Category Archives: Uncategorized

The senseless dustup over the appointment of UCLA Law School Dean Jennifer Mnookin as the new UW Madison Chancellor has raised a more interesting — and worthwhile — question about the Wisconsin Idea. In case you were tending to more important matters, here’s a quick recap. The Board of Regents — both Democratic and RepublicanContinue reading “Midwest: Wisconsin Idea Has to Flow in Both Directions”

One big reason that Donald Trump won in 2016 and went on to take over the Republican Party is that he didn’t sound like a typical politician. In a counterintuitive way, the most demonstrably lying politician in history came off as genuine. Nobody would say things that offensive, that absurd, that nuts if he didn’tContinue reading “Lessons From John Fetterman”

Heading back to the Emerald City this morning, so we’ll make this a quick one. The UW Regents hired Jennifer Mnookin to be the next UW Madison chancellor. She’s currently the dean of the UCLA law school and she went to Harvard, Yale and MIT. All fine schools, but she has no ties to Wisconsin.Continue reading “Over the Mnookin”

Whether or not the Democrats can ride what appears to be the impending overturning of Roe v. Wade to victories in November turns on one word: rare. When I wrote about this last week I said that I liked Bill Clinton’s formulation that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare.” I suspected when I wroteContinue reading “Rare”

I admit it. I’ve got a chip on my shoulder when it comes to the Midwest. Virtually all of our national media and culture (movies, TV, radio shows, publishing houses, etc.) comes from the coasts. And their attitude toward the middle of the country? To paraphrase Rick played by Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, “They’d despiseContinue reading “Midwest: A New Voice”

Florida rejected a bunch of math textbooks because they allegedly contained a liberal bias. The left went nuts. I tended to side with the left until I read the New York Times’ breathless take on the whole thing. Here’s one example of a math problem that was flagged as a problem by a Florida textbookContinue reading “Keep Politics Out of Math”

Last week, Capital Times editor and publisher Paul Fanlund wrote a nice review of my book, Light Blue: How center-left moderates can build an enduring Democratic majority. With his permission we repost it here. By Paul Fanlund When you’ve been a journalist in Madison as long as I have, you’ve seen the gamut of personalityContinue reading “Light Blue Gets Good Review”

Tom Nelson has joined Alex Lasry and Sarah Godlewski with a television ad buy. The least-funded of the four major candidates vying to take on Sen. Ron Johnson in November will probably have the smallest reach, but the ad itself could pack a bigger punch. The fourth candidate, Mandela Barnes, has yet to hit theContinue reading “He Shoots! He Scores!”

A few months ago we ended the practice of posting long opinion pieces by others verbatim. A reader and veteran journalist brought our attention to the concept of “fair usage.” That’s the principle (and law) that says it’s okay to quote bits and pieces from another writer but not to cut and paste their entireContinue reading “Abortion Opponents Aren’t Evil”

I’m late with my Midwest post this Sunday, but I’m still getting it in before Sunday ends — and I have a good excuse. It’s the firewood window up here in the U.P., and so I was using every daylight hour I could to put in my stock for the fall. I count the firewoodContinue reading “Midwest: Firewood”