Priebus: Please stop talking about Ron Johnson

For real, stop it youse guys!

After all, Ron Johnson (R-Qaqortoq) is only the WISGOP's presumptive Establishment Choice as candidate for U.S. Senate.*

WISGOP CHAIRMAN REINCE PRIEBUS: People in Wisconsin are sick and tired of ... career politicians like [indentured Republicans Scott Walker and F. James Sensenbrenner and Mitch McConnell and ...] ...

Watch the whole thing, it's kind of sad. The WISGOP owns Ron Johnson now, so Reince Priebus and the rest of its teevee spokesmodels had better come to grips with his parade of inanities.

Indeed, things are getting so bad lately for the WISGOP's fair-haired boy that even WISGOP Chairman Reince Priebus has taken to campaigning for Democratic Senator Russ Feingold:

WISGOP CHAIRMAN REINCE PRIEBUS: [Democrats] know that the real issue is we don't want to axe thousands of jobs chasing after carbon and cap'n tax and chase jobs out of Wisconsin over a theory that is unproven [sic].

Huh. Via WisBusiness dot com, 09/08/09:

"I'm not signing onto any [cap and trade] bill that rips off Wisconsin," Senator 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.

WISGOP teevee spokesmodels FTW.

* Dick Morris, concurring.

Wisconsin Senator Dave Hansen: He lives!

Hansen "survives," sez Politico dot com. Gimme a break.

survive, v., continue to live in spite of an accident or ordeal.

There was an accident, alright, in that the WISGOP's only other relatively viable candidate couldn't scrounge up a measly 400 signatures to get on the ballot. And there was an ordeal, alright, in that the candidate the WISGOP did field was rather unique, except it's the WISGOP that's enduring the ordeal of being represented by its candidates' uniqueness.

Seriously, Politico, Dave Hansen won nearly 70% of the vote in a Senate district comprising three Assembly districts, each of which went to Republicans in the "Tea Party" of November 2010. In fact one of those Assembly districts belongs to John Nygren, the fellow who couldn't raise 400 signatures (or 399, which he could have if he signed his own name).

David VanderLeest, the unique candidate that the WISGOP put against Hansen, received 5,000 fewer votes than the number of signatures that the WISGOP collected to force last night's election in the first place.

That seems pretty unique too. What happened to the other 5,000?

Gone back to Utah?

"I don't think it tells us too much about the big issues in the recalls — collective bargaining and senators leaving the State," said St. Norbert College political scientist David G. Wegge.

To the contrary, it says quite a lot, considering yesterday's general election was directly inspired by Dave Hansen's decision to leave the State in order to draw public attention to the Fitz Van Walker regime's hitherto unadvertised plan to crush the right to collective bargaining.

Instead, Prof. Wegge informs us, "it was much more about a mismatch." The embedded assumption, it appears, is that Hansen v. Nygren would have been less of a mismatch, which is probably true. But it's not as if some extraneous set of circumstances or Acts of God prevented John Nygren from participating to the extent political scientists might be in a better position to evaluate substantively. It's that John Nygren himself couldn't muster enough WISGOP support to challenge Hansen. Sheesh.

Federal court reminds WISGOP who's in charge

"It's just plain confusing," says lawmaker of law he made.

Excerpted from last Friday's federal court order in Baldus v. Brennan,* a challenge to the constitutionality of Wisconsin Republicans' proposed electoral redistricting plan, a nakedly partisan scheme to cement Republican majorities in the State legislature for decades hence:

The Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution makes the laws of the United States superior to the laws of the individual states. U.S. CONST. ART. VI, cl. 2. As a result, Wisconsin simply cannot strip litigants of their ability to seek redress under federal statutes, in federal courts, for violations of the federal Constitution. To do so would hold the laws of the state as superior to the laws of the United States.

Now the WISGOP wants to rejigger its redistricting bill because its concluding sentence, "This act first applies ... with the 2012 general election," has proven an inconvenience to the WISGOP's ability to defend its functionaries against impending recall elections, which would most likely take place before the 2012 general election next November.

But by attempting to make the act's application immediate, the WISGOP runs afoul of the federal court's admonition, and the WISGOP's success in doing so would have the effect of interfering with the litigants' ability to seek the aforementioned redress. Or that's what the petition for federal injunction should argue, if the WISGOP makes its contemplated move.

* Brennan et al are members of the State Government Accountability Board, but its case is being represented by the Department of Justice.

(And don't miss the warning footnote at the bottom of page 7.)

Alberta Darling: Wrong on the boner pills

Electile dysfunction.

Chris Liebenthal is documenting Alberta Darling's bad week(s):

Wisconsin Senate Republican Alberta Darling "misspoke" regarding the timing of her departure from the Board of Directors of Planned Parenthood. Darling had claimed she left the board before she was elected to the State Assembly in 1990. Turns out that she was there for a full five years after being elected.

D'oh!

And it must be noted again that the WISGOP is so desperate to hang on to Alberta Darling's 8th District Senate seat that it's shifted all of its southern liberal enclaves into an adjacent district, where Senator Lena Taylor presides over a Democratic lock, and pushed its northern borders further deeper into Glenn Grothman-land. That is, if Democratic challenger Rep. Sandy Pasch topples Alberta Darling on Tuesday, it will be exceedingly difficult for Pasch to defend her incumbency in 2012.

Furthermore it wouldn't surprise me in the least — and I have heard this concern voiced by more than a couple of voters — if the WISGOP means to discourage electoral participation by those southernmost Democrats because if Pasch does win on Tuesday, she won't even be those voters' representative in the Senate once the redistricting plan takes effect.

The WISGOP being nothing if not endlessly devious and power-Viagra'd.

It would be just one additional WISGOP voter suppression technique.

Your WISGOP lawyers in the news

On Friday, an attorney for former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler sent WISGOP attorney Michael Dean a letter accusing him of libel* and asking him to retract some of his statements. On Monday, Dean in a letter acknowledged he got some facts wrong, including what case Butler discussed with former Governor Jim Doyle's judicial selection committee.

Well done, you WISGOP lawyers. You cover yourselves in glory. It's about time Butler went after their racket. They're fortunate he's a gentleman.

Very much unlike the unethical judge who took his place.

* That the WISGOP lawyer Michael Dean's "patently false [assertions] ... may constitute libel" is not, strictly speaking, an accusation of libel.

eta: Here's Dean's reply. He blames his failure to verify his patently false assertions of fact on "a computer drive failure" and his hours otherwise spent on commuting from Waukesha County to Madison. Compelling stuff, in the apparent absence of your proverbial homework-hungry dog.

IOW, sorry I'm full of bullshit but at least I got the bullshit there on time.

Classic. Some lame excuses are far, far better left unproffered.

Fitzgeralds try foisting civics lesson on Wisconsin

Because evidently they simply presume we're all compleat idiots:

It's disappointing that a Dane County judge wants to keep interjecting herself into the legislative process with no regard to the state constitution. Her action today again flies in the face of the separation of powers between the three branches of government. — Assembly speaker Jeff Fitzgerald (R-WISGOP)

It's always amusing when right-wing ideologues accuse our judges of ignoring the law. Fitzgerald has no basis for this ridiculous assertion.

If anything "flies in the face" of separation of powers doctrine, it's the Open Meetings Law, crafted and approved by the Wisconsin Assembly, the very legislative body over which Jeff Fitzgerald now presides, and which Judge Sumi faithfully followed in both its letter and its spirit.

(Indeed the OML's letter explicitly describes its constitutional spirit.)

Judge Sumi's reasoning is a textbook demonstration of what are under less inconvenient circumstances for conservatives the latter's very own articulated principles of modest construction and judicial restraint.

What up bruh

Then there's Jeff Fitzgerald's big bruh broham Scott Fitzgerald, WISGOP leader of another State legislative body, the Wisconsin Senate:

There's still a much larger separation-of-powers issue: whether one Madison judge can stand in the way of the other two democratically elected branches of government. The Supreme Court is going to have the ultimate ruling, and they're still scheduled to hear the issue on June 6. This overdue reform is still a critical part of balancing Wisconsin's budget.

A couple of things. In Wisconsin, the judiciary is also a democratically elected branch of government (and Judge Maryann Sumi — like, for example, Justice David Prosser — has been elected twice*). And the Wisconsin Supreme Court is not scheduled to "hear the issue" on June 6.

The Supreme Court is only scheduled on June 6 to hear arguments as to whether or not it should decide to "hear the issue." There has been no appeal filed, as has been widely reported, and the Supreme Court has not even accepted Scott Walker's notorious Republican building maintenance supervisor Mike Huebsch's desperate petition for a writ.

And if it is the case that Fitz Van Walker's union-busting provisions of law are indeed "a critical part of balancing Wisconsin's budget," then not only were those provisions passed unlawfully according to constitutional and statutory open meetings requirements, they were also passed unlawfully according to Article VIII of the State constitution, which requires a three-fifths quorum of State Senators** in order to pass "any law which ... discharges or commutes a claim or demand of the state."

Hench-pariahs

Scott Fitzgerald did not have such a quorum when he had passed the provisions of law during a twilight meeting for which he gave only one hour and fifty seven minutes public notice, provisions of law designed to discharge collective bargaining demands of the State to the express end of, as the horse's mouth itself puts it, "balancing Wisconsin's budget."

In other words, even if the State Supreme Court complied with Governor Scott Walker's Department of Justice lawyers' demand that Judge Sumi's decision be vacated, 2011 Wisconsin Act 10 would likely be immediately enjoined by another court on other constitutional "fiscal bill" grounds.

But the reality of the matter is, Scott Walker and his henchpeople in the Wisconsin legislature are inexorably making themselves into pariahs even among their own partisan colleagues, and they can no longer count on the support of the latter to pass their union-busting provisions lawfully, otherwise they would have done it months ago, as early as March 10.

Hence the various desperate flailings of Huebsch, J.B. Van Hollen, et al.

* Thrice if you consider the recent decount attempt.

** And by the end of this summer it's highly probable the Fitz Van Walker regime's cohort of dependable partisans will be diminished considerably, as two or three incumbent Republican State Senators stand a pretty good chance of getting knocked off in recall elections. A recall election, incidentally, is precisely how Scott Walker first gained political power in his prior incarnation as Milwaukee County Executive. But naturally, as recall elections now pose a serious danger to Republican control of the State Senate, they're all of a sudden a really bad idea, says the WISGOP.

(Even as the WISGOP undertakes recalls against several Democrats.)

"Prosser, J., did not participate."

[Dec. 2]

UPDATE 1: Justice Prosser is ill.
UPDATE 2: The petition is withdrawn.

Unstated whether 2 follows directly from 1, but it was among the "issues raised" in the Supreme Court of Wisconsin's November 30 order. You'd expect the withdrawal to come about on account of the substantive issues raised, but this is primarily about political power for these folks.

And they most likely don't want to roll the dice on a 3-3 split. Which may give some indication as to their confidence in their legal argument. Keep that in mind if and when they get around to re-filing their petition. They still have three in the bag but they don't want to try and persuade Justice Crooks (who may well be the most reasonable one of the bunch).

UPDATE 3: '[Law] specifically precludes this procedural manipulation.'

Ya gotta love this stuff. I mean, it's Republicans making a complete mockery of judicial process, but you have to keep your sense of humor.

UPDATE 4: This from the plaintiffs in the federal redistricting action.

[/Dec. 2]
__________________________________

Wonder how come.*

I get the heebie jeebies when this court starts asking about jurisdiction.

And why even bother asking. They just make it up any/way.

* By the way this is the lawsuit where a group of Republican Teactivists are suing the State Government Accountability Board, on a theory that the GAB actually sat down and read the law drafted by those same lawyers who are representing the Republican Teactivists in the present case, passed by both Republican-controlled legislative houses and signed by Republican Governor Scott Walker. In other words, reading the law and repeating it back to legislative clerks is now a cause of action in the State of Wisconsin. Sounds facetious, but I'm afraid that's accurate.

It's as though the GAB was set up so the suit could be filed because what the WISGOPers are attacking is in fact their own recently enacted law.

In a word, scapegoating.

Because WISGOP v. WISGOP sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? Yet that's exactly what the Republicans, through their silk stocking attorneys, are up to with this: suing themselves. And they've effectively forced the State Government Accountability Board into the position of "adversary."

I wonder if they can sue themselves for ineffective assistance of counsel, because they shelled out hundreds of thousands in fees for, inter alia, this one gigantic boner they're trying to have rectified by judicial fiat.

The GAB's interpretation is not even a close call. It's plain meaning.

Face it, this gang is terrified at losing the Senate. One or two of these Senate recalls are more important than knocking off the Desperado.

Moreover if the Republican Teactivists' theory is correct, then the recall elections that were held last summer were held in "unconstitutionally malapportioned" districts as well. Although the petitioners have not identified at what point in time the current electoral districts became "unconstitutionally malapportioned," it clearly would have been before last summer, because unconstitutional malapportionment was precisely the evil that legislative Republicans undertook to remedy last winter.

So if Republicans are crowing about Democratic "failure" in contesting those districts — and they are — then what harms are a couple more contests in "unconstitutionally malapportioned" districts going to cause?

That's for the next round of questions, I guess.

Memorandum in Support of Petition (Nov. 21)
Supreme Court Order (Nov. 30)

WISGOP confirms everything Bill Cronon said

"No effort to obscure the political motivations behind it."

An intriguing read (as is the article that riled up the WISGOP).

eta: Also Jay Bullock's concluding observation here is spot on.

And: WISGOP can't even spell the man's name:

I worried for a while that my New York Times op-ed on "Wisconsin's Radical Break" might have gone too far in drawing a carefully limited parallel between the current tactics of the GOP in Wisconsin and those of Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s ... but since the Republican Party seems intent on offering evidence to support that comparison, I guess I should just let their words and actions speak for themselves.

Quite so, Tail Gunner Mike Joe. If the shoe fits.

A shorter WISGOP

Ladies and gentlemen, your WISGOP:

Mark Jefferson, the Republican Party's executive director, says that he had never heard of UW Prof. William Cronon before.

Yet in a classic combination of paranoia and ignorance, the WISGOP mandarin was convinced Cronon was directing a vast left-wing cabal.

Hilarious. Thanks for all your great work, David Horowitz.*

* I have heard of him before.

Wisconsin GOP — An instructive juxtaposition

Reports Nate Silver: Republican Governors are Leaving Voters Behind.

Meantime, notes Keesha Gaskins, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice, the WISGOP is busy repealing language in the State statutes that recognizes their "obligation imposed by their constitutional oath of office to represent the interests of the citizens who elected them and all of the other citizens of the state of Wisconsin." Emphasis added.

The latter repeal is apparently in defense of the WISGOP's ludicrously partisan redistricting plan, which those soon-to-be-repealed "other citizens" had but a few days to examine, while the WISGOP's battalion of silk-stockinged attorneys labored over the plan for months, and which plan takes effect for an entire decade. I don't understand how anyone can not be appalled by the Fitz Van Walker regime's brazen arrogance.

Sex offender splits from WISGOP candidate's home

"I had no way of knowing."

WISGOP candidate Jonathan Steitz said he could not have known his tenant had a record as a sex offender because the man was a minor when the offense occurred and the records are sealed.

That may be the case in Wisconsin, but in Minnesota if the offender was 16 and if the offense was felony-grade, then the court's records are available for public inspection. Mr. Steitz, who is an attorney, shouldn't just assume that court records laws are equivalent from State to State.

I thought it was kind of a joke but then I heard about it on WisEye and asked about it and he's well known for going to fish fries and things like that. — WISGOP candidate Jonathan Steitz

Hello? In Wisconsin, that's like mocking the guy for being a Packers fan.

Or loving his mom and her apple pie.

Also: WI Senate = Massive pay cut?

Fake Democrats quintuplets separated at birth

Move over, Elzire Dionne

Source.

They're not Democrats, they're Republicans, all of them. Republicans had the fakes added to tomorrow's Democratic primary ballot, as the sixth fake Isaac Weix admitted, purely to waste public time and public money:

"I ran to push back the general election," he said. "Period."

County and municipal election clerks estimate that the six Republican fakes will require $428,000 in additional public expenditures. By comparison, the Associated Press estimated the cost of the recent Statewide* Supreme Court election recount at around $500,000.

As is predictably typical, the hypocrites cried bloody murder over the latter but you won't hear a peep out of them regarding the former.

Similarly, career Republican Scott Walker fought to keep thinker of bad thoughts David Duke off the 1992 GOP presidential ballot, but hasn't uttered a word about doer of bad acts David VanderLeest, the Republican who is challenging incumbent Sen. Dave Hansen on July 19.

Consistency and honesty are clearly too much to expect of the WISGOP. There's nothing unlawful about the WISGOP's shenanigans; they exploit Wisconsin's open primaries system. But nor was there anything unlawful with the actions of the 14 Democratic Senators who decamped to Illinois to prevent a Senate vote on the WISGOP's union-busting bill. However, nobody should expect any logical consistency on those accounts either.

Nor judicial conservatism from the GOP's so-called conservative judges.

"I ran to complement the general election," he said. "Forward slash."

* Whereas the GOP fakes are running in only six of 33 districts.

WISEN District 8 recall election ::headdesk::

Who advises these campaigns, you got to wonder sometimes:

Citizen Action of Wisconsin, Treasurer, Jackie Boynton
Sandy Pasch for Senate, Treasurer, Jackie Boynton

WISGOP complaint.

The WISGOP complaint, whose operative allegation is contained in its paragraph 10, which is completely groundless, doesn't mention the treasurer position(s). But an amended complaint can't be far behind.

Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Another setback for the WISGOP contingent

The latest on Wisconsin's ongoing electoral redistricting debacle.

Reporter Patrick Marley's been all over this thing like a cheap suit.*

* Or a cheap petition, as it were.

On teh web: Federal court reminds WISGOP who's in charge

How Patrick McIlheran lies for the WISGOP

Perfect example right here:

One Dane County judge rules that collective bargaining reform is unacceptable ...

This is your Journal Communications, Inc. brand of journalism.

But as one Dane County judge very clearly explained, both the federal Constitution and the Wisconsin constitution confer the judicial power equally to both higher and lower courts.* And as one Dane County judge very clearly explained, her ruling was directed at "the March 9, 2011 action of the Legislature's Joint Committee of Conference" and not whether the Walker administration's policy was acceptable or not.

Journal Communications, Inc.'s Patrick McIlheran is flat-out lying.

On the other hand, the Wisconsin Department of Justice, which is "representing the Republicans," makes repeated explicit defenses of Republican political policy in its latest filing with the Supreme Court pursuant to its attempt to have that court legislate from the bench.

The DOJ, on behalf of Scott Walker's infamous building maintenance supervisor Mike Huebsch, has gone so far as to suggest that the one Dane County judge, Maryann Sumi, violated the State code of judicial ethics by responding to the DOJ's petition for a supervisory writ (it's not an appeal, as has been widely reported). Now that is remarkable.

The Supreme Court, which does indeed have superintending authority over the (lower) circuit courts, on May 4 ordered Judge Sumi to file a response to the Huebsch/DOJ petition. Yes, ordered. The DOJ suggests that Judge Sumi should have exercised her option not to respond. The Wisconsin Rules of Appellate Procedure, at Wis. Stat. § 809.51(2), allow that a respondent to a petition for supervisory writ "may file a letter stating that he or she does not intend to file a response."

In other words, a respondent is not exempt or excepted from the Supreme Court's order but may disobey an order of the Supreme Court. Respondents to petitions for a supervisory writ are not limited to "court[s] and the presiding judge[s]," but the petition may be filed against "other person[s] or bod[ies]." And clearly Judge Sumi is in a different position vis-à-vis the Supreme Court than other persons or bodies not courts and presiding judges. Yet the Wisconsin Department of Justice suggests she should have disobeyed the Supreme Court's order.

Obviously Judge Sumi did not disobey an order of the Supreme Court.

And for not disobeying the Supreme Court's order, the Department of Justice is now veiledly threatening to file a motion for recusal against Judge Sumi, despite the fact that the ultimate determination for Judge Sumi's disqualification from the case of Ozanne v. Fitzgerald resides with Judge Sumi, once again, according to the black letter State law.

So at this point the Department of Justice is merely throwing stuff against the wall to find out if any of it will stick, in the course of its "representation of the Republicans." Thus whose impartiality is under question here is pretty obvious. And it sure ain't Judge Sumi's.

All of which demonstrates at least three things: (1) the ideological zealotry of Deputy Attorney General Kevin St. John, (2) Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen's acquiescence to Mr. St. John getting on this breakaway, and (3) the WISGOP Republicans' abject terror at attempting to have their union-busting bill passed by a non-illegal procedure.

McIlheran's bald lie is put forth in service of advertising his appearance tomorrow morning on another Journal Communications, Inc. buffoon's teevee show, Charlie Sykes's Sunday Insight [sic], which runs on Journal Communications, Inc.'s teevee station, TMJ-4. And of course Sykes is also an employee of Journal Communications, Inc.'s radio station, WTMJ.

There you have it, Journal Communications, Inc.'s corpo-blanketing of Milwaukee media with conservative Republican talking points. Because I wouldn't expect a discussion of the Rules of Appellate Procedure among Charlie Sykes and his guests tomorrow, who also include one of the most absurd conservative Republican political hacks in Wisconsin, Brian Fraley.

Roughly as absurd as the political hacks at Journal Communications, Inc.

* Matter of fact the same principle was invoked here in defense of J.B. Van Hollen, which days of defending JBVH at this space are long gone.

Mac Davis goes after Big Lefties like Bugs Bunny

WISGOP activist judge forces unfunded mandate on GAB

"Counting the signature of Bugs Bunny is something only lawyers could try to make seem OK," said Waukesha County Circuit Court Judge Mac Davis.

What the hell does that even mean?

WISGOP attorney Steven M. Biskupic* cited a media report that one man claimed he'd signed recall petitions 80 times.

That was WISN-12 teevee in Milwaukee's total crock of unverified shite. Mr. Biskupic actually believes that crap? Give me a break.

Interlude: Baby Don't Get Hooked On Me

How's the GAB supposed to know that "Mac Davis" isn't a comic pseudonym like "Bugs Bunny"? At least Bugs Bunny wasn't a conservative activist judge. And there are Hitlers in Wisconsin.

* Yep: Michael Best & Friedrich.

WISGOP just gives up on defending policies

Reports the Journal-Sentinel:

Republicans and their backers could spend millions of dollars beating up on the "legitimate" Democratic challengers in the attempt to keep them out of the general election, and the incumbent targeted for recall could just sit out the primary.

Because the Republicans are the grown-ups, the Party of Ideas.

I don't understand why anybody would fall for this underhandedness. Evidently the WISGOP has a low opinion of Wisconsin voters' intelligence.

Pathetic.

WISGOP warned us about election fraud

Little did we know it was planned by WISGOP disciples.

Will Scott Walker and his acolytes condemn these cheap tricks?

Votes and injunctions all smell the same, however

Headlines We'd Like To See:
July 13, 2011 — Wisconsin to Scott Fitzgerald: 'Smell Ya Later'

Here's your famous majority Republican leader in the State Senate telling the people of Wisconsin — his constituents — that they physically stink:

Fitzgerald joked about the protests that engulfed the Capitol earlier this year, saying the [WISGOP] convention was the first time he had been around so many people who weren't chanting and yelling at him. And he says, "You all smell a lot better too."

Classy as ever and brilliant politics as usual.

Wisconsinites could return the favor July 12, and relegate Sen. Scott "We followed the law perfectly" Fitzgerald to well-deserved obscurity by ousting three other WISGOP State Senators in scheduled recall elections.

WISGOP's Reince Priebus in unbelievable outrage

By all accounts, Reince Priebus ain't the sharpest knife in the drawer.

— "Liberty Pundit"

Reince Priebus, the WISGOP chairperson who is seeking to dethrone his former best buddy and current top RNC gaffe machine Michael Steele in an election this month, has got the Base in an uproar again.

Here is Gateway Pundit proprietor Jim Hoft hooting it up via Andrew Breitblart's BigGovernment.com:

The leading candidate in the race — Reince Priebus's law firm supports Obamacare and says its constitutional!

I don't believe Reince Priebus's law firm is the leading candidate in the race, but that's close enough for the Base, apparently.

Yes, you read that correctly.

(Shame about its not being written correctly.)

Reince Priebus's law firm supports Obamacare and says its constitutional.

Boldface (and typo) in original.

This space had found a similar entertainment earlier:

Reince, Priebus & Pelosi LLP.

Arguably fallacious as it is to assign to Reince Priebus his law firm's statement, it's amusing on several levels to see the nut-right deliberately mishandle this information against one of their own.

On the other hand, when the Base discovered Priebus was the "co-author" of a document advising clients on how to obtain the hated federal stimulus funds, another conservative accused Priebus of "scrambl[ing] to scrub" the attribution from the firm's website.

And on a third hand, the firm's advice that the suits challenging Obamacare "have no merit" is mildly comical on its own and I can certainly understand that advice riling the Base especially now that two of the suits challenging the constitutionality of one of its operative provisions are nearing the U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeal.

Several RNC hopefuls debate today. Fox News says it will be ugly.*

h/t Breitblart: Outrageous ... unbelievable.

* But spells Priebus's name every way except for correctly.