutional rights until McDonald v. Chicago.

The irony is strong with this one and Russ Feingold needs to make much more of it. If only for Ron Johnson's edification, as the latter's provided every indication that it went sailing right over his head.

Bill Lueders's "morons" are free to make of that what they will, but the majority non-morons should give it some serious consideration.

The Constitution is worth it. Ask any of the real Tea folks.

Feingold quells the mob

At the United States Senator from Wisconsin Russ Feingold's listening session Monday in Ozaukee County, a question from the floor.

Robert: On your judicial committee that you're on, how come you supported Louis Butler as a representative on the court for southwestern Wisconsin [Western District map]? We the State of Wisconsin voted him off the bench twice [sic] and now you're putting him to a position we can't get him off of [you can, but it's hard].

[Applause]

Feingold: Judge Butler is a distinguished judge. He did a wonderful job in Milwaukee ...

[Hoots, catcalls, grunts, etc.]

Feingold: I understand. Now you do know, of course, that the people of this country, when we made this Constitution, which many people [here] have referred to, specifically chose not to have federal judges elected. Now why is that? They decided they wanted a different kind of judiciary that wasn't based on elections. When Louis Butler lost his seat on the Supreme Court — 51-49 — he was not repudiated. He lost to another guy. That doesn't mean he should never be a judge. That doesn't mean he should go to jail or something. The guy barely lost.

[Audience members: But he lost!]

Feingold: But that doesn't mean ... and, by the way, he won in the Western District of Wisconsin. In the area that he would be the judge for, he won.

[Silence]

Feingold: So I don't think that should be the rule. We had a commission rank him first among all the people that applied, so I don't think it's wrong at all.

[Silence]

Then somebody spotted Glenn Grothman skulking around.

Wisconsin Tea Party movement "swells"

According to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

It's "exploding in size," as it "flex[es] some muscles."

Wouldn't you need some numbers to support those claims? I can't locate any in this story, apart from the "80 tea party groups," many of which likely fit inside a breakfast nook. The Journal-Sentinel advises that "movement leaders [got] together this weekend" in Marshfield, but doesn't even bother to find out how many.

And this is some front page, above-the-fold stuff.

The story does contain one item of significance:

The Democrat seeking re-election in the Senate race, Russ Feingold, has cast votes against bank bailouts and the Patriot Act that match up with tea party views, his campaign says.

"We're going to fight for every voter in the state," said John Kraus, Feingold's senior campaign strategist. "We have a good record on many of the issues these folks care about."

Guns, too, their issue numero uno. I've been saying this for awhile.

Moreover, Russ Feingold has long been an independent critic of the U.S. conventional military response to global terrorism. As the Afghanistan mission continues to go south and the Tea Party cohort inevitably directs its ire against commander Obama's management, it may well be more sympathetic to Sen. Feingold's strategic proposals.

He ought to talk to them about that.

Russ Feingold certainly should court those voters, and can do so legitimately. Anybody who says Feingold is a straight liberal Democrat party-line politician either hasn't been paying attention or else is so brainwashed by AM radio bollocks they're barely worth speaking to.

There are a number of "Tea Party" candidates in Wisconsin (actually they're just Republicans counting on the "explosion" of supporters). I bet you never, ever heard of any of them, and probably never will.*

Face it, the impending demise of the two-party system is a fantasy.

In any event, Wisconsin Republicans want millionaires in Congress.

Plus ça change, ain'a?

* God bless 'em, though; they've got the courage and the convictions.

NRA to license guns like they do with cars and stuff

Item: NRA endorses Ron Johnson

Laughable.

It obviously wasn't for either his understanding of the Second Amendment or the abject dishonesty of his presentations, when Ron Johnson can say things like this with an apparently straight face:

Now in the McDonald case they [the U.S. Supreme Court] ruled that that individual right applies to the States. This is a pretty clear difference between myself and Senator Feingold.

No, this is pretty clearly the nadir of double-speaking absurdity.

It bears repeating — again — that Senator Feingold signed on to a Friend of the Court brief in McDonald, in support of the proposition that that individual right applies to the States. The friends prevailed. So the pretty clear difference between Ron Johnson and Senator Feingold is that had it not been for Senator Feingold and others on the record, Ron Johnson wouldn't even have a McDonald to praise.

Meanwhile Ron Johnson is on the YouTubes saying he only decided to read the Constitution after visiting with the oracle, Dick Morris. To say nothing of the candidate's pontificating — incorrectly — on two vital decisions of the Supreme Court he's evidently not read at all.*

And the NRA falls for all of this incoherent pandering. Sad.

* Ron Johnson's Second Amendment fantasies.

Feingold and the War Logs

While I am disappointed it did not pass, I am encouraged by the support my Afghanistan timetable amendment received, particularly by most of the Senate Democratic leadership. This amendment would have given the American people the information they deserve on when our massive, open-ended military operation in Afghanistan will end. Now, however, this supplemental will add some $30 billion more to the nearly $300 billion we’ve already spent in Afghanistan, with no end in sight. This cannot go on and is yet another reason why a flexible timetable for drawing down our troops in Afghanistan is necessary and appropriate.

— Sen. Russ Feingold, May 27, 2010

Seems he's been on to something. For quite some time.

Senator Feingold has been highly skeptical of Pakistani assurances that its intelligence services have not been collaborating with anti-American insurgents inside Afghanistan. And now it turns out that Sen. Feingold's skepticism has been remarkably well placed.

Gutter Press

What else to make of a newspaper columnist deploying accusations that not only is Russ Feingold "OK with infanticide" but endorsing the even more scurrilous claim that Feingold is in fact "Pro-infanticide."*

Both are definitely new lows for the local organ. Award-winning.

They're lucky Russ Feingold is a public figure.

* Where this charge originates, a sympathetic penitent remarks that Marquette University Law School's inviting Feingold to conduct an upper-level course in U.S. Senate procedure has caused Milwaukee archbishop Jerome Listecki to "truly endure the sufferings of Christ."

But for the nails and the crown of thorns, we hope.

Feingold and Yemen

Item: Earlier Flight May Have Been Dry Run for Plotters

One of the harsher critics of US counterterrorism policy is US Sen. Russell Feingold (D) of Wisconsin, who is as critical of Obama's Afghanistan policy as he was of President Bush's Iraq policy. Senator Feingold has said since shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks that prolonged military operations in Islamic countries cause the US to become bogged down and lose sight of extremist threats popping up elsewhere.

In a Dec. 2 letter to Obama explaining his opposition to the president's Afghanistan troop build-up, Feingold said, "Al Qaeda and its affiliates are located in Yemen, Somalia, North Africa, and other places around the world."

"Rather than investing so many of our resources in Afghanistan, we should pursue a comprehensive, global counterterrorism strategy," he said.

CSM, 01/05/2010

On the other hand, you have Ron Johnson, who believes making such statements is inappropriate to the role of a United States Senator.

Johnson's structural views of government apparently have something to do with the Framers of the Constitution not being accountants.

Feingold will best Gableman, predicts Johnson

Said Ron Johnson campaign manager Juston Johnson: "Based on Feingold's comments so far we fully expect him to run the dirtiest campaign in Wisconsin history."

Funny. The only thing Russ Feingold needs to do — which is what he has been doing — is read Ron Johnson's own words right back to him. Johnson's the one who said he wants to go get all the oil right now, including in Lake Michigan and Charles Krauthammer's backyard.

"The tea party people have made it clear they agree with some of the positions I’ve taken," Feingold said, adding that Johnson "doesn’t match up with some of their views. He's trying to use the label of the tea party, but under closer scrutiny, they're going to realize they don't match up."

That's not dirty, that's smart. And true.

Feingold too

Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin asserted Wednesday that Roland Burris should be seated in the Senate, becoming the second Senate Democrat to publicly break from party leaders on the controversial appointment.

In an interview, Feingold said Democratic arguments that Burris should be denied a seat because he was appointed by the scandal-tainted Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich are weak.

"There's a growing sense that there is a pretty flimsy basis to deny what is clearly a legal appointment," said Feingold. "Despite the controversy, we can't go down the road of having essentially a few subjective considerations to decide who gets seated. That would be an affront to States and their laws."

Burris prepares latest mausoleum engraving

Statement of Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle

Dear Attorney General Van Hollen:

I have received your request for permission to file an action to contest national health insurance reform. I am denying that request. This law is an act of Congress, signed by the President of the United States. The lawsuit you suggest is a frivolous and political attempt to thwart the actions of Congress and the law of the country.

Dude, harsh.

This may not be one of them, but presidents have signed plenty of unconstitutional acts of Congress before.

While the Republican J.B. Van Hollen by all appearances is pandering, any right-wing political warmth enveloping him as a result of his request to the governor is just convenient, delicious gravy. Because underneath is a perfectly defensible legal decision to go after the constitutionality of the so-called individual mandate.

In his official role, AG Van Hollen has a duty to assess federal legislation and its potential effect on Wisconsin sovereignty. I don't expect the present challenge to be successful, but far, far brighter bulbs than I have found its premises to be strongly compelling.

[By the way, stop calling them "Tenthers." The attempt to equate reasonable attention to the language of the Constitution with some crazy lawyer in California's ravings is frankly offensive. Also, conjuring the strains of Ashokan Farewell isn't much help either.]

At a listening session in hostile territory recently (Washington or Waukesha County, I forget which), U.S. Senator Russ Feingold, who supported the federal bill, was challenged on this very point.

Feingold replied that he couldn't say with any assuredness whether the individual mandate was constitutional or not, and suggested that it was the role of the courts to make that determination.

And not just as a general principle, but in this case.

Moreover, the courts cannot undertake to reach that determination until somebody asks them to, another point Feingold stressed in his response to the listening session queries.

Senator Feingold likely won't join Florida Attorney General Bob McCollum's lawsuit,* but I bet he doesn't find the question entirely without serious merit and purely political.

* As opposed to the one he joined seeking the extension of individual Second Amendment guarantees to the citizens of Wisconsin.

Ron Johnson is complaining about something again

Oshkosh plastics millionaire Ron Johnson, this "sorry excuse for a senator," has called "to ensure that all meetings of the supercommittee are noticed to the public, that the public be allowed to attend meetings, and that the meetings be broadcast live." That's the same Ron Johnson who was outraged that Russ Feingold might engage in foreign policy debate, in public, in Congress, as if then-Senator Feingold would PowerPoint troop movements, like Johnson's Fox News chum Geraldo.

The polystyrene mogul vowed to conduct such communications only in private with the President, some of whose constitutional powers, incidentally, Ron Johnson actually believes he lawfully possesses.

Johnson, who earned the nickname "Sunspots" after lecturing Wisconsinites on Northern European geology of the Mesozoic Era, was reportedly both shocked and appalled to learn that topics in U.S. foreign policy were being discussed on the Senate floor by federal lawmakers.

In particular, Feingold's practical and philosophical objections to the American military presence in Afghanistan which, last I checked, was an item of some concern to a large number of citizens and a matter of national security, which conservatives of Johnson's far-right ilk will otherwise tell you is the main reason* Congress exists in the first place.

One of the more prominent items on the super committee's agenda is defense spending, which stands to sustain a half a trillion dollars worth of cuts. So obviously there is to be considerable discussion, especially by those who oppose slashing the military's budget, of specific allocations and projects, which in turn reveal glimpses on the Pentagon's global strategy. Yet Johnson would have us believe that such public revelations would be of less interest to overseas adversaries than Russ Feingold's entering a New York Times editorial into the Congressional Record.

Ron Johnson doesn't really think things through very far, does he.

* If not the sole reason.