Sharron Angle wants Tea candidate off ballot

More righteous candidate is committed to democratic principles
The conversation reveals Sharron Angle almost desperate ...

Angle represents a breed of non-politician "citizen legislators" bent on removing the career politicians from office, or so we are told. One way to do that, apparently, is strong-arming fellow citizens into staying away from participating in their representative democracy.

Liberals tried to convince Ralph Nader to step aside from the 2000 presidential ballot on the grounds he would siphon off Al Gore votes,* but I don't recall Al Gore himself making the direct appeal to Nader.

Speaking of conservatives obstructing democracy, here's Scott Walker back in the day doing his damnedest to keep David Duke off the 1992 Republican presidential primary ballot in Wisconsin:

Walker couldn't have done a very convincing job, because all of the dozen or so telephone calls moderator Joe Smith fields are in favor of Duke's being free to exercise his democratic rights, regardless of what the callers think of Duke's views.

Link: Clarence Thomas was a Black Panther

Evidently Scott Walker has been a career politician since birth. And of course the anti-career politician Ron Johnson hates career politicians so much that he gave Scott Walker ten thousand dollars.

And these are the "principled" candidates.

* Turned out it was actually Pat Buchanan.

Republican Sharron Angle's unfair use doctrine

Asked how much Angle could be liable for, or how much copyright holder Righthaven LLC might demand, Elizabeth Rader, an intellectual property attorney at the law firm of Alston & Bird responded: "How much money does she have?"

Politico

Get me rewrite

Jumbo Dart:

What a way for the Journal-Sentinel to introduce the new district attorney for Calumet County, by reproducing an AP brief that leads with "once the victim of sexual assault" solely because her predecessor was the disgraced Ken Kratz, who resigned. Why should Kratz's exploits color the professional narrative of his successor?

They shouldn't. And it obviously wouldn't have been mentioned — certainly not in the lead — had the vacancy been caused by anyone but Kratz. Making that unwarranted connection is a real cheap angle.

At least, save it for a more sensitive treatment in a longer profile.

eta 1: Worse still, the Journal Broadcasting Group's TMJ-4 actually headlined the miniscule item, "Assault Victim to Replace Ken Kratz."

For crying out loud, it's a person, not a statistic.

eta 2: Much more of the person (but not enough less of Kratz).

eta 3: New DA provided the angle at a press conference: "Dietz says she took the allegations against Kratz very personally because she works to protect those victims and find justice for them. She was horrified by Kratz's behavior, and felt applying for the job was her calling." That sheds a far different light. WRN's reporting treats the matter least sensationally. Lesson: Read the longest accounts first.

Nut-right round-up (Tehran edition)

It was bad enough when Obama was just making statements on Iran, when he should have been leading the groovy counterrevolution in a nuclear chariot — but when he got some ice cream with his daughters, that's when all hell broke loose.

Roy Edroso (includes Wisconsin angle).

"Bush Derangement Syndrome" is a common cold by comparison.

Reports the Grauniad:

In spite of Obama's restrained comments so far, the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, blamed the US, as well as Britain, for the crisis and called on them to end their interference.

Guess who this undermines inside Iran. Correct: Not Obama.

See, e.g., John S. McCain — "But I am the bombardier!"

Freud slipped here

"We're running behind, I'm sorry." — aide to Sharron Angle

I thought that wasn't supposed to be possible.

Scott Walker gives gift of inadvertent comedy

Early Xmas for left-liberal Quesosphere

He's hired an old Sharron Angle hand to be his new PR flack

And she looks pretty crazed too.

Local paper slices on local angle

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel is featuring an above-the-fold (online) report of Tiger Woods's return to golf without once mentioning the 2010 PGA Championship at Whistling Straits. The item refers to every other major tournament (the Masters, the U.S. Open, and the British Open) except the one right here in Wisconsin.

Herb Kohler would not be pleased.

Mike Huckabee is 100% pro-criminal

On his radio show today, Huckabee again addressed the slayings of four police officers,* placing blame both with his own State's system and the government of Washington.

Sure, blame everybody else. However, if the justice system sentenced Maurice Clemmons to 97 years and you released him after 11, then I'm not sure how you get to implicate the justice system.

Because it sounds to me like the justice system got this one right.

Judge Marion Humphrey, Pulaski County, Arkansas:
We're a country that says we believe in mercy. This is the Advent season. And one of the things about our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, is that He promoted mercy. And that is a part of the makeup of some of us who serve on the benches, who serve on parole boards, who serve in governors' offices.

Of course. It also explains why U.S. prisons are jammed with non-violent drug offenders and why simple possession (sans any intent to sell) of eight grams of marijuana is a felony. Moreover, 'It shows he is a conservative with compassion,' as some approving observers are saying of Mike Huckabee's parole decisions.

If Huckabee's presidential aspirations are in tatters, he could always move to Ozaukee County and take a run at the State Supreme Court. He should get a lot of support from Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce. They were always big on the "pro-criminal" angle.

* BurnabyDude wrote:
The suspect was armed and dangerous + he didn't stop on command. As far as I see it, just dessert — and good riddance too. No chance of being commuted by an opportunist governor or being paroled by some idiotic board.

Typical bleeding heart, left-coast socialist Canadian.

Local paper misses tort reform angle

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel editorial board member Ernst-Ulrich Franzen published a silly comment on this fake story a week after it was debunked but whiffed an opportunity to cry out for tort reform:

"They can't mess with our religion," the boy's father told the Boston Globe. "They owe us a small lump sum for this."

Recreational litigation threatened in crucifixion uproar

The blackmail risk and the lecturer

Two of my local favorites, Michael Horne and the Brew City Brawler, react to Milwaukee Magazine editor Bruce Murphy's deft defense of the mag's lately contentious profile of police chief Edward Flynn.

It turns out the chief and his starry-eyed admirer-scribe ended up bumping uglies but according to Murphy, that consummation was adequately removed in time from the editorial completion of the profile so that any appearance of bias is purely coincidental.

I never thought there was much news value to the private trysting and arguably, neither did Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel investigative reporter Daniel Bice, who draped the sordid details on the hook of "journalistic ethics," suggesting in his original report that the affair was ongoing during the production of the 5,400-word feature.

But now it appears that that premise has been blown up.

Nevertheless, Bruce Murphy asks readers whether he should expunge the freelance author from his Rolodex while others ponder her future as an academic (at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she "lectures" aspiring young writers in, inter alia, "ethics," which is a lot of a farce on its face, thus precluding much further inquiry).

Why McBride didn't just suck it up and straighten Bice out in advance of his publishing the story is a mystery, given her alleged area of expertise. It's true she would have had to admit the affair, but she must have known it was going to get revealed eventually somehow, since it's been common knowledge in certain circles for weeks.

It also would have presented the perfect opportunity to "lecture" Bice on his own apprehension of journalistic ethics, to the extent that McBride's personal pursuits are entirely her own business and certainly none of Mr. Dan Bice's, let alone that of his fan base.

It's one thing to dissect and criticize somebody's political opinions or tenuous and stilted grasp of facts, but the right to personal privacy is sacrosanct in my book, and in a perfect world would be in everyone's.

If Daniel Bice had had the timeline before last Friday, he'd have had to at the very least reconsider his angle, and possibly even pass on the story altogether, or else shifted its focus instead onto the chief of police as opposed to McBride and Milwaukee Magazine.

You'd think a university "lecturer" in journalism might anticipate the deleterious effects of failing to return the dogged Bice's phone calls.

Because it works something like this: When the national readership of the Huffington Post, the New York Times, and the rest scans the headlines — maybe even a paragraph or two, if you're really lucky — and notices that Milwaukee Magazine was reportedly implicated in a sexytime ethics scandal, ex post facto damage control is never, ever enough to correct or even mitigate the initial impression made.

Now that is Journalism 101. And just maybe, it's why at least one of Mr. Murphy's stable of freelancers has warranted the second look.

Heckuva job on Brownie

A Fighting Bob guest blogger, Juris Prudence, offers another enlightening angle on the State v. Brown episode discussed below.

To wit, a bit of procedural history:

What hasn’t been pointed out yet, however, is that the [former Republican Governor Scott] McCallum administration, which Gableman was trying to curry favor with, was the same McCallum administration that was to blame for the decision in State v. Brown. * * *

"On December 30, 2002, the department (of health and family services) filed the updated report, supporting supervised release. The report stated that Brown 'ha[d] completed sufficient treatment at (Sand Ridge) to reduce his risk for sexually violent behavior to the point that he has become an appropriate subject for supervised release.'"

After this filing by the McCallum DHFS, the state then didn’t call a single psychologist to oppose McCallum’s DHFS’s request for release. The result was, not surprisingly, that the state failed to provide enough admissible evidence — so it failed to prove its case. You can’t blame the referee for calling the game for the defendant when the state doesn’t show up to play — or worse, where the administration throws the game.

Why isn’t Gableman attacking McCallum? Of course! Because Gableman gave thousands of dollars to McCallum, held fundraisers for McCallum, and then McCallum gave Gableman his job.

To which I would only add — or inquire, as it were — who was it that argued on behalf of the State of Wisconsin to deny Richard A. Brown his petition for supervised release, before both the Court of Appeals and the State Supreme Court?

None other than Peggy A. Lautenschlauger, Attorney General under current Governor Jim Doyle. Evidently Gableman's benefactors in the McCallum administration didn't leave her much to work with. Although she managed a win in the Court of Appeals, it was all over by the top court (thanks to Justice Prosser's deciding vote).

Chaos, death and tears

Followed a link from learned counsel Mike Plaisted's riff this morning. Bob Novak typed this bit about some "unnamed" evangelical Christian nutcases who see a Barack Obama presidency in terms of Biblical prophecy, as in, a plague to bring about the End of Times prophecy.

Of course these whackfruits are planted wide and deep, from John McCain's religious pal John Hagee to the hyperventilating lunatics Rexella and Jack Van Impe, for whom the fanciful fiery death of all humanity in a river of blood is like a raging overdose of Levitra.

This is not news but Novakula's ghoulish angle is that they're somehow connected to good old Mike Huckabee of Hope, AR, favored in some circles as McCain's vice-presidential running mate.

And, obviously, Huckabee says it's bollocks. But they're out there:

My father in law voted to re-elect Bush, because he believed he was put on this Earth by God to hasten the Apocalypse, and he wanted this to happen so that he "wouldn't miss it," and get the chance to be assumed into heaven without being defiled by the grave. — Posted by fontapa

Now I know Republicans used to keep black people from voting by putting quasi-academic tests in their way at the polling stations, so is there a way we can set up some in situ diagnostic psychiatry?

Not only is it disturbing that but 49% of registered voters deliver the presidential mandate (and then only 49% of those, in a recent celebrated instance), 19% helps you lie and buy your way to a seat on a State Supreme Court, and 5% referendums you another Wal-Mart thrown up in Austin, TX. But what's truly frightening is fontapa's father-in-law being among the few that actually do get out and vote.

I'm practically convinced that with 100% voter turn-out in this greatest of all democracies, the only place you'd ever see a conservative Republican politician again is in a museum. Or maybe the End of Times really is coming, and this is our plague.

Strict constructionists in the news

Risibly shameless hypocrite watch:

Tea Party-backed Alaska Senate candidate Joe Miller (R) thinks federal unemployment insurance is constitutionally questionable. But it turns out that his wife benefited from it in the early part of the decade — after she left a job working for him.

Yes, but in this case the Republican's "principles" apply better to you. Are there seriously still people left who haven't figured that out yet?

O'Donnell, Angle, Miller, Johnson ... quite the impressive field.

'I'm going to Washington DC to make sure all these government perqs I've enjoyed ... to make sure they're not available to anybody else.'

Public Service Alert — Have you seen this missing fellow?

Illustration: Thomas Fuchs.

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!

Dishonest J-S editorial criticizes dishonest ads

File under: Breitblartiana

Xoff saved us all a lot of time on this one.

Nevertheless, let's drill down, so to speak.

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel editorial reads:

WisPolitics asked, "Do you want to open up more of the United States — the continental United States — to drilling. I mean, would you support drilling like in the Great Lakes for example, if there was oil found there, or using more exploration in Alaska, in ANWR, those kinds of things?"

So far so good. Here's where things go awry:

Johnson said in part, "We have to be realistic and recognize that fact, and I think we have to get the oil where it is but we need to do it responsibly."

Recognize what fact? The Journal-Sentinel doesn't say. Ron Johnson asserts two facts, both of which the J-S deliberately omits. This is his immediate response, including the preface that the J-S excised:

RON JOHNSON: Y'know, the bottom line is that we are an oil-based economy. We're really, there's nothing we're going to do to get off of that for many, many years. So I mean we just have to, we have to be realistic and recognize that fact and I think we have to get the oil where it is ...*

1) This are an oil-based economy.
2) It will be for many years.

Therefore, says Ron Johnson, "we have to get the oil where it is," including in the Great Lakes. That is what he was specifically asked, and that is what he was specifically answering. That he wants to do it "responsibly" doesn't change the fact that Johnson says we have to "get the oil where it is," including the Great Lakes.**

Conclude the J-S editorialists:

So, he doesn't respond directly to the Great Lakes portion of the question, instead answering generally.

Rubbish.

And, as Xoff correctly points out, it wasn't until nearly a month later — after Russ Feingold's teevee ad appeared — that Ron Johnson went hiking the flip-flop trail. Johnson said a number of politically silly things at various events in June before someone told him to clam up.

That's why he's more recently gone Sharron Angle.

* 100610Johnson.mp3. The exchange is at 13:23.

** There is oil there. See "Should Canada Continue Drilling for Oil and Gas Under the Great Lakes?" by S. Nazhmetdinova (.pdf; 41 pgs.).

Ron Johnson's "screaming 20-somethings"

That's who's running his campaign for U.S. Senate, it says here.

May God, in His infinite mercy, help us all.

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

eta: Candidate Ron Johnson flees from local reporters

This is known as giving them the Sharron Angle.