Wisconsin: Wisconsin generally allows carrying an unconcealed firearm in public, but polling place prohibitions depend on local rules. “If the municipality does not designate polling places as gun-free zones, then it is up to the owner of the building where voting takes place,” Reid Magney, Public Information Officer for the Wisconsin Elections Commission, told CNN. “There is no blanket policy for the state of Wisconsin — it’s a local decision. There are 1,854 municipalities in Wisconsin, and each of them may decide whether to set a policy on firearms.”
In this latest twist of the scandal that’s been rocking South Korea for weeks, prosecutors are investigating allegations that Samsung might have provided €2.8m euros ($3.1m, £2.5m) to a company co-owned by Ms Choi and her daughter, to bankroll the daughter’s equestrian training in Germany.
Prosecutors are also reported to have raided the offices of the Korea Equestrian Federation and the Korea Horse Affairs Association.
Hillary Clinton should not face criminal charges after a review of new emails.
“Based on our review, we have not changed our conclusions that we expressed in July,” Comey wrote in the new letter to congressional committee chairmen.
It’s pretty amazing how it took years to go through her emails the first time and days to sift through 650,000 of them this time. Technology must have really improved over that time period.
Rolling Stone magazine and a journalist have been found guilty of defamation over a false article about a gang rape at the University of Virginia.
The $7.5m (£6m) lawsuit was brought by Nicole Eramo, an associate dean from the university, who said the article had cast her as the “chief villain”.
The 2014 article, written by Sabrina Rubin Erdely, included the rape claim of an unidentified female student.
The magazine retracted the article in April 2015, citing inconsistencies.
The 9,000-word article, entitled A Rape on Campus, centred on the testimony of a student, referred to as “Jackie”, who claimed to have been gang raped at a party held at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity’s house in 2012.
An investigation by the Charlottesville Police Department had found no evidence that “Jackie” had been gang raped.
You wouldn’t know it if you lived in one of the many communities facing a school referendum, but there is a state law that prohibits school districts from spending any money urging voter approval of those referendums. Unethical school boards and superintendents, lusting for the tens of millions in referendum dollars, are brazenly violating the intent and spirit of the law with no shame. It’s bad enough when regular old politicians parse words to skate around the truth or go full Hillary Clinton and just lie, but it is deeply disappointing that the people who run our public schools are willing to behave so unscrupulously — publicly.
In the past, community groups that supported the referendum campaigns would raise money on their own (often with the support of the architects and engineers that would magically be hired to do the projects if the referendums passed), but those days are long gone. The school districts now take the money right out of their taxpayer-funded budgets. They justify this scandalous behavior by claiming they are merely providing “information” about the referendum and how the money is to be spent and not actually advocating a “yes” vote. It’s a distinction without a difference. And it’s a line that is being crossed.
He has numerous examples to support his point, and he’s right. This has been a growing trend. Rather than offering dispassionate information about a referendum, school administrators and school boards have taken to outright advocacy. While such advocacy is against state law, District Attorneys have been completely unwilling to prosecute anyone for it. I suspect that one or two DAs stepping forward to enforce the law would put a stop to such violations statewide.
A rapper whose songs include “Sell Drugz” has been charged with selling drugs in Pennsylvania.
Twenty-nine-year-old Michael Persaud performs under the name Montana Millz.
The Lebanon County district attorney says Persaud and a female accomplice sold heroin to an undercover police officer during a monthlong investigation. The district attorney says they sold 70 bags of heroin to an undercover officer in Lebanon and were arrested Oct. 28.
Two police officers have been killed in “ambush style attacks” in the US state of Iowa, police say.
The first officer was found shot in the Urbandale area of Des Moines at 01:06 local time (06:06 GMT) on Wednesday. The second was found 20 minutes later several blocks away.
Both were sitting in their patrol cars when they were attacked, Des Moines police said. Suspect information was being developed, the force said.
The motive for the attacks is unclear.
Police said there was a “clear and present danger” to officers in Des Moines and Urbandale.
“There’s somebody out there shooting police officers,” Sergeant Paul Parizek told reporters.
Given the timing, we likely won’t know any real details until after the election. But there is a real chance that our president will have to illegally quash this investigation or issue an outright pardon to avoid indictment.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Federal investigators have secured a warrant to examine newly discovered emails related to Hillary Clinton’s private server, U.S. media reported on Sunday, as a prominent Democrat accused FBI Director James Comey of breaking the law by trying to influence the election.
The warrant will allow the Federal Bureau of Investigation to examine the emails to see if they are relevant to its probe of the private email server used for government work by Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, while she was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013.
FBI officials were unavailable for comment on the status of their investigation. Reuters could not independently confirm that the search warrant had been issued.
“Wisconsin state law actually allows a person to change their mind and vote a new ballot if they have submitted an absentee ballot,” said Neil Albrecht, the executive director of the Milwaukee Election Commission.
Albrecht said election officials will destroy the original ballot, and voters are allowed to do that up to three times.
I wonder if there are any statistics about how often this usually happens. I would guess less than a dozen times per election.
I’m not as optimistic as Koffler, but it’s good to see the FBI pretending to be serious.
The FBI today wrote to lawmakers to inform them that it is effectively reopening the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server for State Department business. They’ve found some new emails, though we don’t know what they contain. But it must be pretty bad to do this eleven days before the election.
I can’t underemphasize what a big deal this is. The election is actually quite close. The key factor that will tip it is whether swing voters are more uncomfortable with Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. This will have voters wondering whether by voting for Hillary they are electing someone who either could wind up in jail or will be under constant investigation.
Not to mention someone wholly unethical.
Doesn’t matter if in a few days the FBI says it’s sewing the case back shut again. The damage is done, and it’s considerable.
MADISON, Wis. – Today, Attorney General Brad Schimel filed a letter with Wisconsin Supreme Court Chief Justice Patience Roggensack requesting the Wisconsin Supreme Court appoint a special master to investigate the breach of the secrecy orders in the John Doe case related to the September 14, 2016, article published in The Guardian newspaper. The letter also requests the special master investigate and confirm the final disposition of the unlawfully seized evidence in this case.
Attorney General Schimel committed investigatory support and legal advice from the Wisconsin Department of Justice to any special master the Court appoints.
The entire John Doe investigation has been a horrible miscairrage of justice that violated the civil rights of dozens of people. Someone needs to watch the watchdogs and I’m glad that the Attorney General is stepping up to the plate. Now the Supreme Court needs to get moving.
Remember that she is going to jail for almost exactly what someone involved in Wisconsin’s unconstitutional John Doe persecution did. Will here be prosecutions in Wisconsin?
Former Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane has been sentenced to 10 to 23 months in prison for perjury, obstruction of justice and abuse of office charges.
Kane, the first Democrat to be elected to Pennsylvania’s top law enforcement position, resigned in August after being convicted on all nine counts.
Kane had asked to be sentenced to house arrest, but prosecutors argued her misuse of office was worthy of jail time.
The swift downfall of the once-rising star, seen as a potential candidate for governor or a U.S. Senate seat, began after she leaked secret grand jury material in hopes of embarrassing a political rival. Kane later lied about her role in the leak while under oath.
Kane was convicted of leaking grand jury information meant to undermine a former top prosecutor who had begun a sting investigation into six Philadelphia-area officials, including five state legislators. Kane did not prosecute the six officials, and she blamed a leak to the Philadelphia Inquirer on the former prosecutor.
She then handed older grand jury information to another paper, the Philadelphia Daily News, in a bid to undermine that former prosecutor.
The political organization of Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, an influential Democrat with longstanding ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton, gave nearly $500,000 to the election campaign of the wife of an official at the Federal Bureau of Investigation who later helped oversee the investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s email use.
UPDATE (WKOW)– Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel says a recent video posted by conservative group Project Veritas shows concerning comments that will require a lengthy investigation.
Project Veritas released two videos earlier this week. They feature Scott Foval, a well-known democratic operative in Madison political circles. The videos, which are highly edited, appear to show Foval taking credit for disrupting a Scott Walker presidential rally, and also talking about how to commit voter fraud.
“I’ve got strong instincts that say if you see a bad guy, go after a bad guy. Those videos appear to have someone bragging about breaking Wisconsin laws and some federal laws. So, my instincts are to take a look at it, and we will do that.”
Since the videos went public the policy group Americans United for Change has fired Foval. Foval tells 27 News these accusations are part of a sinister plot that is nothing more than a ruse.
Schimel says he will examine any materials he and his office can legally get their hands on, so they can take a deeper look and determine if any election laws were broken.
On Sunday, October 16, 2016 at 3:23 A.M. a citizen called West Bend Police Department to report the sound of at least six gun shots in the 200 block of Edgewood Lane.
Officers responded to the area and searched for evidence of shots fired and for possible suspect(s). At approximately 4:20 a.m. two officers observed a man standing in the yard at 228 Edgewood Lane. The man pointed a handgun in the direction of the officers and pulled the trigger.
The gun apparently misfired and the officers were able to retreat to a position of cover. The officers were able to identify the 24 year old male subject from previous encounters with the officers. At 4:22 A.M. and 4:29 A.M. officers heard shots fired from the area of 228 Edgewood Lane. At 4:47 A.M. officers heard two additional shots fired from the yard or house at 228 Edgewood Lane.
West Bend Police Officers and Washington County Sheriff Deputies secured the area and attempted to make contact with the residents at 228 Edgewood Lane. Officers were able to make contact with one subject.
[…]
At 8:05 A.M. the 24 year old suspect exited the home. West Bend Police Officers and Washington County Sheriff Deputies took the suspect into custody. He is being held at the Washington County Jail on two counts of Attempt Homicide, and Intoxicated Use of Firearms.
My column for the West Bend Daily News is online. Here you go:
“The petition for a writ of certiorari is denied.” With those nine words from the U.S. Supreme Court, the long, winding road of the illegal and immoral John Doe investigation has come to an end. But with that end, there is a lot of work to be done to clean up the mess, right the wrongs committed and rewrite the laws to ensure rogue prosecutors are checked before they can do so much damage.
The John Doe process, which is unique to Wisconsin, allows prosecutors extraordinary powers to investigate people in exchange for utter secrecy to protect the lives and reputations of the targets of the investigations. In this case, Milwaukee County District Attorney and former chief investigator Francis Schmitz ran roughshod over the rules. In a wide-ranging investigation that included unannounced pre-dawn raids of people’s homes by armed police, confiscation of years’ worth of files and communications, capturing of electronic and phone communications through service providers without notifying the targets, and several other brute force investigatory tactics, the John Doe prosecutors thoroughly uprooted the lives of dozens of conservatives in Wisconsin.
Throughout the investigation, there were several leaks to the media and the media even happened to know when some of the unannounced raids were taking place so they could record it for their news broadcasts. Even as recently as a few weeks ago, more than a thousand pages of documents that are supposed to have been kept secret by the prosecutors were leaked to the British media, where it will be difficult for American law enforcement to track down the source.
It is clear that, from the beginning, John Chisholm and his cohorts used the power of their offices to target conservatives and bully them into silence while allowing the information they collected to be leaked to the media to influence elections.
After years of legal wrangling and news stories, it is worth backing up and remembering what Chisholm was trying to prosecute. He was trying to prosecute conservatives — only conservatives — for exercising their First Amendment right of free speech. The judges overseeing the John Doe process told Chisholm what he was trying to prosecute was not a crime. The Wisconsin Supreme Court told him the same thing. The federal Court of Appeals said the same thing. But the prosecutors were not acting as prosecutors enforcing the law. They were acting as political agents prosecuting their enemies for laws that do not exist.
In responding to the Supreme Court’s denial, Chisholm reiterated as much when he said, “We look forward to the day when Wisconsin adopts a more enlightened view of the need for transparency in campaign finance.” In other words, he knows that he was trying to prosecute conservatives for laws that he would like to exist, but do not, and cannot as long as the First Amendment still holds sway.
The fight is not over yet. The prosecutors have already demonstrated they are not honorable and not above political retribution. They still possess thousands of documents about dozens of people they should never have taken. Even if they claim to return or destroy those documents now, as the Wisconsin Supreme Court ordered months ago, the victims can have little assurance that copies do not exist to be used by their enemies in the years to come. That is why the state attorney general must aggressively investigate and prosecute whoever already leaked documents over the past several years. Only by strict enforcement of the law can future potential malcontents be deterred.
Also, the Legislature took a small step to reform the John Doe process by preventing it from being used for political infractions. They need to go the rest of the way by completely repealing the John Doe process. While it can be argued to have some value, its potential for abuse by dishonorable prosecutors is too great. All of Wisconsin’s citizens are at risk of the abuse of this process and should be protected — not just the politicians. Forty-nine other states manage to prosecute people for crimes without this process. So can Wisconsin.
Thankfully, this abusive John Doe is over. Now we must ensure that no prosecutor is ever allowed to use it to abuse Wisconsinites again.
When asked by Couric how she feels about San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, and others athletes, refusing to stand for the anthem, Ginsburg replied, “I think it’s really dumb of them.”
“Would I arrest them for doing it? No,” Ginsburg elaborated. “I think it’s dumb and disrespectful. I would have the same answer if you asked me about flag burning. I think it’s a terrible thing to do, but I wouldn’t lock a person up for doing it. I would point out how ridiculous it seems to me to do such an act.”
Couric then asked, “But when it comes to these football players, you may find their actions offensive, but what you’re saying is, it’s within their rights to exercise those actions?”
“Yes,” said Ginsburg. “If they want to be stupid, there’s no law that should be preventive. If they want to be arrogant, there’s no law that prevents them from that. What I would do is strongly take issue with the point of view that they are expressing when they do that.”
A nonpartisan watchdog group Thursday called for a federal investigation of Hillary Clinton’s campaign committee, accusing it of illegally accepting millions of dollars worth of “opposition research” and other assistance from Correct the Record, an outside super-PAC, in violation of U.S. election laws.
The Campaign Legal Center also filed complaints with the Federal Election Commission to initiate probes of Donald Trump’s campaign, and two super-PACs backing it, for similar violations of laws barring “coordination” between political campaigns and outside groups.
But the Campaign Legal Center’s detailed 52-page complaint against Hillary for America and Correct the Record — part of the sprawling political empire run by Clinton backer David Brock — is likely to get special attention, given Clinton’s repeated advocacy of campaign finance reform. She has vowed to “curb the influence of big money in American politics” and to push for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United — the controversial ruling that opened the door for groups such as Correct the Record to accept unlimited donations to benefit political candidates.
Finally. Now let the prosecutions of the prosecutors begin for their egregious abuse of power.
Madison — The John Doe investigation of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign is over.
In a terse order, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected a request by Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm to take up litigation that stopped the probe last year. That ends the long-stalled investigation.
The order was issued less than three weeks after documents were leaked that showed the extent to which the Republican governor and his aides worked closely with a supposedly independent group on recall elections. The documents included details about large donations from those who benefitted from laws approved by Walker and GOP lawmakers.
Chisholm, a Democrat, launched the probe in 2012 based on information turned up in an earlier investigation of Walker aides and associates that resulted in six convictions, ranging from misconduct in office for campaigning on county time to stealing from a veterans fund. Walker was not charged in that investigation.
