John Nichols
All I don't know is what I can't read in the newspapers -- Walker edition
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<a href="/user/man-mke" title="View user profile.">Man MKE</a>
From an article by the very estimable John Nichols in The Capital Times comes a bald if unsurprising statement about Gov. Scott Walker. It involved Walker's reaction to the current John Doe investigation and FBI raids involving his tenure as Milwaukee County Executive:
News reports of the FBI raid are the talk of the state. But Walker is not talking. He and his press secretary are instructing reporters not to bring the issue up at public events.
Since when do a governor and his staff feel so uber-privileged that they will not only refuse to answer questions about a particular and unpleasant matter, but will effectively threaten any reporter who dares to bring the matter up in the first place? Is this transparent government, where the public has a right to know? Of course not, but it fits right in with the state GOP legislative leadership's recurring tactic of calling public meetings without following the spirit or even the language of the Open Records Act.
All I don't know is what I can't read in the newspapers -- Walker edition
From an article by the very estimable John Nichols in The Capital Times comes a bald if unsurprising statement about Gov. Scott Walker. It involved Walker's reaction to the current John Doe investigation and FBI raids involving his tenure as Milwaukee County Executive:
News reports of the FBI raid are the talk of the state. But Walker is not talking. He and his press secretary are instructing reporters not to bring the issue up at public events.
Since when do a governor and his staff feel so uber-privileged that they will not only refuse to answer questions about a particular and unpleasant matter, but will effectively threaten any reporter who dares to bring the matter up in the first place? Is this transparent government, where the public has a right to know? Of course not, but it fits right in with the state GOP legislative leadership's recurring tactic of calling public meetings without following the spirit or even the language of the Open Records Act.
I've given this some thought for the last few days. I think that for purposes of the Knight News Challenge, and its rules and emphases, we should position a request for money here to be for a more limited area than I would consider for the whole project. In particular, they like requests that serve a community or area - that wouldn't preclude doing a national proposal - for example, they've awarded money in the past for national proposals that cover a set of geographic areas - but the more I think about this, the more I think that the request should concentrate on Wisconsin, and emphasize the notion of supporting rural citizen journalism.
Off the top of my head, I think that the proposal should cover some number of areas - we need to position this as a unique project and I think the general concepts should include:
Burning Down the Republic in St. Paul
Remember all the reassurances back in June that the FISA bill Obama voted for was really not that bad and had all kinds of new provisions protecting people from unconstitutional searches and wiretapping, and how all the bloggers screaming bloody murder about killing the Fourth Amendment were just hysterical terrorist-lovers?
Right.
In the house that had just been raided, those inside described how a team of roughly 25 officers had barged into their homes with masks and black swat gear, holding large semi-automatic rifles, and ordered them to lie on the floor, where they were handcuffed and ordered not to move. The officers refused to state why they were there and, until the very end, refused to show whether they had a search warrant. They were forced to remain on the floor for 45 minutes while the officers took away the laptops, computers, individual journals, and political materials kept in the house. One of the individuals renting the house, an 18-year-old woman, was extremely shaken as she and others described how the officers were deliberately making intimidating statements such as "Do you have Terminator ready?" as they lay on the floor in handcuffs.
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