Via Ann Althouse comes this video of a mini-stampede by Wisconsin Democrats, upon hearing that Governor Scott Walker was supposedly leaving the Capitol after signing legislation balancing the budget without raising taxes:
…Oops. Well. Natural mistake. Try this: Continue reading Gov. Scott Walker (R, WI) balances budget over Democratic protests.
…what? I am perfectly entitled to use the rules of thumb popularized by left-wing hack groups like ThinkProgress or Talking Points Memo: since they felt justified in using uncorroborated anonymous reports to vicariously convict Prosser of assault, they have absolutely no justification for other people using the precise same criteria to vicariously convict Bradley. Besides, my version makes much more coherent sense.
OK, let me explain this one for folks coming in late. About two weeks ago there was supposedly a violen… oh, let’s not use euphemisms: supposedly, two Wisconsin Supreme Court Justices (Prosser and Bradley) got into a fight. It was first reported that Prosser put Bradley in a choke-hold – whereupon most of the Online Left dropped their pants and started typing blissfully angry screeds about how the crime of one Supreme Court Justice attacking another Supreme Court Justice could only be made right with an immediate resignation – only to have it later come out that other reports had it that Bradley had actually charged Prosser with fists raised, and that Prosser was merely defending himself against a larger and younger opponent. Complicating all of this is the minor detail that no charges were apparently filed*, and Bradley has only now come out with a rather belated claim accusing Prosser of the choking, while not explaining why she is not pursuing a criminal case. Which is very possibly due to the fact that there’s at least one witness apparently who told Bradley at the time that no, she had not been choked.
Note, by the way, that all of the people involved – participants and witnesses – are Wisconsin Supreme Court Justices. You’re going to see some fascinating dissents from these people for the next few years. Continue reading Reviewing Ann Bradley’s physical attack on David Prosser…
“We are not supposed to use school email, but… I don’t frankly care.*”
Before we go any further, let’s establish something right now. As this complaint from the WI GOP shows (see more here), Shelly Moore was well aware that she was not supposed to be using her school account to coordinate and encourage both the Big Labor protests earlier in the year and recall efforts against Wisconsin Senators (particularly since she ended up being the Democratic candidate opposing State Senator Sheila Harsdorf). This cannot be contested. Shelly Moore herself admitted as such… in a work email:
Shelly Moore just didn’t care. That’s not a bowdlerization: she said, explicitly, “I don’t frankly care.” Despite the fact that her activities violate an ethical pledge that Moore signed when she started working as a public school teacher. Despite the fact that there are good and valid reasons why public sector employees must not give even the appearance of impropriety when it comes to separating out their private and public activities – let alone now, when Moore was in fact acting improperly. Despite the fact that the state of Wisconsin gave her that email account in order to do her job, which was not “coordinate union- and Democrat-backed protests against the state government – while on the public dime.” And despite the fact that Shelly Moore is in a position to personally profit quite nicely from all of these activities, given that she’s a candidate for political office now. Nope. None of these considerations matter.
Because Shelly Moore just doesn’t care.
Sheila Harsdorf for re-election to Wisconsin State Senate. Unless, of course, you just don’t care, either.
Moe Lane (crosspost)
Continue reading Shelly Moore’s (D CAND, WI-SEN) UNETHICAL recall freeloading.
This is the way WI protests end.
This is the way WI protests end.
This is the way WI protests end.
(Via Instapundit) Not with a bang, but with a bunch of self-indulgent whining as the adults in the room get on with the state of Wisconsin’s business.
Hmm. Doesn’t really scan.
Moe Lane
PS: The entire Wisconsin protest thing would have been a lot more impressive in the old days, before we saw what groups like the Tea Party could do AND SUSTAIN.
So, I’m confused.
Seriously, while I am not a lawyer, I still don’t see exactly how the Democrats can have it both ways on this. Either it’s law or it’s not. If it’s not, then they shouldn’t be able to file a lawsuit. If it is, then La Follette is ignorant of his responsibilities. The Left should not be able to pick and choose like this.
Moe Lane
*Frivolously, as Hot Air rightly notes: differential treatment of various types of workers goes all the way back to Taft-Hartley. Good luck trying to overthrow that one, folks.
PS: Yes, I’ve already had somebody privately tell me that common sense sometimes has very little to do with the law.
I say ‘would-be’ because Rep. Clark (who is running against incumbent Wisconsin Senator Luther Olsen in the upcoming recall election) doesn’t have the nerve to say things like the below to a constituent’s face:
FC: “Ok. I feel like calling her back and smacking her around.”
Nope! Clark’s much more comfortable with waiting until he thinks that she’s off the phone, and only then playing tough-guy. Which is how people like this operate, of course. I don’t know where the character quote (which I probably mangled, anyway) came from, originally, but it’s true: the best way to find out how a person really acts is to somehow observe him or her when there’s nobody else around. Good thing that Wisconsin voters got an earful, huh?
More here: and remember, Fred Clark is supposedly a hardworking and progressive legislator. At least, by Wisconsin Democratic standards. Which apparently are sufficiently low that reacting this badly to the intolerable affront of being hung up on doesn’t exclude people like Clark from consideration for higher office.
Moe Lane (crosspost)
PS: Luther Olsen for WI-SEN, and the rest of the Republican recall candidates.
…won’t run Democrats in Republican recall primaries. The point of that strategy is to delay the election for another month*, which is something that the Democrats don’t want. Which is why they’re bitterly whining about it now; apparently, they’re quite upset that their opponents can and will play by all the rules of the game.
Seriously, none of this should be a surprise: we went over this already.
Moe Lane
*Something that’s obvious to anybody with a triple-digit IQ; which is of course why We Are Wisconsin didn’t ‘get’ it.
There is an interesting thing about the Wisconsin recall process. Essentially, if you read the document regulating it you will discover that the designation of a particular date for a recall election assumes that there was no primary; if there is a primary, it occurs on that date, with the general election taking place a month afterward. Also of note… political parties do not have veto power over who can participate in a recall primary. The restrictions are that the candidate be a non-felon voter and resident of Wisconsin who presents a valid petition with at least 400 signatures; said signatures have to be themselves registered voters of the district in which the candidate is running. The kicker? None of these people have to belong to the political party in question.
I hope that you can see where this is going. Continue reading Wisconsin Republicans spoil Democrats’ recall fun.
IT’S ABOUT FLIPPING TIME, KLOPPEN… (deep breath)
…that is to say, Wisconsin Assistant Attorney General Joanne Kloppenburg has conceded the election results for her Supreme Court bid against incumbent David Prosser. My congratulations to Justice Prosser; you had an unexpectedly difficult race, and you were able to succeed nonetheless. Well done, sir.
Also, a word to the Greater Wisconsin Committee? You know, the group that created that scurrilous ad that was so awful that it caused a backlash in the Prosser/Kloppenburg race. Anyway, just a reminder: if you guys weren’t a bunch of hate-filled partisan hacks who would cheerfully attack an abuse survivor in order to keep your Big Labor/Democrat masters happy, you might have won that election. But you didn’t, which means that you more of less smeared excrement on your collective souls for… nothing. Nothing at all.
Have a nice day!
Moe Lane (crosspost)
This is very entertaining, because it takes real skill to muck up reporting this PPP poll about Scott Walker’s chances in a hypothetical recall election; fortunately, Joe Conason is up to the challenge. Let’s look at what Conason wrote (bolding mine):
Asked whether they would support or oppose [Scott Walker’s] removal from office in a recall election, 50 percent said yes and only 47 percent said no.
The same poll found that Wisconsin voters are also apparently sorry that they replaced progressive Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold last fall with a tea party extremist named Ron Johnson. Today, they would re-elect Feingold with a comfortable margin over any Republican…
I’ve already gotten a screenshot of this, by the way. Just in case Truthdig decides to memory-hole the entire thing. 
Anyway, again: Conason is reporting that 50% of PPP’s respondents favor a recall of Walker. So far, so good for the Democrats. PPP also reports that in that hypothetical election Feingold would win. OK, piece of data to consider. But what Conason did here – and probably deliberately, seeing as he didn’t link to the original poll – was falsely claim that this means that Feingold would win re-election against Senator Ron Johnson, despite the fact that PPP did not poll that hypothetical match-up. You see, Feingold was never governor of Wisconsin, so he cannot be re-elected to that position. The poll is strictly about the Wisconsin recall situation*; not about Ron Johnson. Perhaps PPP will poll a hypothetical rematch between the two, although why anybody would bother is beyond me completely (it’s not going to matter before 2016 anyway); but until then, it’s dishonest to use polling results in this manner.
Yes, ‘dishonest.’ Remember, we know that Conason meant this poll, because the numbers that he did specifically quote (but not source) are the same; and we know that Conason meant Feingold’s re-election as Senator, because he did specifically use the word “re-elect.” If Joe Conason tries to claim that this was all an innocent mistake – which he undoubtedly will – then said claim should be seen as the calculated insult to his readers’ intelligence that it is.
Moe Lane (crosspost)
*As to the poll itself: yup, pretty harsh. Guess we’ll see in July how those legislature recall numbers hold up, huh? And the obvious problem that the Democrats face in exploiting their hypothetical advantage is left as an exercise for the reader: I don’t give free hints to the Left unless it suits me.
