It's starting. News is coming out on all kinds of interesting stories - too different to merit a single title. So, here we go:
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Good News! Dems Likely to Get Back the State Senate Majority!
We retook the State Senate majority when Republican Van Wanggaard, following his confirmatory loss in the recount he demanded, decided not to pursue a lawsuit to attempt to cling to his seat. John Lehman was sworn in, the State Senate met, and committees were reassigned in line wth the new Democratic majority.
All was well until State Senator Tim Cullen (D-Janesville) didn't like his committee assignments and offered chairmanship and announced he was leaving the Democratic Caucus and becoming an independent. This snivelling I'm taking my ball and going home move left the State Senate in a tie.
Just breaking now is an apparant agreement between Democratic Leader Mark Miller and Tim Cullen on committee assignments. A joint press conference will be held at 2:30 PM Central Time to announce the details.
It's likely that Cullens taking our State Senate majority hostage has worked to get him the committee assignments and chairmanship he wants. I'll update as information becomes available.
UPDATE:
Tim Cullen is back in the Democratic Caucus and we have our State Senate majority back.
On Friday, the two held a news conference announcing Miller was forming two new committees that Cullen would chair, one on small business and venture capital and one on mining. Cullen is also getting a seat on the Transportation Projects Commission and the Senate Committee on Health, Revenue, Tax Fairness and Insurance.
He grabbed a great hostage and got his shameful reward. Sadly, he's not up for re-election until 2014 and by then voters won't remember this childishness action.
On the bright side, Mark Miller can now continue to obtain documents hidden by the Republican majority in their secret contracts with off-site law firms (like the one that did our recent redistricting completely in secret with no input from the public, community groups, or even Republicans that didn't sign the secrecy oath). Additionally, Gov. Scott Walker cannot call a special legislative session to ram through additional Koch/ALEC/extremist GOP blls. They've devastated the state enough already.
Another State Supreme Court Justice David (The Choker) Prosser Victory
Angry white man David (The Choker) Prosser has sucessfully forced another Justice, Annette Zeigler, to recuse herself from hearing his ethics violation case. Justice Pat Roggensack was the first to recuse herself from hearing the case.
He is demanding that all justices on the State Supreme Court recuse themselves from hearing the case so that quorum on the court cannot be achieved and the case cannot be heard.
It's pretty hard to defend your professional ethics when you were seen by your fellow justices choking a colleague and using foul and offensive language toward the Chief Justice, so he's banking on not having his case heard in order to avoid that personal responsibility that Republicans love to demand from others.
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That's all for now, but stay tuned. It's Friday and still early enough for other stories.
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Update 2: I'm almost done putting together an Overpass Light Brigade Diary (with pictures!) which will be out tomorrow. Hope you all join me for the awesomeness.
Update 3: The Romney campaign just announced they will be barnstorming in Wisconsinthis weekend despite their candidate being in England suffering even worse Foot in Mouth Disease than usual.
On Sunday, U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus will be among those aboard the Romney campaign bus on a tour of campaign offices in Waukesha, Green Bay and Janesville.
Sensible people ask why?
"We believe that Wisconsin is ripe for (former Massachusetts) Gov. Romney and the Republicans to win in November," Priebus said during a telephone interview Friday.
"The reason why we think we have a real shot at Wisconsin is that we've had a real shift in the electorate in the focus on the economy, on spending and on people being true to their word when they're elected to office," he said. "I think Gov. Walker, Paul Ryan and Ron Johnson have led the way in this electoral shift."
Dream on, buddy. Just because you have state saturated RWNJ radio and lazy, corporate media to carry water for local and state candidates doesn't mean you control the national dialogue.
Of course, with the GOP and their extremist agenda that nobody in their right mind would vote for, they turn to the big bucks to prop them up.
This weekend, the Republican National Committee's independent expenditure unit purchased $60,000 worth of television advertising in three Wisconsin markets - Madison, Milwaukee and Green Bay, according to media buyers associated with the Democratic Party. The figure is a tiny fraction of GOP ad buys in battleground states, according to the Democrats.
"The air will be saturated," Priebus said of television campaign advertisements that will air through the autumn. "What will matter is who is better on the ground, whose punching. It's just like football. Which line is bigger, better and who will last longer. That's who will win the game."
Again, dream on....
Update 4: It's after 6 PM locally and no further news is likely to come out. I'll check in later and hope to see you all back tomorrow for the OLB pictures of our Racine event.