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The student government voted in support of endorsing a campus-wide student walkout in opposition of the proposed budget repair bill during their meeting Wednesday evening. The Associated Students of Madison voted in favor of supporting the walkout, which encourages University of Wisconsin students to abstain from attending classes on Thursday as part of the rallies taking place in response to Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal.

Following the announcement of the UW –Madison Teaching Assistants Association “Teach Out” tomorrow, United Council of UW Students calls for a day of action in support of faculty and staff of the University, public employees across the state, and the values of Wisconsin. Take action on Thursday February 17th! Join in as Universities across the state of Wisconsin walk-out of classes, hold teach-ins to educate why the Governor’s budget repair bill is an attack on Wisconsin values, and rally for the right to negotiate benefits and fight for fair pay and fair conditions. Click here to read United Council's Statement...

Yesterday we noted the details of a bill introduced by Wisconsin's new Tea Party Republican Governor Scott Walker that would increase payments from public sector employees while eliminating collective bargaining powers for unions (including teachers)—while also introducing unprecedented executive powers to terminate state employees with little due process. In passing, Walker mentioned plans to call in the National Guard, if necessary. It's an announcement that rankled many (maybe intentionally), including the 100,000-member "voice of America's 21st century patriots" organization VoteVets: "Veterans are strongly objecting to Governor Scott Walker's inappropriate threat…."

UW Workers in Peril Alert: On February 11th Governor Scott Walker proposed his Fiscal Year 2010 Budget Repair Bill. In response, United Council representing 140,000 students on 20 campuses across the UW System, stresses the importance of protecting our students. “Students are innovators. They create the business and industry of the future. We want those students here, in Wisconsin. We want their work to generate more jobs in Wisconsin, rather than at other universities in other states. We are the future, Governor Walker. Students make Wisconsin great, and students are Wisconsin’s only hope,” commented United Council President Kirk Cychosz, a...

Watch the youtube video at the link.... Mega barf

MADISON (WKOW) -- President Obama said Democrats are not just going to win the election, we are going to bring back the American dream. President Obama told the thousands of students he needs them fired up to vote. UW Police estimated 26,500 people attended the President's address. Library Mall had approximately 17,200 people, the rest of the people were on Bascom Hill and in front of Science Hall, East Campus Mall and a portion of State Street Mall. UW Police say prior to the gates opening, people formed a line that stretched for 1.1 miles waiting to enter the event.

So, Obama came to Madison this evening. He was lying through his teeth, saying that Republicans were going to cut student financial aid, send jobs overseas, and increase taxes on the middle class. I was seated on Bascom Hill, so I was not in the rally. I held up a Walker for Governor sign and was called an idiot and a nazi for doing so by some older woman (likely a professor or faculty member). What was distrubing was the lack of UW-Madison College Republican support.

Two UW-Madison students woke up with a maple tree in their living room Saturday morning, then spent part of the day replanting it because they were the ones who had dragged it there in the first place. Thomas Schroeder, 21, of Menomonee Falls, and Brenton Neuharth, 21, from Eureka, S.D., were issued citations for damage to property for taking a newly planted tree out of the ground on a terrace between West Main and South Broom streets. Madison police were alerted to it by Keith and Karen Weiss, who were returning from the Dane County Farmers’ Market and noticed an...

MADISON (AP) - A judge has appointed a special prosecutor to determine whether to file criminal charges against nine UW-Madison researchers and officials responsible for experiments that killed sheep. Dane County Circuit Court Judge Amy Smith appointed Madison lawyer David Geier to consider whether to file charges over experiments in which sheep were killed through decompression. Animal rights groups, including People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, filed a petition seeking criminal charges against 14 UW-Madison employees. Smith found probable cause that nine of them violated the law directly or as party to a crime. The petition came after Dane...

Jennifer Loewenstein, a professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, says Israel's deadly attack on the Freedom Flotilla was a "very carefully planned action" subsidized by the United States. The Gaza Freedom Flotilla, which was carrying food and medical supplies to Gaza, came under fire early Monday morning by Israeli navy forces in international waters more than 150km off the coast of Gaza. Twenty international activists are reported to have been killed and 50 others injured in the incident. The following is the transcript of Press TV's interview with Jennifer Loewenstein: Press TV: The first question that comes to...

Efforts to herd clothed, scantily clad and unclad bicyclists together for a potentially uncomfortable Madison tour on World Naked Bike Ride day have flopped in the past. But next month, they just might pull it off. Or at least most of it. There has been no official announcement, but there have been posters, and several informal meetings in the Rathskeller at the Memorial Union on campus. An earnest discussion group is maintained at Yahoo.com and news has circulated among bicycle groups. NOTE: The image in this story may be considered by some to be mildly not safe for work/children (Similar...

Maayana Miskin Jewish and Muslim students clashed Thursday at an event at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, according to the local paper Journal Sentinel. The clash left one Jewish student wounded and a Muslim student under arrest. University officials plan to investigate the incident. The story began as Jewish students held a celebration in honor of Israel's recent Independence Day outside the student union offices. A group of students from the Muslim Student Association came to the event and began yelling at those present, accusing Israel of mistreating Arabs. "We didn't go there intending to cause trouble, we just...

6 UW-Milwaukee students were detained this afternoon during a tuition rally, 15 of which were arrested. The rally began at noon in the UWM Union and moved towards Chapman Hall, home to the offices of many top UWM administrators, where the students were arrested. UWM Police Chief Michael Marzion said the various charges against students include obstructing justice and disorderly conduct. During a press conference, Marzion said that the protest became violent and students were attempting to force their way into Chapman Hall. He said that police made a decision to not allow students into Chapman Hall because a large...

This is why the American people believe Congress is among the country's sleaziest institutions. Recently when the Senate and House were debating the bill to make credit card companies more accountable and to stop them from arbitrarily changing the rules for their customers, Sen. Tom Coburn, the right-wing flamethrower from Oklahoma, decided that this would be a perfect opportunity to play some mischief. Coburn has been trying for the past couple of years to allow people to carry concealed weapons in our national parks, but even when his party had more power than now, he couldn't get that proposal passed....

When our family moved to Wisconsin in the mid 1960s, Dad found us a little two-story Cape Cod in the village of Maple Bluff. By all appearances it was a perfect starter home for an insurance claims man and his wife, featuring a backyard big enough to punt a football in and an elm tree with a swing, all within walking distance of Lakewood Elementary School. But my folks, swept up in the civil rights and anti-war movements, soon discovered they were out of step with some of their new neighbors in the conservative suburb on Lake Mendota's northeast shore....

During the course of the Bush/Cheney interregnum, millions of Americans resisted the worst excesses of a lawless and irresponsible administration that led this country into wars of whim, sanctioned torture and extraordinary rendition, embarked upon a spying regimen that made a mockery of the right to privacy, and destroyed the system of checks and balances that was supposed to protect the republic from monarchical abuse. Each year during a period of democratic decline that was so aptly anticipated by Jefferson with his 18th century reference to "the reign of the witches," we honored Most Valuable Progressives -- groups and individuals...

In what may be the beginning of a campaign to talk soldiers out of deploying to Iraq, 12 peace activists were fined Monday in federal court for trespassing last summer at Fort McCoy in west central Wisconsin. Members of Voices for Creative Nonviolence were arrested in August by base police at the main gate of the 67,000-acre military installation during a walk from Chicago to the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn. The activists said they wanted to "dialogue" with soldiers to tell them their Fort McCoy Training would leave them woefully unprepared for what they would face in...

To make up for years of writing that tends to annoy people with guns, let me take this opportunity to congratulate Wisconsin's deer hunters on a job well done. For decades now, I've written one of the few columns in the state about deer hunting from the deer's point of view. And every year I receive a flood of communications from hunters informing me how totally ignorant I am. What I fail to realize, they patiently explain, is the vital role in wildlife management hunters perform for deer when they go Up North to blow away Bambi's mother. If they...

When deer hunting season opens this weekend, Wisconsin’s poor deer hunters are going to be at even more of a disadvantage than usual in their annual attempt to match wits with highly intelligent animals. This year, deer hunters are going to be burdened by carrying heaping armloads of guns into the woods with them. Deer hunters and other gun lovers have been absolutely terrified ever since Nov. 4 that President-elect Barack Obama is going to swoop down on their homes and confiscate all their guns. In a panic, thousands of gun owners have raced to their nearest gun dealers to...

Can you be an obscure, self-indulged, theory-laden, post-modern scholar and manage to be an effective university president?  University of Wisconsin at Madison is hoping “yes.” It has picked Biddy Martin, Cornell provost and women’s studies professor, as its new chancellor. Her best-known work is a little something called Femininity Played Straight, which features chapters entitled “Sexualities without Gender and Other Queer Utopias” and “Teaching Feminism.” The one review that Amazon.com has picked up on the book is truncated to a single sentence, though it pretty much sums up the obtuseness of Ms Martin’s field: “Martin's eccentric use of the body...