Although judicial debates are usually really lame, I watched the one between Prosser and Kloppenburg because the race is so important

Watching a judicial debate is an exercise in frustration on so many levels, not quite as bad as watching paint dry, but almost. We want to know how the candidates will rule on the issues we care about, but of course they can't tell us -- that would mean they were prejudging cases without objectively ruling on the evidence. Are they liberal; are they conservative? Same thing -- they can't tell us, because to do so would undermine the conspiracy to pretend that there is such a thing as a truly objective judge who does not allow politics or ideology to intrude on the judicial process.

It's an elaborate charade that bears little relationship to reality. In the real world, we all know the April 5th Wisconsin Supreme Court race is about whether liberals or conservatives control the high court and its role as court of last appeal when it comes to Scott Walker's agenda. And yet, if the candidates admitted as much, they would more or less instantly disqualify themselves. Socially sanctioned hypocrisy is the order of the day. The candidates perform intricate verbal dances around the questions, which themselves are usually inane and useless. When there is a question that does touch on a major issue, it's answered through hints and innuendo. We in the audience are left to read between the lines and to interpret such tea leaves as which candidate is most likable, which is least likable, and which has the more judicial temperament (whatever that is).

That's why I rarely watch these things. But the April 5th race is so important I did watch last night's debate on Wisconsin Public Television between incumbent David Prosser and challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg in the nominally nonpartisan election.

For what it's worth, I thought Kloppenburg was the clear winner. She seemed more judicial, calm, and even-tempered. Prosser seemed whiny and defensive. He staged some cheap theatrics by pulling a letter out of his pocket to challenge Kloppenburg when complaining about the third-party attack ad being run against him. A couple months ago, his reelection seemed a foregone conclusion. Since then, the race has been caught up in the protests against Scott Walker. Prosser seemed so upset about the unfairness of this development that he lapsed into the third-person to defend himself.

“Dave Prosser is not a partisan,” he said. “JoAnne cannot point to individual decisions where I have been partisan in my decision making or unfair or crazy. What she’s trying to do is really to focus all the attention on this theory of hers that cannot be substantiated to hide her own extreme political and social views.”

I almost feel sorry for the guy. But it doesn't matter what I think, or who I think won the debate. What matters is the turnout and the desire of the people of Wisconsin to take back their state from the Koch brothers and Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce. That's what I think is going to put JoAnne Kloppenburg on the Supreme Court.

Remembering why unions matter: Chalk memorial to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire victims

One hundred years ago today, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York killed 146 people, most of them young immigrant women trapped on an upper floor because emergency doors had been locked to prevent theft. The names and ages of the victims are being commemorated here in Madison at the Capitol, along with the statement "Remember Why Unions Matter."

The late afternoon sun cast moody shadows on the memorial to this terrible tragedy that did much to spur the unionization of the garment industry and the adoption of better safety standards. The Democratic Underground website reports that the chalk memorial was created by the firefighters and has some additional photos. It's a great tribute from the union members who have played such an important role in the rallies at the Capitol -- one that evokes both the history of their own profession and the role of unions in improving working conditions and protecting worker safety.

You can vote for JoAnne Kloppenburg now -- but make sure you do it right! Here's a checklist.

You can make sure you get your Kloppenburg vote in for this critically important Supreme race now by requesting an absentee ballot, but make sure you do it right. Every election, 10-15 percent of the absentee ballots do not get counted. Here's why not, according to the Madison City Clerk's office:

* Ballot has not been received by the Clerk’s Office until after Election Day.
* Voter has not signed absentee certificate envelope.
* Voter has not had a witness sign the absentee certificate envelope.
* Voter has not registered to vote at their current address.
* Voter has not sealed the absentee certificate envelope.
* Voter has not sent original absentee request to Clerk's Office after submitting request by fax or e-mail.

Here's their checklist of what to do to make sure your vote is counted:

* Either vote absentee in the Clerk’s Office, or carefully read the instruction letter that you receive with your absentee ballot.
* Mail your absentee ballot back to the Clerk’s Office as early as possible. The postmark does not make a difference here; in order to be counted, your absentee ballot needs to be delivered to your polling place on Election Day.
* Make sure you sign the certificate envelope on the line marked “Signature of Voter.”
* Have your witness sign the certificate envelope on the line marked “Signature of Witness.”
* Make sure the envelope is sealed.
* If you have moved, you must register to vote at your new address. Crossing out the address on your absentee label and writing in your new address does not update your voter registration.

Pro-Walker email: With real nut jobs like this running around, who needs fake Kochs?

This was in a folder of emails to Scott Walker marked "pro." It's a screen capture of the email from one Carlos F. Lam, a less-than-brilliant Indiana deputy prosecutor who thinks that suggesting a felony to Scott Walker is a good idea.

This was dug up by the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism when it went through the Walker emails made public after Isthmus and AP requested them under Wisconsin's open records law (see story at the link). When contacted by the Center, Lam denied sending the email, professing to be shocked that anybody would suggest such a thing.

"I am flabbergasted and would never advocate for something like this, and would like everyone to be sure that that's just not me," he said, after being read the email.

Indiana deputy prosecutor Carlos Lam confirms this email appears to be from his email address, but he denies sending it. Click to see a larger version in a new page.

Asked his views on Scott Walker, Lam said, "I think he's trying to do what he has to do to get his budget balanced. But jeez, that's taking it a little bit to the extreme," he said of the email's suggestion to fake violence. "Jeez!"

Lam claimed his email had been hacked, but after sleeping on it, he fessed up and quit his job. Maybe because he realized he would be facing an obstruction of justice charge if he persisted in his claim that he had been hacked, once there was a formal investigation of the alleged hacking, as it seemed likely there would be.

Where do they get these guys? And why do they have such an affinity for Scott Walker? (Remember the earlier story about the deputy attorney general, also from Indiana, who tweeted that the police at the Capitol should use live ammunition against the protesters?)

About those emails: Even Scott Walker cannot fool all of the people all of the time

On Feb. 17, the same I day I took this photograph, Scott Walker told a press conference in the Capitol that most people writing his office supported his union-busting bill. It didn't look like it in the Capitol, and now Associated press reports that, in fact, at the time his email was running nearly 2-1 against the proposal.

Walker's comments about the emails came on the evening of Feb. 17, as roughly 25,000 protesters packed into the Capitol's ornate rotunda and filled its lawn outside. They could be heard screaming outside the conference room where he met with reporters in a news conference broadcast live by several cable news networks.

"The more than 8,000 emails we got today, the majority are telling us to stay firm, to stay strong, to stand with the taxpayers," Walker said of the emails. "While the protesters have every right to be heard, I'm going to make sure the taxpayers of the state are heard and their voices are not drowned out by those circling the Capitol."

But for several preceding days, the emails of support Walker received had been vastly outnumbered by those opposed to his plan.

Lincoln's famous words remind us that, while mendacity may lead to short-term tactical advantage, it's terrible strategy. Politicians' lies tend to catch up with them. Especially if they lie about emails, which are public records.

Thank you, Isthmus and Associated Press.

Kloppenburg-Prosser Supreme Court race: Mark your calendar for this Friday at 7:00 pm

Friday, March 25, at 7:00 pm, Wisconsin Public Television will carry the "We The People" Supreme Court debate. It's your chance to see JoAnne Kloppenburg take on incumbent David prosser on broadcast television in front of a live audience just a week and a half before this important election.

More rain coming, but the raindrops are getting organized

I like the way the raindrops finally get organized and start to move in unison. If there's a political metaphor there, I'll take it.

Ever wonder what Walker's "Wisconsin Is Open for Business" really means?

It's Scott Walker's favorite catch phrase. It's not pretty. And the budget "repair" bill just makes it uglier and uglier.

Who gave them the right to buy the stars?

The Supreme Court, in Citizens United.

UW's Bill Cronon gives NYT readers much needed historical context on what Scott Walker is doing

By and large, the national media's treatment of Scott Walker's radical break with Wisconsin's standards of political decency and transparency has been woefully inadequate. It's been hard for the media to really get a handle on what's bothering us out here in flyover country. The natives are getting restless, but why? Didn't the voters elect that Walker guy? Why won't they even give him a chance to do his job? And that's the mainstream media. Fox News, of course, has kept up a steady drumbeat of talking points straight from the hands of Fitzwalkerstan spinmeisters.

That's why it's so exciting to finally have a nuanced treatment of the larger historical context on the Op Ed page of the New York Times, one that explains to a national audience just what is happening in Wisconsin, and why it's such a radical break with our history and political traditions. It's by UW historian William Cronon -- not just any historian, but one who was just elected president of the American Historical Association last fall.

Cronon documents how Walker has turned his back on a century of progressive reforms that involved both political parties in this state. He is reminded of another part of Wisconsin history, a darker side.

Perhaps that is why — as a centrist and a lifelong independent — I have found myself returning over the past few weeks to the question posed by the lawyer Joseph N. Welch during the hearings that finally helped bring down another Wisconsin Republican, Joe McCarthy, in 1954: “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”

It's a question a lot of us have been asking lately. Maybe the national media will finally, just maybe, begin to understand why.

Scott Walker: In his heart he knows he's Reagan

"And I stood up and I pulled out a picture of Ronald Reagan, and I said, you know, this may seem a little melodramatic, but 30 years ago, Ronald Reagan, whose 100th birthday we just celebrated the day before, had one of the most defining moments of his political career, not just his presidency, when he fired the air-traffic controllers. And, uh, I said, to me that moment was more important than just for labor relations or even the federal budget, that was the first crack in the Berlin Wall and the fall of Communism because from that point forward, the Soviets and the Communists knew that Ronald Reagan wasn’t a pushover. And, uh, I said this may not have as broad of world implications, but in Wisconsin’s history — little did I know how big it would be nationally — in Wisconsin’s history, I said this is our moment, this is our time to change the course of history. And this is why it’s so important that they were all there. I had a cabinet meeting this morning and I reminded them of that and I said for those of you who thought I was being melodramatic you now know it was purely putting it in the right context." -- Scott Walker to Fake David Koch

Note: The sign quotes from an an article in The Guardian titled "Scott Walker's real agenda in Wisconsin." Here's a link. Read it and weep.

Connecting the dots between the Forever War and the war on working people in Wisconsin

Saturday's veterans' rally at the Capitol took place on the eighth anniversary of the start of the Iraq war. That's when President George W. Bush went on TV and made his announcement.

My fellow citizens, at this hour American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger.

We know how well that worked out. And although combat ended in Iraq, we're still embroiled in a Forever War without clearly defined objectives in Afghanistan and, now, Libya.

We say we're the richest nation in the world, and at the same time our politicians tell us there's no money for social services, education and healthcare -- all the things that should be taken for granted in a civilized, advanced industrial nation. This Orwellian contradiction has a lot to do with the Forever War and what it costs.

The U.S. seems to have learned nothing from history's long record of overextended empires that impoverished their people and spent themselves into national decline by trying to defend overextended spheres of influence. Unbelievable as it may seem, the military expenditures of the U.S. substantially exceed those of the rest of the world combined. We spend ten times what the second-place country, China, spends.

One of the co-founders of Iraq Veterans Against the War, Kelly Dougherty of Denver, spoke at Saturday's rally. She eloquently connected the dots

. . . between spending billions of dollars in foreign occupations and not having any money here at home to provide basic services, education and community building activities in our own country. We need to make these connections, that human rights, economic justice, environmental justice and social justice are all tied together, and that's how we're going to win this fight, is making those broader connections and having a big perspective.

Since 9/11, we have been at war for nearly a decade, more than twice as long as our role in World War II. In addition, the U.S. has more than 700 bases in more than 150 countries around the world, give or take a few, since the count is constantly changing.

This level of military spending is incompatible with democracy and decent living standards at home. The corporate interests that benefit from this way of doing things can only sustain their position by fighting a war against the interests of working people, using divide and conquer tactics to pit them against each other, instead of against their real enemies. Scott Walker is only their latest tool in this campaign.

We need to take back our state. But we also need to take back our country.

Firefighters marching at the Capitol Saturday with their bagpipes

Firefighters have played such an important role in the Wisconsin protests. Their early support and the example they and the police unions set with their dedication and selflessness (after all, they were exempt from Scott Walker's union-busting bill) helped bring in tens of thousands of people from other backgrounds, forming a true grassroots mass movement. They were there again Saturday with their bagpipers, leading another march. I really get choked up when I see -- and hear -- them. Thank you!

Link for computers/phones without Flash

Equinox-related science project for a morning person in Madison (Law Park area)

This is a photo I took a few years ago of the "Timekeeper" sculpture installation in Law Park by Robert Curtis. I blogged about how it sometimes seemed I was the only person in the entire city who liked it (though a few commenters made it clear I wasn't quite the only one). One of the things I always liked about it was the way it evoked the old Neolithic monuments like Stonehenge that were said to have astronomical coordinates built into their orientation.

What does this have to do with the solstice? Yesterday Benjamin Pierce, a commenter on the old blog post, noted that the orientation of the installation has interesting astronomical properties:

I am in the habit, when Equinox is impending, of watching the sun appear at exactly 90 degrees east at Sunrise, at lake Monona (because there are no real visual obstructions). The tree just across the way from the timekeeper will cast a shadow that hits the three pillars holding the blue M at 6 AM, 7 AM and 8 AM.

Sounds cool -- and judging from the photo, it seems plausible, but I'd love to have this confirmed by someone else who passes by early on a sunny morning within the next few days (I'm not enough of a morning person to make any of those times from where I live). Let me know what you find out.

A wet Spring Equinox in Walkerville

Even though it was dark, damp and occasionally rainy, Sunday was the Spring Equinox, or Vernal Equinox. Not a lot of green around yet, except on the dome of the Capitol. Now our fight to take back our state is officially the spring protest of 2011. Spring is better than winter. Has a nice, optimistic ring to it, as in spring election, and spring recalls. Happy Equinox!

Borders going out of business "stamp"

Shot this on iPhone yesterday on a return trip to the going out of business sale at Borders West in Madison. Perforated border and processing in-camera with CP Pro app.

After all this liquidation marketing for about a month or so, the store still seems suspiciously well-stocked with merchandise. Makes me wonder. Pure speculation on my part, but . . . When big retailers go bankrupt, they usually hire liquidators to get rid of the inventory. Since this was always a successful location for Borders, I wonder if they're being used to sell left-over inventory from other Borders stores that closed and couldn't move their stock? Just wondering: are they actually restocking, or is it just that people aren't buying? Sad in any case.

Governor Scott Walker shuts down moonrise

Claiming "we're out of money," Governor says taxpayers can't afford Supermoon. But even Scott Walker can't keep the Supermoon hidden behind clouds forever.