Easy dots to connect

It is hard to imagine anybody thinking this won't be noticed, but apparently some folks think it will slip by. Below, first we have Holder's comments on voter registration, and then we have Wisconsin's lack of signature checking on the recall ballots. Geez... whatever could they have in mind?

Holder's Voter Fraud program
From Powerline's Holder Unveils Voter Fraud Program:

Holder continued with point three, his most radical proposal–an effort to do away with voter registration altogether. Try to follow this one carefully:

 "One final area for reform that merits our strongest support is the growing effort – which is already underway in several states – to modernize voter registration.   Today, the single biggest barrier to voting in this country is our antiquated registration system.   According to the Census Bureau, of the 75 million adult citizens who failed to vote in the last presidential election, 60 million of them were not registered and, therefore, not eligible to cast a ballot."

Well, yes. This country has always had a system of voter registration. Only eligible, registered voters can cast a ballot. Why? This is the most elementary check on voter fraud: you can only vote if the local electoral authorities know who you are and have certified that you are eligible. An attack on this system is astonishingly radical, but that is exactly what Holder has in mind.

 "All eligible citizens can and should be automatically registered to vote. The ability to vote is a right – it is not a privilege.  Under our current system, many voters must follow cumbersome and needlessly complex voter registration rules."

Are you kidding? It has never taken me more than a few minutes to register to vote. It is easier than, say, driving to the local liquor store to buy a six-pack of beer.

 "Fortunately, modern technology provides a straightforward fix for these problems – if we have the political will to bring our election systems into the 21st century.  It should be the government’s responsibility to automatically register citizens to vote, by compiling – from databases that already exist – a list of all eligible residents in each jurisdiction. Of course, these lists would be used solely to administer elections – and would protect essential privacy rights."

It is hard to understand what this means. What databases will tell us who lives in a particular precinct and is an eligible voter? Is there a database for illegal aliens? For felons, who in many jurisdictions are not eligible to vote? And assuming that we have a database of sorts, how exactly would a system that does not include voter registration work? Evidently a person can show up at the polls and claim to be anyone who is automatically on the list as a voter. In Eric Holder’s world, there is no registration–same day or otherwise–and certainly no requirement to present identification. So I take it that the Democrats could identify all of the people who are listed as eligible voters in a given precinct (putting aside the difficulty of doing so), and send activists to the polls, pretending to be the one-third to one-half of automatically-registered voters who will not, in fact, show up to vote. There is no registration process, no identification requirement, nothing to prevent Democratic Party activists from casting millions of fraudulent votes. Is that what the Obama administration has in mind? I think so. If not, Mr. Holder or one of his representatives should explain to us how his proposed system will work.

The Obama administration needs all the votes it can get, given its unpopularity with the American people. The question is, will the administration get those votes by persuading legitimate, eligible voters, or will it try to make up the deficit by enabling the casting of millions of fraudulent votes by Democratic Party activists? At the moment, it looks as though the latter is the Obama administration’s chosen course.

Wisconsin Recall Signatures
From Hot Air's “Mickey Mouse” is free to petition for Scott Walker’s recall:

Just as Attorney General Eric Holder speaks out against voter identification laws, a government board in Wisconsin yesterday signaled that it will accept the signatures of “Mickey Mouse” and even “Adolf Hitler” on petitions for an election to recall Gov. Scott Walker. Politico has the story:

 Signatures of names like Mickey Mouse and Adolf Hitler are being considered valid on recall petitions of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker as long as they are properly dated, a government board indicated Tuesday.

Suspicious signatures will be noted, but reviewers on the Government Accountability Board will be looking primarily to see if the signatures are joined by a Wisconsin address and were signed during the appropriate time period, according to WISN12.

“We will flag them, but we will not strike them without challenge,” said board elections specialist David Buerger, when asked if Mickey Mouse’s signature could count. He added that in previous petitions Hitler’s name was only struck because the address was in Germany, not due to the name itself.

What does Buerger mean when he says, “We will flag them, but we will not strike them without challenge”? I hope he means that the elections board will do the detail work to contact the residents of the addresses associated with the sketchy signatures to verify that someone from those residences did, in fact, sign a petition for Walker’s recall — but something tells me that hope is in vain. Now that the board has transparently stated its willingness to accept weird signatures, its members are covered. They can accept the suspicious signatures without verifying and how would anybody ever know? It’s not as though outside folks could look at the petition and say, “Hey, Mickey Mouse’s name is on here!” The board members would just say, “Yes, we flagged that.”

 

Tragedy in Wisconsin

Picture from Display Fake Food

The following report out of Wisconsin is truly shocking. Not the part about a protestor confronting Rep. Robin Vos (R-Burlington) in a bar and berating him. This is Wisconsin after all, such hijinx are to be expected.

No, the surprising part is what happened next -- the protestor got so wound up that he poured a beer over Vos's head. 

A beer? Look, trashing the Capital building while banging on drums and chanting "this is what democracy looks like" is bad enough, but a Wisconsonite wasting a perfectly good beer by pouring it over somebody's head?

From JSOnline AllPoltics Blog post Protester dumps beer on Rep. Robin Vos' head:

The incident happened at the Inn on the Park, 22 S. Carroll St. Witnesses said a man came into the tavern and swore at three lawmakers, calling them criminals. A bartender said the man used the words to the effect of "money" and "damn Republicans," according to the police report.

Another man was recording the incident with a video camera when the bartender asked him to stop. That's when the person who had been yelling dumped the beer on Vos' head, according to the report.

The police report says beer splashed onto two other lawmakers, Rep. Scott Suder (R-Abbotsford) and Rep. John Nygren (R-Marinette).

Vos told police that the man has been harassing him since February, though previous encounters had not involved physical contact. The representative did not know the suspect's name, but a female State Capitol employee, who was with the group, gave police a name and said Capitol Police would have his contact information, according to the report. Police believe he's a 26-year-old.

Yeesh, and I thought the zombie protest  and the boat protest were off-the-rails, but this is beyond the pale. The protests in Wisconsin are truly getting out of hand if the Cheeseheads are disrespecting their Official State Drink. 

Oh the horror, the horror!
  

The saga of the popped balloon

Image courtesy of Shakey Illustraions

When considering Wisconsin politics one must never conclude that they've hit the bottom of the stupid barrel. Just when you think it can't get sillier, they demonstrate that they have a boundless capacity for the bizarre and ridiculous.  

During the summer protestors would gather in the rotunda in Madison and to protest songs, chant "who's house - our house", indulge in paranoid theorizing about the Koch brothers and eventually release red, heart-shaped helium balloons to drift up into the dome.

The balloons began to grate on the nerves of the Capital staff. They were very difficult to get down, and there were fears they would damage the paintings on the dome. Finally one day late in July Ron Blair, the state Department of Administration's assistant facilities director, snapped. 

Well, actually he snapped at least once earlier, Meade over at Althouse's had previously posted a video  him acting like an typically belligerent rent-a-cop who acted like a putz throughout their encounter and even pushed Meade at one point.   

But I digress, back to July 25th, 2011, a protestor named Leslie Peterson was standing in the rotunda, attending the sing-along and holding a red, heart-shaped balloon when Ron rushed at her from behind with a utility knife, popped her balloon, some how cut himself in the process, until finally the two ended up crashing through the door of a restroom in the ensuing fracas. The Blue Cheddar blog posted an eye witness's account:

Jenna says that she was standing with Leslie when Ron approached “out of nowhere”. Leslie was holding a heart-shaped balloon that according to a @joevittie tweet, she had brought to give to a legislator. Jenna says Ron rushed at the balloon and popped it and then darted down a back stairway. In the course of the action Jenna says he did not say anything she could clearly hear, though he may have been mumbling.

Jenna says they were on the 2nd floor of the Capitol and he ran down to the 1st floor. She and Leslie followed close behind yelling at him and asking him why he popped the balloon. Jenna said he stopped at the 1st floor and turned. At this point they were very close, only “a couple of feet away” from Ron. Jenna says Ron lunged at Leslie grabbing her wrists and throwing her into a bathroom door. The force of the lunge was enough to push Leslie into the bathroom and he also came in the room with her. Jenna says that at this point Leslie started to scream and call “Help!”.

Police found Ron Blair at a clinic where he was getting his hand stitched up. He was placed on administrative leave pending and investigation and, as the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported, he was charged with misdemeanor charges of disorderly conduct with a dangerous weapon for using the knife and slamming her against the door. He faces up to 9 months in jail and a $1,000 fine.

Yesterday, in the article Protester sues Capitol worker who popped her balloon, the Journal Sentinel reports that -- what else -- she's filing a law suit. Claiming "he violated her constitutional rights by popping her balloon" and the Journal Sentinel states her "lawsuit filed last week alleges Blair violated Peterson's free speech and due process rights and subjected her to unreasonable search and seizure."

Yes, yes, he's a lout, should get fired from his job and get slapped with probation and a fine, but a civil suit? Civil rights violations? 1st Amendment issues? Seems like she's buttering the bread a little thick with that list of claims.

Also, aside from a popped balloon what sort of damages is she asking for? Bear in mind, after he popped her balloon she chased after him, so its not like she was in mortal terror for her life or anything. Ah well, a Madison jury is sure to give her oodles of money to stick it to the man.  

At any rate, the comment thread of that last linked article is a hoot. It has devolved into the usual internet food fight all of their political threads arrive at sooner or later.

Judge Sumi slapped

Maybe I'll veto the Supreme Court

In an earlier post, Knock me over with a feather, I made fun of Judge Sumi, a county judge in Wisconsin, who decided she had veto power over the legislature and tried to bar a bill from being published into law. 

I mentioned the Wisconsin Supreme Court was due to hear the appeal. Today they issued their decision and they slapped Judge Sumi silly in the process. They lifted the ban and ordered the bill to be published into law. 

The decision was 4-3, but the dissent seems to have centered around the speed and process of the decision, rather than the decision itself. The Wisconsin Legislature had forced the Court's hand by saying they would re-pass the bill today with the disputed parts included if the Court didn't make a decision. That would have mooted the case, and the majority must not have wanted to pass on the opportunity to forcefully set Sumi straight.

I've included part of their decision below, with the more brutal parts emphasized. Bear in mind I'm not a lawyer -- for a more legalistic discussion the threads at Volokh and Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion are good reads. Also, this doesn't end the legal wrangling, as soon as it is published as a law several challenges to it will be filed.

From the decision:

¶39  The first and most obvious issue presented by this case is whether the Dane County Circuit Court, or any court in Wisconsin, may enjoin the publication of an act to prevent that act from becoming law. The answer is "no."

¶40  This precise issue was settled in Goodland v. Zimmerman, 243 Wis. 459, 10 N.W.2d 180 (1943).  In that case, the governor of Wisconsin sought to enjoin the secretary of state from publishing an act of the legislature that the governor had vetoed.  Governor Goodland sought an injunction on grounds that the Assembly had failed to override his veto by the constitutionally required vote of two thirds of all members present.  In other words, Governor Goodland sought to prevent publication of the act on constitutional grounds.  Goodland, 243 Wis. at 464-65.  The court unanimously rejected his position.

¶41  The court was definitive that "the legislative process is not complete unless and until an enactment has been published as required by the constitution and by statute."  Id. at 466 (emphasis added).  Then the court added:

There is no such thing known to the law as an unconstitutional bill.  A court cannot deal with the question of constitutionality until a law has been duly enacted and some person has been deprived of his constitutional rights by its operation.

Id.  Only after a law has been published may a person who is injured by the law challenge it in court.  Id.

¶42  The court provided a textbook discussion of the separation of powers:

It must always be remembered that one of the fundamental principles of the American constitutional system is that governmental powers are divided among the three departments of government, the legislative, the executive, and judicial, and that each of these departments is separate and independent from the others except as otherwise provided by the constitution.  The application of these principles operates in a general way to confine legislative powers to the legislature, executive powers to the executive department, and those which are judicial in character to the judiciary. . . .  While the legislature in the exercise of its constitutional powers is supreme in its particular field, it may not exercise the power committed by the constitution to one of the other departments.

What is true of the legislative department is true of the judicial department. The judicial department has no jurisdiction or right to interfere with the legislative process.  That is something committed by the constitution entirely to the legislature itself.  It makes its own rules, prescribes its own procedure, subject only to the provisions of the constitution and it is its province to determine what shall be enacted into law.

Id. at 466-67 (emphasis added).

¶43  In short, "no court has jurisdiction to enjoin the legislative process at any point."  Id. at 468 (citing cases from Wisconsin and other jurisdictions).

¶44  Goodland was decided nearly 70 years ago, but it remains fundamental law.  In State ex rel. Althouse v. City of Madison, 79 Wis. 2d 97, 255 N.W.2d 449 (1977), this court cited State ex rel. Martin v. Zimmerman, 233 Wis. 16, 288 N.W. 454 (1939), with approval, noting that "the [Martin] court pointed out that the question of the validity of [an] act could not be entertained by any court prior to its enactment."  Althouse, 79 Wis. 2d at 112.  Justice Nathan Heffernan then quoted from Goodland at length and observed that, "If a court could enjoin publication of a bill, the [Goodland] court reasoned, it, not the legislature, would be determining what the law should be."  Althouse, 79 Wis. 2d at 113.  Turning back to Goodland, Justice Heffernan repeated the statement that "no court has jurisdiction to enjoin the legislative process at any point."  Id.

¶45  Goodland also was cited approvingly by Justice Abrahamson in State v. Washington, 83 Wis. 2d 808, 816, 266 N.W.2d 597 (1978) to support the principle that Article IV, Section 1 and Article V, Section 1 of the Wisconsin Constitution are construed to "prohibit one branch of government from exercising the powers granted to other branches."

¶46  The majority of this court now concludes that the circuit court exceeded its authority in prohibiting publication of 2011 Wisconsin Act 10.  This is not a close question. Wisconsin law in this regard is longstanding and completely in line with the law in other jurisdictions. 

Ouch. Some of that would sound condescending if they said it to me -- a non-lawyer. To state such things, in such a tone, to a sitting judge is a pretty clear slap upside her head.