Category Archives: Uncategorized

The other day David Blaska’s lawsuit was settled, but Blaska won his war back in May. Blaska and the conservative nonprofit law firm WILL went after the Madison City Council for requiring that its new Police Oversight Board be made up of various racial and gender identity groups most definitely not including straight white guys,Continue reading “The Land of Misfit Toys”

The latest Marquette University Law School poll came out earlier this month. It’s the first new MU poll since June and it was taken right after the Aug. 9 primaries. Here’s what I think I learned. Is it just a bump? In this latest poll both Republican gubernatorial candidate Tim Michels and Democratic Senate candidateContinue reading “Begging the Big Beglinger Question”

I’m betting that Pres. Joe Biden’s plan to forgive up to $20,000 in student loan debt won’t happen. Here’s why. For starters it will take awhile for the bureaucratic machinery to be put in place. All kinds of detailed questions need to be worked out and processes, decision-making standards and appeal mechanisms need to beContinue reading “Will Loan Forgiveness Survive?”

In normal times I’d welcome Republicans to Wisconsin for their national convention in 2024. But this isn’t my father’s Republican Party. It isn’t even my older brother-in-law’s GOP.  The Republican National Committee has now officially chosen Milwaukee for its next confab, which had been a foregone conclusion since its rival, Nashville, balked at approving aContinue reading “MKE, Nuremberg & the GOP”

Credit Joe Biden with taking a horrible idea and making it better. But the very idea of forgiving any amount of student loan debt is so fundamentally flawed that no amount of lipstick is going to make that pig any prettier. This is pretty clearly something that Biden didn’t want to do. Why else wouldContinue reading “Biden’s Loan Forgiveness is Unforgivable”

On Monday I wrote about (and, I hope, destroyed) the arguments of two Ivy League law professors who would undermine our Constitution and, for all intents and purposes, eliminate one branch of government in the service of enacting legislation that is wildly popular in places like Cambridge and New Haven. What professors Doerfler and Moyn,Continue reading “Public-Market Accelerated Incrementalism”

It’s fair to say that if a person becomes an Ivy League law professor that person is certifiably intelligent. It is not a fair conclusion that they live in the real world. Case in point is the recent oped in the New York Times from Ryan Doerfler and Samuel Moyn, law professors at Harvard andContinue reading “The Constitution Endures”

I used to think that the most dysfunctional local public body in Madison was its School Board. But now the Dane County Board is challenging them for the title. Last night the Board, yet again, couldn’t show any leadership. They couldn’t rally enough support to figure out what to do about the county’s jail facilities.Continue reading “They Blew It Again”

I wish I could imagine a scenario under which defeated Congresswoman Liz Cheney might lead a movement that defeats both Donald Trump and Trumpism. But I think that’s unlikely and, worse, there’s a scenario where she helps him win again. Now that the inevitable has happened and Cheney has been crushed in the Wyoming RepublicanContinue reading “Cheney’s Choices”

In the last three years the impacts of climate change have accelerated and worsened. More and stronger hurricanes. Massive wildfires and a wildfire season that is almost year-round. Flooding in some places and water shortages in others. Intense summer heat waves.  You’d think people would be more concerned than ever. You’d be wrong. An AssociatedContinue reading “The Way to Talk About Climate: Don’t”