Free Republic

On hearing Friday’s news that Mary Burke’s job-creation plan was plagiarized from other Democrats running for governor, in Delaware, Tennessee, and elsewhere we thought, well…there are think tanks whose business is to share such ideas. But Burke reacted less calmly, firing the consultant responsible for the cut-and-paste job. Why? For duping her into thinking she had a jobs plan? More intriguing than Burke snatching ideas that may be interchangeable among Democrats is her apparently scant familiarity with what she is proposing. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel quoted her saying “This is my plan on how to drive Wisconsin’s economy forward,” later adding...

Law360, Los Angeles (September 24, 2014, 8:44 PM ET) -- The Seventh Circuit ruled Wednesday that it is up to Wisconsin state courts to decide whether an investigation into potential campaign finance violations involving Gov. Scott Walker and a host of conservative groups should proceed, overturning a lower court injunction that halted the probe on First Amendment grounds. A three-judge panel called the injunction issued in May by U.S. District Judge Rudolph T. Randa an "abuse of discretion," saying that "this case does not present a situation in which state proceedings may be displaced." The panel directed the lower court...

A federal appeals court on Wednesday removed one barrier to restarting an investigation into possible illegal coordination between Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's campaign and more than two dozen conservative groups, a legal setback for the Republican who is locked in a tough re-election campaign. The three-judge panel of the 7th U.S. Court of Appeals overturned a lower court ruling that halted the probe, but the judges found state courts are the proper venue to resolve legal issues with the case. Despite the ruling, the investigation won't resume immediately because the state judge overseeing it also effectively stopped it in January...

A Waukesha County judge tossed out a lawsuit Wednesday attempting to force changes to the Nov. 4 ballot. Waukesha County Circuit Judge James Kieffer dismissed the case after 25 minutes of arguments because those who brought the suit had not followed a procedure requiring them to first file a complaint with state election officials. The case was brought last week by the campaign committees of Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau). In another blow to the lawsuit, Kieffer also ruled that only electors could bring such a challenge, not the political committees of candidates....

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, faces a difficult re-election in six weeks. Under normal circumstances, he would probably be coasting to victory. He just beat a recall attempt in 2012, Wisconsin's economy is improving, and he put in place reforms that have already saved the state $3 billion. But of course, this is the issue. His now-famous union bargaining reforms of 2011 have incurred the wrath of America's big labor unions, which are now eager to defeat him. But anyone who doubts the wisdom of Walker's reforms — and the self-interested short-sightedness of the public union bosses — need...

America has always been awash in bad ideas. The Founding Fathers spoke a good game about liberty but allowed America to become a slave republic, because they didn't want to alienate the Southern farmers and merchants who helped bankroll and fight the war for independence against the British. The Southern states wanted access to American liberty based on skin color. They got their wish for disproportionate representation in the early republic with the three-fifths clause enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. Tolerance of slavery was not only a bad idea, it has had disastrous consequences for America ever since. Right up...

STEVENS POINT — OK, the concern over militarization of cops is legitimate. But as someone who has been accused of being a flaming liberal, allow me to add this question: In a country that is buried in guns, do we want the enforcers of our laws to walk around with billy clubs while criminals tote semi-automatic weapons? If the bad guys have semi-automatics, then don’t we want cops to have at least that amount of firepower? Surely, we all know there are tens of thousands of semi-automatic weapons out there. Does anyone want to see a single cop killed because...

Wisconsin offices that issue driver's licenses aren't open enough hours to issue photo IDs to all the voters who need them before the Nov. 4 election, a liberal group told federal judges in a brief filed Monday. Wisconsin's 2011 law requires voters to show a government-issued ID with a photo to vote. Because of legal challenges, the requirement had not been enforced since the February 2012 primary. But a three-judge panel of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago said Sept. 12 that the law could be used for the Nov. 4 election and other elections while it considers...

Madison -- First lady Michelle Obama will come to Milwaukee next week to campaign on behalf of Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke. Burke's campaign released the news Monday and said it would provide more details in the coming days on the event scheduled for next Monday. A spokeswoman for Burke didn't immediately say whether Obama would raise campaign funds for Burke while in Wisconsin. Burke has taken criticism from conservatives and some liberals for not appearing with Barack Obama during his recent visits to Wisconsin.

And now the left bites back. Wisconsin’s wild political ride continued Monday, when a left-leaning group with ties to Hillary Clinton announced it is asking the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate Republican Gov. Scott Walker. Interesting that the American Democracy Legal Fund pushes out its plea to Obama administration top gun Eric Holder just as Mary Burke, the Democrat’s candidate for governor, is embroiled further in a major plagiarism scandal. The American Democracy Legal Fund, run by liberal power brokers David Brock and Brad Woodhouse, wants the Justice Department to investigate whether Walker sponsored and ensured passage of mine...

In March of this year Mary Burke, the Democratic candidate challenging incumbent Republican Scott Walker in this fall's Wisconsin gubernatorial election, approved the release of a jobs plan that, it now turns out, contains numerous passages plagiarized from the jobs plans of several recent Democratic gubernatorial candidates in other states and at least one passage plagiarized from an Obama White House press release. After BuzzFeed broke the story on Thursday, the Burke campaign announced Friday that it had "terminated" the consultant who had prepared the 40-page jobs plan. Prior to this announcement, the consultant, Eric Schnurer of the Philadelphia firm...

MADISON, Wis. -- Democratic candidate for Wisconsin governor Mary Burke said Friday she cut ties with a consultant she blames for copying several sections of her jobs plan from platforms of other Democrats. Burke has built her campaign around the jobs issue. One of her key arguments is Republican Gov. Scott Walker doesn't deserve re-election because he hasn't lived up to his promise to create 250,000 private-sector jobs, and Wisconsin is lagging other states in adding workers. Burke told the Associated Press it was her decision to end the campaign's relationship with consultant Eric Schnurer of the Pennsylvania-based consulting firm...

MADISON, Wis. — In this week’s Marquette Law School poll, 48 percent of respondents said Madison millionaire Mary Burke, the Democrat’s candidate for governor, has not been clear enough about what she would do if elected. Now it turns out Burke’s signature jobs plan, the one area in which she seemed clear about her intentions, was lifted from others. Buzzfeed, which has had its own PR black eyes with plagiarism, reported late Thursday that Burke’s plan, “Invest for Success” pilfers entire passages from the jobs plans laid out by Delaware Democratic Gov. Jack Markell in 2008, and Democratic gubernatorial candidates...

Scott Walker can’t stop digging himself into a hole with union workers. After stripping public-sector union members of collective bargaining rights in 2011, one might think that there wasn’t more the Republican governor could do to anger workers. But Walker, who is locked in a tight race Wisconsin against Democratic challenger Mary Burke, ran afoul of the president of a local steelworkers’ union over a recent campaign ad. In the ad, Walker speaks to the camera from a deep hole. Jeff Kaminsiki, head of the United Steelworkers Local 2006, filed a complaint with the Occupational Health and Safety Administration over...

<p>That's really the only way to describe Politico's piece on DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.</p> <p>Based on interviews with DNC staffers -- both former and current -- the piece described Wasserman Schultz as something of a modern-day Tracy Flick: over-eager, disloyal and not shy about promoting her ambitions.</p>

MADISON – Voters in the State of Wisconsin will see a referendum on whether the transportation fund should be protected in the State Constitution. However, most voter are not aware on how the referendum qualified for the November ballot. Under Wisconsin State law, a binding statewide referendum can be qualified if it’s approved by the Wisconsin Legislature by both houses for two consecutive Legislative sessions. According to Ballotpedia, Wisconsin is one of 12 states that uses the two Legislative session method to qualify statewide ballot measures. Extra: Learn More About the Transportation Fund Referendum The Transportation Fund referendum will ask...

WAUKESHA – The Republican Party of Wisconsin filed a lawsuit against the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board on Wednesday in Waukesha County Circuit Court relating to the design of the ballot being used for the November 4, 2014, general election. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald filed the lawsuit on behalf of the party. The lawsuit was filed in Waukesha County because portions of Senator Fitzgerald’s district are located in the county. Both Vos and Fitzgerald are being represented by the Michael Best and Frederich law firm based in Milwaukee. In the complaint, the party mentions that...

If everyone is so happy about abortion, then why doesn’t Planned Parenthood promote and brag about it the same way they do their breast cancer “screenings” or cervical exams? The answer is simple: because while the pro-abortion lobby pushes their radical agenda, most people don’t want to hear an abortion giant brag about killing children. I thought about this as I read an announcement in the FDL Reporter about the closing of a Planned Parenthood in Wisconsin. Here is what Planned Parenthood representatives said about the upcoming closing: We feel privileged so many of you have trusted us to care...

A Milwaukee teen charged in a string of armed robberies last week told police he was trying to do as many crimes as he could before he turned 18 on Sept. 11. Rocarldo Chalmers is one of five suspects charged Wednesday in a dizzying spree of armed stick-ups and car jackings that only ended after a high speed chase. Chalmers faces 10 felonies, including armed robbery, car theft and fleeing. Isiah Deshawn Thomas, 18, is charged with five counts, Anthony Griffis, 17, with two. Two juveniles have been charged in Children's Court. As many as three other suspects remain at...

A top Republican House member on Wednesday proposed eliminating the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, writing a bill that would freeze all hiring at the troubled agency and require the Justice Department to come up with a plan for transferring its duties to other agencies. Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., the Wisconsin Republican who wrote the bill, called it both a chance to streamline government and to clean up an agency that’s been criticized from the right and the left for botched gun-running operations.