by Owen | 0941, 31 Mar 1818 | Politics - Wisconsin | 0 Comments
RIP and condolences to her family.
Former state representative and Wisconsin Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager, the first woman to hold the post, has died, according to Rep. Gordon Hintz (D-Oshkosh), who issued a news release Saturday.
She is believed to have been 62 years old. Cause of death was not immediately reported.
I had the opportunity to debate her several times on WPR’s Week in Review program. Her articulate advocacy for her views will be missed.
by Owen | 2109, 10 Apr 1717 | Politics - Wisconsin | 0 Comments
Well, well… Peg Lautenschlager abruptly resigned as chair of the state’s Ethics Commission and now we know why.
Madison attorney Josh Kaul, son of former state Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager, announced Monday that he will run for his mother’s old job next year.
He’s the first Democrat to challenge incumbent Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel for the right to run the state Department of Justice.
Kaul accused Schimel of using the DOJ’s solicitor general’s office to challenge former President Barack Obama’s policies in court. He also ripped Schimel’s decision to spend $10,000 on DOJ coins emblazoned with “Kicking Ass Every Day” and accused of Schimel of not enforcing the state’s consumer protection and environmental laws.
by Owen | 2350, 20 Oct 1616 | Politics - Wisconsin | 1 Comment
For the Chairperson of the State Ethics Commission, Lautenschlager sure does turn a blind eye to unethical people who are fellow travelers – not to mention her own ethical issues.
Lautenschlager has worked closely with Foval, and the Wisconsin chapter of the People for the American Way he once led, on election initiatives.
They are among several members of Our Democracy 2020, a coalition of left-wing groups that insists on working together on election reforms. Lautenschlager fought side by side with Foval and others to help defeat a ballot issue that effectively removed liberal state Supreme Court Justice Shirley Abrahamson from the chief justice position she long held, and they have worked on killing Wisconsin’s voter ID law.
Foval included a link to a video of the liberal pep rally launch of Our Democracy 2020 on his Vimeo page.
In a March 2015 story in the liberal Capital Times, days before voters approved the ballot giving the court the power to decide its own chief justice, Lautenschlager and Foval were quoted as saying the referendum was just one big power grab by Republicans.
On Thursday, however, Lautenschlager didn’t want to answer questions about her old friend Foval.
by Owen | 2122, 1 Oct 1616 | Politics - Wisconsin | 0 Comments
This person has zero credibility to chair the state ethics committee.
The chairwoman of the state Ethics Commission posted a photo of her presidential election ballot online Friday, which is illegal under state law.
Former Democratic Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager posted on her Facebook page a photo of her granddaughter next to her ballot showing a vote for Hillary Clinton with the message “this is what (her) grandma did for her today.”
Contacted by the State Journal, Lautenschlager said she didn’t know taking a photo of her ballot was illegal and that she has seen other people posting photos of their ballots on social media. She said she would take it down immediately.
by Owen | 0657, 12 Jul 1616 | Politics - Wisconsin | 4 Comments
Former Democratic state Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager was selected Monday as chair of Wisconsin’s new Ethics Commission, and the job of administrator was offered to a former analyst for the nonpartisan board the panel was created to replace.
Lautenschlager, who served as attorney general for one term, had to pay a fine to the previous Ethics Board following her arrest for drunken driving in 2004.
I actually don’t mind that Lautenschlager is rabidly partisan… and she is. I have sparred with her for hours on WPR’s Week in Review over the years and she is on the wingnut fringe of the Democratic Party. But this panel was intended to have partisan appointees. It abandons the fantasy that we can find a panel of utterly impartial beings to arbitrate ethics issues and instead embraces the real world with an adversarial process where all biases are on full display. There is no doubt that Lautenschlager’s biases will be on full display.
What bothers me is that Lautenschlager is ethically challenged herself. You can be partisan and ethical. Those people exist. Lautenschlager is not one of them. Remember that the scandal wasn’t really that she drove a state car into a ditch. The scandal was that she was using a state car in the first place. She declared her home as the official AG office so that she could use a state car to drive back and forth to Madison on the taxpayer dime. Her ethical violations were so bad that she lost in the primary to a Democrat who wasn’t seen as ethically challenged.
Now this ethically-challenged partisan is the head of the new Ethics Commission? We’re not off to a good start.
