Earlier today, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith filed a brief to Judge Noreika, suggesting that she toss Hunter’s ‘sweetheart’ plea deal with Delaware prosecutors due to claims they gave the President’s son preferential treatment.
It is claimed that someone from Hunter’s attorney Chris Clark’s former law firm later called the Delaware clerk – pretending to be from the office of Smith’s attorney, Theodore Kittila – asking them to remove the original filing and, with it, 448 pages of Congressional testimony from the two IRS investigators who worked on the case.
[…]
‘It appears that the caller misrepresented her identity and who she worked for in an attempt to improperly convince the clerk’s office to remove the amicus materials from the docket,’ the order said.
‘Therefore, it is hereby ordered that, on or before 9pm today on July 25, 2023, counsel for defendant shall show cause as to why sanctions should not be considered for misrepresentations to the court.’
And, separate from the issue of the content and children, this is another case of a meeting that could have been an email.
In June, Eau Claire Area School District [ECASD] students were allegedly “required” to report to a classroom where they found their orchestra teacher Jacob Puccio, a school counselor, and the ECASD Diversity, Equity and Inclusion director Dang Yang.
Students were allegedly told that Puccio would be undergoing a gender transition from male to female from a “scripted statement” that was read to several classrooms of elementary and high school music students throughout ECASD.
Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) alleges that the statement was crafted by ECASD to “ensure that students received information in a particular way.” Furthermore, WILL claims that parents are still not aware of what was read to students and want to know the details.
[…]
According to an email obtained by Fox News Digital, McCausland responded saying, “I briefly talked with and forwarded your email on to Dang Yang (the ECASD Director of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion); the district specified that the script I read on Monday needed to be a verbal presentation only and was not to be shared electronically. He should give you the info you need, but let me know if you need anything else. Thanks – [redacted] had a fantastic first year here in band, hope you all enjoy your summer!”
[…]
The complaint filed by WILL states that a Wisconsin statute requires that public entities comply with their duties “as soon as practicable and without delay” and that “no justification exists” for withholding the statement that was read to students.
“The District withheld the requested record despite it’s not being subject to any statutory or common-law exemption to the public records law. The District is therefore required by law to produce the record,” the complaint states.
Consider that we have solid proof that several federal agencies were actively covering up the crimes, and likely treason, of the nation’s First Family. It’s not that they were lazy or negligent. They proactively covering up the hide the crimes of favored people. This is Banana Republic stuff.
Ziegler and IRS Supervisory Agent Gary Shapley testified before the House Oversight Committee that their investigation ‘supported felony and misdemeanor tax charges,’ which were ultimately not brought against the president’s son Hunter due to political pressures.
Ziegler, a 13-year veteran of the IRS who was the main case agent on the Hunter probe, claimed the federal tax investigation into the president’s son ‘supported felony and misdemeanor tax charges’ – rather than just the misdemeanor tax charges Hunter is scheduled to plead guilty to next week as part of a deal that allows him to and avoid prosecution for a separate gun charge.
The agents said under oath that U.S. Attorney David Weiss, the lead Hunter Biden prosecutor, asked Washington, D.C., U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves to bring those charges. But after Graves refused, Weiss threw out the potential felony charges and struck a plea deal with the president’s son.
‘I watched U.S. Attorney [David] Weiss tell a room full of senior FBI and IRS senior leaders on October 7, 2022, that he was not the deciding person on whether charges were filed,’ Shapley said, contradicting Weiss’ previous public statements.
‘If the Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss followed DOJ policy as he stated in his most recent letter, Hunter Biden should have been charged with a tax felony, and not only the tax misdemeanor charge,’ said Ziegler. ‘We need to treat each taxpayer the same under the law.’
In the majority opinion of the court, Chief Justice John Roberts definitively stated that, “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.”
It does not get any clearer than that. Discrimination in favor of one race consequently discriminates to the detriment of another race. Equality can only exist when we actually treat people equally.
For this reason, the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, Wisconsin’s most important private organization in defense of the Constitution, launched the “Equality for All Agenda,” in which they are calling for the repeal of all race-based laws and programs. WILL’s accompanying report highlights several examples of how various Wisconsin governments discriminate on the basis of race.
[…]
The list goes on. The fact is that racial discrimination permeates our governments at every level. From the state of Wisconsin to our local government school districts, people of favored races are granted preferential treatment, opportunities, and money while people of disfavored races are excluded from these opportunities. This kind of racial discrimination was intolerable in 1860. It was intolerable in 1960. It is intolerable in 2023.
As Justice Thomas so eloquently put it in his concurring opinion, “the solution announced in the second founding (his reference is to the transformative 14th Amendment written after the Civil War) is incorporated in our Constitution: that we are all equal, and should be treated equally before the law without regard to our race. Only that promise can allow us to look past our differing skin colors and identities and see each other for what we truly are: individuals with unique thoughts, perspectives, and goals, but with equal dignity and equal rights under the law.”
Our nation has had a long road to racial equality. We have a long way yet to go. The Supreme Court’s ruling is a long stride in the right direction. Now it is up to all of us to see that the principles announced in our Declaration of Independence, written into the Constitution in the 14th Amendment, and affirmed in Students v. Harvard, are upheld by our government, our businesses, and ourselves.
Ridiculous. It seems that a girl could countersue under Title 9.
A federal judge has granted a temporary restraining order against the Mukwonago Area School District. preventing the district from enforcing a recently adopted restroom and locker room policy. The policy, approved June 26, requires students to use restroom and locker room facilities consistent with the sex they were assigned at birth.
An 11-year-old transgender student and her mother filed a lawsuit against the district and sought the restraining order while the suit is pending.
U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman granted the temporary restraining order July 6. The action allows the student, who identifies as a girl, to access girls’ restrooms at school and school-sponsored events and prohibits the district from imposing discipline against the student for use of those restrooms.
Given the media coverage, one might be led to believe that only a sliver of Americans agree with the recent Supreme Court rulings. Yet even the slanted polls show broad support for them. The reason is simple… for most Americans, we still believe that discrimination is wrong and that people should pay their debts – even if the most recent Leftist orthodoxy teaches otherwise.
Majorities of White and Asian American respondents approved of the decision overturning affirmative action, while Latino and Hispanic Americans were evenly split and 52% of Black Americans disapproved in the ABC News/Ipsos poll. Overall, 52% approved and 32% didn’t.
[…]
The court’s rejection of Biden’s student-loan forgiveness plan met with 45% approval in the ABC News poll, while 40% disapproved.
The US Supreme Court struck down decades of legal precedent that allowed colleges and universities to consider race as a factor in admissions.
The court on Thursday specifically ruled against race-conscious student admissions programs at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina.
In concurring with the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that under the 14th Amendment, “the color of a person’s skin is irrelevant to that individual’s equal status as a citizen of this nation.”
According to a ‘highly credible’ whistleblower, an internal FD-1023 memo created in 2020 based off information from a highly-paid FBI informant apparently details a $5 million ‘arrangement’ for an exchange of money for policy decisions between then-Vice President Joe Biden and a foreign national.
The leaders of the House Oversight Committee were granted access by the FBI Monday to view the redacted FD-1023 form in a secure facility within the Capitol. But it did not satisfy Republicans who are moving forward with contempt of Congress charges against FBI Director Chris Wray for failing to turn over the document in its entirety.
[…]
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna also said Monday that the FBI is afraid the informant would be ‘killed’ if their identity is revealed.
‘Just left meeting for House Oversight. The FBI is afraid their informant will be killed if unmasked, based on the info he has brought forward about the Biden family,’ she stated in a tweet.
The Republicans issued a subpoena for the FD-1023 form last month and FBI Director Chris Wray was given a hard deadline of May 30 to hand over the unclassified document, which he did not comply with.
It’s called ‘money laundering,’ he said, saying it fits within the pattern of over $1 million in Romanian-linked payments to the Biden family revealed last month.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A Wisconsin judge on Monday declined to dismiss a lawsuit seeking to ensure that no records are deleted from a now-closed state office created to investigate former President Donald Trump’s loss in 2020.
The lawsuit was one of several filed by liberal watchdog group American Oversight against former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman and the office of special counsel that he led. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos hired Gableman to lead the probe in 2021 under pressure from Trump and conservative Republicans in Wisconsin who were pushing for decertifying Biden’s win.
Vos put the investigation on hold in April 2022 and then fired Gableman in August 2022 after he turned up no evidence to back Trump’s false claims that the election had been stolen from him. Vos fired Gableman just days after Vos won his primary over an opponent endorsed by Gableman and Trump. Vos called Gableman an “embarrassment” to himself and the state.
Even though the office has been unstaffed for nearly a year, it continues to fight open records lawsuits. Courts have repeatedly ruled against Gableman and his former office in those cases.
Dane County Circuit Judge Jacob Frost on Monday affirmed with his latest ruling that the office formerly led by Gableman, and any future version of it, is subject to Wisconsin’s open records law. Frost granted a temporary injunction against any deletion of records by the office and rejected the motion to dismiss, a request made nearly a year ago.
Excellent. Government should not profit on the misery of the citizens.
WASHINGTON − The Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously sided with a 94-year-old grandmother who lost her home to foreclosure and then lost the equity she had in the property when the county sold it and kept the profit.
A Minnesota County sold Geraldine Tyler’s condo for $40,000. Instead of returning the $25,000 difference between the sales price and what she owed in back taxes, the county pocketed the balance and used the extra money for forest development, county parks, and recreation programs.
In a unanimous opinion handed down less than a month after the justices heard arguments, Chief Justice John Roberts held that the Tyler had a plausible case that the county violated the Constitution’s takings clause.
“The taxpayer must render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, but not more,” Roberts wrote.
Agents from the Ajo Border Patrol Station were involved in the shooting while assisting the Tohono O’odham Nation Police Department, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
The FBI and the Tohono O’odham Nation Police Department are investigating the shooting, according to Customs and Border Protection. Tribal chairperson Ned Norris Jr. identified the dead man as Raymond Mattia.
“Our hearts go out to his family and all those impacted during this difficult time,” Norris Jr. said Saturday in a written statement. “As the investigation proceeds, the Nation expects full consideration of all related facts of the incident and an appropriate and expeditious response from relevant public safety agencies.”
Mattia was 2 feet from his front door when he was shot approximately 38 times, according to Tucson TV station KVOA. Mattia had called the Border Patrol because he had multiple migrants trespassing in his yard and he wanted help getting them off his property, KVOA reported.
The shooting happened in the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector, which has the highest number of use-of-force incidents across the agency, with 158 incidents reported so far in fiscal year 2023, according to CBP data.
In March, a Border Patrol agent shot and killed a U.S. citizen near Sasabe after a vehicle chase. The shooting was ruled a homicide by the Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office.
The new law, also known as extreme risk protection orders, is expected to go into effect next spring. It will allow family members, police, mental health professionals, roommates and former dating partners to petition a judge to remove firearms from those they believe pose an imminent threat to themselves or others.
The judge would have 24 hours to decide on a protection order after a request is filed. If granted, the judge would then have 14 days to set a hearing during which the flagged person would have to prove they do not pose a significant risk. A standard order would last one year.
So if an ex-girlfriend accuses you of being unstable and a judge buys her line, it’s on you to prove that she’s wrong? This is modern American jurisprudence.
‘Governors and local leaders imposed lockdown orders forcing people to remain in their homes. They shuttered businesses and schools, public and private,’ he wrote.
‘They closed churches even as they allowed casinos and other favored businesses to carry on. They threatened violators not just with civil penalties but with criminal sanctions too.’
[…]
Referring to the broader issue of strict lockdown policies during the pandemic, Gorsuch added: ‘Doubtless, many lessons can be learned from this chapter in our history, and hopefully serious efforts will be made to study it.
‘One lesson might be this: Fear and the desire for safety are powerful forces. They can lead to a clamor for action—almost any action—as long as someone does something to address a perceived threat.
‘A leader or an expert who claims he can fix everything, if only we do exactly as he says, can prove an irresistible force.’
He concluded: ‘Make no mistake—decisive executive action is sometimes necessary and appropriate. But if emergency decrees promise to solve some problems, they threaten to generate others.
‘And rule by indefinite emergency edict risks leaving all of us with a shell of a democracy and civil liberties just as hollow.’
Remember that Wisconsin’s Governor Evers was in the vanguard of Medical Totalitarianism until the Republican legislature and right-leaning Supreme Court yanked on the reins. The results would be different if it happened today after two liberal wins to the court.
“We want the courts to overturn this reckless decision,” Xavier Becerra, President Joe Biden’s health secretary, told CNN’s “State of the Union.” “We want, yes, that women continue to have access to a drug that’s proven itself safe. Millions of women have used this drug around the world.”
(Reuters) – A federal judge on Friday struck down a Minnesota law requiring a person to be at least 21 before obtaining a permit to carry a handgun in public, finding it violated the right to bear arms under the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
The order by U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez in St. Paul is the latest in a series of legal defeats for state gun control measures following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year expanding gun rights nationwide.
[…]
The plaintiffs argued in their lawsuit that the age minimum violated the Second Amendment because 18- to 20-year-olds were permitted to possess guns at the time of the United States’ founding.
[…]
She noted that the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently upheld a 21-year age minimum for handgun purchases in Florida, based on 19th-century laws, but said those laws only concerned gun sales, not the right to carry guns.
Here is my full column for the Washington County Daily News that ran earlier this week.
Early voting for the spring election is in full swing and the future of Wisconsin sits on the razor’s edge. If Daniel Kelly is elected to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, the court will retain its slight lean to the left with changeling Justice Brian Hagedorn siding with the court’s liberal bloc more often than not on 4-3 rulings. If Janet Protasiewicz is elected, then expect the court’s new majority liberal activist bloc to abandon any pretense of government restraint and run roughshod over citizens’ rights.
It is regrettable that the Wisconsin Supreme Court has had to serve as the last bastion of defense against government overreach, but that has increasingly been its role as government officials progressively don the mantle of a ruling class. In just the last few years, the court has often (not often enough) stood athwart the path of government tyranny. During the pandemic, Gov. Tony Evers went to extraordinary lengths to exert government control over our lives. Even after it was clear that the virus was not nearly as lethal as originally thought and was primarily a threat to the elderly and immunocompromised, Evers sought to extend his personal arbitrary rule over our lives by suspending regular order with perpetual emergency health orders.
Under the threat of using the violent power of government, Evers illegally extended his emergency dictatorial orders to force citizens to stay in their homes, close their businesses, restrain their freedom of movement, force everyone to wear masks, and close their schools. In a ruling that should have been unanimous, only four of the court’s seven justices ruled that Evers had violated the law and returned the state to constitutional rule and the rule of law. How much more damage would Evers’ have illegally wrought had the court not stepped in?
With all of the other overreaches, we scarcely remember that Governor Evers also tried to suspend Wisconsinites’ right to self-governance. Just three years ago, Evers ordered that Wisconsin indefinitely delay the April election, thus denying citizens the right to elect their leaders in a despotic abandonment of democracy. Again, the Wisconsin Supreme Court had to act to ensure that the election would be held and that democracy would not be suspended by the orders of a single man.
Governor Evers’ attempts to enact dictatorial rule to the cheers of elected Democrats is the most dramatic recent example of the Supreme Court protecting citizens from government overreach, but there are dozens of other examples.
For decades, Wisconsinites have trembled at the regulatory despotism of the Department of Natural Resources.
Whether hunting, fishing, farming, or simply trying to enjoy a lake cottage, the DNR has long stretched its statutory mandates into private lives and properties. The Supreme Court has stepped in a number of times to check the DNR’s overreaches.
Last decade, the DNR tried to extend its public-trust jurisdiction to include non-navigable waters and land and to use “scenic beauty” as a benchmark for regulation. This overreach would have the DNR exercising authority over virtually all private property and able to base regulations on the agency’s aesthetic preferences. In 2013, the court ruled that the DNR did not have this authority.
Similarly, the DNR attempted to use its regulatory power to unilaterally change pier permits even after a pier had been installed. This had the impact of forcing homeowners to spend thousands of dollars to comply with arbitrary and shifting regulations. In 2019, the court ruled that the DNR was overreaching again and is not allowed to issue ex-post-facto regulations.
Wisconsin’s leftists have be unrestrained in their glee for using the court to unbind the overreaching claws of government by electing Protasiewicz to the high court.
Everything is on the table. Unrestrained tax increases by invalidating Act 10. Making it easier to cheat in elections by striking down voter ID. Disarming citizens by ignoring Second Amendment rights. Unleashing regulatory agencies like the DNR or Department of Transportation by allowing them to interpret their own authority. Liberating criminals at the expense of victims. Democratic gerrymandering on the scale of Illinois. Crushing business with regulations in the name of equity. Forced unionization by striking down right to work. Unrestrained indoctrination and abuse of parental rights through our government schools.
It is all on the table.
The question to be decided next week is whether Wisconsin will try to continue on the messy road of representative government and constitutional restraint, or whether it will take the road of arbitrary rule of unrestrained government by judicial decree.
Vote for Daniel Kelly. Vote for the continuation of this grand experiment in self-governance.
Here is my full column that ran in the Washington County Daily News last week:
The election on April 4 presents an unambiguous choice for voters about the future of Wisconsin. Daniel Kelly would keep the Wisconsin Supreme Court on its constitutionally humble and conservative path. Janet Protasiewicz has already trumpeted the kind of activism she would wage to turn the high court into a political weapon for leftist causes. As we have seen in other states, leftists do not have any qualms about muscling political victories through the courts when their ideas fail to win public support at the ballot box.
In recent weeks we have learned that Protasiewicz is not just the ardent activist who protested against Act 10 and giddily shares how she will tip the scales of justice when her “values” demand it. Not only have we learned that her long judicial record is one of callous disregard for victims of violent crime as she coddled felons. We also learned from Wisconsin Right Now’s reporting that she allegedly abused her first husband, who was over thirty years older than she, and that two witnesses have come forward who heard her regularly use racial slurs when she was a Milwaukee prosecutor.
The optimist in me hopes that some of Wisconsin’s leftists would feel the twang of guilt about voting for someone with such deep character flaws, but the realist in me understands that they are more interested in outcomes even if the vessel that delivers them is cracked. They will vote for Protasiewicz in droves. The rest of this column, therefore, is directed at conservatives who need to understand the gravity of the election and get off their duffs to vote.
The thing about judicial activists is that nothing is safe. Policies that were correctly adjudicated long ago by the court and considered settled will be resurfaced by activists to get a different outcome. Protasiewicz has already said that she considers Act 10 to be unconstitutional and Wisconsin’s electoral maps rigged, so expect those to be overturned by a Protasiewicz-led court. That will just be the start of an avalanche of legal activism to roll back important policies.
During Gov. Scott Walker’s administration, Wisconsin made giant strides to being Wisconsin closer to the Founders’ guarantees in the Second Amendment. The Legislature passed Wisconsin’s first concealed carry law to allow law-abiding citizens to exercise their Second Amendment protection to “keep and bear arms.” The Legislature further protected citizens by enacting the castle doctrine, a simple, but important, law that presumes that someone is under imminent threat if a thug forcibly enters their home, vehicle, or business.
As is their compulsion, leftists sued to overturn both concealed carry and castle doctrine policies when they lost the policy debate at the ballot box. Both policies were upheld by the courts. According to the Wisconsin Department of Justice, over 700,000 Wisconsinites have been issued concealed carry permits since 2011. If Protasiewicz is elected, we can expect those hundreds of thousands of licenses to be canceled. And no, it does not matter what the law or Constitution actually says. Judicial activists care not for the constraints of law. That is the point.
One thing that the pandemic reminded us is that in times of trouble, our government schools will choose institutional interests over the welfare of children every time. Given the decades of declining performance, increasing violence, and curricular malfeasance, this bureaucratic colonialism should have been obvious, but their collective response to the pandemic has crystalized their priorities.
Wisconsin’s school choice programs have been offering children an alternative path to getting a quality education and a successful future. When Gov. Tommy Thompson pioneered school choice in Milwaukee, the leftist institutional interests fought back in court. After a heated legal battle, Wisconsin’s Supreme Court ruled that it was constitutionally permissible for religious schools to participate in the Milwaukee School Choice program. The U.S. Supreme Court later declined to hear a challenge to the law, thus ending the legal challenge. The vote on the Wisconsin Supreme Court was decided by a single vote. Had one justice ruled the other way, generations of Wisconsin’s children would still be trapped in failing schools and doomed to navigating life without a quality education.
Since that Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling in 1998, the Legislature has steadily expanded Wisconsin’s school choice programs to benefit hundreds of thousands of children throughout the state. Should Protasiewicz be elected, expect those monied interests who want to build barbed-wire fences to keep our children in their failed institutions to relaunch their legal challenges to school choice knowing that a Protasiewicz-led court will rule in their favor. Janet Protasiewicz is telling anyone who will listen how she will vote on issues brought before the court and how she considers it her duty to put her finger on the scales of justice when the law says otherwise. Listen to her. In this, she is telling the truth.
The April 4th election is our chance to put two excellent jurists on the judicial bench upholding our U.S. and Wisconsin Constitutions, applying the law aswritten, and protecting our rights and freedoms.
Dan Kelly is a man of honor and integrity. He served with distinction on the Wisconsin Supreme Court 2016-2020. He made the difference in helping end the illegal lockdowns of us during the CCP Virus “pandemic” by ruling that the executive branch could not keep renewing its 60-day “emergency measures.” Remember those horrible months? Businesses closed (many never reopened), schools and churches were shut, people were forced to wear do-no-good masks, etc. Dan Kelly fought for us and our freedoms. He did not go along with Big Government’s tyrannical suppression of our precious rights and freedoms.
By contrast, his opponent vows judicial activism (i.e., inserting her own political values in place of actual law). Putting her thumb on the scale of justice is wrong, dangerous, and can be deadly.
Like Justice Kelly, Russ Jones is a constitutional conservative – he honors and follows the law as written. Unlike his compromised opponent, Russ did not sign the Walker recall and was not appointed by Evers. Attorney Jones is an award-winning litigator, with over 250 jury trials during 20 years of service. He has the highest standards of personal conduct and will apply the law fairly and impartially. His honesty and dedication to the rule of law will make him an outstanding circuit court judge.
Dan Kelly has earned my total support for election to our Wisconsin Supreme Court. Russ Jones is the best choice for Washington County Circuit Court Judge. Please join me in proudly voting for Dan Kelly and Russ Jones on April 4th. Ask all your adult family members, friends, neighbors, and colleagues to do so, too.
The election on April 4 presents an unambiguous choice for voters about the future of Wisconsin. Daniel Kelly would keep the Wisconsin Supreme Court on its constitutionally humble and conservative path. Janet Protasiewicz has already trumpeted the kind of activism she would wage to turn the high court into a political weapon for leftist causes. As we have seen in other states, leftists do not have any qualms about muscling political victories through the courts when their ideas fail to win public support at the ballot box.
In recent weeks we have learned that Protasiewicz is not just the ardent activist who protested against Act 10 and giddily shares how she will tip the scales of justice when her “values” demand it. Not only have we learned that her long judicial record is one of callous disregard for victims of violent crime as she coddled felons. We also learned from Wisconsin Right Now’s reporting that she allegedly abused her first husband, who was over thirty years older than she, and that two witnesses have come forward who heard her regularly use racial slurs when she was a Milwaukee prosecutor.
The optimist in me hopes that some of Wisconsin’s leftists would feel the twang of guilt about voting for someone with such deep character flaws, but the realist in me understands that they are more interested in outcomes even if the vessel that delivers them is cracked. They will vote for Protasiewicz in droves. The rest of this column, therefore, is directed at conservatives who need to understand the gravity of the election and get off their duffs to vote.
The thing about judicial activists is that nothing is safe. Policies that were correctly adjudicated long ago by the court and considered settled will be resurfaced by activists to get a different outcome. Protasiewicz has already said that she considers Act 10 to be unconstitutional and Wisconsin’s electoral maps rigged, so expect those to be overturned by a Protasiewicz-led court. That will just be the start of an avalanche of legal activism to roll back important policies.
[…]
One thing that the pandemic reminded us is that in times of trouble, our government schools will choose institutional interests over the welfare of children every time. Given the decades of declining performance, increasing violence, and curricular malfeasance, this bureaucratic colonialism should have been obvious, but their collective response to the pandemic has crystalized their priorities.
Wisconsin’s school choice programs have been offering children an alternative path to getting a quality education and a successful future. When Gov. Tommy Thompson pioneered school choice in Milwaukee, the leftist institutional interests fought back in court. After a heated legal battle, Wisconsin’s Supreme Court ruled that it was constitutionally permissible for religious schools to participate in the Milwaukee School Choice program. The U.S. Supreme Court later declined to hear a challenge to the law, thus ending the legal challenge. The vote on the Wisconsin Supreme Court was decided by a single vote. Had one justice ruled the other way, generations of Wisconsin’s children would still be trapped in failing schools and doomed to navigating life without a quality education.
Since that Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling in 1998, the Legislature has steadily expanded Wisconsin’s school choice programs to benefit hundreds of thousands of children throughout the state. Should Protasiewicz be elected, expect those monied interests who want to build barbed-wire fences to keep our children in their failed institutions to relaunch their legal challenges to school choice knowing that a Protasiewicz-led court will rule in their favor. Janet Protasiewicz is telling anyone who will listen how she will vote on issues brought before the court and how she considers it her duty to put her finger on the scales of justice when the law says otherwise. Listen to her. In this, she is telling the truth.
Good. But realize that this unconstitutional law was on the books for over two decades. This is why judges matter.
(Reuters) -A federal judge on Monday blocked California from enforcing a state law requiring new semiautomatic handguns to have certain safety features, finding it violates the right to bear arms under the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney in Santa Anna, California is the latest in a line of decisions striking down state gun laws following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year expanding gun rights. The judge said it would not take effect for 14 days to give the state a chance to appeal.
The California Rifle & Pistol Association and four individuals sued the state last year to challenge the law. The association hailed the ruling while the office of California Attorney General Rob Bonta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The 2001 law, known as the Unsafe Handgun Act, requires new semiautomatic handguns to have an indicator showing when there is a round in the chamber and a mechanism to prevent firing when the magazine is not fully inserted, both meant to prevent accidental discharge. It also requires that they stamp a serial number onto bullets they fire, known as microstamping.
