Free Republic

Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. told a gathering of about 100 people on Sunday that citizens who use their firearms in self-defense should have their guns returned to them within 48 hours of being cleared of criminal charges. Clarke was a guest speaker at a free concealed-carry class held at Kochanski’s Concertina Beer Hall, located on the city’s south side, an establishment that made headlines last week after the owner of the tavern, Andy Kochanski, fatally shot a would-be robber. While prosecutors have cleared Kochanski of criminal charges and agree that he acted lawfully in defense of himself...

MADISON — An Appleton Area School District committee charged with reviewing and recommending a reading list for the public school system’s ninth-graders proved anything but an open book, according to the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty. In a lawsuit against the school district, Milwaukee-based WILL, a libertarian-leaning public interest firm, asserts the Communication Arts I Materials Review Committee met in secret before handing down its fiction recommendations to a subcommittee of the Appleton School Board. “They didn’t follow the open meetings law” said Tom Kamenick, associate counsel and open government specialist at WILL. “These meetings were completely closed off...

It is either the case that African Americans, young people, old people, and poor people labor under some onerous yet curiously undetectable burden that keeps them from obtaining free, government-issued photo IDs, or it is the case that Hillary Clinton, the NAACP, et al. are full of bunk when they claim that voter-ID laws such as the one just adopted in North Carolina amount to “disenfranchisement.” The evidence strongly suggests the presence of ambient bunk levels approaching toxicity. In general, Americans are very handy when it comes to acquiring free things issued by the government, and none of the groups...

In a statement expressing his frustration with how growth in the local economy bypasses black males in the city, Ald. Joe Davis said Friday that the illegal drug trade is the "common way" for many African-Americans to provide for their basic financial needs. Davis, who is African-American, entitled his statement: "Divide and conquer politics stagnates Milwaukee's economy, shuts out black males." {snip} Davis said the city's rate of economic growth involving the private sector was "pathetic." He added that that poor performance was directly related to the city's crime rate. "We accept group homes, day cares, gas stations and corner...

Wisconsin's public employees are leaving their unions in droves, which should be no surprise: With passage of Act 10 in 2011, public unions in the Badger State lost many of their reasons for being. The "budget-repair bill" pushed through the Legislature by Republicans and signed into law by Gov. Scott Walker limited bargaining to wages only, and then only up to the cost of living; it also required unions to recertify each year and barred the automatic collection of union dues. Relying on federal financial records, the Journal Sentinel's Dan Bice found union membership has declined by 50% or more...

A former Milwaukee priest who was removed from ministry after being charged with sexual abuse but cleared by a jury in a civil trial, is seeking $450,000 in damages from the archdiocese. Marvin Knighton says he was removed from the priesthood wrongfully, after a jury found him not guilty on sex-abuse charges. Church officials, conducting an independent inquiry, concluded that the charges against him were credible even if they did not meet the “reasonable doubt” standard required in civil law. Knighton’s claim came to light in bankruptcy proceedings for the Milwaukee archdiocese. His name appears, alongside the names of sex-abuse...

Some unions' finances also suffer after Scott Walker curtails powers Gov. Scott Walker's signature plan to slash collective bargaining has set off a Darwinian struggle for survival among Wisconsin's public employee unions. In the two years since Walker's plan became law, tens of thousands of teachers and state and local workers have dropped out of their unions, according to a Journal Sentinel analysis of little-used federal financial records. No labor group has been hit harder than the one representing Milwaukee city and county workers. In 2010 — the year that Walker was elected governor — the American Federation of State,...

Two Milwaukee men — each with a state permit to carry a concealed weapon — traded dozens of shots in a rolling shootout through two sides of town and down a freeway, the kind of scenario concealed-carry opponents warned would turn road rage incidents deadly. No one was killed or injured in the June 26 incident, according to a criminal complaint that charges just one of the men with a crime. Prosecutors aren't saying any more about the case, and the shooters couldn't be reached for comment Friday. But the gunfight is bound to spark more debate over concealed carry....

MILWAUKEE – Tom Barrett presides over a $1.42 billion budget and a “company” with some 8,300 employees, but with all that responsibility the Milwaukee mayor only ranks seventh on the list of top paid city employees with $145,635 annual earnings. Perhaps more striking, his estimated $2.86 million lifetime pension also ranks seventh among his Milwaukee peers, according to a new report by Taxpayers United of America. Those figures demonstrate how the public pension system is simply unsustainable, say members of that group. BIG MONEY: Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett stands to collect millions in from his public retirement pension. TUA estimates...

A saxophone player has claimed that she was assaulted as she played a jazz song in the street by three African American women who said a white girl shouldn't play that sort of music. Cassandra Struve, 26, was performing in the street outside the Summerfest grounds in Milwaukee, Wisconsin around 11pm on June 26 when the three women approached her. 'I was playing Minnie the Moocher, classic Blues Brothers song,' Struve told WITI. 'A lady with a child in her hand came up to me, smacked me in my face and said, "Don’t play that".' They added that a white...

MILWAUKEE (AP) — As more victims of clergy sex abuse came forward, then-Milwaukee Archbishop Timothy Dolan oversaw a plan to pay some abusers to leave the priesthood after writing to Vatican officials with increasing frustration and concern, warning them about the potential for scandal if they did not defrock problem priests, according to documents released Monday. Dolan’s correspondence with Vatican officials and priests accused of sexual abuse was included in about 6,000 pages of documents the Archdiocese of Milwaukee released Monday as part of a deal reached in federal bankruptcy court with clergy sex abuse victims suing it for fraud....

In Niagara Falls, a black mob of 20 attacked a mother and her family on a picnic. They hurled racial slurs and told them they did not like their “Puerto Rican (expletive) music.”The Niagara Gazette described what happened next as a “fight,” although many would call it an assault: “Her son was punched and kicked by several people and fell to the ground. When her son picked himself up, the woman said a man from the group pulled out a pistol and pointed it in her son’s face. She said someone in the group was yelling, ‘Shoot him … shoot...

A saxophone player was assaulted outside the Summerfest grounds near Chicago St. on Wednesday, June 26th around 11 p.m. 26-year-old street performer Cassandra Struve became a target on opening night while she was playing an old jazz song. “I was playing Minnie the Moocher, classic Blues Brothers song,” said Struve. ”A lady with a child in her hand came up to me, smacked me in my face and said ‘don’t play that.’” Struve says three African American women confronted her and shouted that a white girl could not play the song. After being hit, Struve says she was shocked and...

Wisconsin --(Ammoland.com)- This past spring, many of you may have heard of, or viewed news reports pertaining to Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke’s public service announcements that made national news. Sheriff Clarke has, in the past, gone to radio advertising to make public service announcements about drunk driving, distracted driving and other issues.With this most recent public service ad campaign the Sheriff took on the important topic of self-defense. You can hear his public service announcement that went “viral” here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8TCx-sM1vw In what can only be taken as discrimination against the 2nd amendment and the right to self-defense, the Milwaukee County...

Sailors on Lake Michigan know they're approaching the south side of Milwaukee when they spot the Allen-Bradley Clock Tower. But the building beneath the tower acts as a marker of another sort: the structure originally built to be a manufacturing plant is now filled with white-collar professionals. As the global headquarters of Rockwell Automation, the Allen-Bradley building provides office space for 3,100 employees who range from product development engineers to sales and marketing teams and corporate executives. They're in the manufacturing business, but it's not quite the same business that once made Milwaukee prosperous. Rockwell Automation sold over $6 billion...

Last Friday’s cross-dressing day at a Milwaukee elementary school proved contentious. The school-sponsored event was one of the theme days during school spirit week at Tippecanoe School for the Arts and Humanities. While the themes for each of the other days were sufficiently milquetoast, Gender Bender Day — as it was originally named — raised a few parental eyebrows. Members of the school’s student council chose the transvestite theme, reports WITI-TV. The idea was straightforward: boys were encouraged to dress like girls and girls were encouraged to dress like boys. Deidri Hernandez, the mother a second-grader at Tippecanoe, found out...

B. Todd Jones, the acting director of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is scheduled to receive a confirmation hearing on June 4, an aide with the Senate Judiciary Committee said Friday. Jones' nomination has been stalled over a series of questions including about a bungled ATF sting in Milwaukee. The Milwaukee case, known as Operation Fearless, is expected to be one of the issues to come up at the hearing, according to the aide. The ATF has been without a permanent director since 2006 when then-Director Carl Truscott resigned after spending lavishly on a new headquarters....

Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. said in a television interview Wednesday night that he agrees with the views of an anti-federal government group that recently gave him an award.During a interview on a range of topics with WISN-TV (Channel 12), Clarke was questioned about being named "sheriff of the year" by the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association and an image of Journal Sentinel columnist Daniel Bice's recent article about the award flashed in the background.Bice first reported that the association is the brainchild of Richard Mack, a former Arizona lawman who believes a sheriff's primary duty is...

In Milwaukee, the homicide rate for black residents is 27.9 per 100,000 compared to 9.7 for Latinos and 1.7 per 100,000 white residents. Of known 2011 homicide suspects in Milwaukee, 93 percent are black, while 4 percent are white and Latino. The city itself is 40 percent black, 17 percent Latino, and 37 percent white, according to Census figures. {SNIP} Milwaukee is among the 20 most violent cities in America. The largest number of homicides in Milwaukee occurred in the 53206 Zip Code. {SNIP} In 2011, 17 of the 86 homicides in Milwaukee occurred in 53206. Between 2005-2009, there were...

ATF agents let a man armed with a gun and threatening to shoot someone walk out of their storefront sting operation in Milwaukee last summer, failing to arrest him or take the weapon, the Journal Sentinel has learned. The suspect, Bobby Ball - a felon with a violent history - promised to return to the store and sell the agents that gun and others but he never came back, according to sources familiar with the case. Instead he spent four months on the loose, until he was picked up in Minnesota on a drunken-driving arrest. He is now awaiting sentencing...