It being a slow news week, I thought I’d share some of the more interesting parts of a book I’m reading now. Here are a couple excerpts from Carl Sandburg’s biography of Lincoln, The Prairie Years. This should be interesting reading for anyone that thinks that the good old days were days of clean and honest politics, and some of the parallels to today are stunning.

Here’s how Springfield ended up becoming the Illinois State Capital:

Lincoln led the “Long Nine” in finding the votes in the legislature to pass a bill moving the capital of the state from Vandalia to Springfield. Other counties besides Sangamon were hustling for the location; it went to Springfield mainly because of the patient and skilled manipulation of Lincoln. A few members voted for the bill because they liked Lincoln, but most of the voters came through trades, deals, “log-rolling.” “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.”

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When a bill came up in the legislature to throw off to the territory of Wisconsin the fourteen northern counties of the State of Illinois, he fought to defeat it. He wanted Illinois to have Chicago, a port on one of the Great Lakes within its borders, connecting the West with the East. If the measure had won, it would have left Illinois depending on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers for water transportation, with its main economic outlets toward the South, with its future tied closer to the South. The bill was beaten by a vote of 70 to 11.

What if this bill had passed? Can you imagine Chicago, Wisconsin? This is why Lincoln was a genius – even he knew that Packer and Bear fans could never live together.

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Here’s one that should sound familiar:

Among Illinois Whigs there were regrets. They carried their national ticket, but lost the state to the Democrats. This put a new color on a case they were interested in. Months earlier they had charged the Democrats with fraud in voting; thousands of Irish workmen in the canal zone had started a test action before a circuit judge who ruled that foreign born inhabitants must be naturalized before they could vote. The Democrats took the case to the Supreme Court, knowing that if they lost thecase they would lose thousands of votes.

Then came the newly elected legislature into session, with a Democratic majority holding power through the ballots of the canal-zone workers. This was the hour Stephen Douglas, register of the land office, seized; he wrote a draft of a bill; he made a speech in the rotunda of the capitol asking the legislature to pass the bill; the bill passed and became law; it threw out of office four circuit-court judges, set up five new supreme court judgeships, and arranged for the legislature to appoint nine new judges, who would be the supreme court of the state besides doing the work of the circuit-court judges who were thrown out. The bill passed the senate by a vote of 22 to 17, and the house by a vote of 45 to 40. By this move the Democrats saved the canal-zone vote for their party, appointed Democrats as clerks in half the counties of the state as provided in the bill, and placed Stephen A. Douglas, who could no longer be register of the land office under a Whig national administration, on the bench as a supreme court judge.

During this session of the legislature there were bitter feelings between the Whigs and Democrats. The voting was often close. Once when the Democrats wanted a quorum and the Whigs didn’t, the Democrats locked the door of the house so as to keep the quorum in. Lincoln, Joe Gillespie, and another Whig raised a window and jumped out and hid.

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And here’s a lesson for all the sissies that run for office now:

Besides wit and personality, a man had to have bulldog courage and a “constitution like a horse” to stand up in the game. When Stuart was running against Steven A. Douglas for Congress in 1838 the two Shucks grappled, and “fought like wildcats” back and forth over the floor of Herndon’s grocery till each was too tired to hit another blow. When Stuart came to, he ordered a barrel of whisky for the crowd.

Lincoln, a while later, sending news to Stuart in Washington, wrote “Yesterday Douglas, having chosen to consider himself insulted by something in the Journal, undertook to cane Francis [the editor] in the street. Francis caught him by the hair and jammed him back against a market cart, where the matter ended by Francis being pulled away from him. The whole affair was so ludicrous that Francis and everybody else, Douglas excepted, have been laughing about it ever since.”

I am 100% for a policy where politicians can challenge newspaper editors to a fight in the middle of the street. This needs to become law in 2006.

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There’s also a great story of how Lincoln agreed to marry the sister of a friend of his, if his friend could get her sister to move to Illinois. She did, and the sister turned out to be homely and obese. So Lincoln mulled over whether he should keep his word for a few months, then decided to ask her to marry him. When she said “no,” he was shocked. It had never occurred to him that she may not want to marry him! So he was hurt by a woman he never wanted to marry in the first place. He wrote a letter to his friend, ending with:

“Others have been made fools of by the girls; but this can never with truth be said about me. I most emphatically, in this instance, made a fool of myself. I have now come to the conclusion never again to think of marrying, and for this reason: I can never be satisfied with any one who would be blockheaded enough to have me.”

Amen.

“Bleg?” Is that the right word for when you ask your readers for something?

Anyway, part of the reason I haven’t been posting much is that I have been working my way through Carl Sandburg’s Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years, which I checked out from the library. In reading it, I wanted to do some highlighting and take some notes (yes, I am a complete dork), so I’m looking for a copy to buy. Problem is, it looks like in most modern versions, The Prairie Years and The War Years have been condensed into one volume. I can’t find just a version of The Prairie Years by itself.

Any suggestions on where to look? E-mail me or post a comment below. And yes, I will bore everyone with the details when I’m done reading it. A lot of great stuff.

UPDATE: Thanks to those who helped me look – I think I found what I was looking for. I’m glad I did – I checked the condensed modern version at Borders and it leaves out huge sections that I found most interesting.

In the grand scheme of things that matter to me, Jenifer Finley’s recent employment situation ranks just below the accumulation of dry toothpase at the base of my toothbrush. But when political appointees start to make grand statements about how pure they are, I get suspicious. So I did a little digging.

As you recall, Finley recently savaged Vrakas for presenting a budget that wasn’t “fiscally conservative” enough. She said, in a statement released on Christmas Eve entitled “I Can No Longer Sit Silent”:

“I resigned because I felt that Mr. Vrakas did not present a conservative budget. As Mr. Vrakas’ former campaign chairperson, I feel that Mr. Vrakas promised but then did not deliver a conservative enough budget to the taxpayers.

Mr. Vrakas rejected my recommendations and many others that would have provided far more significant relief to the taxpayers. Ultimately, he whittled down the budget cuts to what I consider an unacceptably low amount.”

Vrakas’ sin was that he “allowed” a property tax increase of $2.5 million for county services. Conservatives saw this as a property tax increase, when Vrakas actually lowered the tax rate. So people were paying a lower rate, but because their property values increased, the effect was to increase revenue to the county by $2.5 million. This same game of semantics happens every budget in every local government.

Now let’s look at the 2004 budget proposed by Finley’s husband, former County Executive Dan Finley. According to a September 2004 article by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Scott Williams, Dan Finley’s 2004 budget increased taxes by $3.3 million, for an increase of 4% over the previous year. In fact, Finley actually used this $3.3 million tax increase as evidence that Wisconsin doesn’t need a Taxpayer Bill of Rights, since he called the 4% increase a “freeze.”

In 2003, Dan Finley introduced a budget that increased taxes by $3.5 million, for an increase of 4.4% that year. In 2002, it was $2.9 million, for an increase of 4% over the previous year. You get the picture.

So now where again was Jenifer Finley’s high minded rhetoric about conservative values when her husband Dan was proposing tax increases greater than what Vrakas proposed? Was she issuing press releases saying she could no longer remain married to a man who couldn’t propose “a conservative budget?” Can she “no longer sit silent” because she did so for so many years while her husband jacked up taxes? What were all these great spending cutting ideas that she foisted on Vrakas that she never was able to talk her husband into?

This is why I think Jenifer Finley’s whole act is a charade. I have no special insight into the situation, but I imagine she did something to make her presence in Vrakas’ office unbearable. Vrakas canned her, and now she’s out to get her pound of flesh from him. Regardless of what happened between herself and Vrakas, she knew the conservatives would jump at the bait in her defense if she threw the tax increase chum out there in the water.

Regardless of what you think of Dan Vrakas’ budgeting and hiring practices (the latter are obviously awful), firing Jenifer Finley was the right thing to do. Waukesha County is better for it. It is time for everyone to “heal and move on,” which Finley ironically urged everyone to do in her Christmas Eve Massacre letter as she was knifing Vrakas in the back.

Oh, and James Wigderson has a great post summarizing the blogosphere’s take on “Finleygate,” complete with valuable links.

Okay, that might be stretching it. But a while back, I did write a post about how paying our elected representatives more would improve the quality of our politicians. Today, Sowell wrote a column agreeing with me. Or I agree with him, or something like that. Anyway, it’s kind of cool to make the same point as someone whose intellect you admire and respect so much, especially since I can barely spell the word “intellect.”

Everyone is aware of the continuing dog and pony show politicians are engaging in to blame oil companies for their recent profits. In fact, here is an example of this charade just today. But this little clip showed up in Wispolitics today that points out the benefactors of these profits might not be who you think (read more here):

Ironically, pharmaceutical and energy companies – which politicians have accused of gouging the public – have contributed the greatest gains to the state’s $70 billion public pension fund, according to figures through Sept. 30, the latest available from those who run the fund. Retirees often depend on the checks they receive from the agency that administers that fund – the State of Wisconsin Investment Board (SWIB) – to pay their medical and utility bills.Through the first three-quarters of this year, energy and pharmaceutical companies – including Exxon, Chevron, British Petroleum and Amgen – have added more than $345 million to the State of Wisconsin Investment Board’s portfolio.

So we have a Democratic governor and state senators who complain incessantly that oil company profits are evil, when in fact those same profits are going to benefit state employees. So instead of dragging oil executives to a phony hearing that accomplished nothing, why can’t Doyle, Decker, and Robson write a bill that sends those profits back to Wisconsin consumers? They are perfectly capable of shifting those poisonous profits out of the state’s retirement fund and into the hands of Wisconsin’s citizens, who have been “gouged.” They can’t control how much private stockholders (like Russ Decker and Fred Risser) profit from oil companies, but they can certainly control how much the state is willing to benefit.

Of course, they’re not truly interested in doing anything substantial, they are only interested in the occasional insultingly puerile press release.

A photo from today’s Capital Times.

I’m sure their parents are proud. If my daughter goes through a “feminist” phase in college, I will go through a “withdrawing her college savings account” phase.

A note to college guys: If you see either of these girls at any time, or any woman wearing an “I Love Emergency Contraceptive” t-shirt, OFFER THEM A DRINK. IMMEDIATELY. In fact, you may want to carry around a flask of Midori Sour in your pocket, in case of emergency.

Madison – University of Wisconsin System President Kevin Reilly today announced the UW’s plans to begin a statewide search for their next dean at area Hooters restaurants. “Only someone that sits at the bar at Hooters all afternoon can truly improve the quality of individual we’re looking for to lead our universities,” said Reilly while wiping sweet baby back barbeque sauce off of his mustache.

The UW System has recently received a great deal of negative publicity stemming from the behavior of their administrators. Paul Barrows, the appropriately titled Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs at UW-Madison, has been removed from his position for alleged sexual harassment and for running through the women on campus like he had a week to live. UW-Whitewater Dean Lee Jones has been accused of using $50,000 in money for his own personal uses, and other UW employees have spent time in prison for sexually assaulting young girls and stalking young boys on the internet.

“There’s no question we need to improve the ethical conduct of our university leadership, because it can’t get any worse,” said Reilly. “We know we can raise our ethical standard by hiring individuals that sit around, drink beer, and slap scantily clad waitresses on the buttocks all day,” said Reilly. “Regular Hooters customers have done their part for the educational system, as they personally fund the cosmetology college tuitions of thousands of trashy white women,” added Reilly.

Eager to interview was Frank “Bootyquake” Kowalski, a large mustachioed man wearing an “Amateur Gynecologist” t-shirt. “I ain’t much for learnin,” said the flatulent Kowalski, as he fell off his bar stool. “But I know I can dean the sh** out of that place,” he said, finishing off his 5 Wing Flappertizer meal.

“I knew a guy that went to college once,” said Kowalski. “His wife caught him in bed with his girlfriend and she set him on fire. After that, I said no way – no college for me,” he said.

“I can see why the UW sees Hooters breastaurants as a hotbed of people with good character,” said assistant Middleton branch manager Pat Cleveland. “We are the ultimate family restaurant – good food, clean fun, and if you’re lucky, you might get to see a little butt crack,” he said. “I can sum up the positive, community-oriented atmosphere at Hooters in two words: No homos,” he said.

Reilly said that if the Hooters search is unsuccesful, he will continue his search at strip clubs, massage parlors and 2 Live Crew concerts. Paul Barrows, who accompanied Reilly to Hooters, found the Breast and Thigh Sampler platter to be particularly enticing.

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SIDE NOTE: In doing the rigorous research for this post, I noticed that Hooters donated $225,000 for the Hurricane Katrina Relief Fund. That’s nice of them, but don’t they have an abundance of floatation devices they could have donated?

DOUBLE SECRET SIDE NOTE: I’m folding up shop here at the blog for a couple weeks to enjoy Christmas and New Year’s. I may post something if I’m uniquely inspired, but it will be sporadic, if at all. If you’re “jonesing for York,” I have plenty of columns from months back that nobody ever read, so be my guest.

Let me just say up front that I have absolutely no stake in the Republican Attorney General primary, and I have no idea who I’m going to vote for. Not that it would matter – I would think a candidate would rather have an endorsement from NAMBLA than me. All I know is, whoever wins the primary, I will be voting for in the general election.

That being said, I was struck by the contrasting styles between the two candidates when I watched the Wispolitics.com webcast of their recent debate. While J.B. Van Hollen seemed likeable and reasonably knowledgeable, Paul Bucher was combative and irritable. He looked angry that he was even there, and fidgeted with his watch, his pen, and his glass of water throughout the entire event. His answers were short, fast, and tight lipped, and he abruptly dropped his microphone each time he finished talking. After each answer, it looked like he wanted to end with “does that answer your question, jackass?” before biting the head off a terrier. When I finished watching the webcast, I looked around hoping I hadn’t just been prosecuted for something.

I was first struck by Bucher’s prickly style when I was one of the seven people watching “Here and Now” on public TV a few weeks ago. The Fabulous Frederica Freyberg asked both candidates whether they would use the film of Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager’s drunk driving arrest against her in the general election. Van Hollen said that he thought other groups would probably be using the video, and that he wouldn’t authorize his campaign to do so. Bucher essentially said (and I am paraphrasing), “Hell yeah, I’ll use it,” almost foaming at the mouth at the chance to embarrass Lautenschlager even more than she has done so herself. If he does use the ad, I respectfully ask him to pay CBS to run it on a one hour loop in place of “The Ghost Whisperer.”

Now, I totally get Bucher’s demeanor – he sees the Attorney General’s office as a position where you don’t mess around. He sees being friendly and approachable as antithetical to an office where you have to be red assed. And he sees this as an opportunity to contrast his style with not only Van Hollen, but his two Democratic challengers, as well. Unfortunately, given his performance on the webcast, the only thing he is contrasting himself with is a human being.

Of course, I’m a law and order guy myself. I obviously think the Attorney General has more important priorities than suing cranberry growers and handing out giant checks to senior citizens. But voters also elect their legislators, who actually write the laws that the AG enforces. And what these voters want is someone like them, who they can talk to and relate with. A little charm goes a long way when electing lawmakers, and I think the same would be true of an AG candidate.

Not that Van Hollen is without flaws, either. Granted, debates these days aren’t really heavy on details, but he could offer a little more insight into his practical experience. He is young looking, so he could make a little more effort to seem a little less easygoing. But on the whole, I think Bucher needs to move in Van Hollen’s direction a lot more than vice versa. I think both of these guys are electable, but Bucher would do himself a big favor by making more of a personal connection with voters.

UPDATE: Jessica McBride offers a spirited defense of her husband here.

I don’t really pretend I’m any kind of ace investigative reporter, but it appears that at least in one case, I had it right. Last week, I wrote a post pointing out that the pattern of behavior by newly minted felon Chuck Chvala hinted strongly that Chvala was out to get State Senator Jon Erpenbach. During the court proceeding, Chvala repeatedly referenced Erpenbach and his aide, former Chvala staffer Julie Laundrie.

Yesterday Laundrie released this letter to the judge in the Chvala case, accusing Chvala of exactly the type of intimidation and harrassment that I pieced together in my post. Laundrie, who is in a better position than any to know what Chvala is capable of, writes:

My selection as a prominent part of the plea agreement was not a simple chance. In fact I was told by the Assistant District Attorney that the agreement did not contain my name, but the defendant insisted that my name as a witness be included. In the filing of December 8th sentencing statement, the defendant again attacked and made accusations while reporting to the court his guilt. In addition, a former campaign contributor of the defendant has made accusations regarding me to the media. I can only assume that this campaign against me is an attempt to detract from the proceedings of the court and a way to publicly and privately hurt someone else. I see this as unrepentant and an act of intimidation. The defendant’s actions are unremorseful and disrespectful of the court.

There’s a lot more to this story, and some enterprising reporter should start digging into the nature of the Chvala/Erpenbach/Laundrie relationship. If a dope like me can do it, anyone can.

Special thanks to Xoff for reminding me what nauseating dreck the most recent editorial by Wisconsin State Journal publisher James Hopson is. Apparently you have to go pretty high up on the food chain over there to get truly awful editorials.

Hopson lazily argues that the Legislature is wasting their time by bringing up bills like the same sex marriage amendment and concealed carry. This is a common complaint by editorialists that simply don’t agree with the subject matter of these bills. That would be the intellectually honest thing to say – explain why you oppose the legislation, rather than just accusing the Legislature of wasting their time. In fact, Hopson could have just saved his own time and just printed any one of the hundred Dave Zweifel columns from the Capital Times that say the exact same thing.

Truth is, the Legislature has passed 329 bills this session, but Hopson’s newspaper has only seen fit to cover a few. Maybe if he were actually paying attention, he would realize the Assembly and Senate do more than just pass the bills he reads about over coffee in the morning. No bill takes more legislative time than the budget, but I don’t hear him complaining about that one. The Assembly spent an entire day caucusing on the bill to require ethanol in gas sold in Wisconsin – I guess that wasn’t a waste of time, seeing as how the State Journal has editorialized in favor of that specific bill. The Assembly and Senate spent a good couple of days on the gas tax indexing repeal – was that a waste of time?

Hopson may remember my post from October 31st (I’m sure he’s a regular reader) where I talked about a bill in the Legislature to allow tax credits to businesses that employ the disabled. This is a groundbreaking bill that has inspired other states to try the same thing. Apparently, he thinks the Legislature doesn’t have the time for such bills because they are all so focused on making the state’s gays a little less fabulous.

Certainly Hopson remembers September 22nd, when the Assembly was scheduled to bring up a number of bills and veto overrides. The previous evening, Representative Pedro Colon failed to vote on a veto override that would have provided more funding for nursing homes. So he spent the entire next day on the floor pissing and moaning about missing the vote, holding up deliberations on the other bills Hopson thinks are so important. It got so bad that Assembly leadership had to cancel the whole day of work, as Colon and his cohorts were determined to pout about his missed vote. I would think that would be the ultimate waste of Legislative time, but somehow that little charade failed to make it into Hopson’s article.

No, the only things that waste time for Hopson are bills that he disagrees with. Apparently he is unaware that the specific bills he targets are, in fact, important to some people – people that he sees on television, but would never have over to the Hopson estate for dinner. If you have ever laughed at a Jeff Foxworthy joke, you likely haven’t been invited to a Hopson dinner party.

And the things he ridicules? Let’s take a look:

He believes there should be no limits on stem cell research (which includes reproductive cloning), and that injecting ethics into the debate is tantamount to strangling a newborn.

He apparently thinks UW students shouldn’t even have to consider having to pay for their own contraceptives, if they want to do the “bone dance” with Kurt in Daytona.

He thinks that there’s nothing to see at the UW, everything’s just fine. Please keep moving. Taxpayers are paying for the UW president’s maid to have a lifetime backup job. Nothing to see here. Keep moving.

And what does he think the Legislature should be working on? School funding? Please, spare me. School funding has been studied time and time and time and time again by committee after worthless committee. It is addressed in each and every budget. Wisconsin has two options – spend more state money at the expense of things like medical assistance, or increase property taxes. Which does he favor? I’m sure he’d be thrilled with the Legislature’s good use of time if they spent the next year on school funding and decided to cut aid by 20%. I’m positive he would think that was a good use of time.

His point about corrections says it all. He believes Wisconsin is too “enlightened” to have people in jail. Just wait for one of these felons to break into his house and “enlighten” him upside the head on the value of a good corrections system.

It’s a sad state of affairs when the publisher of a newspaper has to come out of his cocoon to write such a putrid column. He owes everyone that read his column 3 minutes and 26 seconds of their lives back.

As a public service, I have provided a list of the 329 bills Hopson’s paper can start covering if he thinks people are wasting too much time on the ones he doesn’t like.

UPDATE: Future ex-State Senate candidate Pat Kreitlow takes exception to this post on his blog here. A couple of observations:

1. Still waiting on the Kreitlow school finance plan. Can’t wait for his “creative” ways for you to pay more in taxes. I anxiously await the details. Maybe he can get some ideas from the governor’s recent school financing study group that made virtually no recommendation other than to raise the sales tax. I guess Kreitlow thinks we need a new governor, since he doesn’t seem to have any new ideas, either.

2. I assume his ridiculing of one minor bill means he is willing to make a pledge that he won’t offer any of the crappy little local bills that you have to do to get re-elected? I look forward to drilling him anytime he introduces a bill that doesn’t deal overhauling school funding.

3. If Kreitlow thinks I’m a mouthpiece for Republicans, he obviously doesn’t read my blog very often. But if a state senate candidate in Eau Claire has enough time to mix it up with an anonymous blogger in Madison, good for him and the 40% of people that will vote for him.

4. Nice of him not to allow comments on his blog. Shows real guts. I hope that’s not a harbinger of how he views constituent input.

DOUBLE SECRET UPDATE: Hopson’s paper, the Wisconsin State Journal – and I’m not kidding – devotes a front page to discussing who would play Barry Alvarez in a movie version of his life. Waste of time, indeed.

For those of you looking for the political stuff, it will be back next week. For now, I wanted to do a self-indulgent look at the CDs I enjoyed the most this year. I’m obviously no expert, so I can’t do a definitive “best” CDs list, as I only really listen to what I buy.

I realize that it’s likely my readership probably won’t have heard of at least 9 out of these 10, so click on the album name for more details. And be sure to check them out.

So here we go….

Sufjan Stevens – Illinois

Every year I struggle with picking what my favorite disc was – but not this year. It’s a blowout. A compelling listen from beginning to end, Illinois is Stevens’ second installment in his tongue in cheek plan to record an album for each state (Michigan was his first). Combines sweeping orchestral numbers with intimate acoustic songs, all the while adhering to listener friendly hooks. And you might learn a little about the history of Illinois, too.

Twin Cinema – New Pornographers

Nashville – Josh Rouse

“Streetlights” is the best song I heard this year.

The Kingsbury Manx – Fast Rise and Fall of the South

Decemberists – Picaresque

Fountains of Wayne – Out of State Plates

White Stripes – Get Behind Me, Satan

Archer Prewitt – Wilderness

Foo Fighters – In Your Honor

Stars – Set Yourself on Fire

A teary-eyed Kathleen Falk today recounted her struggle dealing with a debilitating case of halitosis. “There were some dark days when I could barely show up to work, knowing my breath smelled like I just ate a homeless man’s underwear,” said an emotional Falk, dabbing her eyes.

Falk, a candidate for Wisconsin Attorney General, held a press conference in a Capitol hearing room this afternoon surrounded by thirty other halitosis survivors. The conference began after local emergency workers resuscitated the press corps after they passed out from the collective odor. “Let me serve as an example for all of those of you out there with stank breath that you can succeed in life with this affliction,” said Falk. “Whether you are born with acrid breath or you just sucked down a plate of tutto pasta with extra garlic, you have friends that are here to support you – and possibly offer you a Listerene breath strip,” said Falk.

Lautenschlager immediately shot back, accusing Falk of accepting excess contributions from Scope (otherwise known as “Big Breath”). Lautenschlager pointed out that Falk’s campaign has spent 63% of their funds on Binaca breath spray. “That is outrageous,” said campaign finance reform advocate Jay Heck, who somehow was able to get a quote to the newspaper despite being trapped under a piano in in the Himalayan mountains, half eaten by a bison. It was later discovered that Heck actually donated $3.78 and a copy of his “Boner Jamz ’03” video to the Lautenschlager campaign.

Critics say Falk’s flagging campaign is trying to emulate the campaign of her opponent, Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager, who has served as a courageous role model to breast cancer survivors nationwide. Falk also responded to Lautenschlager’s charge that she doesn’t have any criminal prosecutorial experience. “As public intervenor, I was tough on crimes against the environment,” said Falk. “I once successfully convicted a crime family of squirrels that were taking more than their share of nuts for the winter. They will never terrorize anyone’s bird feeder again,” said Falk.

“As attorney general, I will spare no public expense in trying to make myself look as good as possible,” said Falk, vowing to travel the state and hand out twice the number of giant fake checks to seniors who have been swindled by Publisher’s Clearing House as Lautenschlager. “When the Steven Avery trial commences, the public can rest easy that I will be there to improve my own image to the fullest extent possible, no questions asked,” said Falk.

Since the Democratic primary is expected to be hotly contested, Falk staked out her position on Lautenschlager’s left flank. “I will work to make sure the right wing agenda of hatred is thwarted,” said Falk, adding that she would require all unmarried individuals under the age of 25 to marry a member of the same sex. “I won’t rest until you can walk into Denny’s and get a free abortion with any purchase of the French Toast Slam with bacon,” said Falk.

Falk also remained adamant that the campaign be run clean and focused on the issues. “My campaign is driving the straight and narrow, right down the middle,” said Falk. “We don’t plan on veering into the ditch of dirty politics, and I have made that ever-clear to my campaign workers,” added Falk. “Our vision is 20/20, and we will not allow our campaign to be impaired and swerve all over the issues,” said Falk.

So I was thinking of doing some lame jokey post about Kent Woods and how now he’s going to have to go get his “I Love TABOR” tattoo removed after his defeat tonight. Or how it was a mistake for him to rename his children “Taxpayer” and “Bill of Rights.” So I searched Google Images for “Kent Woods” and this picture came up.

Please accept my apology before you click on the link. It’s a big file, and it gets progressively worse as it loads.

Remember ex-Chvala staffer Paula McGuire’s breathless account of what a great guy convicted felon Chuck is? The one where she recounts how Chuck emptied his own trash and allowed a Capitol janitor to sit in on a policy meeting where they all ate pizza? A great story, right?

Too bad it isn’t true.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Steve Walters actually talked to the janitor, who said it never happened. From the Journal-Sentinel Capitol Reporters’ Blog:

She’s one of the fine people who clean up after those of us who spend most of our days, and a few nights, in the Capitol. And, there’s no reason to name her; she’s afraid doing so would only end up getting her in trouble, in some way or another. Let’s use the initial M. for her.

And, let’s just say M. was astonished to find her name in the 47-page statement filed by the long line of people trying to get a Dane County judge to be lenient Thursday when he sentences former Senate Majority Leader Chuck Chvala (D-Madison), who accepted a deal that required him to plead guilty to two felonies for Capitol corruption.

Trying to convince Dane County Circuit Judge David Flanagan to not send Chvala to jail, Chvala’s lawyer said in court documents last week that, “Chuck Chvala has a soft side to him” and then quoted one of his former aides as remember a touching Capitol incident proving just that:

“One evening when the state Senate was in session late into the evening, (M.), a custodial employee at the Capitol, came into our office to empty the trash cans. Chuck was in his office with his (chief of staff) and other senators discussing bills … over a quick dinner of pizza. Chuck saw (M.) waiting apprehensively, unsure if she should enter his office to empty the trash. He immediately grabbed his trash can and went and emptied it himself. Chuck then invited (M.) into his office to have a slice of pizza and asked her to share her opinions on the pending issues…”

Touching, uh? You can wipe your moist eyes now.

Except M. doesn’t remember ever sharing a piece of pizza and her opinions with Chvala at any point in her Capitol career. And, she agreed, if it would have happened, she would have remembered it.To be sure, M. remembers Chvala as always being “kind” to her, but the come-let-us-eat-pizza scene? Never happened.Makes you wonder how many of the other anecdotes listed in the 47 pages of pleas for leniency are, uh, half-baked. Or should they be called the Chvala Chronicles?

Ironically, Paula McGuire now works for the Department of Justice. Think there’s any chance the Attorney General will investigate her own staffer for filing a false statement in an official court document?

So let’s back up here: Chvala had someone testify to his “integrity and true character” by using a completely fabricated story to demonstrate it. Paula McGuire, you are an early entrant into the Irony Hall of Fame. No balloting necessary.

It says a lot about Chvala that his defenders have to make up nice stories about him. In fact, did Al Gore even run for President? I’m skeptical now.

Bravo, Steve Walters. Bravo.

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Note: I am told that Kevin at Lakeshore Laments had this up before I did - so thanks for the mention.

Who knew I was a cop in Lawrenceville, Illinois?

I thought I’d get this kid a sweet fleece jacket before I told him he was adopted.