Here we go again

"Conservative" judge vs. public defender

Last time out the former party got himself into an ethics imbroglio which half the court that heard the case contends is unresolved still.

Press Release: Stephens for Justice Committee

Related: Retiring WMC CEO kills irony dead

You know who else was a strong leader?

Dane for Senate.

h/t Mary Spicuzza

Ron Johnson fails to provide health care coverage

Asserts the Great State of Wisconsin:

It is important to know which companies [e.g., Pacur] fail to provide coverage for some or all of their employees and instead rely on the government to cover these costs.

— Karen Timberlake, Dept. of Health Services Secretary

Yesterday Scott Suder, a Republican member of the Wisconsin Assembly, threw a conniption when he learned the State's Department of Health Services publishes partial summaries of the number of employees (and their dependents) at Wisconsin companies who are recipients of the medical assistance program known as BadgerCare.

Claiming to be unconnected with the Ron Johnson for Senate campaign, Rep. Suder fired off a press release charging everyone from several local reporters to U.S. Senator Russ Feingold to Governor Jim Doyle with unlawful shenanigans. "Russ Feingold is so desperate that it appears Jim Doyle has to break the law in order to disparage an Oshkosh businessman," Suder said, and then, upping the ante, "This time they have gone too far by violating the law."

But it might appear that Rep. Suder's tactic has backfired.

This morning the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports that Rep. Suder has already received a reply from Karen Timberlake, the department secretary, from whom Suder demanded an explanation.

Timberlake's response could well drive Suder even wilder:

In her letter to Suder, Timberlake said the department "provides such information because it is important for taxpayers to know which companies fail to provide coverage for some or all of their employees and instead rely on the government to cover these costs."

And among those would be none other than Fox News/Republican candidate Ron Johnson, who is "relying on the government" to cover the cost of his own employees' health care benefits, the same Ron Johnson who has repeatedly called government-administered health insurance "the greatest assault on [his] Freedom in [his] lifetime."*

Suder pointed to a DHS administrative rule that refers to "safeguarded information" relating to BadgerCare that may not be distributed as including "past or present employment."

However, the administrative restriction applies to "individual applicant[s] or recipient[s]," none of whom are individually named in any of the summary documents published at the department's website or by the various news outlets that ran the original story (Lisa Kaiser at the Shepherd Express was the first, after which the Journal-Sentinel and the Associated Press picked up and went with it).

Perhaps Rep. Suder could successfully argue that releasing the employment information itself reveals the identities of individual applicants or recipients, in which case the Department of Health Services has been violating the administrative rule for several years.

Maybe we'll find out soon enough whether he'll try or not. It's not hard to read Timberlake's reply as at least mildly politically charged and if Suder was that excitable yesterday, he may be fit to be tied today.

* In fact he claims it — and Dick Morris — as his primary motivation.

Quote of the day

I'm tempted to be That Guy who says Feingold is more likely to make the shocking comeback than Sestak. — Nate Silver

Except it wouldn't be as shocking as Wisconsin electing a cipher.

Ron Johnson's Stasi manhandles affable scamp

Right in view of the American flag!

Related: Joe Miller's Tijuana border patrol

Suder demands to know who uploaded Excel files

It's a Ron Johnson campaign outrage!

State legislator wants answers and he wants them NOW:

State Rep. Scott Suder (R-Abbotsford) said Monday that the State's decision to release the number of those enrolled in BadgerCare to the Journal Sentinel "compromised the integrity of the information."

Um ...

Wisconsin Department of Health Services Employer Reports

h/t Lisa Kaiser.

The Tail-Gunner flourishes yet

No, it's not Mike Gableman this time

Our flag is a symbol for all the true Americans — not the Communists, socialists, fascists, nor others who are opposed to the free-enterprise system.

LETTER: Feingold opposed flag-burning [amendment]*

As a matter of fact, Senator Feingold's position was in accord with Justice Antonin Scalia's. So is Scalia a Communist, a socialist, a fascist, or some "other" opposed to the free-enterprise system?

* As did Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the noted Marxist-Leninist whose cash money free enterprise champion Ron Johnson loves.

Divisive Ron Johnson now with added petulance

Julie Leschke, a former Oshkosh Chamber of Commerce employee who left the Chamber to work for the Johnson campaign, contacted at least two people in the Oshkosh Area School District to ask them to write a rebuttal letter to association president Len Herricks' letter endorsing Feingold.

They declined.

Fox News's Ron Johnson can't even get along with a tiny education committee. How does he think he's going to get along in the Senate?

Earlier: Ron Johnson hearts the Social Darwinist, Charles Murray

Burris says farewell

He'll especially miss Senator Ralph Feinberg.*

Otherwise Burris's recollections are entirely accurate: Senators Feinstein and Feingold were indeed the first two to buck the Democratic opposition (following this blog, of course).

* cf. "Get me that clown, Renchburg." — Richard Nixon

Visit the Ronald Burris archives-mausoleum.

Liberals in denial, continued

Van Hollen also was wrong to seek to join other attorneys general in a lawsuit over the individual mandate in the new federal health care law. Van Hollen claims the legislation "was a clear case of federal overreach" for requiring citizens to buy health insurance. We'd say it's Van Hollen who is overreaching.

— Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel editorial.

The truth is, Van Hollen's been spot on the money so far. And the AG can expect more vindication forthcoming from Virginia by year's end.

HCR is in trouble, and not from Ron Johnson's silly cries of "repeal." Congress may regulate commerce, but it seems doubtful Congress may coerce into existence the commerce it's empowered to regulate.

And if the federales' taxing power argument keeps failing as hard as it did in Florida, then that coercion into existence is all it's got left.

It may be necessary, but is it proper? It's got to be both.

Ron Johnson, RepubliCorp employee of the month

RoJo wins coveted award at Milwaukee's posh University Club

"For his outstanding service in promoting the corporate agenda."

Photoset calculated to frighten Juan Williams

Reza Aslan is wearing what appear to be "transitions lenses."

RoJo's bean-counting skills are not the sharpest

But he advertises those as his primary qualification.*

Ron Johnson overlooked a few tens of thousands of beans here too.

* Others include "man whose personal Freedoms are under assault."

Speaking of obscene

Whitman has spent $141.6 million

Mitt Romney 2012, the gauntlet has been thrown down.

Another NPR reporter under investigation

Turns out he's been moonlighting as Ed Anger.

Clarence Thomas "was obsessed with porn"

Could have been an academic-juridical interest:

I shall not today attempt further to define the Long Dong Silver. But I know it when I see it. — Jacobellis v. Ohio

Egads.

Also: Who has put pubic hair on my Koch?

Earlier: Zany prank call referred to FBI

@clarencethomas

La Crosse priest sexual assault trial starts Monday

Remember this guy:

Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki said he had no choice but to side with the priest accused of assaulting a woman the priest was counseling because there was no corroborating evidence against him.

And this:

A western Wisconsin diocese and Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki are being criticized for not reporting to law enforcement sexual assault allegations against a visiting priest who was later arrested.

A 47-year-old West Salem woman told the Diocese of La Crosse in September that the Rev. Edmund Donkor-Baine allegedly touched her breasts and placed her hand on his pants over his genitals while counseling her for a divorce, according to a sheriff's department report.

Listecki wrote her a letter dated Dec. 22 stating that her complaint was the first the diocese received against the priest and that Donkor-Baine, 47, denied the allegations. The letter also said the diocese had not been able to conclusively determine what happened.

Trial had been postponed.

During Listecki's time in La Crosse the diocese had the highest "clearance rate" of priests accused of childhood sexual assaults in the nation. The national average of accused priests being "cleared" by the diocese and being allowed to return to their parishes is 12%. At the La Crosse diocese, the rate is a whopping 64%.

Uppity Wisconsin.

Not to put too fine a point on it

Screw Juan Williams.

I toggled past Bill O'Reilly for a few moments this evening, and there was Juan Williams, crying like a baby over his new $2m contract.

And also from the department of not to put too fine a point on it:

Hypocrite.

Witches were once at least honest, albeit evil

"I asked [Coons] where in the Constitution is the phrase 'separation of church and state,'" O'Donnell explained. "He said the First Amendment."

That's a lie.

"Well I think [the First Amendment] says exactly what it says, that the government will not create, will not dictate, that every American has to believe a certain way ... "

Dear God. Has Althouse made something up to defend this too?

You can't blame people for being ignorant — we're all ignorant to some degree about a whole lot of things. But when you're this ignorant and you act as if you know it all and you're presenting yourself as eligible for high federal office, it becomes an issue.

Norbert accords Feingold a Nate Silver bump

The incipient rebound?

Silver weights Norbert with more oomph than the 9/29 Rasmussen.

And, Silver's "538 regression" model shows Feingold ahead by 4.5.

Ron Johnson can't be relishing the prospect of a 90-minute encounter with Russ Feingold and the formidable Mike Gousha tomorrow night.

Mike Gousha doesn't let slide much evasion or many non-answers, both of which are Ron Johnson's stocks-in-trade (necessarily).

Ron Johnson is not a details man

Details, you know, like homeless military veterans.

Wisconsin's sexytime district attorneys

This guy, this guy, and this guy.

He had the blessing of the district attorney there, Duffy spokeswoman Wendy Riemann said of the 2001 filming.

Guess who that was: Mike Gableman, who is not terribly sexy.

Wisconsin law prof defends Delaware smug doofus

Inexplicably popular blogger Ann Althouse and the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's haplessly accidental funnyman Patrick McIlheran come to the rescue of Tea Party Republican Christine O'Donnell's embarrassing performance* at a candidates debate in Delaware the other day.

Looky here what Althouse has to say, the award-winning McIlheran beams: "She's a famous blogging lawyer." What Althouse has to say is that she doesn't have a "verbatim transcript" of the eight-minute exchange, that all the press reports are terrible, but forges ahead with her "analysis" nonetheless, by relying on ... a press report.

Prof. Althouse commends O'Donnell because, Prof. Althouse claims, she was focusing on constitutional text during the tête-à-tête with Democrat Chris Coons, whereas Coons was speaking about broader principles of interpretation. Except no, O'Donnell was not.

What follows are the relevant portions of the "verbatim transcript," which took all of about 15 minutes to prepare.

The clip begins with O'Donnell delivering a moronic lecture to Coons on teaching creationism in public schools, about which O'Donnell is wrong on every single count. Eventually, O'Donnell announces:

O'Donnell (2:21):
The reason we're in the mess we're in is because our so-called leaders in Washington no longer view the indispensable principles of our founding as truly that: indispensable. We're supposed to have limited government, low taxes ... [crosstalk]

We'll leave it to Prof. Althouse to locate either "limited government" or "low taxes" in the text of the Constitution.

Coons (2:36):
And one of those indispensable principles is the separation of church and state.

At this point, the moderator tries to move on to the next question.

O'Donnell (interrupting) (2:48):
Uh, wha, where in the Constitution is separation of church and state?

[Laughter, appropriate expressions of shock and horror]

She doesn't say anything about text; they're still on the "indispensable principles of our founding." Then the moderator does move to another question, during which O'Donnell has to ask him what is in the 14th Amendment.

Moderator (3:59):
The 14th Amendment defines citizenship.

O'Donnell (4:02):
Oh.

And again, she refers to "principles." Later, the two candidates return to the First Amendment's Establishment Clause.

Coons knows exactly what O'Donnell is up to, that at some point she is probably going to attempt to pose the thoroughly idiotic question, 'Where are the exact words "separation of church and state" in the Constitution.' Idiotic because everyone knows they are not there, and that it was a Jeffersonian paraphrase famously repeated in 1947 by Hugo Black in Everson v. Board of Education, and not because the Court was basing its decision — which favored the party that was a religious establishment, incidentally — on Jefferson's letter to the Baptists. Black mentioned it in passing because he understood it to be one of those "indispensable principles of our founding."

Which is what O'Donnell had brought up in the first place and what Coons was continuing the discussion on for several minutes.

Coons (5:42):
I also think you've just heard, in the answers from my opponent, and in her attempt at saying, 'Where is the separation of church and state in the Constitution,' reveals her fundamental misunderstanding of what our Constitution is, how it is amended and how it evolved. The First Amendment — the First Amendment — establishes the separation, the fact that the federal government shall not establish any religion, and decisional law by the Supreme Court over many, many decades ...

O'Donnell (interrupting again) (6:09):
The First Amendment does?

Coons (6:11):
... clarifes and enshrines, that there is a separation of church and state that our courts and our laws must respect. Back to Roe versus Wade ...

O'Donnell (interrupting again) (6:18):
So you're telling me that the separation of church and state, the phrase 'the separation of church and state,' is found in the First Amendment?

There is O'Donnell finally saying "the phrase," while Coons is still speaking. But he never even suggested that "the phrase" appears in the Constitution, and indeed it isn't even clear that he heard O'Donnell saying "the phrase," because she's talking over him. Again.

Coons (6:23):
... and the Griswold question earlier, the zone of privacy is something that the Supreme Court interpreted the Bill of Rights and several of those amendments to create. It is important for us in modern times to apply the Constitution, in my view, as it exists today, and as it's been interpreted by our Justices. And if there are settled pieces of constitutional law, like the separation of church and state, like the individual right to reproductive freedom that Roe v. Wade represents, that we've lived with and have lived under for decades, in my view it is important to know whether you have on my side a candidate who believes and supports those things and on the other side a candidate who is both unfamiliar ...

O'Donnell (interrupting again) (7:06):
Let me just clarify, you're telling me that the separation of church of state is found in the First Amendment.

Coons (7:12):
Government shall make no establishment of religion.

This horrifies Prof. Althouse as it's not exactly a verbatim rehearsal of the First Amendment, but it works well enough as an expression of the spirit of the case law as it stands today, which is what Coons just got done talking about. But O'Donnell still isn't satisfied.

O'Donnell (7:16):
That's in the First Amendment.

[More laughter]

Yes. Did you not just catch Coons's example of Griswold, or what.

That "indispensable principle" is found in the First Amendment. Likewise, those other "indispensable principles of our founders," that corporations are persons, and that cash money is free speech.

(One might reasonably assume Jefferson counts as a "founder," if not a "framer," although the framer of the First Amendment, James Madison, had been a close and like-minded colleague of Jefferson's on these very issues of religious establishment and separation when both were State legislators in their native Virginia previously. Which is to say, if Hugo Black was after an authoritative contemporary voice, he could've done a hell of a lot worse than Thomas Jefferson.)

Which is what Coons had been saying all along, and he is correct, if inartful. And Althouse is wrong: O'Donnell was never talking about "text" apart from one fleeting moment that Coons probably didn't even hear, as it was practically mumbled, while he was talking.

That is what the video reveals — what Althouse's press reports don't.

Watch and listen.

* Embarrassing to view. O'Donnell is incapable of embarrassment.

eta: Moar witches.

Johnson's employees have access to Johnson's plan

But only if they can afford it:

"If they choose to get health care at Pacur, we provide that to them. We do require people to contribute to part of that cost. Depending on the particular situation, it it's less costly for them to take Badger Care, they have that Freeeeedom." — Ron Johnson

So they become sort of honorary Canadians, eh?

By the way, shouldn't Don Walker give some love to Lisa Kaiser?

See also: Geddy Lee, being over 50, is S.O.L. for hip replacement

The only job Ron Johnson has a plan to create

Is his own, as a career politician.

And even that plan wasn't his own plan, it was Dick Morris'.

See also: The assault on Ron Johnson's employees' Freedoms

And: Green Bay paper cited for hunting a deer out of season

Ginny Thomas's "prank" call referred to FBI

To the extent Justice Souter was a stealth nominee, I am Bigfoot.

— Clarence Thomas, 09/10/91

"The Clarence I know was certainly capable not only of doing the things that Anita Hill said he did, but it would be totally consistent with the way he lived his personal life then," said Lillian McEwen, who dated Thomas from 1979 through the mid-1980s and is writing a book.

This wacky stunt should sell a few more.

"Religiosity" contributed to apology demand

Clarence Thomas told the U.S. Senate in 1991 that he'd never once "debated the contents" of Roe v. Wade, even though it was decided while he was in law school. The claim was greeted with disbelief.

"The case that I remember being discussed most during law school was Griswold," Thomas said. As among the most significant contents of Roe v. Wade is Griswold, the denial is awfully hard to swallow.

Thomas performed a lot of backpedaling away from many previously enunciated radical views of the law and his confirmation vote was so close (52-48) that it's not inconceivable some of that support derived from sympathy for what Thomas called his "high-tech lynching."

So perhaps the couple should be grateful to Anita Hill.

Related: Ginny Thomas is pretty out there with the wing-nuts

And: Three Things to Do When Clarence Thomas's Wife Calls You

Milwaukee judge ponders Voting Rights Act

Item: Wisconsin felon disenfranchisement challenged

Here's one sympathetic ear:

It is plain to anyone reading the Voting Rights Act that it applies to all "voting qualification[s]." And it is equally plain that [New York Election Law] § 5-106 disqualifies a group of people from voting. These two propositions should constitute the entirety of our analysis. Section 2 of the Act by its unambiguous terms subjects felony disenfranchisement and all other voting qualifications to its coverage.

The duty of a judge is to follow the law, not to question its plain terms. I do not believe that Congress wishes us to disregard the plain language of any statute or to invent exceptions to the statutes it has created. The majority's "wealth of persuasive evidence" that Congress intended felony disenfranchisement laws to be immune from scrutiny under § 2 of the Act includes not a single legislator actually saying so. But even if Congress had doubts about the wisdom of subjecting felony disenfranchisement laws to the results test of § 2, I trust that Congress would prefer to make any needed changes itself, rather than have courts do so for it.

— Sonia Sotomayor

What self-respecting strict constructionist could take issue with that?

Hayden v. Pataki, 449 F.3d 305 (2d Cir. 2006).

Feingold supporters trumpet St. Norbert poll

As well they should, but I wouldn't get too excited about one result from a sample size of 402 with a margin of error of +/- 5%.*

If it turns out to signal a reversal of the recent trending in Ron Johnson's favor, then excitement would be appropriately in order.

As more voters begin to pay attention to the election they should justifiably be inclined to perceive Ron Johnson as a double-talking charlatan, something a few of us noticed as far back as May when the Fox News candidate, having just recently dismounted a Tea Party podium where he'd been shouting about evil liberals clamping down on free speech, ungraciously tore down the campaign posters of his Republican primary rivals from the wall at the WISGOP convention.

Here's one such elector.

* Several of the so-called national pundits have already written Senator Feingold off, but I wouldn't trust any of them either.

Bruce Murphy acts surprised

At a Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel stem cell story:

This is balanced reporting? You get a scientist on one side and a nonscientist and polemical advocate on the other side to make a claim to the contrary?

I think Mr. Murphy is too sophisticated an observer of the press not to recognize this as a typical example of reporting on science, where Young Earth creationists are elevated in expertise commensurate to research biologists, and where reporters allow Ron Johnson to get away unchallenged with comments such as, "I certainly do not believe this is settled science and some pretty eminent scientists have come to my defense on this one," as he told journalists on October 8.

The "pretty eminent scientists" to whom candidate Ron Johnson refers came to his alleged defense in a factually inaccurate letter published in late August by none other than the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and include a notorious Tea Party barker and yet another who "claims to be an expert in 'dowsing,' the practice of finding water, metals, gemstones etc. through the use of a Y-shaped twig."

And, perhaps best of them all, this unlucky fellow:

George Taylor — Very rarely right about anything.

Pretty eminent scientists, you say. Not exactly. In fact a couple of the letter to the editor's signatories are not scientists at all.

One teaches business marketing — at a college in Australia. Which, come to think of it, does sound a lot like what might pass for a pretty eminent scientist in Ron Johnson's Fox News fantasy world.

Apart from the occasional misbegotten result of reporters attempting to "show both sides" of some controversy, surely they have the necessary tools to explode this fatuous statement of Ron Johnson's.

Another qualified U.S. Senator

I thought they covered this in fifth grade.

"When Coons responded that the First Amendment bars Congress from making laws respecting the establishment of religion, O'Donnell asked: 'You're telling me that's in the First Amendment?'"

"She seemed genuinely surprised." — AP

O'Donnell couldn't remember what's in the 14th Amendment at all.

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.

Joe Miller's Tijuana border patrol

"If East Germany could, we could." — Joe Miller (Update 7)*


Source.

* Except the wall was to keep the Germans in, not the Mexicans out.

Conway to demand GOP opponent's chest X-ray

And Prince Albert in a can
"Rand Paul keeps Christ in his heart."* — KYSEN political ad

I actually don't doubt the implication of the [Jack Conway] ad, namely that Rand Paul harbors a private contempt for Christianity. He's a devotee of Ayn Rand,** who is a fundamentally anti-Christian thinker.

— Jonathan Chait

That's putting it mildly. More to the point: Anti-Christ.

Nevertheless, Chait condemns Conway's ad because it "comes perilously close to saying that non-belief in Christianity is a disqualification for public office," which is an "illiberal" technique in politicking. Perhaps, but running as a Democrat in Kentucky these days calls for behaving in some respects like a Republican, and Republicans are notorious for these sorts of character attacks.

Maybe this little episode will teach them a lesson (not bloody likely).

More importantly, Jack Conway effectively rattled the living bejaysus out of Rand Paul. If that was the idea — and surely it was — it could scarcely have been more successful.

The current slew of GOP "citizen legislators" has about two weeks to keep from bursting into full-bore crazy. Can they handle it?

* Calling PolitiFact.

** We have a couple of those here too.

GOPer goon squad's business license was expired

Quite the operation this character is running.

"Polls suggest that voters have grown less fond of Mr. Miller."

So the country hasn't completely lost its mind ... yet.

New campaign slogan:
M-U-R-K-O: Close enough to discern voter intent

Goon Squad

Euthyphron Johnson

On corrupting the youth of Oshkosh.

Ron Johnson favors unreasonable searches

Who consented to all these Soldiers in my peacetime bedroom?

"Our courts have created the right of privacy out of thin air."

— Fox News candidate Ron Johnson*

Apparently some "assaults on Freedom" are perfectly acceptable, just so long as they're an assault on somebody else's Freedoms.

* Scroll to the bottom for the rest of Ron Johnson's paranoiac rant. Don't Wisconsinites want to put the ghost of McCarthy behind them?

PolitiFactWisc: Words don't matter after all

According to PolitiFactWisc:*

[Planned Parenthood's] lobbying arm says in a direct mail piece that Scott Walker "tried to pass a law to allow pharmacists to block women’s access to birth control." That bill might have made it more difficult for some women to get contraceptives at some pharmacies, depending on who was on duty. But words matter — the possible narrowing of access to birth control in some cases isn’t the same as blocking it in all cases.

We rate the claim as Barely True.

Except PP never said "blocking it in all cases" and in any event:

block, vb — Synonyms: IMPEDE, HINDER, OBSTRUCT [M-W]

Scott Walker "tried to pass a law to allow pharmacists to impede women's access to birth control." True.

Scott Walker "tried to pass a law to allow pharmacists to hinder women’s access to birth control." True.

Scott Walker "tried to pass a law to allow pharmacists to obstruct women’s access to birth control." True.

All true.

And this is not the first time PolitiFactWisc has deliberately tampered with the language of the claim it was evaluating.

Jill Bader, [communications director] for Republican Scott Walker’s gubernatorial campaign, said it was "completely false" that the bill had anything to do with birth control.

Now that is pure B.S. What did it have to do with, Nicorette?

* Elsewhere, @PolitiFactWisc claims to have "debunked" PP.

Not even barely.

False imprisonment or shopkeeper's privilege?

Reporter handcuffed pilfering answers from AK GOP candidate

Related: The Library of Congress, recent acquisitions

Lolbertarian's agua con Buddha

As the attorney general ... I'm always amused to get a lecture on the law from a self-certified ophthalmologist.

Touchy fella, that Rand Paul.

FedSoc not even trying to conceal bias anymore

Scholar will harangue the faithful Thursday

Under its previous name, the Judicial Confirmation Network worked for the confirmation of President George W. Bush's nominees for federal judicial seats. After Barack Obama was elected, the group changed its name to Judicial Crisis Network and focuses more on blocking current nominees.

Admission is $20, 25% discount for clergypersons*

* Includes all-you-can-carry chocolate brownies.

Earlier: Federalist Society vs. observed reality

SOTU address too tempting for excitable Alito

Justice courts treason by not jumping around and applauding

Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections.

— Obama, 01/27/10

That's not true, said Alito.

The continuing adventures of Reince Priebus

Couldn't [WISGOP Chairman] Priebus and Co. find an article to cite that doesn't contradict the narrative they are pushing?

Via Pretty Important.

Well it is this Reince Priebus:

It's disgusting ... It's offensive to the people of Wisconsin. I hope Russ Feingold has an explanation as to why he thinks Obama ought not to be executed ... My guess is Ron Johnson would believe Obama should be executed and he oughta be treated as a war criminal.

Poor sod's a little confused.

The only other people who are that confused are the old folks on social security the cynical Priebus & Co. are using as political pawns.

We don't need no re-education*

Johnson mocked by even his fellow anarcho-capitalists

* Camps, or what?

Picked the wrong day to be a sexting DA

Ouf. The triple whammy.

Allegedly leveraging the pardon power can't be good either.

Liberals in denial

Professor Timothy Jost of Washington and Lee University stressed that already the judge has thrown out the plaintiff's claim that the mandate is an unconstitutional tax (the judge ruled that it's not a tax at all) ...

TPM

That was a defense of the individual mandate that the court threw out, and a pretty significant one at that. I like this headline too:

Parts of healthcare suit may proceed — UPI

Understatement of the year.

And you can barely even locate the story at the New York Times.

Court suggests ways to avoid individual mandate

Leave the country or die:

Those who fall under the individual mandate either comply with it, or they are penalized. It is not based on an activity that they make the choice to undertake. Rather, it is based solely on citizenship and on being alive.

State of Florida v. DHHS (.pdf; 65 pgs.)

The court utterly rejected the federal government's argument* that the individual mandate is a tax in furtherance of the general welfare rather than an exercise of Congress's interstate commerce power.

"If [the individual mandate] is to be sustained," the district court declared today, "it must be sustained as a penalty imposed in aid of an enumerated power, to wit, the Commerce Clause power."

That won't be easy, given that the law seeks to regulate inactivity.

Somewhere, J.B. Van Hollen is gloating.

* Which the court essentially accused the feds of disingenuously cobbling together after the fact, as this here blog had predicted.

eta: "Based on the reporting we've done, it looks like the Commerce Clause argument is the best shot the [plaintiff] attorneys general have — but it was still considered a long shot." — David Kurtz, J.D.

It was? By whom? Not by anybody I know.

Suddenly scientific Sensenbrenner

C'mon 'N Ride It (The Train) (h/t Rich in retail)

Item: F. James goes full Greenpeace obstructionist

Okay, but only if he subpoenas the Lord of Monckton to testify.

Yes ... Wisconsin has had it to here with career politicans.

In a far better world than this

Rich Whitey draws 2% of vote

And speaking of Rich Whiteys ...

Something to look forward to

Jeffrey Dahmer in Heaven.

Related: Mahatma Gandhi in Hell.

@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®