Free Republic

In a sweep through the swing states of Michigan and Wisconsin, Mr McCain was met by the kind of near-hysterical crowds previously seen only at campaign events for his Democratic rival, Barack Obama. More than 6,000 exultant supporters turned out on Friday night in Sterling Heights, a town in Michigan's Macomb County, home of the Reagan-Democrats, the small town blue collar voters who propelled Ronald Reagan to the White House in the 1980s and hold the key to victory this year. Where he once played to a few hundred people, Mr McCain was greeted by an electrified crowd chanting "Sa-rah,...

If there was any doubt that John McCain's surprise pick of Sarah Palin has grabbed the attention of many Republicans, Barbara Falk, a retiree born and raised in this quaint small town, put it to rest yesterday: "I came out to see her." So did Falk's friend Pat Mantel, who said, "I do enjoy that vice president that McCain picked." And so did Mantel's sister Carol Eberhardt, a retired lab worker and single mother of three, who said, "She speaks my language." A day after McCain gave what many critics panned as a flat acceptance speech, Palin proved to be...

Later yesterday, the two traveled to Macomb County, the suburban Detroit turf where the "Reagan Democrat" demographic was first identified by pollster Stan Greenberg. Palin appeared to earn more applause than McCain when she was introduced, and an unsolicited chant of "Sarah! Sarah!" rose from the crowd of several thousand. She delivered an appeal to those socially conservative, working-class voters on the basis of patriotism, not class. "Our opponents have been going on recently about how they fight for you," Palin said. "Since Senator McCain won't say this on his behalf, let me say it: There's only one man in...

At a packed street rally here this morning, Republican John McCain used his first post-convention stop to promise a war on special-interest influence and excessive partisanship in Washington, D.C. "We're going to start to work for the people of this country," McCain shouted. "It's over for the special interests. It's over!" The Arizona senator joined Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, his vice presidential pick, in front of an ice cream shop on a well-preserved main street the city says is virtually unchanged since 1900. Without mentioning specifics in a brief address downtown, McCain said the duo would visit small towns across...

Can a city stop people from posting a link to its Web site? That’s the question at the center of a federal lawsuit brought by a Sheboygan woman against the mayor and other officials there, in what appears to be a first-of-its-kind case, according to an Internet law expert. Jennifer Reisinger says the Sheboygan city attorney ordered her to remove from her Web site a link to the city’s police department, in what she believes was retaliation for her support of recalling Mayor Juan Perez, according to the suit filed last week. The city went further, the lawsuit claims, launching...

ELKHORN, Wis. - When Tallan "T-Man" Latz was 5, he saw Joe Satriani playing guitar on TV. "I turned around to my dad and said, 'That's exactly what I want to do.'" Three years and countless hours of practicing later, 8-year-old Tallan is a blues guitar prodigy. He's played in bars and clubs, including the House of Blues in Chicago, and even jammed with Les Paul and Jackson Browne. He has a summer of festivals scheduled and has drawn interest from venues worldwide.

The American Queen steamboat, carrying 600 passengers and crew, on a 7 day cruise form St. Paul to St. Louis will be in La Crosse Wisconsin until 1 PM Monday. Explore La Crosse webcam

MADISON, Wis. - Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle said Friday that his support for exploring nuclear power is in line with the position of fellow Democrat and presidential candidate Barack Obama and not a reversal from his previous stance. But state Assembly Speaker Mike Huebsch, R-West Salem, said Doyle told him in 2003 he would veto any bill that lifted a moratorium on building new power plants. Huebsch said Doyle's position had "thawed" by 2007, when the governor said he'd be open to studying nuclear power as an option. The change in Doyle's position comes as he's been actively campaigning for...

A new chapter in the life of the... Catholic church in the Coulee Region begins today, the first day the Shrine Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe is open to the public. Nine years after Archbishop Raymond Burke, former bishop of the La Crosse Diocese, first announced plans for the shrine, he dedicated the church at a Mass on Thursday that lasted more than three hours. Now... the success of the shrine lies largely in how the public, locally and around the world, receives the site Burke calls a place of pilgrimage.... Corinne Dempsey, an associate professor of religious studies...

<p>NIAGARA, Wis. - Marinette County's sheriff says the shooting that left three young people dead and another wounded was apparently a random act.</p> <p>Sheriff Jim Kanikula (kan-ih-KOO'-lah) says a man dressed in camouflage and armed with an assault rifle came out of the woods and started shooting. The sheriff says there was no communication from the gunman with the group of 9 young people that had gathered at a Menominee River bridge to swim.</p>

The Gun Owners of America have launched a campaign to help support the family of a man sentenced to 30 months in jail for a rifle that misfired. Officials with GOA today announced they will be working to generate support for the wife and three children of David Olofson, on whom WND has reported in the past, while a GOA-orchestrated appeal of his conviction proceeds. "Not only is Gun Owners of American representing Olofson during his appeal, we have set up an Olofson relief fund so that his wife and mother of their three young children will be able to...

Waldo - Some 150 anarchists from throughout the United States and Canada descended on a strip of private land this week in this Sheboygan County village for four days of workshops, including some focused on strategizing for demonstrations at the upcoming Democratic and Republican national conventions. The 2008 CrimethInc. Convergence was the sixth annual communal campout organized by CrimethInc. Ex-Workers' Collective, an international underground network that since the mid-1990s has published widely read anarchist texts such as "Recipes for Disaster: An Anarchist Cookbook." The group also has drawn the attention of FBI agents trying to infiltrate the protest movement. At...

Barney Lavin is a fifth-generation farmer in western Racine County who tries to run his 250-acre Angus cow-calf and grain operation in an environmentally friendly way. Lavin, 57, has restored some land to wetlands and last year went a step further -- by enrolling 31 acres in the Farmers Union Carbon Credit Program, in which credits are bought and sold on the Chicago Climate Exchange.Other Wisconsin farmers also have the opportunity to join the program, in which the Farmers Union collects carbon credits from farmers who use no-till crop production, convert croplands to grass, manage native rangelands sustainably, plant trees...

PORT EDWARDS, WI -- Steve Devine has traveled this road before. Devine, who turns 57 next month, worked as a dispatcher at a trucking company for 16 years. But when the Wisconsin Rapids firm went out of business in 1991, he managed to land a good job nearby at the paper mill in Port Edwards, a village of about 2,000 nestled along the Wisconsin River. Now, after 16 years at the mill, Devine is looking for a job again -- and his prospects are bleaker this time around. Montreal-based Domtar last month closed the Port Edwards mill, which is about...

Growing up in Manitowoc, WI, Sarah Kaufmann's favorite pastime was drawing. She didn't care what she was drawing, as long as she had a pencil or crayon and some paper. At the time, Kaufmann had no idea those countless hours spent filling sketchbooks would one day help her become a famous sculptor. Most sculptors use stone, metal or wood for their creations. Kaufmann, however, has chosen a medium much closer to the heart of Wisconsin. She's made quite a name for herself chipping away at cheese. Yes, Sarah "The Cheese Lady" Kaufmann is a cheese sculptor. Kaufmann was at Sam's...

Extreme weather has virtually wiped out Door County’s cherry crop for this year, which not only means slim pickings in orchards that attract thousands of tourists each summer, but also a loss of an estimated 350 to 400 seasonal jobs for workers who harvest and process the iconic scarlet fruit. At a time when epic rains and flooding have wiped out berries and vegetables in other parts of the state, Door County’s loss may seem surprising because it is attributed to an opposite extreme: a three-month drought last summer, followed by a January that brought rain and wild temperature fluctuations....

Order restored among crowd seeking food vouchers By GREG J. BOROWSKI and ANNYSA JOHNSONgborowski@journalsentinel.com Posted: June 23, 2008 Milwaukee police said they have restored order this morning but will remain outside of the Marcia P. Coggs Human Services Center after a crowd awaiting free food vouchers - which never were to be distributed - became unruly this morning.Police Department spokeswoman Anne E. Schwartz said Vliet St., between N. 12th and N. 13th streets, is blocked, and barricades have been installed so people are able to line up around the block of the building at 1220 W. Vliet St."That line is...

<p>When we think of Wisconsin, we think of it as the nation's Heartland -- a placid place where you can park your car anywhere and leave it unlocked, with the key in the ignition, knowing that no matter how long you're gone, when you return your car will be covered with cheese.</p>

As an avid supporter of Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic primaries, Debra Bartoshevich is not alone in her frustration over Clinton's defeat. She’s not alone in refusing to support Barack Obama. And she’s not entirely alone in saying she’ll vote this fall for Republican John McCain instead. But what makes her unusual is that she holds these views as an elected delegate to the Democratic National Convention

Clinton delegate to vote for McCain As an avid supporter of Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic primaries, Debra Bartoshevich is not alone in her frustration over Clinton's defeat. She's not alone in refusing to support Barack Obama. And she's not entirely alone in saying she'll vote this fall for Republican John McCain instead. But what makes her unusual is that she holds these views as an elected delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Denver this summer. "I'm sure people are going to be upset with me. I don't want to lose my national delegate status," says Bartoshevich, a...

HERE WE GO AGAIN, with the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents demonstrating its arrogance and contempt for the taxpayers who foot the bills. The board approved whopping raises for top UW officials. The new UW-Madison chancellor, Biddy Martin, was hired with a salary of $437,000 a year, more than $100,000 higher than her predecessor John Wiley was paid. President Kevin Reilly was granted a raise of nearly $80,000, moving from $342,000 a year to $421,500 nnually by next June. SOME READERS may remember just a few years ago, in 2003, when the regents were ruled in violation of...

It was discovered that during the height of the recent flooding in Wisconsin Democratic Governor Doyle spent the whole day a personal campaign fund raiser golfing and banqueting with big money donors and not on the job. Apparently, someone directly involved in supporting the banquet thought it was shocking that Doyle would be spending the day on the golf course while Wisconsinites were fighting and struggling with the state's worst flooding in history. This golf course whistleblower contacted a few media outlets and the only one interested in covering this news was radio host Mark Belling on Milwaukee. Doyle's fund...

LAKE DELTON, WI - A 245-acre lake in this resort town overflowed Monday, virtually emptying the lake basin and washing away lakefront homes along with a chunk of the local tourism industry.Lake Delton, a key part of the Wisconsin Dells tourism area, overflowed about 10 a.m. on Monday morning after two days of rain and was dry by Monday afternoon, said Thomas Diehl, a Lake Delton village trustee. Water in the manmade lake rose until it was too much for a highway enbankment that was holding it back. The highway washed away as water drained into the nearby Wisconsin River....

Lake Delton, a 254-acre water playland for thousands of tourists each summer, has been drained after a portion of the lakeshore was breached. At least four houses fell into empty basin, and work crews were frantically trying to plug the breach with tons of stone and concrete. Meanwhile, a couple thousand of people in Columbia County about 30 miles north of Madison were urged to evacuate below the Wyocena and Pardeeville dams, said Pat Beghin, a spokesman for the county's emergency management. The Wyocena Dam's spillway had washed out, and workers were sandbagging to try to save it, Beghin said....

Cheeseheads don't need to be bleu: Experts say predictions that California will soon overtake Wisconsin as the nation's top cheese producer are unlikely to come true. The Golden State and its happy cows gained quickly on Wisconsin in the past decade, but plants in California are maxing out, while efforts to boost production in Wisconsin are paying off, said Dick Groves, longtime owner of the Madison-based trade publication, Cheese Reporter. Groves helped spark the friendly competition between the states 10 years ago with an editorial predicting California would overtake Wisconsin in cheese production by 2005. He later amended it to...

A man, woman and two teenage children apparently shared a house in Necedah Township, Wisconsin with a corpse for two months before authorities found the body. At least one of the adults in the house insisted the dead woman inside wasn't "fully dead," and that they could pray her back to life...

A University of Wisconsin Stevens Point student government leader is coming under fire for allegedly trashing a pro-life display on campus. Student senator Roderick King is said to have vandalized a display featuring crosses erected by the campus pro-life group to memorialize those babies killed in abortions. The UWSP pro-life group Pointers for Life put up the Cemetery of the Innocents display and spent the morning last Thursday repairing the damage someone caused in an apparent vandalizism. That's when they were trashed a second time. As students repaired the earlier damage, King led a group of angry students by walking...

Could there be a calculated, cross-country plot to kill young college men, including some in Minnesota? It seems a little hard to believe, but two New York detectives say, they can prove it.

SURVEY Do you agree with Edgerton High School's decision to allow the Pledge of Allegiance in Spanish? Yes, I agree with the decision. No, the policy should be changed. I'm not sure. I don't care. Other.

Mounting mortgage misery, accumulated credit debt and higher consumer costs contributed to a 29.5% jump in bankruptcy filings in Wisconsin in the first quarter of this year, and attorneys and debt counselors say the situation is likely to get worse People who were living on the edge financially with monthly mortgage payments they barely could afford now are tipping into insolvency as fuel and food costs rise, they say. "I think we're just at the beginning of it," said Claire Ann Resop, a bankruptcy attorney in Madison. "I think it's going to be a couple of years." There were 4,570...

Wisconsin leads the U.S. in drunken driving rates — and Minnesota is not far behind. So says a federal government report released today. A CLOSER LOOK It's estimated more than a quarter of Wisconsin's adult drivers drove under the influence in the past year. Rounding out the worst five states — all from the Upper Midwest — were North Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska and South Dakota. WHICH STATE WAS THE BEST?Utah had the lowest incidence of drunken driving. It was the only state where fewer than 10 percent of adult drivers reported driving drunk. Next came West Virginia, Arkansas, Kentucky and...

By the time Ald. Michael McGee's term ends Monday, city taxpayers will have paid him more than $67,000 while he has been sitting in jail, city records show. That includes a car allowance of more than $3,000 - even though McGee hasn't been able to drive in jail and couldn't legally drive before his arrest. And when he turns 60, McGee also will be eligible for a small city pension, based on his elected service and a previous job with the Milwaukee Public Schools. McGee, 38, was arrested last Memorial Day and has been charged with shaking down business owners...

The political action committee of the National Rifle Association spent more than $73,000 this week on mailings in support of Michael Gableman's campaign for Supreme Court. Gableman is challenging incumbent Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler in Tuesday's election. According to documents filed with the Government Accountability Board, the NRA Political Victory Fund spent more than $14,000 on postcards and more than $59,000 on postage on March 27. Because the expenditure was made on March 27, the cost was not recorded on the most recent campaign finance reports filed with the GAB; the cutoff for those filings was March 17. Gableman...

Challenger beats Butler in high court race; 1st such ouster since '67 Madison - Burnett County Circuit Judge Michael Gableman won a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court by a narrow margin Tuesday, bucking history and becoming the first challenger to knock off an incumbent state Supreme Court justice in more than 40 years. When Gableman takes the seat Aug. 1, it will be the first time in 110 years there hasn't been a justice from Milwaukee. Just before midnight, Gableman declared victory in the race against incumbent Louis Butler. "I recognize this is not a moment of individual victory...

MADISON, Wis. -- Michael Gableman had 51 percent of Tuesday's vote compared with 49 percent for Butler with 93 percent of precincts reporting. Butler is the first incumbent justice to lose a re-election bid since 1967. He joined the court in 2004 after being appointed by Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle. He built his campaign around the charge that Butler was a judicial activist. Gableman claims to be a judicial conservative. While the race was officially nonpartisan, Democrats including Gov. Jim Doyle and liberal special interest groups campaigned heavily for Butler while Republicans and conservative outside groups worked for Gableman. The...

When Wisconsin voters go to the polls this April Fool's day, the state Supreme Court may realize the joke's on them. After four years of judicial activism, one of the court's most liberal members, Justice Louis Butler, is up for re-election -- and voters get to send a message about what they expect from their judges.

Spooner, WI -- A large explosion and fire at a chemical plant in Spooner, Wisconsin has injured at least 2 people. Witnesses say, several area fire departments are on the scene at the Cortec Corporation plant. The Spooner Health System tells KARE 11 the hospital is treating two people from the plant. Their conditions were not immediately made available. The Wisconsin State Patrol said it did not know the cause of the 8:43 a.m. explosion at the plant owned by St. Paul, Minnesota-based Cortec Corporation. Cortec vice president Anna Vignetti said the injuries are believed to be first- or second-degree...

PHOTO ID Double standard on proposed voter ID? Sen. Jeff Plale (D-South Milwaukee) co-introduced Senate Bill 473, which includes this text: "A dealer may purchase nonferrous scrap, a metal article or a proprietary article from any person over age 18 if the dealer does all of the following: 1) obtains photographic identification from the seller or deliverer . . . " This is the same Plale who voted not to allow the voter photo ID amendment to come to the Senate floor. Notice this measure requires a photo ID. I'd like to know why Plale believes people must show a...

Losing Brett Favre is hard enough, but what if the Green Bay Packers lost their home field advantage? Global warming could remove those icy cold days and snowstorms that tend to benefit the Pack if they're playing against a team more accustomed to warm weather. An analysis by Environment America found that cold weather teams won more than 65 percent of their home games played from November through January against warm weather teams from 1998 through 2005. And though all cold weather stadiums saw average football season temperatures rise during the past seven years compared to the previous 30 years,...

Racine - A Racine County jury this afternoon found Ezequiel Lopez-Quintero guilty of first-degree intentional homicide and use of a dangerous weapon in the shooting death of Kenosha County sheriff's Deputy Frank Fabiano Jr. Lopez-Quintero, 45, an illegal immigrant living in Kenosha, faces a mandatory life sentence for the conviction of first-degree intentional homicide and up to an additional five years for use of a dangerous weapon. Fabiano, a former U.S. Marine and an 18-year veteran of the sheriff's department, was gunned down on the night of May 16, 2007, while attempting a routine traffic stop in the town of...

Agents from the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency have been stepping up the number of arrests of undocumented immigrants in Wisconsin recently. It’s a trend that’s beginning to worry some Wisconsin dairy farmers who employ immigrant milkers from Mexico. A new study of employment patterns on 600 farms in four Wisconsin counties found that 90 percent of the milkers on those farms were Mexican immigrants. It’s a trend that ballooned between 1998 and 2000, soon after the North American Free Trade Act went into affect. Study author Brent Valentine of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Rural Sociology says...

Attracted by tax incentives that went into effect Jan. 1, Universal Pictures has committed to shooting portions of its upcoming Johnny Depp film "Public Enemies" in Wisconsin, Gov. Jim Doyle said Tuesday. The movie is likely to include scenes filmed at locations in Milwaukee, Baraboo, Oshkosh, Madison and Columbus, Wis., said Scott Robbe, executive director for Film Wisconsin and a leader behind the development of the tax incentive program. "Milwaukee will play prominently in the film," Robbe said, adding that Depp will come to the city for the shoot. The movie company reached agreement Tuesday with the Wisconsin Department of...

Bill and Hillary Clinton and the geniuses who are running their campaign have done all they possibly could to lose in Wisconsin and their efforts have been rewarded! They publicly speculated that they would override the will of the voters and line up super delegate/bosses to vote for them regardless of how their districts and states voted. They spoke about using delegate credentials challenges over seating the Florida and Michigan delegations to overturn the will of the primaries. Bill Clinton’s volatile temper was on full display pitting the former president in a shouting match against a heckler. There has never...

McCain declares victory, congratulates Huckabee, continues being McCain.

In the Republican stronghold of Brookfield, Barack Obama was picking up some support among voters who cast their votes against rival Hillary Rodham Clinton and the war in Iraq. Merry Risch, 47, said the ongoing conflict in the Middle East was swinging her typically Republican family to the other party. "I just don't think that we want to be over there, and they don't want us over there," said Risch, who voted for Obama, along with her 18-year-old daughter and her daughter's boyfriend. John Urban, a 40-year-old anesthesiologist, said he voted for Obama because the Republican race already seems decided...

I know it seems crazy, but since the Left always encourages there supporters to vote for less conservative Republicans when Democrats have no race. I think we should return the favor.

Whether it was wild or a captive mountain lion remains to be seen. The Department of Natural Resources confirmed Tuesday that DNA tests concluded that a large cat seen leaping from a hayloft on Jan. 18 in Rock County was a cougar. If it is determined to be wild, it would be the first evidence that cougars had returned to Wisconsin since the early 1900s. Additional testing from a U.S. Forest Service laboratory in Missoula, Mont., will determine the sex of the cat and the subspecies. If testing shows that the cougar was from South America, for example, it would...

Killing seen as unlikely issue in decision on headquarters The weekend murder of a Miller Brewing Co. executive in the Walker's Point area is not expected to play a major role in determining the eventual headquarters location for the combined operations of Miller and Coors Brewing Co.-snip--------------------------------------------- Denver, with a population of 568,465, reported 1,748 violent crimes, including 19 homicides, during the first six months of 2007, according to FBI data released this month. Milwaukee, with a population of 581,005, reported 3,984 violent crimes, including 50 homicides.