Free Republic

Conservative justices in Wisconsin handed the governor’s allies a win Thursday in the ‘John Doe’ election scandal. But liberals say the deck was stacked against them from the beginning. The gods are smiling on Scott Walker. And by the gods, I mean four of the six Badger State’s supreme court justices, who just put the kibosh on a lengthy and secret “John Doe” investigation that targeted some of the governor’s top allies and like-minded groups. The investigation was sparked over allegations that outside independent groups who supported Walker secretly coordinated with Wisconsin Republicans during the run up to the 2012...

Finds prosecutors raided conservatives’ homes to investigate constitutionally protected free speech. In a ruling this morning, the Wisconsin Supreme Court rendered official what observers have long known: Wisconsin Democrats did, in fact, launch a massive, multi-county “John Doe” investigation of the state’s conservatives, featuring extraordinarily broad subpoenas and coordinated “paramilitary” raids of private homes; the “crimes” that provided the investigation’s pretext were not crimes at all, but First Amendment-protected speech; and the legal theory underpinning the investigation was bunk, “unsupported in either reason or law,” as the court put it. ...On October 3, 2013, multiple Wisconsin conservatives were awakened by...

The long unraveling of the so-called “John Doe II investigation” convened by partisan district attorneys in Wisconsin is now complete. This case was about using vague campaign-finance rules to intimidate conservative groups and smear Republican officials, including Gov. Scott Walker. No charges were filed in the John Doe II investigation and it was halted by both the state and federal courts.Today, the Wisconsin Supreme Court releases its final disposition in the case: To be clear, this conclusion ends the John Doe investigation because the special prosecutor’s legal theory is unsupported in either reason or law. Consequently, the investigation is closed....

Labor groups are gearing up for another fight with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) now that he has entered the presidential race. After a failed recall bid in Wisconsin, unions are determined to make sure Walker never sets foot in the Oval Office. But organized labor’s opposition could play well for Walker in the GOP primary because it appeals to his conservative base. Some of the biggest unions are still formulating their plan of attack against Walker, even as they signal they will dip into their coffers to go after him. The strongest signal came from AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka....

Oops! Maybe the  Scott Walker recall election in 2012 was not such a good idea in retrospect. Such is the conclusion of liberal Chris Cillizza writing in the Washington Post. According to Cillizza, although the attempt to recall Walker was appealing to liberals at the time, it backfired in a big way by making the Wisconsin governor well known nationally to the extent that he now has a good shot at winning the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. Cillizza tells his tale of political woe due to unexpected consequences:

....[SNIP].... Labor unions rely on density for two reasons. First, unions need monthly dues in order to be able to pay organizers and staff. The more members, the more dues, the more organizing. Second, the more unions that exist in a region, the easier it is to organize. That's because more union employers usually means smaller disparities between the wages paid by different businesses -- meaning less incentive to oppose organizing drives. That's why New York state has the highest union membership rate in the country: New York City's high union density makes it easier to organize. Again, half of...

Right to work. The elimination of wage control laws. Voter ID laws. Defunding Planned Parenthood. Expanding school choice. These are some of the No. 1 priorities for Republican legislators around the country. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has hit every item on this list, and he did so in a deep blue state; Wisconsin hasn’t gone red in a presidential election in more than 30 years, and its labor union culture may be second only to that of the automotive capital in neighboring Michigan. Walker’s uncompromising conservative governance made him Democrats' No. 1 target at both the state and national level,...

In April, three victims of Wisconsin’s long-running “John Doe” investigations broke their silence. Former Scott Walker adviser Cindy Archer spoke to National Review on the record while two other women asked for their identities to be concealed. All three, however, told remarkably similar stories — of police raids at dawn, pounding on the door, threats of battering rams, and ransacked homes. They weren’t suspected of drug crimes, violent crimes, or other crimes recognizable to the American public. Rather, they were either close associates of Scott Walker or involved in the broader conservative movement in Wisconsin — and were caught up...

Wisconsin unions Monday are once again attacking Republican Gov. Scott Walker, this time over a proposed budget that may result in cuts to tenure for state college professors. With the upcoming budget session, the Wisconsin Joint Finance Committee is expected to propose a plan to reform the University of Wisconsin System. While it is not yet finalized, unions warn the plan will cut $250 million in funding and will remove academic protections for professors such as teacher tenure. This latest union battles comes at the heels of a likely announcement Walker will run for president. With his previous labor reforms,...

MADISON, Wis. – Democrat Milwaukee County prosecutors tapped the email and text communications of conservative activists as part of a five-year probe aimed at bringing down Republican Gov. Scott Walker, affidavits reviewed by Wisconsin Watchdog reveal. One target of the spying operation told Wisconsin Watchdog the methods used to keep tabs on Wisconsin residents were like those of the National Security Agency’s domestic spying program. “It was actually worse because (Milwaukee County prosecutors) were taking the body of emails and looking at actual data,” said the source, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution from the prosecutors....

A huge political scandal is slowly coming to light in Wisconsin, as information comes to light about the conduct of that state’s Government Accountability Board (GAB) as it persecuted supporters of Governor Scott Walker, who bravely took on the public employee unions of that state.  The outrageous tactics used included midnight SWAT team raids on Walker’s political supporters.  Ten days ago, I wrote about some of the potential law-breaking and document-alteration engaged in by the prosecutors.  But new evidence has just come to light. Yesterday, Judge Lee S. Dreyfus of the Waukesha County Court unsealed a trove of documents...

<p>MADISON, Wis. - Gov. Scott Walker is in Las Vegas to meet with billionaire casino mogul and Republican super donor Sheldon Adelson, as Walker continues to consider running for president in 2016.</p> <p>Walker's campaign spokeswoman Alleigh Marre said Tuesday that Walker was in Las Vegas for "public and private events."</p>

One of the more compelling reasons to consider Scott Walker’s candidacy for president is that he has been elected, repeatedly, governor of a mid-size state with a strong executive. Wisconsin’s state constitution establishes a powerful governor’s seat, as opposed to, say, Texas’ constitution, or even to the limited powers granted to the U.S. president. There are numerous ways in which the state of Wisconsin is a microcosm of the country, and perhaps advisory of things to come. The state is deeply polarized, divided almost equally between left and right, as the U.S. has been now for forty years or more,...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, the Republican Party has a genuine star. The Republican Party has a demonstrated, genuine hero and potential star in its ranks, and he is the governor the Wisconsin. His name is Scott Walker. Scott Walker has won three out of four elections in the last five or six years, regular gubernatorial races and a couple of recalls. Every American labor union, every American labor union thug, a rigged judiciary, a rigged media. The Democrat Party has thrown everything they've got at Scott Walker, and he has beat them back without one syllable of complaint,...

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Politifact.com have been tracking Gov. Scott Walker’s election campaign promises through an online feature they call the “Walk-O-Meter” and can be found online at PolitifactWisconsin.com. There you will find that Walker has kept an overwhelming amount of his campaign promises out of the 65 they are tracking.

Today’s revelations about local prosecutors’ claims that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker “was at the center of an effort to illegally coordinate fundraising among conservative groups” in a “criminal scheme” are much ado about nothing. Why? Because federal district court Judge Rudolph Randa already enjoined the prosecutors’ investigation, saying they were trying to criminalize the political speech of the governor and conservative organizations in violation of the First Amendment. In fact, Judge Randa called the prosecutors’ appeal of his injunction order “frivolous.” Despite the excitement by some over the fact that amongst the documents unsealed today by a federal judge is...

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker criticized the accusation he illegally coordinated fundraising with conservative groups during an appearance on Fox News. "We tried to take the government away from the big government special interest and put it firmly in the hands of the hard working taxpayers, both at the state level and the local governments," Walker, a Republican and potential 2016 presidential candidate, told "Fox & Friends" on Friday.

IÂ’m going to tell you a true story, and then tell you how the news media is covering it. This is a true story: in 2012, Democratic district attorneys in Wisconsin launched a secret probe known as a John Doe investigation with the goal of proving that conservative groups illegally coordinated activities during Gov. Scott WalkerÂ’s recall election. They issued more than 100 subpoenas, demanded the private information of conservatives and conservative groups, and actually conducted secret raids. And under state law, individuals who were targeted or witness to the investigation were forbidden from making knowledge of it public. Fortunately,...

Democrats are giddy over the unsealing of “secret” documents that charge Scott Walker’s recall campaign with illegal coordination with outside conservative groups. To name just a few: USA Today: “Prosecutors: Wis. Gov. Scott Walker in criminal scheme.” Associated Press: “Prosecutors: Gov. Walker part of criminal scheme.” Washington Post: “How the State of Wisconsin alleges Scott Walker aides violated the law, in 1 chart.” If you didn’t know better, you might think this is a big story, highly damaging to one of America’s most successful governors. In fact, the current frenzy merely demonstrates the laziness and bias of reporters who don’t...

Literally minutes after Gov. Scott Walker and Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch officially announced their re-election campaign Tuesday, a Hillary Clinton front group rolled out its attack machine against the Republican governor and potential 2016 presidential hopeful. American Bridge, backed by big-money liberal donor George Soros, “welcomed” Walker and his “failed job creation promise to the Wisconsin governor’s race.” The liberal “research and communications organization committed to holding Republicans accountable for their words” by employing liberal spin, made its first sortie an all-out assault on Walker’s jobs record, criticizing the governor’s failure to date to hit his ambitious pledge that the...