Only a listener with the IQ of a potted plant could conclude negative ads about a political candidate around election time are not electioneering activities designed to get people to vote for a certain candidate.
What is shaping up to be the most expensive and nastiest race for state Supreme Court Wisconsin has seen prompted the national court-watching group Justice at Stake to issue an alert yesterday. The contest for the open seat on the state's highest court also is the subject of Milwaukee Magazine editor Bruce Murphy's latest column.
A state Senate committee yesterday approved an amended version of the ethics reform bill that is the subject of a special legislative session, a day after an Assembly committee made some changes to the legislation and passed it.
Governor Jim Doyle yesterday called the Legislature into special session to act on recently agreed-to ethics enforcement reforms.
The State Elections Board now charges an exorbitant fee to copy certain public documents. The board's new fee applies to voter lists used by candidates to canvass and solicit prospective constituents and send newsletters and other mailings.
Chalk one up for the power of protest. The news is spreading this morning that media conglomerate Clear Channel is reversing its decision to replace the progressive talk radio format on Madison's WXXM 92.1 FM "The Mic" with sports programming.
Editorial reaction to last week's announcement of a bipartisan agreement on ethics reform has ranged from "it's about time" to "good first step" to "OK fine, but don't you dare think you're done."
One of the phoniest of the many phony front groups that now dot Wisconsin's political landscape, All Children Matter, is in hot water because of campaign literature it circulated in the 21st Senate District in an unsuccessful attempt to influence the outcome of that key Racine-area senate race.
A Catholic bishop orders all the priests in his diocese to play a recording of his sermon on gay marriage, the death penalty and stem cell research at Sunday Mass. He forbids any "verbal or non-verbal expression of disagreement" with his message. Naturally the bishop is given a free speech award by a civil rights grou
The search is on. For the poison pill, that is. Even as the Wisconsin State Journal today editorialized that state lawmakers have run out of excuses for inaction on ethics reform, the Assembly’s ethics reform stonewaller-in-chief, Speaker-elect Mike Huebsch, is telling reporters that he and his legislative allies plan to try attaching an amendment to the ethics bill requiring a photo ID to vote in Wisconsin.
Our friends at the national Center for Public Integrity are reporting that Howard Rich has located two of his tax-exempt political organizations in Wisconsin and appears to be operating them illegally in our state.
This postscript to our recent blog, "Voters' #1 Concern," comes courtesy of All Politics Watch, a weblog on the online edition of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
Mega media conglomerate Clear Channel and progressive talk radio always seemed like a poor fit. Still, it was disheartening – no, make that thoroughly disgusting – to hear that Clear Channel is pulling the plug on progressive talk on Madison's Air America affiliate – WXXM 92.1 FM "The Mic" – in favor of Fox Sports Radio.
National exit polls showed that concern about corruption and ethics in government was the top concern of voters in Tuesday's election, outranking even the Iraq war as the biggest motivating factor for the housecleaning that significantly altered the political landscape at the national and state levels alike.
The Associated Press was reporting with more than a week to go until Election Day that the major parties had spent nearly $160 million in ads attacking congressional candidates, compared to $17 million spent on ads with a positive message.
Just when we thought the blog posted earlier today covered all the bases Bishop Robert Morlino has been running on behalf of the proposed constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and civil unions, the bishop added a peculiar new twist to this increasingly bizarre story.
When the Democracy Campaign recently shined light on the efforts of the Madison Catholic Diocese to influence the outcome of the statewide referendum on the proposed constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and civil unions, Bishop Robert Morlino's first reaction was to brandish the First Amendment in his defense.
Democracy isn't newsworthy. At least not on local TV news. That's the unavoidable conclusion of a new University of Wisconsin study showing that a typical 30-minute evening newscast featured 36 seconds of election coverage in the month after the traditional Labor Day kickoff of the 2006 election campaign season.
The state Elections Board decided yesterday to stick by its August 30 ruling ordering Republican candidate for governor Mark Green to get rid of nearly $468,000 in illegal donations, but punted the question of whether another $775,000 that the state Justice Department and a circuit court judge contend runs afoul of federal law should also be dumped by the Green campaign.
When the Democracy Campaign raised questions about money Mark Green raised in Washington as a member of Congress and later transferred to his campaign for governor, we set out to expose illegal donations. We also ended up further exposing what's wrong with the state Elections Board. This whole episode has shown what a kangaroo court the Elections Board is.
At last Saturday's Fighting Bob Fest in Baraboo, organizers of the People's Legislature announced one of the next steps for this multi-partisan, grassroots reform movement – the formation of a "Ruckus Corps" of citizen volunteers who will create a little havoc in fighting government corruption and pressing for action on reform at the Capitol and in their own communities.
As we reported last Friday, the state Justice Department responded to concerns raised by the Democracy Campaign by ruling that the state Elections Board has to comply with a voter privacy law in Wisconsin's statutes. Registration numbers assigned to each voter need to be kept confidential as election officials compile voter lists under a new computerized registration system being developed for the state by the global outsourcing firm Accenture.
In late July, the Democracy Campaign asked Attorney General Peggy Lautenschlager to review a state Elections Board directive to local election officials to ignore a state voter privacy law and requested an opinion from the attorney general about whether the Elections Board is at liberty to instruct election officials throughout Wisconsin to disregard the law.
Sixteen of 20 Republican legislators or candidates for higher office who were mentioned in testimony during former Assembly Speaker Scott Jensen's misconduct trial did not answer a recent survey asking where they stand on campaign finance and government ethics reform.
Fewer than half the legislative candidates running in the November elections responded to a six-question survey on campaign finance and government ethics reform conducted by WDC, Common Cause and the League of Women Voters.