Posted on 04/21/2015 12:07:42 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
The knock on the door in the dead of night is the stuff of Darkness at Noon, and of the state of Wisconsin.
To the question of whether armed police can storm your house and take away your personal effects and tell you to shut up about it, based simply on your political advocacy, Wisconsin answered for years, “Why, yes, they can — now please, shut up about it.”
The so-called John Doe investigations into Governor Scott Walker and conservative groups in Wisconsin have been an ongoing travesty that — now that Walker is entering the presidential stage — should be considered a national disgrace. Walker’s opponents weaponized campaign-finance law, literally.
Our own David French has talked to families targeted in the John Doe raids for the first time, and their stories are harrowing. Shouting officers at the front door in pre-dawn raids, at least once with a battering ram. Armed police rifling through and carting off their belongings, down to and including a daughter’s computer. And warnings to stay silent.
The targets were told not to tell their lawyers, or their friends, or their neighbors. When armed cops storm the house next door, people often wonder why, but the targets were forbidden from discussing what happened. As French points out, this wasn’t the right to remain silent and avoid self-incrimination, but an order to remain silent and not to make any professions of innocence. They had a keener sense of due process in Salem, Massachusetts.
The investigators were, among other things, fishing for campaign-finance violations, on dubious grounds. So, for exercising their First Amendment rights, some targets were denied their First Amendment rights. This is the Bill of Rights, via Kafka and Inspector Javert.
The investigations have been such a long-running farce that there is John Doe I and II. As Scott Walker’s first campaign for governor got underway in 2010, the Milwaukee district attorney, John Chisholm, opened the initial John Doe investigation under a proviso of the law that allows officials to keep their targets secret and to compel them to hush up.
A partisan Democrat whose wife was a shop steward for a teachers union, Chisholm investigated everything possible related to Walker for a couple of years, without really laying a glove on him. It was in the run-up to Walker’s re-election campaign that, with the help of a compliant judge, John Doe entered its next phase of harassment of conservative groups.
Investigators swept up personal e-mails, and issued wide-ranging subpoenas, including information on donors. The Wisconsin Club for Growth describes in court filings how its activities were hindered, as people began refusing meetings, donors got nervous, and one of its key officials, Eric O’Keefe, wasn’t allowed to explain the nature of the investigation. O’Keefe, who has been courageous in resisting the investigations, has said, “The process is the punishment.”
And the offense was backing the wrong side in a highly contentious political dispute. It’s one thing for kids with bongo drums to register their opposition to Scott Walker; it’s another for armed agents of the state, operating with the force of law, to be used as essentially a political cudgel.
The John Doe investigation has bogged down under the weight of its own ludicrous unfairness, and various court challenges. The Wisconsin Supreme Court could soon rule to halt the investigations altogether, and the United States Supreme Court is set to decide whether it will consider a federal lawsuit brought by Eric O’Keefe and the Wisconsin Club for Growth.
Wisconsin legislators are considering scaling back the law enabling John Doe investigations to prevent future abuses. The John Doe process might make sense for unraveling a dangerous criminal syndicate; it isn’t appropriate in a tenuous campaign-finance investigation, let alone as a tool of intimidation against people on the wrong side of a political argument.
The politicized knock on the door in the night isn’t right for Wisconsin, or anywhere else in the United States of America.
This is the future.
Disgusting, reprehensible, blatantly unconstitutional, and anti-American.
The perpetrators of these offenses should ALL be in prison.
Well, it’s the Left’s ground game when they lose.
Scott Walker and Wisconsin conservatives (and people around the country that supported their efforts) pushed through reforms in a state that progressives believed was theirs.
This process has been their punishment.
We must continue to push - make sure what these people have gone through, and are still enduring at the hands of a politically motivated, weaponized judiciary, isn’t in vain.
The Democrats retaliated against the supporters of Scott Walker who I supported with $$$ because he was right on unions. How disgusting.
Emotional victimhood issue here to do what?
Push us all into supporting a candidate for president named Walker who has been described as “acceptable to the Establishment”.
The liberal media and Nixon fought a war in the 1970’s and I didn’t like the liberal media for going after Nixon but I didn’t end up being a Nixon admirer.
Walker has to prove on key issues like Common Core, Obamacare, Amnesty and religious freedom where he is.
I think Ted Cruz has a better set of views on those issues rights now if you ask me.
Crazy stuff, but not unexpected. There are so many laws today that can be used to persecute/prosecute unfavored groups or people. Raising your head up can definitely make you a target.
This is perhaps the main reason why I’m so opposed to the homosexual movement. It’s not about tolerance. It’s about using the full weight of government to punish anyone who dares stand for so-called “traditional” morality.
Governments have essentially bottomless resources to persecute innocent citizens. Dare stand up? Prepare for OSHA inspections, IRS audits, EPA assessments, etc. As the article notes, they don’t even need to prove guilt. The prosecution is often more than enough punishment by itself.
The question is: what are we capable of doing about it?
Terribly written article. Doesn’t begin to show the HORROR of what those DEMONCRATS did to those people.
Can’t have socialism without tyranny, the link is absolute.
the leftists were so bold...why...did they know Wisconsin’s GOP were to squish to fight back???
This makes me almost admire leftists. They are willing to destroy their enemies while the GOP are too squish to launch such an attack toward leftists!
I’m not every excited about H1B visas.
But I’m watching the British elections right now with Nigel Farage of UKIP wanting to secure his country’s borders and keep immigrants out.
Farage has said he’s willing to let non-British citizens in to work if British citizens aren’t there to do the work.
UKIP wants an Australian style points system which allows people in if their skills are needed.
One area where Australia is looking for foreign workers is submarine crew. Their preference is for English speaking countries like Britain, Canada and the US.
Australia’s navy is expanding its fleet of submarines to defend against China.
I’m not going to get angry with Cruz over this. I will keep watching the scene as I am with all these candidates looking for anything that stands out.
M-14, 7.62 AP Ball ammo.
Goes thru that Kevlar vest like hot knife thru butter.
Have a nice day, Commiepig.
Ban ALL no-knock swat raids.
People on FR will NEVER understand the terror of waiting for the other shoe to drop...
Poorly written laws become tools of harassment and oppression.
The John Doe investigation is a bit "unique." Learn more about it before you cast aspersions on people who had to live through this.
Democratic party trash MO ...weaponized law.
Well, this looks like Scott Walker’s moment of truth. Is he going to do something about the fascist John Chisholm, or not?
This is before the WI Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court.
This sort of behavior by officials is only about two degrees away from tossing your political opponents into the gas ovens. Guilty without charges, without trial, without the right to even protest.
You just “disappear” your opponents. And there are always plenty of willing jackboots available for the midnight raids. Probably most are members of SEUI so it’s all good in their book. Damn them all to Hell.
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