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There were no wild turkeys in Wisconsin when I was growing up.   They had been wiped out by the 1920s.   The common wisdom was that they could not handle the winters in Northern Wisconsin, but they might be re-introduced into the Southern half of the State. The "common wisdom" was wrong.   I took the above picture this morning, on the way to my parents former property, which now belongs to my Brother.   He had stalked a trophy tom turkey there just 3 days before.   Even though turkeys have become plentiful in Wisconsin, you are still required to apply for...

Opponent Mary Burke weighed down by jobs plan plagiarism allegationsMary Burke weighed down by jobs plan plagiarism allegations. Gov. Scott Walker is casting himself as a turnaround artist, seeking re-election with a pitch to voters that he revamped the state’s spending and business climate in just four years. For a governor with presidential aspirations, it’s a case he’s likely preparing for a national audience as well — but first he’ll have to get through a tighter-than-expected re-election race against Democrat Mary Burke, a former state secretary of commerce. As if that wasn’t enough, analysts say that his race could also...

Teri is the face of an infamous Wisconsin case in 2004 where an estranged husband beat his wife with a baseball bat on a bitter January day and stuffed her body in a garbage can that was half full of snow, leaving her to die in an unheated storage unit. Teri has joined the campaign to re-elect Scott Walker, and here is what she has to say: http://www.scottwalker.com/teri So, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, is that really how Scott Walker "gives women the back of his hand"?

Opponents of Wisconsin's photo ID requirement for voters took their case to the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday, seeking an emergency halt to the state's implementation of the law before the fast approaching Nov. 4 election. ~snip~ In their petition, voter ID opponents told the Supreme Court that there's not enough time to properly implement the law in the month remaining in the tight race between GOP Gov. Scott Walker and Democratic challenger Mary Burke. "Thousands of Wisconsin voters stand to be disenfranchised by this law going into effect so close to the election. Hundreds of absentee ballots have already...

MADISON, Wis. — The plagiarism scandal surrounding Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke may be affecting Wisconsin voters. The latest Marquette University Law School poll, released Wednesday, shows incumbent Republican Gov. Scott Walker has opened up his lead against Burke by 5 percent among likely voters. Of the 585 likely voters who participated in the Marquette poll between Sept. 25-28, 50 percent said they would vote for Walker; 45 percent said they would be voting for Burke. The poll’s margin of error is 4.1 percent. Information for Marquette’s previous poll, which had Walker ahead of Burke by 3 percent, was collected...

MADISON, Wis. — On the eve of the one-year anniversary of sweeping raids in Wisconsin’s politically charged John Doe investigation into conservative activists, Eric O’Keefe, one of the targets of that probe, is going public in a big way. Speaking at length for the first time O’Keefe, a director of the conservative Wisconsin Club for Growth, tells Wisconsin Reporter he was shocked by the prosecutors’ tactics: predawn, paramilitary-style raids on the homes of conservatives, and the confiscation of their papers and electronic equipment. “We ran a meticulous political operation; not only did we comply with Wisconsin’s laws — we were...

Don Hosmer Last year, on the way the Gun Rights Policy Conference (GRPC), I had an unexpected encounter at a diner in central Texas.   I rode my motorcycle to that GRPC.   This year I took my truck to the GRPC in Chicago.   I have friends and family in Wisconsin that I wanted to visit, and some items that would have been less comfortable to carry on a motorcycle.    This year the encounter happened after the conference. I was traveling up I-90/94 when I decided to stop for dinner on the northern edge of the Wisconsin Dells.  Last  year I...

From an ongoing press conference. The official poll will be released in an hour New Marquette University Law School Poll shows Gvr. Scott Walker, among likely voters, out of the 4.1 range of error Poll done from Sept 25-28 801 registered voters Sept 25-28 585 likely voters Among LIKELY voters Walker 50% Burke 45% Among registered voters Scott is 1% ahead

QAMISHLO, Syrian Kurdistan,— A US citizen, Jordan Matson, has joined the Kurdish People's Defence Units (YPG) ranks in Syrian Kurdistan in order to fight against Islamic State IS jihadi militants, receiving the code-name “Serdar”. Matson was slightly injured when a mortar shell landed near him in a clash in which 8 IS militants were killed. Matson says he is very content with the attention he receives in the YPG. A US citizen from Wisconsin has joined the YPG ranks, which already includes many people from different ethnic groups in Syria and the Middle East in general. Matson says he had...

On Monday, first lady Michelle Obama swooped in to Milwaukee to help reinvigorate a struggling Mary Burke for governor campaign. Weighed down by accusations that her staff plagiarized large portions of her jobs plan, Burke called upon Obama to do a little cheerleading for the Democratic base. "We need to be just as passionate and as hungry as we were back in 2008 and 2012," Obama told the crowd. "They're assuming we won't be organized and energized. And only we can prove them wrong." Well, not quite. Perhaps the first lady can be forgiven for not following Wisconsin politics that...

Meg Kissinger is a seasoned reporter at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Wisconsin’s well-known newspaper. She’s seen a lot in her days. But what she said happened at a speech by Michelle Obama in the state on Monday left her utterly “creeped out.” Kissinger took to her Facebook and Twitter page to describe what happened. In short, she said, aides for both the first lady and Wisconsin Democratic candidate for governor, Mary Burke, told her she was banned from talking to members of the crowd. Kissinger was in Hudson, Wisconsin, covering the first lady’s speech in which she was stumping for...

<p>APPLETON, Wis. (AP) – Wisconsin officials are working to better serve the rapidly growing Hispanic community in the state, with a little help from the Mexican Consulate in Chicago.</p> <p>A mobile version of the Chicago-based office issued passports and consular identification cards to hundreds of Mexican nationals at an Appleton church last week, Post-Crescent Media reported. About 800 people took advantage of the services at First English Lutheran Church from last Wednesday to Saturday, according to Alfredo Gomez Sepulveda, a coordinator of the consulate’s mobile program.</p>

When Wisconsin governor Scott Walker signed a law curbing the power of public sector unions in his state in 2011, Democrats warned that public schools would suffer terribly. But one year after the law had taken effect--and in the midst of a recall campaign that was driven entirely by the backlash to the law--Democratic candidate Tom Barrett could not name a single school hurt by Walker's reforms. When Mary Burke, the Democrat challenging Walker in 2014, was asked last month by THE WEEKLY STANDARD if she could name any schools hurt by Walker's reforms, she replied with an anecdote about...

Just this week, two seemingly unrelated events unfolded, but they actually reveal a new liberal tactic. The Hillary Clinton Front-Group, American Bridge, filed a bogus federal complaint against Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and then a federal probe into New Jersey Governor Chris Christie found no evidence linking Christie to “Bridge-Gate.” Meanwhile, Texas Governor Rick Perry was indicted last month. Make no mistake, these events are related. Emerging is a new liberal tactic to gin up legal proceedings against conservatives and then use the media to amplify the investigations and make the officials look guilty. These attacks are part of a...

A series of fireballs lit up the night sky across the eastern U.S. Tuesday night and Wednesday morning just hours apart. ... More than 420 witnesses reported seeing the fireball streaking across the sky, with those reports from Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana. Among the reports AMS received in Indiana, one person in Greenwood described the fireball as having "small reddish sparks as it snuffed out, scattered in all directions." ... Three of the four reported fireballs happened within 90 minutes of each other, with the other reports over New Jersey, Tennessee and Florida. "It is rare that multiple...

Democrat Mary Burke told education officials Friday she would fight as governor to stop the expansion of voucher schools but would leave alone the long-standing program in Milwaukee. "This is something that may sound like a good political sound bite, but it is bad public policy," she said of expanding the voucher program. "I think it is the thing that most threatens a vision of a public school system and an education for students in Wisconsin to be the leaders in our country." Her comments drew applause from her audience at a Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators conference at...

Wisconsin avoided yet another challenge to its voter photo-ID law as a U.S. appeals court panel split evenly on a request to reconsider an order allowing the measure to be in force for elections on Nov. 4. The 5-5 vote Friday by judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago let stand a Sept. 12 three-judge order allowing the state to keep the 2011 provision in place.

Map from usacarry.com It was only a couple of decades ago that crossing state lines left most law abiding people effectively disarmed.   That started changing as the "shall issue" concealed carry firearms reform swept through the country.  I particularly remember how criminals were targeting people with rental cars in Florida, because they could be fairly certain that the people were from out of state, and thus effectively disarmed. Florida responded by changing there law to allow for interstate reciprocity, and to allow non-residents to obtain Florida concealed carry permits.   Florida permits are now one of the most popular...

A federal appeals court on Wednesday removed one barrier to restarting an investigation into possible illegal coordination between Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's campaign and more than two dozen conservative groups, a legal setback for the Republican who is locked in a tough re-election campaign. The three-judge panel of the 7th U.S. Court of Appeals overturned a lower court ruling that halted the probe, but the judges found state courts are the proper venue to resolve legal issues with the case. Despite the ruling, the investigation won't resume immediately because the state judge overseeing it also effectively stopped it in January...

Law360, Los Angeles (September 24, 2014, 8:44 PM ET) -- The Seventh Circuit ruled Wednesday that it is up to Wisconsin state courts to decide whether an investigation into potential campaign finance violations involving Gov. Scott Walker and a host of conservative groups should proceed, overturning a lower court injunction that halted the probe on First Amendment grounds. A three-judge panel called the injunction issued in May by U.S. District Judge Rudolph T. Randa an "abuse of discretion," saying that "this case does not present a situation in which state proceedings may be displaced." The panel directed the lower court...