Free Republic

An effort to investigate Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's political fundraising during his 2012 recall election cost Badger State voters $1.1 million, recently released court documents show. The investigation was halted last year after a judge determined that the activities alleged in the probe were not in fact illegal. The figures may grow higher. At least seven lawsuits relating to the "John Doe" probe, a secret investigative procedure available to state prosecutors, have been filed and litigation remains ongoing, reported the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Patrick Marley. The Wisconsin Club for Growth, one of the targets of the probe, has appealed...

Hundreds of people protested Wednesday in Wisconsin's capital and more than two dozen were arrested for blocking a road a day after a prosecutor ruled that a Madison police officer's fatal shooting of an unarmed biracial teenager was justified. Brandi Grayson, co-founder of the Young Gifted and Black Coalition that organized the protest, said the group wanted community control over the hiring and firing of officers and a U.N. probe into racial disparities in Dane County and Wisconsin. "We don't have time-set goals. We understand the struggle for black liberation will be generational," Grayson said. Lakaya Horton, 13, of Madison,...

Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) were essentially tied in Hot Air’s recurrent survey last month — although the latter had a slight edge. Roughly three weeks later, however, that same dynamic still holds true. Both Republican hopefuls are garnering roughly one-third of the vote each (with Ted Cruz faring a little bit better): As Patrick Ishmael notes, the sample size has almost doubled since April. Simply put, 2946 Hot Air readers participated in Hot Air’s primary survey this week, up from 1782 last month. Despite the larger sample size, however, the poll finds Cruz and Walker...

MADISON, Wis. -- A white Wisconsin police officer won't be charged for fatally shooting an unarmed 19-year-old biracial man, a prosecutor announced Tuesday, prompting peaceful demonstrations but none of the immediate violence that has hit some other U.S. cities in similar cases. Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne said he wouldn't file charges against Madison Officer Matt Kenny in the March 6 death of Tony Robinson, saying the officer used lawful deadly force after he was staggered by a punch to the head and feared for his life. Ozanne, mopping his brow repeatedly but speaking forcefully for some 25 minutes,...

It took Republicans three tries to win control of the US Senate and consolidate Congress under their leadership. In the end, the landscape left by the 2008 Democratic triumph left them uniquely vulnerable in the sixth-year midterm of an unpopular presidency. The tables will turn in 2016, warns National Journal’s Charlie Cook, as the gains of 2010 will make Republicans highly vulnerable to losing control of the Senate once again: Today, The Cook Political Report puts two Republican-held seats in the “Toss Up” category—the open seat in Florida and Kirk in Illinois. That toss-up column will certainly grow as...

Wisconsin is poised to shift to a new and unproven model of self-sufficiency for the state's sprawling state parks system. The changes could include more alliances with the private sector and naming rights at some park venues. A key legislative committee on Thursday called for the Department of Natural Resources to rely on traditional sources of cash, such as state park stickers, trail passes and fees paid for campsites, for future funding. It also called for the DNR to conduct a study to explore new revenue streams — but no longer rely on tax dollars. Nationally, state parks haven't been...

So apparently Scott Walker took a quiet trip to Israel this week and we are only finding out about it via his Twitter account: Great 1st day in Israel yesterday @ Western Wall, Mount of Olives, Church of the Holy Sepulchure & Via Dolorosa .....[SNIP]..... Thanks @netanyahu for the meeting. Our democracies share common values & work to confront shared threats -skw .....[SNIP].... Enjoy your trip Governor. Tell Netanyahu to forgive us for Obama and that he has our support.

May 11, 2015 By Staff Writer A five year old girl who had done nothing wrong was wantonly murdered as she sat on the lap of her grandfather. You haven’t heard about it? That’s not surprising; while the Al Sharptons and the Jesse Jacksons of the world posture and bloviate about violence and a lack of respect for human life that permeates communities, they routinely keep quiet about attacks that happen every single day in America unless the victim was a person of color and there are television cameras pointed at them. You see, the left isn’t interested in telling...

BREAKING:Charges will not be filed against MPD Officer Matt Kenny in the shooting death of Tony Robinson Updated: Tue 3:17 PM, May 12, 2015 MADISON, Wis.---BREAKING: DA Ozanne: Charges will not be filed against MPD Officer Matt Kenny in the shooting death of Tony Robinson. UPDATED: Tuesday, May 12, 2015 ---3:17 p.m. MADISON, Wis.---BREAKING: DA Ozanne: Charges will not be filed against MPD Officer Matt Kenny in the shooting death of Tony Robinson. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wisconsin voters last month approved a constitutional amendment giving justices the power to select the chief justice. Conservative-leaning justices then elected Justice Patience Roggensack as chief justice. But Abrahamson contends she remains chief justice and is suing in federal court.

Jim Geraghty has a piece on the home page today about how Jeff Sessions got Scott Walker’s ear on immigration. Here is a further statement from Sessions on the debate: >>>>Any political party that wants to win needs to demonstrate that it is willing to go to bat for working Americans. Perhaps no issue more divides a small handful of elites in Washington, D.C. from the American people than the issue of immigration. The idea that immigration should be increased beyond any level ever recorded — without any discussion of its social or economic impact — is not mainstream, but...

Authorities have arrested four people in the shooting deaths of two Mississippi police officers over the weekend, but the sheriff of Milwaukee County — more than 900 miles away, in Wisconsin — says there’s a fifth culprit on the loose. Suspect description: African American, slender build, salt-and pepper-hair, last seen wearing a blue power tie and sounding professorial. His alias: President Barack Obama. Less than 24 hours after Officers Benjamin J. Deen, 34, and Liquori Tate, 24, of the Hattiesburg Police Department were gunned down during a traffic stop, Milwakuee County Sheriff David A. Clarke linked the deaths to events...

Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, the all-but-declared Republican presidential candidate currently leading the polls in Iowa, sounds more like Alabama senator Jeff Sessions when he discusses immigration issues these days. “The next president and the next Congress need to make decisions about a legal-immigration system that’s based on, first and foremost, on protecting American workers and American wages,” Walker told Glenn Beck on April 20. “It is a fundamentally lost issue by many in elected positions today, is what is this doing for American workers looking for jobs, what is this doing to wages, and we need to have that to...

Twenty-seven senators want President Obama to block federal agencies and contractors from asking job applicants about prior criminal convictions. The senators, including 26 Democrats and presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), want Obama to take executive action to "ban the box," referring to a question on job applications that asks if an applicant has any convictions. "We ask you to require federal contractors and agencies to refrain from asking job applicants about prior convictions until later in the hiring process," they said in a letter to Obama on Monday. "This policy would eliminate unnecessary barriers to employment for all job...

<p>Washington (CNN)Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker will have a fresh chance to prove his foreign policy chops with a trip to Israel this week.</p> <p>The likely Republican presidential contender said Saturday in South Carolina that he and his wife were (t)raveling to the country later that day and would meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the trip.</p>

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker are tied atop a crowded 2016 GOP primary field in the early state of New Hampshire, with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush slipping into a tie for third with Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, who picked up some support since a separate poll was released in February. Mr. Paul and Mr. Walker were the first choice of 12 percent of GOP primary voters, followed by Mr. Bush and Mr. Rubio at 11 percent apiece and businessman Donald Trump at 8 percent, according to the Bloomberg Politics/Saint Anselm poll. Next were...

Keep in mind that polls this early in a presidential cycle measure mostly name recognition rather than solid voter choice. Even with that caveat in mind — or perhaps because of it — the Bloomberg/St. Anselm poll released last night delivers bad news to Hillary Clinton and Democrats for 2016. Instead of a commanding lead over a field of emerging names, Hillary barely edges out most of the GOP field: There’s no clear Republican front-runner in the New Hampshire presidential nominating contest, while Hillary Clinton retains an overwhelming advantage among Democrats in the Granite State’s first-in-the-nation primary.Clinton’s advantage over...

Scott Walker has snagged a key Romney ally, attorney and foreign-policy hand Robert C. O’Brien, for his not-yet-announced presidential campaign. A spokeswoman for Walker’s 527 group, Our American Revival, confirmed that O’Brien will serve as a foreign-policy adviser. O’Brien, sources say, decided to endorse Walker after being courted by several other Republican presidential contenders, including Texas senator Ted Cruz, former Texas governor Rick Perry, Florida senator Marco Rubio, and South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham. He is a personal friend of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, a fellow Mormon who served as a key foreign-policy adviser on the governor’s 2012 presidential...

Gov. Scott Walker visited Jerusalem Sunday on the first day of his five-day trip to Israel and was photographed standing near the Western Wall. Republican Jewish Coalition Executive Director Matt Brooks tweeted a photo of Walker clad in a yarmulke, the traditional Jewish head covering for males, and blue polo shirt near the Western Wall, which is considered the holiest place for Judaism. Also known as the Wailing Wall or Kotel, it's a place many Muslims, Christians and Jews visit in Israel. On Sunday morning Brooks tweeted: "Hitting the day running on first day in #Israel w/ @ScottWalker -visited the...

When it becomes successful in their own backyards, even die-hard liberals support school choice. “I support [means-tested, not universal] vouchers, I support homeschooling, I support charter schools, I support changes in the traditional system, [and] I support virtual schools,” Dr. Howard Fuller, author of No Struggle, No Progress and former Milwaukee Public Schools Superintendent, said recently at an international educational summit in Austin, Texas. “For me it’s about providing low-income and working-class parents with the capacity to choose” among various schooling alternatives. howard fuller book While acknowledging that “[e]very public policy has an upside and a downside,” Fuller believes “the...